Hopefully Not Stupid

Why I read Metafilter, Part 2

2009-06-20T20:31:00.000-04:00

saulgoodman reminds us about why laws permitting abortion were passed in the first place. It wasn't that women didn't get abortions beforehand. It's that far too many did, and the results were horrific.

Annoying web ads 1

2009-06-11T02:36:00.000-04:00

Lately there's been something of an ad blitz among certain web properties that have become nearly unavoidable in internet advertising. As one of the few remaining Firefox users who doesn't just block the hell out of all of them, I figured I should note them for posterity before they vanish, unseen, unloved, to make way for whatever schlocky virtual product web marketers will try to convince us we need next.

1. CIVONY, now EVONY

An online flash game (I think), at first these annoying flash ads would try to put the imperative on the viewer (an annoying advertising technique that makes ads sound bossy) with text like "Save your queen NOW, My Lord!" Since then they seem to have mellowed a little, but only a little. Currently there's an ad in rotation that reads "SAVE YOUR LOVER! Play Now Free Forever."

The Pede says that it's a simulation game not dissimilar to Civilization, a fact that the original name played up; the "O" in CIVONY was a globe, which drew attention to the "CIV" part of the title in a way obviously engineered to make the game seem like a Firaxis product. Evidently Firaxis thought so too, for not long after the game was suddenly renamed to EVONY.

As for the game itself? I wouldn't know; I've never clicked through. Following flash ads is only slightly lower, in the great hierarchy of noob actions, than forwarding Obama fear screeds.

2. 1 rule to a thinner stomach: OBEY

Speaking of casting imperitives.... These extraordinarily domineering ads tell people to OBEY one (or sometimes two) rules in all-caps, and sometimes in red letters, while displaying before-and-after pictures of weight loss success stories. The before pictures are vaguely disgusting, but oddly, so are the after ones, which bring to mind surgery more than an attractive physique.

Why I read Metafilter, Part 2

2009-04-16T15:13:00.000-04:00

This thread is still on the front page over at MeFi. If you go through and read the comments, you'll learn about Al Jazerra and the relative lameness of U.S. cable news, about Overton windows, and the real reason (even greater than the math behind our two-party-oriented election process) that third parties haven't done well in the United States.

There are days when I feel reluctant to post on Metafilter because I feel overwhelmed by the general quality of the comments. But it's usually around that time that something bizarre and inexplicable makes the Blue, like the Japanese meme about anthropomorphizing WWII fighter jets as anime girls, and I feel qualified to post once again.

It also helps that they linked Peanuts Roasted to the front page recently. Yay!

Outrage of the Week

2009-04-09T18:06:00.000-04:00

It seems that the local library blocks access to Metafilter on its for-patron computers, because it is a "bulletin board." Thanks for the layer of plastic between me and the world, guys! Sheesh.

For the record, the system they use is "SmartFilter."

What I've been up to: @Play

2009-04-08T23:41:00.000-04:00

@Play is a series of columns on the site GameSetWatch dedicated to exploring the history and progress of roguelike computer games.

Roguelike means, literally, "like Rogue," one of the earliest dungeon-exploration computer games. Although the game dates to the earliest years of the 80's, there are still a number of things it does that are not equaled by almost any commercial computer roleplaying games. In particular, the game is always challenging, puts the player's character in great danger, consists of randomly-generated dungeon levels, and scrambles some aspects of the game world (the identities of the objects) so they must be rediscovered upon every play-though.

That last bit deserves further elaboration. If you drink an orange potion in Rogue and it turns out to heal you, then every other orange potion you drink in that game will turn out to be a healing potion. The game will even rename orange potions to "potion of healing" to help clarify the relationship between description and function. However there are also bad potions to discover, and some potions don't have so obvious an effect when drunk. Part of the process of successful Rogue play is to track down, through use of both each type of item and the limited number of "scrolls of identify" found in the game, what everything does. Yet, when the game is over, the next game everthing will be mixed up again, and all the items will have different functions.

Roguelike games are also notable because, unlike the great majority of CRPGs, exploration and combat take place in the same game mode. Taking a step or taking a swing both happen in the same screen; there is no separate battle scene. Running away is the simple act of walking in the opposite direction of your assailant, who may then decide to use his turn to follow.

Anyway, I've found these games fascinating, far and away above other types of computer game, ever since the day I found an old floppy-disk version of PC Rogue on an uncle's 8086. Although the game is aging, it is still one of the more interesting roguelikes. Seeing more play these days, though, is Angband (which emphasizes the turn-based tactical play), Dungeon Crawl (which has a fine game balance), ADOM (a very harsh game with tons of things to do and mysteries to solve), and of course the venerable Nethack, possibly the deepest computer game ever made.

(Notice that I do not mention as essential to roguelike gaming that the game present its game world in ASCII characters. All the games listed above, to some degree, do this. But more and more often, some do not.)

Why I read Metafilter, Part 1

2009-03-31T17:53:00.000-04:00

In the comments to the post on Miss Universe visiting Guantanamo Bay (itself rather a bizarre story), user "The Whelk" wrote:

What universe is she queen of again?

The Miss Universe Organization producers of the Miss UNIVERSE®, MISS USA® and MISS TEEN USA® Pageants is a Donald J. Trump and NBC Universal joint venture.

Oh yes, I remember the Trump Pocket Universe. I was traveling from the Realm Of Seven Delights And Also Chocolate to the Base Material Plane. To avoid the Negative Energy Sphere I had to transfer at Trump InterDimensional.

The Pocket Universe revealed itself as a vast black marble lobby, limitless in reflective luster. Massive gold columns vanished into the unseen ceiling, making sad show of the feeble decorate plants cowering at their feet. In the center of the lobby was a pool and in the center of the pool was a girl.

She was encased in a crystal box and set upon shimmering silver silk pillows. She was young and beautiful, dolled up in a diamond necklace and crown, with a golden chain wrapped round her delicate ankle. It was cold in the lobby, cold and quiet, but she did not notice me. She was staring into the space between the columns, the place where the black marble blurredi, reflecting nothing.

Her gaze made me feel exposed and ashamed. I turned away to complete my next Material Jump. I thought the chain was cruel, seeing as she was already caged, but the crown seemed the worst of all. What use was finery in a such an airless space? What was she Queen of? This empty pocket? This tomb? I thought it was very sad. Then I completed my jump and I did not think about it anymore.

Awesome.

So, what has been going on?

2009-03-31T16:11:00.001-04:00

- Since I last posted here, I started a column for GameSetWatch called @Play, which people seem to like.
- I started another column more recently, Pixel Journeys, which is a little more fulfilling but rather harder to do.
- I've written a few Game Design Essentials articles for Gamasutra, which seem to take exponentially more effort each one I write. The last one though, on Atari Games, turned out really well. But I think I need to scale back my expectations.

- I've started a blog on Peanuts strips, going through them from the early days and pointing out cool strips. I first read Peanuts around the age of nine, from library books found in school and from a collection an uncle had. I've been kind of hooked on Peanuts since then. It's so far been unexpectedly easy to do posts for that, so I've got a good backlog of them built up.

I've decided to revive this blog due to the realization that I've been sharing a lot of things in Google Reader, things that are worth blog posts of their own, but without a blog to post them too they just sort of sit there in the list, unread. I've got a good backlog of those built up too, so maybe this'll be sustainable over time.

Stand by....

2009-03-30T05:16:00.002-04:00

Blog to revive shortly. In meantime, check out AWESOME NEW TITLE LOGO IMAGE PICTURE GRAPHIC THING.

Wikipedia: Lightsaber Combat Techniques

2007-04-11T13:44:00.000-04:00

Wikipedia's page on lightsaber combat styles is almost enough to make one forget how poorly thought-out the prequel Star Wars movies are.

Almost.

New York Press > Defective by Design: How Sphere came to be made

2007-03-26T05:48:00.000-04:00

From the New York Press some years ago, written by Matt Zoller Seitz, brought to light by Matthew Baldwin: a remarkably negative review of Sphere.

Washington Post > Metafilter: "My National Security Letter"

2007-03-23T23:47:00.000-04:00

An anonymous owner of a small ISP spills the beans at the Washington Post talking about the National Security Letter he received, which forbids him from telling anyone, not only about aid he was forced to render to the FBI, but that he was forbidden even from saying that he had gotten the gag order.

Gag orders are a thing that makes me particularly angry. I do not believe someone will be able to convince me that they are not fundamentally against free speech, but these letters are far worse than even usual. Remember back when the Patriot Act was being renewed, how one of the statistics the proponents of the renewal was particularly fond of siting was that there had been little documented abuse of the act? Well of course it wasn't documented, because the people who were in a position to tell us about the abuse were forbidden from talking about it!

Ever day that goes by, it is becoming harder to act civil around those people who continue to support these kinds of monstrous offenses against reason. There is a line beyond which abysmally bad politics begins to intrude upon the personal.

This... I mean... ugh.

Metafilter: Codex Seraphinianus

2007-03-22T16:26:00.000-04:00

There was a Metafilter thread a few days ago pointing to a Flickr consisting of scans from the 'Codex Seraphinianus', which may be the strangest book ever written. It's not in any known language, but one invented by its author/illustrator, Italian architect Luigi Serafini. (Or not: some suspect that it's just gibberish.)

It's unquestionable, however, that the illustrations have a striking, whimsical power.

slacktivist: Gaming the Stats

2007-03-22T16:20:00.000-04:00

Fred Clark is right on the money, as usual, with "Gaming the Stats" over at his (surprisingly?) liberal media politics pro-religion blog slacktivist. This time out, he discusses metrics used to measure performance in organizations, all organizations private and public, becoming more important than the things they measure.

We've all seen this lots of times. I like to call it "assigning to the name the importance of the original" when I'm feeling obtuse. It is the part of the corrosion at the heart of our culture: that the work we do is less important than the personal status that we gain.

Let's try this again

2007-03-22T16:19:00.001-04:00

Blogging to resume momentarily I think, although the form may be a bit shorter than in the past.

Windows Vista: which version is right for you, and which other version will you end up with?

2006-03-08T11:22:00.000-05:00

I am a member of that "Exploring Windows" list Microsoft maintains in order to advertise at clueless computer users. (This can readily be deduced by looking at the content of the list.) I'm a member because I haven't gotten around to unsubscribe.

But then, why would I unsubscribe, when periodically I get a message like this?

The message says....

