KnightErrant: The Musings of a Noble Nobody

So I guess I can still use this space

2009-04-01T23:51:00.001-04:00

Or something like that.

200

2007-12-27T01:39:00.000-05:00

Well, because my good friend Dave was unkind enough to point out my abandoned blog, I felt the need to post something new here.

Thanks a lot, Dave. (jerkfaced idjit.)

So anyway, this is my 200th post, according to the little post counter thingamadoodle on my stats page.

Not that it means anything, because when you post in the wee hours of the morning, nothing much makes sense and if it does, it's still nonsense.

What I SHOULD do is go through and delete just about everything on here (it's all crap anyway) and start fresh... or maybe start a new blog elsewhere. Not sure. I'll get back to you on that.

On Steve Irwin

2006-09-05T00:28:00.000-04:00

I've been gone a while, but I felt obligated to write a brief blurb about the late Steve Irwin, who died Monday of a stingray strike to the heart while filming a television special on marine creatures.

I liked Irwin. I felt he was a bit overexposed, but I felt he had an enthusiasm about nature, including some of the most unloved creatures out there, that was extremely important, and likely turned countless children onto an interest in the animal world.

There are many who did not like Irwin's methods, or felt he acted too juvenile to consider him a real conservationalist. This dislike saddens me, and I feel people in this mindset are missing the point.

To turn an average child onto science, one has to show the exciting parts of it. There are boring parts to every job, but if you show them the rewards of the work then it will outweigh the lackluster. When trying to turn on the average person to Chemistry, one does not pull out a chalkboard and write the equations to show chemical reactions... one rummages through the chemical closet and blows stuff up. Irwin did this for biology, trying to show the interest and the risk of the animal kingdom. And like it or not, Irwin did constantly raise awareness for the conservationalist cause, and not just the “cute” animals either.

Love him or not, the loss of Irwin is a loss to future interest in the field.

Rest in peace, Crocodile Hunter.

CRIKEY!

Last Post on Old Computer... No, Really This Time

2006-06-22T00:33:00.000-04:00

This is also the final time I am using my old computer. I know I said this before, and then ended up looking like a goof after I screwed up the implementation of that one, but seriously this time. After this, I am finally switching fully over to the new machine. It works, got everything up and running, I've just been using both.

But this machine has been acting a bit funky. She's been a good girl, but it's time to retire this one and move onto the next.

So until I finally have something relevant to say... Rock on.

I Hath Returned... Sort Of.

2006-06-22T00:26:00.001-04:00

Okay. Long hiatus, but I have returned.

The reasons for my temporary abandonment of the blog are multitude, but I'll run down the important ones.

I originally intended this to be more or less about politics and philosophy. Soon after I started this, I hit a period where I was absolutely and ridiculously jaded about life. I felt that my nation's politics had entered a point of such ridiculous idiocy, that there was no point in bothering writing about it. So I wrote stupid little things instead, dumb jokes and posts about random girls licking things. It was all very boring. So I quit.

Now I am back. I'll be reevaluating if I even want all my old posts here, but I'll start new stuff in a day or two.

So until then... Rock on, kids.

010203040506

2006-04-05T01:02:00.000-04:00

Using American notation, the time and date was just at:

01:02:03 04/05/06

How cool is that?

One Year of KnightErrant

2006-03-20T01:02:00.000-05:00

It's been one year since I made my first post!

(It has also been almost two months since I posted...but oh well.)

195 posts later, and I still manage to occasionally put stuff up here. Cool.

I'd like to take this anniversery moment to plug Cloudstrider again. Both the old blog at community.livejournal.com/cloudstrider as well as the brand new forum at www.cloudstrider.com!

Rock on, kids, time for a nap.

The Knight Is Confused

2006-01-25T00:43:00.000-05:00

Who's on first!
What's on second!
I don't know!
THIRD BASE!

Another Chapter of Eminent Domain

2006-01-18T00:42:00.000-05:00

Once again, politicians abuse Eminent Domain statutes to take away from the little guy and give to the more-connected and politically favored guy.

KTLA, an LA news source, reports that the city of Los Angeles seized the property of furniture manufacturer Vaughan Benz in South Los Angeles, supposedly to build a new animal shelter.

A year later, there is an effort by Councilman Bernard C. Parks to sell the property to a company called Cisco Bros., which oddly enough is also a FURNITURE MANUFACTURER.

Now, why would the government take property away from a furniture manufacturer, and when they decide they might not want an animal shelter after all, sell it to a different furniture manufacturer?

The possible key difference between Vaughan Benz and Cisco Bros.? Cisco Bros. executives have political connections and have made $17,500 in campaign contributions to city leaders... including $1,000 to Parks and $1,500 to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

If there has been a more blatant display of graft in these Eminent Domain suits, I have not yet seen it. That's just shameful.

And on that sad note, I'm off. Rock on, kids.

I Have A Copyright

2006-01-17T00:23:00.000-05:00

This piece from the Washington Post is somewhat tragically ironic. It notes that Martin Luther King's full "I Have a Dream" speech is often not heard in the classroom, because MLK's family controls and enforces the copyrights on it. It leads to the situation where the poorest institutions - such as minority-populated poor urban schools - cannot hear the speech.

Still Alive, If It Can Be Called Such

2006-01-16T01:39:00.000-05:00

Yes, yes, Lo and Behold Knighterrant is still alive. Whoopdie do.

I got caught up in several things. Firstly, I finished Neverwinter Nights and all the expansions and premium modules. Great game, simply awesome.

Then I got caught up in a few things. One of which was a strange thread over on Cloudstrider where a new member named Ragnarok20 decided that drunk driving should be legal. Needless to say, just about everyone else disagreed with him and it sparked a fierce argument. (Calling it a "Discussion" or "Debate" would be generous.) Read it, if you feel so inclined.

But I'm off. Rock on.

Challenger

2006-01-11T00:51:00.000-05:00

The Dodge Challenger. [Photo at Yahoo! News]

I want one.

Or Not!

2006-01-08T22:54:00.000-05:00

Apparently, the architecture changes were just too much for my old hard drives to run on my old installation. Windows won't load up on my new computer.

Apparently, I'm getting a SATA drive sooner than I thought. And using up some of my precious installation keys. Bummer.

Oh well. No bottlenecks anywhere on my system at least, once I get the fucker running.

Anyway, I'm not big on Newgrounds, but I was directed at this little music video by a buddy of mine. I recommend it, it brightens one's day.

The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny

...Remember when I used to do social-political commentary? What happened? Oh yeah, I had shit to do. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get back to it eventually.

Rock on, kids.

Old Computer Signing Off

2006-01-08T02:59:00.000-05:00

Well, it's served me (sorta) faithfully for five years, but this is the final post made from my old computer... well... if you don't count having to replace the motherboard... and the videocard... and the mouse... and the monitor... and the keyboard... and the freaking hard drive...

Okay, let me rephrase that. After I rebuilt it using non-craptastic non-Compaq parts, it served me reliably for years. However, in the wonderful world of Technology, even the most reliable items eventually have to be replaced due to impending obsolescence. Which makes me sad. :( <- See? That's me sad.

However, I finally got all the wiring/driver/etc. kinks worked out with my brand new, won't-be-obsolete-for-a-few-years-anyway computer. So this shall be the final post from this ole PC. It shall be gifted to my parents, and spend the remainder of it's operational life looking up marthastewart.com for my dear mother. (I feel kinda sorry for it.)

Rock on, Kids.

Proof That People Are Nuts

2006-01-06T01:05:00.000-05:00

This item on the 'Concerned Women For America' website proves that people worry too Goddamn much.

They are expressing concern that the Barbie website having a question about gender, with the available answers being 'I'm a Girl', 'I'm a Boy', and 'I Don't Know' will cause massive gender identity issues in children.

I say these people need to find a fucking hobby other than worry about what might turn their kid into raging homosexuals. It's genetic people. You can't catch homosexuality from something.

I note with much mirth that it’s usually people that crow loud and long about the immorality of it that end up being secretly gay themselves.

Such as this Baptist minister for example. How ironic.

Rock on, kids.

Efficiently Wasting Time

2006-01-04T00:56:00.000-05:00

I ran across the Experimental Gameplay website through another blog I read. Basically, the idea is this group of college folk would take a theme, and then have a week to program a game around it.

All games are simplistic, were programmed in about a week, and most are addictive as hell.

I recommend the classic Tower of Goo, by the way. Crazy stuff.

Have fun with this, but don't say I didn't warn you about it making your time vanish.

Rock on, kids!

Back In The Saddle Again

2006-01-03T01:16:00.000-05:00

First post of 2006! w00t!

I spent my New Year's rather intoxicated. But, as alcohol is wont to do, it wore off. Stupid booze.

Been a fun few couple of days, and now, as depressing as it is, it is time to return to the dreary world of jobs.

Rock on, kids. Don't drink and drive. (And no, I didn't.)

Sexy PC = = Aching Back

2005-12-29T23:07:00.000-05:00

Got all the PC parts in, finally, and spend about four hours wiring it up. I still need to pull my hard drives from this PC and put it in the new one before it all works, though. Bummer. Plus, my back hurts from being hunched over my case for most of the evening putting everything in it's proper place.

I really should wire up some SATA drives instead of reusing my IDE drives to take full advantage of what my new rig has to offer, but I just reinstalled everything a few weeks ago and I don't feel like using up any more of my precious MSDN installation keys (I only get so many, ya know!). In addition, reinstalling on a Dialup connection is a real PITA when it comes time for security patches.

No big rush, though. I still need to figure out how to fit a 20 inch full-tower case in a desk that has a tower hutch of 18 inches.

Fitting 20 inches of case in an 18 inch hutch is problematic, you see. It's 2 inches too big, and that just won't do.

So I can either take a hammer to my existing desk, or purchase myself a new one. Decisions, decisions.

I'm gonna go lie down now. Rock on, kids.

Computational Goodness

2005-12-27T23:44:00.000-05:00

Firstly, I'd like to say I hope everyone had a pleasant Holiday. Welcome to the week where jack shit gets done, because next weekend is New Year's.

It is also apparently a week that is out to get me. You know it's gonna be a good time when everything is so iced over, you literally cannot get out of your driveway. I sat today spinning my wheels, because all the snow and ice melted in the slightly warmer weather and promptly refroze as night fell. It took me forty five minutes, a shovel, two pieces of plywood, and a lot of patience to chip enough ice away that I could get some traction and get out to get to work. As I was doing this, I could think of nothing but the ridiculousness of the situation. (Stupid dirt driveway.)

Also today, I misplaced the RFID keyfob I use to clock into work. Having to knock on windows to get people's attention to get in, while also being very late? Yeah, that's a good time... (Hmm, still need to look for that stupid fob...)

Secondly, I made a post a few days ago reporting that the DHS roughed up some college kid over requesting a copy of the Little Red Book. Well, he's been found out. The story was fraudulent. I WAS TRICKED! Who makes shit up like that? What a dickhead.

I suppose the scariest part about it was how easy it was to believe. We live in a time where our President has admitted that he ordered the NSA to spy on Americans, and expects us to thank him for it. So the idea that DHS agents were checking library book lists for people reading "Un-American" items seemed rather credible.

It's sad it's come to that, really. I wish I had read it and been able to think with a clear conscious that it was a load of bullshit, but so much doubt has been cast upon our government that I didn't even blink. I was outraged, but not even really surprised. It was just so plausible. And the fact that everyone believed it off the bat does not bode well for how America views its government at the current time.

Lastly, I don't really enjoy being perpetually single, but there are benefits. For example, not having to justify myself to anyone when I drop $1600 on a brand spanking new PC. Mwah ha. 3800+ AMD Venice-core processor. 2 gigabytes of Corsair DDR-400 RAM. GeForce GTX 7800 Video Card. 320 Gigabytes of harddrivey goodness. And a power supply that puts off so much juice I could probably use it as a space heater in winter.

I spent $170 on the case. Why the hell did I spend $170 on a gorgeous Fulltower, when I could've gotten a good Midtower for $100 less? Because I could, that's why. The fucker has enough room for six hard drives for God's sake. Two 120 mm fans! Everything lights up! It's awesome! I just wish I had thought to check how tall my hutch was before I bought the case though, because it's actually an inch and a half too big to fit into my desk. Nothing that taking a hammer to my desk won't fix though.

Also, I really don't want to buy a new system for at least five years so this sucker is designed for a bit of adaptability. My current configuration can take up to 4 gigs of ram, and supports SLI if I feel like dropping another $450 on a second GTX. Fulltower leaves me a lot of room to play, and it even has a motherboard tray for ease-of-swapout when it comes time to upgrade the mobo and CPU.

Mmm. SLI. That’s gonna be fun. I think I’ll do that sooner rather than later.

Okay, I know out of my three readers, two of you don't give a shit, so I'll stop rambling about my computer now. Sorry. I'm a big dork and I love my Tech. I figure I buy a new system every five years (and upgrade here and there as time passes), and my next system will be when I'm thirty. By that time, I'll probably be Mr. Family Man, looking for El-Cheepo PC to run spreadsheets on to figure out my mortgage. Brr. Scary.

This is my last Gaming rig, and I wanted it to do everything but make me breakfast in the morning. Don't worry though, I promise I'll try not to do so much upgrading that it becomes self aware and takes over the world. ;)

(What is really sad is five years from now, I will read the specifications I just posted and chuckle. I occasionally chuckle at the computer I bought when I was fifteen. 166 MHz Pentium, man! 16 Megs of RAM... which I promptly upgraded to 32! A 3.1 GB hard drive! Uber1337, man! Uber1337! Ahh, the technology of the mid 1990's. Good times.)

Anyway, I'm done. I need to go look for my keyfob so I can actually get into work without banging on the door tomorrow.

Rock on.

Merry Christmas!

2005-12-24T04:01:00.000-05:00

Ahh, been a few days. The Holidays are a busy time for many people, and that includes me. I don't think I'll be back until after Christmas, so a Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays (whatever you prefer) to my few regular readers and also to any poor saps that randomly stumble upon my inane ramblings.

Now, just a bit of commentary about a man named Bill. Bill O'Reilly, to be exact. I have something to say that really must sent off in his direction, in regards to him believing "Secular Forces" are out to "Destroy Christmas." That something being: "Dumbass."

