Rants and Raves from 2005
Norwood Police Blotter | Long Lost Twins
An E-Mail I Received, And My Response
(December 18, 2005)
I generally get a lot of positive comments on my photo stories. This one, however, was so amusing I had to post it.
Comments: u guys are losers wtf um hey yeah ur cool lets go by toys n film them n take photos of them on the net n ffreak ppl out bout it all like um hello ur not 5 yrs old power rangers are so yestetrday u guys scare melike geshhhhhhhhh i have no further commments
thanks luv simone
pelase call me on0403461672
Email: mone_grone@hotmail.com
Full Name: simone
To which I replied:
Dear mone_grone@hotmail.com.
You should be made aware that some idiot is posting using your account, and you should take steps to stop people from infiltrating your e-mail account like this. People could get the wrong idea.
Hotmail probably has some protections you can employ from 14-year-old idiots who can't even speak the language.
Sorry for your troubles. I have nothing but sympathy for your plight.
Thanks. Sorry for the intrusion.
Sean Huxter.
(Sadly, the e-mail bounced, probably due to Hotmail's anti-spam measures. Nice, a guy can e-mail me with no fear of rebuttal.)
Bush the Spy
(December 17, 2005)
Oh.
My.
GOD!
Bush today defended ordering the illegal spying on American citizens, citing 911 and says despite its illegality, he'd do it again!
OH. MY. GOD!
And Bill Frist had the utmost gall to say that what Bush did was "legal, constitutional, and consistent with the ideals of this country"!!!!!
What country is he talking about? This country? The Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves, I can feel the vibrations in the earth! I can hear the whining engine-like noise from where I sit!
What a bunch of freakin' zealots! Why are they not in jail?
Any time Bush gets caught doing this shit, he cites 911 and people back off! "Oh, I did that cause... 911!" It's time not to back off, people! It's time to impeach that maniac!
Oh, Nixon taped some people. Clinton got a BJ. But Bush can start a war against a sovereign nation with nothing to back it up, putting thousands of lives at risk, (which has already killed tens of thousands of people), alienate all allies, torture prisoners, many of who are completely innocent, and illegally spy on American citizens, and...
crickets chirping. Nothing! No action taken!
It's getting to the point that whenever I hear the numbers 911 coming out of that mouth, I urge. I want to puke.
You know what? 911 was a national tragedy.
The Bush Administration has been a national disgrace! A national nightmare! A national embarrassment!
Because we are not responsible for 911. We are responsible for Bush. We did that to ourselves!
What a Time For My Batteries To
Fail!
(December 17, 2005)
Today my family and I went into Boston to see the Star Wars exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science, which I can't recommend enough! They have models there of the original Blockade Runner, an X-Wing, the original Star Destroyer, Millennium Falcon, to name only a few! It was a hell of an exhibit, and I'm glad I went!
We also went downtown to see the window displays at Macy's and Filene's, which is a yearly event for us. This year, Filene's featured "Olive, the Other Reindeer"...
...but in a bizarre twist, Macy's windows featured the same display as last year - "A Christmas Story".
Don't get me wrong, the display was excellent, but I thought two years running was a bit lazy.
Anyway, that's not the point of this rant, though both of those events were fun. Early on the trip, both sets of my rechargeable batteries for my digital camera died, and I hadn't had a chance to get to a store to buy a new camera battery.
And what rotten luck! This is one of those moments you wish you had a camera, because, dude, no one's going to believe this!
We got off the Green Line from Science Park, and emerged at the Boston Common stop, right across from Downtown, where we were going to see the window displays.
I heard a bunch of yelling down the street towards the Public Gardens, and to what do my wondering eyes appear but two hundred semi-nude people running our way!
I grabbed my camera, turned it on, and prayed "Just let me get ONE picture! Just one picture!" But to no avail! Battery Dead.
Meanwhile, 200 runners, mostly men, and an occasional woman, wearing nothing but sneakers, Speedo swimsuits and bikinis, stopped on the sidewalk to do pushups, only to continue on past us, up the street to the State House.
You have to understand that the temperatures in Boston today were sub-freezing!
My wife, daughter and I are standing right in the funnel they're running in, and we high-fived about 30 of these young folk as they ran past us, having the time of their lives!
And me with not a single image of power left in my digital camera batteries!
I have no idea what it was about, but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, not the least of which were the hundreds of pedestrians and shoppers who witnessed the run.
And without a digital picture, who's ever going to believe me???
Here's a picture from Boston.com:
I Wish I Had Had The Guts... And A
Sharpie!
(December 17, 2005)
One thing I noticed on the subway in Boston today, on our way home from our adventures (see previous rant) was a Boston Globe ad saying "How Will The Bruins Play On The Road This Year?" And someone had written in in ball-point pen "Good".
Man, I wish I had my Sharpie! And the guts to write what I wanted to write, which was:
"Probably better than they will play on the ice!"
Oh, the opportunities that just slip by...
Dealing With A Wireless Network
(December 13, 2005)
I'm finding my BitTorrent download rates are abysmal. So I find out that to increase BitTorrent performance, I should set up Port Forwarding on my wireless router. So let me just delve a bit into the background of my wireless network ordeal from the beginning.
I bought a Linksys WRT54G wireless router. Plug and Play. I had an older computer (my wife uses for her work) and I had just bought a nice new (second-hand) SONY VAIO. I wanted them networked together, to use the internet, and the printer, etc.
The plan was to hook the wireless router up to the VAIO, which is in the living room, and have a wireless network card on the PoC (Piece-of-Crap), so the two could work together, etc.
Well, the PoC has Win 98, and not with the service pack. It refused to cooperate, no matter what, in plugging in a plug-n-play wireless network card. Just absolutely refused.
So rather than defeat the purpose of the wireless router (and run a 50 foot network cable through my apartment) I had to hook the wireless router up to the PoC by a network cable. That worked. It meant I had to run a phone line (DSL) under the bedroom carpet, which I was trying to avoid.
And the VAIO (which has Win XP Home) used the wireless card with no problems at all.
The PoC used to reside in the living room, and the printer with it. I didn't want to move the printer, so I had to hook it up to Win XP. I could find no drivers for this ancient printer (an Epson Stylus Color 600) that would work on Win XP. It turns out when I hooked the printer up to the VAIO it just worked. There must have been a legacy driver in Win XP for the Epson printer. It was different than the older driver, but worked essentially the same way.
This setup has been working for a while now, with just a few random disconnects on my VAIO which resolve themselves within a minute.
Along comes BitTorrent.
To get the new series of Doctor Who, I had to learn what BitTorrent was, and to use it.
So I find that BitTorrent is working terribly slowly for me, and I discovered that I had to set up Port Forwarding. The FAQ on the BitTorrent site told me how on a LinkSys wireless router. Except the menus were nowhere like described in the FAQ. But I found out the right menus and I set Port Forwarding on. I noticed a fair increase in download rate right away.
But never one to let sleeping dogs lie, or well enough alone, I had to do more.
The FAQ said that DHCP had to be turned off to use this properly. I of course took that to mean on the router, so I turned that off. And immediately lost connection to my router!
Now I was controlling the router through my wireless computer, and not the PoC (which is so unreliable it often just decides not to give me a mouse or a keyboard, and its' USB drivers are so heinously messed up it runs at about 1% of its right speed, so even a USB mouse is awful, it lags like crazy.) and I turned off the DHCP on the router, and immediately lost access to my network.
So I go to the PoC (which luckily has decided to give me mouse and keyboard control at least temporarily) and I turn DHCP back on.
Of course I'm an absolute networking NOOB, so this is just playing with fire, and I know it.
So I find out thanks to the help of two friends online who have a great deal of network expertise, that the FAQ is actually referring to the computer's DHCP (the computer the BitTorrent client will run on -- the VAIO) has to be turned off. Because otherwise my IP will change from time to time, defeating the Port Forwarding which requires I specify the IP of my computer.
So they tell me how to change it. I turn off DHCP on my computer, and give it a static IP and - I immediately lose connection to the network.
So I leave it on for now.
And since now I'm getting good peer connections on BitTorrent, I decide to play with fire one more time and set the DHCP users from 50 to 100 on the router (just in case.) And now you can tell can't you that I'm a wireless networking NOOB!
So the second I do that, I lose connection to the router again, but this time not just from the VAIO, but from the hard-wired PoC too! I'm completely locked out of my router's setup.
However, I'm connected, and the internet is working. I just can't access the wireless router's setup page via the web connection.
