I’ve shared one meal with Andrea Harris, and no, we didn’t go out for something Mexican:

I don’t see what the big deal is about Mexican food. Just about everyone I know is obsessed with the stuff. “What’ll we eat tonight?” “Let’s go out for Mexican!” Said with the gleaming eyes of fanatics. And then we end up [at] some Fake-Mex place like Chili’s. But like I said, I’ve eaten the more authentic cuisine (when I lived in Miami there was the little place in Little Havana, of all neighborhoods, which was owned and run by Mexicans from Mexico, stocked with Mexican sodas and all kinds of things, where the food was the real stuff; and it was good too — all at a little hole-in-the-wall place). But I don’t see what’s so special about it. It’s basically the same heavy peasant fare that people eat the world over — meat, rice, beans — tarted up with hot chilis. I think that’s the draw, the hot chilis: apparently capsaicin is addictive, you build up a resistance to it like to any drug and you need more and more to fulfill your cravings. Also it increases endorphins, just like heroin. But it tastes better than sprinkling heroin on your food.

This is why God in His wisdom gives us ulcers: to get us to lay off the jalapeños, fercrissake.

In this part of the country, anyway, you’re either going to encounter some form of Tex-Mex in a comparatively-sanitary form or something closer to the Real Enchilada in a shadier configuration.

And then there’s Taco Bell, which, says Andrea, is “about as Mexican as apple pie.” Not that you’d care at 1:50 am.

The opportunity presented itself: Phoenix had a back-to-back, and they decided to save Shaquille O’Neal for Minnesota, presumably a more-difficult opponent. But the Shaqless Suns had more trouble than they expected with the Oklahoma City Thunder, falling behind 31-26 early in the second quarter and still behind late in the fourth, at which point God Steve Nash took matters into his own hands, rattling off bucket after bucket, finally dishing to Matt Barnes to put the Suns up 99-98, and that’s how it ended.

Nash, stopping off at the Ford on his way to the Hall of Fame, had 20 points, 15 assists, and 8 rebounds; the reliable Amare Stoudemire tossed in 22 points of his own, and the Suns shot a respectable 53.9 percent from the floor.

You could argue that Nash played 42½ minutes to pile up all those stats, and he did; but the Kevin Durant Show ran over 44 minutes, in which KD knocked down 29 points. The Thunder won several of the stat categories: rebounds, 40-34; points in the paint, 44-36; steals, 13-6.

Scott Brooks seems to be experimenting with twin point guards. Tonight, Russell Westbrook got the points (15, versus five assists) and Earl Watson got the dimes (13, against two points). With Nick Collison in foul trouble early, Chris Wilcox stepped up for 18 points and six boards. The crowd, back to sellout level, did what it could. Ultimately, though, Steve Nash owned this game. And if the Thunder lost by one, well, you have to wonder if maybe they wouldn’t have lost by thirty-one under the previous regime.

And now, it’s off to Cleveland, where King James will wreak havoc.

I refer, of course, to the humble iPhone, which has picked up some new applications of interest:

NMobile and Trapster are two mobile applications that provide up-to-date, detailed maps of speed-enforcement zones with live police traps, speed cameras or red-light cameras. After launching, each application pulls up a map pinpointing the locations of speed traps within driving distance. An audio alert will sound as vehicles approach an area tagged as harboring a speed trap.

You may well ask, “How does this gizmo determine if you’re in a speed-enforcement zone?” And the answer is decidedly low-tech:

Both applications rely on the wisdom of the crowds for their data. Users can report camera-rigged stop lights and areas heavily populated with radar-toting police officers through the application or on each company’s Web site. Eagle-eyed motorists using either application can also contribute information on the location of newly spotted speed traps from the road with a couple of taps on the iPhone. Then, using the iPhone’s GPS location detection, the applications warn drivers when they are approaching known or reported traps.

(Via Megan McArdle, who asks: “What’s the over/under on the first government attempt to shut this down?”)

While Detroit licks its wounds and gears up for another round of groveling to Nancy Pelosi, the Koreans are taking a comparatively-unusual approach to debt service:

Kia, an affiliate of the country’s top car maker Hyundai Motor Co, has found it difficult to issue bonds to refinance debt amid global financial turmoil and a looming worldwide recession that has hit auto demand.

So what do they do?

Kia … said it had decided to pay 300 million euros ($378.5 million) worth of debt due on Monday in cash.

In cash? Whoever heard of such a thing?

(Seen here.)

No, it’s got nothing to do with Las Vegas.

Mark Alger details his Hierarchy of Vehicular Needs:

I prize (in this order), comfort, wide field of vision, visibility, crash-survivability, winter traction, and cargo capacity over fuel economy.