"War on Christmas?" Gee whiz, I don't know if you looked around recently, but I think Christmas is winning. I could do a line-by-line refutation of his pieces, but reading it again and realizing how stupid the whole thing is and that people actually believe him... that would just make me unhappy. So I won't read it again.

Suffice to say: There is no War on Christmas. It is all in Bill O'Reilly's head. I don't think that the 80-85% of Americans who celebrate Christ's birth have anything to worry about from the Secular side of America.

You want to worry about Christmas being destroyed? Blame retailers from ripping out all the good feelings that Christmas was supposed to have and turning it into an angry stressful Consumerfest. Overcommercialization is more of a threat to Christmas than the American atheist minority. So stop fighting battles where they don’t exist.

Okay, that's enough negativity for one evening! Enjoy your weekend, folks!

Merry Christmas!

DHS Investigates College Student for Library Book

2005-12-19T00:35:00.000-05:00

(Link to Story, via South Coast Today/The Standard Times website)

A student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth requested the book Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, a.k.a. "The Little Red Book" via his school library's interlibrary loan program to help him complete a research paper on Communism.

He was, instead, treated to a visit from a pair of Department of Homeland Security agents.

This is utter bullshit. It's to the point where they're investigating anyone with "Significant Travel Abroad," although who gets to define “Significant” is anyone's guess, and who happens to check out a book that's on a "Watch List?" What happened to freedom of the press, free exchange of ideas, freedom of speech? I personally think it would be nice to NOT have to worry about Federal Agents paying me a little visit just because I read something they don't agree with!

What has our country become?

UPDATE: This story was fake. What an asshole. News article here. My thoughts on the story are posted as the second item on this post

We're Getting a Spaceport!

2005-12-16T04:52:00.000-05:00

Virgin Galactic, the company whose name is kinda cheesy, is building a commercial spaceport in New Mexico. Read the AP Article here at CBS ews.

Nothing really stunning, but we are getting something named Spaceport, officially. My goal of flying around in an Millennium Falcon-esque somethingorother comes one day closer.

Rock on, kids.

Video Game Myths Debunked

2005-12-13T00:37:00.000-05:00

A nice piece on video game myths by Professor Harry Jenkins of MIT. Give it a read.

And in other news...

2005-12-12T01:00:00.000-05:00

...A professor at the University of Kansas had the living bejesus kicked out of him by two guys for calling Intelligent Design "Mythology."

In a related story, two Kansas men proved they were hypocrites for kicking the shit out of a professor in the name of one Jesus of Nazareth, a historical man known for his dedication to pacifism.

Nice job guys. Way to display your lack of intelligence. You can't defeat someone in debate so you assault them to show your devotion to your religion. Congrats!

I hate hypocrites.

Cloudstrider Post

2005-12-09T01:36:00.000-05:00

I put something over on Cloudstrider, a philosophy / debate community blog I'm a member of.

Go ahead on over to CS and read the piece over there.

Join up if you want, as well, we can always use new people.

Rock on, kids.

The Revolution Comes Cheap!

2005-12-08T01:23:00.000-05:00

Apparently, the Nintendo Revolution will be quite inexpensive, with price estimates ranging from $99 to $200. Sure as heck beats the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, which retail (or will retail) at roughly three times the midline estimate of the Revolution.

So, the Revolution will be dirt cheap, and I could potentially play the entire backlog of Nintendo games on it? Sold, man. Even with the whacko controller, I’m all for it.

Rock on, kids.

Hey, Where Did I Go?

2005-12-07T02:28:00.000-05:00

I don't know either! Just never seemed to get around to updating it these past few days. Which is a real pity, because I actually have some decent essays burning around in my brain, and all you guys (my blessed three readers!) get is gibberish.

But five things I have learned on my unintentional hiatus:

1) Stitches itch. To answer Leigh Ann's question of "What the heck?" to my last rambling post, I had a biopsy done to the top of my skull. Stitches and cauterization. Blah! The cauterization, i.e. the thing that sounded like an electric arc welder being used on my skull, stung a bit. And the stitches itch.

2) I am not done with homework. I seriously thought my homework days were done after I graduated college. As I sat redoing scripts at my desk at home yesterday, I realized that I was really, really wrong.

3) Apparently, I need more sleep. Tonight will have marked the fourth time in about a week I basically dropped dead at 7 o’clock. Evidently my body is not appreciative of my current four hours of sleep a night.

4) Murphy’s Law is still in effect. As is evident by me breaking the hood release lever on my car minutes before I was supposed to take it in to have the oil changed. Stupid cheap plastic.

5) Escapa! Flash games are awesome. Play this! Sometimes it’s the simple games that are the most addicting. Also, if you beat 41.25 seconds, you beat my current best score.

Okay, so that wasn’t really something that was particularly illuminating, but I didn’t have a fifth thing to say. So just play the game already!

Anyway, back to bed. Rock on, kids.

Ouch!

2005-12-02T01:02:00.000-05:00

So instead of going to work today, I was getting sliced up by a doctor.

The needles didn't really hurt. The scalpel really didn't hurt, surprisingly enough. The stiches didn't hurt. But the cauterization! Now that stung more than a little. They had this thing that sounded like an electric welder, except instead of metal it was being used on me. Roasting flesh is not a good smell, especially when its your own.

Ahh, the smell of cooking Knighterrant in the morning. Smells like... OW! SHIT! OW!

Rock on, kids.

Anime Article in Fortune Magazine

2005-11-30T01:31:00.000-05:00

An interesting article in Fortune Magazine concerning the business practices of Anime/Manga firms in the US.

An interesting lesson to be learned. The Anime industry caters to fans, treating them well. In return, the fans become (rabidly) loyal and the industry gets a lot of profit for a minimal investment.

Other current industries... let's use the mainline movie and music industry as an example... not only doesn't cater to fans, but actively treats them like criminals. It also seems to assume it is owed money, even when the content has become crap. Its fans become alienated, and the purchasing declines. When they see their incomes shrink, instead of saying to themselves "Hmm, this is a problem. Let's start to accommodate our fans and offer them better content," they say "Hmm, this is a problem. Let's load up our DVD's with even more restrictions to prevent piracy, and we better heavily advertise more pointless unoriginal crap because original content is too much of a risk."

Hence, we get "Mission Impossible 7" loaded with Digital Rights Management software that melts down your computer if you have ever even thought about having an Internet connection. They are shocked and outraged that no one will buy it, and assume it is because of piracy (not the lack of quality or bite-the-hand-that-feeds business practices), and gets even more irate with every passing iteration of this cycle.

Meanwhile, mostly unconcerned about piracy because fans tend to purchase real copies anyway (either out of loyalty and support of the product they enjoy or because they want a better quality item than the one they downloaded off the Internet) and understanding that loyalty and trust is a two way street, the Anime industry makes sure to cater to fans. These few Anime companies are quietly make a killing, relying almost totally on word of mouth to carry their product. And it works. That, my good people, is a nice business model.

Rock on, kids.

The System Is Down!

2005-11-27T23:59:00.000-05:00

This post has nothing of relevance to anyone but me. But just in case my three or so readers are wondering where the hell I've been:

Back on Friday, I was just getting home from the bar and I was going to blog on how I almost hit a herd of stupid deer (there was at least six doe, just milling around in the middle of the freaking road!). I came in, sat down at my desk, and flipped on my computer. Then this popped up on the screen:

"Windows cannot start because the following file is missing or corrupted: C:\Windows\System32\Config\System"

Oh beautiful. The system file is broke. There's some major anal pillaging, right there. So Automated System Recovery requires floppy disks (whoops! I no longer have a floppy drive! Haven't needed one since the invention of thumb drives with several hundred times the capacity of floppies, you know...), so I can't use that. The windows recovery console? It's just an emasculated version of DOS. Seriously, utterly useless in my current predicament.

Reinstalling. Oh, there's some good news. Fortunately, I had a spare hard drive lying around. Installed Windows on that drive, and I still have all my files on my old drive intact. Fresh clean install, connect to the Internet... Ten minutes, I was hit with spyware. I hate those people.

I was hit that fast because I was using the original release of XP Pro. No security updates, and there was some pretty big holes in the first release. Thankfully, I have an Microsoft Developer's Network subscription. Mmm. New releases. Slap SP2 on here, and I'm good to go. Not fond of SP2 due to some of it's changes, but it's far better than getting bombarded by people using the security holes to send me "CLICK HERE NOW!!!!1!" popups.

Operating system is reinstalled, security patches in place, Antivirus and Antispyware all back on and updated. (Oh yeah, and I patched Ultima Online back up too. Must have games...) Had to lug my tower over to a friend's house to hook up to his DSL connection to get all the stuff (Dial-up just won't work for that sort of thing anymore, too many megs per download), but I'm finally back up and running. My harddrives are running pretty hot for some reason, though. Need a casefan. Other than that, smooth sailing.

But I'm still fairly mad. I shouldn't of had to waste all my time reinstalling everything. Random file corruptions shouldn't happen. Am I really that far out of line to ask things to work reliably? I think not.

They just need someone like me in Microsoft QC. I'm show them what's what. :)

Oh well. Rock on, kids.

Happy Thanksgiving

2005-11-24T01:15:00.000-05:00

Have a good Holiday, kids. Enjoy the turkey. (Or the tofu, if you are inclined to vegetarianism.)

On Paying Thousands for the Xbox 360

2005-11-22T23:13:00.000-05:00

Not that any of my whopping three readers are scrambling to buy an Xbox 360 in the next three days, but for those who stumble upon this considering shelling out three to five thousand dollars on E-bay for one... This is directed at you.

People... Just wait a month. No, really. Stop E-baying. The console is NOT worth 3,000. There are maybe two games worth playing right now. There really isn't a rush. Wait a few months, and there will be whole slew of shiny new games for your enjoyment, and a much cheaper 360.

The system isn't vanishing tomorrow. It'll be around for another five years or so. Another month won't make too much of a difference, and will save you about $2,500 over buying it off an E-bay grifter. You shell out the big bucks now to rub it in people's faces that you have a 360 and they don't, in thirty to sixty days they'll have one two and will have a lot more cash than you do.

Patience!

A'ight. I feel like I've been ground up in the gears of life, so I'm off to bed. Rock on, kids.

CNN: Executed Man May Have Been Innocent

2005-11-21T00:46:00.000-05:00

Link to the CNN Story

Cases like this are the reason I cannot in good conscious support capital punishment. The inherent imperfection of humanity lends itself to imperfect justice, and the fact that our justice system is imperfect makes the permanence of death an improper possible sentence.

IT Gigolo

2005-11-17T01:04:00.000-05:00

I ran across this via Boing Boing. The IT Gigolo "Ray Digerati" (which is not his real name... and IT stands for Information Technology, by the way... computers and stuff) fixes women’s' computers in exchange for sexual favors.

I'll be dipped. Apparently, I've been going about this all wrong. But it just didn't occur to me that there would be women willing to trade sex for virus removal.

Of course, once word of this begins to disseminate... Two things will happen.

One, a large number of geeky people who are only talked to when someone wants their computers fixed will start asking for sexual favors.

Two, a large number of geeky people will be subsequently slapped. (But hey, it could be worth a try. :-P)

Rock on, kids.

Work@Home

2005-11-16T00:57:00.000-05:00

Work is something I try to avoid mention of during the course of blogging, but today it's all I really have. There’s other stuff I want to blog on, but I don’t have the time.

I work for a software company, and we're involved in a "crunch time" situation. Product release is next week, so we have to work like mad to get everything done.

I was reviewing my ETC's (estimated time to completion) which represent how much time I need, and then thought about how much time I ACTUALLY have, and realized that "Time Needed" exceeded "Time Available."

By, you know, about two weeks.

Well, we can't have that. I sort of dig gainful employment, so I had to do something I didn't really want to do. Work at home. On my free time.

I could stay at the office, but I don't get paid overtime, after all, since I'm salaried. No point in it, all I'd be accomplishing is having to drive home in the dark, and probably end up with another deer through my windshield. So I bring my stuff home and work on my own PC in the comfort of my own abode. I can't do everything here than I can do there, but I can do enough paperwork and stuff to cut my time down by a good margin.

So here I am. And what am I doing? Procrastinating.

It reminds me of college, really. Only without the alcohol, women, and anything resembling fun. God, I miss college.

Oh well. Time to return to the work.

Rock on, kids.

Dialup: It's Craptastic!

2005-11-14T00:25:00.000-05:00

I remember a day, long since past, where I would've committed felonies to get the 33k I eke out today. This is no longer the case.

One of the worst things about playing MMORPG's (That's Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games... Read this old post of mine if you still have no clue what the hell I'm referring to) is that if you leave for a while, you return to patches. Patches are fun little bits of code they have you download to repair problems in the program. ("Patches" fix "Holes" in the code, you see. Get it? Ha ha!)

Most programs have patches. The problem with an MMORPG is that if you don't have the patches, the game will not work. Everyone has to have the same code, after all, or it will be somewhat screwy. And the games change often. Very often. Statistic balances, race balances, class balances, new items, new monsters, bug fixes, exploit fixes, new features… When something changes, they patch it. The longer you don’t play, the more patches you have to download before you can play again. Downloading seventy six megs of patches on a line that does 33.3 is something that is NOT GOOD.

It took me four hours to download the first thirty one meg patch. When I found out there was a thirty five meg patch behind it... Yeah, there was swearing.

Whining done. Rock on, kids.

Access Denied!

2005-11-12T09:28:00.000-05:00

There is nothing more annoying to a technophile such as myself than being denied access to the Internet. It is a semi-frequent occurrence to me, and the only problem I have with my Internet service provider. Other than this, my ISP is great. (As great as Dial-up can be, anyway. It's a downside of living in the sticks.)

After a hard day's work yesterday, I sat down at my computer and ran through the connection, only to be told my username or password was wrong.

Well, it's not my username. That's saved. So I must've mistyped my password. A rare occurrence, but a possible one. I carefully retyped my password and tried again. And again. And again, and again, and again. I certainly don't do it wrong THAT much.

So if someone at an ISP could explain why, at random intervals, the server decides to reject my password for hours, it would be appreciated and informative.

