I saw a commercial for this a little while ago, went to the website and was absolutely astounded at what this lil' gimmick can do. It's the FLY Pentop Computer and it's gonna be one of the hottest selling items this Christmas, bank on it. Costs $99 bucks but you tell me: isn't it a pretty neat thing to be able to draw a picture of a calculator and then be able to use it? Or to draw a keyboard and play it? Wish we had stuff this neat to play with when I was a kid...
Monday, October 17, 2005
John Quincy Adams versus George W. Bush
Found this quote today and found it quite appropos regarding the state of America today:
"(America) does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once listing under other banners than her own, were they even banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit..."This was from a day when American presidents wrote their own words, instead of being written for them.-- John Quincy Adams, 1821
How did we get to this level, where we don't have leaders of this kind of caliber anymore?
Sunday, October 16, 2005
De Niro was thrown from this stage: A night at The Barn Dinner Theater
Last night Lisa and I joined my parents and sister (it's her birthday tomorrow, Happy Birthday Anita!) for dinner at a place that I've long been curious about but 'til now have never been to: The Barn Dinner Theater in Greensboro. The Barn, founded in 1962, is the oldest and longest-running dinner theater in America, and the last remaining from a chain that used to be 27 Barns from New York to Texas. Back in its early days the performance's cast not only acted on stage, they were the waiters and waitresses. I've known for many years already that Robert De Niro acted at The Barn for awhile (imagine that: Robert De Niro being your waiter for the evening!). Well some of the management told me last night that De Niro was also fired from The Barn one night, right in the middle of a show. Mickey Rooney and a few other well-known performers have also done gigs at The Barn, so this place has seen a little bit of history.How it works is that they open the doors to the dining room at 6 p.m., and a host escorts your party to your table. From there you help yourself to three buffet tables of really good gourmet cooking: I'm serious, the food at this place is delicious. Tastes like real home-made cooking like Granny used to make. I had the chicken (which wasn't fried and wasn't barbecued but it was really spicy, I've no idea how they cooked it) and barbecue (also spicy), green beans and corn, some kind of baked apples and a couple of biscuits, and for desert a slice of chocolate cake. Every bit of dinner was well worth the trip alone. But then came the show...
About 7:15 they started clearing the buffet tables away, and The Barn's emcee came out and did a round of birthdays (including Anita's), anniversaries, and one young lady who was proposed to by her boyfriend in front of everyone. After he finished the stage descended from the ceiling with a couple of props (two chairs) and the show was on. It was a two-act musical called Band of Angels, about the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville and all the ghosts that haunt it. So there were characters like Hank Williams, Minnie Pearl, Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash and wife June, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, Ernie Tubb and Waylon Jennings, among others, talking and singing to this country rube named Buster who managed to get inside Ryman from the rain. I thought it was a pretty good tribute to not only these country performers who have gone on already, but to country and bluegrass music as an artform. All told, it was a wonderful evening spent with family in a really unique establishment. Band of Angels is playing at The Barn until November 22nd (it got held over for an extended engagement because it's proven to be so popular) so call The Barn Dinner Theater and make reservations now: it's well worth the trip. Or come later when they do shows (some even from Broadway) like Annie and Lend Me a Tenor. Heartily recommended. I give this place five stars.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Who to blame for everything that happened in The Godfather saga
It's the women.
AMC ran The Godfather Part II earlier today. It made me think of something that dawned on me the last time I saw Part III. You know who's somewhat to blame for this despicable, self-destructive situation that the Corleone family falls into? The womenfolk of the Corleone family, that's who.
Mama Corleone is the worst of the lot. She could have put a stop to this nonsense a long time ago. She could have talked Vito out of this spiralling madness. She did nothing. Did she even say anything over the course of the two movies she was in? Not a word that I can remember. She failed miserably in her role as wife and mother of the family: two sons murdered (one by brother Michael) because of "this Sicilian thing", a daughter who in the end was a murderer and a son who ends life a disgraced, bankrupted shell of a man. What kind of track record for rearing kids is that supposed to be? Don't tell me a wife has no pull even in a traditional family where the paterfamilias rules all: she could have at least protested to Vito before this all spun out of control. Instead she chose to not do anything at all. She didn't say a word to Sonny and Fredo about "Oh please don't get mixed up in this business that's killed so many people I can't stand to lose you too!" Did she even care?! What a wretched example of a wife and mom she was.
Then there's Connie. It's not so much her failure to act as it is her weakness to stand up and walk away that's the problem. She could have gotten married and lived happily ever after from the beginning of the first movie. When Carlo became abusive - and I wonder if Carlo got that way 'cuz he got corrupted by the family - she could have, should have, walked away then. She can't pull away. I don't think she really wants to pull away. That wasn't really that big of a fit she pitched at Michael at the end of Part I either: she's like the battered wife who just got beat up but she keeps coming back "because where else are you going to go?" In the end she turns out to be a killer just as much as Michael. She had her chances to leave this never-ending circle of vengeance but she chose not to take them. That, I think, only served to perpetuate what went wrong with this family.
Kay is trying. Lord knows, she is trying. It's not the family that she's so infatuated with, it's Michael. She believes he can be a good person, even years later when she re-enters his life at the beginning of Part III. She keeps wanting him to change, and when she fails she tries to take her children as far away from this insanity as she can. She should have tried it for herself. Look, there has to come a point when you realize that the person you love just isn't going to change. Who knows, if she had left Michael a long time before (like when she realized he was lying to her at the end of The Godfather) maybe that would have knocked some sense into Michael. A man can do most anything, change anything, when the woman he loves puts it all on the line. She didn't do that. She gave Michael no reason to change. She's guilty... but I still feel sorry for her.
Whatever anyone else says about it, Sofia Coppola was wonderful as Mary in The Godfather Part III. She made Mary come across as this sweet, beautiful girl... someone who should be as far removed from life in a Mafia family as possible. And when she's killed at the end of the movie it genuinely hurts: Michael's silent scream is probably the most perfectly captured moment of anguish on film ever. Nevertheless, I have to fault her, for kinda the same reasons I fault Connie and Kay. She seemed too tolerant of what her father is doing, too eager to see him as nothing but a good man. That, and she got WAY too cozy with her cousin, Vincent... who was hellbent on being the very kind of man that Michael was been trying (and failing) not to become. Didn't she see that? In her own way, Mary perpetuated the Corleones' circle of destruction. But like Kay, I feel sorry for her too.
The only major female in The Godfather trilogy who is really innocent is Apollonia. Did Michael ever share with her what drove him to come to Sicily? Probably not: whether he intended to go back to America or not, I've always felt like he really was trying to make a clean break from all of that at this point in his life. Apollonia was going to be part of that break. Instead she got blown to pieces, as one of the very few people in this entire tragedy who is entirely without blame. Her death is what sends Michael back to the world he had wanted no part of: with Apollonia gone, Michael has nothing left but the life he left behind.
But none of these women should ultimately be held responsible for all the carnage and travesty that comes to this family. Blame the brunt of it on the menfolk. They are the ones who could have chosen to walk away from this, but didn't. Still, had the women stepped in and done their best to put the brakes on things, a whole lot of people would still be alive in this story. But then, it wouldn't really be The Godfather at all, would it? :-)
Friday, October 14, 2005
Microsoft Windows at 20
PC Magazine has lengthy coverage of this coming month being the twentieth anniversary of the introduction of Microsoft Windows. Lots of good technical background and history here, going from the initial release up to Windows XP and the upcoming Vista.
