Specialization is for Insects

Google Maps is perfectly willing to give driving directions from Chicago to London. Check out step #19.

Somebody at Google has a sense of humor.

I’m down in Champaign taking “Smoke Divers” from IFSI. It’s a really good class. We spent all of today in our packs doing mazes in various conditions, including live fire drills. The class doesn’t really teach anything I can articulate, it’s all about becoming more comfortable with the air packs.

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I got to go to an apartment fire on Friday. It was a good time.

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I joined the Illiana Yacht Club today. It’s on Wolf Lake in Hammond, Indiana.

Ever since I bought our Hobie 16 last fall, I’ve been looking for a good place to sail it, and hopefully store it. I had mostly considered Lake Michigan; the obvious choice for this area. However, finding an affordable place to store the boat is a problem. Plus, Lake Michigan can be treacherous, and Liz and I are not the most experienced sailors in the world; our crew are rank beginners, all under the age of ten.

There are four other Hobie Cats at the Illiana Yacht Club, plus a lot of small mono-hulls. They have races every Sunday afternoon. The club seems to be very unpretentious and family oriented.

I think it’s going to be a fun summer.

Life of Pi is a novel by Yann Martel. It’s the story of a boy who spends 9 months in a lifeboat with a tiger. If it were a movie, I imagine it would be directed by Carroll Ballard.

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Children of Men is a novel by P.D. James and a movie by Alfonso Cuarón.

Cuarón’s Children of Men is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Liz and I saw it in a theater this past January, and we just watched it again on DVD last night.

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There’s an article in today’s Chicago Tribune that really raised my libertarian hackles.

The makers of Equal think Splenda’s slogan “Made from Sugar, So It Tastes Like Sugar” is false advertising. Equal is suing Splenda for $176,100,000 in lost business. (That figure is almost a year’s worth of sales for Splenda.) The crux of their claim is that consumers are deceived into thinking that a product “made from sugar” actually contains sugar. This “deception” is costing them money: Equal has lost market share, Splenda has gained market share.

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We went to a fire in Flossmoor last night. One of our guys got injured.

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