So I get onto LinkSys's live support chat, and I'm told to shut everything down and restart. None of the other changes required a reset, so I figured this was the standard bullshit that support people tell you out of desperation. See, I pinged the router, and it was answering. I just couldn't access its setup page.
By this time at night my wife is in bed, and the router, being in the bedroom with the PoC, has to be shut off, so I have to open the door, risk waking her up, to shut it down and power back up again.
But I am not about to shut down the whole system. Just the router. And it worked! I got access again, and I thanked the kind support person, and logged off, thankful that I'm smart enough at least not to follow her advice for a full multi-system shut-down/restart.
Then I discover Azureus, (another peer-to-peer downloading system) does most of this stuff automatically, which is an improvement over BitTorrent.
So I download it, and the second I run it, it yells at me that my LinkSys router has problems with UPnP (Universal Plug'n'Play) system, and this will cause frequent disconnects with the peers, which will hurt performance.
Great!
I downloaded Azureus to stop the performance problems I had been plagued with! Now I have a different problem to deal with! It tells me I have to upgrade my LinkSys router's firmware!
Oh great! Another risky step that could cause all sorts of problems!
So I go to the LinkSys web site to download the firmware. It asks for my router model number. No swear. WRT54G. But it also asks the version number! Yikes! What now? It's still in the bedroom, in the dark. So I go in with a flashlight and find out the version number says "v.3" just like that. v.3
Now, to me that's "Version point 3" or "Version 0.3".
So there is no v.3 or v0.3 on LinkSys's web site. They do have V 1.0, V 2.0, etc... up to V 5.0.
So I contact LinkSys's online support help again, and they tell me I have V 3.0.
Nice! Why does their web site refer to the model number as V 3.0 when the model itself refers to v.3?????
CONSISTENCY, PEOPLE!
So I download the upgrade and run it.
I sit nervously by as the download does its thing. I never have good luck with this stuff.
It loads, runs, and starts uploading the firmware to the router. Then it says "Writing to Flash". This is the sensitive part, I know it.
Suddenly, at about 60% done... the wireless network disappears! I get kicked!
Now this would be fine if the software had actually warned: You may experience a disconnection during this process but it didn't. Basically, to me, it disconnected at 60% Flash Burn, which to me is a BAD THING!
But when it reconnects me, I have a look at the router's info panel and the firmware version seems to have upgraded successfully, but I'm never sure. It may indeed have gotten 60% done and died.
Just to check, I run into the dark bedroom again, and I see something I have never seen before. On the left-most part of the LinkSys router's panel, the Cisco logo has lit up yellow!
And still Azureus is complaining about the same problem. It tells me that this router has problems with UPnP. It tells me that this version of the firmware doesn't work with Azureus, and I should download the most recent firmware upgrade. Which I just did!!!!!
So for all my troubles, I did get one thing out of it all.
A yellow logo lit up on my router!
And so now I'm using Azureus, despite the frequent disconnections (watching the download rate drop rapidly from optimal down to 0b/s only to have it slowly creep back up again is highly frustrating) it has something BitTorrent doesn't. Definable ports. So rather than being forced to use 6881 through 6889 (which some ISPs purposely choke) I can set my own, which I did.
Still, I am not happy with it, since it still disconnects, and I lose performance.
But hey, at least I have that yellow logo lit up on my router!
eBay Lesson: Read The Damn Auction!
(December 4, 2005)
For an upcoming Doctor Who photo story, I needed a Barbie bicyle. A few years back I bought a cheap one at a dollar store for my daughter, but it soon got trashed. Not well constructed. Nice looking, though. But a while back, due to its deteriorating condition and lost parts, we chucked it. And as usually happens, whenever I chuck something it's not long before I need it.
So I went to eBay and found very few good Barbie bicycles. Lost an auction or two on a 1972 yellow bike that seems fairly common on eBay, but the prices were going a bit high for me.
So I bid on another one and won it for $4.75. At this point I was just bidding on several bike auctions hoping I'd win one of them. And I did. Final price: $4.75. I need this item quickly, and usually shiping in the US is fast and I could have it in time to shoot my story.
But then I read the auction details sent to me by the buyer. If I had read closely, all this information was available.
1) He's from Canada. (Well so am I, but at this point, shipping from Canada may mean my bike doesn't get here in time for me to use it.)
2) His shipping was $8.50!!!!!! For a $4.75 bike! Suddenly I'm paying $13.xx for a bike I wasn't willing to pay more than about $8.00 for (shipped).
3) He does NOT take PayPal! I have a balance built up on PayPal and I usually only enter into auctions that take PayPal because going to the Post Office for a money order is a huge deal for me, with a busy family and one car.
4) He is in Canada. Did I mention that? That means an international money order. And those cost nearly four bucks!
So this fiasco ended up costing me over $16.00 just to get a simple damn Barbie bike I already had but threw out. And I know I'm not going to get it in time for my shoot.
So I wrote him a note to this effect, and almost ... almost wrote "Send it or keep it, it won't matter to me." on the note I sent.
Last night I bid on another identical bike and won the auction for ninety-nine cents and with shipping will come to about $4.75, less than the bid price alone on the Canadian bike! And this one I will probably get before it's too late to use it.
Basically, this is only the second time I regret buying something on eBay.
The first was my very first purchase - a Johnny Lightning "Back to the Future" Delorean when they first came out. I thought they would be hard to find, so I bought one for $11.00 plus shipping. I figured it would be a small run, and at that time, similar items were very hard to find in stores. Of course the following week they were all over my local stores for $3.99 each or less.
Anyway, live and learn.
Note: This is none of the fault of the seller. He put his terms in the auction, I just skimmed over them too quickly. The lesson is: Read eBay auctions carefully!
The Pope Shuts Out Gay Priests
- Remains Deluded
(November 29, 2005)
The new Pope came out with a declaration setting policy on homosexuals in the priesthood. It states that transitory homosexuals may be ordained as priests if they have been celibate for three years, but that deep-seated homosexuals may not.
Uh... transitory homosexuals... those are the ones that got cured, right?
The very declaration shows the Church's stubbornly-held ignorance on the matter.
I liked Fark.com's headline on the subject:
"World's largest child rape club says gays are bad for society"
How Many Nails Does This Coffin Need?
(November 22, 2005)
A memo has been discovered (though not published) by the Daily Mirror in the UK that reveals that Bush intended to bomb Arab news agency Al-Jazeera, but British Prime Minister Tony Blair talked him out of it.
While the memo hasn't been released, those who have read it say it was "damning".
Which is lent some further credence by the activities of the Rendon Group, which put specific attention on Al-Jazeera.
Not to mention, a Presidential Daily Briefing purports to show that Bush was told there was no link between Sadaam Hussein and Al Qaeda. (We all know this, but this proves Bush knew it long before we knew he knew. But as it didn't fit in with Bush's long-time agenda of finishing the job his father started, he ignored it.)
So... how many nails, exactly, do we need to hammer into the Bush Administration's coffin before we bury it for good?
Teacher Loses Her Job Because
She Gets Pregnant Without Getting Married
(November 22, 2005)
A teacher in New York loses her job because she's pregnant, and unwed. The Catholic school has a morality clause in its contract that allows this dismissal, despite its blatant human rights violation, not to mention blatant sexism, neither of which is a new item on the Catholic Church's menu of delights.
Now how stupid is that? (No, it's not new. I'm from Newfoundland. Same used to go there until the denominational school system was abolished.)
She's suing the Church. And I hope she wins. What if I formed a religion whose major tennet was to discriminate against blacks, or hispanics, or Jews? If my Church's school fired a teacher for being one of those minorities, how quickly do you think I would bet my ass sued back to the stone-age these Churches belong in?
Congress shall make no law establishing religion, but dammit, this country sure has plenty of laws to protect against employment discrimination for whatever reason.
First of all, how would a man be treated under similar circumstances? Well, it's sure hard to prove a man has gotten a woman pregnant out of wedlock, so men get a free skate. No belly, no biggie.
Not to mention priests who abuse children don't get fired. They get promoted. Or moved to a new parish to get fresh meat.
Hey, here's an idea. She should have had a secret abortion - and then they would have let her keep her job.
Nice one, Catholic Church. One day you come out and declare Intelligent Design hokum, and then this.
Intelligent Design De-Nied!
(November 22, 2005)
Speaking of Intelligent Design... In Kansas, now famous for voting to teach Intelligent Design (*cough bullshit cough*) and to teach that evolution is a "flawed theory", the University of Kansas has shut them down.
Rather, they are going to teach a course called "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies"
"The KU faculty has had enough," said Paul Mirecki, department chairman. - Kudos to the University for showing some sense.