The Top Ten Best GHOST PHOTOGRAPHS Ever Taken
The other night I happened to catch Ghost Hunters on the Sci-Fi Channel. It’s an hour-long show that follows the members of TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society) as they investigate reputedly haunted locations, in an attempt to document and de-bunk supposed ghostly infestations. I'd never seen the show before but I came away very impressed by these guys: they're regular working joes – the founders are Roto-Rooter plumbers by day – who do their investigations on nights and weekends in a completely professional and ethical manner. They scrutinize everything and make thorough reports to the proprietors of the sites they look into. If there's nothing that can't be explained, they say so. If there is bizarre stuff going on that doesn't fit on the charts, they report that too, without embellishing it for what it might or might not be.
10. "The Brown Lady" of Raynham Hall This photo was taken in 1936 at Raynham Hall in Norfolk, England, by two photographers of Country Life magazine. Raynham Hall was long reputed to be haunted by the ghost of Lady Dorothy Townshend, who died in 1726. The ghost had been seen on many occasions throughout the years when it was spotted descending these stairs by the Country Life photographers, who quickly took a snapshot. This is considered by many to be the most highly regarded and reputable photograph by a ghost yet made.
9. The Hampton Court Ghost This one became fairly well known after it was released in December of 2003. Hampton Court, near London, was one of Henry VIII's favorite hangouts (it's because of him that Anne Boleyn is now a headless ghost roaming the Tower of London). A fire door inside the castle kept being opened when no one was supposed to be around. Guards checked the security cameras' videotape... and spotted this figure in period costume walking through the door. Castle personnel swear they don't know who did this, noting that they don't even have a costume that looks like this. 'Course this could be some prankster at work, but I felt this was yet worthy of including in my top ten list... until we ever find out otherwise. It might turn out to have just been some tourist in an overcoat. Anyway if you want to watch the actual footage of the specter opening the door L.E.M.U.R. Investigations has it on their website.
8. The Newby Church Monk Reverend K.F. Lord took a picture of the altar at his church in North Yorkshire, England (why are the GOOD ghosts always found in England?) and this is what came out. The picture and the negative are said to have been thoroughly examined by photographic experts and they can't find any evidence that this was either a double exposure, or artificially altered. The "thing" is calculated to be standing nine feet tall, and no one's found any record of a monk that humongous ever being at Newby Church. Who is it? What is it? Trick of light or something else? Either way it's way too creepy to not mention on this list.
7. The Bed-Ridden Boy I found this one at the L.E.M.U.R. website also. The photo was taken in 1999 at the Historic Worley B&B Inn in Dahlonega, Georgia (YES finally ghosts in our neck of the woods!). It wasn't until four years later that this photo – which seems to show a figure resting on a bed – was really given notice. It's thought that this might be the ghost of a young man who died in the house in the 1800s after being struck by a train, and if you go to L.E.M.U.R.'s page you can find a picture of the lad (when he was still alive) to compare this photo with.
6. Freddy Jackson's Comeback Freddy Jackson was a mechanic in the Royal Air Force in World War I. Freddy Jackson's squadron served onboard the H.M.S. Daedalus. Freddy Jackson was killed in 1919 when an airplane propeller hit him. Two days later when the squadron assembled for a group photo, Freddy Jackson faithfully showed up, grinning behind the ear of a fellow comrade. Guess nobody bothered to tell Freddy Jackson that he was dead. His face was widely recognized in this photo by members of the squadron.
5. His Favorite Chair Remember how Archie Bunker liked his recliner so much that he never let anyone else sit in it? Well, ol' Archie doesn't have anything on Lord Combermere. After being ran over by a horse-drawn carriage he died in 1891. A photographer set up a camera with its shutter open for one hour in the manor's library while the entire staff was off at Lord Combermere's funeral, some four miles away. When the plate was developed, the startling image of what looks to be a man's head and arm sitting in the chair was immediately noticed. Many of the staff said that the image looked very much like the late lord, and it happened to be sitting in Combermere's favorite chair in the library.
4. Darn Backseat Drivers! In 1959 Mable Chinnery went to the cemetery to visit the grave of her mother, as any devoted daughter is apt to do. She took some photos of the gravesite and then turned and took this picture of her husband sitting alone in the car's passenger seat. The film was developed and this came out: somebody sitting in the backseat wearing glasses, clear as day. Mrs. Chinnery swore that the "backseat driver" was none other than her own mother... whose gravesite she was standing next to when she took the picture! Hmmmm... a live husband and a deceased mother-in-law looking over his shoulder: there's a joke here, I just know it.
3. What Do You Want On Your Tombstone? Ike Clanton is from the same family that produced the Clanton gang of O.K. Corral fame. He’s obviously proud of his heritage, and he shows it on his website TombstoneArizona.com. Back in 1996 Ike Clanton took this photo of a friend wearing western duds, in the middle of Tombstone's Boothill Graveyard. They swear that nobody else was in sight when they made this picture. Furthermore, some time later they tried to restage this picture with someone standing at the spot where the "mystery man" appears in the background. Ike Clanton says that it was impossible to take such a picture and not show the rear person's legs. Clanton said he wasn't so sure about Tombstone being haunted, but this photo made a believer out of him. There's so much ghostly activity going on in the famous town that Clanton's set up a special section of his website dedicated to Tombstone's population of yesteryear. Well worth checking out, if nothing else than for the sense of history that this excellent website conveys.
2. "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it..." I first saw this photo over twenty years ago. It was the first "ghost photo" I ever came across and it still wigs me out to look at it. In 1924 James Courtney and Michael Meehan, two crewmen of the tanker S.S. Watertown, were accidentally killed by gas fumes while cleaning a cargo tank. The crew of the Watertown - on its way to the Panama Canal from New York City – buried the two sailors at sea off the Mexican coast. That was on December 4th. On December 5th the first mate reported that the faces of Courtney and Meehan were appearing in the water off the port side of the ship. Over the next several days every member of the crew witnessed the faces appear and disappear, including the ship's captain. When he reported this to his supervisors after docking in New Orleans it was suggested that he try to photograph the faces. Captain Keith Tracy bought a camera and the ship was soon underway again. Sure enough, the faces appeared, and Tracy took six pictures, then secured the camera in the ship's vault. The camera was not removed until it was taken to a commercial developer after docking in New York City. Five of the photos showed nothing unusual, but the sixth clearly showed what was said to be the faces of the two dead crewmen. No evidence of forgery or tampering of the film was ever discovered. The faces stopped appearing after a new crew was brought aboard the Watertown.
1. Come On Baby, Light My Fire Of all the ghost photos I've seen (well, except for that one that I can't show at the present time), this one is hands-down the most eerie. Probably the most disturbing too. I didn't know about this one until a few months ago. Almost ten years ago, on November 19th, 1995, Wem Town Hall in Shropshire, England was engulfed in flames and burned to the ground. As firefighters tried to stave off the inferno a town resident, Tony O'Rahilly, took pictures from across the street using a telephoto lens on his camera. There, rather clearly in one of the photos, is what looks very much to be a small girl standing in a doorway, with the brightness of the flames behind her. No one ever remembered there being a small girl present on scene, much less in that close a proximity to the fire. The photo and the original negative were turned over to a photo expert who decided that the picture was 100% authentic: "The negative is a straightforward piece of black-and-white work and shows no sign of having been tampered with." Okay, so what's a girl ghost doing in such a big fire? Well in 1677 a fire destroyed many of Wem’s wooden houses. The fire was said to have been caused by a 14-year old girl named Jane Churm, who had been careless with a candle. Churm died in the fire along with several others, and her ghost is said to still haunt the area. Whether there's such a thing as ghosts or not, it must be said: if this is just a trick, an illusion of smoke and fire that happened to be captured on film, it's a zillion-to-one coincidence that it just so happened to appear in the form of a girl who also died in a terrible fire at the same location. But hey, stranger things than that have happened in this world, right?