Which got me thinking: what criteria drew me to my present set of wheels? Expediency was certainly a factor, since my previous set of wheels had been rendered inoperable and, in the judgment of some auto-insurance type, unfixable, but there were thousands of cars for sale that June day in Oklahoma City, and Carmax would happily have trucked one up from elsewhere had I asked, so there had to be something drawing me to this particular car.

The first order of business was size, and there were two sets of dimensions to consider:

• Many people seeing me seated assume I’m six-five or six-six, until I stand up and reveal myself to be more of a point guard than a power forward: six feet even, with a 28-inch inseam. So I could give a flip about legroom; I just want to make sure I don’t scrape my scalp against the headliner.
• The garage at Surlywood was built in 1951 — three years after the rest of the house — and was not ideally suited to the longer, lower, wider stuff that Detroit ground out later in the decade. The previous owner drove a Nissan Maxima, so I would consider no vehicles that substantially exceeded its size.

Beyond that, I was looking for some measure of reliability, since I was buying used, and I didn’t like the machine-gun slits that passed for windows in some recent models. I ignored utterly the crash-test results — having just had a crash, I was in no mood to contemplate the likelihood of another — and I paid only perfunctory attention to fuel economy, inasmuch as all the cars under consideration were what the EPA terms “mid-size,” and that commonality of size suggested to me that gas consumption was likely to be about the same with any of them.

What sealed the deal, though, was a piece of cheap metal: the badge. As I explained at the time:

As a practicing plebe, I’ve always felt that if you want a Camry, you should buy a Camry, and forgo the big L badge. But there’s another side to this story: suppose, just suppose, that the guy who buys the Lexus, knowing he paid the big bucks, actually does a better job of taking care of his pricey little beastie?

And the other side of that coin: the Lexus dealership, by repute anyway, is going to be more anxious to curry the favor (possibly even the favour) of its customers than is your average Toyota store.

Which explains why I have an Infiniti I30, which, were it not for the badge and some glitz and 100 lb of sound insulation and a whole lot of manufacturer obsequiousness, would have been, yes, a Nissan Maxima. It’s something of a tradition around this house.

Two months and change until the next Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and it turns out I hadn’t seen the last Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. So I had Amazon.com throw a copy into my book order, and it arrived yesterday, and after glancing at however many photos there were, I pronounced it meh-worthy.

Some explanation for that showed up in The Week, which also arrived yesterday:

It’s well established that the images of impossibly thin and beautiful models in magazines can make perfectly normal young women feel fat and ugly. Now a new study says that the sexy female bodies in the pages of “lad” magazines like Maxim and FHM are just as depressing for men as they are for women.

Which struck me as an odd thing to appear in The Week, which is owned by Felix Dennis, who also created Maxim. I sought out further details of the study, and turned up rather a lot of them:

“We found that reading lad magazines was related to having body self-consciousness a year later,” said [Dr Jennifer] Aubrey [of the University of Missouri]. “This was surprising because if you look at the cover of these magazines, they are mainly images of women. We wondered why magazines that were dominated by sexual images of women were having an effect of men’s feelings about their own bodies.”

To help answer this question, Aubrey collaborated with University of California-Davis Assistant Professor Laramie Taylor. The researchers divided male study participants into three groups. Group one examined layouts from lad magazines that featured objectified women along with a brief description of their appearances. The second group viewed layouts about male fashion, featuring fit and well-dressed male models. The final group inspected appearance-neutral layouts that featured topics including technology and film trivia.

“Men who viewed the layouts of objectified females reported more body self-consciousness than the other two groups,” Aubrey said. “Even more surprising was that the male fashion group reported the least amount of body self-consciousness among the three groups.”

Aubrey speculated that the exposure to objectified females increased self-consciousness because men are reminded that in order to be sexually or romantically involved with a woman of similar attractiveness, they need to conform to strict appearance standards.

The Week quotes Dr Aubrey:

“Men make the inference that in order to be sexual and romantic with women of the caliber they see in Maxim magazine, they also need to be attractive.”

This strikes me as at least slightly arguable — it’s not that hard to find examples of lovely women with unlovely guys — but you have to figure that those fellows have something to offer, and I’d hazard a guess that whatever that something may be, it’s not the product of reading lad mags.

What worries me is that somebody might think this is a really swell idea:

Ordinary Americans will be able to afford medical costs by getting coverage through their car-insurance companies. Conversely, to end carbon emissions (by making driving too expensive for ordinary Americans to afford), let the HMOs handle auto insurance, too.