(And no, I did not constantly try for hours on end. I tried about once every twenty minutes for three hours before giving up and going to bed.)

It's not a good feeling, being denied access. And the less that happens, the better I feel (and the longer I'll continue to pay my ISP!).

Rock on, kids.

Urban Legend

2005-11-11T00:09:00.000-05:00

About four years back, I played a real dumb joke on some people I knew. Four friends of mine and I decided we were going to walk through the cemetery near our college on Halloween night. Why? Because it was Halloween night! Duh.

Well, the cemetery was cold and boring. It's filled with dead people after all. They don't really do a whole lot.

So on our way back, one of my friends decided I should go sit in the Student Center, while they returned to our dorm and pretended not to notice I was gone until someone brought it up.

Well, I was sitting on a bench bored out of my mind, and I decided to crank my watch back an hour.

So my friends returned (actually a different set of friends. they were the "search party"), and amazingly enough, reported that some members of the gullible crowd of my dorm actually bought the fact I was missing. Ignoring the fact it was Halloween and that we were prank prone idiots.

Anyway, I returned with the search party, and acted indignant at them taking off without me. I also mentioned the time according to my watch.

Jaws dropped. Had I really lost an hour of my life? "Holy crap," one resident cried, "You went through a temporal vortex!"

Me, I was trying not to laugh.

Four years later, my friend (the one that originally suggested the prank) was walking by the selfsame cemetery. A group of kids from my Alma Mater were outside, looking in.

One of them was recounting a tale, in the same tone of voice as one would tell the tale of the Headless Horseman or whatnot.

"And when they got back to where they lost track of him," he said, "they found out he thought only a few minutes had passed! He was missing for an hour!"

My friend had to reach deep within himself to not yell "IT WAS US!!!"

The prank has passed into Urban Legend. And I, for some reason, am now ridiculously happy I decided to wind my watch back that fine evening.

Rock on, kids.

No More Vanilla Coke?! CURSES!

2005-11-09T00:42:00.000-05:00

They're getting rid of Vanilla Coke!

This is a tragedy! Of epic proportions! They're canning (or rather, they're no longer canning) my favorite soft drink!

NOOOOO!!!

A tragedy, a travesty, and it is just plain unpleasantish! I certainly can't switch to Pepsi Vanilla... just doesn't taste right. They have too much sweetener in it.

Ya know, first my local Wal-Mart, may the chain be forever cursed, stopped carrying Tommyknocker Strawberry Creme. And now this!

I’m not a huge fan of Regular Coke, so there goes switching to the “basic product.” I suppose I'll have to go back to drinking plain old icewater. It's better for ya anyway.

Oh well. Rock on, kids.

November 8th!

2005-11-08T00:33:00.000-05:00

GO VOTE!

Book Review: American Gods

2005-11-07T00:55:00.000-05:00

Just finished reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman. It was published back in '02, so it's not the newest book on the block but it's recent enough and interesting enough I'd thought I'd stick it up here.

American Gods follows the story of a man named Shadow. (His mother must've wanted him to get beat up in school.) Shadow is released from a short stint in prison, only to find his beloved wife was killed in a car wreck only a day or two before his release. Lost and alone in the world, he accepts a job as bodyguard and errand-boy for the enigmatic Mr. Wednesday, an aging con-man who has as many secrets as he has lies.

In his travels, Shadow finds out that gods and legends of old roam America. Odin, Anubis, leprechauns, dwarves, Loa, and a multitude more hide in plain sight throughout the country; brought over by immigrants through belief alone. And before long he ends up caught in a war of the divinities, the old gods versus the gods of modern day: the gods of Television, the Internet, cars, and technology.

The book is a highly unusual and interesting read, but is not without its faults. The premise is actually quite good, but the execution is at times fairly confusing and hard to follow. I can definitely see the meandering style as a major put-off to some people, but for those who decide to be patient enough to follow it (which may include some re-reading at points) will be pleased for the most part.

The disjointedness of the book, however, leads to an equally disjointed and somewhat dissatisfying ending, at least in my mind. The problem is not exactly solved, per se, but rather it just sort of goes away. And it's not the fact that it's not a happy ending that bothers me as much as it's not even bittersweet. Gods are dead, people are dead, and nothing really happens from it. It also reminds me a bit of the ending of Lord of the Rings. Not that it's anywhere near as good as Tolkien's epic, but it reminds me of it because of the way it ends. First, the problem is solved and the story ends. And then, it ends again. And then it ends again. And then again. Every time you think "Okay, it has to be over..." it's not. It just won't wrap up!

The literary digressions can also be a bit of a nuisance. Gaiman fits in secondary tales with very little bearing on the main plot. Two or so are interesting, but the rest just slow the story down.

But despite it's flaws, the story still managed to suck me it. Shadow has an interesting run: His wife returns from the dead (only she's still dead), he has a barfight with a Leprechaun, robs an ATM with Odin, sings Karaoke with African spider-god Anansi, and enjoys the "company" of the Egyptian goddess Bast... not to mention he has to deal with the goddess of television hijacking every TV show he watches to try to get him to switch sides, while Men-in-Black (who exist only because people believe they exist) hound his every step.

A more experienced reader with a love for mythology and strange stories will really enjoy American Gods. Less patient readers and those without much interest in old religions will probably be put off, and may possibly think Mr. Gaiman was smoking something when he wrote this.

I, however, enjoyed it. My grade is a B- (or rather, a C+ with a few extra points for originality and effort).

Rock on, kids.

Good New on Eminent Domain

2005-11-04T00:59:00.000-05:00

Well, it's not much, but this Yahoo news story on a successful House vote against property seizure is certainly good news.

Nineteen Years of Scouts

2005-11-02T00:43:00.000-05:00

Sorry to my three readers, but I'm going to go all sentimental and stuff.

A little history.

I joined Tiger Cubs, the lowest level of Cub Scouts, back in around 1986. I was all of six years old at the time, and in Kindergarten. I honestly don't even remember it. But I went through the motions, got my Arrow of Light (Highest Cub Scout award) and moved on to Boy Scouts.

I joined Troop 50, and just sort of never left. I'm a bona fide Eagle Scout, and I could have left after I got that. It's the highest award, after all, nothing really else to get. But my Troop was in a bit of a spot. The scoutmaster at the time was... well, incompetent. Overly strict, and just a few French fries short of the Happy Meal. The boys didn't like her. She was also misusing troop funds and treating the scouting outings as a family vacation that she had to bring the Scouts to. (She brought her parents, siblings, etc. to our camping trips, for Pete’s sake.) She was killing the troop. So I didn't leave, I just stayed on (at first by just not going away, and then as Assistant Scoutmaster) and did my best to hold my troop together. By the time she was done, we had only two boys left, down from around a dozen. I took over the recharter that time and took some "Creative License" to make Council think we still had the five minimum. It was dishonest, but I wasn't letting my troop die.

Eventually, she was pretty much run out of town, and a few other former Eagle scouts took over for a while as a buffer between permanent scoutmasters. I couldn’t take over any capacity bigger than what I was already doing, because I was in college at the time, and it was enough of a problem just to keep myself involved. But eventually, we got a new Scoutmaster who did quite well. An honest sort, with a lot of time to spend on the troop and a vested interest in making it better. Eventually, we also signed on a second Assistant Scoutmaster. We’re now back to about a dozen boys. A bit low on the cash, but we’re not in dire straits. The troop is doing well.

Meanwhile, my life has become more hectic and a lot less fun, and I just no longer had time to sacrifice to my troop.

So after nineteen years as a Scout, almost fifteen of them spent in Troop 50, and with five years behind me as an adult leader, I was forced today to step down from my post tonight.

Four-fifths of my life has been spent in Scouting, either as a youth or an adult leader, and I honestly can't remember the time before I was in the BSA. And now it’s done.

I’m a bit bummed.

But that’s all I got. Rock on, kids.

Myst V

2005-11-01T01:01:00.000-05:00

So here I am, playing Myst V. And not getting very far.

For those who are unaware... you poor slobs... Myst is a computer game. An adventure game, to be exact. The general idea is you have to make your way through these interesting worlds solving puzzles to progress through the story. They're real mindbenders. But it's the premise that drew me in. The premise is the characters in the game can write worlds... They have a language that, when written down, creates a "link" to the world described in the writing. I always loved that idea.

Anyway, me being an impatient fellow sometimes, I've never made it through one of the Myst games without looking up answers. In the original Myst, it was only one puzzle. In Riven, the sequel to Myst, it was two puzzles. In Myst III: Exile, I think I gave up about twenty minutes in and just cheated like a sonuvabitch. In Myst IV, I actually lasted surprisingly long, but eventually gave up. In the Myst spin-off "Uru" and its expansion packs "To D'ni" and "Path of the Shell", I would have done real well if some of the puzzles hadn't been "Stand still for fifteen minutes." What kind of puzzle is THAT? Honestly.

So anyway, Myst V: End of Ages is the LAST Myst game. Storyline over, c'est finis. So this is my FINAL chance to beat a Myst game without cheating.

And it really sucks. :( I'm stuck beyond ridiculousness. This will take me months.

Okay, rant over. Rock on, kids.

Daylight Savings Time: Can We Just Keep It?

2005-10-31T00:19:00.000-05:00

So for yet another year we turned back the clock and are now in Standard Time once again.

I fucking hate Standard Time. It gets dark now around 5:30. That is ridiculous. That SUCKS, in fact. Why don't we just keep it on Daylight Savings time? If we were to keep Daylight Savings time throughout winter, it would be dark in the morning, true. But on Standard time, it's light a bit earlier in the morning and we lose the tiny fraction of after-work light we might of otherwise had. It's depressing to think that I'm wasting all my daylight in a cubicle staring at a computer screen!

Then there is the turning all the clocks back. It’s a hassle! There are seven clocks in my house, five devices that have an internal clock that needs set, the clock in my car, and I have three watches. All need changed. Why should we bother?

In addition to personal preference, there are some practical reasons for this consideration. Not only does keeping it lighter longer save a bit of electric by us having our lights off during daylight hours, but lost productivity brought about by the general "local jet-lag" feeling that comes with every time change from us resetting our internal clocks will be eliminated. Plus, I dunno about you, but every car accident I've ever had -last week's deerstrike included- has occurred after dark due to visibility concerns. Driving home in the dark sucks! Keep it lighter and let people with long trips get back!

So what if one year is missing an hour? What’s an hour in the grand scheme of human history? Not a whole damn lot! But sacrificing one hour for that year will give us more daylight for ourselves and eliminate all the pain-in-the-ass effects of our twice-a-year timechange. It’s time to streamline the process and just stick to Daylight Savings!

Rock on, kids.

Wal-Mart: Always Low Benefits, Always!

2005-10-27T00:26:00.000-04:00

"Hey, Knight, how are you?"
"I just got a DEER planted through my goddamn WINDSHIELD."
"Oh..."

Deer are rock stupid sometimes. One just decided to use it's body to turn my pretty convex windshield into a not-so-pretty concave one. I hate losing my car to the repair shop for days... ARGH!

Okay, but onto the news: Varying news agencies have reported (Yahoo! News) that a Wal-Mart memo revealed that they're trying to figure out ways to cut employee benefits without harming their image...

CUT Employee benefits? To what? How can you cut something that's nearly noexistant? Maybe return to the Scrip system? Replace employee wages with store credit to reinforce company "loyalty?"

Now, I'm a bit tired (plus a fucking DEER just went through my car's WINDSHIELD), so I'll pick up this rant at another time after this final point:

Corporations like Wal-Mart are about the bottom line. Employees are just a line item. This is not an honest or fair system. By shopping at Wally-World, we're slowly self-poisioning our economy by purchasing cheap trash that also cost us manufacturing jobs due to outsourcing...

Basically... Shop local (When possible).

Rock on.

An Abstract Debate on Evolution vs. Intelligent Design

2005-10-24T23:49:00.000-04:00

Read this hypothetical debate between Evolution and ID. It's actually quite amusing.

Television Innovation

2005-10-23T23:46:00.000-04:00

I've noted something about television. It stinks. Really badly.

Innovation is not rewarded in American television. Indeed, it is actively discouraged. All they care to do is to take an existing idea and change the details. So if there is a successful show, they take the core idea of the show, take new characters and put them in a different place, change the name, and then market it as a new show.

Look at Survivor, for example. New idea, right? Spawned truckloads of imitators, right? Well, Survivor was just another imitator. The supposed "Granddaddy of Reality TV" was based on a Swedish TV show called Expedition Robinson. It aired because it was shown to work.

What else is often shown? Sitcoms, military dramas, crime dramas, etc. All shows that have been done before.

Now, take the flipside... Let's start with my favorite shows that got pillaged: Firefly! Firefly was an odd duck. A western in space, you see. It's characters were not squeeky clean Star-Trek types. In fact, they weren't even the "good guys." They were crooks, and there was a lot of good character development. It was interesting. It was new.

The reward for being new and interesting, was it got poor marketing, shown out of order (Really... To show a TV show out of it's intended order just isn't a good plan), and was cancelled.

Likewise, the other two series I like whining about ("Harsh Realm" and "The Lone Gunmen") were treated similarly.

Then let's take something completly different: Lost. Yes, the uberpopular TV show. Innovative, isn't it? New and unique? Has everyone talking around the watercoolers and whatnot? I've only seen the pilot so far, but I enjoyed it.

ABC Executive Lloyd Braun was the one who green-lighted the show. His reward for helping create such a popular new drama? He got fired!

An thusly lies the answer why people are watching less TV these days... Why new movie releases are flopping...

THE NEW SHOWS AND MOVIES ARE COOKIE CUTTER VERSIONS OF OLD ONES. And they also SUCK.

Oh well. Rock on, kids.

Jack Thompson v. Gamers

2005-10-21T01:14:00.000-04:00

Okay. World's gone crazy. (Well, the gaming world anyway.)

Jack Thompson (Wikipedia entry), in case you've randomly run across this weblog and do not happen to be particularly interested in the gaming industry, is a Florida lawyer who hates video games.