And there you have it, my personal list of the best ghost photographs (or not) taken so far. But before I close out this article, I want to make mention of just one more photograph: one that I found while doing some research ("The Best Ghost Photographs Ever Taken" at About.com’s Paranormal Phenomenon site was a HUGE help, as was the website for L.E.M.U.R. Paranormal Investigations). This photo is, ahhh geez what else can I say about this: if this is the real deal, then there's something cosmically sweet about this picture. Some people say that love is forever... well, this might be the first time ever that we've got documented proof of that. I’ll let Denise Russell take it from here, courtesy of About.com’s Paranormal Phenomena:
It made me recollect a night a little over five years ago, when I was part of a ghost hunt. There were about seven or eight of us – two reporters (myself included), a professional photographer, and a selection of other responsible individuals – that a newspaper sent in to spend the night at what is said to be one of the most famously haunted hotels in America. It was meant to be "part Scooby-Doo and part Blair Witch", my editor said. We were supposed to treat it seriously, but also have some fun while we were there: not to take it TOO seriously. 'Cuz then we might fall into the trap of believing things that our subconscious minds wanted us to believe. Our editor worked it out with hotel management for us to have what was supposed to be the most haunted room in the entire place to use as our homebase: we'd meet back every hour and swap notes. In the meantime we were free to go wherever, just so long as we didn't bother the guests. We didn't have anything like electro-magnetic field detectors or night-view videocameras, but we did have several photographic cameras (including one loaded with infrared film) and my audio tape recorder that I used to speak notes into and record whatever else.
Long story short: we came away from that night with more than we expected. A lot more. There's a photograph taken that night that I wish I could post here, but the copyright belongs to someone else, so it wouldn't be right for me to do that. I made myself look at it again after watching Ghost Hunters, even though five years later it still gives me the freezing willies. We took several pics with the infrared film: in four of the photos (including two from the "haunted" room) there are unexplained signatures that show up. It's the one in the hallway that's really disturbing: it was the day after we got the photos back that we realized there was a woman's face hanging neck-high in mid-air down the hallway. There was nothing there when we took the photo, and don't ask me why we chose to take a picture at that exact moment: the whole story is coming someday from another venue, and I don't want to steal their thunder by talking about it here. There was also the matter of my tape recorder: it picked up some very spooky sounds – a voice whispering – while we were in another building on-site. There were two people in that room at the time, and this wasn't a voice from either of us.
Do I believe in ghosts? Well, given the evidence we collected firsthand that night, I now admit to believing that there's something we can’t explain in terms of the normal world that’s at work here. My own personal theory? If there are such things as ghosts, I don't believe they're "spiritual" in nature at all. My thinking is that they are some kind of "recording" left in a place that sometimes replays itself: a recording in time and space. It might have something to do with quantum physics. Or this might all be a little too wacky anyway. But you tell me: would you say you don't believe in spooks if your tape recorder picked up a weird voice saying "Let me out..."?
Anyway, at the time I wound up doing a lot of research into real-life hauntings, including the many apparent photographs of ghosts taken over the years. Some I'd seen before and others were brand-new to me. It's been something I've made an occasional study on in the years since. A number of them "stuck with me". Since we're now getting into the Halloween season, I thought it might be fun (and maybe even horizon-broadening) if I shared here what I thought were the top ten ghostly photographs taken to date.
So far as I can tell, these are the real deal. Meaning that they've been sifted through with a fine-tooth comb by people who know photography and have withstood all scrutiny. These are the pictures that simply can't be explained, or at least haven't yet according to anything we can explain currently. That doesn't leave very many photos for serious consideration: there are tons of professed ghost photos. Most of them are explained away with extreme ease: Too many "ghosts" are simply camera straps that got in the way of the lens. Ghostly "orbs" are probably nothing more than light scintillating off of dust particles. Some ghostly images are mere double exposures (an example of which is glimpsed in the movie The Godfather). Occam's Razor applies bigtime here: the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one. Tends to be, that is...
So with all that in mind, for your viewing pleasure (and excluding the one photo that I've already said I can't show here, even though it's really unsettling to look at) and just in time for Halloween, here are what I consider to be:
And there you have it, my personal list of the best ghost photographs (or not) taken so far. But before I close out this article, I want to make mention of just one more photograph: one that I found while doing some research ("The Best Ghost Photographs Ever Taken" at About.com’s Paranormal Phenomenon site was a HUGE help, as was the website for L.E.M.U.R. Paranormal Investigations). This photo is, ahhh geez what else can I say about this: if this is the real deal, then there's something cosmically sweet about this picture. Some people say that love is forever... well, this might be the first time ever that we've got documented proof of that. I’ll let Denise Russell take it from here, courtesy of About.com’s Paranormal Phenomena:
"The lady in the color photo is my granny," she says. "She lived on her own until age 94, when her mind started to weaken and had to be moved to an assisted living home for her own safety. At the end of the first week, there was a picnic for the residents and their families. My mother and sister attended. My sister took two pictures that day, and this is one of them. It was taken on Sunday, 8/17/97, and we think the man behind her is my grandpa who passed away on Sunday, 8/14/84. We did not notice the man in the picture until Christmas Day, 2000 (granny had since passed away), while browsing through some loose family photos at my parents' house. My sister thought it was such a nice picture of granny that she even made a copy for mom, but still, nobody noticed the man behind her for over three years! When I arrived at my parents' house that Christmas day, my sister handed me the picture and said, "Who do you think this man behind granny looks like?" It took a few seconds for it to sink in. I was absolutely speechless. The black and white photos show that it really looks like him."I don't need what might be a ghost's photograph to attest to this truth: when you're in love with that one special someone, nothing will stop you from being with that person. But it's still pretty nice to get a tangible confirmation of that every once in awhile...
"Free speech for me but not for thee": Anti-war activist arrested for expressing views
This is either a country where we allow freedom of speech and the press whether or not we agree with what's being said, or we aren't. If we aren't, then this isn't a country worth fighting and dying for anymore. The way America really, really is, what it's become... screw it. Let it die. Don't ask me to love what this country has become. That's like asking a son to totally accept his father even though dear old Dad is an alcoholic and heroin addict. You can love what your father used to be before the addiction the same way you can love what the American republic used to be... and that's patriotism at its finest. But you can't love someone or something and agree to watch their self-destruction like that.
A student at George Mason University is harassed by campus police, then arrested for "anti-recruiting". The behavior of the people who didn't agree with his stance is nothing short of fascist, including the supposed "Marine".
I'm wondering if anyone will write me an e-mail or comment on this, and defend what happened to this guy.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Microsoft vs. Google: Count Zero coming true
In 1987 William Gibson released Count Zero, the sequel to his award-winning novel Neuromancer (hard to believe it's now over 20 years since that book first came out). One of the three stories in Count Zero - which eventually tightened together into the story's central plot - focused on Turner: a mercenary-type who specializes in helping scientists and executives defect from one company to another. See, in the near-future depicted in Gibson's "Sprawl trilogy" (which concluded in Mona Lisa Overdrive), cutting-edge technology is such a cutthroat business that corporate talent needs a small army to get extracted from the highly-fortified compound of a multinational conglomerate in order to make a career change. Needless to say, the company that the defector is fleeing from is not happy about losing a chunk of its braintrust to a competitor.
Count Zero comes to mind now that Microsoft has lost at least two executives - including one of their top computer scientists - to Google. An enraged Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer reportedly threw a chair after one of the execs told him about an imminent departure for Google. The big fear at Microsoft now is that Google is going to be hiring even more staff from the "House that Gates Built". Part of that is the worry that Google will be offering word processor and spreadsheet applications over the web, instead of having to pay Microsoft several hundreds of dollars for MS Word and Excel.
It's almost enough to chalk up one more mark for things that William Gibson foretold in his books. First it was the Internet (Gibson is the man who first came up with the term "cyberspace"), now it's (nearly) all-out war between rival corporations. Maybe someday soon we'll have "simstim" also.
Thirty years ago, people really did BUY these
Darth Larry made a frightening (and funny) find a few days ago. It's hard not to laugh but remember: twenty years from now our children will be snickering at OUR CDs of Eminem and Brittany Spears.