The great thing about car insurance companies is that you only deal with them for big-ticket items and handle everyday maintenance yourself. This makes automotive care affordable for almost everybody, which leads to more driving and more pollution.

Unless the HMOs handle it. Need an oil change? Then call your primary car mechanic and make an appointment through his secretary to determine that your car does, indeed, need an oil change, and you’ll be allowed to schedule a visit to an oil-care specialist three weeks from next Tuesday (don’t forget to ask your boss for time off work), and your mechanic bills the HMO some huge amount but your co-pay is only $25, plus another $20 for your primary car mechanic visit.

This is not too different from getting a service appointment at the local Infiniti store, though an oil change will run me a bit less than $45 and they’ll actually lend me a car for the duration. What’s more, they’ll wash my car.

But then it starts to get tricky:

What happens when your tires start going bald? Once your PMC confirms this diagnosis in writing, the insurance company will pay for a new set at the tire shop five towns over from where you live (i.e., the nearest one belonging to your HMO’s automotive provider network. The other 19 tire shops in your area are off-limits to you).

Of course, if you want to buy a new car, you’ll need your PMC to check it over and look for pre-existing conditions. If the car’s in less-than-perfect shape, you might not qualify for coverage at all. Sucks to be you.

And let’s not forget gasoline! It’s extremely dangerous when used improperly, so instead of allowing folks to buy it willy-nilly, it’ll be prescribed on a need-only basis. Since you’re not legally responsible enough to determine that need on your own, your primary car mechanic will authorize how much gas you need, which station you can buy it from, the proper octane rating and whether you really need gas at all.

Remind me to block Henry Waxman’s IP address, lest he see this.

Morgan Freeberg has decided that women’s legs are evidence of intelligent design:

You know that thing going around about how bananas are an atheist’s nightmare, because they possess so many attributes all of which seem to be orchestrated toward making them easier to eat? The same is true of the female gam. Designed by an intelligent Higher Power, to be observed and appreciated.

Entered into the record: Exhibit A AK.

Some of you may have gotten some older posts mixed into the site feed over the last couple of days. This was my fault; I’d gone back and fixed several broken internal links, and the gizmo that evaluates the feed had been left in Date Modified mode, so all of the posts containing those links were duly sent out.

I have since modified the Date Modified mode so it shouldn’t do that.

New York Times best-selling novelist Elizabeth Boyle is no fan of spoilers:

If I am looking forward to something (a book, a TV show, a movie) I make it a studious practice of avoiding anything that might hint at the plot, the twists or even if there is a surprise. I’ll read a review for about two lines to get the sense of whether the reviewer liked it or didn’t and then stop, for fear the reviewer has forgotten his job and gone and spoiled the premise for his readers.

Because, ladies and gentleman, IMHO the job of a reviewer is NOT to give away the plot. They can give a broad overview of the story, but when they lay out each and every surprise, twist or character Ta-Da the author, playwright or screenwriter has carefully and meticulously labored over to layer into the story just so, then they might as well have just slammed the oven door on the souffle.

On the reviews of one of her own novels:

And when I see that someone has reviewed my book, especially this one, I am at first thankful for the time they’ve spent to give my book a review, but there is also that momentary cringe. Dear God, don’t let them give away the farm, I mutter as I click the mail open. Most of the reviews have been good at realizing that the reader is going to have more fun with this story if they don’t know every detail of the plot. They understand that the reading experience is about being surprised about who the characters are after you’ve peeled through the requisite chapters like layers of a onion.

It helps, of course, if the author herself doesn’t telegraph the entire story in the first chapter or two. And apart from the fact that this particular book is a romance and therefore can be reasonably expected to end with the couple living happily ever after, I admit that during the reading I came up with half a dozen different outlines for just how Point B would be reached, and every last one of them was wrong.

(Yes, it’s a romance. I don’t deny it. I consider it, however, necessary research.)

Once again, we open up a mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnalls’ porch the SiteMeter logs and pull out a sampling of search strings for the delectation amusement of the readership. Sometimes it even works.

wonderful tonight is crap:  But it’s really great crap, Mrs Presky.

what is intellectual flexibility:  The ability to connect Eric Clapton to Firesign Theatre in a single snarky sentence.

condoleezza rice beautiful legs:  Well, you figured she’d be remembered for something.

distinguishing objective and subjective writing:  The usual benchmark: my writing is objective, while your writing is subjective.

whats up with debra messing’s nose:  I’d attribute it to cartilage.

what pecentage of men wear bikini underwear:  I have no idea, but I fear it’s greater than zero.

population of large boobs:  I have no idea, but I suspect it’s greater than the percentage of men who wear bikini underwear.

can you get chlamydia by trying on new panties that someone else wore naked?  If someone else wore them, they’re not exactly new, are they?

cds are for old people:  Absolutely. I am old, so feel free to send me CDs.

who said there is no limit to human stupidity:  Anyone who watched political commercials this past October.

who sells Chaz the first one:  I wasn’t aware I was buying.