No, I mean HATES video games. Reading Jack's opinion, it sometimes seems he thinks they cause anyone who's ever touched a controller to steal, rape, and murder completely at random. It also causes your IQ to drop like a rock. Oh yeah, and it seems you're going to go to Hell for playing Super Mario Bros. that one time fifteen years ago.

Now, demonizing video games really isn't new. This has been happening since Doom and Mortal Kombat in the early '90's. It's still going on. Hillary Clinton does it all the time. She blames video games for violence, we make fun of her for it, and then we all go about our business as usual.

But the annoying things about Jack are he's a very LOUD individual who is not content with just going after the games. He attacks gamers. Frequently using religious language, he seems to think he is one of God's footsoldiers, and that the Almighty himself has given Jack the task of destroying the video game industry. Apparently, this Footsoldier of God is also a person who likes websurfing and who has a LOT of time on his hands, as he frequently visits video game websites and leaves taunting messages insulting the gaming community (calling us "drooling cretins" among other things). One of the most Jack-visited sites is GamePolitics. He also threatens to sue anyone who looks at him funny, and likes to use the phrase "OR ELSE" a lot.

So when you piss off a fairly large group of people, there is bound to be some backlash. Disregarding idiots who have been sending Thompson death-threats (Note to idiots... KNOCK THAT OFF. That really doesn’t help us AT ALL. In fact, sending Thompson death-threats actively HARMS our case.) there was a flood of complaints to the Florida Bar Association concerning his unprofessional conduct.

So many gamers reacted with glee this morning when it seemed that Thompson was under investigation due to the massive amounts of complaints received (Ars Technica article, Kotaku article).

However, Gamespot later wrote (article here) that Thompson was NOT under any new investigation. The Gamespot article also contains a letter from Jack Thompson that he apparently sent to the Bar. (Jack likes mass mailing his letters.) In it, he seems to conclude that every gamer who has sent a complaint to the Bar really works for Blank Rome, the law firm that works for Take-Two interactive. He also says that all the complaints are completely illegal and if the Florida bar processes them, it's risking breaking Federal law... (how that is possible I'm not sure, but I'll look into that.) Also, George W. Bush is worked in there somehow (Jack concludes that due to Blank Rome's high ties, apparently with Dubya himself, makes them think they can "run over" people who oppose them...).

Here's the fun part about the letters... They're rants. They're worse than my rants, quite frankly. Unabashedly calling people who oppose him idiots and sociopaths, he actually ended the letter in a threat to the Florida Bar.

Does that seem like a good plan to you? Threatening the entity that controls your license to practice law? Because it doesn't seem like a good plan to me.

Anyway, later on, Kotaku (article here) basically concludes, accurately, that everyone is confused. So we'll have to wait until tomorrow (or later) to find out what's going on.

So, final comments for this evening:
It is my personal opinion that Jack is completely insane. I can describe it no other way. He threatens gamers not just with litigation, but with Hellfire and Damnation. He believes God is on his side in this. That's a bad thing. Thinking they're correct on a religious level tends to make crazy people dangerous. He is also what is called, impolitely, an "Attention Whore." He doesn't send gaming websites copies of his letters out of the goodness of his heart. He does it to provoke a reaction. Understandably, the reaction is negative, and when we make it known we disagree with his "righteous" opinion, Jack uses this to reaffirm to himself that we are all incorrect, stupid, and evil.

I believe he can be described no other way than how he likes to describe us. "Sociopath." And because he is a scary attention whore sociopath, until it is confirmed he is or is not under investigation, this will be my last post on him.

Rock on, kids.

(As a side note, all sizes except 'Small' of ThinkGeek.Com's "I Hate Jack Thompson" T-shirt have been sold out.)

Jack Thompson... Jackass

2005-10-19T00:59:00.000-04:00

As Penny Arcade is reporting... Major Jerkoff Jack Thompson is trying to have Gabe and Tycho arrested for "Harassment." Calling Penny-Arcade an "Extortion Factory," Thompson insists that the good officers of Seattle shut them down...

So... Jack is mad that Tycho and Gabe donated the $10,000 he claimed he would and then changed his mind when the chips were down... What a humanitarian.

THOMPSON... QUIT... WASTING... PEOPLE'S... TIME.

That is all. Rock on.

Jack Thompson, Lawyer and Hypocrite

2005-10-18T01:00:00.000-04:00

Kudos to Tycho and Gabe over at Penny Arcade for extreme acts of generosity.

So the story goes basically like this: Jack Thompson, everyone's favorite Anti-Videogame lawyer, said in an open letter that he would pay $10,000 to a charity of Paul Eibeler's choice (Eibeler is the CEO of Take Two Interactive), if someone "created, manufactured, distributed, and sold" a video game based on his designs.

His designs (detailed here at the Advanced Media Network website) were that of the "Ultra Violent" video games he actively campaigns against, with the difference being that the targets in his video game was that you killed game company CEO's, employees of the game industry, store clerks at Best Buy and Target (for not checking kid's IDs), and finally gamers and programmers at E3.

Can you say Hypocrite? I knew you could!

Okay, yes this aimless post has a point. People, of course, called Jack's bluff and created his game. Nothing fancy, but it fit the definition.

Jack backpedaled. Hard. He claimed his entire "Modest Proposal" was satire, and the offer of the money was never real. (Asshat.)

So, Tycho and Gabe donated the ten grand to charity in his stead. Even donated it in his name. Nice, eh? (Post is here at Penny-arcade.com, third post down).

So, to recap:
Tycho and Gabe are awesome.
Jack Thompson sucks.

(Gabe also made a good point... If someone made Jack's game, would he then have to sue himself? Something to think about...)

Rock on!

Movie Review: A History of Violence

2005-10-17T00:57:00.000-04:00

A very abridged movie review today... Went to see "A History of Violence," so here's the minor analysis.

It's pretty good. I wasn't blown away, although I had a few friends who seemed to be. A decent film.

There is graphic violence, but it's sparse and appropriate. Only three major violent scenes and a few minor instances. The violence is graphic and realistic though. Blood, brains, and bone; as opposed to actors just going "I got shot so I'll jerk and fall over." And some sexual content, too, although not as bad as it could have been. Basically, don't take along Little Billy to see this film.

Story is fairly solid. It focuses in on one theme, and not much in the way of entwined subplots, but enough juice to keep it entertainign. It's good though. Acting is well done, too. The film itself is a bit short, running about an hour and a half. It could have used a few more scenes, but did well as it was.

Long story short, A History of Violence is a decent movie to spend a weekend night on; and is short enough you'll still have some free time afterward. Also: I am really tired and don't feel much like doing a good movie review.

A History of Violence, Grade: B.

Rock on.

Now With More Spies!

2005-10-14T00:31:00.000-04:00

Today, it was announced that the United States is creating a new Intelligence (ha!) branch called the National Clandestine Service.

Oooh, yay, we get more spies! As if we don't have enough spies? Seriously! We have the CIA, the FBI's NSS, the DIA, the NSA, the CSS, the NRO and God knows what other acronyms!

(The acronyms are, just in case you want to look them up, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Security Service, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Central Security Service, the National Reconnaissance Office, and so on and so forth.)

The US employs thousands of people and pays millions of dollars a year ...hell, probably billions... to find out other people's business. So we need another branch? How about reorganizing our current branches instead of layering on more bureaucracy to an already apparently inefficient and ineffective system?

Not to mention, do we really NEED that many people? Root through all those agencies long enough, they could probably tell you want I have for breakfast. Who the hell cares what I had for breakfast? I don't even care anymore. How about worrying about the real enemies instead of being Big Brother? Hmm? Too many details and you lose the big picture sometimes! (And this should probably go in a separate rant... Yeah, let's save that one for tomorrow. Back to the new branch.)

So just back in June, Dubya created the National Security Service. He also created the Department of Homeland Security, which seems to dabble in spying from time to time (On people that live here...). Apparently, those aren't enough. We need ANOTHER one.

And the best part... The director of this new service? Shhh! It's a secret!
That's right... The director's identity is secret! Woo! Yay, spying!

*Sigh* Now look. I'm not so naive to say the United States should do away with it's intelligence gathering entities... It's an ugly world and we have a great big bullseye painted on us. I'm just saying that we do too much, with too little focus, and do it too inefficiently. It's another example of the system becoming more important than the reason the system was created. It will end up doing less, costing more, and providing more avenues for people who shouldn't be in there to become members of our intelligence community. Furthermore, keeping the whole organization a secret prevents pretty much any oversight and will in turn lead to greater corruption. That's all I'm saying.

Okay, I said my piece. Rock on.

(And by the way, my breakfast was Honey Bunches of Oats. The kind with the dried peaches.)

Eight Hours Rest, Eight Hours Recreation My Arse

2005-10-12T23:42:00.000-04:00

So way back when, when people were trying to get labor laws enacted (concerning the eight-hour working day), the chant was "Eight Hours Work, Eight Hours Rest, Eight Hours Recreation!"

It was a good chant. I like that chant. Except it's not terribly accurate anymore.

My day is not eight hours work, eight hours rest, eight hours recreation.

It's nine hours work, one hour going to or from work, one hour getting ready for work, five hours of doing work that's not related to work, four hours of worrying about work, and four hours completly passed out (and usually dreaming about work).

And that's just me. Imagine the workaholics of the nation!

We need to reprioritize, I think. I really need more of the rest and recreation part of that chant.

Emperor Norton I of the United States

2005-10-12T00:12:00.000-04:00

Wikipedia featured this article today. It's one of the funnier things I've read.

Basically boils down to this: Mr. Joshua A. Norton declared himself the Emperor of the United States. And because he had the conviction that he was (you know, being borderline nuts and all), and the brass to say it... People treated him darn near like an Emperor. Police saluted him, he issued his own currency, people defered to him, and even though he died near-penniless, his funeral was well appointed and featured front-page of the two largest newspapers of his city. 30,000 people attended his funeral.

It's just... Interesting.

That's all I got though. Rock on.

Even More Fun with Eminent Domain!

2005-10-10T23:50:00.000-04:00

It all started with a Pfizer plant in New Hampshire. Then it was a yacht club in Florida. And now it's a stadium in Washington.

Once upon a time, the only way the Government could take your home was for a true public use... Highways, schools, and such. Now, if the town can make money by selling you out and tossing you on the street, they will. And seemingly, there is exactly nothing you can do about it.

Of course, the common tie in all this is greed. Someone else is profiting by dispossessing common folk, and it sure as hell is NOT the common folk. Corporate interests, multi-millionaire businessmen, politicians... They used to at least pretend they had our interests at heart. Now, all the lies are vague and thin. After all, the law is on their side now, so the lies don't even have to be that good. Who cares if tens or hundreds or even thousands lose their homes? Apparently not the people who are supposed to be our representatives.

Corporate interests need a new office? You're out on your ass.
Millionaires need a place to park their boats? Kiss your waterfront property goodbye.
The right palms get greased during the planning of a ballpark? Your house is as good as bulldozed.

Up next? Well, just about everything goes. There will be eminent domain for businesses of all stripes, but especially those that cater to the same people that will toss you out of your family house without a second thought.

So much for the American Dream, eh?

Congratulations... We're no longer citizens. We're a bunch of serfs with delusions of freedom.

Serenity

2005-10-09T02:08:00.000-04:00

Well, I know I had something important to write... But that was well before I spent the evening sharing drinks with a lovely young lady fairly hanging off me. That usually doesn't happen. It was a good day.

Anyway, I saw Serenity earlier. It's the movie continuation of the television series Firefly, that I mentioned a few posts earlier.

Serenity viewers can be divided into two categories. Those who have seen Firefly, and those who haven't.

For fans of the original series, Serenity is quite the treat. It explains a lot, from the layout of the system, more on River and Simon's escape from the Alliance, to the origins of the Reavers... It was cool. Also some things that may shock some fans too. Ending is fairly bittersweet, kids, but still a great flick.

For folks who have never seen Firefly, some "inside jokes" or finer details may be missed, or events may lack the emotional impact; however, I had two of my cousins with me who had never seen Firefly and both reported positive views on the movie. Even though you may not automatically know the characters, they do a decent job of getting each character's personality across even if they do pretty much jump into the action.

In short, I was not disappointed with Firefly. Serenity does not fail me either. It's good stuff.

So, Final Grade!
For Firefly fans: A. A definite must-see
For Others: B. A solid, enjoyable film.

Friday! Also... Al Gore!

2005-10-08T01:35:00.000-04:00

Friday nights. Usually don't blog anymore on Fridays, because I'm in town and a few drinks into my night around this time.

This weekend I'm watching all the episodes of Firefly instead, so I can go see Serenity and know what the hell's going on. That works too.

Leaves me at a loss about what to write on. So I'll start with I HATE SPAM. In all it's forms. Alas, my blog seems to be a spam-magnent and I don't know why. It's troublesome, though, always having to track down and delete those damn spam messages in my Comments. :( I wish the stupid people would just go away. Ah well.

On a more serious note, my "Politics Radar" (And by that I mean a buddy who said "Hey, read this!") picked up a remarkable speech by none other than Al Gore. I never really liked Mr. Gore a whole lot, and he's lost a lot of political capital with his White House bid... But this speech is phenominal. It's also long, so yeah, have fun with that.

I came here today because I believe that American democracy is in grave danger. It is no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse . I know that I am not the only one who feels that something has gone basically and badly wrong in the way America's fabled "marketplace of ideas" now functions.

How many of you, I wonder, have heard a friend or a family member in the last few years remark that it's almost as if America has entered "an alternate universe"?

I thought maybe it was an aberration when three-quarters of Americans said they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on September 11, 2001. But more than four years later, between a third and a half still believe Saddam was personally responsible for planning and supporting the attack.

At first I thought the exhaustive, non-stop coverage of the O.J. trial was just an unfortunate excess that marked an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. But now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time.

Are we still routinely torturing helpless prisoners, and if so, does it feel right that we as American citizens are not outraged by the practice? And does it feel right to have no ongoing discussion of whether or not this abhorrent, medieval behavior is being carried out in the name of the American people? If the gap between rich and poor is widening steadily and economic stress is mounting for low-income families, why do we seem increasingly apathetic and lethargic in our role as citizens?

On the eve of the nation's decision to invade Iraq, our longest serving senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor asked: "Why is this chamber empty? Why are these halls silent?"

