Such is what has become of our world.
"Reason laid waste".
Feel free to comment.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
President Obama signs "stimulus" into law
The $787 BILLION package is now enacted legislation, as President Barack Obama signed the bill at a ceremony in Denver.
There might be another "stimulus" coming soon, believe it or not.
And on the day of this esteemed occasion, the Dow dropped 297.81 points, -3.79%, to close at 7,552.60.
And on a somewhat related note, I've been hearing some curious rumblings about stuff going down in the Eastern Europe markets, that might bear watching for the time being.
Travis the Chimp, on Xanax, goes bananas and mauls woman before being shot dead by Connecticut cops
So help me, my eyes are tearing up with laughter after reading that headline, even though this really is a horrible story...Travis, a 200 pound, 15-year old chimpanzee who had appeared in TV commercials and "was toilet trained, dressed himself, took his own bath, ate at the table and drank wine from a glass", went berzerk last night in a Stamford, Connecticut neighborhood after breaking loose from his owners' custody, and then severely mauled Charla Nash with "life-changing, if not life-threatening injuries" to her face and hands. Travis' owner Sandra Herold had to beat the ape off her friend with a butcher knife and a shovel.
Travis had earlier been given tea laced with the anti-depressant Xanax. He proceeded to terrorize the streets before being shot dead by Stamford cops, after Travis opened the door of a police cruiser and attempted to enter the vehicle. According to one report, Travis may have intended to drive away from the scene.
Feel free to post the obligatory Planet of the Apes comments as you see fit...
Ramos and Compean finally free (they never should have been in prison to begin with!)
This morning, former Border Patrol agents Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos were freed from the federal prisons they had been in, and rejoined their families.
About time. But then, their imprisonment was a travesty of justice from the beginning. Regardless of their sentences being commuted, a whole lot of people in this country will never forgive George W. Bush and his lackey Johnny Sutton for taking sides with a known drug smuggler against two men who were trying to protect their country's safety and sovereignty.
No, I won't be one to forgive Bush for that, either.
That said: it's good that Ramos and Compean are back home.
Trailer for TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
Giant transforming sentient robotic organisms and lots of Michael Bay-hem signature carnage and 'splosions (with a soundtrack by Steve Jablonsky). What more could you ask for?!
Trailer for INGLORIOUS BASTERDS
I must regretfully confess that I have never seen a Quentin Tarantino movie during a first run in the theaters...
...but I am already sold on Inglorious Basterds, due for release this summer.
"Each man under my command owes me one hundred Nazi scalps. And I want my scalps."
See Brad Pitt pour out unbridled Jewish rage on Fortress Europe below...
PRIDE AND PREDATOR?! Are you kidding me?!?
Elton John's Rocket Pictures has begun production on Pride and Predator: a cinematic adaptation of a Jane Austen novel that deviates wildly "from the traditional period costume drama when an alien crash lands and begins to butcher the mannered protags, who suddenly have more than marriage and inheritance to worry about."This is, apparently, not a joke.
One of the producers has also said that "It felt like a fresh and funny way to blow apart the done-to-death Jane Austen genre by literally dropping this alien into the middle of a costume drama, where he stalks and slashes to horrific effect."
Jane Austen books must be a hot sci-fi genre these days. Cinema Blend is also reporting that Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is in the works, with involvement from Natalie Portman.
Words fail...
Monday, February 16, 2009
Kansas and California have run out of money
The state government of Kansas is no longer issuing tax refunds and may be unable to pay its employees.
Meanwhile, California is $40 billion in the red and may have to lay off thousands of workers soon.
Dare I mention that "Hell Époque" thing that I first wrote about last year?
BIOSHOCK bringing moral chaos to mobile phones
BioShock, 2K Games' smash hit first-person shooter that tries your personal ethics as much as it tests your aim, is now coming to mobile phones courtesy of Indiagames. The reveal came at the 2009 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Indiagames is working on two versions of BioShock for mobile devices: a straightforward 3-D port of the original game, and... a 2-D rendition, believe it or not.(Can't help but wonder if the 2-D version will resemble this NES-style "demake" or perhaps this Game Boy mock-up.)
I'm of the opinion that BioShock is a game that needs to be played at night, or at least a way darkened room with all the lights out, on a fairly large screen and the sound turned way up. The ruined underwater city of Rapture with all its 1950s trappings is easily the most sinister setting of a video game that I've ever encountered. Putting it on a tiny device to play anywhere... sounds like it's gonna take away from that kind of atmosphere. But hey, the more BioShock the better, right? :-)
Here's some footage of the 3-D version, including the deranged Splicers and of course a Big Daddy in action...
Banker gives $60 million of own money to his employees
Lately it seems like the "feel good" stories have become even more few and far between. So when one is found, I feel more than a little compelled to give it a shout-out.
Take, f'rinstance, what Leonard Abess Jr. did. Back in November he sold a majority share of his holdings in Miami-based City National Bancshares.
