Quick and healthy Spanish rice!

Looking for an easy side dish?  Looking for something healthy?  Looking for something "authentic" Mexican but bastardized beyond belief?  Look no further!

(One caveat - this recipe may be a little "busy" for some, but I like a wide variety of flavors in my dishes, and seized this opportunity to clear out the pantry.  Omit ingredients as desired.  You should probably keep rice in the dish, though)

I'll try this with a new format, too - mostly illustrated.  This recipe made me six very hearty portions, so it could easily be served as 8 or 10 side dishes:

Heat & oil pan

 Add diced onion, salt & pepper

Make way for seeded & diced jalapenos!

 Now a diced green pepper

Festive spices - I added toasted cumin and garlic

 Frozen corn and rinsed canned black beans

 I use brown minute rice - this is approximately 3 cups of dry rice.  You can use regular rice, just be sure to pay attention to the instructions for cooking the rice!  Also, hold back on just a little bit of the chicken stock (recommended) or water for cooking the rice, because:

 You'll add salsa.  I started with 1/2 of a 16 oz jar, but I wound up having to use the whole thing.

Stir, cover and simmer until the rice is done and water is absorbed.  If you cook like I did here, you might want to check and make sure you have enough water, so you don't wind up with a pan full of scorched rice.  I decided I didn't have enough tomato-y goodness, so:

 I added a can of diced tomatoes in tomato sauce, stirred, and

 Viola!

Be sure to enjoy with

Grill-roasted veggies and. . .

 Chipotle & pineapple marinated chicken!

  

For those who need amounts of ingredients - this recipe included:

1 or 2 tablespoons of olive oil

1 onion

4 jalapenos 

1 green pepper

salt & pepper

maybe a teaspoon or two of cumin & granulated garlic

1 can black beans

1 cup frozen corn

3 cups minute rice

water according to rice instructions (minus a little bit)

1 - 16 oz jar of salsa

1 can of diced tomatoes

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of mankind's first steps into space

 Vostok 1 Mission Insignia

Vostok 1 was the first known spaceflight in the Vostok program and the first known human spaceflight in history. (Vostok is Russian for “Orient” or “East”; I presume it was so named because spacecraft are launched on an easterly trajectory to harness the rotational force of the Earth)  The Vostok 3KA spacecraft was launched on April 12, 1961.  The flight took Yuri Gagarin, a cosmonaut from the Soviet Union, into space, marking the first time that a human entered outer space, as well as the first orbital flight of a manned vehicle.  Vostok 1 was launched by the Soviet space program, and was designed by Soviet engineers guided by Sergei Korolyev under military supervision of Kerim Kerimov and others.

 In case you forgot who the Soviet Union was.

The spaceflight consisted of a single orbit of the Earth.  According to official records, the spaceflight took 108 minutes from launch to landing.  As planned, Gagarin landed separately from his spacecraft, having ejected with a parachute 7 km (23,000 ft) above ground.  Due to the secrecy surrounding the Soviet space program at the time, many details of the spaceflight only came to light years later, and several details in the original press releases turned out to be false.

 Yuri, Yuri, you're the cosmonaut for me

27 year-old Yuri Gagarin was the only crew member of Vostok 1.  The Vostok spacecraft were designed to carry a single cosmonaut.  The primary and secondary backup cosmonauts for the mission were Gherman Titov and Grigori Nelyubov.  The assignments were formally made on April 8, four days before the mission, but Gagarin had been a favorite among the cosmonaut candidates for at least several months.

Unlike later Vostok missions, there were no dedicated tracking ships available to receive signals from the spacecraft.  Instead, they relied on the network of ground stations, also called Command Points, to communicate with the spacecraft; all of these Command Points were located within the Soviet Union.  This meant that communication with the craft was not always clear, and telemetry data were not immediately available.  Also, because of weight constraints, there was no backup retrorocket engine.  The spacecraft carried 10 days of provisions to allow for survival and natural decay of the orbit in the event the retrorockets failed. 

The entire mission would be controlled by either automatic systems, or by ground control.  This was because medical staff and spacecraft engineers were unsure how a human might react to weightlessness, and therefore it was decided to lock the pilot's manual controls.  In an unusual move, a code to unlock the controls was placed in an onboard envelope, for Gagarin's use in case of emergency.  But, prior to the flight, one of the mission controllers told Gagarin the code anyway.