Proponents of Intelligent Design claim that the universe is far too complex to have arisen on its own.
But that's a ridiculous circular argument.
If the universe is too complex to have arisen on its own, who created it?
God, of course.
But what created God?
Nothing. He was always here.
So something as complex as god could have arisen by itself, but not the universe? What a pack of dumb-asses.
Massachusetts to Vote
on Gay Marriage?
(November 22, 2005)
A "family-oriented" group in Massachusetts apparently has succeeded in getting enough signatures on a petition to put the Gay Marriage question on a ballot in 2008.
Two things:
1) A story a couple of weeks ago on local news talked about people getting signatures on a Gay Marriage petition by lying about what the petition was about. The petition claimed to be about wine sales at a local grocery store, but in fact it was a petition to put a ban on gay marraige on the ballot in 2008. (Gay marriage is currently legal in Massachusetts).
Is there no Rovian tactic these slime won't perpetrate?
2) A Massachusets Family Institute organization representative said that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, and it always has been in our society.
I think he should have finished his sentence:
"Marriage is the union of one man and one woman, and has been in our society ever since the sun revolved around the earth in its crystal sphere."
In a way, I guess it's good that these slimeballs resorted to deception to get their signatures. When this petition is presented, a good lawyer can have it thrown out due to the questionable methods used to steal these signatures.
My Latest Mispronounciation Peeve
(November 16, 2005)
Forward.
Americans are more and more frequently pronouncing this one fo-ward, rather than for-ward.
It's easy. Just say four (or for if that's too complicated for you - see next Rant) and word. Not ward, word. Put them together and you get forward.
It's not fo-ward, it's forward.
Where Did U Go?
(November 16, 2005)
Americans have dropped the letter "u" from words such as "colour" and "valour" and "harbour."
They say those letters aren't necessary - that they add nothing to the word.
Oh? Why that's ridiculos. Ludicros. Perhaps they can't spell because they're jealos?
For that matter, if you listen carefully, it's really pronounced "coler" and "valer" and "harber". Why not just change it to that if you're too lazy to spell it right. (Or is that rite?)
Torturers Are Terrorists
(November 7, 2005)
(Warning: This rant is the most angry I've been in a long time, so I do not mince words. Bush must be removed from office. And if I insult you because you yourself condone these acts, then you deserve to be insulted. You are the person I am talking to.)
The more I hear about Bush's torture camps, and his attempts to hide or protect his heinous, immoral activities, the more I come to the realization that people who torture others, or order others to be tortured are nothing short of terrorists themselves.
I would not have anyone tortured in my name. I would not have anyone tortured in the names of those who died under acts of terror.
And now that I see Bush and Cheney pushing to alter the text and intent of John McCain's attempts to ban torture of all kinds from the repertoire of the American government, by trying to at least exempt the CIA, the more I realize that this administration is using torture for many and various reasons, worldwide, and in secret prisons that were so secret even Congress is demanding to know where the money is coming from to fund these torture houses.
Let me make this clear. Anyone who uses torture is a terrorist. Anyone who condones the use of torture in their name is condoning terrorism. If you, as an American, agree with your country's use of torture, you, sir (or madam) are no better than a fucking terrorist. That's what I said. I'm talking to you.
Like those who encouraged, and later followed Hitler and his SS, you too, will be ashamed of yourself when this hysteria leaves, and common sense comes back into vogue.
Mr. Bush. It's time to end your mistake of a presidency.
Step down. Admit the shame of trying to claim you do not torture. Whatever your rationale is, it is insane. Admit to your shameful dishonorable actitivies, from condoning and permitting the outing of a woman whose job it was to protect the security of your country - you remember security, right? The lie under which you stole a second election? Admit to ordering the torture of prisoners - you don't have much of a leg to stand on, you had your own buddy Gonzales write a legal opinion that torture is condonable.
Hide, Bush. Hide behind plausible deniability. Hide by arresting and jailing a few underlings, ordered by you, through Cheney, and down the chain of command to those underlings, who carried out your commands, and were caught. They are now in prison, or about to go to prison for you. Because you ordered this. What about you? When are you going to prison?
You, sir, ought to be ashamed to even exist. Remove yourself from power. Do what you promised. Put some dignity back into the White House. Leave it. Get your stink out of it.
Intelligent Design Is
Nothing But Designed Ignorance
(November 6, 2005)
I recently came across this article: (Intelligent Design: The New Creationism Threatens All of Science and Society exposing the "Intelligent Design" movement, a fairly recent resurgence by right-wing fundamentalist religious groups in the US to get Creationism (a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis in the Bible) taught in schools again, as first an alternative, then a full replacement for the well-documented and fully supported fact of Evolution. Read the part about the "Wedge", an attempt to get a foot in, and then use that to split the trunk of science apart.
(Note: To call evolution a theory is exactly the same as calling gravity a theory. Perhaps to some of these people, gravity is "intelligent falling".)
This article even documents this movement as not only a cultural grassroots movement by people with decreasing skills in logic, critical thinking, and of course science, to fit the world around their limited Biblical view, but as a deliberate and coordinated attack on science in this country.
Please read the article! It should be a must-read for everyone.
One thing that bug me about this article, is that almost half of the people in a particular poll (documented and credited in the article) did not even know the most basic scientific facts:
*The earliest humans did not live at the same time as dinosaurs.
*It takes Earth one year to go around the Sun.
*Electrons are smaller than atoms.
*Antibiotics do not kill viruses.
The article claims (with poll backup) that up to one in five Americans think the Sun revolves around the Earth.
And these are the people claiming Evolution is false, and that Creationism is true! This is like people who can't even add two and two (no, it's not five!) trying to prove Fermat's theorem?
Of course proof has nothing to do with this. This is a PR issue. This is an advertising campaign. This is a sound-bite attack on science by people who are willing to try to weaken the solid foundations of science (at least in the minds of the ignorant masses) by coordinating the use of buzz-word slogans such as: “fairness,” “just the facts, ma’am,” “Darwinism is a religion,” “what are scientists afraid of,” “evolution equals atheism”.
(That last as if not believing in a flimsy mass-delusion of a fairy-tale makes a person ... less of a person? Less of a critical thinker? I find the opposite to be true for the most part, but that's another Rant entirely.)
A hundred or so years ago, when people were actually taught logic and critical thinking, Darwin came on the scene and presented his solid theory of Natural Selection. Even in those times (which some consider even more religiously governed than now in the US) people, while stubbornly trying to hold onto their religious beliefs, had to begrudgingly admit to the veracity of Darwin's theories. Why? Because they were somehow less Christian? Hardly! Why, though? Because they were not complete frikkin' idiots!
Yet today, a new breed of idiots is pushing it back. Why? Well, it's all in that article. It's another effort by the Religious Right in this country to take over the country itself and rule it as some kind of new Idyllic Theocracy!
So read that article, and the next time someone brings up Intelligent Design, don't just scoff and pass it off as a quaint bit of ignorance! To dismiss it is akin to dismissing a tidal wave. Fight it! Fight it, or it will become stronger, and eventually it will gain enough strength to actually take over as the only "correct" view of the world. There are already 45% of people in the US who think Intelligent Design has some merit. That growing movement, brought about mainly by this country's increasing inability (or lack of will) to teach kids in schools how to think logically and critically, and an increasing loss of the separation of Church and State, as well as an increasingly fundamentalist right-wing religious war against anything not like them, will soon become the prevailing group, dragging this society back to the dark ages.
And trust me, you do not want to live in that world!
White House - A Hive Of Dignity
(October 29, 2005)
When Bush was making his case for war, Cheney was involved with getting information from Africa.
(Remember that Cheney was the man who lied through his teeth on national television about WMDs and other things. Outright lied. This is well-documented. I watched his lips move. I saw him caught in a major lie on national TV. Everyone should watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.)
Joe Wilson was sent to Niger to find out about "yellow cake" Uranium purchases. He came back knowing that no such purchases took place. (We later found that documents on the purchases were a forgery.) This so went against what Bush and Cheney were trying to do that two of their staff leaked information to Robert Novak (the man Jon Stewart calls "Scumbag for Liberty") about Joe Wilson's wife, who was an undercover CIA operative.
Not only did they expose Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, but her cover operation, and suddenly, anyone in the world who had dealings with them were in danger for their lives. We have no idea how many (if any) agents and informants were killed due to this leak. We can never know. Perhaps it's none. Perhaps it's not.
This deadly-serious crime has been investigated, and "Scooter" Libby (this Bush administration sure loves its Ivy-League nick-names, right, Brownie?) has been indicted on five counts of three crimes. None of which includes the actual leaking of the name, because that's harder to prove and prosecute. He still stands to face up to 60 years in jail.