Smurfpocalypse Now
I saw this picture and was hysterical with laughter for about fifteen minutes...
This has got to be one of the most surreal things I've seen in quite a long time.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
I am going away for awhile
I am stepping away from blogging for some time. Don't know for how long. Things could do for a little respite, and some realigning, and you never know how they'll settle out in the end... but I rather believe that it will be for the better. Don't be surprised if this blog is entirely different when I return. Don't be surprised if I'm entirely different. Who knows, I might be a whole 'nother person that you've never seen before when this is finished. But we'll see how and what happens in the meantime about that. Until then, keep smiling.
When Bush says "I want more power", start worrying
So, President Bush is asking Congress to give him more powers in the event of major catastrophes. The article suggests that he may ask to be given the authority to:
- Order mandatory civilian evacuationsThe last one is the really troubling possibility: that Posse Comitatus could be suspended.- Dispatch U.S.-based armed forces for emergency search-and-rescue operations
- Grant wider leeway for active-duty U.S. military personnel to carry out law enforcement operations.
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and suggest what to some is the unspeakable, if not outright unthinkable: that given the right situation, this president will seek to remain in office indefinitely. That if a major enough terrorist act were to happen between now and the 2008 election, Bush would see fit to suspend the vote "for the duration of the emergency". He would appeal to the American people and enough of them would nod their heads and agree that it "wouldn't be right" to be changing presidents amid wartime. If granted a wider leeway of presidential powers, Bush could probably do so with very little recourse left to any opposition other than outright rebellion.
Of course, I thought the same thing of Bill Clinton some years ago: that he would go to this kind of length to cover up his wrongdoings. I was wrong on that one (thankfully). The thing is, as more time goes by I think Clinton was actually the more noble between he and Bush (and I never thought I'd put "Clinton" and "noble" together like that). I really can't put it past Bush to go for something like this if there were a chemical or low-yield nuke attack somewhere in America. With all the mechanisms he's put in place - and now that he's seeking to put in place further - I'm more than a little inclined to believe that he's looking for some way to use it all to his own advantage.
Yeah, maybe I'm speaking a lot of crapola. But you tell me: do you trust any politician who's asking for more power?
For a few dollars more: "The Man with No Name" coming to Xbox/PS2
IGN.com is reporting that a videogame based on Sergio Leone's "The Man with No Name" trilogy is coming to Xbox, PC and Playstation systems sometime in 2006. It's possible that Clint Eastwood might be brought onboard to provide vocal talent for the game.
This might be what finally gets Dad to pick up an Xbox controller :-)
Episode III goof: Ring around the collar
This has been bugging me ever since I caught it the very first time I saw Revenge of the Sith. The scene where Anakin is on the slab, getting rebuilt into classic Darth Vader. Here's three cuts in succession. Notice anything wrong here?
Okay, in the top image there's Anakin in most of the Darth Vader armor (for the first time I'm noticing that he's not wearing the gloves) and the droid is lowering the facemask down onto Anakin's head. The next panel shows us Anakin's POV as the mask turns on, giving us the only glimpse in any Star Wars movie of how Vader sees the world behind the mask. The bottom image is just before the mask clamps down with the helmet completely sealing the head.
The "collar" that the mask hooks onto is missing in the first image, even though the mask is already on its way down onto Anakin's face. It mysteriously materializes around his neck just in time for the whole thing to come together around his head. The collar should be there during this entire cutaway to Palpatine's medical facility, but it ain't.
Maybe this'll be something they digitally fix for the forthcoming DVD release. Or for the "Ultimate Edition" six-episode multi set that you just know George Lucas will someday release with EVERYTHING corrected and amended per his grand master vision :-)
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
New toy to play with
Lisa found me a 256 MB flash drive. Previously I was using a 128 MB one. I know they make them much bigger (like a gig or so) but I still think it's a pretty neat gimmick to mess around with. I find it amusing that this is 80 megabytes bigger than the hard drive in my very first computer. First things I put on it was the medium-sized Quicktime of Forcery and a Quicktime installer, so I can carry around a much larger version of my own movie with me. Lisa's gonna be using the 128 version for school stuff from now on. Anyhoo, just thought this would be a neat thing to mention getting, if nothing else than for my own sake :-)
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Four years ago today al Qaeda defeated the United States
Osama bin Laden got pretty much everything he wanted. The country that existed prior to 9/11 is gone now. In its place is a land where no-warrant searches take place, where you can be locked up indefinitely without being charged or put on trial, where our women and children are fondled obscenely at the airport, where guns are now seized from average citizens, where Big Brother monitors all of our communications (if you don't think the government isn't interested in what you are writing or reading, you're dead wrong), where it's all to easy to lie and deceive people into a horribly executed abortion of a war, where our military forces are stretched to the breaking point, where we are practically surrendering our southern regions to illegal immigration (California to Texas will be northern Mexico at this rate), where citizens do not matter so much as corporate interests...
Dammit, this isn't the America I grew up reading about. I really do wonder if that America can even come back, or if it was ever really here at all.
Do you think that America is a much greater country today than it was four years ago, before the planes hit?
We reacted the wrong way totally. We should have been like the British, treating this like an enormous act of criminal minds and proceeded to punish the guilty as necessary. Instead we got a country that punishes everybody. Well, everyone except those with power and affluence, 'course. When they got bombed this summer the people of Britain were stalwart. We have been nothing other than coward.
We let them win, because we allowed them to make us destroy who we are as Americans. We gave al Quaeda the biggest victory of its existence, and we dare pat ourselves on the back for being "good American patriots" even as we give away one freedom after another for sake of "security" from the government.
H.L. Mencken was right: "Democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses". I know exactly who the jackals are. The problem is there's too many jackasses in this country ruining it for those of us that still care about these things.
I don't feel any bit "patriotic" on this fourth anniversary of 9/11, because there's precious little left to this country to feel proud about. And I refuse to be a hypocrite about it. We've been destroying ourselves ever since. There won't even be an America like this in another five years, the way things are going. You tell me how that's something to honor with empty words and useless gestures.
This church's pastor is an idiot
Local Church's Sign Offends EvacueesWRONG!! You wanna know where the nickname "the Big Easy" came from? Black musicians from the east and further up the Mississippi used to consider New Orleans to be maybe the one place that they could always find work. It was almost too easy to be a paid musician there, and so it is that they came to consider New Orleans the "Big Easy". There was nothing vulgar about the term, and if it weren't for it being so attractive to black musical artists there never would have come the unique sound of jazz (although I've heard some preachers rail against jazz itself as being "evil" but that's a rant for another time...)A confrontation this morning between an East Texas church and an evacuee from New Orleans. It centers around a sign out front of Woodland Hills Baptist Church on Old Jacksonville Road in Tyler, about a mile inside the loop. Some say the message is offensive.
"I drove by that sign and was just horrified when I saw that," says Kelly Jackman who now lives in Tyler but used to live in New Orleans.
That sign at Woodland Hills Baptist Church reads ,"The big easy is the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah."
Kelly along with her sister Robin Lafont, an evacuee from New Orleans, showed up this morning at the church to talk to the man who put it up, Pastor Wiley Bennett.
During a heated discussion, Robin asked, "What's the point of the sign out there?" Pastor Bennett replied, "The point of the sign is New Orleans, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and New York City are some of the most wicked cities in America."
Robin, who still has family members unaccounted for in New Orleans, is offended by the sign. "I'm telling you. This hurts. Why would you want to put more hurt, more salt in my wounds and why would you want to do this to me?"
Kelly adds, "And to go by and see this church saying that God did this to destroy these people and basically they're celebrating that by putting that sign up there saying look at what God has done. He has destroyed the city of New Orleans because it is evil."
Pastor Bennett says, "Anybody that's ever visited New Orleans, the very name its self - Big Easy - denotes that it's easy to find sin there..."