Which version of Windows Vista is right for you?

Hoo boy.

It only became known that there were going to be multiple versions less than a month ago, and already they're pushing out marketing messages to the clueless legions. I'm by no means a Microsoft fan, but this business over Vista strikes me as startlingly awful. But for those reasons, continue reading.

People use computers for an unimaginable variety of work and leisure activities. To fit this wide range of uses, Windows Vista will be broadly available in five versions (http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=4628420):

Of course they use computers for lots of things, that's why they're called general-purpose computing machines. To offer customized versions of Windows for each use isn't empowering, at best it's stingy since they don't want to give away all features for one purchase price, and means they'll end up selling extra copies, as users buy weaker versions, find out there's features in the more costly versions they need/really want, and have to schlepp back out to the software store to shell out again. "What's that?" the clerk will say, "You want to return an old software purchase? MWA-ha-ha! Guards, seize him!"

I cannot rightfully imagine why Microsoft would do something like this if they were not expecting at least a sizable number of computer users to do something like that.

For Home:
Windows Vista Home Premium (http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=4628421): Goes beyond basic tasks and helps you get more done around the house while more fully enjoying your digital entertainment.

The middle-ground. People with prior Microsoft experience (like those screwed by the Home/Professional difference) will probably default to this. According to their site (at the very URL listed above), this will be the cheapest version that actually includes their new Aero interface. It also has the options for making your own DVDs (DRM permitting) and it "provides new ways for you to enjoy your music, photos, and DVD movies", assuming the RIAA, MPAA and I assume professional photographers of America allow it.

Windows Vista Ultimate : Includes the full set of business, mobility, and home entertainment features for those who use their PCs at work, at home, and on the road.

Will probably contain some gaming acceleration tweaks that games will quickly come to rely upon. Will have the fewest crippled features.

Windows Vista Home Basic : Increases reliability, security, and ease of use for entry-level computers and basic tasks such as writing e-mail and surfing the Web.

The version that will be bundled with low-end computers. That's the rub, the true implications of this plan. That copy of Windows you get with one of those $500 machines at Wal-Mart, you may not realize, actually accounts for a sizable percentage of the cost of that machine. It'll lower the cost of the initial package, but to do the things you really want with the machine, you'll end up having to shell out for the big thing anyway. That's called a hidden cost folks, and by paying it, you'll ultimately be shelling out for Windows twice, once for the basic version and one for the super deluxe XTREEM version. Those who won't will be reduced to second-class citizens.

Anyone want to place any bets as to whether the next version of Windows will go back to offering one Home and one Business version, and in the ad copy for it brag about how simple it is Microsoft is making it for customers?

Video Games: Amazing Ouendan skills

2006-03-05T22:10:00.000-05:00

My last post, which was meant to be a criticism of cell phone calling plans and ended up looking like an advertisement for them, has made me a little wary of Google's Blog Comments plugin for Blogger, but I'm giving it another try.

Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! is an insanely catchy music game for the DS from Japan that we just *might* someday get a US release of. In it, the players must tap numbered circles on the touch screen in order in the rhythm of a song. Word is the game is incredibly demanding, as the linked-to video should indicate.It's also one of the cooler pieces of game music I've heard. Why don't we get things this cool in the US? Sure there's Katamari, but beyond that it seems like an unending stream of sports games and (ugh) Tom Clancy.

See more at Silicon Era....

Families talk free and get up to 5 free Samsung x495 phones

2006-02-16T00:51:00.000-05:00

Ah, long time no see guys....

Here , T-Mobile hawks their "unlimited messaging for families plan," illustrating once more the reason why I have no cell phone or text messenger or service like that: they're all priced at extortionate rates, with the only exceptions being plans that all seem to carry some hidden "gotcha" designed to screw you over if you fail to invoke the proper incantations.

And whose idea was it anyway, to charge for sending per text message, anyway? How much money does it really cost them to ship a few bites of ASCII wirelesly? Would they charge 12.5% more to send an eighth bit?

Artwork: Movie Club flyer

2005-08-31T17:55:00.000-04:00

Something I've done to promote a film club we're starting here at GSU. Used Corel Painter's charcoal tools to both create the black background and the white foreground elements. The eraser tool created the solid-edged fingers in front of the projector. I used CorelDraw to produce guidelines to help me keep the perspective straight.

The expression on the guy's face I think works really well, though it reminds me uncomfortably of the kid from Paranoia Agent, or maybe an over-mischevious Ernie.

Artwork from Super Mario Strikers

2005-08-18T23:04:00.000-04:00

Funky, graffitiesque artwork of the Mario characters for an upcoming Mario soccer game. Including the coolest official corporate illustrations of both Mario and Wario in a long while, as well as the hottest drawing of Peach ever.

Planet GameCube Game Art: Super Mario Strikers

My response to a Johnny Isakson form letter about the flag-burning amendment

2005-06-24T01:36:00.000-04:00

Johnny Isakson, one of my state's two senators, has a form on hisa website that, if filled out, eventually results in a response to someone at "senator@isakson.senate.gov", although that address doesn't work for replies. It's probably written by staffers, and may even be a form letter (although I've gotten two responses now with moderately different content), but that doesn't stop me from wanting to respond to the message.

I really hate getting automated, or employee-sourced, message in response to my concerns, especially when the person I'm writing to is a co-sponsor of something so wrong-headed as the flag burning amendment.

Since my response to his message bounced, because I spent so long writing it and don't want it to vanish into the ether, and to serve as a record of the reasoning being used in favor of that damnable amendment, I'm going to post my response here. I doubt he'll ever see it, but maybe it won't go to waste this way.

> The American flag is a national treasure, and is one of our
> greatest symbols of nationhood and national unity.

I have no idea if a straight response this way will actually get read
by anyone, but it seems a lot less annoying (for myself and whoever
reads these things) to try to do a straight reply instead of
continuing to direct my responses through the web form and breaking up
the conversation, while also losing track of my own messages.

It is my considered opinion that ultimately, while flags have
important symbolic value, they are, in the end, symbols, and that
those who are popularly described as "dying for the flag" are more
accurately dying for the nation for which it stands. But the nation
is not the flag; the logical error committed there, frequently
committed these days, is taking the representation of a thing as the
thing itself.

> I believe desecrating
> the flag dishonors the sacrifices of those who served this Nation and
> continue to defend us all.

The word "descrating" is a loaded term, and has meant different things
throughout history. Did you know that there's already laws on the
books meant to protect the flag? They forbid using it as, for
example, part of an article of clothing. It dates back to a time when
people were concerned about commercial exploitaton of the flag -- a
cause I could get behind, considering how much false patriotism
centers around prominent flag display.

But I consider passing spurious amendments to "protect" a symbol to
be, at best, misguided. You cannot harm a symbol by doing anything to
one representation of it -- there will always be more flags. You can
harm that symbol, however, by harming the thing it represents -- and
one of the most powerful things we have in the U.S. is freedom of
speech. While I would never burn a flag myself, as the cliche goes, I
would do everything in my power to protect someone else's right to do
so.

The whole flag burning amendment issue strikes me as nothing more as a
political fad, seriously harmful to freedom of speech, brought to the
service of empty patroitism.

> While the Supreme Court says protestors have the
> right to burn the flag, the Constitution says we have the right to amend it,
> and we must now do so to protect the flag.

The Consitution says you have, not the right (as congressmen you don't
have the right to do any damn thing, your post is in service to your
constituency and grants you *no* rights), but the duty to amend it
when the need arises. But there is hardly such a need at this moment
-- the figure being bandied about is that a grand total of ONE flag
burning incident occured in the United States last year. To sponsor a
Constitutional amendment to fix a problem that doesn't exist in order
to bring the power of the U.S. Government to bear against a
questionable issue -- honestly, the situation seems, how should I put
this... Schaivo-esque?

I do appreciate the personalized responses, even if they are, at best,
written by staffers. (But then again, you do have a job to do.) I get
the feeling that neither of us is going to convince the other here, so
I'll merely thank you for your time, and get down to the business of
spreading the word about your co-sponsorship of this lamentable
amendment.

Random Ideas, 6/16

2005-06-16T20:38:00.000-04:00

1. Take the music to the song "Hotel California." Put it into a blank video file. Then splice into that file appropriate scenes from the movie Manos: The Hands of Fate, so as to make a music video for the song. Post it somewhere on the web. Watch the fun.

2. Also a video idea. Intercut between highlights (more likely, lowlights) from the
current session of Congress and President Bush press conferences (Schrivo, estate tax repeal, the Flag Burning amendment current winding its way through Congress), and scenes from a really over-the-top hillbilly gathering, complete with cousins kissing, pickup trucks tearing up dirt roads, unlovely people in deteriorating overalls with vehicles devoted to dead people & peeing Calvin decals, et cetera. Overlay the whole thing with "Arkansas Traveller" and "Turkey in the Straw."

3. Go to www.yakov.com and see aging, one-joke funnyman Yakov Smirnov try to ply his two-decade-old wares in Branson, Missouri, making his apparently prodigious living these days confirming the misbegotten beliefs of superiority held by the more rural, more regrettable portions of our nation. Try to make fun of it but quit halfway through when overcome by feeling of profound ennui, mixed with longstanding, now confirmed suspecion that one is merely raging against the ever-deepening tide of stupidity infesting the United States, then collapse weeping, spending night curled up inside bottle of cheap liquor. Later, try to get a description of the whole process published on McSweeney's.

If I had the money to run a television ad campaign...

2005-05-11T16:08:00.000-04:00

I previously posted as a Slashdot comment. It was too much work for Slashdot alone. The story linked to this very insightful Grimwell Online article, concerned the excitement that game companies are feeling over the prospect of selling extra game content.

That's right. You've bought their $50 (likely, soon to be $60) game, you're playing along, and you're sort of bitterly enjoying it in that uniquely modern-video-game-experience way, but then you read that the kind of extra feature that you use to need to press Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right for, now you have to pay additional bucks to get.

Yeah, that's a winning business model.

Think about it: Back in the old days, strategy guides were completely optional things. Now, there are games where the guide is almost necessary to play (often because of lackluster manuals). How long before games are designed around the need to buy extra content just to play them well? Keep in mind that there are games out now that are almost impossible even without the ability to buy powerups to make it playable.