(What will really happen is Libby will fall on his sword, in two years he gets a pardon from Bush, and he goes on to become Fox's op-ed host on a new TV show on how badly the Democrats are doing in office, and all the shameful acts they are perpetrating on the American people - none of which will include lying to the nation, bringing it to war under false pretenses.)
And what of Rove? Reports say he's not out of the water, but the fact that his name wasn't mentioned yesterday in the indictments indicates he's not in as much trouble as Scooter. And indications are that this whole scheme came from the VP's office, not Bush's office, so Libby is probably the ring-leader. But we do know he was involved. The fact that there is no indictment simply indicates he can't be prosecuted easily.
Stop reading this and watch the film "Bush's Brain". Watch how he (allegedly) leaked information to the press that Bush's opponent, Ann Richards, was a lesbian just days before the Texas Gubernatorial election, a completely unfounded rumor that lost her the election. See how he (alledgedly) planted a bug in his own office to discredit an opponent in another election campaign. Somehow it was leaked that John McCain, Bush's Presidential opponent, had a wife with a drug problem, and McCain was called mentally unstable. Every victory Bush has had, has been gotten on the back of a pack of lies and false press leaks by Rove, the dirtiest political figure in recent history. Makes Nixon look like Kennedy. And Rove has done it again, this time to Joe Wilson, who intended to make Rove's master look bad.
Anyone who knows how Rove works knows what happened here, and just how, again, the slippery "Turd Blossom" was careful to leave a trail of deniability in everything he does from helping Bush take a country to war over false pretenses, to oh, I'd say, buying a gallon of milk.
Hey, Rove. I have a question. What's it like living with yourself?
Anyway, the point of this rant is that even if you don't believe Bush brought the most militarily powerful country on the earth to war against Iraq over false pretenses (weapons that did not exist - used to project a veritable nuclear sword of Damocles over the heads of Americans), even if you don't believe Bush's cronyism (in his hiring of Mike Brown in a capacity for which he was tragically underqualified, or his recent nomination of his buddy Harriet Myers to the Supreme Court), even if you thought Bush was honestly doing these things for the betterment of his country... even if you believed that...
...remember that Bush was the man who was supposed to bring dignity back to the office of the White House. Remember that? He campaigned on it. After the sex scandal of Clinton's last days, Bush claimed he could wipe out that scar of indignity from the venerated halls of the White House.
And not long ago Bush said he would fire anyone involved in this intentional leak of a national security operative. Remember? Bush is all about National Security.
So will he fire Rove, his peripheral brain? (Because his own doesn't really work... we've seen him try to use it, and it's never been pretty.)
I'm waiting for him to twist that to "anyone convicted of a crime" would be fired, and then "anyone jailed for over 60 years" would be fired, or "anyone executed for a crime" would be fired... it's coming.
Do I believe Bush can bring dignity back to the White House? Sure.
If he resigns. Whenever this corrupt administration, the most corrupt since Nixon's, leaves, it will automatically bring dignity back to the White House.
Fall Back? Why Not Fall Out?
(October 29, 2005)
To increase the amount of evening light in summer, Ben Franklin proposed Daylight Savings Time, and it caught on.
So now every year we fake time forward an hour in summer. If you were to set up a sun dial, it would be off an hour from spring to fall. Then in the fall, we go back to "Standard Time". Then your sundial would be right again. This is almost a world-wide self-delusion.
So here's my question. If we want an extra hour of sunlight at the end of the day, why don't we just:
Get up an hour earlier?
Yes, that's right. Instead of working from 9-5, let's all work from 8-4, and we'd have that extra hour of daylight throughout the year, and not just summer, and we wouldn't have to fake the sundial.
It's a simple scheme, and far simpler than flipping time forward an hour part of the year and flipping it back the rest. No semi-annual disruption, no resetting the VCR clocks.
Let's just stay on the real sun clock, and move our whole day an hour forward.
Daylight Savings Time is a fake. It's a crutch. This scheme would be permanent, and we'd get all the benefits of Daylight Savings Time without any of the troubles that go with switching back and forth from the fake time system to the real one.
I come from Newfoundland where in the early 1990s we tried "Double Daylight Savings Time", which pushed the clock two hours forward in the summer. It was nice to have the sun setting at 10:00pm, but it really caused business problems as our window of common business hours with the mainland of Canada and the US narrowed by an hour. So I understand the idiocy of Daylight Savings Time.
I'm not saying Ben Franklin was an idiot. Far from it. The man was a Da-Vinci scale Genius! And this country wouldn't exist as it is without his genius. But in this scheme, he could have found a simpler solution.
2000 Dead US Soldiers in Iraq
(October 25, 2005)
2000 Americans have died now "liberating" Iraq. And how does our government honor their memories?
That's right. Journalists are not allowed to shoot the flag-draped coffins as they are returned home.
Lovely. The Latest Navy Recruiting
Ad
(October 20, 2005)
I just saw a TV ad for the Navy showing sleek stealth ships and cool action shots inside the latest of high-tech naval vessels.
The tag line: "Because rocket science is more fun if you have real rockets."
Then the video shows a missile being shot from the deck of a ship.
Uh... that's a missile! A killing machine! It has no other purpose. So now you're luring our kids in by telling them it's fun to blow people up for real?
I can't believe that there are groups fighting against fake violence in video-games, but those same people would have no problem with the advocating of real mass murder in these ads.
How often since Bush has taken office have I heard from Americans that the UN is a useless body? When Bush set his sights on Iraq and the UN said "Uh... no." Right-Wing Americans have been calling for the disbanding of the UN. I guess as long as it exists as a rubber stamp for American aggression, I guess it's fine, but when it disagrees with the US it's suddenly useless.
To anyone who says that the UN is a toothless tiger (a term posted by a co-worker in the office chat groups today), I have this to say:
The UN was never meant to play a toothy tiger. It was intended as a place where toothy tigers could meet and talk out their problems in an open forum rather than resorting to war as a first resort rather than a last resort.
The UN has prevented plenty of wars that you have never ever heard about because the people involved worked out compromises and agreements rather than erupting into war.
The fact that it can’t prevent ALL war is hardly a reason to call it a toothless tiger. What a strange viewpoint it is to think that the only thing that can prevent war is a huge set of teeth in order to bite anyone who steps out of line. That may be one country’s way of thinking, but it is not a common point of view in the rest of the world.
Nothing, not even an all-powerful being, could prevent all war. Hell, most all-powerful beings cause more wars than they prevent.
The UN may not be perfect, but since its formation it has been a resounding
success. Its peacekeeping efforts and disaster relief achievements alone more
than justify its existence, even if you disregard the unknown number of wars
it has prevented over the decades.
Religion, and Why
(October 7, 2005)
Thankfully, it is human nature to question how it all works.
Ironically, many religions prevented that in the past.
Don't question.
Questioning led to science. Science led to real, solid answers, not hand-waving and answers that simply restated the question, or which reverts back to "because I said so."
Science has always, since its discovery, been very good at answering how.
It can't answer why.
And people always want to know why. So they turn to religions, which profess to have the answers.
Sadly, religion doesn't answer why either, it just pretends to. Because it doesn't know why.
It is human nature to constantly ask why, but it is nature's nature never be able to provide the difinitive answer.
So we will always ask, and never be answered.
Doctor Who's Sonic Screwdriver
(October 4, 2005)
I ordered my Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver weeks ago from 10th Planet in England. Word was that they ship to the US, and sure enough, they do. And at completely reasonable prices too. I doubt you'd get shipping that cheap anywhere in the US.
It cost £9.99 plus £3.75 shipping (from the UK to the US) for a grand total of around $24.17 US.
It was a pre-order, so they didn't have the screwdrivers in stock yet. The day they were released, I heard that the demand for these was so huge they were having trouble getting enough stock out to stores.
So I e-mailed them about my order and they said they had stock on its way.
Another 12 days passes and I heard that one guy in Boston had received his. So I e-mailed again today to ask about my order.
And then later when I came home there was a package from the UK on my doorstep. Yes! My Sonic Screwdriver had arrived!
I fired off an audio review of it which I submitted to Podshock, a Doctor Who podcast. Perhaps they'll put it on the next episode... who knows?
(Click image for a larger version)
Note that this toy requires three AG13 batteries (laser-pointer batteries) and they are not included!! In the US, most toys that use these button batteries include the batteries. So first you'll have to have three of these ready to go for when your Screwdriver arrives.