Anyway, the pastor of this church... is acting like an idiot, to be nice about it. See, this is what happens a lot when some Christians take it upon themselves to be more an authority on God than anyone else. This guy relishes hurting people, though he won't admit it. Take a looksee at his church's website: obviously a "King James only" outfit. Which explains the horridness of it: King James only churches usually have some of the worst websites I've ever seen. Whenever a church is King James only, that pops a big red flag in my mind: they see that as a license to inflict all the pain they want to, in the name of the Lord. Believe you me I know.
Anyway, I don't believe that Katrina was a punishment from God on New Orleans alone: the most "sinful" part of town escaped practically unscathed. And the "Southern Decadence" gay pride parade went ahead as scheduled, by the way... not that I think anything highly of that (I don't) but that fact alone smacks this notion that Katrina was "divine retribution" upside the head.
Okay, enough ranting here. Time to get ready for church, and who knows if I won't rant about this there either...
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Interdictor blog has been the site I've most visited the past two weeks
There's going to be a movie made about these guys someday, bank on it.
It was four years ago tonight...
...that I started writing the script for Forcery. Feels so curious now, to finally have that behind me.
Two days from now will more or less be the official start of pre-production of our next project. Which will be something of an experimental way to make a movie. I'm really excited about what this is going to be, all the things that are going into making it.
KWerky Productions website is still down
No, we ain't out of business (yet :-), we're just working through the intricacies of a physical relocation of our server. Should be back up soon (along with news on our next project or two). It'll be at the usual address when it comes back online.
"It can't happen here"
Avearge American citizens are being removed from their homes by force, are having their weapons seized at gunpoint, and are being removed to government-run shelters "for their own protection", in a major American city. A federal court just ruled that the government can detain anyone it calls a "threat" for however long it wants to.
All of this is happening under a Republican President, by the way. You know... the party that this kind of thing isn't supposed to happen from.
For anyone who's been paying attention to these sorts of things, Claire Wolfe is more or less admitting that "it's time" now. "I'll never argue with anyone who says the time is already here," she writes: "The only question now is how to be effective. But it's now absolutely imperative to find the way."
I hope and pray she's right.
Another Saturday so you know what that means...
Another solid piece by Kyle Williams that WorldNetDaily refuses to put atop their front page.
To their credit, the pieces by Dr. Kelly Hollowell and Jerry Falwell are pretty good this week. Hollowell is contrasting the tragedy of Katrina with that of abortion, while Falwell is generously offering free tuition to students who came out of Katrina at his Liberty University, which I've heard firsthand over the years is a pretty good school, despite some misgivings I've long had about Falwell. I'll still contend that of the three main columnists that WorldNetDaily has on Saturdays, that Kyle Williams's is still the deepest and most articulate. And why WND isn't putting him on the forefront of things anymore, I've no idea.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Red Dawn over New Orleans
Well, this is a post I never thought I'd ever have to make...
About twenty years ago there was a movie called Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell. Maybe you've seen it before (probably during one of those hundreds of times that TNT used to run it back in the late Nineties) so you already know it's horribly dated by today's standards. But if you haven't: it was about the Soviet Union dropping paratroopers into the American heartland as part of a massive invasion, which Swayze and Howell and Charlie Sheen and a bunch of other kids take up guns and fight against in guerilla warfare. It was like The Breakfast Club starting up its own militia. For its time it was a dark, morbid flick (it held the Guinness record for "Most Violent Movie" for several years afterward). For two hours it was the kids' turn to kick Russkie butt and take names. Little wonder that it became something of a favorite for adolescent viewers.
I wanted to bring up a scene from Red Dawn, just after the Russians and Cubans and other Communists have taken over this town where Our Heroes used to attend high school and play football. The commanding officer of the invading contingent gives orders to his men to go to some building in town, where it's known that gun registration records are kept. The soldiers then take the records and proceed through town confiscating all the guns that are listed in the registry. It's the most efficient way of stifling opposition before it has a chance to really start. All the guns get taken away from the good American citizens (except for the ones that Patrick Swayze and his gang use to open up a can of whup-a$$ on the Soviets with). Hence, hardly anybody has a chance to fight against the oppression.
That scene from Red Dawn was the very first thing that crossed my mind when I read this news coming out of New Orleans. From the Associated Press via the Houston Chronicle:
Authorities confiscating guns from homeowners in New OrleansI've seen numerous reports that the authorities are going by gun registration lists, exactly as was done in the fictional movie Red Dawn.NEW ORLEANS — Soldiers and police confiscated guns from homeowners as they went house to house, trying to clear the shattered city of holdouts because of the danger of disease and fire. Police today also marked homes with corpses inside, with plans to return later.
As many as 10,000 people were believed to be stubbornly staying put in the city, despite Katrina's filthy, corpse-strewn floodwaters and orders from Mayor Ray Nagin earlier this week to leave or be removed by force. By midmorning, though, there were no immediate reports of anyone being taken out forcibly, police said.
Police are "not going to do that until we absolutely have to. We really don't want to do that at all," Deputy Chief Warren Riley said...
...Police and soldiers also seized numerous guns for fear of confrontations with jittery residents who have armed themselves against looters.
"No one will be able to be armed. We are going to take all the weapons," Riley said.
On Thursday, in the city's well-to-do Lower Garden District, a neighborhood with many antebellum mansions, members of the Oklahoma National Guard seized weapons from the inhabitants of one home. Those who were armed were handcuffed and briefly detained before being let go...
One of the most obvious questions that pops into mind is, will the confiscated weapons ever be returned to the rightful owners? Somehow I doubt that they will be.
I understand that New Orleans isn't the healthiest places to be at the moment, but the risk of contracting cholera isn't going to marginally increase simply because one is the owner of a firearm.
All things considered: these are American citizens that are being deprived - unlawfully, and unconstitutionally - of their right to self-defense and self-preservation. For no logical or apparent reason whatsoever other than because those who assume to be the "authorities" have decided that these citizens are incapable of taking care of themselves without "government assistance". Considering how the "authorities" completely imploded last week, I'll trust Joe Sixpack's judgement over that of the chief of police and mayor of New Orleans, thankyaverymuch.
This is the kind of thing that revolutions are started over. The bloody kind, mind you.
I had to make a note of this, if for no other reason than because of my own conscience. This confiscation of guns from what would be normal Americans in any other circumstance in New Orleans is wrong, no matter how it's looked at.
I almost want to say it's funny: I've seen things from some movies actually come to pass. I never thought that one of those movies would be Red Dawn though.
I've never even watched Firefly before...
...but I found this to be pretty darned cool. Wish I had that many bricks to play with :-)
Thursday, September 08, 2005
AAAAHHH it's a Crazy Frog, SHOOT IT SHOOT IT!!
This is supposed to be a big thing over in England and the rest of Europe. I guess it'll be catching on here pretty soon: every decade sees America getting some imported "cuteness" from elsewhere. In the Eighties it was the Smurfs from Belgium. Then the Nineties it was Pokemon from Japan. So Ed came by earlier tonight for dinner and afterward he showed me Crazy Frog, which is a cellular ringtone with a music video that started out in life as an imitation of a two-stroke moped engine and then a Lightwave animation. Or something. It's a blue frog. With a motorcycle helmet. And genitalia of some sort it looks like. This thing's ringtone was the #1 selling musical number in Great Britain for awhile (Coldplay even complained about its popularity). There'll be a videogame of this soon. I'll wager an RC Cola and a Moon Pie that we'll soon be seeing cutesy little stuffed animals of the Crazy Frog and t-shirts with this annoying amphibian on them. America will go nuts for the Crazy Frog. There will be a Crazy Frog movie. And then we'll all wake up the next morning like from a bad hangover and wonder why in the world did we spend bajillions of dollars on all the Crazy Frog stuff that's littering our houses. Just giving you guys advanced warning on what might be coming our way, is all. Do a Google search about the Crazy Frog to find out more.And when you're finally sick and tired of the bloody thing, aim your shotgun and blast the frog away with the "I Hate That Frog" Flash game. I got as far as 92 meters playing it: how far can you go?