And then, Abess gave away $60 million of the profits to EVERYONE that was on his bank's payroll. He even went so far as to find 72 former employees so that he could give them a share of the money, too. More than 400 people got the "bonuses", and depending on how long they had been employed some got more than $100,000
This is an awesome story of capitalism and corporate responsibility, folks. And when I say "responsibility", what I mean by that is a company or business owner going above and beyond in rewarding its employees - who have already shown loyalty to the company - without it being mandated by some decree of government. Nobody made Abess give up his own money. In my opinion, Leonard Abess Jr. made a smart investment in his own company. And I'd be willing to wager an RC Cola and a Moon Pie that City National Bancshares might be among the better managed banks in this day and age.
Abess didn't publicize his good deed, but it was inevitable that news of it would get out. When asked about his motivation...
Abess said he had long dreamed of a way to reward employees. He had been thinking of creating an employee stock option plan before he decided to sell the bank.Leonard Abess Jr., you're a good man. And you deserve a tip o' the hat for your good deed :-)"Those people who joined me and stayed with me at the bank with no promise of equity -- I always thought some day I'm going to surprise them," he said. "I sure as heck don't need [the money]."
Creepy and kooky: 5 months in jail for man who whistled THE ADDAMS FAMILY theme
Leopold Wrobel of Wingerforth, England has been remanded to gaol by the constabulary for a period of twenty weeks after being found guilty of harassment and violating an "antisocial behavior order" that was sought against him by his neighbors.
Apparently, what Michael and Kathleen Sharpe found so offensive is that Wrobel would constantly whistle the theme music from The Addams Family whenever he saw them.
In his defense, Wrobel claimed that he was only whistling at his dog. But "closed-circuit TV footage shown to the court depicted him repeatedly whistling when the couple left their house or arrived home."
I don't know what's more disturbing: this guy's whistling fetish, or the fact that England now has so many surveillance cameras that one was looking out for Wrobel's performance.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Apollo astronaut Schmitt sez: Humans not causing global warming
Harrison Schmitt - geologist, former senator from New Mexico and one of the last men to walk on Moon during the Apollo 17 mission - has voiced his strong belief that global warming is not happening... or at least that it is not being caused by human activity.
And what's more, Schmitt also states that "global warming" is being used as a political tool to increase the presence of government in people's lives...
Schmitt contends that scientists "are being intimidated" if they disagree with the idea that burning fossil fuels has increased carbon dioxide levels, temperatures and sea levels.Schmitt is a real scientist, and a former elected official. I'm far more inclined to trust his take on the "global warming" situation than many of the more current crop of either researchers or politicians. Sad to say: over the past few decades the trend has been that the science has increasingly become driven more by policy than it has been by empirical evidence. And in that regard, we simply do not have enough long-range climate data to satisfactorily proclaim that global warming is or isn't happening."They've seen too many of their colleagues lose grant funding when they haven’t gone along with the so-called political consensus that we’re in a human-caused global warming," Schmitt said.
Dan Williams, publisher with the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, which is hosting the climate change conference, said he invited Schmitt after reading about his resignation from The Planetary Society, a nonprofit dedicated to space exploration.
Schmitt resigned after the group blamed global warming on human activity. In his resignation letter, the 74-year-old geologist argued that the "global warming scare is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making."
Chris sings the praises of HandBrake 0.9.3!
A little over a year ago I posted the how-to tutorial on putting video content from a DVD onto an iPod. The workhorse program that I found perfect for my needs was HandBrake. When it came time to convert Lost Season 4 for my iPod classic ('cuz I like having all the Lost episodes hanging on my belt... along with my own movies, the Star Wars saga, etc.) I found that HandBrake had upgraded to version 0.9.3.So if you haven't checked it out yet, I heartily recommend giving HandBrake a looksee, because it has become significantly more powerful since the last time I used it en masse. HandBrake 0.9.3 introduces universal video input: it can now convert practically any format of video into MPEG-4, including DivX AVI files (very nice for putting those bootlegged Doctor Who episodes on an iPod or iPhone or any other portable video device). The video quality has been greatly improved, with many more presets and options available. Syncing of video and audio is said to be fixed, but I never saw any problems with that to begin with. I have however found that HandBrake 0.9.3 is far more stable in Windows Vista: previously, I had to re-install the program every time I wanted to convert a new DVD. Version 0.9.3 has fixed that bug: I've "fired it at the walls" (my own terminology for probing software for its limits) quite a bit over the past several days, and it keeps coming back and asking for more.
If you are using a Windows machine, you will likely have to purchase and install SlySoft AnyDVD, which does the actual work of decryption of a DVD. But HandBrake itself is free and open-source, and is available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.
Federal government's fiscal obligations calculated to be more than WORLD's gross product
Jerome Corsi has published a wallopin' eye-opener of an essay. According to his figures, the United States federal government's runaway spending (like the "stimulus") combined with its already existing financial obligations, is more than the gross domestic product of the entire world.
There is no way we are going to be able to pay for all of this in our lifetime, the lifetime of our children, and quite possibly the lifetime of their grandchildren. Not if our politicians keep adhering to this insanity.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
"We're fine. We're all here, fine. How are you?"
Something screwy is amiss with this blog on the technical backside of things. It looked fine yesterday (so far as I can tell) but in both Firefox and Internet Explorer, stuff is missing.
If this place looks more whacked than usual, it's prolly just me monkeying around behind the scenes trying to get it all fixed :-)
Immigrants can now fast-track to citizenship through U.S. military (and what this REALLY means about America...)