Also note that the item looks somewhat different from the prototype pictured above. The gray plastic you see on the model is actually done in a silver paint that looks amazingly like cast metal. And it's not cheap chrome. It looks great. The other main difference is that the main barrel is actually modeled in a fleshy-colored plastic, not the ivory you see here, which would have been more accurate. No idea why they changed that. There is a subtle cracking etched over the main barrel, to simulate the cracked ivory of the real thing.
Also, there is no black square on the slider button. And the blue bar on the side of the picture above is not as nice, and includes two etched-out buttons that push a small button on the central core to activate the electronic features.
It's an awesome toy! The thing emits two sounds from the show, but the sound is a bit low. It also emits a blue Ultra-Violet light which brings out the invisible ink from the pen on the bottom of the screwdriver. And the light looks remarkably like it does on the show.
Nice work from Character Options Ltd.
Hurricane Rita's
Real Effect
(September 30, 2005)
Time Magazine's October 3, 2005 issue features the following photograph.
A family examines the remains of their house.
But look at the child. Click on the picture for a larger version, but click on the child's face for perhaps the most haunting and riveting photo from this whole disaster.
Hurricane Rita Diagram
(September 22, 2005)
So... is this what Rita is doing to the Gulf Coast?
(This was sent to me, so I have no idea if it is authentic. Damn funny, though.)
Familiar Ship in Battlestar Galactica
(September 22, 2005)
The new Battlestar Galactica series has been quite the hit. A new take on the old series, rather than a sequel or faithful remake, it's gritty, harsh, and amazing.
Here's a shot from Caprica.
Recognize the ship? Perhaps you may not, but if you're a fan of Firefly, you sure know it.
The Fall TV Lineup
(September 22, 2005)
You can burn out on Cop shows, you know. Yes, that's right, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
Way to Go Mullah Robertson!
(August 23, 2005)
How do you take on a war against religious extremism in today's world? With religious extremism, apparently.
Ask Pat Robertson, who, on his 700 Club show, advocated assassinating Venezuela's leader, Hugo Chavez.
While Venezuela is not a party in the War on Terror (tm), Robertson advocates assassination because he doesn't like Chavez. And of course it's about keeping the oil flowing.
Can't he at least lose his broadcasting license over this?
Ah. Those Christians. I love their message of peace and tolerance as taught by example by their spiritual leader, Jesus Christ. Jesus would be so proud.
Here's a thought exercise, thanks to Pat Robertson: WWJA? (Who Would Jesus Assassinate?)
Another Difference Between Canada
and the USA
(August 22, 2005)
On Water Street in St. John's, Newfoundland, I snapped this picture driving by a business there.
While there, in many of the gift shops besides this one, I found bongs, hash pipes, and other drug paraphenalia being sold as gifts, which, if I simply owned it here in the US, my ass would be in jail with Big Bubba the murderer, getting sold for cigarettes because someone thinks smoking a natural plant not only does, but should ruin your life.
And I'm not talking about tobacco, which is so filled with artificial chemicals, and causes cancer and a buzillion other diseases and conditions, which can ruin your life... I'm talking about people who would willingly ruin lives because they feel morally superior to those people and think their lives should be ruined because they smoke a natural, harmless plant.
Morally should ruin your life! How freakin' sick is that?
That, my friends is just one more difference between a sane country and one that's fucked up beyond repair. You choose which is which, but at least when you do, use your brain.
Bush's First Nominee for the Surpeme Court
(July 24, 2005)
Ouch. Very subtle political cartoon. Takes a second, but when you get it... you get it.
If you don't get it, simply highlight the area between the brackets:
[ The man on the right is nominee for the Supreme Court, John Roberts, being fitted for a Judicial Robe. Roberts has written briefs saying Roe vs. Wade was wrongly decided, and one of Bush's main judicial aims is to repeal Roe vs. Wade, making abortion illegal again. The coat hanger is a very subtle reference to back-alley abortions, or what could happen if the Supreme Court overturned the Roe vs. Wade decision. ]
Addendum to Tom Cruise on Psychiatry
(June 25, 2005)
Yesterday on The Today Show, Matt Lauer interviewed Tom Cruise. Tom said "I've never agreed with psychiatry... I understand why I don't agree with psychiatry... because I'm bat-shit insane!"
It's Official. Tom Cruise is an Absolute
Idiot
(June 24, 2005)
Cruise has lost it. He just said "There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance."
Ohhhhh, he understands the history of psychology, [he tells Matt Lauer on the Today Show today] so a drug that actually prevents death of Post-Partum mothers and children, is just masking the problem.
Well, duh... in the case of Post-Partum Depression, all that's required is something that masks a temporary problem long enough to get the mother through the depression (which can last for days, weeks or months) so that she doesn't end up killing her child and/or herself.
What an absolute idiot.
Though I have to begrudgingly say that his stance on Ritalin and his stance on drugging up kids is closer to mine.
But he's taking what has become a trendy cover-up for a lot of childrens' behavioral issues with dope, and extrapolating it to things that actually do work for people who need it.
And I'm not saying that no children require drugs, because some do. But I'm convinced that it's a small percentage of those kids currently on those behavioral drugs.
I think in the vast majority of cases, it's an out for lazy parents who can't deal with the behavioral quirks of their kids and just drug them up so they don't have to deal with it. (I've seen first-hand the immediate result of these drugs on kids and on adults. I see one woman I know on this drug and it's like she's floating through life on a cloud... I'm sure I could put a cigarette out on the back of her hand, and she'd just glance at it and say "oh. that was interesting")
And I do not trust a profession whose very existence requires there be enough people out there taking these medications. That seems like quite a dangerous thing, to me. Seems like a self-fulfilling business. Create a need and fill it. Or in this case, create a prescription and fill it.
But as for Post Partum Depression, Cruise is way off base. I've lived through Post-Partum Depression. Not me, of course - my wife. A woman who rarely lets anything get her down had what I would call a mild case of PPD, and that was scary enough.
"There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance." As a woman whose hormones are spiking, or ebbing. See of there is no chemical imbalance. Unless he thinks the body isn't made up of an equillibrium of chemical reactions...?
Post Partum Depression is, by very definition, a chemical imbalance, and it leads to death. It is a temporary condition, and it passes in most cases. But when you're in it, it can be life-threatening.
Just days after Cruise made his statement that Brooke Shields was being "irresponsible" by endorsing these drugs, a local woman stabbed her newborn baby six times with a kitchen knife because of Post Partum Depression.
It's Tom Cruise who's irresponsible. Telling millions of women who -- because of this society's cult of celebrity, will actually take his advice as if he knows what the hell he's talking about -- is irresponsible.
What an idiot. And a dangerous one.
As are most people pushing an evangelical religion.
Another Spineless Politician Rears His Ugly
Head
(June 21, 2005)
Senator Dick Durbin (Dem, IL) on June 14, referring to the torturous treatment of detainees at Quantanamo Bay, said:
"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings."
He said it. He was right. The kind of treatment we are discovering is being used on prisoners in the US base in Cuba is something you would expect from the Soviet Union or the Nazis.
Now Durbin is snivelling and backtracking because his comments were taken out of context and feelings got hurt. Sorry... can't hurt anyone's feelings... you can torture them, but you can't insult them.
"Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line," the Illinois Democrat said. "To them I extend my heartfelt apologies."
"To you [editor's license] I apologize that you elected such a gutless, spineless, and I guess for that matter, completely torsoless wimp for a politician. You elected me to stand up for you and I don't even have the backbone to do that. Whenever I try to stand up, I just flip-flop over like a wet rag. The attrocities... I mean the wonderful treatment likely innocent people... er... I mean confirmed terrorists (not taxi-cab drivers who may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time) have been forced... I mean experienced... er... enjoyed, I should say, has been excellent, and a great score for the reputation of the US worldwide."
"I apologize to you all for implying that anything done there isn't so wonderful that we are all about to line up and volunteer for similar treatment, but no, we're not that lucky."
"Furthermore, I apologize for telling the truth. I apologize for pointing a magnifying glass at a problem, rather than just ignoring it in the sincere hope it will go away. And finally, I apologize for existing."
"Thank you. Vote Durbin... sorry..."
Nice going... Dick!
BLOCKBUSTER Lies About Late
Fees
(June 15, 2005)
Netflix really has Blockbuster Video running scared. Here's how it works. You pay $17.99 a month and can order as many movies as you can view in that time, with the caveat that you can only have 3 out at any one time. If you watch a lot of movies, this is an incredible deal. If you like to hold onto them, suddenly, it becomes less economical.