Is gaming full of empty promises? Are game companies acting like rampaging lucre-beasts? Will people buy access to fairly gimmicky and short-lived bit-content, like "tricked out vehicles" to make friends drool while they watch them play some racing game? (That's paraphrasing, fairly maliciously, the quote from the Grimwell article from some X-Box exec, excited about his new, precious revenue source.)

I don't think it'll last, and I'd accelerate the process if I could. If I had the money, I'd love to produce this commercial and see if I could get it inserted into network news broadcasts. I kind of doubt I could, for the same reason Adbusters has problems getting their own spots aired.

Gen Y Slacker Type #1: "Dude! Take a look at this new game! If I press this button, the guy does a backflip and slices through that monster like a buzzsaw!"

Gen Y Slacker Type #2: "That's nice, but-"

#1: "Oh, and when I win the game, it opens up an entirely new character who can play the game in, uh, a slightly different way!"

#2: "Interesting, except-"

#1: "Oh, and look at that other character, check out the polygons on her, huh? On that... fake girl, heh heh... heh..."

#2: "But why not-"

#1: "And I've collected everything I can collect, and I've found the secret double-plus-good ending, and I've max'd out everyone's stats, and I can play as the bad guy, and everything's unlocked... and I've... but... uh."

#2: "And you're now feeling kind of empty from the whole experience, right?"

#1: "Hm, now that you mention it, yeah."

#2: "Yeah. Here, take a look at this pamphlet. It should help to put the situation into better perspective."
(Hands over a pamphlet entitled: "Why You're Feeling Empty: A short essay on the meaninglessness of arbitrary accomplishment.")

- LATER -

#1: "Wow, that handout you gave me was right on the money! I've thrown away my game systems and got started doing something useful!"

#2: "Just like I did a month ago. What are you doing?"

#1: "Writing Sonic the Hedgehog super hot triple-X hentai fanfiction!"

#2: "Just like I started doing a month ago. Hmm...."

This is why I think that the success of video games is short-lived. As companies are producing strings of games that are successively less unique and fun, playing through them feels more and more like work, work with a very insubstantial reward at the end.

Once a majority of players have made that connection, everything falls apart. Again.

("And it's about time," sez Cranky Kong.)

Found on Slashdot: The Submarine

2005-04-21T16:59:00.000-04:00

Link: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

This strikes me as incredibly on target. It talks about the ascendancy of PR departments and how reporters allow them to practically write the news for them.

That by itself is foreboding enough. Now replace the word "PR departments" with "White House press releases."

Is the lack of mainstream media criticism of the Bush presidency's incredibly revisionist approach to the executive branch beginning to make sense now? The problem with the mainstream media isn't liberalism, it's laziness.

Web Funny. Funny, huh huh huh.

2005-03-21T10:42:00.000-05:00

I don't laugh at an awful lot on the web, anymore, 'cept maybe Fafblog, but then today I find not one but two hie-larious sites.

Okay, I found one of them linked to from Fafblog, but I still claim credit for it! It's Topic Drift, and as I said in a Fafblog comment, it's like someone overdosed on the literary works of Woody Allen and turned into one, Flaming Carrot-style. And that's a good thing, fokes.

The other thing is called somehow The Squooshy Pineapple, an' it was found on Memepool, and it's even more much funnier than rind of bacon. (Grammar flaws in previous sentence intentional, do not write me.) It's a picture of wire service photographs with joke captions - except unlike the many contest sites that work along that tired premise, these are actually good. Of special note today is the picture of Pseudomilly Brock and her dog, "Hungula." Warning: do not view while enjoying a beverage or else risk turning your drink into Nostril Cola.

Loonatics?! Also, WB's update track record

2005-02-17T17:00:00.000-05:00

Q: How stupid are Warner Bros. executives?

A: This stupid:

(Picture scavanged off of Michael Barrier's blog.)

The picture shows the redesign of Bugs Bunny into yet another of those ill-advised spin-offs WB tends to make every few years, seeking to reimagine and modernize the classic Warner Bros. characters.

I don't have a scanner handy, but right in front of me is a picture in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution which provides pictures of the updates of Wile E. Coyote, the Tazmanian Devil, Daffy Duck and the Road Runner (and also Space Jam-introduced wannabe Lola Bunny), and except for the TD it's almost impossible to tell them apart. Don't they see this is going to tank SO BAD. Does the process of getting an MBA just drain all appreciation for wit and humor from your brain? There have got to be people in the pipeline making this show who can see this, why aren't they speaking up?

Even more indicative of a fundamental disconnect with reality by these people -- the thinking that informes the update to the classic characters is based on the fact that the Duck Dodgers series on Cartoon Network fizzled quickly, and the Looney Tunes: Back In Action movie lost $79 million dollars. Of course, the possibility that both of these implementations were lacking entirely the charm and cleverness of the original shorts, which were made on the cheap and yet are even now regarded as among the best cartoons ever made, that never occurs to the clueless folks now regrettably in charge of what is potentially animation's greatest property.

This strikes me as a good opportunity to go over the various recent attempts to update the classic Warner Bros. characters, and how they have, each, failed to recapture the spirit of the original.

(These are rated on a scale of one to ten anvils.)

TAZ-MANIA
Rating: Three anvils.

Some of the episodes of this show were actually good, but for every Bull and Axel cartoon (the best thing about the series) there was a so-so showing. The Taz character just didn't work that well as a teenager in a sorta-suburban setting. Also, the show was very... talky. Imagine what a cartoon with the Tazmanian Devil in it that could be regarded as talky would be like. That image is largely accurate. However, it must be said the animation was rather good.

TINY TOON ADVENTURES
Rating: Two anvils.

The first of the Stephen Spielberg-branded cartoons, even though he really didn't have a lot to do with them. Once in a while there was a good episode (the They Might Be Giants music videos are classics), but overall this show was way too pleased with itself. There are still people today who will swear up and down that it was brilliant, but they're still laboring the spell of childhood nostalgia. (The only reason people went to see Episode II, in my opinion.)

ANIMANIACS
Rating: Five anvils.

Once in a while this was brilliant, like with the oft-rerun Nations of the World song, or the "I'm Mad" theatrical short they put at the beginning of WB's otherwise-forgotten Thumbelina cartoon. Of the various cartoon shorts showcased in this show, the Warner Bros. were often very good, all these: Mindy and Buttons and Rita and Runt, were awful, but Slappy Squirrel was often surprisingly clever. Anything they showed that had the slighest hint of historical content tended to be crappy. This show, of course, was where Pinky and the Brain got its start, seguing smoothly into...

PINKY AND THE BRAIN
Rating: Six anvils.

Pinky and the Brain was often great (perhaps the greatest premise ever shown on Saturday morning), but also (somehow) suffered from Animaniacs' historical cartoon malaise. The better ones tended to be those that showed up earlier in the run, but there were excellent cartoons throughout its run. (Especially "Mouse of La Mancha", brilliant writing on that one.) This remains the high point of WB Animation's latter-day, non-Batman output.

TWEETY AND SYLVESTER MYSTERIES
Rating: One anvil.

Whoever came up with the idea for this should have been derided, but whoever decided to make it should have been shot.

BABY LOONEY TUNES
Rating: One anvil.

Jim Henson's Bugs Bunny Babies!

FREAKAZOID!
Rating: Six anvils.

Stands alongside PatB as the highlights of the age. Some of these cartoons push the "classic updates" premise of this post, but Freakzoid, despite being an obsensible superhero cartoon, was actually a clever parody of them. I don't include Road Rovers here because it was too far over the line into action cartoons (and sucked anyway). Freakazoid wasn't as good as the Tick, but then, what is? Also note that the Earthworm Jim cartoon was just as good, and also aired on Kids WB at about this time, but is largely forgotten today except as a videogame character.

DUCK DODGERS
Rating: Three anvils.

In this one they went back to trying up update classic characters and what do you know? They failed miserably. Their including things like a Green Lantern crossover cartoon prove that the creators of this show have absolutely no idea what made the classic characters great.

Fafblog: Homeland Joe!

2005-02-17T16:59:00.000-05:00

What do you do when a bill is introduced to Congress offering the Department of Homeland Security unlimited power, that is a status of being able to ignore every federal law and of being immune to judicial oversight, and it passes the House of Representives after surviving, intact, a proposed admendment to remove that provision?

Well if you're Fafnir at the always-brilliant Fafblog, why you write this! Head 'em on, move 'em out, round 'em up, rawhide!

(Accidently posted this first over at the Other Blog, goes to show how focused I am these days....)

Oh wow: A hate letter!

2005-01-01T01:08:00.000-05:00

Apparently someone decided that the best place to express disagreement to a recent Slashdot comment I made would be here (check the comment on the preceding post here, "Headlines over IP," to see what I'm talking about). For the record, my comment was about Microsoft abandoning Passport, and it was, essentially, "See? Microsoft does fail sometimes!" I can't believe someone was able to find venom (or whatever diluted substitute for it he uses) in his heart enough to curse me out over that.

Just goes to show you, eat your veggies, and start up a sparsely-posted blog, and you too can become the target of spastic insults from people you've never met in reaction to just about anything you say! I'm almost in tears... it's like I've finally arrived!

Headlines Over IP (HOIP)

2004-12-17T16:42:00.000-05:00

Wow, four months since the last installment. Not a lot of good stuff here either, though #3 is quite odd.

1. TechWeb : Microsoft Moves On Spyware To Stymie Firefox
http://www.techweb.com/wire/security/55800866

See class? Competition is good!

This is just funny. How many months has Microsoft blithely ignored spyware, and Internet Explorer, to do something about it only when a percieved rival has made threatening gains upon their position?

And note that instead of coding up something in-house, they actually bought out someone else! Microsoft makes the operating system that most spyware is hard-coded to take advantage of (like the Run and RunOnce registry keys), but instead of simply cooking up a weekend-project applet to check these keys for new entries, they just bought someone out and had done with it.

Okay, enough tech stuff. What else is there in this magic flash box...

2. ABC News : Politics : More Uncounted Ballots Found in Wash.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=339998

We've entered the age of the fractional percentage point. I so wish I was living in one of those areas instead of throwing my vote against the bulk of laughably dumb, horrifyingly red, Fox News-in-public-places Georgia, a land to prove to anyone interested in knowing that the minds of human beings can be twisted around to accept any damnable idea as gospel. What we have here is proof of the inevitability of humanity's extinction. Ain't it swell.

3. CBC News : Texas city orders strippers to wear permits

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2004/12/17/texas-041217.html

A city in Texas has passed a law requiring strippers to wear permits on stage...