The decision that was then being considered by the Senate with virtually no meaningful debate turned out to be a fateful one. A few days ago, the former head of the National Security Agency, Retired Lt. General William Odom, said, "The invasion of Iraq, I believe, will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."

But whether you agree with his assessment or not, Senator Byrd's question is like the others that I have just posed here: he was saying, in effect, this is strange, isn't it? Aren't we supposed to have full and vigorous debates about questions as important as the choice between war and peace?

Those of us who have served in the Senate and watched it change over time, could volunteer an answer to Senator Byrd's two questions: the Senate was silent on the eve of war because Senators don't feel that what they say on the floor of the Senate really matters that much any more. And the chamber was empty because the Senators were somewhere else: they were in fundraisers collecting money from special interests in order to buy 30-second TVcommercials for their next re-election campaign.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was - at least for a short time - a quality of vividness and clarity of focus in our public discourse that reminded some Americans - including some journalists - that vividness and clarity used to be more common in the way we talk with one another about the problems and choices that we face. But then, like a passing summer storm, the moment faded.

In fact there was a time when America's public discourse was consistently much more vivid, focused and clear. Our Founders, probably the most literate generation in all of history, used words with astonishing precision and believed in the Rule of Reason.

Their faith in the viability of Representative Democracy rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry. But they placed particular emphasis on insuring that the public could be well-informed. And they took great care to protect the openness of the marketplace of ideas in order to ensure the free-flow of knowledge.

The values that Americans had brought from Europe to the New World had grown out of the sudden explosion of literacy and knowledge after Gutenberg's disruptive invention broke up the stagnant medieval information monopoly and triggered the Reformation, Humanism, and the Enlightenment and enshrined a new sovereign: the "Rule of Reason."

Indeed, the self-governing republic they had the audacity to establish was later named by the historian Henry Steele Commager as "the Empire of Reason."

Our founders knew all about the Roman Forum and the Agora in ancient Athens. They also understood quite well that in America, our public forum would be an ongoing conversation about democracy in which individual citizens would participate not only by speaking directly in the presence of others -- but more commonly by communicating with their fellow citizens over great distances by means of the printed word. Thus they not only protected Freedom of Assembly as a basic right, they made a special point - in the First Amendment - of protecting the freedom of the printing press.

Their world was dominated by the printed word. Just as the proverbial fish doesn't know it lives in water, the United States in its first half century knew nothing but the world of print: the Bible, Thomas Paine's fiery call to revolution, the Declaration of Independence, our Constitution , our laws, the Congressional Record, newspapers and books.

Though they feared that a government might try to censor the printing press - as King George had done - they could not imagine that America's public discourse would ever consist mainly of something other than words in print.

And yet, as we meet here this morning, more than 40 years have passed since the majority of Americans received their news and information from the printed word. Newspapers are hemorrhaging readers and, for the most part, resisting the temptation to inflate their circulation numbers. Reading itself is in sharp decline, not only in our country but in most of the world. The Republic of Letters has been invaded and occupied by television.

Radio, the internet, movies, telephones, and other media all now vie for our attention - but it is television that still completely dominates the flow of information in modern America. In fact, according to an authoritative global study, Americans now watch television an average of four hours and 28 minutes every day -- 90 minutes more than the world average.

When you assume eight hours of work a day, six to eight hours of sleep and a couple of hours to bathe, dress, eat and commute, that is almost three-quarters of all the discretionary time that the average American has. And for younger Americans, the average is even higher.

The internet is a formidable new medium of communication, but it is important to note that it still doesn't hold a candle to television. Indeed, studies show that the majority of Internet users are actually simultaneously watching television while they are online. There is an important reason why television maintains such a hold on its viewers in a way that the internet does not, but I'll get to that in a few minutes.

Television first overtook newsprint to become the dominant source of information in America in 1963. But for the next two decades, the television networks mimicked the nation's leading newspapers by faithfully following the standards of the journalism profession. Indeed, men like Edward R. Murrow led the profession in raising the bar.

But all the while, television's share of the total audience for news and information continued to grow -- and its lead over newsprint continued to expand. And then one day, a smart young political consultant turned to an older elected official and succinctly described a new reality in America's public discourse: "If it's not on television, it doesn't exist."

But some extremely important elements of American Democracy have been pushed to the sidelines. And the most prominent casualty has been the "marketplace of ideas" that was so beloved and so carefully protected by our Founders. It effectively no longer exists.

It is not that we no longer share ideas with one another about public matters; of course we do. But the "Public Forum" in which our Founders searched for general agreement and applied the Rule of Reason has been grossly distorted and "restructured" beyond all recognition.

And here is my point: it is the destruction of that marketplace of ideas that accounts for the "strangeness" that now continually haunts our efforts to reason together about the choices we must make as a nation.

Whether it is called a Public Forum, or a "Public Sphere" , or a marketplace of ideas, the reality of open and free public discussion and debate was considered central to the operation of our democracy in America's earliest decades.

In fact, our first self-expression as a nation - "We the People" - made it clear where the ultimate source of authority lay. It was universally understood that the ultimate check and balance for American government was its accountability to the people. And the public forum was the place where the people held the government accountable. That is why it was so important that the marketplace of ideas operated independent from and beyond the authority of government.

The three most important characteristics of this marketplace of ideas were:

1) It was open to every individual, with no barriers to entry, save the necessity of literacy. This access, it is crucial to add, applied not only to the receipt of information but also to the ability to contribute information directly into the flow of ideas that was available to all;

2) The fate of ideas contributed by individuals depended, for the most part, on an emergent Meritocracy of Ideas. Those judged by the market to be good rose to the top, regardless of the wealth or class of the individual responsible for them;

3) The accepted rules of discourse presumed that the participants were all governed by an unspoken duty to search for general agreement. That is what a "Conversation of Democracy" is all about.

What resulted from this shared democratic enterprise was a startling new development in human history: for the first time, knowledge regularly mediated between wealth and power.

The liberating force of this new American reality was thrilling to all humankind. Thomas Jefferson declared, "I have sworn upon the alter of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

It ennobled the individual and unleashed the creativity of the human spirit. It inspired people everywhere to dream of what they could yet become. And it emboldened Americans to bravely explore the farther frontiers of freedom - for African Americans, for women, and eventually, we still dream, for all.

And just as knowledge now mediated between wealth and power, self-government was understood to be the instrument with which the people embodied their reasoned judgments into law. The Rule of Reason under-girded and strengthened the rule of law.

But to an extent seldom appreciated, all of this - including especially the ability of the American people to exercise the reasoned collective judgments presumed in our Founders' design -- depended on the particular characteristics of the marketplace of ideas as it operated during the Age of Print.

Consider the rules by which our present "public forum" now operates, and how different they are from the forum our Founders knew. Instead of the easy and free access individuals had to participate in the national conversation by means of the printed word, the world of television makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation today.

Inexpensive metal printing presses were almost everywhere in America. They were easily accessible and operated by printers eager to typeset essays, pamphlets, books or flyers.

Television stations and networks, by contrast, are almost completely inaccessible to individual citizens and almost always uninterested in ideas contributed by individual citizens.

Ironically, television programming is actually more accessible to more people than any source of information has ever been in all of history. But here is the crucial distinction: it is accessible in only one direction; there is no true interactivity, and certainly no conversation.

The number of cables connecting to homes is limited in each community and usually forms a natural monopoly. The broadcast and satellite spectrum is likewise a scarce and limited resource controlled by a few. The production of programming has been centralized and has usually required a massive capital investment. So for these and other reasons, an ever-smaller number of large corporations control virtually all of the television programming in America.

Soon after television established its dominance over print, young people who realized they were being shut out of the dialogue of democracy came up with a new form of expression in an effort to join the national conversation: the "demonstration." This new form of expression, which began in the 1960s, was essentially a poor quality theatrical production designed to capture the attention of the television cameras long enough to hold up a sign with a few printed words to convey, however plaintively, a message to the American people. Even this outlet is now rarely an avenue for expression on national television.

So, unlike the marketplace of ideas that emerged in the wake of the printing press, there is virtually no exchange of ideas at all in television's domain. My partner Joel Hyatt and I are trying to change that - at least where Current TV is concerned. Perhaps not coincidentally, we are the only independently owned news and information network in all of American television.

It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.

The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as "the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance.

It did not come as a surprise that the concentration of control over this powerful one-way medium carries with it the potential for damaging the operations of our democracy. As early as the 1920s, when the predecessor of television, radio, first debuted in the United States, there was immediate apprehension about its potential impact on democracy. One early American student of the medium wrote that if control of radio were concentrated in the hands of a few, "no nation can be free."

As a result of these fears, safeguards were enacted in the U.S. -- including the Public Interest Standard, the Equal Time Provision, and the Fairness Doctrine - though a half century later, in 1987, they were effectively repealed. And then immediately afterwards, Rush Limbaugh and other hate-mongers began to fill the airwaves.

And radio is not the only place where big changes have taken place. Television news has undergone a series of dramatic changes. The movie "Network," which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1976, was presented as a farce but was actually a prophecy. The journalism profession morphed into the news business, which became the media industry and is now completely owned by conglomerates.

The news divisions - which used to be seen as serving a public interest and were subsidized by the rest of the network - are now seen as profit centers designed to generate revenue and, more importantly, to advance the larger agenda of the corporation of which they are a small part. They have fewer reporters, fewer stories, smaller budgets, less travel, fewer bureaus, less independent judgment, more vulnerability to influence by management, and more dependence on government sources and canned public relations hand-outs. This tragedy is compounded by the ironic fact that this generation of journalists is the best trained and most highly skilled in the history of their profession. But they are usually not allowed to do the job they have been trained to do.

The present executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations: from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. They placed a former male escort in the White House press pool to pose as a reporter - and then called upon him to give the president a hand at crucial moments. They paid actors to make make phony video press releases and paid cash to some reporters who were willing to take it in return for positive stories. And every day they unleash squadrons of digital brownshirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.

For these and other reasons, The US Press was recently found in a comprehensive international study to be only the 27th freest press in the world. And that too seems strange to me.

Among the other factors damaging our public discourse in the media, the imposition by management of entertainment values on the journalism profession has resulted in scandals, fabricated sources, fictional events and the tabloidization of mainstream news. As recently stated by Dan Rather - who was, of course, forced out of his anchor job after angering the White House - television news has been "dumbed down and tarted up."

The coverage of political campaigns focuses on the "horse race" and little else. And the well-known axiom that guides most local television news is "if it bleeds, it leads." (To which some disheartened journalists add, "If it thinks, it stinks.")

In fact, one of the few things that Red state and Blue state America agree on is that they don't trust the news media anymore.

Clearly, the purpose of television news is no longer to inform the American people or serve the public interest. It is to "glue eyeballs to the screen" in order to build ratings and sell advertising. If you have any doubt, just look at what's on: The Robert Blake trial. The Laci Peterson tragedy. The Michael Jackson trial. The Runaway Bride. The search in Aruba. The latest twist in various celebrity couplings, and on and on and on.

And more importantly, notice what is not on: the global climate crisis, the nation's fiscal catastrophe, the hollowing out of America's industrial base, and a long list of other serious public questions that need to be addressed by the American people.

One morning not long ago, I flipped on one of the news programs in hopes of seeing information about an important world event that had happened earlier that day. But the lead story was about a young man who had been hiccupping for three years. And I must say, it was interesting; he had trouble getting dates. But what I didn't see was news.

This was the point made by Jon Stewart, the brilliant host of "The Daily Show," when he visited CNN's "Crossfire": there should be a distinction between news and entertainment.

And it really matters because the subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy: it leads to dysfunctional journalism that fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they cannot hold government accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt, or both.

One of the only avenues left for the expression of public or political ideas on television is through the purchase of advertising, usually in 30-second chunks. These short commercials are now the principal form of communication between candidates and voters. As a result, our elected officials now spend all of their time raising money to purchase these ads.

That is why the House and Senate campaign committees now search for candidates who are multi-millionaires and can buy the ads with their own personal resources. As one consequence, the halls of Congress are now filling up with the wealthy.

Campaign finance reform, however well it is drafted, often misses the main point: so long as the only means of engaging in political dialogue is through purchasing expensive television advertising, money will continue by one means or another to dominate American politic s. And ideas will no longer mediate between wealth and power.

And what if an individual citizen, or a group of citizens wants to enter the public debate by expressing their views on television? Since they cannot simply join the conversation, some of them have resorted to raising money in order to buy 30 seconds in which to express their opinion. But they are not even allowed to do that.

Moveon.org tried to buy ads last year to express opposition to Bush's Medicare proposal which was then being debated by Congress. They were told "issue advocacy" was not permissible. Then, one of the networks that had refused the Moveon ad began running advertisements by the White House in favor of the President's Medicare proposal. So Moveon complained and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporary, I mean it was removed until the White House complained and the network immediately put the ad back on, yet still refused to present the Moveon ad.

The advertising of products, of course, is the real purpose of television. And it is difficult to overstate the extent to which modern pervasive electronic advertising has reshaped our society. In the 1950s, John Kenneth Galbraith first described the way in which advertising has altered the classical relationship by which supply and demand are balanced over time by the invisible hand of the marketplace. According to Galbraith, modern advertising campaigns were beginning to create high levels of demand for products that consumers never knew they wanted, much less needed.

The same phenomenon Galbraith noticed in the commercial marketplace is now the dominant fact of life in what used to be America's marketplace for ideas. The inherent value or validity of political propositions put forward by candidates for office is now largely irrelevant compared to the advertising campaigns that shape the perceptions of voters.

Our democracy has been hallowed out. The opinions of the voters are, in effect, purchased, just as demand for new products is artificially created. Decades ago Walter Lippman wrote, "the manufacture of consent...was supposed to have died out with the appearance of democracy...but it has not died out. It has, in fact, improved enormously in technique...under the impact of propaganda, it is no longer plausible to believe in the original dogma of democracy."

Like you, I recoil at Lippman's cynical dismissal of America's gift to human history. But in order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum and create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future. Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the Rule of Reason. We must, for example, stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth.

