Do we REALLY need a Martin Luther King holiday?

EDIT 6:01 AM 1-18-2007: I've decided to take this video down. Have been watching it a few times and... well, the delivery could be a lot better. I still have a lot of beliefs about this, and why this holiday is really doing more harm than good.

There's one thing that came from making this video that I'm glad of, that I didn't realize until now: that some people in our society really are keeping the younger generations from finding its own leaders... and we direly need those.

But I'm going to withdraw this one for now. There's a better way to deliver this same message, I just know it. But until I know what that should be, this one is going to go back to my hard drive.

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Ouch!

Saddam Hussein's half-brother was decapitated during his execution by hanging.

The guards in charge of the execution used rope that was too long, was the problem. There's actually a mathematical formula that executioners are supposed to follow that takes in the condemned person's weight, height etc. and from that it spits out how long the rope should be. Too short and the guy dangles there and slowly suffocates. Too much rope and it takes the poor sap's head clean off. Ideally, the drop is abrupt enough to violently break the condemned's neck so as to bring about unconsciousness as quickly as possible.

There are some things you learn in history class that you can't "unlearn", if you know what I mean...

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"Mass hysteria!": Net going nuts over alleged GHOSTBUSTERS game

In the past few hours Ain't It Cool News and quite a lot of other web outlets have passed on word about this... thing, that may or may not be a new Ghostbusters video game. Below are several videos credited to a company called ZootFly, that show the alleged game in action. It could be a fake though: some are saying that the below videos look somewhat like Gears of War for the Xbox 360. If this is something fan-made, an awful lot of effort must have gone into making this. It could also be a conceptual thing to sell the idea of a Ghostbusters game. But based on early reaction I'm seeing in a lot of places, this is something that many people are wanting to see happen.

Here's a piece of concept art that's making the rounds on the 'net right now:

And here's one of the videos (you can watch some more at the Ain't It Cool News link):

If this Ghostbusters thing is a real honest-to-goodness game coming out for the Xbox 360, that and Halo 3 alone would be enough to make me want to go out and buy the system (but I'll still wait to see if the "upgraded" Xbox 360 with HDMI port and 60 gig hard-drive materializes). I'm especially digging that this game - if it's a real game - is updating Ghostbusters to be gritty and hard-edged for the 21st century like this artwork is indicating.

Well, let's keep our fingers crossed (but don't cross the proton streams!) and maybe we'll see this. In the meantime if you've got an older game system or emulator software, you can always try to track down the Ghostbusters video game by Activision that came out twenty years ago. Even on the Atari 2600, it was a classic.

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Robert Heinlein, Dick Cheney and the concept of sacrifice

Ever since I read Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers six years ago, I've thought that there was a lot of sense about the concept of government in that book. The movie version touches on it a little bit, but you really have to read the novel to fully appreciate the beauty of it. Heinlein posited in Starship Troopers that the responsibilities that come with governing and even the simple matter of voting belong only to those who have demonstrated that they are willing to serve and sacrifice for the greater good. Thus, only those who have served a minimum of two years in the military are allowed to vote and hold public office. As a result, the decision to engage in war is decided upon solely by those who fully understand the full risks and consequences of sending young men and women into battle.

Which brings us to the matter of Vice President Dick Cheney, who said this today...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Vice President
Dick Cheney said on Sunday the United States must show it has the "stomach" to win in
Iraq or it will confirm al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's view that Americans can be pressured to leave.

U.S. allies helping in fighting terrorism -- Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and Egypt -- must have confidence that the United States will stay until a successful outcome, he said.

"If the United States doesn't have the stomach to finish the task in Iraq, we put at risk what we've done in all of those other locations," he said on "Fox News Sunday."

A man who received FIVE deferments from draft service during the Vietnam conflict, telling America that it's obliged to have "the stomach" to keep sending its sons and daughters into a war with no clearly defined goal.

Dick Cheney does not understand sacrifice. Those are not his children that he's sending to fight in his war. Had he actually served in the military, he would perhaps have some moral basis on which to stand... but he doesn't even have that.

How the hell does Dick Cheney get off telling Americans that they must possess "the stomach" when he's always lacked it to begin with?

This war is being perpetuated upon us by a bunch of old men who never had the will to fight for themselves, but also have no qualms about sending young men off to die for their own selfish purpose.

Well, somebody has to say it...

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About 24: It. Is. A. TV. Show.

Here's what Drudge Report is flashing as breaking news tonight...