But it's catching on like wildfire, and WalMart entered teh biz too.
Blockbuster Video was running scared and started airing ads declaring "No Late Fees!" until you read the fine print at the bottom of the ads. First, it's only at particpating stores. Second, sure, if you like, keep that movie for a bit longer. Like a week...
But if you do return it a week late, guess what? They charge you a "restocking fee" of $1.25. What, you ask, is a "restocking fee"? Well, it's A LATE FEE!
Keep that movie for over 30 days, however, and they charge you the full retail price of that movie.
Not a late fee, you say? True. Not a late fee. A sale. You now own that scratched DVD and its stickered, ugly case.
So you can still return it. Hey, perhaps it's true. No late fee!
Then they will refund you the price you paid for the film, and... they add a restocking fee.
Once again, folks, what's a "restocking fee"? Well, it's A LATE FEE!
If you are charging money for a late movie, it's a late fee!
In fact, New Jersey brought a lawsuit against Blockbuster for lying. Vermont and New Hampshire, too. Blockbuster settled a lawsuit with more than 40 other states over its deceptive advertising of "No Late Fees".
For fun, Google: blockbuster "no late fees" policy and have a good, fun read.
GPS Units. Why?
(June 14, 2005)
You know, I just don't uderstand this fascination for the personal hand-held Global Positioning System. GPS units are selling like crazy, and I have no idea why.
Like owning an SUV, probably less than .5% of owners use them in a way they were intended, and I'm betting about the same percent of GPS owners actually use them to hike around the world without the aid of a map.
So why would I want one? If I'm going on a day trip to, say, New Hampshire, I generally know I'll be in New Hampshire. If I go to the White Hills, I know I'm in the White Hills. Generally road signs and street signs will tell me where I am, and I will probably have a road map in case I get lost.
How would a GPS system help me in any way? First, if I have it, but I have no map, then I'm lost anyway. If I have one and I do have a map, it will generally tell me what I already know, unless I am somehow lost.
If someone kidnaps me and dumps my body in a random state, in the middle of a desert or prairie, with no visual indication of where the hell I am, then it's highly likely they won't leave me with my GPS system and a map.
So chalk the GPS system up with Cel Phone Ring Tones and Car Alarms. Can anyone tell me why any of these are necessary.
Doctor Who is Back, Baby!
(May 22, 2005)
For about 9 weeks now I've been watching Doctor Who - the new series based on the classic 1963-1989 series. It was always one of my favorite shows when I could watch it... (on Detroit PBS stations in the late 1980s) so I was upset when it went off the air.
A couple of years ago it was announced that the BBC would bring back the much-beloved series. This of course sparked excitement, but also serious skepticism. Could a new revival of the old series be done in a new TV format, years after the momentum of the show had died?
The 1996 TV Movie "The Enemy Within" starring Paul McGann and Eric Roberts (as the Master) was a fairly dismal failure to most fans. I watched it once when it first aired, and never again (until recently). It was never available on DVD or VHS... you had to catch re-runs if you could. I thought it was just awful. It was only (as I said) recently that I was able to see it again for a second time, and I only then realized I had missed several minutes at the beginning which were kind of vital. My new assessment is that it wasn't quite as bad as I remembered it.
But it wasn't terribly good either. They took serious liberties with the Doctor - making him half-human, and allowing him to kiss a companion - Two things that got fans up in arms.
The problem with reviving Who is that it could have been done so tragically badly.
So it was with great anticipation that I downloaded the leaked version of "Rose", episode one of the new series. Three weeks before it aired in the UK, a leaked copy got out, and I was lucky enough to see it.
I loved it. Sure, there were minor issues, because there's no way you can reduce a serial-style show down to single episodes without some changes to the format. But the look, the feel, the actors, the writing... were quite good!
In this one, Autons (never actually named in the episode, but well-known to early Doctor Who watchers) threatened to take over the Earth as a food supply. The Doctor finds Rose, a lowly shop girl in a fancy fashion shop in London, about to be killed by these baddies, and she gets caught up in his intrigue, as he plots to destroy the Nestene Consciousness controlling these automated plastic mannequins.
And so I cruised the newsgroups to see what fan opinion would be, and to my surprise, mostly, they liked it! Sure, there are always fans that will tear down anything you do that isn't 100% exactly like the imaginary image they have in their own heads of what it should be, but for the most part, people actually liked it.
So did I.
But that was episode one. A lot of effort is put into the first foot forward, so perhaps next week it'll suck. Then came "End of the World", which was a bit of a take on Douglas Adams' Restaurant at the End of the Universe - a space station orbiting Earth several billion years into Rose's future, there to watch as it goes Kablooooiee! Another good episode! Even better than the first, I'd say.
So certainly episode three must be the start of the decline, right?
Then came "The Unquiet Dead" in which Rose and the Doctor travel back to Victorian times, a staple of Doctor Who fare. And fans were screaming "Best Epiosde - EVER!" And who can argue? Ghosts, Charles Dickens, Fancy dresses, aliens living in the gas lines, a psychic maid... how can anyone argue? We begin to find that the Doctor is a very sad being, and we begin to see why. We eventually learn that there was a Time War and the Doctor is the last of his race. His planet completely destroyed during this Time War that we know nothing about as yet.
"Aliens of London" was pretty good. Too much fart humor, but otherwise, a solid, good episode, and the return to the serial format. This was part one of a two-parter. In this episode, the Doctor brings Rose back to her own time so she can visit her Mum and let her know she's alright... but instead of bringing her back 12 hours after they left in "Rose", he brings her back 12 months after... and the results are disastrous! Rose's Mum, Jackie, had put up posters in hopes anyone could tell her what happened to her daughter who disappeared 12 months earlier. Rose's boyfriend Mickey had been hauled in for questioning on her murder five times, but he had to be let go for lack of evidence - the actual damage done by the Doctor's simplest mistakes are finally explored for the first time in a way that looked and felt real. I was blown away!
"World War Three", the second part, was also pretty good, and wraps up the invasion of Earth by evil bad aliens. Not the best in the series so far, so here goes, right? The inevitable decline has begun.
"Dalek". Wow. Now here we go... the revival of the most beloved and hated Doctor Who villains ever! The evil, xenophobic maniacs the Daleks. Many people today don't realize that Daleks were even bigger than the Beatles back in the 1960s. There exists a photo of John Lennon with a Dalek, and it wasn't taken to show a Dalek with famed John Lennon, but the other way around - here was Beatles lead singer John Lennon, and look! He's with the famed Dalek! Hard to explain today to someone who didn't live it, or research it. In this episode, we learn that the Doctor saw the last of the Daleks die - yet here's one in 2012 Earth, in an underground bunker in Utah. It is being kept alive by a power-hungry man who apparently controls all of the world's governments covertly. But only when the Doctor arrives, does the Dalek show any sign of life. He revives, escapes, and causes havoc on the whole building until it realizes it has taken on some of Rose's DNA and is now impure. So it hates itself and we see the results. What could have been the best episode ever was a good one, but failed to go over the top. Not a disappointment by any means, but not a triumph either.
So we figure that was the peak. Then comes "The Long Game", in which the Doctor and Rose find themselves several hundred thousand years into the future, on a News Broadcasting sattelite orbiting Earth. The Doctor immediately notices something's not the way it should be for this era, and they set about finding out what. We find that an alien species has taken over the sattelite and is slowly influencing Earth until it can effect a complete takeover. News media can have that effect - just live in the US for the past 9 years and you can see it in action. Simpler than previous episodes, but definitive Doctor Who. And fans are still excited!
"Father's Day": Rose, who never knew her father, only knowing that he died when she was a baby, asks the Doctor if she can go back and be there when he died, because it's known that he died alone waiting for the ambulance to arrive. They go back, she sees him die, and just stands there. So she asks if they can go back again for a second chance. This time, though, she runs out and stops him from dying. That's bad, see, because now she's changed her own history. Not just the world's history, but her own. She and the Doctor were in two distinct timelines, and one of them changed. That causes these hidious Reapers to burst into the timeline killing everything in sight, wiping out the bruise in the timeline. This gives Rose a chance to get to know her Dad - not the hero he was painted by her mother - but just a flawed guy, trying to make a living in a meager world. In the end, Pete (her Dad) understands that he's not supposed to be alive - that Rose is his daughter from the future, and that he was never around for her growing up. So this failed man, this guy who we find out is no hero - becomes one, sacrificing himself to save the timeline. It had Who fans in tears, and no wonder. A poignant episode, and the Doctor was hardly even in it. Brilliant TV.