Um, can you say “missing the point?” If you have to wear a permit on-stage to be nude, then you aren't really nude now are you? Though I'm sure some of the more creative women in question could make much of, shall we say, stragically-placed documentation.

Congratulations San Antonio, for enacting the 21st century's first bona-fide blue law. Really, what does this do to aid law enforcement? What problem can be fixed by forcing nekkid ladies to wear permits notifying folk of their legally-allowed public unclothedness that couldn't be solved by merely keeping them (the documents or the women, take your pick) off-stage? And what is it that caused San Antonio's entire city council to vote in favor of it?

I can't shake the feeling that this was passed inreaction to a specific, highly-secret, probably hilarious, incident. Coming soon to an adult mag near, yet not close enough to arouse suspecion, you.

Link: Quitting the Paint Factory

2004-12-14T15:26:00.000-05:00

Found on BoingBoing, a very cool article about the necessity of not working. I'm unemployed currently, in a town and at a time in which unemployment is rather more common that I'd like, but a lot of this strikes a chord with me. I simply cannot function if every waking moment has some purpose attached to it. Insight and reflection require unoccupied moments, and this is not an indication of mental sluggishness or stupidity, but of wisdom.

Quitting the Paint Factory

I'm Back!

2004-12-01T05:57:00.000-05:00

I just got finished with a wild month, participating in Nanowrimo, the yearly 50,000-word-in-a-month thing. My project is a humorous story about alien worlds, Cthulhu-esque preschool teachers, the end of time, and plenty of other things. So many other things that it's not anywhere near finished at 50k words, and even when it is finished, then comes the editing, oy the editing. But one thing at a time.

Anyway, found on Metafilter was this really cool thing: Einstein's Theories of General and Special Relativity, explained entirely in words of four letters or less! Now the length of the words used is no excuse to not understand these things! Enjoy.

The first Michael Moore movie controversy: Roger & Me

2004-10-17T22:44:00.000-04:00

Long before Bowling for Columbine threw up its hands in the direction of violent crime in the U.S. and Fahrenheit 9/11 threatened to sway a presidential election, there was Roger & Me, Moore's scathing attack on General Motors for pulling out of Flint, Michigan (to which he's returned in each of his documentaries since).

All of you people who think Fahrenheit 9/11 is full of "deceits" (bah to you), have a look at this Roger Ebert essay from 1990, written about a similar controversy with that film. Before you point and say "You see? See?!! He's always been doing it!", have a look at what Ebert had to say about it back then. The names, places and details are different, but the points apply to the film even today -- that the movies are more about putting forth an opinion in an entertaining, poetic manner than being a rote recitation of facts. His films are not straight facts but an interpretation of them. That means they're opinion, but so what? Non-conservatives are still allowed to have opinions, aren't they?

Even if they were, they certainly wouldn't be as bad as those outright false attacks on Kerry's war record, you don't get much more evil than that folks.

Go Team Venture!

2004-10-17T02:59:00.000-04:00

I just watched a cartoon in which a musclebound secret agent beat up four old men, one of them a sumo wrestler and another a fish-man, disguised as women -- or more accurately, woman robots. And it was funny, oh how it was funny.

Venture Bros. rocks.

News in spam: http://www.yesbushcan.com/

2004-10-17T01:36:00.000-04:00

How did these guys get my address? I mean, it's not *typical* spam, it wasn't sent to tens of thousands of random people, it's obviously meant to be read by a blogger, and since my email address is right there on this page, well, that answers that. But why did they think I'm a conservative blogger? I've been mostly liberal here on Hopefully Not Stupid (when I'm actually posting that is), and most of the stuff over on Three Second Decree is politics-agnostic.

But it's still spam, in that it's unsolicited, automated and sent in bulk, and those are indeed the key ingredients.

This is the full text of the message:


RatherGate proved that bloggers are the best fact checkers.  That is

       why we are writing to a few bloggers asking for help.



       Yes Bush Can has collected several documents that are clearly suspect.

       But we need your help to prove they are fake:

       http://www.yesbushcan.com/falsedocs.shtml



       Let's spring to action before these documents needlessly tarnish the

       reputation of our Commander and Chief.  You know the drill: analyze the

       handwriting, search for factual errors, and post your discoveries.



        And keep us posted by sending email to FakeDocs@yesbushcan.com.



       Thanks in advance for your help.



       YesBushCan

1. I don't know about what everyone thinks about the "Rathergate" documents now (and that name seems mightily like wishful thinking on behalf of conservabloggers), but I seem to remember seeing Daily Kos state that the documents could, indeed, have been real. And even if they weren't -- Bush is known to have been a lax National Guard attendent. Even if Kerry's war record was faked (and if it is, I'd say that shrapnel in his leg shows astounding attention to detail when it comes to fakery), the fact remains: Kerry went to Vietnam, and Bush got out of it. But this isn't even important from an electorial standpoint.

2. The contents of the falsedocs.shtml page lists these documents that they'd also like to have falsified by bored bloggers:


Dick Cheney's DUI

George W. Bush's DUI

George W. Bush's Second DUI

Bush and Cheney have excellent judgement and would never get behind the wheel while drunk.



Memo to Ken Lay

Second Memo to Ken Lay

Ken Lay has been indicted on felony fraud charges -- there is NO WAY he was this close with President Bush.



Bush Daughters' Possession of Alcohol

It must be fake: This is clearly a liberal media snow job on these poor girls.



Osama Warning Document Part 1

Osama Warning Document Part 2

This so called "official document" suggests that Bush was asleep at wheel before 9-11. Get real.



Are there any other fake documents we are missing? Please send them to us so we can post them on this site for conservative bloggers to debunk.

Seeking to disprove these things starts me to thinking -- what if this isn't really a conservative website? What if it's a liberal website that seeks to subtlely undermine Bush's supporters through sly, real-seeming ridicule, the way Landover Baptist does with fundamentalist Christians? C'mon, urging people to debunk Bush's DUIs? If that's true, then the creators of the site are obviously geniuses -- and just as obviously nuts.

This will be remembered as the year the political campaigns, long on the road there, finally broke down and became entirely postmodern. The satire is more realistic than the real stuff, everything everyone says is called a lie by someone else, and "proof" is decided, although nobody will admit to this, more based on what they already believe rather than the evidence presented to them, for after all unless you're a forensics expert actually looking at the evidence involved, how can you really trust it? The right actually laughs at the left's claiming there's a conspiracy against them, despite the fact there exists Fox News, and the best news show on TV is a comedy program, bringing us back to satire!

Thank god a Van Helsing commercial just came on TV, so I can get to hating something it's a lot more healthy to hate than my own country, I mean, ugh!

Seven Warning Signs of Pseudoscience

2004-10-12T20:44:00.000-04:00

I've often thought about ways to break people out of their fraudlent beliefs, and this is a good list of things to look out for whenever someone presents, say, "startling new research supporting Intelligent Design!" Have a look.

Three Second Decree & Statesboro Blogger

2004-10-08T04:28:00.000-04:00

Three Second Decree is my new ultra-short-form weblog, which I predict will be much easier to keep updated than this one. Everything on it is a sentence long or shorter! Have a look at: http://www.hiddenglade.com/threesecond/

I just got a message from another downtrodden Statesboro resident who has a blog. It's actually a rather cool fiction blog! Go on over to Okay, we'll do that to have a look.

That's it for the moment, hopefully I'll have some more Headlines for you guys soon!

Debates, Schbates

2004-09-29T16:42:00.000-04:00

Breaking my long silence (during which I made a 1420 on the GRE hooray for me!), a story on NPR's website on what the national presidential debates aren't really all that great. For starters, they ain't debates: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4052162

Fafblog hits one out of the park

2004-09-20T18:27:00.000-04:00

This is hilarious... if you're not conservative, that is. Check it out:

Fafblog Special Interview: GOD AND SATAN

Link: Fighting Intrusive Public Transpo Preaching With Show Tunes

2004-09-18T17:00:00.000-04:00

Sorry to have been quiet lately. Here's a little sump'n sump'n found over at Metafilter:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/koaloha/29646.html

Link: Classic Movie Scripts

2004-08-26T18:29:00.000-04:00

The site

Found on Memepool. The site's on Geocities, so visit now before demand wrecks it. This page collects the scripts of old movies and makes them available to read. The highlights: The Wizard of Oz, Dr. Strangelove, Annie Hall, and Citizen Kane, full of Orson Welles' unnecessary, yet revealing, extra descriptions of characters and settings. Really cool stuff.

Games: Serious Scrabble

2004-08-14T04:28:00.000-04:00

Is chess possibly the most over-analyzed and obsessed-over game on the planet? Perhaps poker? Maybe Monopoly? Guess go?

It’s possible that this game is, in fact, Scrabble. In case you don’t believe me, check out this Wikipedia article, where a tournament-level game between two players, scoring 1,004 points between them, is exhaustively explicated and wrung for every last drop of strategic significance. Scrabble is, to me, one of the most interesting popular board games out there, but this is just nuts.

In related news, a documentary about tournament Scrabble players, the name of which escapes me, either has recently, is currently, or will soon be making the rounds in American cities that actually have a cinema scene (Statesboro, unfortunately, is not one of them). If it’s anything like this game synopsis, it’ll be interesting, if a bit of a headache inducer.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's... Headlines?!

2004-08-11T18:32:00.000-04:00

How long has it been since I've done one of these? It just may be longer still until I have enough spare cash to be able to spend time on the computer at Maui's Smoothies, browsing around newsmap looking for news stories to make silly comments about, so let's make this one count, dadgumit.

1. Xinhuanet : English : Separated Filipino twins in good condition
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-08/11/content_1759274.htm

My god.

But I mean that in a good way! Well, mostly...

We live in age in which conjoined twins, connected at the head as if they had some horrifying adventure in Funhouse Mirrorland, can be detached from each other. And, afterwards, be in a condition that can be described by someone, anyone at all, as "good." And that is the happy occurrence this simultaneously wonderful and disturbing article has to report.

Say what you want about the corrupting influences of civilization, about the tendency of individuality to be lost in a sea of groupthink and corporate coercion, about the escalating tendency of human beings to feel overwhelmed by their environment, but there are still some things, a small but important number of things, that rock. We may not yet have flying cars, robo-maids, or an English translation of Sega Virtua-Hooker, but I'd say this still indicates that, yes Virginia, we are living in Jetson-land.