According to a story at The New York Times, the United States military is about to offer American citizenship to legal immigrants if they enlist in the armed forces. Some might be eligible for citizenship in as little as six months.
The reason for this, is that the American military is admittedly "stretched thin" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So let's go review what happened a little over a millenia and a half ago, when the cost of maintaining its vast empire utterly taxed Rome's martial capability. With not nearly enough proper imperial denizens to draw upon, the Roman government eventually acquiesced to enlisting barbarians from Germania and Gaul to bolster its forces. In many cases, the foreign soldiers were offered Roman citizenship as part of a package of incentives (which could also include some lucrative latifundia).
Fifteen hundred years later, and another great world-spanning power... is now doing much the same.
Don't anybody give me any harsh looks now. I'm just the historian here.
It's the trailer for WATCHMEN's TALES OF THE BLACK FREIGHTER with the voice of Gerard Butler!
If you've never read Watchmen (what's the matter with you? Go read it now!) then this requires some 'splainin'. In the graphic novel there's this kid who's reading a pirate comic book at a newsstand. The comic book, Tales of the Black Freighter, is shown to us the readers as a "story within a story" and it parallels a lot of what's going on in the greater scheme of Watchmen. Zack Snyder didn't have enough time to include it in the feature film adaptation of Watchmen, but it's important enough that it's coming to us next month as an animated feature on DVD and Blu-ray! And the word is that months afterward when Watchmen itself is released for home consumption, that an "ultimate edition" will be coming out that splices together the live-action movie and the animated Tales of the Black Freighter.
So with that said, here's the trailer for Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter, featuring the voice of Gerard Butler (Leonidas in 300) as the marooned mariner...
Watchmen: Tales of the Black Freighter will also include Hollis Mason's autobiography Under the Hood.
Thanks to Phillip Arthur for the heads-up!
The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre was eighty years ago today
It was on this day in 1929 that the mob war between Al Capone and Bugs Moran came to a violent head inside the garage of the SMC Cartage Company in Chicago. Seven members of Moran's gang were ambushed in a well-executed plan by Capone's enforcers (some dressed as Chicago policemen) and butchered mercilessly by machine gun fire. Moran himself by some twist of luck managed to avoid being at the scene.
Friday, February 13, 2009
...But where the heck are Spider-Man and J. Arthur Crank?!
This afternoon I finally got to watch the new version of The Electric Company on PBS. It's a revival of the very fondly remembered original series from the 1970s.
So what did I think of it? I watched many of the episodes of the original The Electric Company a few years ago when they ran on Noggin, and was surprised at how well the show had held up over the years. The Electric Company circa 2009 remains faithful to the purpose of its parent... but is a fresh and rapid-fire delightful update aimed at a new generation. And I was surprised at how many homages to the Seventies series there are: right down to paying tribute to Rita Moreno's immortal warcry "HEY YOU GUYSSSSSS!!!" Didn't spot an appearance by Letterman (no, not the late night TV host) but there was an animated spoof of 24, among other clever sketches. The one with the farmer and his mixed-up signs: can't help but wonder if the original show would have ever tried to be, dare I say it, "risque"? :-)
All in all, I thought that the new The Electric Company holds a lot of promise, and maybe even quite a bit of entertainment value for (ahem...) those of us among the "older" set. There's a lot of potential here for PBS to have another classic show on its hands.
Now all it needs is something on par with Morgan Freeman taking a bath in a casket...
"Stimulus" file size: Is Congress TRYING to keep us from examining it?
ReadTheStimulus.org is reporting that the final language of the "stimulus" bill has been posted on the U.S. House website. But if you think you're going to get to exercise your right to easily pore over the legislation, think again. From ReadTheStimulus.org...
Final Language PostedThere is no reason at all why this bill, as bloated as it is, should not be in standard rich-text Acrobat format. 1,419 pages? In a document containing all text and no images, that would be extremely quick and easy to download, not to mention convenient to search and scan.
Posted at 11:00 pm on Thursday, February 12, 2009The final language has been posted; you can find links to the various docs at the Speaker's website. Update: The speaker's website is apparently down. Imagine that. Docs are also available here.
The total size of the four major files is over 100MB, and consists of 1419 pages. Three of the four files are huge "scanned" PDFs, meaning they were created by printing the original document and then scanning it in again --- and therefore contain no real "text" that can be easily searched. This will make our parsing process difficult and more time consuming, so we most likely won't have our versions ready until midday tomorrow. But we'll see...
But instead, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has published the "stimulus" as unwieldy scanned images.
In my mind, either the House website staff is inept and incapable of fully grasping available technology, or this is a deliberate attempt to prevent the legislation from easily being scrutinized by the public.
I'm inclined to believe the latter.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
THE PEOPLE VS. GEORGE LUCAS trailer is online! Guess whose film you'll see a tiny part of???
Awright, I've been sitting on this for the past week or so, eagerly looking forward to when that e-mail would arrive with the official announcement and now... it's here!
Alexandre Philippe is a filmmaker who is currently working on an ambitious project called The People vs. George Lucas (here's the official website: PeopleVsGeorge.com). Tonight, Alexandre and his crew released the first trailer for their film.
Behold!
Want to see it drastically embiggened and high-deffed? Mash down here!
