The Secret Lair

It’s a good thing the Bad Doctor always has a stock pile of kaiju sized tranquilizers.

Is Mr. Kenneth Newquist’s so-called Monster Week 2010 an examination and retrospective of movie monsters or a damning, behind-the-scenes exposé that will bring all of the Overlords’ schemes into light? Is Jaws a ground-breaking horror film that set the trend for summer blockbusters or a misunderstood documentary? Just how blurry is the line between fantasy and reality? Answer: Not Blurry Enough.

• No one, not even SyFy, has made a creature feature spotlighting a havoc-wreaking shetland-bonobo hybrid, but the Overlords may be willing to option them for the screen.
• Overlord Miller reveals the shocking true origin of St. Patrick’s Day.
• Technically, it’s DOCTOR Mega John Cmar.
• “ant fungus exploding head” can be simplified to Cordyceps.
• Cat sharks and chipmunk spiders. You’re welcome.
  
  
• Did we miss any Monster Classifications?
  • Mythical Monsters (hydra, minotaur)
  • Natural Monsters (Jaws, Lake Placid)
  • Science (Man-Made) Monsters (Godzilla, Sharktopus, Them!)
  • Extraterrestrial Monsters (The Thing, Critters, Predator)
• Perhaps we shall do a monster contest. Nominate your favorite monster in the comments.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:10 — 38.7MB)

Monster Week has kicked off over at Nuketown and the esteemed Mr. Newquist has posited that Jaws (1975) is the “prototypical modern monster movie.” That’s all well and good, but as terrors of the deep go we here at The Secret Lair feel that Spielberg’s shark lacks a little something; a little something we call Science.¹

Now, as Mr. Newquist rightly points out, there is a scientist in Jaws. Richard Dreyfuss portrays one Matt Hooper, an ichthyologist whose expert knowledge of Carcharadon carcharias and its ilk is…well, downright dull. Hooper is strictly a small-s scientist, not at all interested in turning sharks into more efficient killing machines or creating bipedal man-shark hybrids. You know: Science! Instead, Hooper is all about bite radius and feeding habits. Boring!

Nor is the shark any more exciting. Sure, it’s big—maybe even bigger than any great white man has ever encountered—but in the end it’s just a shark, and we can do better. Just ask Dr. Preston King (Jeffrey Combs), who fused human and shark DNA in Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy (2005), or perhaps Dr. Susan McCallister (Saffron Burrows), who genetically enlarged shark brains in Deep Blue Sea (1999); while their motives differed, both doctors used capital-s Science to create deadlier, more dangerous sharks. King’s hybrid shark is bipedal and amphibious, allowing it to kill on land as well as in the water, while McCallister’s sharks can swim backwards and are intelligent enough to kill even Samuel L. Jackson.²

As impressive as these genetically-modified sharks may be, they pale in comparison to the shark-cephalopod hybrid killing machine created by Blue Water Core for the U.S. Navy in Sharktopus (2010). Crossing a shark with an octopus? That’s capital-S Science at its finest.

1. You might be more inclined to call it “Mad Science,” but that’s just the sort of judgmental shortsightedness we’ve come to expect from you. [↩]
2. Spoiler alert! [↩]

As if there weren’t enough eReaders in the world, Borders recently released the Kobo eReader. While not as spiffy cool and full of magical pixels like the iPad,¹ nor as hip and trendy as the Kindle, our crackpot team of crackpot scientists² at the Secret Lair’s test lab annex thinks the Kobo is a pretty cute device in its own right. I was lucky enough to be selected to prod and poke³ at the Kobo. My report is as follows.