2. IndiaTimes : Economic Times : International Business : Trump just got fired, but he also got a raise
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/811236.cms
(Original source: Reuters)

Donald Trump has two messages to himself as he looks to reorganize his debt-laden casino empire. First, “you’re fired” and second, “you’ve got a raise”, according to a federal filing on Tuesday.

The first is the catch phrase he uses as the star of the hit reality TV series The Apprentice.

Until recently I haven't had access to the wonders of satellite television, so I've never seen The Apprentice. So allow me a moment to push my brain back up through my left nostril, through which it squirted when I discovered there was a show in which A. Trump played a role, B. his catch phrase is "You're fired," and C. is a hit.

Prepare yourselves as I'm ramping this up into boldface: HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?! Is it the damn 80s all over again? Are groups of frat guys sitting around the communal TV, going "Woo-hoo!" whenever Trump sacks somebody? Do we now exult as a species when a poor schmo gets the axe from one of the richest bastards - BASTARDS - in the world? Wait I forgot, we're living in the era of the "reality" show, where malevolent producers cook up a stinking simulacra of real life, weak in compassion and kindness but rich in the kind of veiled, pseudo-Darwinian, survival-of-the-fittest propaganda that makes it perfectly okay, in too many worldviews, for one to do a flamboyant fandango all over the hopes and dreams of others, for the simple reason that they can, and can eek some cents out of it. That's not entertainment, it's propaganda.

And could there be even one person remaining in this world who believes in that moldy fiction, the American Dream, and thinks that with hard work and shrewd business sense that they could someday catapult themselves onto Trump's pedestal without liberal application of at least one of those two ancient, all-purpose salves, Extreme Luck and Shady Business Practices? If your ticket to success is printed with the name of a reality show, then I hate to break it to you, but this is not a viable path to success that anyone except the one-in-six-million who get on those shows.

I decided to learn more about this show, and Google'd up NBC's web site for The Apprentice. For a hoot, boys and girls, have a look at the site's bio for show host and Executive Producer Donald Trump. It scrolls on and on, detailing in lavishing, worshiping prose every damn erection Trump's bought or built and stamped his ludicrous name upon. That, ultimately, is why Trump's involved with this show, why he'd condescend to be involved with it, when on the big roster of his profitable endeavors this has got to rank at least twenty places beneath his friggin' casinos.

Reading about the show's premise, this is what it looks like to me. Please, someone whose seen the show, correct me if I'm wrong. Donald Trump and "trusted colleagues" George Ross and Carolyn Kepcher round up a bunch of people who applied to be on the show, make them perform annoying, difficult tasks with each other, then decide among themselves which of the lot has demeaned himself the least by slavishly doing precisely what he's been told. At the end of the series, the remaining applicant gets hired by Trump Enterprises and gets a quick "in" to the notoriously insular world of corporate management.

Oh, sign me up for the upcoming DVD release of that.

3. Internetnews.com : Google Auction Immient
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3393411

It's about bloody time!

Months and months we've heard about the IPO, how it's going to be a "Dutch Auction," and how Wall Street hates its guts, hates it it does.

I love Google as much as anybody, but c'mon, sell it already! Oh, notice how Yahoo! managed to finagle itself some real cheap shares, for the price of lawyers and a patent application really, by using one of those highly-questionable software patent thingies to threaten Goog into giving them a cut. Yippie.

4. E! Online News: Mike "Rowdy" Wallace Busted
http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,14694,00.html?tnews

Man oh man, is this ever going to sting around the doughnut table. "Hey 'Rowdy,' attack any cops lately?" Imagine losing all your arguments with Andy Rooney when he drags out the chestnut, for the nth time, "At least I've never been in jail." I figure it'll be around the twentieth time that happens that 86-year-old Mike'll snap, and show Mr. Rooney a bit of the fightin' style that got him put in the slammer in the first place, to the cheers of harried secretaries and interns throughout the office.

Seriously, c'mon now. Mike Wallace did not "lunge" at a city inspector. If he did, then the inspector should have just stepped out of the way of the elderly telejournalist's murderous grip and continued doing his job. Even if he was "overly assertive and disrespectful," is that really sufficient cause to throw someone in the pokey?

But still, whoever woulda thought that Mike Wallace would one day be brought in by the man? I hope we get a juicy expose on this all over CBS prime time, serve 'em right. Let's see that inspector on the business end of a 60 Minutes interview. It'd be a hell of a lot more interesting to me than whatever antics Donald Trump's cooked up this week.

Link: Documentary, "The Future of Pinball"

2004-08-06T05:17:00.000-04:00

Link to documentary's home page

I'm a big pinball nut, or at least I would be if I had the chance to play (there seem to be no machines remaining in Statesboro). Pinball suffered a great blow when Williams, the biggest pinball manufacturer in the world, suddenly left the business. Strangely, they got out less than a year after releasing the revolutionary Pinball 2000 system, which was quite profitable right out of the gate with only two released, Revenge from Mars and Star Wars: Episode 1 (both games I've played and enjoyed). Yet ten months later their entire pinball staff was disbanded, including Pat Lawlor, the most successful pinball designer of all time, creator or Funhouse, Addams Family Pinball and Twilight Zone. Many of their engineers went over to Stern Pinball, the only major manufacturer left, or Pat Lawlor's new company, which creates games for Stern.

The documentary is the story of the creation of Pinball 2000 and its success, and its rapid demise at the hands of WMS Industries management, and is due out sometime in the remainder of this year. And I, for one, can't wait to see it.

In other news....
- Still looking for a job. Oy.
- After almost twenty years of on-again, off-again play, I have finally won a game of Rogue! I'm still a bit light-headed from the accomplishment.

Link: How to be creative

2004-08-02T01:06:00.000-04:00

Gapingvoid article

Found on Boingboing, I think this is an excellent description of the needs and processes of becoming truly creative. Great stuff.

TV: Case Closed

2004-08-02T00:55:00.000-04:00

<>It’s strange, but one of the best detective dramas on TV isn’t live action but anime, a cartoon from Japan. Even more amazing, for its genre, is that there are no barely-dressed cyborg women, narrow-eyed evil swordsmen with long hair, or annoying spiky-headed kids who can save the world with the power of their playing cards/battle tops/pokemon. <>

It’s called Case Closed, a.k.a. Detective Conan, and it airs at one in the morning on Cartoon Network. It does have a typical annoying anime premise; 18-year-old detective genius Jimmy Kudo is poisoned by bad guys, which fails to kill but turns its victim into a little kid as a side effect. I can think of a bunch of people who’d pay to take that poison, but once you get past that the show turns out to be excellently written, solidly reasoned, and beyond that initial conceit almost more realistic than a cartoon has any right being<>.

But not quite! Little Conan Edogawa (you get a point if you can decipher the pair of references in Jimmy’s pseudonym), his former girlfriend/current gal pal Rachel and her lecherous, hack detective father Richard Moore tend to encounter more murder cases in their personal lives than in Richard’s line of work, and the number of deaths presided over by Jimmy’s elementary school posse is almost greater than those overseen by the police inspector. It’s so much that it pushes the limits of credibility more than the premise, but it’s nothing Father Dowling hasn’t seen.

And despite being both a detective’s daughter and a detective's girlfriend, Rachel never seems to notice all the weird things that have been happening since Conan joined them, and Richard never seems to notice how he can never remember how he solved all the cases that Conan so easily and conveniently causes to be attributed to him. <>

And Jimmy/Conan, seriously, is a blinking genius. The explanation that this eight-year-old kid is solving mysteries because he’s really eighteen fails to address the fact that most fifty-year-olds don’t have this kind of grasp of police procedure and the mortician’s trade. But of course the gimmick is just there to give us an excuse to watch and try to figure out mysteries. They’re like sardines tightly packed into their can, with most stories, complete with murder, suspect introductions, presentation of clues and dramatic ending fitting comfortably within a 30 minute episode, with the occasional two-parter. But it’s so different from the typical mystery genre that they make it new all over again, easily winning second place in the Strange Detective footrace (first place, of course, must go to Monk) that it’s surprisingly watchable.

Underneath the anime story tricks and implausibilities is a tightly-written puzzle mystery show in the classic style. The show isn’t afraid to make the viewer watch for clues, and Conan is very likely to refer to things that were never remarked upon by any of the characters, but just happened to be on the screen for less than a couple of seconds. There’s a good mixture of story types as well, with the occasional Columbo-style episode (murder shown at the beginning and the fun is in watching The Detective figure it out). And the murderers hardly ever raving psychos, but always have reasons, and usually elicit some sympathy from the viewer before they are brought to justice by the steel-eyed second grader.

Note that despite the heavy kid factor this isn’t for Saturday Morning, and no other show in Adult Swim’s lineup is as deserving of its late-night timeslot (1 a.m.) as this one. One recent episode featured a corpse that had been hacked to pieces, and Conan’s grade-school classmates have gotten up close and personal with bloody dead bodies on more than one occasion. Sometimes murder is shown graphically, and blood has often been shown splattered full and red on crime scene walls and floors. Word is that Fox Kids was all set to add this to their lineup, to the extent of licensing the show’s Japanese name Detective Conan, but apparently somewhere along the line they actually saw the show, and quickly realized there was no way they could pull a Dragonball-Z with this one, with blood edited out and the deceased magically “sent to another dimension.” Also, the show doesn’t quite fit their hideous toy-hawking mindset, what with the focus on crime scenes, murder weapons and alibis. It’d be like selling an Angela Lansbury action figure.

In Adult Swim’s sea of ultra-random Flash cartoons, prime-time cartoon rejects, and anime shows running the gamut from obfuscated giant robot to girl-sighing feudal dog boy, Case Closed stands out. It’s not quite Cowboy Bebop, or even Big O, but it’s interesting enough to stay up until the wee hours for. And with over 300 episodes in Japan, it’s unlikely they’ll run out of shows for some time.

Link: "Double-Time March To War"

2004-07-30T16:18:00.000-04:00

Original story.

Found on Michael Moore's "Mike's Latest News" archives, most of the piece takes the mainstream media to task for failing to challenge Bush on his war on Iraq. But the most interesting paragraph in it only has to do indirectly with Bush:

Everybody who's ever worked in a large organization knows the difficulty of moving unwelcome information up the chain of command inside hierarchical bureaucracies. Nobody's eager to tell his boss' boss something that person doesn't want to hear. The stronger the command structure, i.e. military and quasi-military bureaucracies, the harder it gets to push bad news to the top. It's one big reason communism never worked.