 Strap a rocket on this badboy, and you're ready for launch!  

(pretty much literally)

On the morning of April 11, 1961, the Vostok-K rocket, together with the attached Vostok 3KA spacecraft, were transported several miles to the launch pad, in a horizontal position.  Once they arrived at the launch pad, Sergei Korolyev inspected the rocket and spacecraft for problems, and without finding any, the rocket was raised into the upright position.  At 10am (Moscow time), Gagarin and Titov were given a final review of the flight plan.  They were informed that launch was scheduled to occur at 9:07am Moscow time.  This time was chosen so that when the spacecraft started to fly over Africa, which was when the retrorockets would need to fire for reentry, the solar illumination would be ideal for the orientation system's sensors.

At 5:30 a.m. Moscow time, on the morning of April 12, 1961, both Gagarin and his backup Titov were woken.  They were given breakfast, and assisted into their spacesuits.  One of the onlookers in the dressing room semi-jokingly suggested that upon landing in his futuristic outfit Gagarin could be mistaken for the pilot of an American spy plane like the one that had been shot down over USSR in the previous year.  The idea was taken seriously and officials made the urgent decision to paint C C C P (USSR) on the front of Gagarin's helmet in big red letters.  A number of photos showing Gagarin in his helmet before and after the letters were painted confirm the aucenticity of the story.  One life-support engineer known for his calligraphic writing quickly accomplished the improvised task.  Gagarin reportedly pleaded with the "artist" to be careful not to drop red paint on his nose.  After transport to the launch pad, Gagarin entered the Vostok 1 spacecraft, and at 07:10 local time (04:10 UTC), the radio communication system was turned on.  Once Gagarin was in the Vostok 1 spacecraft, his picture appeared on television screens in the launch control room from an onboard camera.  Launch would not occur for another two hours, and during the time Gagarin chatted with the mission's main CapCom (the flight control “capsule communicator"), as well as Chief Designer Sergei Korolev, Nikolai Kamanin, and a few others.  Following a series of tests and checks, about forty minutes after Gagarin entered the spacecraft, its hatch was closed.  It was soon discovered that the seal was not complete, so technicians spent nearly an hour removing all the screws and sealing the hatch again. 

During this time Gagarin requested some music to be played over the radio.  Sergei Korolyev was very nervous in the lead up to the launch; he experienced chest pains, and took a pill to calm his heart.  Gagarin, on the other hand, was described as calm; about half an hour before launch his pulse was recorded at 64 beats per minute.  Gagarin's launch vehicle blasted off into the cloudless blue sky almost as scheduled, just a fraction of a second before 09:07 Moscow Time.  Several thousands of military officers, soldiers, technicians and engineers spread over various facilities of the top-secret test range later known as Baikonur witnessed the roaring vehicle rising over the steppe and heading eastward.

 Orbital path of Vostok 1

Fortunately for Gagarin, his liftoff and the ride to orbit went smoothly. Inside the spacecraft, Gagarin felt how the heavy pressure of g-loads pressed him into the seat, stiffening his legs, arms and face and making it difficult to talk.  One minute after launch the acceleration had reached 3-4 g and Gagarin's pulse rose from a regular 64 to 150.  According to Korolyev, around 13 minutes after launch, he had confirmation that the first man from Earth had reached the Earth's orbit.  The question remained, though, of what kind of orbit it was.

For decades, countless books repeated each other, claiming that Gagarin's launch was flawless.  Only by the end of the 20th century did the truth start to emerge.  Later calculations showed that Gagarin's orbit was 327 kilometers above the Earth's surface at its highest point (apogee), instead of the planned 230 kilometers.  Overshooting its apogee by almost 100 kilometers posed multiple and potentially deadly problems.  Since Vostok had no backup braking engine, its planned orbit was calculated to be low enough to allow the rarified air at that altitude to slow down the spacecraft so that it could reenter the atmosphere and land 5-7 days after launch without any additional thrust.  In preparation for the possibility that the sole retrorocket could fail, Vostok carried enough air, food and other vital consumables on board for a 10-day flight.  However, Gagarin's actual orbit would need more than two weeks (possibly as many as 30 days) to decay and allow the return to Earth.  Therefore, if the first cosmonaut's braking engine failed, he would be doomed to a slow death in orbit.  Even if everything else went as planned, the higher-than-normal orbit could still affect the flight.  Immediately after the separation from the third stage of the launch vehicle, a special timer called PVU Granit was activated onboard Vostok, counting down toward the firing of the braking engine.  Probably as a result of the higher (and consequently longer) orbit, the timer was now programmed to start the deorbiting maneuver slightly ahead of the correct point.  In turn, the premature reentry would shift Gagarin's touchdown point forward, short of its target.