Pros:

• It has open format support, specifically EPUB. It will also accept PDF format.
• The display is an e-ink display. I really like this as my eyes tend to freak out easily.
• It has an SD card slot which is also a bonus. No one likes running out of space. I imagine you could also use this device as a thumb-drive as well as that’s how it shows up when plugging it in via standard USB.
• Simple, intuitive navigation makes finding what you want relatively painless. There are three buttons on the side (home, menu, display, and back) in addition to a direction pad. Home takes you to a list of what your currently reading (or have looked at recently). Menu displays a bunch of options depending if you are home or in a book. This is where you can configure the Kobo, or if you are in a book, change chapters. Display lets you choose between five different font sizes, and two different font types. There is also a decent library function where all your loaded books are listed in alphabetical order by title.
• Slip resistant back is a nice little after thought sort of feature. It does a decent job on keeping the device stationary when it’s set down.
• The battery life claims to be two weeks or 8,000 page turns. I haven’t had mine long enough to require a recharge, so I can’t really confirm these claims. So far the battery seems to be doing really well (from what I can tell from the indicator).
• The screen is a nice size. It’s just about as large as a standard softcover book.
• It’s very thin and light, but it doesn’t feel fragile or cheap. It has some mass to it despite its size, while still being quite comfortable to hold.
• It also has bluetooth capability. From what I’ve read, the purpose of this is to sync with a data phone in order to purchase books on the fly. I don’t have a data plan on my phone, so, again, I’ll just have to take their word for it. It’s still nice to know it has this ability (not as cool as the Kindle 3G access, but still nice).
• It comes preloaded with approximately a butt-ton⁴ of public domain books. So if you were meaning to catch up on all the classics, Kobo has saved you the effort of hunting down everything and loading it yourself.
• Lastly, the price is fairly reasonable (at $149.99) considering the competition. Also, as of this writing, Borders is giving folks a $20 gift card with each Kobo purchase, so, yay!

Cons:

• It’s not the speediest of devices. The boot up is a little sluggish (about 30 seconds). The loading of a new book can by quite slow. For instance, it took about two minutes to load On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, while it only took a few seconds for The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I’ve heard a few complaints about the speed of page turning (about a second), but it hasn’t bothered me. So, while not a fast device, I’m generally not in a hurry when reading. It might bother the more impatient among us.
• The Borders ebook software is a bit lacking. I was a little bit disappointed to see that most of the books that came pre-loaded don’t show up in the library list. Also, there doesn’t seem to be a way to add existing, non-DRMed titles that you may already have (which were not purchased through Borders) to the Kobo via this software. Granted, you can just copy the files over to the device itself, totally bypassing the software. For library management, I would recommend Calibre over the included software. It will convert pretty much any document you have into either epub or pdf format and load it onto your Kobo for you. It also has a nice library organizer.
• No light for night time reading.
• Rumor has it the bluetooth is only supported with Blackberry devices. Alas, my phone isn’t cool enough to test this out.⁵
• Directional pad placement may be awkward for lefties.

Conclusion:

Despite the slowness, so far I really like this little device. It does exactly what it was meant to do which is store books and allow me to read them easily. In this task I feel it does a very good job. I am using Calibre for my library management, so any issues I had with the included software is null. I’m able to load files and manage them without any issue using this method which is perfect for me.⁶ All in all a pretty nice little device for the money. I would recommend this for anyone looking for a simple eReader that allows for a lot of flexibility of content without a lot of bells and whistles.

Rating: 4 out of 5 robots⁷

1. Yes, all you technical technicality technicians, it’s technically not purely an eReader. Whatever. It’s still full of magical pixels. [↩]
2. They’re the crackpottiest! [↩]
3. In a purely scientific fashion, of course. [↩]
4. That’s Imperial butt-ton units. [↩]
5. What? Really? Ah well. It’s not like I was going to use that feature anyway. [↩]
6. And the fact that I can use 3rd party software with this device is another bonus. [↩]
7. If the loading was a smidgen faster and there was a light of some sort, in my opinion, it would be perfect. [↩]