Will the big rigs put on the brakes?
WorldNetDaily has a story today about commercial truckdrivers possibly staging a strike in the very near future, to protest the rising cost of fuel. I've heard this talked about for at least the past month or so and... well, I'm of the mind that this is altogether possible. Not to mention easily understandable given the frustrations of these truckers. Most of them are independent contractors who have to purchase their own fuel, and a lot of 'em are running in the red right now. I don't blame them at all but it must be admitted that in the wake of the blow this country's taken from Katrina, a trucker's strike all over the place would be a severe test of the tipping point on a lot of things.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Katrina victims to get $2000 debit cards from U.S. government
From the Associated Press...
Katrina Victims to Get $2K Debit CardsAt the risk of being called cold-hearted: this is a really stupid thing to do. There's going to be all kinds of abuse opening up with this scheme. And what happens to everyone else who becomes a victim of a hurricane? Do we give them two thousand dollars from the public coffers also?
Sep 07 3:42 PM US/EasternBy DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press WriterThe federal government plans to hand out debit cards worth $2,000 each to families displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff, under fire for his agency's response to the disaster, held a conference call with governors of states with evacuees and described the plan. While many details remained to be worked out, the plan was to quickly begin distributing the cards, starting with people in major evacuation centers such as the Houston Astrodome.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the cards are aimed at providing "some immediate cash assistance to those who are in shelters, those that were evacuated."
Republican Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who participated in the conference call, said the cards will be offered "to people in shelters as well as people who are not in shelters but who have evacuated the area and need help." He said the hope is the cards will encourage people to leave shelters voluntarily.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is administering the program. FEMA officials said the program is aimed at those most in need, so not all families that fled their homes will be eligible...
This smells too much like a political ploy, if anything.
Bush kept cancer patients from getting chemo?!?
Unbelievable, but apparently true.
Someone is probably going to jump flunky on me for posting this though, likely tell me something like "Bush was there to boost patients's morale" or something.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Gilligan has left the island. Maynard G. Krebs has banged his bongos for the last time.
Nothing else to say, 'cept another legend has left us. Say hello to the Skipper and Thurston Howell III up there, little buddy.
Monday, September 05, 2005
So, ummm... you saying the hurricane was GOOD for some people?!
Barbara Bush said this today at the Astrodome, no joke:
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this... this is working very well for them."Now, what kind of person is it that would divy-up the victims of something so impartial into either "privileged" or "underprivileged"?
I'm almost reminded of the "steerage" passengers aboard the Titanic.
Europeans building Doctor Octopus fusion machine
Physicsweb.org has the scoop on some scientists re-enacting the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster...
Europe plans laser-fusion facilityFusion? Lasers? Tritium?!? I think somebody's been watching Spider-Man 2 way, WAY too many times...2 September 2005
Laser physicists in Europe have put forward plans to build a £500m facility to study a new approach to laser fusion. A panel of scientists from seven European Union countries believes that a "fast ignition" laser facility could make a significant contribution to fusion research, as well as supporting experiments in other areas of physics. The facility could be up and running by the middle of the next decade.
The laser would be used to compress and heat a small capsule of deuterium and tritium until the nuclei are hot enough to undergo nuclear fusion and produce helium and neutrons. In a reactor the energy of the neutrons would be used to generate electricity without the emission of greenhouse gases or the generation of long-lived nuclear waste...
Together from across a century...
This now ties with the photo of Jabbar Gibson behind the wheel of the schoolbus as my favorite photo to come out of Katrina.
Hoping CBS doesn't turn this into "Survivor: New Orleans"
Another uplifting story: holdouts in New Orleans's French Quarter banded together into "tribes" to help each other out.
I think in years to come, what's happened in the Big Easy because of Katrina is going to be a hotly-discussed topic in sociology circles. This has brought out the worst in some people, and the very best in others. Why that happened is going to be well debated for a long time.
About Bush and me...
I feel the need to clarify something that really can't be emphasized enough:
I do not hate George W. Bush.
I do hate the things he is doing to this country.
F'rinstance, he is committing treason by letting untold millions of illegal immigrants flood across the border from Mexico. Illegal immigrants and God only knows who else: it's a would-be terrorist's dream come true.
He lied us into a war with Iraq. The reasons for this war have never been consistent. If he wanted to take out Saddam because he was "a bad man", fine, market it like that. See how the American people would feel up to going in on that rationale. The entire impetus - no matter what else has come out since then - for the invasion was the weapons of mass destruction. And there really were none. And now the reason for our war is that we have to stay there to honor the memory of those who've died there...?!?
Bush is the President most far-removed from the American people that there has ever been. This alone is why I don't consider him to be a real President: he's just filling a position, without the sense of honor that comes with that position. You cannot be a servant of the people unless you are willing to meet with the people... no matter how their opinion of things differs from your own.
Bush has employed - and continues to employ - some of the most wicked agents of personal destruction that modern politics has ever known. I say again: why should a good Christian choose to associate with Karl Rove? Witnessing to him would be one thing. Encouraging him to continue hurting people without reason is quite another. Seems there's a thing or two in the Bible about that.
Bush, I hate to say, believes he really is above the American people. God never set up a sovereign or a king over us. He didn't anoint Bush to be the first such either. This kind of attitude isn't going to win him any favorable spot in the history books. He will, at best, be considered a bully on par with Lyndon Johnson.
Bush has gone fully in the face of everything that Ronald Reagan believed about the role of government. Reagan believed in smaller government. Under Bush it has ballooned beyond belief. The Department of Homeland Security is a disgrace to everything that traditional "conservatives" have stood for.
Bush pushed the PATRIOT Act into being. 'Nuff said.
Bush supported CAFTA. Also, 'nuff said.
So many other reasons for not trusting the man. For holding him in outright contempt, even.
Do I believe that George W. Bush is beyond redemption? No.
Do I believe he could still change some things for the better? Yes.
Defending and upholding the Constitution of the United States would be one place to start. So would making himself a real man of the people, instead of some far-away politician literally scared of his constituents.
Admitting that mistakes were made. And he has made some. Nobody's perfect. I would trust the man who DOES admit mistakes far more than I could trust a man who does not.
It's almost funny: for not falling into line behind him as a rabid supporter, and for pointing out his faults, I am called "a bitter little man". If I were to throw my hands up in adoration of the man and not question anything, I would be called "a good American citizen" by the same mindset.
Funny still: in the past 72 hours I have... -blasted Louisiana Governor Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Nagin... especially Nagin - paid homage to the memory of William Rehnquist - condemned Democratic Underground for some vicious things posted on that site - suggested drilling the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge - pointed out that New Orleans officials ("Democrats" mind ya) failed to follow their own hurricane emergency plan- defended Bush against some accusations he's faced about the hurricane (the issues regarding aid are one thing, arguing that he caused the devastation is quite another)
Weighing one against the other, I've been a lot harsher on the "Democrats" in the past several days than I have been on the "Republicans" by a vast margin.
It ain't easy being an unaffiliated individual, I tells ya...
By any other name, Divx still sux (Blu-Ray news)
No not DivX the AVI video codec, which I like a lot. I mean Divx: that bastardized DVD format that was sold at Circuit City several years ago, just when DVD was getting to be popular.
Good lord those were some of the most shameless TV commercials ever made. I actually felt sorry for that poor guy who was being paid to smile into the camera as he explained how Divx players "play both DVD and Divx titles". The really scary thing is that some studios - like 20th Century Fox - seriously considered releasing their movies in the Divx format. Then reality came crashing down upon them when they discovered that most consumers were not keen on the idea of trusting their credit card numbers to a household appliance.