I don't know all the answers, but along with my partner, Joel Hyatt, I am trying to work within the medium of television to recreate a multi-way conversation that includes individuals and operates according to a meritocracy of ideas. If you would like to know more, we are having a press conference on Friday morning at the Regency Hotel.

We are learning some fascinating lessons about the way decisions are made in the television industry, and it may well be that the public would be well served by some changes in law and policy to stimulate more diversity of viewpoints and a higher regard for the public interest. But we are succeeding within the marketplace by reaching out to individuals and asking them to co-create our network.

The greatest source of hope for reestablishing a vigorous and accessible marketplace for ideas is the Internet. Indeed, Current TV relies on video streaming over the Internet as the means by which individuals send us what we call viewer-created content or VC squared. We also rely on the Internet for the two-way conversation that we have every day with our viewers enabling them to participate in the decisions on programming our network.

I know that many of you attending this conference are also working on creative ways to use the Internet as a means for bringing more voices into America's ongoing conversation. I salute you as kindred spirits and wish you every success.

I want to close with the two things I've learned about the Internet that are most directly relevant to the conference that you are having here today.

First, as exciting as the Internet is, it still lacks the single most powerful characteristic of the television medium; because of its packet-switching architecture, and its continued reliance on a wide variety of bandwidth connections (including the so-called "last mile" to the home), it does not support the real-time mass distribution of full-motion video.

Make no mistake, full-motion video is what makes television such a powerful medium. Our brains - like the brains of all vertebrates - are hard-wired to immediately notice sudden movement in our field of vision. We not only notice, we are compelled to look. When our evolutionary predecessors gathered on the African savanna a million years ago and the leaves next to them moved, the ones who didn't look are not our ancestors. The ones who did look passed on to us the genetic trait that neuroscientists call "the establishing reflex." And that is the brain syndrome activated by television continuously - sometimes as frequently as once per second. That is the reason why the industry phrase, "glue eyeballs to the screen," is actually more than a glib and idle boast. It is also a major part of the reason why Americans watch the TV screen an average of four and a half hours a day.

It is true that video streaming is becoming more common over the Internet, and true as well that cheap storage of streamed video is making it possible for many young television viewers to engage in what the industry calls "time shifting" and personalize their television watching habits. Moreover, as higher bandwidth connections continue to replace smaller information pipelines, the Internet's capacity for carrying television will continue to dramatically improve. But in spite of these developments, it is television delivered over cable and satellite that will continue for the remainder of this decade and probably the next to be the dominant medium of communication in America's democracy. And so long as that is the case, I truly believe that America's democracy is at grave risk.

The final point I want to make is this: We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Worldwide Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it because some of the same forces of corporate consolidation and control that have distorted the television marketplace have an interest in controlling the Internet marketplace as well. Far too much is at stake to ever allow that to happen.

We must ensure by all means possible that this medium of democracy's future develops in the mold of the open and free marketplace of ideas that our Founders knew was essential to the health and survival of freedom.

- Al Gore, WE Media Conference, October 5, 2005

Hamas to Gaza: NO DANCING!

2005-10-07T00:35:00.000-04:00

So Israel pulled out of Gaza... Which is nominally good. Except Hamas has been gaining power in the region. That's not so good.

(Also, a distressingly large number of Palestinians who reportedly live with poor shelter burned down all the abandoned Israeli settlements... Yeah, you need housing so you burn down houses. That's just... Stupid. Congratulations, guys, you're idiots. I'm sure most of your religion is wishing folks like you weren't on the news all the time.)

Anyway, so Hamas, being ever so ... er... Reasonable... has been breaking up parties and stuff because of it's strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Why is it that retards who think they speak for God love to push everyone else around? Not cool. So continuing with a quote from London's Times:

After controversies when a Hamas-led council halted a dance festival and Islamist gunmen stopped a rap band performing in Gaza, Dr Zahar defended the enforcement of a strict interpretation of Islam.

“A man holds a woman by the hand and dances with her in front of everyone. Does that serve the national interest?” Dr Zahar said on the Arabic website Elaph. “If so, why have the phenomena of corruption and prostitution become pervasive in recent years?”

Yep, people. Mr.Mahmoud Zahar, the ranking Hamas nutjob in Gaza, believes that a man dancing with a woman is a matter of national security. So much in fact, that he blames prostitution and corruption on dancing.

Yes, that dancing! Those foul dancers, with their... moving around and whatnot! OBVIOUSLY... That is the cause of corruption in the world today. No, it's most certainly not a combination of, say, money, religion, and power. Nope. It's dancing.

Prostitution too. Yep, a girl who dances automatically thinks, "Hey, I should sleep with people for money!"

Yes. DANCING is the most pressing issue for the Palestinian state today.

Idiots. What worries me more than them saying this is that people actually believe them.

I think they need to be less worried about dancing and rap music (as much as I dislike rap music...), and more worried about the fact they think it's okay to strap bombs to their bodies and blow themselves up in crowds of civilians.

FOX and TV Shows

2005-10-06T00:33:00.000-04:00

I am quite convinced that Fox has something against Science Fiction.

For example, after about five or six seasons of the X-files, they yank around the writers and threaten to cancel it pretty much every year, and it started going bad. The story went nowhere.

They cancelled Harsh Realm after only a few episodes. They screwed over The Lone Gunmen. And they dropped Firefly, but only after showing all the episodes in an incorrect order.

Firefly, in specific, is what I'm talking about. It lasted one season, in a Timeslot of Doom. And yet, the DVD box set is a bestseller, with a five-star rating on Amazon after 1600 votes, and is the basis for the current #2 movie in the US, with an 80+ fresh rating on Rottentomatoes.com.

Kids, get that many people to agree on anything on the Internet, and it must be good. Fox, apparently, would be unable to recognize a hit show even if it was used to bludgeon them.

I just finished watching the pilot episode (Which was oddly enough televised last), and it was pretty darn good. It's light Sci-fi, which means it keeps it's technology in the background (No engineers complaining about how the Tachyon build up in the Dilithium crystals are keeping the Warp Core at 60%, or whatever). Plus, it has a lot of anacronistic qualities. People using old guns and riding horses and stuff. It's a Western in space. Pretty groovy.

But yes, back to Fox. They suck. The end!

Rock on kids.

Mackenzies of the World... Sorry

2005-10-04T23:38:00.000-04:00

To any lady named Mackenzie who loves their name, I apologize. But I must rant on your name.

Mackenzie (and its variations) has become a really popular name for girls. It hit #41 in 2001 on the list of most popular names, and is still in the 40’s, I believe. Which leaves me with just one question...

Why do people name their daughters Mackenzie?

I really, really want to know. I've a majority of Irish and Scottish blood, so I have nothing against Celtic names. Quite the contrary, I absolutely love them. Uniquely spelled, uniquely spoken, many Celtic names are unique and grotesquely underused.

But for God's sake... MACKENZIE?

The name is a male name. Kenzie is a corruption of a Celtic name roughly amounting to Kenneth. "Mac" means "Son of." So therefore, there are a bunch of people naming their daughters what amounts to "Ken's son." See my problem here? Not only are you using a last name as a first name (which is valid, I suppose), but the name is not feminine. In fact, "Mac"-anything is, by definition, masculine. You might as well name your baby girl "Fred."

If you REALLY want a Celtic name, how about Maeve? I love that name. Or Siobhan! Or Rhiannon! Or Caitlin, if you want something somewhat trendy and easy to pronounce...

But lay off Mackenzie. Please.

More Fun With Eminent Domain

2005-10-03T22:52:00.000-04:00

In Florida, the pissing on citizen's property rights continues what happened in New Hampshire. As previously mentioned, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled back in June that local governments could confiscate property from one private citizen and reward it to another private citizen if the land would generate more revenue in the second citizen's hands. (FYI, Corporations are "Legal Citizens" in the United States. Yes, McDonalds is a US Citizen.)

This time around, Riviera Beach is considering confiscating up to two thousand homes and businesses, displacing up to six thousand residents, mostly low income, to build what amounts to a billion-dollar yacht club.

Yes, indeed! There will be hotels, high-end housing, a multilevel boat garage, a 96,000 square foot aquarium, and a manmade lagoon! All that's required is to utterly disposes six thousand people!

This is sick. How can these politicians turn on their voter base? How can they say "Yes, we're elected officials, so let's fuck over our lower-class electorate and build a really big yacht club!"? It defies all honesty and decency. It spits in the face of civil liberty.

I still deny these bastards are of the same species as I. They can't be human.

The EU and the Internet

2005-10-01T23:18:00.000-04:00

A short, disjointed post tonight:

The EU has recently declared that they want joint control over the Internet.

And to this I say: ...A'ight...

But wait! Did I not say that the US should retain complete control over the Internet?!

Well, yeah, I did. Mostly. I said that the US should not turn over control of the Internet to the UN, specifically.

The EU, on the other hand... T'is a horse of a different color. Not the least of which that Europe hosts the think tank CERN, the creators of the World Wide Web. (The 'Net was our idea, and they used our idea and built the Web. Ours the hardware, theirs the killer app. Et cetera.)

Now, they still have some issues to sort out with their organization and Constitution and whatnot, but them gaining a modicum of control over the Internet? I'd be careful about it, but I think we should honestly consider it.

My concerns were founded in the fact that the UN has become a bureaucracy for bureaucracy’s sake, and that nations like China wield strong power in it. China has veto power on the Security Council for Pete's sake. The US is still bound under the First Amendment, no matter how much our idiotic politicians and Corporate zombies try to tear it apart. China? Not so much. The EU, while a bit heavy on the speech restriction of "Unpopular ideas" in certain areas are more or less birds of a feather to the US where freedom of speech is concerned.

Of course, I would much rather trust a multinational nonprofit entity dedicated to the upholding the ideals of free speech on the Internet... But a joint organization of some of the world's democracies will work too.

So the EU having a say on the Internet? If they can eventually get their own house in order, why not?

Rock on, kids.

Writing Fiction Is Such a Pain in the Ass

2005-09-29T23:37:00.000-04:00

I used to write Science Fiction in high school. I am a big dork, after all. But I got out of it, because I decided I was wasting my time ever trying to write.

Had to buckle down! Go to college! Get my Edumacation-thing! Get a job, make money, etcetera... etcetera... etcetera. No time for fun, there's work to be done!

Well, my job is good. It's tedious and thankless work, but the pay and benefits are right and the coworkers are decent people. But all work and no play is... Exhausting. I'm starting to lose my hair. I needed a hobby to chill me out a bit.

After giving a few other hobbies a whirl (and NEVER having enough people to play paintball... Darn it!), I turned back to my old hobby of writing fiction.

I've been out of it for around seven or so years now, but I had a nice big new idea burning away in my noggin and I figured I'd be able to start cranking out a somewhat decent first draft.

So I sat down at my PC... and sat... and sat... and sat... Played solitaire... and sat.

And for good measure, I sat.

I have the idea, oh yes, I have the idea.

But I am at Point A, and can't figure out how to get to Point B.

Such a pain in the ass, I swear.

So I'll get back to y'all tomorrow... And hopefully I am not bashing my head off my keyboard at that time.

Rock on.

Erie Police, Dedicated to Duty

2005-09-29T00:41:00.000-04:00

I meant to write a long post, but before I even knew it it ended up being a quarter to one in the morning. Never a good time for long winded bullshit.

So just a thing of note that came to my attention. The nearby city of Erie, Pennsylvania has fallen on some hard times financially. Lacking the funding, they could not fund the police department enough to put a sufficient number of officers on all shifts.

So many of the good people in Blue of Erie are working overtime.

For free.

Nada. Zip, Zilch, Zero. They will answer the calls, they will put their lives on the line, and they will do it without receiving compensation because if they do not, no one else will.

Ladies and Gentlemen, such simple nobility is what being human is truly about.

A sincere thanks to the Police Officers of Erie and all such honorable officers of the law.

Rock on, kids.

In Mourning for Mourning

2005-09-28T00:13:00.000-04:00

As noted by a previous post, I'm a big fan of MMORPGs (that's Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games... Games you play with hundreds of others on a common game server). One I had been looking forward to for well over a year... heck, almost two years, was the oft renamed Mourning. (Was Realms of Torment, then changed to Realms of Krel, then changed to Mourning.)

Anyway, it seems Mourning is now FUBARed. It was supposed to release back in February, but I never heard what happened to it. Looking up the websites reveal nothing but a blank black page. So I turned to everyone's favorite source of information: Wikipedia!

In February, the game was "released." That is to say, those who preordered it received a craptastic buggy Beta version on a CD-R. After that, the game was "searching for new funding." In other words: It's dead, and screwed over some customers on the way out.

I'm rather quite sad. The features it was supposedly going to present would have been mildly revolutionary to MMORPG's, a genre which sadly receives little innovation due to the high risks of presenting such a game.

So basically, I'm in mourning for Mourning. It's quite the bummer.

Rock on, kids.

Do Not Tell Me I Have a Case of the Mondays... Or Else!!!

2005-09-26T23:29:00.000-04:00

Someone actually told me today, "Looks like someone has a case of the Mondays!" Of all the hackneyed Office-Space quotes they could use, they tell me that.

I threatened to throw them out the window. That likely just proved their point.

Well, I'm out of things to say, so here's a random picture of Chewbacca groping Princess Leia.

Rock on.

Camping = Cramped Neck

2005-09-25T23:57:00.000-04:00

So I'm back from a weekend of camping (and just in time to notice that the item I had posted about me going away for the weekend never made it past "draft," by some evil conspiracy or another), and I must say one thing:

Camping hurts.

The spot we were camping in was rather quite pleasant, except for one minor detail: Very hardly compacted ground. Sleeping without a foam mattress was rather injurious to my neck.

Also, learned something: Putting Grape Jelly in Chili is a valid culinary decision. Adds a unique sweetness to the chili that works quite well. Who would've thunk it?

Second thing learned: Learn first that the owner of the hot sauce you are about to try normally only uses about one tablespoon in an entire pot of chili prior to layering it on your sandwich and chowing down... As opposed to learning that bit of information after about fifteen minutes and five glasses of milk...

For one final bit of randomness, here's an article about Commando Dolphins.

Rock on, kids.