And at 1:29 into the trailer, there's a black and white clip showing "George Lucas" furiously typing. No, your eyes ain't deceiving you: that is Chad Austin from my first film Forcery (click here to watch THAT movie)! Alexandre contacted me about using Forcery awhile back, and all of us at KWerky Productions are thrilled to have been invited to take part in this project.
The People vs. George Lucas is scheduled for a 2010 wide release. As you can expect, it will be a pleasure to keep y'all posted about it in the meantime :-)
Something I just caught from last night's LOST...
If you have "This Place Is Death" recorded, or from iTunes or whatever, then do yourself a favor...
...and listen very, very carefully to the scene early in the episode where Jin, Danielle and the rest of her team are on the beach. In particular, listen to the voice that's reading out "the numbers" on the radio.
It sounds like Hurley's.
As if this story isn't loopy enough already!
Man apparently rid of HIV following radical stem cell transplant
Extremely exciting medical news coming out today: a 42-year old man who had previously been infected with HIV is now, apparently, completely free of the virus and is displaying no symptoms of further infection. This following a stem cell transplant from a person carrying a unique mutation that confers natural resistance to the virus that causes AIDS.
The patient has now been without detectable HIV for two years now, and is not currently on any antiretroviral medication. However, researchers warn that the therapy is "too extreme and too dangerous to be used as a routine treatment", and that a third of those who undergo it die from complications.
I'd still chalk it up as a victory for this kind of medical research, though. Who knows what kind of refinement might eventually come from such a development. And gene therapy is still a very new field: during the next ten or twenty years, we're likely to see even more powerful advances.
Nite Owl and Silk Spectre in MINUTEMEN scrolling arcade game (coolest WATCHMEN viral site yet)
The marketing for Watchmen never ceases to amaze me. This time it's an Eighties-style scrolling street fighting arcade game based on the Minutemen. Plunk in your virtual quarters and play as either Nite Owl or Silk Spectre as you clean up New York City of the 1940s.
Maybe if you rack up a high enough score, it'll unlock Hooded Justice and Mothman as playable characters :-P
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Well played, Tarheels
Duke fan that I am, I'm man enough to admit that UNC had an excellent game tonight. 101 to 87... that might be the biggest margin between the two teams in a long time.
So to the Tarheels: congratulations!
(I just don't want to have to make a habit of saying that :-P)
Customary reaction to LOST episode: "This Place Is Death"
Lost is better television than we darned well deserve.
And "This Place Is Death", tonight's episode, was one of the richest of the series to date.
I thought it was also one of the strongest of the Sun and Jin-centric episodes, and doesn't it say something about Lost that Sun could be in 2008 and Jin could be back on the Island in 1988, and this show still make sense? After how powerful the reunion between Desmond and Penny was, I'm of the mind that the setup is happening before our eyes for something much, much more intense when Jin and Sun find their way back to each other. They'd better get back: I know hordes of people who will be honked-off enraged if that doesn't happen.
The scenes in 1988 with Danielle and her team explored a lot of ground in a surprisingly short amount of time. I've wondered what "the sickness" was that 2004 Danielle was talking about... might it have something to do with "Smokey"?
Daniel and Charlotte: seemed handled a bit clunky, but I'm willing to see how this plays out. Jeremy Davies proves once more why he was the perfect choice to play Daniel: nobody does off-kilter lovable nerds better than he :-)
Ben's emotional blow-up in the van was an excellent scene. Michael Emerson shows again that he is one of the best actors working in the medium right now. More and more it's becoming easier to take Ben at his word, and I don't think he was being deceitful at all when he talked about what he and others had done to protect the Oceanic 6.
So... Locke has done it. He has turned the wheel and is on his way. Can't wait to see the story of "Jeremy Bentham" unfold once he gets to the outside world.
The final scene, where the gang meets Eloise inside the church: can't help but think that portends some amazing stuff next week. Eloise speaking in the teaser about how "this is how the Island was found" while showing the weird pendulum is painfully tantalizing. Can't wait 'til next Wednesday to get here to find out more.
Okay so... thought? :-)
Two satellites collide in space over Siberia
At least 600 pieces of spaceborne shrapnel are now plaguing the sky, no thanks to an unprecedented collision between two satellites in low-Earth orbit.Early yesterday, 790 kilometers (490 miles) above Siberia, an inoperative Russian satellite called Cosmos 2251 smashed into Iridium33, a communications satellite. Ground radar is now tracking the hundreds of resulting bits of debris, hoping that none of it will smash into any other satellites or the International Space Station.
When asked which satellite was at fault, NASA scientist Nicholas Johnson said, "they ran into each other. Nothing has the right of way up there. We don't have an air traffic controller in space. There is no universal way of knowing what's coming in your direction."
The good news, if there is any, is that Iridium Satellite LLC still has 64 satellites in unusually low orbit, relaying calls between special satellite phones (the U.S. Department of Defense is one of its biggest customers).
I wonder if one of them was trying to speed through an intersection...
Fred Reed, Internet's greatest curmudgeon, is retiring (for now)
This is a sad day for the very many of us who have faithfully followed the "scurrilous commentary" of Fred Reed. The renaissance man behind Fred On Everything announced yesterday that he is ending his regular columns, owing to upcoming surgery for a corneal transplant (as Reed puts it "this being the belated result of a largely forgotten foray by the US into military adventurism").Reed shared his reasons for beginning his web-based column, and he speaks for many of us in conveying the biggest reason why a lot of us do this, in whatever way we can. He also admits some inevitable frustration with it all...