What the heck was Divx? Pay-per-view DVD, plain and simple. You'd buy a Divx disc, which looked exactly like a DVD disc. You take it home and you could put it in your Divx player. It might play your movie two or three times with no problem. But if you wanted to watch it more than that you had to make sure that your Divx player was plugged into your telephone line, because the Divx player had a modem inside that would dial up somewhere and charge to your credit card every time you played the movie from there on out. The encoding on the disc was such that you couldn't play it without proper decryption from Divx Central, only after you'd forked over the money to watch your disc.
This was an idea so bad it made New Coke taste good. Personally, I did not want to plug my DVD player into a telephone jack. I did not want to give my DVD player access to my credit account. I did not care for complete strangers to have a record of what I choose to watch with my DVD player (if I view John Carpenter's The Thing fifty-seven times then that's my own business). I did not want to pay a "user's fee" every time I employed said DVD player. I did not... well, you get the picture.
Geez Louise, who in the world actually bought into this thing, anyway?!
Long story short, Divx bombed. It got yanked off the market and Circuit City offered a refund of some sort to those that did purchase Divx players. And you'd think that a lesson would be learned after such a fiasco, right? Right?!
From Engadget.com comes this item:
Blu-ray players to "punish" users who hack their gear?So my Blu-Ray player will connect to the Internet. And this differs from connecting my DVD player to the phone line... how?
Posted Sep 2, 2005, 11:14 AM ET by Ryan BlockOf course the looming next-gen optical format war about to go down between Blu-ray and HD-DVD might be kind of interesting if it weren’t taking place, well, in your very livingroom. But with talks broken down and devices starting to crop up, it looks like the first blows will soon be felt—but aren’t they supposed to be hitting one another and not the end user? Because this little bit in a Reuters piece this morning left us a little unsettled:
On top of that, consumers should expect punishment for tinkering with their Blu-ray players, as many have done with current DVD players, for instance to remove regional coding. The new, Internet-connected and secure players will report any "hack" and the device can be disabled remotely.
Are they talking about PVP-OPM techniques and rejected HDMI keys, or something else far more sinister? Because apparently "A hacked player is any player that is doing something it’s not supposed to do," which open to a pretty fair amount of interpretation—most of which egregious.
If this happens, HD-DVD will become the preferred consumer standard. Practically by default. Blu-Ray will go the way of Divx, New Coke and Betamax (GREAT video quality, horrible business decision to make it only record one hour of footage though). And I can't believe that I might be watching this happen all over again...
Sunday, September 04, 2005
The Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon is on
It's a little different this year: it's raising money for both the Muscular Dystrophy Association and for the Hurricane Katrina victims. Jerry Lewis is lookin' good: a few years ago he didn't look so hot but he's buff enough now to do the Nutty Professor again it seems. And darn, Ed McMahon looks pretty good too! Anyway see if it's on locally and if it's not head over to the MDA website and watch a live streaming RealVideo feed of it as it happens. I had to use Internet Exploiter... I mean, Explorer to get it to work, and the RealMedia player 'course, but it's well worth a looksee if ya have the time.And please, if you can, think about donating to the MDA during this thing.. It's a really good charity, with one of the least amounts of overhead of any nonprofit: whatever is raised at the local level stays at and is used at the local level. Every year Jerry's broken the record for the amount of money that was pledged during the last telethon... let's make him do it again!
Goofs and all, I like this new show Rome on HBO
It holds nothing back in showing how colorful, brutal, lecherous and oratorical those wacky Romans really were. Tonight's was the second episode and it was decidedly better than the first one. By the end of the hour I just knew where this chapter of the story was gonna end, on the other side of a certain lil' creek on the northern border with Italy. Definitely recommended but I did catch something that, maybe it's just the historian in me but it did jar me somewhat out of the illusion: early in tonight's episode one of the characters uses the expletive "f***ing". Well, that particular word didn't even exist in 49 B.C.! They were about sixteen hundred years away from its origin and that was with the Puritans, believe it or not. Remember how in The Scarlet Letter they made Hester wear that big red "A"? Well something like that: if the Puritans found someone among them in an adulterous relationship, they made that person wear a sign around their necks with the letters F.U.C.K. inscribed on it. That was a well-understood acronym meaning "For Unclean Carnal Knowledge". I know it's funny to cast blame for the worst profanity in the book on the pious Puritans, but there ya go. And these Romans definitely ain't the pious sort. But I guess some lingual license was in order anyway, right? Anyhoo, if ya like a healthy dose of historical realism and don't mind the risque, give HBO's Rome a shot.
Happy 75th Anniversary to Dagwood and Blondie!
EDIT: There is a HYSTERICAL piece by David Grimes at Jewish World Review about the unsolved mysteries of Blondie. Like, how does Dagwood eat all those horridly huge sandwiches and stay so rail thin? Nice readin' in light of today's festivities :-)
We could kiss Saudi goodbye: VERY cool news on the fuel front
The boys at Shell R&D have been busy: "a billion barrels a square mile" would make the United States energy independent until the end of time. From Rocky Mountain News via Scripps:
...Since 1981, Shell researchers at the company's division of "unconventional resources" have been spending their own money trying to figure out how to get usable energy out of oil shale. Judging by the presentation the Rocky Mountain News heard this week, they think they've got it.There's plenty more at the story's main link. This may be the first really good news on this kind of front to report in a long, long time.Shell's method, which it calls "in situ conversion," is simplicity itself in concept but exquisitely ingenious in execution. Terry O'Connor, a vice president for external and regulatory affairs at Shell Exploration and Production, explained how it's done (and they have done it, in several test projects):
Drill shafts into the oil-bearing rock. Drop heaters down the shaft. Cook the rock until the hydrocarbons boil off, the lightest and most desirable first. Collect them.
Please note, you don't have to go looking for oil fields when you're brewing your own.
On one small test plot about 20 feet by 35 feet, on land Shell owns, they started heating the rock in early 2004. "Product" - about one-third natural gas, two-thirds light crude - began to appear in September 2004. They turned the heaters off about a month ago, after harvesting about 1,500 barrels of oil.
While we were trying to do the math, O'Connor told us the answers. Upwards of a million barrels an acre, a billion barrels a square mile. And the oil shale formation in the Green River Basin, most of which is in Colorado, covers more than a thousand square miles - the largest fossil fuel deposits in the world.
Wow.
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Chief Justice Rehnquist has died
I saw him preside over a Supreme Court case in January 1997. I heard from a lot of people who worked there that he was a really nice guy. A real gentleman through and through.
The bad news just keeps coming lately, it seems. A good man is gone.
I hope people are mindful about that.
This sounds horrible, but I'm wondering how long it will be before "the ghouls" come out relishing the now-vacant Supreme Court seat.
EDIT 11:22 PM EST: Well, that didn't take too long...
Hey. LiferjJudge Ginsberg doesn't look so hot either and may have to be carried out of the Supreme Court building feet first. She'll die with her boots (are made for walking) on. Then GW will get a threeferThat is honestly the #1 thing on their minds right now, believe it or not.
EDIT 11:26 PM EST: That was from Free Republic. There's also this one from Liberty Post:
Bush will get a minimum of 4 picks. Ginsburg and that old guy (Stevens?) will be next.And this one...
A good man. God, I wish it had been that satanic witch BaderGinsburg instead.EDIT 11:29 PM EST: I'm not even gonna bother linking to anything from Democratic Underground. There is some real nastiness going on there right now. I did take a look in there and... it's disgusting folks, trust me.
I'd be more ashamed of how some on Free Republic and Liberty Post are treating this. There are some people on those boards practically wringing their hands with delight that there's an opportunity for "their kind" of Supreme Court justice to be appointed.
