Month: January 2009

Yet Another Long Day For Jack Bauer

So I caught the first two hours of Day 7 of 24 last night, and while I’m not doing cartwheels in the hope that it will be a great season, I’m hopeful because it seems better than last season.  So far.

Day 6 opened strong, with Jack killing Curtis and a nuclear bomb going off in suburban L.A.  That wasn’t the only bomb for the season–the day quickly went downhill, featuring Jack teaming up with Rain Main to hunt the terrorists, going up against his father and being a witness to the killing of Charles Logan, one of the best characters on the show.

This season so far is more grounded, but it has some problems:

  • CTU is no more.
  • The First Husband is a psycho.
  • Once again, there are moles all over the place.
  • Tony Almeida is not only alive, but (seemingly) evil.

I can do with the first.  But I’m getting tired of moles in every government classification from vice president on the way down to postal carrier.  I’m sick of crazy relatives of powerful political figures. And like Jack, I don’t want to believe Tony is bad.
Still, it’s nice to see Jack in action and sticking it to a Congressional committee.  Only time will tell if this season can save the show.

King Tom3 Comments

Pie From The Sky

I’m a fan of finding new and interesting ways of cooking things.  That’s why a recent posting from Popular Science is setting the idea wheels in motion.  The PopSci Web site answers the question: If You Dropped a Corn Kernel From Space, Would it Pop During Re-Entry?

Unfortunately, the answer is mostly inconclusive:

If an astronaut were to throw a watertight kernel out of that space shuttle moving at 17,000 mph, would the kernel reach hot enough temperatures to pop as it flew through the atmosphere? It’s possible, says Kenneth Libbrecht, a physics professor at the California Institute of Technology, but he can’t run the numbers to say for sure, because no one has measured how much friction a kernel generates when it moves through the air. 

We need to get the boys (and girls) in the lab working on this one right away.  If possible, this sets the stage for a revolution in meal preparation.  All cooking is is the addition of heat to food, and one could harness this for a profit.  

Don’t go stealing this, but here’s the idea:  When the Space Shuttles have outlived their usefulness, send them up to space as orbital kitchens.  You want a pizza?  Chinese Food?  Roasted chicken?  Just call and the chefs in the shuttle will put the ingredients together and just drop it into orbit so your meal lands on your roof.  And probably crashes through, destroying your house.

On second thought, maybe they should just stick to finding out whether ants can sort tiny screws in space.

King Tom3 Comments

The French Connection

Hi , i’m the webmaster of [redacted], and i see u’re website http://www.the-king-tom.com who’s had a PageRank of 0  and , i would know if u want to exchange a backlink with me ? .
If that’s okay , can u put this backlink on you’re homepage :
<a href=[redacted]’>[redacted]</a>
Thanks to give me you’re backlink and i put on my homepage ( PR 5 )
Excuse Me for my english , but i’m french.
Best Regard
Webmaster

-E-mail received earlier today from a French visitor

I know I haven’t posted in a while, but this is ridiculous.

It’s been 13 days since I’ve last written (and the last post was a collection of recipes rather than the usual intellectual highbrow thoughts presented here at the kingdom).  I’ve been thinking, but nothing has really inspired me–and I doubt people want to read me complaining about the cold.  But today, inspiration came to my e-mail box.

First, I received note that the one little bit of “marketing” I do for the Kingdom is set to expire at the end of the month.  It’s not that much, so I’ll pony up to re-sponsor the page of the Yankees’ greatest Japanese pitcher.  The only trick is remembering to do so.  I have two-and-a-half more weeks.

The second thing to hit my e-mail box is the e-mail I’ve included at the top of this post.  I’m not going to publish the guy’s name or Web site, but this guy in France wants to include the Kingdom as part of his directory of French Web sites.  Granted, if I were to write him an e-mail in French it would probably come out as bad as his did in English (and that’s with six years of French classes!).  Still, after seeing his site, I doubt it would help me with traffic and I’m fine with this site being read by the five people kind enough to visit whenever they do (thanks Mom!) and those who come here expecting something else.

So to those of you who visit, there will be more writing in the coming days, weeks and months (with Lost starting in less than 16 days, you can bet I’ll have something to write about).  And thanks for stopping by.

King Tom4 Comments