While over the tip of South America, as Vostok was near the highest point of its orbit, Gagarin noticed improvement in communications via short-wave radio.  Unknown to him, at 09:53, transmitters of the Vesna short wave station in Khabarovsk had been activated on explicit orders from General Kamanin with the goal of finally assuring Gagarin that his spacecraft was in the planned orbit and that the flight was proceeding normally.  It is still unclear if this misleading message was a ploy to give Gagarin a psychological boost or the result of a blissful ignorance on the part of mission managers.  Also, at 10:02, Moscow radio finally made the long-awaited announcement about the flight.  Given the original intention to announce the launch within 20 minutes after the fact, it is still unknown whether the delay was the result of red tape or due to scrambling to confirm orbital parameters.


As the sun appeared over the horizon for Gagarin, the flight control system obtained an exact reference for the orientation of the spacecraft for landing.  Gagarin felt the spacecraft pitching and yawing, as the attitude control system was "catching" the sun into the main sensor.  Vostok was then ready for the deorbiting maneuver.  Everything looked good until the conclusion of the 40-second burn of the braking engine, initiated successfully at 10:25 Moscow Time.  Gagarin was expecting the separation of his reentry capsule from the instrument module to take place 10-12 seconds after the deorbiting burn (which would have been just as the craft began to pass over Africa); however, it did not take place.  In the meantime, the spacecraft continued tumbling wildly, as it approached denser layers of the atmosphere.  Despite this situation, Gagarin believed everything was on track for a safe landing, and when the separation finally did take place ten minutes later, the spacecraft was over the Mediterranean Sea.

For decades, the very fact, not to mention the cause, of the whole incident with the separation of the capsule and its instrument module remained unknown to the general public.  Even after Gagarin's mission report was published, at least one participant of the events denied any problems during the reentry and tried to explain the situation by Gagarin's confusion about the real time of the separation.  As it turned out, a single valve within the braking engine failed to shut completely at the beginning of the engine burn, letting some fuel leak out and avoid the combustion chamber.  As a result, the engine "ran out of gas" and shut down around a second earlier than scheduled.  The aborted maneuver slowed the spacecraft by 132 meters per second instead of the programmed 136 meters per second.  Even though it was enough to push the spacecraft off its orbit toward reentry, it was apparently not enough for the "punctual" flight control system to generate the nominal command to cut off the engine.  In the absence of a proper cutoff command, the propellant lines of the engine remained open, after it ran out of fuel and stalled.  As a result, the pressurization gas and remaining oxidizer continued escaping through the main nozzle and steering thrusters, causing the spacecraft to spin wildly.  Although the engine was later cut off by a timer, the lack of delivered thrust also caused the flight control system to scrub the primary sequence for the separation between the reentry vehicle and the instrument module.  Fortunately, the separation did take place some 10 minutes later, (around 10:35 Moscow time), supposedly, as a result of an emergency command.

As the spacecraft plunged into the atmosphere, Gagarin saw a bright crimson glow appear behind his windows.  It was accompanied by the crackling noise of thermal protection layers burning in the heat of atmospheric reentry.  Gagarin estimated that at their peak g-forces exceeded 10:
"There was a moment, about 2-3 seconds, when data on the control gauges started looking blurry.  It was starting turning gray in my eyes.  I braced and composed myself.  It helped, everything kind of returned to its place."
Potentially much more troubling and unexpected than g-loads was the burning smell in the cabin.  Fortunately, it was very slight and short-lived, according to Gagarin's recollections after the flight.