Funny, but I never thought Supreme Court justices should be "conservative" or "liberal". They should have but one mindset: an abiding love for the Constitution and the desire to interpret it as best as God might guide them. It's not an office for political opportunism.
But hey, what do I know: I'm just a guy with a blog.
Rehnquist was on the court that ruled in Roe v. Wade, I just realized. Turns out he was in the minority on that one, even writing the dissenting opinion. That's the kind of justice I would rather see: a believer in judicial restraint.
I seriously doubt that either of the two sides now lining up is very much interested in that, though.
"Plan? You mean there was a PLAN?!"
City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan pertaining to hurricanes.
I'm wondering how much of this was actually followed-through on.
So Bush is selling crude oil from the strategic reserve...
...to supposedly help with the fuel shortage.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
The problem is not so much supply right now as it is a refining problem. Simply putting more crude out there on the market is not going to have any significant effect on gasoline prices.
I've no idea why he would do such a thing, but there it is, defying all wisdom regarding petroleum economics.
The New Orleans situation as a model of American government
That's practically what's being argued at Enemy Of The State blog right now. Is what's going on truly "Anarchy in New Orleans??" Here's a sample:
Friends of mine have come up to me with almost gleeful self-righteousness and proclaimed,"SEE! SEE! This is why Anarchy can't work!"There's some good thoughts here, I have to admit.Ironically what is going on in New Orleans (specifically the looting of private property) resembles the behavior of Government and not philosophical Anarchism.
Philosophical Anarchism holds private property as sacred and Government has utter contempt for it. The State's total existence depends on the looting of the citizenry.
What we have on full display in New Orleans is what happens when you put full trust in collective solutions for protection of life, liberty, and property.
You get substantial loss of life, liberty, and property.
KWerky Productions website is down at the moment
Ed asked me to make a note of this a few days ago and it somehow got lost in the jumble of things. The KWerky Productions website (including the Forcery website) is currently down because of a physical relocation of the server. It should be back up and running fairly soon though. This is happening because of a development that is seeing KWerky Productions branch out a bit in terms of what we can and want to do. More on that later. In the meantime just hold your horses and we should be back online soon enough :-)
This bar never closed (uplifting Katrina story)
The Toronto Star has a story about a bar in New Orleans's French Quarter that rode out Katrina and is still doing business! This place will become bigtime legendary if the city ever comes out of this, like Cafe du Monde (which I understand is still standing and could recover pretty easily). Here's the start of the story:
Doors never closed at this Big Easy barNice to see that some uplifting stories are starting to come out of this mess :-)ROSIE DIMANNO
The sign behind the bar says "Never Closed."
That ain't no lie, cher.
At Johnny White's Sports Bar, the weathered oak doors were flung wide open yesterday, as they have been throughout the sweaty days and crazy nights since Hurricane Katrina pummelled this magnificent, gallant and eternally buoyant city.
This was, as far as I could find, the only such establishment in the French Quarter — possibly the only establishment in all of New Orleans — still doing business. It's not business as usual, but damn near close to it. An oasis of conviviality in a metropolis that is waterlogged, without power, and officially locked down. Locked down, as in martial law imposed. Locked down, as in short-tempered cops patrolling the city, bellowing out from their cruisers: "Get the hell off the street!"
But at the decidedly downscale Johnny White's, a clutch of regulars remain defiantly perched on their stools at the tiny, knife-scarred bar, joined here by an influx of hurricane refugees who have managed to wash ashore at a saloon that sailed through the storm with all its facilities intact. "The beer's warm," shrugs one bearded, funky-smelling patron. "But have one on me."
Another good piece by Kyle Williams at WorldNetDaily
Now, if only WorldNetDaily would make it so you don't have to dig through the site to find it. Williams went from being one of the most at-the-forefront writers WND has, to being someone... ahhhh forget it I've ranted about this enough already. Head over here to see what Kyle has to say about some Christians who think Katrina was an enema sent by God.
Found a better picture of Jabbar Gibson
Somebody commented on the earlier post that Jabbar should drive the bus back to New Orleans and take over as mayor :-) If you're just now hearing about it, Jabbar Gibson is a 20-year old (not 18 as previously reported) from New Orleans who stole a schoolbus, picked up victims of Katrina and drove them all the way to the Houston Astrodome. Theirs was the first busload of evacuees to arrive. This guy is my favorite hero to come out of this so far. Anyway, here's Jabbar in the driver's seat as his bus arrived...
Friday, September 02, 2005
So... who was at fault for the destruction of New Orleans?
I've been thinking about that a lot during the past few days, and the conclusion I'm coming to is...
...that it was nobody's fault, but a lot of people were not adequately prepared for this.
If anyone, blame the French, or one lousy Frenchman anyway...
...Because Jean Baptiste Lemoyne, Sieur de Bienville - the founder of New Orleans - conned the King of France to making all the cheap swampland that he swiped up near the mouth of the Mississippi be the new capital of French Louisiana. As New Orleans grew Bienville sold his parcels of land at outrageously higher prices than what he acquired it for. So New Orleans was a town born of a corrupt politician... and it looks like his lack of vision is going to be darn near the death of it too.Feels weird to see that after writing it just less than a year ago.
I've seen a lot of reports blaming the New Orleans disaster on President George W. Bush. That he took away from the budget the funds that would have improved and reinforced the levees. I don't know if it's fair to blame that on him though: even if levee improvements had begun in 2001, it's been calculated that it would take twenty-five years to complete the entire project. I think a lot of things have been botched at the federal level so far as disaster relief goes - things that were far more expedited last year in Florida, f'rinstance - but in regard to the levees, I really can't put total blame on him for this. It was unwise to practically defund the measures, however. But in terms of time to do this, the levees couldn't have been redone even if Bush poured five times the requested budget into doing this.
I'm most tempted to blame the local politicians, namely Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin. Nagin especially: he really blew his chance to show leadership qualities on Saturday, two days before the storm hit. He actually conferred with the lawyers to see if he could declare a mandatory evacuation. It had never been done before in New Orleans history. It was unprecedented... but then a situation like Katrina was unprecedented also. This could have been Nagin's moment to take the initiative and earnestly try to get everybody out of town. Who cares about what the lawyers would have thought at this point? I think a lot of New Orleans people honestly thought there was nothing to worry about, that Katrina would change course, because of the city's reluctance to evacuate. A lot of them kept on partying even as the storm lay just off the coast. This is what the history books are going to judge Ray Nagin by, I'm afraid. Blanco showed a similar lack of leadership potential leading up to the storm: she failed to have adequate resources available to handle the situation. Among other things I've heard that the decision to impose "contraflow" on the highways leading out of town actually hampered some rescue/relocation efforts. She also failed to do enough to prompt people to evacuate, it could be judged.
That's how I see things as they relate to the actual hurricane. As far as now goes, it's too early to tell... but I've been disappointed in all three of the above mentioned people. Anderson Cooper was right when he confronted Lousiana Senator Mary Landrieu: the people of New Orleans do not want to hear politicians thanking and congratulating each other while they're starving to death and rats eating dead bodies in the streets. So far that's all the elected officials seem to be doing: posturing for the cameras, and blaming each other. It's way past time for the adults to take over in this situation.
But, ultimately, none of these people are going to be blamed for this. New Orleans was in a horrible geographical situation, and it played Russian roulette with the coming of each new hurricane season. This time it finally happened to get the bullet. It was an act of God, whatever His will was with regards to that once-great city. If any of us here on Earth are at fault, it is only in that we proudly have too much faith in ourselves, instead of remembering that despite all our abilities we are yet at the mercy of forces far beyond our control.
August activity made for a busy blog
I just looked through all the posts made in the previous month and August 2005 was the most active one yet: 70 posts total. This past month covered hit on just about everything. There were a lot of them toward the end as Katrina bore down and the aftermath, but otherwise it's a nice normal peek into the tortured psyche of me :-)