"My reasons for inditing the sucker were, first, to see whether a web column could work and, second, to get away from the strangling grasp of political correctness. A third reason, common I suppose to most columnists, was the hope that, however minor my voice might be, in combination with thousands of others it might engender pressure for slowing the rush into the high-tech medieval twilight that the culture has undertaken.As with everything else he has written that I've read over the years, it's a great essay. Our thoughts and prayers go out to him, and here's hoping that the Internet's best curmudgeon and best-known expatriate will be back in the saddle sooner than later :-)"This by now is clearly quixotic. The civilizational changes we now see are both irremediable and beyond control. The peasantrification and empty glitter of society, pervasive hostility to careful thought, onrushing authoritarianism, and distaste for cultivation are now endemic. I do not know where these lead, but we are assuredly going to get there. Fuming buys nothing."
Texas preparing for possible collapse of Mexican government
This might be the most under-reported story in America right now, that has the potential to wreck the most havoc on this country: the escalating violence of the drug wars in Mexico and the teetering stability of that country's government.
I've got friends in Mexico City who tell me they can't believe us Yanks aren't talking about this "enough". Juarez, straight across the border from El Paso, has seen more than fifteen hundred murders already in the past year. Many of them have been of the "send a message" variety... particularly the bodies that the police are finding sans heads.
So maybe this'll open some eyes: the government of the state of Texas is bracing for a likely collapse of Mexico's authority and the millions of refugees that would no doubt be streaming north to escape the chaos.
Should this happen, the services infrastructure of the United States... well, it ain't in such hot shape either, is it?
Whatever happens, it will assuredly not be anything like this great clip from the Latino Comedy Project...
First pics of the Fallen and the Constructicons gestalt from TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN!
Japanese website ACTOYS has posted the first good image of the Fallen from this coming summer's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen...
And guess what else ACTOYS has snagged? I hate hate hate that Michael Bay wasted the name "Devastator" on a mere army tank in Transformers, so I'm betting they'll stick another name on the Constructicon combiner.
Whatever it's gonna be called, the Constructicons gestalt is one pure angry design that looks hella kewl!
Seibertron.com has a lively discussion going on now about the Fallen and, ahem..., "Devastator".
I just hope it won't require a Masters degree in engineering to put the toy of that thing together.
Monday, February 09, 2009
To whom it may concern
"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind..."-- Hosea 8:7
"The Woz" to compete on DANCING WITH THE STARS
ABC's hit show Dancing with the Stars returns for a new season on March 9th. And it's been confirmed that joining singers Jewel and Belinda Carlisle, gymnast Shawn Johnson and rapper Lil' Kim will be none other than Steve Wozniak, AKA "The Woz" and co-founder of Apple Computers.I might have to check this out. Steve Wozniak has always seemed to be a pretty cool guy. He's currently active with a Segway Polo team (though that might not help his footwork much on the dance floor).
Too bad Circus of the Stars is no longer on television: we could have probably seen Steve Ballmer throwing chairs on the high wire.
Internet video, Netflix enticing many to cut cable TV
Interesting story about technology and the economy: vast numbers of people are canceling their cable television service, opting to get their TV with old-fashioned antennas instead. Rising cable rates and the ever-increasing need to cut back on expenses is one reason. So is this: a lot of folks are now turning to broadband Internet - either through pay services like iTunes or bittorrent downloads - to get their fix of the shows that they like. Netflix's popularity is also considered a factor in the decrease for cable TV.
I could easily see this trend continuing, and into some potentially very interesting new territory over the next several years. Like, f'rinstance: a group of video bloggers, armed with inexpensive equipment and bleeding-edge Internet bandwidth, setting up a live operation on par with anything Fox News and CNN is doing.
Don't think it can't happen.
Insanity: "Stimulus" ultimate cost could be $9.7 TRILLION
At this point, I am only left to seriously wonder if the people who are supposed to be running the country, have any functional grasp at all of the value of numbers.$9,700,000,000,000
According to a story on Bloomberg.com, the total cost of all the bailouts that the U.S. House and Senate are pursuing with this "stimulus" package, is going to come out to, at least, $9.7 trillion.
Here it is for people who like to look at lots of zeroes...
It's said to be enough to pay off 90% of all the homeowner mortgages in this country.
I'm going to paraphrase a line that I heard from a movie several years ago...
"The country is headed for trouble. The country is headed for grief."
Image of Jesus on my closet door?!?
This might be the stupidest post that I've ever made on this blog (and that's sayin' something). I'll let you, Dear Reader, judge for yourself.
It's sort of my friend Kevin Bussey's fault (even though he's a totally great guy :-). His blog, Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee, is one of my favorites: not just because he offers up a lot of terrific insight as a brother in Christ, but also for his fondness of posting about the more whimsical news of the world. And he especially enjoys sharing the occasional stories about "apparitions" of Jesus or Mary materializing in loafs of bread, lava lamps etc.