Above anything in Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine (which I generally liked), this strikes me as insightful. It's just a really cool observation, I think.

Job search update:
It continues to go badly. Getting fed up with this town, may have to go elsewhere.

News: Republicans campaigning to put Kerry on ballots

2004-07-25T18:39:00.000-04:00

Original Article

After the last presidential election, which was so narrowly decided in favor of Bush that the Supreme Court basically decided the election, yet if it weren't for the fact that if Nader hadn't split the liberal vote due to one of those typical futile third-party efforts the presidency would certainly have gone to Gore without contest, we're seeing a rather cynical ploy on behalf of some Republican groups: conservatives campaigning to put Nader on the ballet in some states.

Yeah, it sounds a bit iffish just out of the blue like that, "C'mon now, would they really be so cynical to play such numbers games?" Well maybe I'd agree with you, except if you go to page two of the above-linked article, the CEO of one such organization outright admits to doing it, almost seeming pleased with his own cleverness?

Why does this happen? Simply, it's because some people are more concerned with getting "my guy" in, than trying to discover the true will of the American people. There's no law against campaigning for someone with diametrically-opposed views, true, and I'd rather not see one passed. But it does illustrate what an atmosphere of gamesmanship has arisen in our political process.

And due to the particular mathematics of our electoral system that greatly favors a two-party system, combined with the incredible inertia against any changes whatsoever to the mechanics of our political process (because whoever wins would naturally be reluctant to change the procedure that granted them power, in case another chocolate bar falls out of the machine), I figure this kind of thing will only get worse.

In other news, blog posts are still extremely infrequent at the moment due to continuing job search. I'm getting really frustrated with it all.

Link: Failure Is Not an Option, It's Mandatory (NYT)

2004-07-16T18:28:00.000-04:00

A New York Times op-ed piece (registration required) that I believe sums up well part of the hidden strategy behind the right's attempt to remain in control in the upcoming elections: long hours attempting to pass a brain-dead constitutional amendment (the "Federal Marriage Amendment," as appropriate and well-named addition to the ol' parchment as the Bill of Rights, I'm sure) that no one seriously expects will garner the two-thirds majority it needs, in order to generate the necessary degree of failure to alarm voters into action in November. Kind of like using a legislative gravitational slingshot effect.

An interesting concept. I'm rather certain that things like this happen to some degree, though I honestly don't know how effect this one will be.

In other news, sorry for the lack of Headlines lately. I'm considering giving them a different name, in order to distinguish them from Jay Leno's frequent (and frequently lame) Headline feature. But what, oh what, could the new name be?

Games: Rogue for Dreamcast

2004-07-15T04:22:00.000-04:00

What's the oldschool RPG that's a sex machine to all the chicks? Why it's Rogue, the ancient originator of computer RPGs, representational dungeon graphics, randomly-generated gameplay and the genre of Roguelike games, the most famous member of which being the Honored Representative from the Great State of Roguelike, awesome, all-powerful Nethack.

Some wonderful person has actually hacked together, from several different sources, a version of Rogue for the Sega Dreamcast video game console. The Dreamcast suffered from an early demise, some say because of extreme software piracy, but really, more likely due to Ess-Oh-Enn-Why, but the system has gained a second life due to the fact that it’s relatively easy to create homebrew games for it; the basic system is perfectly capable of reading, and even booting games off of, CD-Rs.

And now that there’s a version of Rogue, magnificent Rogue, wonderful Rogue, great and terrible Rogue, I finally have a good excuse to drag my machine out of mothballs. What an incredibly cool thing!

Movie discussion: "Michael Moore Hates America"

2004-07-07T18:17:00.000-04:00

Has Michael Moore become so much of an institution that people are making movies to discredit him? Evidently so. "Michael Moore Hates America" is the unwieldy title of a film that purports to show.... well, that Moore hates America, I guess. Take a look at the movie's web site real quick so we're on the same page.

Saying that Michael Moore hates America is just stupid. No one I know with half a brain thinks Moore hates the United States; our vaunted First Amendment is the source of his success. But more importantly, by giving the film this title, whatever truth the movie contains is overshadowed by that massive ad hominem attack on Moore's work. The title is stupid, and even counter-productive: people who've never heard of Michael Moore will look at it and may think, maybe I should look this guy up. You haven't really become a big player in our country's combative political environment until someone decides you're worth a huge discrediting effort, and armchair pundits subconsciously recognize this.

What do I hate about Michael Moore Hates America? For one thing, it feels slimy. The site's subtitle is "The Official Site for a Documentary that Tells the Truth About a Great Nation." Statements like that... what possesses someone to write that? If you're going to discredit Moore, you should do it without confusing the issue with agitprop. Instead, you try to make yourself sound objective. And while Moore's works are themselves somewhat propagandistic, they aren't necessarily one-sided; the conservatives who've complained about Bowling for Columbine's factual basis never complain about the movie's real point: that guns are not the problem in the United States so much as the NRA, the nightly news, and the uniquely American attitude of national paranoia. This is precisely the reason that it's Moore's most popular movie to date, the reason it's won those awards, and why Moore doesn't deserve to be painted with the Strident Liberal paint that the Right loves to slather on anything they don't understand.

There's almost a cottage industry of Moore discreditors these days, and field research done, in of all places, the message boards over at Slashdot, have uncovered two primary types: those people who think Moore is a "limousine liberal," and those who say he lies.

The people who seek to discredit him by saying he's not the working-class person he seems to be, of course, are using a logical fallacy. Truth is truth, whether it's spoken by the President of the United States, a rogue filmmaker, or that guy on the street corner with the "The End Is Near" sign. I get an uncomfortable feeling when people present this information as if it affects the truth value of his books, movies or TV series, almost as if there were some sort of organizing force that sought to destroy Moore, or more accurately public opinion of Moore, in any way possible.

Furthermore, if Moore has indeed become rich from his work (it wouldn't have been from his documentaries in this case but his books), the question remains: what is wrong with this? I thought conservatives were all nutso about personal achievement, and soaring eagles, and lone wolves, and accomplishment, and standing on tall crags looking visionary, etc. You don't set out on a career as a documentary filmmaker thinking you're going to get rich. If you do so you are a fool. No one could have predicted Fahrenheit 9/11's success, or Bowling for Columbine's, or even Roger & Me's for that matter. The fact is, Moore's path to success has been exactly the same one that conservatives have been lauding and claiming to pave for American individuals for a long time, though actually they seem less concerned about helping the working class travel it than their Yale-graduate favorite sons.

Now we get to a trickier issue, concerning the many niggly little lies that people claim to have found in his work. I once looked through a page purporting to list out the lies in Bowling for Columbine. (Also, check out Moore's response to it.) What happened here is, one person goes out and claims Moore lied on this range of points (which, as noted in Bowling's case, generally miss the point of the movie). Then Moore responds to them, and points out the movie underwent extensive fact-checking and lawyer-vetting before release. Then the person who claimed the lies in the first place claims that Moore sidestepped issues, or brings up new, less compelling, more niggly, lies, etc.

What is truth? Can you go out and say, conclusively, that anything is true? Both political conservatives and liberals, and most people who practice some kind of religion, make a habit of presenting things they merely believe in as absolutely correct. They may even believe it themselves. Many times they present something they merely think is true as something that can be rigorously defended. Hell, sometimes different organizations release studies that claim opposite things as true. I'm not saying there's no such thing as truth, but that it's really easy to tell people what they want to hear, and they'll then believe it above anything else. If I say two plus two is four, and you say I'm wrong, does it mean there's a 50% chance I'm right? What if ten people said I'm wrong?

There are a few things in Bowling that may not be exactly true; Roger Ebert points out the text on a plaque mentioned in the movie may not match what's said in the film. Moore responded that yes, it's true, how could you do this to me Roger? Unless you live in Washington D.C. you can't check for sure, and if you did go there to check and it turned out that Moore was right, you'll just become the next target for being called a liar. People continually claim that the opening scenes of the movie, in which Michael Moore receives a gun in a bank that was giving them away in a promotion, were staged. Moore says no, it wasn't staged, it really happened that way, have a look at the outtakes. Then other people come up and say, but what about these other things, and so on. It's an atmosphere of uncertainty, and I can't help but think that it's engineered to be so.

But Bowling For Columbine is primarily a work of opinion, with fact-checker-approved supporting arguments, and overall the opinion is still an extremely compelling one, despite the rather muddy interview with Charlton Heston at the end (honestly, the movie could have done without that). It costs a lot of money, effort, sweat, tears, what have you, to make a movie. To impugn it, all you need is a web server and basic grammar skills, which tends to lend less credence to the people scurrying around trying to damage its credibility. Which is probably why Michael Moore Hates America is getting made. I predict it will prove popular with a certain group of people, the ones who watch FOX News religiously. Fahrenheit 9/11, however, for all the people who claim it's preaching to no one but liberals, is playing well even in Republican states. Which is the bigger story, that Bush's presidency isn't on the level or that Michael Moore hates America? I think Moore's the ultimate winner in this round, though whether he intentionally lies or not, I don't think it'd stop those people from criticizing him either way.

One more thing. Recently, Moore himself has said that he would not be opposed to people downloading copies of Fahrenheit 9/11, despite Hollywood disapproval. Remembering some people clamoring loudly that Moore should release his film on the Internet, and thinking those people would applaud him for doing so (well okay, not release it so much as agree to not prevent other people from doing it, but is it really so important to you that he foots the bill?), I did a Google search for that page. What I found, instead of a page congratulating Moore on his enlightened service to the truth, was a lot of broken links to http://www.moorewatch.com/releasethemovie/. I don't know if it's just a web site hiccup that's breaking those links and preventing me from seeing the glorious mea culpas from the Moore-haters, or a broken site upgrade or hackers or whatever. I can't even seem to get a Google cache for that page. Most curious. I'm sure the answer can't be that the page was quietly taken down once news broke. Couldn't be.

Link: Fafblog on the Bush/McCain ad

2004-07-07T14:49:00.000-04:00

Am I alive? Yes, barely. To prove it, here's a link: Fafblog's take on the Bush/McCain political ad. 'Tis hilarious.

Blog posts slow at the moment

2004-06-28T15:40:00.000-04:00

I haven't been posting much lately 'cause I'm looking for a job. More news later....