I just watched "The Empty Child" and I have to say I got chills. It's World War II in London during the Blitz. Rose is lured away from the Doctor by a child crying "Mummy... are you my Mummy?". She accidentally gets lifted aloft by a Barrage Balloon, and is spotted by a renegade Time Agent, who isn't supposed to be here. Meanwhile, the Doctor meets a young girl who is taking advantage of air raids to feed homeless children by entering houses emptied to shelters while food's on the table. We find that something is taking over people and becoming "empty" children. So another nice moody story for the new series. This one's a two-parter, and I've only seen the first part so far, but again... fans are crying "Best Episode Ever!"
Man, when I think how crappy any attempt at a new series could have been, I am so grateful for all involved in this revived series!
Russel T. Davies, producer of the new series - THANK YOU! Carry on!
Pedantry ... or Why Bother, Let's Just Let Everything
Go To Pot?
(May 22, 2005)
I use Usenet to read newsgroups. I post at other private forums. I generally do a lot of reading on the internet - reading what others have posted. Every now and then someone posts an argument that is so full of gramatical errors, spelling errors, and just bad language usage that someone then posts a reply telling the person where he went so verbally wrong.
I usually don't write that first reply because the person who I'd be replying to invariably gets defensive and insulting. However, I'm beginning to change my mind on that...
The usual response to such a grammatical correction is this: Oh, you can't tear down my argument, so you attack my grammer. (Yes, the "e" was on purpose.)
To these people who cry pedantry... I have this to say:
My wife teaches first-year English Composition at a Boston college... you wouldn't believe some of the stuff she comes home with in her students' papers...
These are people who somehow got to the college level while maintaining a (for some of them) near functional illiteracy. It's quite clear they have never read a single book.
Some of them come from homes that don't even own a single book, and the students have never read a book outside of those required for school and most of them didn't even read those - and that's the real problem.
Growing up, teachers teach the rules of grammar and English (though decreasingly so in recent decades - don't get me started on the 1990s trend towards "wholistic learning" in which spelling wasn't even considered to be important - what crack-brained idiot thought that up?) but it's up to us to firm up that teaching by actually reading and learning from it.
I learned almost all of my own grammatical rules by reading them being used correctly. I can understand clauses never outrightly taught in schools - things you must learn by reading, not by watching television and playing video games.
(No, there's nothing wrong with watching television or playing video games... but that can't be all you do...)
And the internet isn't helping. Some very basic and simple rules of language are being not only ignored, but reinforced by their complete misuse on the internet. When bad language is passed off as correct, it only teaches others that that bad language is the right way to speak (or type). And it just gets worse and worse.
I have some serious issues with this whole problem, and I for one am wholly willing to correct anyone for glaring mis-use of the language. Especially if a gentle prod will correct the problem in the person who made the mistake. (And there's no point getting offended because you didn't know the difference... just take the advice and learn from it, and you won't make the same mistake in the future... well, at least we can hope.)
Pedantry, some call it. I often hear Oh, it doesn't matter... you knew what I MEANT. Oh? Is that so?
You want to convince me of an argument, but you want me to go through the extra effort to try to decode what it is you were trying so inadequately to say? Forget it, pal.
Too many people scream pedantry in order to cover up for their own laziness in learning. But it's education that's brought us out of the dark ages. If we worried about pedantry, we'd still all be serfs farming the landlord's grain.
Read Eats, Shoots and Leaves - an excellent book on grammar. One chapter goes so far as to point out how a war was fought over the misplacement of a comma. Yes - language can be that serious.
The lesson is: LANGUAGE IS IMPORTANT!
Language is intended to get your point across to others. If you can't use the language properly, you can't expect others to work the extra effort to try to figure out what the hell it was you were trying to say.
So learn the language. Use it properly. There are plenty of ways of saying the same thing, so there's plenty of flexibility. But blatant mis-use of the language is not the best way to get your point across to others and hope they take your views seriously.
If you went around saying 2+2=5 and yelling pedantry every time someone corrected you, you'd be laughed at. Language accuracy should be treated no differently.
Or to further the mathematical example: Imagine if you handed $20.00 to a waiter to pay your $15.49 bill, and he handed you back four bucks. Would you then shrug and say "close enough."? Hardly. Where's pedantry then??? You'd be the first to point out the waiter's error, and you'd be indignant while doing it. As if the waiter was lazy enough to not get his math right.
English is no different. Why should making your point without error be any less important than giving back the right amount of change?
As I said, there are many ways to say a certain thing correctly. Choose one and you'll be fine. Say it incorrectly, and you will have to face the consequences of confused people wondering just what the hell you were trying to say. But then you have only yourself to blame.
My Favorite Optical Illusion
(March 23, 2005)
And I tested this image in Photoshop. The squares A and B are both valued at 107 in each of the Red, Green and Blue channels. I know it to be true, yet I have a hard time believing it.
Yes, This Was A Real Computer Game Ad - Wow.
(March 23, 2005)
How Many Credit Card Offers Can You Get In
One Single Day????
(March 10, 2005)
FOUR! That's how many I got today! In one single day!
Today I got one from Visa, one from PayPal, and - get this - two from Providian! Two. Two separate offers from Providian.
Hey!!! Stop sending me credit card offers! If I want a credit card, I'll call you!
BBC: Do Not Listen To Your Number One Fans!
(March 08, 2005)
This rant is in reference to some negative reviews that have surfaced after the "leak" of Episode One: "Rose", of the new Doctor Who series. Ain't It Cool News (they don't need my help with their traffic - no link) posted several negative reviews, practically ignoring the good ones, and several have appeared in discussions in Newsgroups. Overwhelmingly, the reviews have been positive, but the negative ones have been too negative. Suspiciously too negative. It led me to wonder why.
BBC: Do Not Listen To Your Number One Fans!
You can't please them. It's been tried. And it never works.
No matter who does what, it will never quite fit the exact image that one fan who posts the bad review has in his rigid little head. He has spent the last 30 years doing his own new series in his mind, and if the BBC doesn't get theirs exactly like his he'll go right off the deep end.
I know whereof I speak.
The most ardent fans are the worst people to have on your side. Those are the ones who are completely inflexible and will write a twenty page tirade because the Sonic Screwdriver looks different or has a blue light. But he doesn't mind that 30 years ago it looked like a cheap prop.
He will scream in a red rage because the Daleks don't look exactly like the shoddy ones seen on the old series, with their heads practically coming off when they bump into the sets, and you could almost see the feet stickout out from the skirt.
He will exclaim out loud that Chris Eccleston looks nothing even remotely like Tom Baker, and that he's "goofy". On the other hand, they'll swoon in orgasmic ecstacy over a Three Stooges-Look-Alike that played the recorder 40 years ago.
He will tear down a whole series because there are white borders around the TARDIS windows - a machine known to have problems with its chameleon circuit. But doesn't mind the fifteen times it changed shape in the old series.
He will rant and cry about a TARDIS control room that resembles an alien bathysphere, because it's not as good as the TARDIS wall when it was a printed background of the real wall with rondels. Nor did he throw a hissy fit when the TARDIS control room suddenly changed to a Victorian cupboard - that was brilliant because it was the original series and Tom Baker's shadow fell across it.
He will insult the mother of the person who allowed the TARDIS door to be seen as the inside of the Police Box door, but won't mind when the Time Machine wobbles and tilts whenever Peter Davison rushes into it.
If it were up to this fanboi, the show will fail and never ever return. And he will once again get to wallow in the darkest corners of his parent's basement with his half-worn-out VHS tapes copied from PBS in the fall of 1987 whimpering, "My precious... my precious..."
When Steven King wrote "Misery" he knew what he was doing. This person, BBC, is your number one fans. Ignore him.
I, for one, can't wait. It sounds like the Doctor is spot-on, his sense of humor and timing are excellent, and his interactions with humans quirky and slightly non-human. Kind of like Tom Baker when he first donned that Viking helmet.
BBC:Do not listen to your Number One Fans They are invariably no better than Number Two!
Instead, make this one for those people who love Doctor Who. Those are two very different animals.
My Mother's Sweaters Get Some Attention
(March 4, 2005)
A couple of years back my mother knitted my daughter some sweaters for her Barbie. I liked the quality so much I asked her to do one or two for my GI Joes. I use casual and civilian clothing in my photo shoots, and I thought that Joe could use some nicely made winter wear.
So she sent me ten sweaters of various design. I posed a dozen GI Joes in vogue positions and created an online catalog to sell the sweaters to fellow collectors. The first batch went rather fast, and I sent all the proceeds back to my mother. So she sent me some more.