Finally, this is rather dispiriting:

There were literally thousands of requests like this over the weekend. As Mark Twain once said: “There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.”

I can’t imagine anyone actually needing this WordPress plugin, but it has its amusing aspects:

My latest plugin, the WordPress Politically Correct plugin, PC plugin for short, is a fitting plugin for today’s 2.0 bloggers. Turning your blog into something your mother would be proud of has never been easier.

My mother never read a blog in her life, but no matter. Here’s how it works:

Look at this exerpt for example:

So there was this bum harrasing this chick right? The guy was so drunk it wasn’t even funny. Next thing you know this huge, bald fireman comes to her rescue. He grabs the homeless guy and knocks him out cold. The poor soul looked dead, just lying there on the pavement. I know why the guy did it. The girl looked like a slut. He probably thought he was going to get some action. Yeah, she looked real easy.

Oh, my ears hurt from the foul, non PC language! Time to clean things up, turn your PC plugin on and presto! here’s what you get:

So there was this displaced homeowner harrasing this breasted american right? The guy was so chemically inconvenienced it wasn’t even funny. Next thing you know this huge, follicly challenged firefighter comes to her rescue. He grabs the optionally residential guy and knocks him out cold. The economically disadvantaged soul looked metabolically challenged, just lying there on the pavement. I know why the guy did it. The girl looked like a previously enjoyed companion. He probably thought he was going to get some action. Yeah, she looked real horizontally accessible.

Ah, better! Music to my ears.

In the next version, there ought to be a replacement for “get some action,” if you ask me.

If you want it, here’s the plugin page.

(Via Scuffulans hirsutus.)

Earlier this month I expressed some concern over the future of PC World, what with a couple of its columnists signing off in the December issue.

However bad it may be at PCW, though, it’s worse at rival PC Magazine:

PC Magazine will go the way of the Christian Science Monitor and assorted teen magazines and become a digital-only publication, parent company Ziff Davis Media announced Wednesday.

The print version of the monthly will come to an end with the January issue. In addition, PCMag Network, the online home of the publication, will be renamed PCMag Digital Network. Seven employees of the magazine will lose their jobs.

The more than 600,000 subscribers to the magazine will be offered subscriptions to the monthly digital edition of the magazine. Currently the digital edition has roughly 15,000 subscribers, who pay $15 a year.

Meanwhile, across the way:

Ad pages for the magazine plunged 23% this year to 617, following a 34% slide in 2007, according to IMS/The Auditor. Rival tech title PC World edged out the longtime frontrunner last year, and widened its lead to well over 100 pages in 2008.

I can remember when PC Mag had 617 ad pages in a month. (Of course, they were publishing twice a month in those days.) Here’s the announcement from editor Lance Ulanoff.

If you ask me, and of course you didn’t, the best computer-related stuff Ziff-Davis ever did was the short-lived PC/Computing, which featured the legendary Notebook Torture Tests and a column by Penn Jillette.

Have you ever considered a four-year membership-renewal term? (Current options are 1, 2, 3, 5, and Life.) I’d bet it would go over pretty well right about now.

If you keep a window open for the State Election Board’s Web site as the votes are counted, the number that’s drilled into your head is 2,231: the number of individual precincts in the state. Much has been made of the fact that the McCain/Palin ticket carried every single county in Oklahoma; the Oklahoman has now looked into the individual precinct numbers, and has found 198 where Obama/Biden drew the majority of the votes.

The explanation, says OU political-science professor Keith Gaddie, is in line with conventional wisdom:

If you look at the urban areas, these are classic urban voting patterns. The Democratic concentrations were in minority precincts and in both older working class suburbs and older affluent suburbs.

Newer ‘burbs and rural areas, by contrast, went staunchly Republican.

My own precinct (Oklahoma County 453) was, I suspected, about evenly divided. It turned out to have a bit of a McCain tilt: 52.4 percent to 47.6 for Obama.

One woman’s “expensive” is another woman’s “investment,” I suppose. To get a better grip on these terms, I turn to Plumcake’s explanation of the hierarchy of the shoe biz:

“Inexpensive” (under $100) you have your lower-end department store shoes, Payless, Target, Wal-Mart; teetering on the upper level of inexpensive is Nine West, DSW etc. I do not say it is impossible to find an investment shoe at this level, but I have not come across one.