Movies: Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

2004-06-25T19:47:00.000-04:00

In “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,” we have a story every bit as dumb as that of “Around the World in 80 Days,” and yet I enjoyed it much more.

It all has to do with mood. “Around” tries so hard to thrill us with Jackie Chan fight scenes, astound us with foreign places, entertain us with monkey-like antics, and inspire wonder with its impossibly soaring musical score, that the whole thing falls apart. Those of us who have built-up immune systems to this sort of thing, from watching dozens of these love children of “Independence Day” and “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” aren’t impressed with the old tricks.

“Dodgeball,” on the other hand, revels in its dumbness. It doesn’t even try to pretend to take itself seriously. Almost every character in the movie is a type or unbalanced in some way, from Ben Stiller’s over-the-top egotistical gym owner to the guy who thinks he’s a pirate. The only guy who could be said to be normal is our hero, the straight man, who reacts to everything with an expression that says, “okay, these people have serious problems.”

Peter Le Fleur (Vince Vaughn) runs a small, unprofitable gym. A high school rival, White Goodman (Ben Stiller) owns a highly profitable gym and takes great pleasure in lording it over Pete. In a lesser film Pete would be consumed with rage, here Pete just gives a bemused look and lets White stew, which probably infuriates him even more. Caught between White’s persecution and Pete’s indifference is mortgage worker Kate Veatch (Christine Taylor), who White seems to think is a flunky and Pete hopes will be a girlfriend.

Pete is unskilled in financial matters, and his gym is in foreclosure on its second mortgage. Yes, the movie has a contrived mortgage plot which drives its heroes on a quest for success on the Dodgeball court, a sport that, thankfully, is treated by the movie with exactly the respect it deserves, relegated to airing on ESPN 8. Pete and his slacker gym buddies try to win the big Dodgeball tournament to earn the money to get the gym out of hock, and there you have the plot. It’s not a winner, but that doesn’t matter here.

This is one of those movies that lives and dies by its jokes, and while there are a few clunkers, overall they work. The standout performer is Ben Stiller, whose rich egotistical gym owner would be evil if he had the capacity for it. It’s a shame that so many of his best lines are used in the commercials for the movie, as his character really is the best thing here.

There’s a good mix of over-the-top groaners and true wit here, and it helps save Dodgeball from being another brain-dead summer comedy. Note in the opening scene how White Goodman’s gym commercial defeats itself with subtle payoffs instead of hitting the viewer over the head with them. The movie knows you’re allowed to have stupid characters, but that pure stupidity, in itself, isn’t funny. That, in a nutshell, is why Dodgeball is worth watching.

The Bigger They Are, The Harder They Headlines

2004-06-25T19:44:00.000-04:00

Deutsche Welle: Science & Technology: Berlin Mutant Boy Extra Strong
Original Article

Brother, has this been bandied about the web a lot. In summary, about four years ago a kid was born in Germany whose body doesn't produce a limiting protein that halts muscle growth. While he looks normal, he's in fact really strong for his age. It's a condition that has never been observed in humans before, which I find interesting because of its implied corollary: that this has been observed in animals.

No, his first words were not "Bam! Bam, bam, bam!"

The way I see it, this kid is in for a life of great sadness. He could have medical problems we won't even have terminology for for years, unless you count things like "Bovine Neuromuscular Disorder." If his name becomes known, or even if it doesn't, you can bet every half-assed journalist from here to Tomsk will write an article about him with "super" somewhere in its title. Jokes running along the lines of "What's Prof. Charles Xavier like, really?" will get old after the twenty-fourth iteration. He comes from a family of athletes, but if he chooses to, will professional sporting organizations allow him to compete?

But maybe I'm just pessimistic. Here's hoping the best for the adorably abnormal little tyke.

World Movie Magazine: News: Disney to Scale Down Film Production
Original Article

Thank you god.

After that lunktacular craptravaganza called "Around the World in 80 Days," I can't help but hope that Disney quietly closes this portion of its conglomerative holdings and gets redoubles its core business: making economical, affordable Evil available to the home and small business markets.

But wait! They're not getting out of the movie business entirely, but just out of clunkers. (And, yes, Pixar films.) Michael Eisner, also known as the Anti-Walt, says by reducing the number of movies they make they'll be more selective about what they make, favoring "franchisable" movies like Pirates of the Caribbean over things like Around the World in 80 Days.

Which, if you ask me, is really stupid. The good thing about Pirates of the Caribbean wasn't it's franchisability, it was Johnny Freaking Depp! If he hadn't been in it, it would have been just another stupid pirate movie. I can't believe Eisner and company are blind to things like this. Do you have to have to undergo I.Q. Reduction Surgery when you get on the board of directors?

Link: When Think Tanks Attack

2004-06-23T20:28:00.000-04:00

Deltoid Article

Why doesn't this surprise me? The trickle of reports of suspect open source-bashing studies produded by Microsoft-sponsored groups, who typically do not reporting the sources of their funding, is revealed to be a full-blown tidal wave. More disturbing, to me, is the news that Big Oil and Big Tobacco have been doing the same kind of thing. (Microsoft is so big, and acting alone in their own disinformation quest, that adding "big" before their name is redundant.)

Yep, I'm mad. Grrrr!

Movies: Around the World in 80 Days

2004-06-22T14:46:00.000-04:00

Written for the George-Anne, campus newspaper of Georgia Southern University. (Web site hopelessly out-of-date.)

There is a book you may have heard of, called "Around The World in 80 Days," or in the original French, "Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours." It is by science fiction genius Jules Verne, and is a story much beloved by me. Yet you'd be forgiven for wondering whatever the hell this movie version has to do with the book, besides theme, similarly-named characters and a brief reference to the book's ending gimmick. Like with 2002's “The Time Machine,” almost nothing of interested has survived the trip through the Hollywood production meat-grinder, and all we have left is ground chuck.

You must understand that I do not believe it is the job of movies to get the books exactly right. I love the Lord of the Rings movies, despite the fact that almost 5% of the material from the books is different than Tolkien wrote, and maybe up to a quarter was left out. Peter Jackson still got much of the spirit of what Tolkien put on the page, and that's much harder than just filming the literal events of the book. Just ask Ralph Bakshi.

But book-based movies do have a duty in that, if they carry the same name, they must represent the original story in spirit. This movie “Around The World In 80 Days,” unquestionably, does not. Phineas Fogg is one of the most redoubtable figures in all literature, a Victorian Englishman so amazingly precise and regular that he fired his previous valet for giving him shaving water two degrees cooler than his custom. He has been changed into a garden-variety “wacky inventor.”

Passportout and Inspector Fix undergo similarly wrong-headed transformations. Fix in particular is quite loathsome, played by some spastic, vaguely human rodent-creature, a poor-man's Jerry Lewis, who mugs and flops and hurts himself in scenes of excruciating slapstick. I can't see how anyone could believe this man is a police inspector for Scotland Yard; he is barely verbal.

The plot has also been bleached away of its essential core, turning its tale of great period adventure into a saddening exercise in watching Jackie Chan smack people. The original story barely mentions China but half the movie takes place there, all to give the film a tortured rationale for casting Chan as Passportout, in a lame-duck subplot that exists solely so the film can have comic-book villains.

It is true that there are wonderful sights in this movie, computer rendered cityscapes of color and light that would be stunning if viewed in an animated feature. But, here, they're wasted as a dumber version of the country introductions from "Eurotrip." There are some slightly amusing sight-gags for people who know the era from the book, but the people who'd appreciate them will be too busy groaning at the idiot plot. It can't be questioned that Jackie Chan's famously self-performed stunts are astounding. But, this isn't a chop-socky martial arts movie. They are out of place anywhere near Verne's work.

There is a little game you can play with movies like this. Realizing that there must have been some reason for each deviance from the original story, you can try to figure them out. For “The Time Machine,” it was the desire to turn H.G. Wells' novel of social satire into an action movie.

For "Around The World in 80 Days," I can only conclude it's because the people who made it are creatures of darkness and hate, who daily excrete stinking film from their demonic colons, and have used their infernal powers to divine a means of getting paid for it. By no means should you see this movie. If your girlfriend wants to see it, break up with her. If your kids want to see it, disown them. If President Bush comes to your home and demands that you see it, emigrate.

Link: The Film Crew Online

2004-06-20T03:10:00.000-04:00

So just who are The Film Crew? Why, only Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, doggedly determined to remain both culturally visible and financially liquid in this, the opening years of the long, cold, post-Mystery Science Theater era. These are men who know funny, and they know bad movies. These attributes put them close to my heart, you know, the one I keep in the refrigerator, in the jar beside the milk.

The only thing preventing me from obsessing gleefully over their potential opinionating on The Chronicles of Riddick is my anticipation of the shame I'll feel upon the realization that they've done a better job at it than I did.

(What tortured syntax! Did I get the tenses right in that sentence? Makes my brain hurt.)

Link: The Reality of Running Away From Stuff

2004-06-17T18:08:00.000-04:00

Found on boingboing: The Reality of Running Away From Stuff.

How likely *is* it that those guys in The Mummy Returns could have outrun the onset of dawn? Read this page to find out, and also get some insight into just how ludicrous movie physics is becoming these days, as well as why we should care.

Where Have All The Headlines Gone?

2004-06-16T14:17:00.000-04:00

Just one this time:

Seattle Times: Local News: Paul Allen sees space tourism in our future
Original Article

"This is your captain speaking, if you'll look out the right-hand window you'll see several billion miles of empty void sparsely punctuated by tiny points of light variously ranging from three to several million light years away. This view will be available for roughly the entire time we'll be spending outside of Earth's atmosphere.

Outside the left window you can see the continent of North America passing by, home to the Empire State Building, Disneyland, the Alamo, the Golden Gate Bridge, roughly ninety-three thousand McDonalds restaurants and many of the environmental problems plaguing our planet.

We'll be docking at Copernicus Station in approximately five minutes, please observe the No Smoking sign, and make sure that all liquids are in closed containers and not floating in random blobs around the room."

Space tourism is a lot of work to go through for little payoff. Earth tourism is interesting because we have weather that creates all these majestic natural wonders in a small number of specific places (like the Grand Canyon), but not over the vast majority of out planet's surface (like the great expanse of undifferentiated prairie in the American mid-West). The moon, relatively speaking, is miles and miles of more of the same. We also have all these sites that our culture has picked out as being significant, like worlds' fairgrounds, tallest buildings, architectural landmarks, ancient burial grounds, and presidential shooting sites. While Mother Nature has produced some outstanding work, when it comes down to sheer number of landmarks, human-kind beats her out handily with its endless sea of historical sites, novelty shops and giant, fiberglass cows.