As G-forces subsided and the capsule continued descending safely, Gagarin prepared to eject from his craft.  At an altitude of seven kilometers, the main hatch of the capsule was jettisoned and seconds later, the pilot ejected.  The main parachute deployed successfully, however the backup chute came out later as well and, after some delay, deployed.  As a result, Gagarin landed under two parachutes.  For six minutes during the parachute descent Gagarin struggled to open a valve for breathing atmospheric air.  The device stuck below his external orange layer and he had to use a mirror to pull the valve.


Both he and the spacecraft landed via parachute 26 km (16 mi) south west of Engels, in the Saratov region.  A farmer and her daughter observed the strange scene of a figure in a bright orange suit with a large white helmet landing near them by parachute.  Gagarin later recalled, "When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear.  I told them, don't be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!"

Officially the U.S. congratulated the Soviet Union on its accomplishments.

The Soviet press later reported that minutes before boarding the spacecraft Gagarin made a speech: "Dear friends, you who are close to me, and you whom I do not know, fellow Russians, and people of all countries and all continents: In a few minutes a powerful space vehicle will carry me into the distant realm of space.  What can I tell you in these last minutes before the launch?  My whole life appears to me as one beautiful moment.  All that I previously lived through and did, was lived through and done for the sake of this moment." He actually recorded the speech—prepared by anonymous speechwriters—in Moscow.

Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (the world governing body for air sports and aeronautics and astronautics world records) rules in 1961 required that a pilot must land with the spacecraft to be considered an official spaceflight for the FAI record books.  At the time, the Soviet Union insisted that Gagarin had landed with the Vostok; the government forced the cosmonaut to lie in press conferences, and the FAI certified the flight.  The Soviet Union admitted in 1971 that Gagarin had ejected and landed separately from the Vostok descent module.  (cheating bastards)

 If you were the first person in space, this could have been yours.

The craft landing site is now a monument park.  The central feature in the park is a 25 meter tall monument that consists of a silver metallic rocket ship rising on a curved metallic column of flame, from a wedge shaped, white stone base.  In front of this is a 3 meter tall, white stone statue of Yuri Gagarin, wearing a spacesuit, and with one arm raised in greeting and the other holding a space helmet.

Not bad for a bunch of communists! 

Taxes are due in one week!

Don’t forget, if you live in the US, the income tax filing deadline this year is April 18, which is one week from today!  And no, I’m not playing a prank on you, trying to get you to file your taxes late; I know that tax day is usually April 15, but I’m being serious!  The deadline this year is April 18.  *Honest!*

 Do NOT mess with these bitches

Why the change for this year only?  (read: The Billy Blog will not be held responsible for you thinking you will be able to file your taxes on April 18 every year)

On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act, which freed approximately 3100 slaves in the District of Columbia nine months before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued (which, of course, didn’t actually free any slaves in the Union slave states, but declared the permanent freedom of slaves in all areas of the Confederacy that had not returned to Union control).  One interesting note about the Compensated Emancipation Act, which paid an average of about $300 to slave owners for each of the freed slaves, is that it is the only instance in the US in which the federal government provided direct compensation to slave owners for the forced emancipation of slaves.

In commemoration of the Compensated Emancipation Act, on January 4, 2005, Mayor Anthony Williams signed legislation making Emancipation Day an official public holiday in the District of Columbia.  While Emancipation Day is celebrated on April 16, by law when April 16 falls on a Saturday, it is observed the previous Friday.  And by law, District of Columbia holidays impact tax deadlines in the same fashion as federal holidays, so, all taxpayers will have an extra three days to file.  I know a lot of you are going to use every last extra minute to put off those taxes even longer!  Just make sure the envelope is postmarked by the 18^th! 

 This postmark is not dated, so if the IRS didn't

receive your taxes prior to the deadline,

you'd owe your ass!

even if you were in North Borneo.

The *shocking* truth of inward reflection

People say they won’t shock others for cash, but they do it anyway:

When faced with a thorny moral dilemma, what people say they would do and what people actually do are two very different things, a new study finds. In a hypothetical scenario, most people said they would never subject another person to a painful electric shock, just to make a little bit of money. But for people given a real-world choice, the sparks flew.

 Would you shock someone else for money?

The results, presented April 4 at the annual meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society, serve as a reminder that hypothetical scenarios don’t capture the complexities of real decisions.