So yesterday Kevin had this item about what is supposedly a picture of Jesus in a car dealership's door. It reminded me of something that I'd promised to do for Kevin over the past few months. And seeing that picture well... I couldn't help but think "Hey, my Jesus is more Jesusy than their Jesus!"
So I might as well get this over with...
Here it goes: my old closet door has a very curious wood grain pattern in it, that many people over the years have said looks exactly like Jesus Christ holding out His hands.
On the right (click to magnify) is the best photo that I was able to take of it, over at my parents' house last night. But trust me: this looks much better in real life than it does in the picture. Even in subdued light, the visual signature is readily discernible. Several people who have visited my old room have said that they can make out the hair, brow, eyes, nose, and mouth of a male figure who seems to be standing. Most of the folks who have seen it swear that they can see the figure is wearing a robe or similar garment.
The most interesting feature of the pattern is that it seems as though, if indeed people are seeing a man (or Son of Man) here, that it/he/He is holding two hands out in front of him, in apparently perfect proportion to the rest of the figure.
So... what do y'all think: is this just a regular wooden pattern, or is it a bona fide photographic anomaly?
I'll have it be known here and now though: I do not want flocks of pilgrims lining up to see this! So far as I'm concerned, there's nothing supernatural about it at all. And it wouldn't be proper to come oggle this anyway: if the Bible teaches us that not even the angels are to be worshiped, then I can't begin to imagine how much worse it is to pay homage to an inanimate hunk of wood.
But all the same, I will confess a curiosity as to what others might be seeing in this picture.
Comments?
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Guess what chilling line of dialogue has made it into the WATCHMEN movie!
EXTREMELY encouraging word from the Watchmen panel at New York Comic Con yesterday. The thousands in attendance were treated to the first 18 minutes from the movie, which shows the fight between Edward Blake and his assailant, and then a montage of the Watchmen world's history playing out to Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are-A Changin'", followed by Rorschach's initial investigation of the murder.
And then, the audience at New York Comic Con got to behold something that I know for darn near certain that every Watchmen fan has been hoping and praying would make it into the movie...
Two words: "Prison Cafeteria".
And yes: Rorschach says it. We are finally going to get to hear him say the line, on the big screen.
I've a lot to do tomorrow, but I plan on spending a little time seeing if there's a theater in Greensboro that's gonna have a midnight premiere of Watchmen. It'll be worth staying up late, just to see that scene along with a few hundred other rabid Watchmen fans, and watch everyone go crazy when he says it.
Johnny Robertson is paying good money for this...?
Very strange night of cult leader Johnny Robertson's usual broadcast on WGSR this evening. The first hour was a recording of this morning's "service" at Martinsville Church of Christ. And that in itself was notable because to the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that I've ever seen Johnny Robertson praying. Except that his "prayer" was straight out of Luke chapter 18, in that it was practically the same as that of the Pharisee in the temple who prays "God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers..." etc. Yes folks, that apparently is the substance of "prayer" among the cult (which again, is not the real Churches of Christ at all).
Then Robertson went on a vicious rant, boasting about how his "church is the most authoritarian!" among other things, and then devoted much of the rest of the "sermon" to evolution and Charles Darwin, mostly in order to attack that same museum in Danville that he has some kind of beef with.
And then the recorded service ended and the program went to this...
That's it. For the next half-hour, it was a DVD menu that went out on live television. People who happened to tune in to WGSR between 9:30 and 10 got to see waves rolling on a beach as earthy "New Age" music played in the background of the DVD main menu, and nothing else.
So unless I'm mistaken, Johnny Robertson paid between $500 and $1000 to broadcast a DVD menu on television tonight.
Parse this as you will.
Scientists teleport matter across a meter distance!
(Okay, for us stubborn Americans we're inclined to say "yard" instead of "meter" but since this is dealing with physics I'm going to use the metric system out of principle!)
Teleportation of matter has been achieved over a distance of one meter, scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute of the University of Maryland along with colleagues at the University of Michigan have announced. 'Course, the matter in question was a single atom, but to transmit the information of its quantum state from one location to another - via that spooky "entangling" thingy - is still a huge milestone to have achieved. And if you read the Fox News story, it does sound suspiciously like the "beaming" used in the Star Trek franchise, right down to the "Heisenberg Compensators".
But if I were an editor on the Fox News website, I would have chosen a better picture to accompany this story...
...they actually used a still of the "transporter malfunction" scene from Star Trek: The Motion Picture - the most violent teleportation accident ever depicted on screen - to go with the article.
That is not a particularly encouraging juxtaposition :-P
Gun-loving teacher's Facebook photo gets her suspended by Stasi-ish school officials
Betsy Ramsdale of Wisconsin apparently likes guns. Nothing wrong with that. And she likes them so much that she posted a picture of herself aiming a rifle on her Facebook page. Nothing wrong with that either: it's her own account, she gets to do with it on her own time whatever she likes and if Facebook doesn't think it violates the terms of service, nobody else should hassle her about it.Except that Betsy Ramsdale is also a teacher employed by what is all too often the modern monstrosity of public education. And when officials at Beaver Dam Middle School were "alerted" to the photo, they immediately placed Ramsdale on administrative leave.
So what it all comes down to is that Betsy Ramsdale is being punished for practicing her freedom of speech and right to privacy, by her implied advocacy of the Second Amendment. That's a heckuva civics lesson to be teaching the kiddies, ain't it?