Happy Bastille Day everyone!¹ Here at the Secret Lair we like a good overthrowing, so long as the Overlords are the ones doing the overthrowing.² It also warms the cockles of the Overlords’ hearts when possible overlording competition is removed, even if said competition is over 200 years in the past.³

In celebration of this fine occasion, the Overlords proclaim that there should be cake. Cake that must be eaten.⁴

Without further ado, we present The Secret Lair Let Them Eat Cake Cake.⁵

The Secret Lair Let Them Eat Cake Cake Recipe⁶

Ingredients:

• 3-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 packages or yeast (3/4 oz)
• 1/3 cup milk
• 5 large eggs
• 12-1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips (the darker the better)
• 1 package cream cheese frosting, divided into three batches
• red and blue food coloring

Instructions:

1. Combine the flour, sugar, salt, and yeast in a bowl⁷.
2. Add the milk and eggs, mixing until all the flour is incorporated.⁸
3. Knead the dough until it’s uniformly mixed and smooth and sides o f the bowl become clean (5- 10 minutes).
4. Cut the butter into small pieces. Add the butter to the dough slowly, only a few pieces at a time, mixing the dough until everything is incorporated.
5. Knead the dough until there are no more chunks of butter, and the sides of the bowl become clean. The dough will become very smooth. This may take up to 15 minutes. You may need to add a little bit more flour, one tablespoon at a time to achieve this.
6. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and place it in a warm place (room temp.) for 2-3 hours or until the dough doubles in size.
7. Gently punch down the dough to deflate. Sprinkle a little bit of flour on the surface and place a piece of plastic wrap against the surface.
8. Cover the bowl well with plastic wrap again and place in the fridge until the dough doubles again (another 2-3 hours).
9. Deflate the dough again, extract it from the bowl, form it into a ball an d wrap with plastic wrap. Leave in the fridge for at least 6 hours or overnight.
10. Hooray! The dough is ready to be formed!
11. Butter a 9″ x 5″ loaf pan.Roll out the dough into a large rectangle that is about 7-8″ on its shortest side and 1/2″-1″ thick.
12. Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the surface of the rectangle, leaving some free space at one of the short ends. Roll the dough in on itself (like you’re rolling a rug⁹ ), covering the chocolate chips with the dough. Once you reach the end, pinch the dough to seal the ends.
13. Place the loaf in the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm spot until it doubles in size (again 2-3 hours).
14. Preheat the oven to 375°F.
15. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until dark golden. Turn out onto a rack. Thump the bottom – if it sounds hollow, the loaf is done. If not, put back in pan and cook for another 5 minutes.
16. Cool to room temp. on a rack.
17. Add blue food coloring to 1/3 of the frosting and mix until the color is uniform. Add red food coloring to 1/3 of the frosting mix until the color is uniform. Leave the last 1/3 white.
18. When the loaf is cool to the touch, frost the top of the loaf with one stripe of blue, white, and red like the French flag.
19. Et voila! C’est magnifique! Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!

1. Or at least those of you with an ounce or two of French-ish heritage. Or at least those of you that wished to had some sort of French-ish heritage. Or at least those of you who enjoy a croissant now and then. [↩]
2. As opposed to underthrowing. Although I hear those are fun too, but not as noisy. [↩]
3. Our scientists tell us they almost have all the bugs worked out of the Pogo Time Ball [↩]
4. OK. So for all you technical technicality technicians, the historical quote was actually “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche“. We know and we don’t care. I mean, brioche is sort of cake like anyway. [↩]
5. Or TSLLTECC for all you acronym junkies out there. [↩]
6. Technically brioche. You win this time, technical technicality technicians! Also, our scientists haven’t actually tested out this recipe yet, so, good luck. We’re fairly certain it’s non-explosive. [↩]
7. If you have a mixer with a dough hook, that will save you a lot of time and avoid cook’s cramp. [↩]
8. If using a mixer, you may need to stop it and scrape down the sides to get everything mixed in. [↩]
9. or a toilet paper roll [↩]