Morality studies in the lab almost always rely on asking participants to imagine how they’d behave in a certain situation, study coauthor Oriel FeldmanHall of Cambridge University said in her presentation. But these imagined situations are missing teeth: “Whatever you choose, it’s not going to happen,” she said.

But in FeldmanHall’s study, things actually happened. “There are real shocks and real money on the table,” she said. Subjects lying in an MRI scanner were given a choice: Either administer a painful electric shock to a person in another room and make one British pound (a little over a dollar and a half), or spare the other person the shock and forgo the money. Shocks were priced in a graded manner, so that the subject would earn less money for a light shock, and earn the whole pound for a severe shock. This same choice was given 20 times, and the person in the brain scanner could see a video of either the shockee’s hand jerk or both the hand jerk and the face grimace. (Although these shocks were real, they were pre-recorded.)

When researchers gave a separate group of people a purely hypothetical choice, about 64 percent said they wouldn’t ever deliver a shock — even a mild one — for money. Overall, people hypothetically judging what their actions would be netted only about four pounds on average.

But when there was cold, hard money involved, the data changed - a lot. A whopping 96 percent of people in the scanner chose to administer shocks for cash. “Three times as much money was kept in the real task,” FeldmanHall said. When participants saw only the hand of the person jerk as it got shocked, they chose to walk away with an “astonishing” 15.77 pounds on average out of a possible 20-pound windfall. The number dipped when participants saw both the hand and the face of the person receiving the shock: In these cases, people made off with an average of 11.55 pounds.

People grappling with the real moral dilemma — as opposed to people who had to choose in a hypothetical situation — had heightened activity in parts of the insula, a brain center thought to be involved in emotion, the study shows. FeldmanHall said that insula activity might represent a sort of visceral tension that’s going on in the body as a person pits the desire for money against the desire to not hurt someone. These visceral conflicts within a person seem to be missing in experiments with no real stakes, she said.

“My initial response is it’s a really Milgram-esque experiment, harkening back to where people are induced to do something bad to someone else,” said cognitive neuroscientist Tor Wager of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Stanley Milgram, a Stanford psychologist, famously compelled college students to administer painful electrical shocks to others.

Even though the findings are “a little bit chilling,” Wager says, “it’s important to know.” These kinds of studies can help scientists figure out how the brain dictates moral behavior. “There’s a real neuroscientific interest now in understanding the basis of compassion,” Wager says. “That’s something we are just starting to address scientifically, but it’s a critical frontier because it has such an impact on human life.”

I love this study both for what it represents and what it purports to represent.  On some scale, it indicates that humans are comfortable causing pain and suffering to other humans (provided there is a payout), but let’s be realistic – any of the test subjects would know that the shock recipients had agreed to be shocked, and it would only be a temporary and non-life threatening pain.  I feel that the study, as presented, wants the viewer to subconsciously extend the scale of the experiment, and assume that this means that most people have no problem hurting others as long as financial gain is possible – and while I do not doubt that there exist people of this sort, I think one has to ignore a host of other factors to draw that conclusion.  What really interests me about this study is not that people will shock others for profit, but that there is such a large difference between those who will shock others for profit, and those who admit it.

Now I’m not a heartless bastard (although some who responded to this post disagree), but I’m pretty sure that I’ll shock you for a pound.  Heck, I’ll shock you for a dollar.  But I’ll admit to it.  Why will so many administer the shock (96%) and yet so few (36%) admit to it?  Probably societal norms.  It’s probably also for the same reason that you can’t really play poker for no stakes – if you don’t have any vested interest in the game, someone will probably just go all in on the first hand and try to double up, because he's not taking it seriously.  If he stands to lose money, though, he will (or should; if someone’s just stupid or sucks at poker, I can’t help that) play in a more responsible manner.  Likewise, without a vested (read: financial) interest in self reflection, of course 2/3 of the people will say that they won’t shock someone.  They don’t want the interviewer to think poorly of them (for violating our societal norms), but more importantly, they don’t want to face their true inner demons. 