So I did another "Sears Catalog" photo shoot, and sold the second batch of sweaters.
So she sent me some more. And I created another catalog. This one even more Sears-like, or JC Penny-like. The catalogs were done completely tongue-in-cheek, of course, complete with descriptions such as: Darien (left) wears a brilliant red sweater with dual ropes down the front and back in hopes he will stand out in a crowd and not seem invisible. (The Joe I used to pose this sweater is a clear, transparent Joe figure.)
I didn't want to over-spam my collectors' group with prodding messages to buy the sweaters, so the last batch did not sell out completely. Still, all the money went to my mother, and a lot of collectors got nice sweaters out of the deal.
What's notable about this story is that sometime this month I noticed a large number of hits on my web site for the Catalog page. So I traced those hits back to their source and found that bloggers had found my site and were spreading it around. Some were quite good-natured, like this one:
The toques are delicious.
They've got the JC Penney catalogue look down pat.
Given the apparent quality of craftmanship I would've said Lands' End or L.L. Bean, but certainly the posing styles are JC Penneyesque. It's not too late for a special-interest calendar either...Fisherman Fellows and Females for 2005?
and:
But what took me by surprise is how many people saw the page as a gay page. Yeah. He wears sweaters so suddenly, GI Joe is gay? I had to laugh when I saw comments like these from MonkeyFilter: (I wish I was making these up)
Heh. Methinks mk1gti is protesting too much...
But on the same page someone posted:
It's nice to see that shinything delved a little into my site and found one of my favorite gems.
Other sites listed the catalog and other posters saw only "gay"... Funny how a guy because he has no gun in his hand is seen by some as gay.
It kind of reminds me of that Mad TV sketch where a senator calls in an artist who is looking for an arts grant for his Rorshach pictures. (Just random patterns). And the senator (or congressman) accused the artist of distributing pornography. "I am not going to approve a grant for paintings of nekkid boys! Nekkid boys! Look at this one. Nekkid boys!"
Hilarous, except that it so accurately portrays those who fear what they are.
One post on another site went as far as to say: "The owner of that site is a sad sad indivudal." Heh. This from a guy whose icon is a Democratic Donkey symbol having sex with a Republican Elephant symbol and whose post has a banner with half-naked pr0n women on it for "Naughty America".
The ladies over at Supernaturale seemed to like the catalog...
And I found by perusing the referring sites to my page that the New Zealand Herald on February 27, 2005, posted one of the pictures from my catalog on its back page in the "light-hearted" stories section. Wish I had a copy I could send to my mother.
But by far the most hilarious thing is that over at Captain Comic's Comic Cave, they're talking about me as if I am a guy with way too much time on my hands. Ok... this... from a bunch of guys logging onto a comic site to talk about men in tights. Picture the Simpsons' Comic Book Guy pointing in the mirror and laughing at himself.
Best... Irony... Ever!
What this seems to have done is expose the homophobia and latent homosexuality of many of the posters. I never expected that, but I guess I should have. I bet not one of those guys owns a sweater. Or even if he does he won't wear it anymore for fear of someone calling him gay.
Anyway, my mother made some money doing something that she does naturally, I had some fun making a JC Penney catalog, and some collectors have sweaters for their GI Joes and other figures. And the homophobs got to rant. I guess everyone's happy.
The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we can imagine.
Peabody Essex Museum - Political Statement?
(February 1, 2005)
Do you think the placement of this pair of Asian statues is coincidental?
Peabody Essex Museum - Revisited. Again.
(January 29, 2005)
Today we went to the Peabody Essex Museum again in Salem, MA. We love this place! I can't say enough about it. Just a couple of the exhibits they have there that would blow anyone away: Terminal Rosary Bead, and Chinese Concentric Spheres.
Today we went to see the Nunavut exhibit - art from the Arctic region of Canada. This is the last weekend for this exhibit, and we couldn't miss it. Great day. Beautiful out. It's been so cold here that although it may have been 10 degrees Fahrenheit, we needed no coats when we arrived, because that seemed warm in comparison to what we've become used to in the last three weeks. Ok, joke. It was really above 32 degrees today, the warmest day we've had in New England for weeks.
Anyway, I thought it high time to show a few items at the Peabody Essex that no one should miss.
Ivory Oriental Basket
 |
 |
 |
|
Ivory Oriental Basket, made for export (Click
for larger image)
|
The detail is amazing, and the sheer, see-through portions
have to be seen to be believed. (Click
for larger image) They appear to be simply vertical cuts into the
sheer, thin ivory. Amazing.
|
See how the translucent portions are done.(Click
for larger image)
|
Ivory Tusk Carving
 |
 |
 |
|
Elephant Tusk Mounted In Wood (Click
for larger image) This thing is about four feet long, curved.
|
The detail is incredible. A huge village scene is carved
all over the surface of this masterpiece. (Click
for larger image)
|
Just some of the detail. It boggles the mind. .(Click
for larger image)
|
And while I didn't get a good picture of it, you really must go see this Ivory night stand, made for export. It is one of the finest examples of its kind anywhere. I believe Sister Wendy did a piece on this one. Since the picture is so bad, I'll just put a thumbnail here and urge you to go see it yourself.
Store Names
(January 29, 2005)
This speaks for itself. It is an actual store on the way to Salem, MA.
I have tried every brand
and variant on Cheesies looking for the one perfect Cheesie. Sure, they may
seem like 90% styrofoam and 10% spray paint, but somewhere out there I knew
there was the perfect Cheesie. And I found it.
Wise Cheez Doodles are the best. That is all.
House vs. Medical Investigation
(January 28, 2005)
vs.
Ever watch the new Fox show House? Features Hugh Laurie in what may be the worst-cast investigative show in history. Hugh Laurie, aka Prince Regent, aka Bertie Wooster, is now the most sour, cynical doctor in TV history. Marcus Welby he ain't. House centers around this obnoxious doctor who takes on cases that are almost impossible to diagnose. But he and his team always manages to find the problem and cure it miraculously by the end of the hour.
Ever watch the new show Medical Investigation? It's a CSI-like mystery show which centers around Neal McDonough who playes an obnoxious doctor working for an international medical investigation team, who find bizarre cases that are almost impossible to diagnose. But he and his team always manages to find the problem and cure it miraculously by the end of the hour.
Sound similar?
Well this week I watched an episode of House called "Poison" in which a student was brought into the hospital in critical condition and placed under House's care. Every avenue is investigated. Was he on drugs? Did he use pesticides? Did he eat spoiled tomatoes from a Mason jar whose seal was comprimised? Then another boy (who happened to ride the same bus to school) came in with the same symptoms.
Long story short, and if you don't like spoilers, don't continue reading: the problem was his jeans. He purchased a pair of jeans which were not washed before he wore them. And they contained traces of a toxic chemical. Turns out the guy who was transporting the jeans (stolen) also used the same truck to cart pesticides for his other job as a landscaper. I even recalled seeing the video footage of the truck, with the chemical barrels, and the leak coming from the containers towards the boxes holding the jeans.
At this point, about 50 minutes into the show, I started thinking, "Oh, I've seen this one before... I just must have walked in at this point." Because this seemed very familiar.
And as the show progressed, the video footage I recalled never showed up. They simply talked about the cause and found the cure. No footage of the truck with the chemical barrel, or the jeans.
Then I recalled that Fox was advertising this as "An All-New House - Next on Fox."
So what was going on here? Was I inventing memories of this video footage?
Nooooo, both Carol and I recalled at that point that we had seen this exact same plot on Medical Investigation. And it's true. The cause of the problem in the episode "In Bloom" was jeans contaminated by chemical spill because the jeans were carried in the same truck as chemicals that leaked.
So what happened here? How can two competing shows whose formula is so similar that they have to be in direct head-to-head competition to win audience, have the exact same plot? Was this a coincidence? Or was it corporate espionage? Or was it a writer who played two sides of the fence?
Whatever the answer, this is beyond excuse.
Green Card - Finally! But:
(January 21, 2005)
For about six years (give or take) my family and I have been in proceedings to become permanent residents of the United States. This means my wife and I can work here without visas or other complicated paperwork and nonsense. This is not the same as citizenship.
But I thought I'd share with you all one of the pieces of paperwork we had to fill out in order to begin proceedings.
Form I-485 Part 3. Processing Information
Hmmmm... I had a tough time answering some of those... I hope for you Americans, that you are comforted by the strenuous screening processes employed by your Immigration officials.
So... is this a test to see how moral I am? Or how stupid? Is this an intelligence test designed to screen out really really stupid people?
All content of these pages © Sean Huxter.
|
|