“Designer” ($100-300) will generally get you decently-made department store house brands and your entry-level luxury lines (Kate Spade, Tory Burch and Juicy Couture); there are some excellent values to be had in this range, particularly if you pay attention to construction and not the label. If all your shoes come from this category, pat yourself on the back, you’re doing well. Stuart Weitzman, Delman, and Cole Haan are reliable heavy hitters in this price range.

“Premium Designer” ($300-600) is where the committed shoe junkie lives. In this category your shoes will be crafted in Italy, France or Spain of excellent materials. Most of the designers who occupy the “Ultra Premium” category have a home base here including most non-runway shoes from Manolo, Chanel, Dior, Jimmy Choo and Prada.

“Ultra Premium” (over $600) is the shoe as art form. These are often made of exotic skins or feathers that are no longer allowed to be collected (they get them from the archives of old feather houses); these shoes will be limited edition and usually available in boutique only.

Your mileage, of course, may vary. I suspect that there will be a certain amount of eye-rolling on my side of the gender divide; I can say only that most of my shoes these days cost right around $100.

If you’ve stopped learning, you’ve stopped living; evidently I’m still breathing, or something.

• You want something to taste better? Wrap it in bacon.
• Apparently there are no Mexican restaurants in England.
• A bitter ale for bitter times.
• Special bulletin for Chicagoland: it’s colder in the winter.
• Was anyone seriously wondering about Katy Perry’s rack?
• Growth industries for the future: preventing identity theft, providing clean water, looking after women’s legs.
• Is it too much of a hassle to post comments at your site?
• As God is my witness, I thought turkeys came from, like, some extrusion plant in Secaucus, New Jersey, not a freaking death factory.
• If you’re happy and you know it — the TV is probably off.
• Libation of the future: Hello Kitty Beaujolais Nouveau.
• A post about a couple of dimwits and a portfolio of risqué photos results in the third-highest traffic day ever at this site.

More whenever.

I figure interim coach Scott Brooks gave the following instructions to the Thunder today:

• Don’t take so many shots if you’re not going to make them;
• We’re not going to throw bodies onto the roster just to see if someone can play this game.

And while the Hornets won this one at home, 109-97, the Thunder didn’t embarrass themselves the way they’ve done too many times this season; it’s just that New Orleans was clicking on all cylinders tonight.

I mean, really. Chris Paul got a triple-double: 29 points, 10 rebounds, 16 assists. Sharpshooter David West scored 33. The Bees won the battle of the boards, 35-29, and they only missed one foul shot all night.

But Oklahoma City, despite a second-quarter dry spell, did several things right. Brooks shook up the starting lineup: Nick Collison was shifted to center, Jeff Green to power forward, Kevin Durant to small forward (where he belongs, if you ask me), and Damien Wilkins got the start at shooting guard. Wilkins responded with 11 points; Chris Wilcox, spelling Collison, got a double-double (14 points, 10 boards); Durant, under less pressure to hit the jump shots, dropped in 30 points. And Jeff Green was decently effective at the four, turning in 17 points and five rebounds. A lot of DNP-CDs tonight: Brooks played only eight men. (New Orleans coach Byron Scott played nine, though Devin Brown was injured early and did not return.)

And that bit about taking fewer and better shots — well, if Brooks didn’t say it, the team still did it. The Thunder hit 38 of 72 for 52.8 percent; the only problem was, the Hornets were even better than that, knocking down 54.1.

If there’s one thing you hate about this game, it’s a back-to-back with a plane trip in between, and there are two such coming up. The Phoenix Suns will be at the Ford Tuesday, and then it’s off to Cleveland to play the Cavs on Wednesday; the Minnesota Timberwolves, the one team the Thunder has actually beaten, will arrive Friday, followed by a trip to Memphis on Saturday.

And look what happened: one Phillip Sherman on July 5 left his cell phone in the McDonald’s restaurant in Fayetteville, Arkansas. His wife had previously sent nude pictures of herself to this cell phone.

Then matters escalated: the manager at Mickey D’s, Aaron Brummley, placed a call to Mr. Sherman’s mom and said he would keep the phone until it was picked up. Shortly thereafter, apparently Mrs. Sherman started receiving text messages, by which she learned that those photos had not only been seen, but had been uploaded to the Web.

The Shermans are now suing McDonald’s, the franchise owner, and Brummley for $3 million, presumably for not warning them about the hazards of losing cell phones containing nude photos at a workplace full of teenagers.

(Via Fark. I don’t have a link for the actual pictures; there may be links posted in that Fark thread.)