Without the opportunity of financial gain to force a true reflection of one’s values, most of those surveyed say they won’t shock others because they don’t want to be someone who would shock others for money.  I’m certain that many of them might even believe it, because they don’t want to face the uncomfortable truth that they might be someone who would shock another person for fun and profit (well, actually just profit; if they would do it for fun, I’m sure they would readily admit to it).  But when faced with that forced reflection (for the opportunity to profit), people have no problem accepting the truth, and then shocking the crap out of people.  I would have loved to see exit interviews.

 Shocking!

And that, to me, is what is most interesting about this study – I think it shows that ~60% of people will lie to you, but for the low, low price of 20 pounds, the truth can be bought.  Who needs waterboarding???

Are you a bank robber? Kindly get shot in the face and die, please.

This has been consuming my thoughts for most of the day today:

(from KMOV.com) -- Three people were shot and taken to the hospital after police exchanged gunfire with bank robbery suspects in north St. Louis. 
Police received reports of a hold-up at the Pulaski Bank in the 3700 block of South Grand around 9:21 a.m. on Thursday. According to police, two suspects in construction vests entered the bank and demanded cash. Witnesses tell St. Louis police that one of the suspects fired a gunshot in the air. Witnesses also say that one of the suspects had what appeared to be a hand grenade. No one in the bank was injured.
After getting the cash, the suspects took off. Moments later, police spotted a green Dodge Dakota pick-up truck with the suspects inside and attempted to pull the vehicle over. The suspects sped away and police followed.
The suspects lead police through downtown St. Louis and into north St. Louis. As police were following the vehicle, the suspects fired multiple shots at the officers. Authorities say the officers had to swerve repeatedly to avoid the gunfire.
At the intersection of Marcus and Lexington, the suspects tried to turn and hit another vehicle. That caused a chain-reaction crash with two police vehicles involved in the pursuit. Police say the suspects then opened fire on the officers. The officers returned fire.
One of the suspects, a 57-year-old man, was shot twice in the head and once in each wrist and ankle. He was taken to a local hospital where he is listed in serious condition.
The other suspect, a 49-year-old man, was shot in the hand, buttocks and ankle. He was also grazed in the ear. He is hospitalized in fair condition.
A police officer was also grazed in the leg by a bullet. The officer 42 years old and has been on the St. Louis police force for 12 ½ years. He was taken to Barnes Hospital where he was treated and released.

Now this captivates me for quite a few reasons - First, I work in a bank.  I live with the daily possibility of some douchebag(s) trying to rob the place.  Consequently, I happen to have a very low opinion of anyone who would commit such an act.  Second, I used to work for Pulaski Bank, and I know some of the people who were directly affected by the acts of these asswipes.  In fact, the wife used to work at that very branch.  Thankfully, she has moved on to a different one.  Third, I happen to be a very big proponent of the right to bear arms.  Of course, with that right comes great responsibility, and anyone who abuses that right at the expense of others has committed a grave transgression.

As an amateur detective, the emerging details of today's robbery reminded me of a similar robbery just over one week ago (on 3/29, to be exact).  A different Pulaski Bank branch was robbed by two men wearing construction vests (Coincidence?  I think not.).  Courtesy of BanditTracker St. Louis, you can see these pieces of crap in action:

 These pictures are from the 3/29 robbery, taken from BanditTracker St. Louis

Now that's a scary situation, because some animal has decided that he wants money, and he has no problem pointing a gun at you because you are no longer a person, but you (as a bank teller) have become just some obstacle between him and what he wants.  How far of a stretch is it for him to start shooting?  After the news today, apparently not far at all.

I like to consider myself a reasonable, thoughtful Christian man with a sound moral backing and a healthy respect for life, but as the story unfolded and reports came out that one suspect was shot in the head and the other shot in the hand, I said to myself, "that sucks that only one of them got shot in the head."  The (alleged) robber that got shot in the head was listed in grave condition earlier today, and I honestly couldn't care if he died or not.

Why did I become so callous to other humans?  That was an odd realization for me, and I had to ponder it for a little bit.  I guess I have no sympathy for someone who puts his desire for money (or anything else) in front of the lives of others just living their lives.  I've also been a little peeved lately with the media of St. Louis, because bank robberies have become a bit more frequent in the last few years, and it always seems like the robberies get the front page, but when the bad guys get caught (and yes, they almost always get caught), it's a tiny blurb in the back.  I kind of like the message of, "hey, when you rob a bank, you could get shot in the face and die, just like this guy."  It's a very compelling story to me.