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN JAN 14, 2007 18:17:05 ET XXXXX

IS FOX SET TO BLOW THE NUKES ON '24'?
Sun Jan 14 2007 18:14:34 ET

As Washington continues to raise concerns about terror threats on The Homeland -- a recent CIA report outlined a scenerio of possible "series of explosions using 'low charge' nuclear weapons" -- Hollywood and FOX-TV are set to up the ante with the new season of 24!

Few outside of the 24 set know the exact details of the new season unfolding, but studio sources claim producers are pushing hard to take it radioactive this time -- and keep it there.

"Time to wake the country up!" a top FOX source told the DRUDGE REPORT over the weekend. "I do not think there has ever been TV done like this, the viewer is going to be completely riveted."

The source claims executives are prepared for any fallout from local municipalities that may be on the receiving end of plot turns and twists. How many cities 24 puts on 'nuke alert' is unclear.

FOX has set a highly-controversial espisode of 24 to air Monday night, opposite NBC's GOLDEN GLOBES.

In 2002, White House officials questioned the timing and release of PARAMOUNT's action movie SUM OF ALL FEARS -- a movie which depicts a nuclear bomb unleashed on an American sporting event!

One senior Bush official, who spoke to the DRUDGE REPORT at the time, claimed the movie crossed over the line of civic responsibility and commerce.

Developing...

Good grief... it really has come to this point, hasn't it?

I mean, the line now between real-life and fictional entertainment has become so blurred, that the possible use of nuclear weapons on an hour-long TV drama rates as serious breaking news. Worse, the producers are said to be "prepared" for the outcry from the cities they plan to wipe out. On the show. Not in the real world. Just on teevee. Which is fake...

And to think that some people thought that the whole "Who Shot J.R.?" thing was too much.

I tried to get into 24. Honest. I missed the first season except for the finale where Kiefer Sutherland shot Dennis Hopper about 5,348 times in the space of six seconds with that gun and thought that maybe I should give it a try the next season. That came along and I watched for about three episodes before it lost my interest. That's not to say 24 is a bad show, just that it's formula never caught hold with me. I've always thought that Kiefer Sutherland is a great actor, too (my favorite performance of his is probably in Flatliners). Maybe I'm missing something by not "getting" 24 and this really is supposed to be a big deal. But for what might happen on the new season of 24 to rate as serious news over everything else that's going on in this world... well, that says something about where our sense of priorities are, in my humble opinion.

But if anyone is willing to write me and tell me personally that I should give 24 another go and that this is something I could definitely dig, I might be willing to check it out again.

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Bush Administration is violating the Bill of Rights... again

This time the government is examining the bank records of Americans "suspected" of having terrorist links.

How are we supposed to have faith that the government is not also examining the records of people who have come out with open disagreement about what this administration is doing? How can we possibly believe them that they have only the best of intentions at heart when they do things like this?

Well, how can we?

Amendment IV of the Constitution of the United States:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

So where are the justly-issued warrants in these searches?

Or is it that in the name of fighting "the terrorists", that things like that don't have to be adhered to any longer?

Why do "they hate us for our freedoms" when we don't really have freedoms to begin with anymore anyway?

Why should anyone believe that the America that is going to result from what these people are doing is going to eventually be an America worth defending at all someday?

What's going to keep another presidential administration from really abusing these powers sometime in the future, and probably sooner than later?

How can anyone, with a clear conscience, defend what the people in this administration are doing to this country?

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Lend me your ear: ROME Season 2 starts tonight on HBO

At the end of the finale of the first season of Rome, Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) was holding the body of his wife and we saw Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson) holding hands with his ex-slave... who seemed to have already forgiven Titus for bashing the brains out of her fiance. Meanwhile the corpse of Gaius Julius Caesar (Ciarán Hinds) was starting to attract flies on the Senate floor.

Presumably, tonight's opener for Rome's second season will have the funeral of Caesar and the beginnings of the seizing of the empire by Mark Antony (James Purefoy) and Gaius Octavian (Max Pirkis), who is going to wind up becoming Caesar Augustus.

The first season of Rome was like The Sopranos B.C., and some of the most brutal yet captivating storytelling I've seen on television in recent years. Season 2 will hopefully bring more of the same. Enjoy it while you can though: word is that HBO won't be funding any more Rome beyond this season because of the production's high cost. Meaning that Rome is probably going to be like Carnivale: another HBO show that was ended before it could live up to its potential. Sic transit gloria mundi...

The revels begin again tonight at 9 p.m.

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