Eric James Stone

I’m sitting here at The Parents^TM house watching Monday Night football (Broncos-Raiders) with Dad and my cousin Scott and blogging wirelessly from my laptop. Since my fantasy football team was up by over 30 points, there was only a a slight chance that I could lose (which is now a “no chance.”) But Dad and Scott had things to worry about.

Anyway, just wanted to blog “on the road,” so to speak.

I’ve added some Javascript to indicate new posts since your last visit (assuming you’ve visited before.) It needs a cookie to be set before it starts working, so in future visits you should see it (assuming I’ve posted something new.)

Using viruses to kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

(And for those who think I should have said “virii,” click here.)

For several years now, my favorite series of books has been the Honor Harrington series by David Weber. Crown of Slaves is a book set in the “Honorverse,” co-authored by Weber and Eric Flint. While Honor herself makes only a cameo appearance, it involves several characters introduced in the series (and in some of the Honorverse short stories previously written by Eric Flint.)

It was a good adventure, fun to read. I did spot what I felt was a major flaw in the thinking of a character who should have known better. It was necessary to the plot to have the character be gone for most of the story, and it would have been possible to do so even if the character’s thinking hadn’t been flawed. So it’s not a flaw that had an impact on the plot, but it’s just that when a character is supposed to be an expert, and he says there are three possible explanations for something, a fourth explanation should not be obvious to me.

Still, if you’re a fan of the Honorverse, it’s worth reading.

Well, I won’t bother posting the prediction I made regarding the BYU game, because it was wrong and they lost.

The defense did pretty well considering that Stanford had wonderful field position most of the time. Our offense never really got on track.

Ah, well. At least it wasn’t a conference game.

Someone recently told me he found the starfield background of my blog distracting. (That person would have remained nameless had our parents not chosen to call him Jonathan.)

Well, it just so happens that I like it. But, in case you agree with him, I’ve added something over at the top of the left column to let you choose a “Plain Vanilla” theme instead. (Probably won’t work for people not using Internet Explorer 5 or later on Windows. That’s why the government should grant Microsoft a monopoly on browsers.)

Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day.

I just finished watching Bicentennial Man. I remember reading the Isaac Asimov story it was based on, but don’t really remember the details of the original story, so I don’t know how different the plot of the movie is.

Overall, the movie was a little slow in places, but I found it interesting overall. The question of what rights a human-level (or greater?) artificial intelligence should have is an interesting one. It’s been dealt with in various science fiction settings, but until the law actually has to confront the issue, it’s hard to predict what will happen because the details could make all the difference.

Rodents Of Unusual Size? From Yahoo! news:

A rodent the size of a buffalo? Researchers say they have found fossils for a 1,545-pound giant that thrived millions of years ago in a swampy South American forest.

It was, in fact, Antonio Bryant’s catch that put the finishing touch on my fantasy football team’s win. The Klingon Warriors crushed the Local Sheriffs (owned by my brother Michael) with a score of 105.58 to 59.30.

Once again, the Klingon Warriors had the high score of the week. (It really helped that both Priest Holmes and Travis Henry had three touchdowns.)

So, the Klingons are comfortably in first place in the league. Next week’s game is against the Marauders (owned by my first-cousin-once-removed Brandon), one of the only two other teams left undefeated after two weeks.