Also, on a somewhat related note, check out that BanditTracker website.  See if you recognize anyone.  If you do, it could lead to a $1000 payout!

So there you have it - I am very thankful that only one good guy was hurt, and apparently that is a (comparatively) minor injury.  I'm very glad that nobody was hurt inside of the bank.  I hope everyone who had to deal with this situation can get past the trauma and whatever else psychologically damaging that has happened, and I hope (naively optimistically) nobody has to face such a situation again.  Finally, if you're a bank robber, kindly get shot in the face, you worthless scum.

Job Interview Craziness

With about five candidates for every job opening these days, some responsible for hiring decisions have resorted to desperate measures in their efforts to narrow the field. Researchers at career site Glassdoor.com culled through tens of thousands of queries reported by job seekers who had done their best to come up with answers on the spot, and selected the oddest interview questions of the past 15 months.

Luckily for beleaguered candidates, the interviewers seemed in most cases to be more interested in how people responded -- that is, in hearing their thought process, and seeing how well they kept their cool -- than in receiving a "correct" response. A sampling of Glassdoor's list, and where the question was asked:

"Given the numbers 1 to 1,000, what is the minimum number of guesses needed to find a specific number, if you are given the hint 'higher' or 'lower' for each guess you make?" -- Facebook

"Using a scale of 1 to 10, rate yourself on how weird you are." -- Capital One 

"Explain quantum electrodynamics in two minutes, starting now." -- Intel

"How many balloons would fit in this room?" -- PricewaterhouseCoopers

"If you were shrunk to the size of a pencil and put in a blender, how would you get out?" -- Goldman Sachs

"You have a bouquet of flowers. All but two are roses, all but two are daisies, and all but two are tulips. How many flowers do you have?" -- Epic Systems

"What is the philosophy of martial arts?" -- Aflac

"Explain to me what has happened in this country during the last 10 years." -- Boston Consulting

"If you could be any superhero, which one would you be?" -- AT&T

"How do you weigh an elephant without using a scale?" -- IBM

"If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games would need to be played to determine the winner?" -- Amazon

"How many bricks are there in Shanghai? Consider only residential buildings." --Deloitte Consulting

"You have five bottles of pills. One bottle has 9 gram pills, the others have 10 gram pills. You have a scale that can be used only once. How can you find out which bottle contains the 9 gram pills?" --eBay

"What is your fastball?" -- Ernst & Young

"How would you market ping pong balls if ping pong itself became obsolete? List many ways, then pick one and go into detail." -- Microsoft

"How many smartphones are there in New York City?" -- Google

"You are in charge of 20 people. Organize them to figure out how many bicycles were sold in your area last year." -- Schlumberger

"Why do you think only a small percentage of the population makes over $125,000 a year?" -- New York Life

"You have three boxes. One contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled so that no label accurately identifies the contents of any of the boxes. Opening just one box, and without looking inside, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?" -- Apple

"How many ball bearings, each one inch in diameter, can fit inside a 747 aircraft?" -- SAIC 

Now I've spent a little bit of time trying to solve some of the logic puzzles and math estimation questions, but again, I really think that most of these are more to see how an interview candidate can deal with something way out of left field.  Have any of you ever been faced with ridiculous interview situations?

The Secret History of Super Mario Brothers 2

In order to live up to the eclectic nature of The Billy Blog, I now offer you the answer to a question you probably never would have asked yourself - how did Super Mario Bros. 2 come to be such a different style of game than its smash hit predecessor, Super Mario Bros.?


Does this artwork look familiar?

Original case artwork for Nintendo's 1987 game Doki Doki Panic

Super Mario Bros. 2’s long, strange trip to the top of the charts in 1988 began with a prototype video game that failed miserably.

The 8-bit classic, which became a massive hit for the Nintendo Entertainment System, grew out of a mock-up of a vertically scrolling, two-player, cooperative-action game, Super Mario Bros. 2 director Kensuke Tanabe said in an interview at this year’s Game Developers Conference.

The prototype, worked up by SRD, a company that programmed many of Nintendo’s early games, was intended to show how a Mario-style game might work if the players climbed up platforms vertically instead of walking horizontally, said Tanabe.

