May 25, 2008

Who's the Ezra Gurney in Cowboy Bebop ?

In case you hadn't noticed, the characters in Cowboy Bebop map nicely onto those in Captain Future, though it's not a bijective mapping. (And by mapping I don't mean the characters are similiar; I mean they're analogous.)

The Captain <-> Spike Spiegel
Greg, Otho <-> Jet Black
Professor Simon (Ken Scott?) <-> Edward
Ul Quorn <-> Vicious
Joan Randall <-> Faye Valentine
Yiek, Oak <-> Ein

Which leaves out Ezra Gurney, a fairly major character. The best I can come up with is Alfredo ("Punch") from Big Shot. He dons a moustache, he's getting quite some screen time, and he fills the crew in on the baddies.

May 16, 2008

Radical Luddism (or maybe not).

Yesterday, thirst-stricken in front of an organic food store, I bought a bottle of Lauretana mountain spring water, which brags, among other things, about being bottled using only natural gravity, without any pressure. If taken as a rejection of pumping technology, developed about two-and-a-half millenia ago, this is pretty radical even by most luddist standards; if, however, this is intended merely as a criticism of artificial gravity, this is rather conservative.

I'm tempted to take Lauretana's logic one step further and just leave some empty bottles outside to be rained into, which is probably as low-tech as you can possibly go.

May 10, 2008

Web 2.0 Company Name Magnetic Poetry

I just spent three weeks in the Bay Area.

This hot new startup is called
which is for .

Alternatively, you can also pick basically any word from one of the Dravidian languages.

Or you can just grow a handlebar moustache, wear bell-bottoms and hang a sign around your neck that says Style is timeless.