Some of the comments in the linked article are downright hysterical. One parent says that "With the way things are going these days, with the kids bringing guns to school and bomb threats, (photograph) is something to be concerned about."
Funny thing: I used to go to a private school and the head of its board of education once put a picture of himself with a shotgun in our yearbook 'cuz he was an avid hunter. To the best of my recollection, nobody from that school ever killed anyone with a shotgun. And I'm also kinda reminded of what Dick Cavett once remarked: there's more comedy on television than there is crime... so how come comedy isn't breaking out in the streets?
This kind of harassment of teachers, parents and students for asserting their Constitutional rights, on the part of public school administrators, has got to stop! All it's doing is breeding more - I'm not sorry for saying this - cowards who are now intimidated by even the suggestion of a thing!
Man gets over 50 traffic citations... in one day!
Elvis Alonzo Barrett of Boynton Beach, Florida has learned the hard way: real life is not like Grand Theft Auto IV.
This past week Barrett fled police who were already trying to ticket him for one traffic violation. He led authorities on a high-speed chase that had him running through red lights, crashing into another car and then a fence. When he was finally caught, he was also found in possession of a quantity of crack cocaine.
When the final tally came in, Barrett had racked up more than FIFTY traffic citations in a single day, including one for not wearing a seat belt. He was also driving with a suspended license.
I wonder if the cops missed any. I mean, after thirty or forty citations it's hard to keep up...
Les Misérables: Gold teeth for sale in New Orleans
From Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis...
The person who submitted the photo writes...
"Got the photo from a friend. The white sign that has been blacked out used to be the Toy Center. The biggest & best toy store in New Orleans in the late 50's early 60's. The Coca Cola bottling plant & Tulane Shirt Company were just to the left on S. Jefferson Davis Parkway. Times have changed."I remember back in the early Nineties when Haiti was being torn apart following the military coup that overthrew Aristide. People there became so hard-up for money, that they had resorted to looting cemeteries: digging up graves to steal jewelry, gold teeth and even silk casket linings to sell. That's the kind of desperation that whenever I see a picture like this or hear somesuch else so similar, I have to wonder how far we really are from the edge of that abyss.
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Joshua Ortega hints at GEARS OF WAR prequel (and teases about single-player DLC)
All kinds of good stuff coming out of New York Comic-Con tonight for Gears of War fans. Joshua Ortega, the writer of Gears of War 2, heavily suggested that a PREQUEL to the original game is in the works: one that would deal with the events of E-Day. That was the day, 14 years before the first game takes place, when the Locust Horde burst out of the underworld and began their genocidal war against the humans of Sera. So that's potentially ten years worth of story that players might be able to experience and fight through. And if we're able to play as Marcus Fenix then I guess that could mean his tale as a COG soldier right up to the day he chose to abandon his post and try to rescue his father: the action that ultimately sent Marcus to prison."You will not be disappointed in the next ten years," Ortega said. "It's a ten-year plan. Gears is long-term. The lancer is the new lightsaber."If you played through Gears of War 2 then you know there's all kinds of dangling threads waiting to be exploited. If Epic Games plays their cards right, they could wind up with the video game equivalent of Lost in terms of high-brow storytelling.
Ortega was also asked about single-player centric downloadable content for Gears of War 2. "Keep watching," Ortega said. "You won't be disappointed." Which as one who is primarily a single player, makes me happy :-)
Broke states turn to exploiting seat belts for fast cash
I've never liked mandatory seat belt laws. For one thing, it should be a matter of personal preference whether one chooses to wear a seat belt or not. In my mind such legislation embodies all the worst aspects of the "nanny state". I understand that statistically, seat belts do tend to save lives. But I have also known plenty of people for whom seat belts are physically uncomfortable, because of medical conditions or something similar. My grandmother, f'rinstance. Whenever she got into a car she simply looped the belt around her shoulder and rode like that (something that I'll admit to doing every so often as well :-)
And then there are those who have argued that seat belt laws have nothing to do with safety at all: that they are designed to be reliable revenue streams for the states that have them. That case is certainly bolstered by the number of states that want to empower law enforcement officers to pull over drivers simply for not wearing seat belts. And this time the various governors and other officials are admitting that it's because their states "don't have enough money".
(If this is going on in the state of Washington I suppose that if you don't buckle up the state can also take your DNA as a consequence.)
The only other observation that I know to make from this, is that government at all levels is running out of funding. The entire system is beginning to buckle beneath its own weight and simply spending and looking for ways to maintain that spending, isn't going to maintain it for much longer. Sooner than later, it's gonna come crashing down.
Maybe it'll be a good thing. We can start fresh and clean again. And do away with so many of these laws that have nothing at all to do with protecting us and our rights. Scrapping the seat belt laws would be a good start...
Friday, February 06, 2009
James Whitmore has passed away
Veteran actor James Whitmore, probably one of the most well-recognized and beloved faces to have ever graced the American stage and screen, passed away today after a struggle with lung cancer. He was 87.The folks of my generation probably best remember Whitmore from The Shawshank Redemption. He played Brooks in that film: the "institutionalized" prison librarian who is released into a world that he no longer recognizes. Director Frank Darabont liked him so much that he also put Whitmore in The Majestic a few years later.