Thunderstorms

2005-09-22T23:59:00.000-04:00

Quite a storm out tonight. I used to love thunderstorms when I was a kid. I still like rain, and maybe even a little lightning to a degree, but ever since a big storm knocked over the ninety eight foot maple tree in my front yard a few years back (squishing most of the stuff in my yard and taking out my power for three days), not so fond of storms any more. The lightning and wind also messes with the electric and the phones, which a Net-bound dork like me just no longer appreciates.

So, I'm stuck camping this weekend. I'm an assistant scoutmaster for the local scout troop, and we're the organizing troop of the district's fall campout. And boy, will it suck. Supposed to rain ALL weekend. I haven't really had a good time camping in quite a while. All the older kids (who are sort of supposed to help us keep order a bit, and teach the younger boys) are no longer here. It's all young ones, and I swear they're all hyperactive. It goes from being a Scout troop to being a babysitter sometimes... Oh well.

Won't be blogging due to the fact I'll be getting rained on, so rock on and stay dry.

Region Locked

2005-09-21T00:41:00.000-04:00

There is something about the X-Box 360 (as well as the original X-box, I have found, and many DVD-ROMs and DVD players) that seriously bugs me. It's called "Region Locking." Basically, certain DVD players, including those on computers and the various X-boxes, will only play DVD's from certain regions. In other words, if I have a DVD player locked for American DVD's, and I purchase a DVD coded for the Japan region while visiting Tokyo... I will be unable to play it on my DVD player.

Why? Well, I'll bet their excuse is "to prevent piracy," but it seems to me that the reason is because corporations are complete jackasses who love to fuck over their consumer base.

Now, I don't purchase games or DVD's from Japan... But this bugs me. I don't think I'll buy a 360 because of it.

Oh well. Rock on, kids.

Spyware

2005-09-20T01:05:00.000-04:00

In one of my moments of "Well, I best mention this for the less technologically inclined that may wander upon my blog:"

If you are ever randomly browsing the web, and are suddenly inundated with popups saying you have spyware and it offers to remove it: don't believe it. The popups are phony. No, really.

Unfortunately, especially if you are suddenly deluged with popups while browsing Wikipedia, they may also be right: You likely do have spyware. The problem is, it's the spyware that's creating the popups! Sort of a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing hoping the panic of the uninformed will cause them to click "Yes!" and install nasty stuff on their computer.

Don't believe it, and run as many REAL spyware things on your machine as you can. I recommend Ad-Aware for the less advanced. Spybot Search & Destroy is also supposed to be good.

And if you're an advanced user, Bazooka Spyware Scanner is great. It requires manual removal of the spyware, but it will find just about anything.

Also note that "WinAntiVirus Pro! 2005" is a farce. That is the particular product I'm being bombarded by. It is evil. Do not believe it.

Well, that's it for me, I'm off to nuke some spyware. Rock on, kids.

Corporation

2005-09-19T00:16:00.000-04:00

No in depth post tonight, kinda busy:

The Corporation. Watch it, if it sounds interesting. I'll likely talk about it a bit tomorrow.

Negligence

2005-09-17T22:06:00.000-04:00

In a new height of negligence, CNN has reported that three mice infected with Bubonic Plague have been ...*ahem*... "Misplaced" from the Public Health Research Institute, which is on the campus of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

They are not sure if the mice escaped, were stolen, were lost in a paperwork error, or were eaten by another lab animal.

However, any way you slice it this is inexcusable.

Bubonic freakin' Plague! Black Death! How could you be THAT careless?

If they escaped, it is probably through indefensible inattentiveness. While the mice will have reportedly died by now, what happens if between then and now they had been bitten by a flea or mosquito? Most prior outbreaks of Bubonic Plague occur with such events!

If they were eaten by another animal, that's just retarded there. What did they do, randomly toss a snake into the mice cage? Stupid.

Lost in a paperwork error? Then FIND the bastards! That's not even funny. Bureaucracy is no excuse for idiocy!

And if they were stolen, that just bodes ill. If it was a particularly stupid animal rights activist that happens to work for the lab, that's one thing. Hopefully, he didn't do anything stupid with them. Find him, and fire the dumbass. But what if the mice were sold to someone with... Less than honorable intentions? Do we really need that kind of grief?

Note also that the school is undergoing investigation for financial corruption in regards to millions of dollars in political donations and politically connected no-bid contracting.

In brief, this is a monumental incident of sheer incompetence! This is just another example of what happens with no-bid "buddy buddy" politically connected contracting! They FUCK UP, because they don't care. They don't care because even if they fuck up, they'll still get paid. It is high time there is some house cleaning! Those responsible need to be sacked, including the politician that awarded the contracts no-bid!

Quarter Century

2005-09-17T21:24:00.000-04:00

Twenty five years, and I still haven't figured out what the hell's going on...

Now THAT Was a Contest!

2005-09-14T23:48:00.000-04:00

A little bit of Video Game Lore I recently uncovered.

Back in the early 1980's, in the wonderful time before the dreaded Video Game Crash of 1983, Atari had a set of four games (Earthworld, Fireworld, Waterworld, and Airworld) collectively called SwordQuest. Centered around these four games was perhaps the single most awesome contest in Video Game history. (The crash and cancellation of the SwordQuest contest happened before the release of Airworld, so not only was the contest cancelled, all four games weren't even released).

The premise was pretty simple, all things considered. The game came with a comic book that told the story to the game (as Atari games were not known for their in-depth storylines). You went around in the game and solved puzzles. When you found the puzzles, you got a clue telling you where to look in the comic book for a word hidden somewhere in the artwork. If you found all the clues for a particular game, you could combine these words into a sentence, and send that into Atari.

Contestants would be selected from the people who sent in the finished sentence from the game, and they would be invited to play against each other. Whoever got the most clues in 90 minutes won the contest for that game. There were to be five contests altogether, one for each game and a final "Swordquest". The four winners from each individual contest would play against each other in the final.

The most awesome thing about the five Quests were the prizes. No namby pamby money or consumer goods here! No sir! The five prizes were practically British Crown Jewels, man! Gold and gem encrusted artifacts, straight from the game!

Here's a rundown:

The prize for the Earthworld quest was a talisman, representing the "Talisman of Penultimate Truth" from the game. An eighteen karot solid gold amulet, it was encrusted with twelve diamonds and the twelve birthstones of the Zodiac. A white gold sword decoration completed the look.

The prize for the Fireworld was a chalice, representing the game's "Chalice of Light." It is made of gold and platinum, and encrusted with citrines, diamonds, green jade, pearls, rubies, and sapphires.

The Waterworld prize was to be a crown, the "Crown of Life," and it was a gold crown set with aquamarines, diamonds, tourmalines, rubies, and sapphires.

The Airworld prize was to be a "Philosopher's Stone." It was a fist-sized piece of white jade, with a gold cover encrusted with aquamarines, diamonds, tourmalines, rubies, and sapphires. (Shown below with the cover on)

The final prize on the SwordQuest was to be, obviously, a sword. I couldn't find a photograph of the sword, and as far as I can tell, it was never made. It was, however, going to be even more ostentatious than the other prizes. It was to be a sword with a silver blade and a gold hilt, set with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and sapphires.

Each of the World prizes was valued at $25,000 and the sword was valued at $50,000. Adjusting for inflation from 1983 to now, they would be worth slightly less than twice that today ($47,550 for the four smaller prizes and $95,510 for the sword.)

Alas! Alack! Atari was bought out, and to top it off, the Video Game Crash happened. The video game industry was brought to it's knees, paving the way for the Rise of the Nintendo. The SwordQuest was doomed.

Note my usage of various tenses. I said "Was" for the talisman, "Is" for the chalice, and "Was to be" for the other three... The Chalice is the only item known to still be in existence, nice and safe in the bank of Michael Rideout, the Firequest winner. The talisman was, unfortunately, broken apart and sold so the winner could pay for college. (Gotta do what you gotta do...) The sword was likely never made. And the Philosopher's Stone and Crown were lost. Likely, they grace an executive's office somewhere...

They just don't hold contests like this anymore. It's always for cash or a bike or something. They need to do this again...

(Bethesda Software! You have Elder Scrolls IV coming up! How about it?)

Frightening

2005-09-12T23:49:00.000-04:00

The further I delve into politics, the more my faith in humanity is destroyed.

KnightErrant Returns, 9/11, and Tom DeLay.

2005-09-12T00:26:00.000-04:00

Well, after a long week of the local Community Fair, I believe I can probably manage a few posts again. I'm an assistant scoutmaster for the local boy scout troop, and we run an archery and BB gun range at the fair every year. Plus, we march in the fair parade.

Well, in return for my volunteering I:

* Got indigestion from the multitude of fried fair foods.
* Was frustrated by the boys misbehaving and not being very Scoutlike.
* Got a cold.
* Almost got shot in the face by an arrow.
* Am still pretty sore.

Oh well.

**********

Anyway, so today (or yesterday, rather... it being past midnight) was the anniversary of September, 11th. I commemorated the event by sleeping in late and not watching television the entire day. I really couldn't have taken the politicians twisting the memory of all those people to their own ends.

Don't get me wrong here: 9/11 was a gut-wrenchingly terrible event... But as one of the seemingly few people in America left that can distinguish between "Patriotism" and "Nationalism," the Poli-ticks doing their spinning makes me want to puke.

Frankly, I think the "Towers of Light" are the best tribute. Something silent and a little bit inescapable. If the families want to read off the names, that's okay too. It gives a bit of perspective. But the next politician to try to gain political capital off this needs to be given an Atomic Wedgie. Seriously.

**********

Moving on (Eventful times, and here I was not blogging it. Stupid fair.)... It's just a footnote in the whole New Orleans catastrophe, but it's still noteworthy. The Huston Chronicle's "DomeBlog" reported this...

(Paraphrasing)Tom DeLay visited the Astrodome to see living conditions there. He talked to three young boys, compared the experience to camping... and asked, "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"

"Is this kind of fun?" Is it fun, boys? Was it fun, watching your city be destroyed? Was if fun watching people die horrible deaths? Was it fun living in filth until someone finally decided you should be rescued? Is it fun that you're now a refugee (I don't care if the term is not preferred, that's what they are!)living in a sports arena?

Why do we elect such detached clueless idiots? I don't know.

Buisness Sense

2005-09-06T23:34:00.000-04:00

A little something on the business front to mull over.

A Humbling Thought

2005-09-05T23:03:00.000-04:00

Just a little reminder that eventually even the greatest nations fall. Stay humble, and remember that even the nations of the present will one day be consigned to a history book of tomorrow.

(The NY Times requires registration. Go to BugMeNot if you don't wish to sign up.)

Research Takes Time

2005-09-05T01:31:00.000-04:00

On what was more or less a whim following a discussion on natural disasters, I wrote a seven-page piece on truly cataclysmic events. Things like Supervolcanoes, Hypernovas, and quantum events that rend the fabric of reality itself. Some of them are very likely. Some are so unlikely, it's pointless to dwell on it for anything other than amusement. But all are nasty, and all are kind of interesting. It did, however, take me a long time to research it; hence the lack of recent posts despite all the political outrage I could be venting on.

I posted the piece over on the Cloudstrider Forums. Go on ahead and read it, if you feel like never sleeping soundly again. :)

Rock on.

Okay... Why?

2005-09-02T00:10:00.000-04:00

Why would people in New Orleans shoot at helicopters trying to rescue people? No really, Why?!

I know natural disasters make people desperate... Does it also make them stupid?

If you're the praying type, you may want to spare one for the poor bastards still stuck down there...

Life After Oil

2005-09-01T00:04:00.000-04:00

An interesting article on our options after we run out of oil...

The Forbidden Library

2005-08-30T23:57:00.000-04:00

I seriously detest book-banners. No, really. I seriously detest people who think a book should be banned because it runs counter to their viewpoint. Forcing one's ideas upon others and denying them the chance to form their own opinions, in my mind, is a crime of the highest magnitude. (And my stance on book burners would probably frighten most people... so let's not go there...)

For example: The DaVinci Code. It's a novel. It's a story. And yet, because it expresses some elements that runs counter to the world's predominant religion, many people are up in arms against the book.

I read a book review on it that wasn't really a "review" per se, but a four page long diatribe on how the elements of this work of fiction were... well... Untrue.

To which I would like to respond with a big ole Duh.

It's a book. It's a story. I personally think it's a good one, although I prefer the first book, Angels & Demons, to The DaVinci Code.

Don't even get me started on Harry Potter. I don't read them, but the Pope himself is condemning them as a corrupting influence. I would think the leader of the world's Catholics would have better things to do.

Moving along, my friend Nicole pointed out this website: The Forbidden Library. It contains a list of books that have been banned over the years. Some bans are old or foreign, but many were right here, recently, in the United States, by school and public libraries.

A selection:

George Orwell's 1984: One of the more insulting selections on this list, 1984 was challenged in 1981 in Jackson County, Florida, for being pro-communist... which it isn't. It's a book about the dangers of too much government influence. Of course, Big Brother would disapprove this book being read by the public at large!

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl: an important first hand book on the Holocaust was challenged in Wise County, Virginia in 1982 and by the Alabama State Textbook Committee in 1983. Too negative? A book concerning the Holocaust? Really? You think?!

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was removed from the library in Wild Rose, Wisconsin in 1974 for being "slanted." Is that what they’re calling our past slaughters of Native Americans? "Slanted?" How novel.

In 1995, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales was removed from a senior literature course at Eureka High School in Eureka, Illinois. A CLASSIC literature text was removed from a LITERATURE course... Just… no comment…

In 1987, the science textbook Earth Science was challenged by the Plymouth-Canton school system in Canton, Michigan for "teaching Evolution exclusively", avoiding "any mention of Creationism", and "underminds {sic} the parental guidance and teaching the children receives at home and from the pulpit." Don't even get me started on this one.

Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 was heavily censored by the Venando Middle School in Irvine, California in 1992. How ironic... A book about censorship being censored...

And I'm not even that far into it, nor have I been using every example... Also on this list are Steinbeck, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, C.S. Lewis, and Roald Dahl. Shakespeare appears on this list more than once.

And for God's sake: Where's Waldo was challenged in 1989 by the public libraries of Saginaw, Michigan because there was a tiny drawing of a woman sunbathing without a top.