“The idea was that you would have people vertically ascending, and you would have items and blocks that you could pile up to go higher, or you could grab your friend that you were playing with and throw them to try and continue to ascend,” Tanabe said. Unfortunately, “the vertical-scrolling gimmick wasn’t enough to get us interesting gameplay.”

The rapid-prototype development process on display here informs Nintendo’s design philosophy to this day. The company doesn’t begin development with characters and worlds: It starts by making sure the game boasts a fun and compelling game mechanic. If it’s not perfect, Nintendo has no qualms about throwing it out.

Soon after he was hired by Nintendo in the mid-’80s, Tanabe sat down with his boss, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, to look at this prototype together.

“The game was mocked up (so that) when the player climbed about two-thirds of the way up the screen, it would scroll so that the player was pushed further down,” Tanabe said.

The game-design team led by Miyamoto was tasked with coming up with a game that used this trick of programming. But Tanabe and Miyamoto weren’t too hot on the concept.

While the prototype featured two players jumping, stacking up blocks to climb higher, and throwing each other around, the technical limitations of the primitive NES made it difficult to build a polished game out of this complex action. And playing it with just one person wasn’t very fun.

“Miyamoto looked at it and said, ‘Maybe we need to change this up,’” Tanabe recalled. He suggested that Tanabe add in traditional side-scrolling gameplay and “make something a little bit more Mario-like.”

“As long as it’s fun, anything goes,” Tanabe remembers Miyamoto saying.

You may already know the rest of the story. The Mario sequel was originally released in Japan as Doki Doki Panic, starring a wholly different cast of characters. The game released in Japan as Super Mario Bros. 2 was a totally different game, a set of super-difficult new levels built with the original game’s engine and graphics.

That title wasn’t released outside Japan. Instead, Nintendo used Doki Doki Panic, swapping the game’s characters out for the Mario cast. This was the game that Western audiences knew as Super Mario Bros. 2.

Doki Doki Panic (left) featured a cast of Arabian Nights-like characters and 

different enemies than Super Mario Bros. 2 (right)

Since it was developed by the Mario team, Doki Doki Panic’s colorful world, catchy music and gorgeous artwork fit in well with Nintendo’s star characters. But some purists felt the gameplay wasn’t what they wanted out of Mario: They were used to stomping on enemies to flatten them, not picking them up and throwing them around, a small but fundamental change that gave Mario 2 a significantly different feel.

Although the initial concept for the game had been scrapped, the development of that original two-player cooperative prototype inspired all the innovative gameplay of Super Mario Bros. 2, Tanabe said.

“Picking up blocks was the same thing as pulling out vegetables from the ground,” he said. By the same token, picking up the other player and throwing him turned into picking up enemy characters.

Doki Doki Panic was actually part of a deal with the Fuji corporation, in which Nintendo would produce a tie-in videogame for a media-technology expo called Yume Kōjō, or “Dream Factory.” The mascot characters invented for this expo were the stars of the game.

“I remember being pulled over to Fuji Television one day, being handed a sheet with game characters on it and being told, ‘I want you to make a game with this,’” Tanabe said.

Released in 1987, Doki Doki Panic was one of the biggest hits on Nintendo’s Disk System, a floppy drive that worked with the Japanese version of the NES. Since this hardware was not released in America, many Disk System games were ported to standard game cartridges for U.S. release.

“Because we had to make this change, we had the opportunity to change other things” about the game, said Tanabe. “We knew these Fuji TV characters wouldn’t be popular in America, but what would be attractive in America would be the Mario characters.”

Tanabe’s team made many improvements to the original for its American debut, adding more enemy characters, throwing in some visual nods to the Mario games and greatly enhancing the animation and sound effects.

Because one of Mario’s most notable features at the time was his ability to grow and shrink when he ate magic mushrooms, this was added to the game. But the implementation was not without its issues.

“When the characters got shrunk down to a smaller version of themselves, it was easy to sneak through parts of the level that you weren’t supposed to go through, so we made their heads bigger so they would get caught on those things,” Tanabe said.

The enhancements to Super Mario Bros. 2 were so great that the game was eventually brought back to Japan, retitled Super Mario USA.