Whitmore's remarkable career went all the way back to the World War II era. He won a Tony in 1948 for his lead role in Command Decision (also his first Broadway performance). A year later he made his first movie, The Undercover Man. And for the next half-century he was a fixture in film and television. But he still returned to the stage on occasion, especially with his one-man shows in which Whitmore portrayed Harry Truman, Teddy Roosevelt, and Will Rogers. Most of those were eventually adapted to screen, with Whitmore again assuming the roles. Many people will also remember that Whitmore was the orangutan that presided over Taylor's "trial" in the original Planet of the Apes. And there was that terrific performance that he turned in for The Twilight Zone episode "On Thursday We Leave For Home", among many other things.
But for some reason, along with The Shawshank Redemption, I most remember James Whitmore for all of those television commercials that he did for Miracle-Gro. I did not know for certain that he was such an avid gardener until I read his obituary, but just from watching him in the ads, I got the sense that he was sincere and definitely knew what he was talking about. The man was apparently gifted with a green thumb along with his extraordinary theatrical presence.
Frank Darabont has written a wonderful tribute to James Whitmore on Ain't It Cool News.
He will be missed.
Bend over, here it comes again: "Stimulus" deal reached
Awright, I'm prepared to go ahead and say it: the Obama Presidency is already a disaster. And this legislation is gonna be about as successful as the Smoot-Hawley Act.$780,000,000,000
Word out of D.C. tonight is that a tentative agreement on the "stimulus" package has been reached in the Senate. It's probably going to be enacted law over the weekend or soon afterward.
Said "stimulus" is going to cost me and you, Fellow Taxpayer...
According to one senator, James Inhofe out of Oklahoma, the bill is only 7% stimulating and the rest of it is just more spending.
I remember the big budget battle in 1993. It's what really started opening my eyes on all the waste that goes on in the federal government. And I never thought that I would see anything that outrageous again.
If the phone lines to Washington D.C. don't burn up with angry calls starting tonight and into the next several days, if this thing passes, well... I can't help but wonder if this might even eclipse Smoot-Hawley in terms of economic destruction.
But on the bright side of things, at least Matthew Lesko will have plenty of new government money to stay happy for a good looooong time...
New WATCHMEN video journal stares into abyss of Rorschach's mask
Exactly one month from today we'll finally get to see the Watchmen movie. And I think it's safe to say: the biggest anticipation of the past twenty years has been for how well Rorschach will translate to the big screen. Empire has the exclusive premiere of this latest video journal, which focuses on Rorschach's background and that very neat mask that he wears.
And if you've read the book, perhaps it will interest you to know that this clip has a fleeting glimpse of our favorite antihero in a certain pose wielding a meat cleaver...
FANBOYS opens in limited release today
It starts playing on 44 screens. But you know what? Even if it were to open on just one screen, that would still be cause for applause and celebration. Ernie Cline has tried to make this movie since 1998 (the year the film is set in) and more than a tenacious decade later, he gets to see his hard work pay off as his tale of friends who attempt to break into Skywalker Ranch so that a terminally ill pal can see Star Wars Episode I flickers to life at last.
Ain't It Cool News has a list of cities and theaters that are showing Fanboys. Unfortunately the closest city to my own location that's playing it is Philadelphia, and doesn't look like my schedule is gonna allow for a trip up this weekend. But to those of you who are lucky enough to catch it: feel free to post a comment about what you thought of it, 'cuz we're eager to hear the word!
Where's the hope?! Obama evokes fear if "stimulus" isn't passed
Remember all that talk of "hope and change" during the past election cycle? What happened to it? Because now President Barack Obama is sounding like the dire opposite of Franklin Roosevelt, warning that if the "stimulus" bill isn't passed...
"This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse."Not even three weeks into the job and the man's already done did a "malaise speech".
Dear President Obama: if you seriously want to stimulate the economy across the board, you cannot do it with more spending! That might seem to buy some time in the short term, but what is really needed is to cut taxes and CUT SPENDING!
That may not win Obama any early accolades, but posterity would ultimately judge him to be a wise president if he were to adopt such a sober-minded fiscal policy.
State of Washington considers swabbing DNA from EVERYONE who gets arrested
It's like Barney Fife gone zealous with a genetics lab: legislators in the state of Washington are mulling the idea of getting DNA samples from everyone who is stopped by law enforcement for anything at all, even something so minor as a traffic infraction. And no, they don't wanna wait until a conviction in court either: everybody arrested would have to yield over their personal deoxyribonucleic acid. Although supposedly the DNA would be destroyed if there is no conviction (yeah right).
Y'all in Washington, you need to fight this as hard as you can. This is a huge intrusion of personal rights and screw what the "bigger government" types are saying about how this is "needed" to be "safe". It's not a question of "will this be abused?" because history has proven that if a thing such as this is tolerated, it will be abused!
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Bad WATCHMEN costumes
No wonder Alan Moore is so hesitant to see his work become major motion pictures...
I agree with Matthew Federico: the guy on the right in what's supposed to be the Comedian outfit, looks more like the third Mario Brother. But that's still much better than what we're expected to believe is a convincing Ozymandias getup (left).
Find this pic and those of the Rorschach, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre duds at WatchmenComicMovie.com.