Censorship, especially at public libraries, is never a good thing.

Rock on.

"Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime..."
-- Justice Potter Stewart, dissenting Ginzberg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463 (1966)

Morning Zombie

2005-08-30T00:15:00.000-04:00

So I decided to take an after dinner nap, and ended up sleeping for four hours. My monday night just sorta vanished.

My sleep patterns haven't been "normal" since high school. This probably isn't healthy.

Insomnia sucks. It makes me very zombie-like in the morning. (Except I eat cereal instead of brains.) Zombies aren't cool.

So Tired...

2005-08-29T00:32:00.000-04:00

"T'was a really damn long weekend, and all through the house...
Not a creature was stirring... Especially not me."

I got nuthin'. Go read a random page on Wikipedia It'll expand your horizons.

(Yes, the link will literally send you to a random page. Wikipedia is awesome like that. Just so you don't think I linked you to "Booger" or whereever you end up...)

Anyway, have fun with the Wiki... Me? I'm going to bed.

No Change Please, My Brain Can't Handle It

2005-08-25T23:06:00.000-04:00

Read over this. It concerns the fact that the human brain sometimes refuses to believe what it sees, and how often we simply won't accept something in front of our eyes because it "shouldn't be there."

Most people like the gorilla example better, but I'm a bit fonder of the "door" example. A person would stop a college student (standing across a street, I hope...) and ask for directions:

In one experiment, people who were walking across a college campus were asked by a stranger for directions. During the resulting chat, two men carrying a wooden door passed between the stranger and the subjects. After the door went by, the subjects were asked if they had noticed anything change.

Half of those tested failed to notice that, as the door passed by, the stranger had been substituted with a man who was of different height, of different build and who sounded different. He was also wearing different clothes.

Despite the fact that the subjects had talked to the stranger for 10-15 seconds before the swap, half of them did not detect that, after the passing of the door, they had ended up speaking to a different person. This phenomenon, called change blindness, highlights how we see much less than we think we do.

I find that utterly facinating...

Ah well, rock on.

Stop Asking Me to Fix Your Computer!!!

2005-08-24T23:52:00.000-04:00

Okay. So almost two years ago, I taught computer courses for about three months. So far so good.

Today, I got an e-mail from a former student saying, in a nutshell: "Hi! How are you? Find a job yet? My computer is broke. I deleted the printer and my digital camera software says there is a bad file. Can you fix it?"

I resisted temptation to write "Hi! Fine! Yep! No way!"

But I was kind enough to, from the really simplistic explanations ("Delete" a printer, eh?), give a hopefully functional rundown of the repairs she needed to perform.

Short of my standard fee, I'm not making a housecall.

So let me put it like this, for all the people who know a computer geek and only contact him when your computer is broke:

Uncool.

#1) Computer geeks are people too. They don't appreciate that kind of thing. At least be kind enough to only bug computer geeks you personally know. Not talking to you for two years and then getting asked to help fix a computer isn't nifty.

#2) Don't be too impatient or harsh. We do our best, but are oftentimes busy. Especially don't be impatient if we're fixing it for free; that's just mean.

#3) And if nothing else, if the geek goes out of his way to help you (and they likely will), offer some compensation. A couple of bucks is never unwelcome. I'm not asking to give him a month's worth of pay or your firstborn child; but is a few dollars (or some baked goods, if you're a good cook! :) ) really too much to ask?

But I'm off to bed. Rock on. And BE NICE to the GEEKS.

Biofuels: An End to OPEC!

2005-08-23T22:51:00.000-04:00

Now this is what I'm talkin' 'bout!

Biodiesel and Ethanol! Fuels made from vegetables! These, my good friends, are the instrument of OPEC's demise... well, if we could get the politicks to stop pandering to those oily bastards, anyway.

We have the technology. We have the need. We still have the time and money to invest before we're all fucked over by the Oil Crash...

Now all we need to do is convince the 'Ticks and the Lemmings that believe them that their greed for oil money is against their long term interests as well...

Oh boy, is that going to take some doing...

Political Compass

2005-08-23T00:35:00.000-04:00

Over at Cloudstrider, they're on a bit of a Quiz-Kick. So I offered up the Political Compass.

For those unfamiliar with it, the Political Compass adds an "Up Down" twist to the "Left-Right" scenario. While "Left" still denotes "Liberal" and "Right" still denotes "Conservative," it's more of an economic view. "Up" is Authoritarian, while "Down" is Libertarian. 10's are the limits of the scale in all points. My compass is -4.25, -4.21 (4.25 into the Left, and 4.21 into the Libertarian). So according to their celebrity graphs, I'm somewhere between Ghandi and the Dalai Lama. :)

It is interesting to note that I originally took this about a year and a half ago, and there has been a distinct shift in my views further left and down, by about 1 1/2 points each... hmm...

Just remember to try not to mold your answers by what you think you are, but just go with your gut. ;D Have fun.

Busy, busy, busy...

2005-08-22T00:20:00.000-04:00

Ever have a weekend so busy you didn't have time to think? I did. It was busy. I don't like busy weekends, I like relaxing weekends.

Ah well, I reckon it was cool. I'll try to continue my moral outrage at American politics another time. :)

Ouch

2005-08-19T00:41:00.000-04:00

Know what hurts? Split teeth.

It's Not News, Dammit! Part Deux

2005-08-19T00:18:00.000-04:00

Okay everyone! Major announcement here!

Sean "P. Diddy" Combs figured the "P." was getting between him and his fans, so from now on you can just call him "Diddy!"

ARGH!

Why the hell is this NEWS?!

Did this really rate a spot on The Today Show?

Or a CNN Headline?!

GIVE ME A BREAK!

Combs has changed his moniker so much that I don't see how him changing it again can hold any fascination with people! And furthermore (to paraphrase Jon Stewart here), it is not the "P." coming between mister "Diddy" and his fans. That would be the fact he is an obnoxious celebrity with several bodyguards.

.XXXcapades

2005-08-16T23:43:00.000-04:00

...A poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

-Shakespeare's MacBeth, Act V, Scene V

Today, after a few years and likely millions of dollars studying the situation, ICANN was about to approve a new Top-Level Domain (TLD) for adult websites: the ".xxx" suffix.

Now, I supported this measure. It warranted a greater level of control over a certain sector of the Internet that many find objectionable. While many pornography websites would not be using the .xxx, preferring to keep their .com; it did make it somewhat simpler: Block .xxx sites, and you're sure to block at least some pornography. It wasn't a cure all, but it was a step.

Of course, at the very last moment, suddenly people started to get up in arms. A virtual red-light district? A space exclusively for pornography? Heavens, no!

So, the governments of several countries, including my own beloved United States, plus at least one Christian group wasted a whole lot of people's time and money (and by people, i mean taxpayers), giving them a political circus and forcing a one month stop on ICANN's autonomy.

And to this, let me say "ARRRGH!!!"

Thank you, governments of United States, France, and Brazil! Thank you, Family Research Council! Thank you all! You have scored an utterly useless coup against pornography! Absolutely nothing will change in the online adult industry thanks to your heroic efforts! Plus, you've undermined the autonomy of ICANN, censoring the Internet and basically ruining the arguments I put forth to keep the Top Level Domains in the hands of the US and out of the international politics of the UN. Bravo! BRA-VO!

So let me see if I can boil this down enough for you folks as to why this was a bad idea:

1. The Internet will always have pornography. You may fear "legitimizing" it, but the truth is it's not going anywhere.
2. A virtual "Red-Light" district, while not a cure all, would have been helpful for programs that block adult content.
3. A .xxx domain name would have generated revenue for ICANN's coffers
4. By getting yourselves in a political tizzy and forcing ICANN to stand down, you've harmed the arguments for keeping the TLD's in US hands.
5. You wasted taxpayer time and money for a result that will ultimately have NO effect.

SO: Wasted time and money, destroyed potential revenue, no effect on porn, harmed Internet and ICANN freedom, harmed reasoning for keeping TLD's in US hands...

Wow, nice job. I'm off to bang my head off a wall!

Rock on, kids.

It's Not News, Dammit!

2005-08-15T22:49:00.000-04:00

Been a long, crazy day. Just nuts. Plus I have a hole in one of my molars the size of the Grand Canyon and it hurts like fucking hell; it'll be at least a week before a Dentist gets around to seeing me. :(

Sucks.

To add some frustration to my toothy agony, I went to CNN and saw this as a front page headline:

Demi Moore: Ashton Kutcher is soul mate.

GAAAAAH!!!

That is not news, that is not news, that is NOT NEWS!!! It does not belong on the front page of CNN! It does not belong anywhere near a headline! If it is even bothered to be reported, it belongs buried in the Entertainment Section.

And therein lies the problem. The "Entertainment Section." The Lemmings need to know who's sleeping with whom, don't they? Else their little lives wouldn't be complete...

Bah. It's pitiful. It is NOT news, it is not helpful, and it is FAR from having any importance whatsoever!

I'm going to go swill some whiskey to numb my perforated molar now. You have fun with your entertainment.

Dweeb

2005-08-15T00:32:00.000-04:00

Being the local computer dweeb is a blast. No, not really.

Basically, even the technologically inclined people tend to bug you. I don't usually mind, unless it takes a long time.

It gets fun, because the people who aren't technologically adept tend to make self-diagnoses of their computers. So I usually end up spending a lot of time confirming their diagnosis is incorrect, and then having to go back and figure it out.

And yes, solving another person's problem is why today's post is shoddy and irrelevant. :-P Have fun, folks.

Four Amendments and a Funeral

2005-08-11T23:27:00.000-04:00

My friend Joe from over at Cloudstrider pointed out this story in Rolling Stone. It's an interesting look at the childish jackasses that run our country.

I recommend it, if you can handle a little unpleasant truth.

Runaway Bride and a Stupid Media

2005-08-11T00:43:00.000-04:00

I can't believe they're still reporting on this woman.

I bother looking at the TV for the first time in a week, and I see that idiot "Runaway Bride" Jennifer Wilbanks.

They're reporting on her community service because, you know, apparently someone mowing a lawn is news.

This pointless reporting of stories about nonentities has never ceased to confuse me. It's not even a "Human Interest" story. The woman is not interesting. She's just a dumb rich woman who got cold feet and bolted on her wedding. That is the beginning, middle, and end of that story.

SHE. IS. NOT. NEWS.

Not even by the definition of the word "News." It is not "New" when you report on something constantly. That is called "Beating a dead horse."

It's time to give it up already, Mainstream Media people! Hey, I got an idea! How about you do your fucking job and report on the government? Believe it or not, that is WHY you have Freedom of the Press to begin with: to educate the public on the democratic processes and shine light where it needs to be shined. Not so you can chase around a woman with bad marital judgment.

Of course, you chase her around to avoid doing your real jobs, because most people in the "Mainstream Media" are just a bunch of corporate-political reprobates these days anyway.

Rubbish!

2005-08-10T00:11:00.000-04:00

In light of recent court decisions saying Portland police were not violating the Fourth Amendment by swiping people's trash, the Willamette Week newspaper did something rather novel:

Since trash apparently became public property once it hit the curb, the intrepid reporters swiped the garbage of the Mayor, Police Chief, and a local District Attorney.

In the entertaining fiasco that resulted, only the DA seemed to manage a sense of humor about the situation.

Priceless, man. Priceless.

The Tale of the Ponderosa Princes

2005-08-08T23:06:00.000-04:00

I've been reading about these guys for several years. The Ponderosa Princes of northern Victoria in Australia makes for an interesting story.

Long story short, back in 1994 Virgilio "Big Joe" Rigoli, a fruit farmer, got cheesed at the Australian government for bulldozing some of his orchards. So, he informed the government he was seceding from Australia! He formed the Principality of Ponderosa, put up a fence and moat around his 60 acre farm, and it stayed that way ever since.

Well, the story came to an end a couple of weeks back when the Aussie stormtroopers took the Rigolis into custody. Big Joe has been tossed in jail for thirty five months, and his sons for two years and twenty months respectively. They topped it off with a $25,000 fine.

Now, I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did. But I empathize with the self-styled "Princes." Who wouldn't? When you have what amounts to the following conversation with the government that supposedly represents you:

Government: You have to bulldoze your fruit trees.
Big Joe: But I don't want to bulldoze my fruit trees...
Government: Too God damn bad. We'll do it if you won't, because we say those trees need squished!

I mean, seriously...

Like all attempts to leave a modern nation, this one fell flat. Now, I don't support seceding from nations, but it is an interesting thing to think about: When governments become heavy-handed, what avenues are left for citizens?

Alas, the valid choices are shrinking, so some desperate (or deluded) individuals may go as far as secession. (It never works, though.)

For a funnier example of secession, read about the Conch Republic of the Florida Keys. Now that's good stuff. :)

Documentry Review: "Orwell Rolls in His Grave"

2005-08-07T23:40:00.000-04:00

If you've read my blog further than my random ramblings and talking about attractive girls licking their handheld video game systems, you will know that I am a very political guy with a profound distrust in the Government, corporations, and media.

Of course, the reason I have a distrust in those three is because, in reality, they're all the same. Corporations own the media, and both influence politics through money and services, which in turn aid or hinder the other two with laws and regulations.

Now, there are tons and tons of documentaries on this. Most of them are crap, quite frankly.

"Orwell Rolls in His Grave" is not one of the crappy ones. This documentary on the corruption of the mainstream media in the United States and abroad is a well made, entertaining, and informative documentary. Quite frankly, it is so informative it is chilling. It is quite dense in terms of content, and I may have to watch it again one or two more times before everything sinks in because it was a lot to come to grips with. And that's coming from me... I'm afraid others might have aneurisms trying to absorb it all.

I really don't know how to put it, but I'll sum it up:

Everything you see via the mainstream media is politicized. It is approved, spun, and created by businessmen and politicians who want to control what you see, hear, and if they can manage, think. This is a terrifying march toward the total information control of Orwell's 1984.

I really can't do much more with it. It kind of blew my mind.

Buy it. Watch it. Talk about it with others, and have them watch it too. This film will not be seen on the media stations which it criticizes, so this is the only way to get it around.

"Orwell Rolls in His Grave" is an important political documentary for all people who consider themselves citizens of a democracy to see.