Until we're able to shuttle people back and forth to, say, Mars quickly and efficiently (and good luck with that), the creation of space stations and moon bases will add the grand total of two locations to the brochure collection at the local Escape-U-Life travel agency. Cool for the short term, granted, and I'll admit that it'd be neat to cavort around in zero-G until bone decalcification makes it medically inadvisable, but until some version of extraterrestrial skiing gets invented to enable rich preppy kids to better waste away their weekends, the whole idea is ultimately faddish.

Visit The Moon: It's Like Aspen, But More Dangerous!

Those Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Headlines

2004-06-13T15:05:00.000-04:00

CNN.com: Juror: Sympathy spared Nichols
Original Article

Not that I'm at all happy with our government's role as black-hooded Wielder of the Axe, but have none of these jurors seen Bowling for Columbine? James Nichols' interviews in that movie are quite enlightening.

BBS News: Middle East: US 'not bound by torture laws'
Original Article

A Pentagon report last year argued that President George W Bush was not bound by laws banning the use of torture, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Woe be to the weak-kneed and the faint of heart that strays unwisely to the dark chambers beneath the White House, mwahaha!

What really infuriates me about this whole Abu Gharib business? That there is this great beclouded mass of U.S. Citizens who will still support Bush after this, for whom there is absolutely no thing that could be revealed about him that could possibly change their minds, so swayed by their voluntarily-restricted sources of information. I'm surrounded by these people. Most of them, to be fair, are like this because their lives are full of so much worry and toil (though certainly not by third world standards) that they don't have the energy or time to really examine whatever beliefs came installed at the factory.

I don't believe these people are beyond hope, but I have no clue as to what could possibly change their mind. The huge Monty Pythonesque Hand of God itself could come down from the sky with a note reading "Bush == Bad," and they'd just start arguing as to whether that was, in fact, the real Hand of God or one of Satan's cunning traps.

Bush will never see prosecution whether the laws affect him or not. It's interesting that we have different standards of behavior for brutal South American strongmen and Presidents of the United States; the strongmen are held more accountable! Laws that have no hope for being enforced are basically void, and that's the comfortable position in which President Torquemada now finds himself.

Kill The Riddick!

2004-06-12T19:27:00.000-04:00

What a crappy movie. Or more accurately, what we have in The Chronicles of Riddick is three crappy movies, each trying to convince us it's the real film: the blessedly short early movie weighed down with meaningless talk about space religion, the stupid two-parter filled to the gills with evil space fleets, poorly-kept statuary and black Mrs. Macbeth in a tortoiseshell dress, and the long middle movie, about a prison escape from a jail planet, that's more interesting than the entire rest of the film combined. That's not saying much.

Movie number one takes place on Helion Prime, and begins after we're given a couple of wholly unnecessary scenes to establish Riddick's (Vin Diesel) character. (For those who missed Pitch Black, that's “amoral ass-kicker.”) I didn't get the full effect of these scenes because I could barely hear what Vin Diesel was saying. The man's voice is so low it makes Henry Kissinger jealous. At the end of Movie #1 there are strobe-lit fight scenes that rival Pikachu himself in seizure-inducing power, and the universe's most ceremonial explosive device.

Also around this time we meet Aereon, an Air Elemental played by the semi-invisible Judi Dench. Elementals “calculate,” we're told, but we're not told what. (Taxes? Actuary tables? Poker odds?) Ariel's role is to be a bargain-basement Bene Gesserit in a movie that looks, when it starts blabing about prophecy and faith in unconvincing ways, like it'd dearly like to be Dune, if it weren't trying so hard to be space opera. Anyway, Aereon might be interesting if she did even one damn thing in this movie besides be invisible a lot.

That brings us to the second movie, set inside of the (please understand it causes me pain to write this) Necromonger spaceship. The Necromongers are trying to reach either the Omniverse or the Underverse, I'm not sure which. Necromongers operate by turning the people into conquer into Necromongers themselves, but it's not obvious why they do this since later it becomes obvious the procedure doesn't instill any sense of loyalty.

The Necromonger national motto is “You keep what you kill,” a phrase that doesn't make sense even if you've seen the film. (Maybe there are lots of game reserves on their home world?) They are led by the Lord Marshal (Colm Feore), a guy who visited the Omniverse personally, and according to The Invisible Dench, “came back as a different being. Stronger... stranger.” This means he can swoosh about real fast and has, I swear to God, H. R. Giger's comb-over.

And he can take people's souls. Early on he runs up to someone in casual evening-wear, and pulls out a transparent version of him, in transparent evening-wear. The rather surprised, de-souled guy looks back kind of wistfully, like he wants to shout “Hey man, I need that to be with!” then collapses. How long before Riddick gets to experience this? About an hour thirty.

The third movie has little to do with the Necromongers and saving the universe, in which Riddick goes to a completely pointless prison world, Crematoria, so he can meet up with his old girlfriend. This planet marks the beginning of the best parts of the movie, and when we leave, all that's left is crap. At least there isn't any soul-taking, alien-toupee'd idiot swishing around in Man-E-Faces' helmet.

How bad was this movie? The audience I was with laughed at it. They laughed at the dumb neon-faced Necromongers standing around like gecko lizards. They laughed at the stupid alien uniforms, which look like a cross between Roman armor and a pillbug. They traded dumb lines in the lobby outside the door. I heard one kid this particular groaner: “There is only one speed... my speed.” There are lots of movies I don't like, but rarely is there a film in which the audience joins in on the hating.

It was beautiful. But the movie, let's be clear about this, was not.

The Hidden Asses of H. R. Giger

2004-06-11T22:23:00.000-04:00

Step one: Go to the homepage of H. R. Giger's official website.

Step two: Note that you are being mooned by strange, insectoid asses peeking out from the right-hand side of the big picture to be found there.

Step three: Shake your fist at the picture and yell "Lousy biomechanical nightmare representing dark fears arising from our dehumanizing society!" Then harumph and walk away.

Games: Talks with Glenn Wichman, co-creator of Rogue

2004-06-09T17:29:00.000-04:00

Glen Wichman and Michael Toy singlehandedly created the genre of Roguelike games with the original Rogue, which to this day is one of the best-designed (and hardest) games you're likely to find.

One interview with Glen Wichman is at:
http://home.arcor.de/cybergoth/gamesc/rogueinterview.html

Glen recounting of the creation of the game, on his own site:
http://www.wichman.org/roguehistory.html

And because few people ever experience it, a web page describing a "total winner" game of Rogue:
http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/other/?rogue

Link: In 2004, vote the George Bush/Zombie Reagan ticket!

2004-06-09T15:31:00.000-04:00

Found on metafilter: http://www.bush-zombiereagan.com/

Be especially sure to check out the FAQ!

The International Prototype Headlines

2004-06-07T17:48:00.000-04:00

Newsfactor Network: Windows Apps: Microsoft Bursts 'True Fantasy' Bubble
Original Article

Awww, it's such a shame that we're being spared yet another ill-advised Massively Multiplayer Option for Raising Personal Girth.

Ever since EverQuest proved one shouldn't ever underestimate the ability of ever-lovin' gamers to play remarkably shallow games forever, everyone's been seeking to jump on the MMORPG bandwagon with their dumb little monster hack-fests.

It's actually a type of game that's close to my heart, but I find it saddening to see everyone approach the genre with Everquest's design manual in their hands and cartoon dollar-signs in their eyes. It's going to take a lot more than hit-a-monster, cast-a-spell, get-a-new-weapon, level-up to get me interested again.

Washington Post: Filter: The Ballmer Treatment
Original Article

"Developers! Developers! Developers!"

Okay, it's out of my system. You know Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's never going to live that down. High-end workstations being built at this moment are being fitted with AVI copies of the video of that infamous speech in their very ROM, to save their eventual owners the trouble of downloading it.

Folks, this is a long boring article filled with the typical tech-section speculative fascination with whatever Microsoft is doing now, or might do sometime between now and the same time next fiscal year. Microsoft's CEO is getting involved in their Business Solution's Group. Microsoft denies it's a sign of trouble. Gabs are gabbing, wags are wagging, and nags, oh how they are nagging.

And it bores me to tears, despite my proud geek status. Someone wake me when it's Longhorn.

Link: Ronald Reagan: In Memorium

2004-06-06T22:30:00.000-04:00

This is probably the best of all the Reagan memorials.

Damn it, Medium Lobster did a much better job than I did. CURSE YOU MEDIUM LOBSTER, AND THE POT OF WATER IN WHICH YOU SIMMER!

Headlines for Dummies

2004-06-06T21:12:00.000-04:00

HeraldNet: News: Dial 'M' for mad
Original Article

From the Associated Press, the gist is that cell phone companies are jerks, and people hate them.

But really, who likes utilities anyway? Who is ever really happy about their phone company, or their water bill, or their electricity provider? Charges for services are becoming decoupled from the costs of providing them, resulting in stupid charges for things requiring dubious effort, like "connection fees" from the phone company. Sometimes I think that more effort goes into coming up with impressive-sounding, rad-flash terminology for new charges, that are unlikely to be questioned by users spotting them on the bill, than for providing the services themselves (which frequently boil down to setting a flag in a database somewhere).

Newsday.com: Technology: Sony's new online music store falls far from Apple's iTunes
Original Article

A sentence from the article:

An online music service designed to appeal to the hip and the fashion-conscious - today's de facto audience for pop - can't afford clunky.

This nearly made me choke on my latte. I'm so glad that the taste-makers have caught on to the importance of stylish user interfaces. I hear Longhorn's new UI will be licensed from Calvin Klein!

Ronald Reagan: A (Highly Inaccurate) Life

2004-06-05T22:58:00.000-04:00

Earnestine Ronaldo "Ronald" Reagan was born in the depths of the Great Depression, in a small log cabin on the banks of the Hudson River in lower Manhattan. He showed an aptitude for dance at an early age, and at the age of nine was enrolled in the prestigious Joffery Ballet School. But the rigors of training clashed with the emerging independent spirit of the child, and at eleven he ran away to join the circus, where he first met eventual co-star, and long-time collaborator, Bonzo the chimpanzee.

It was Bonzo's urgings that propelled a now high-school age Reagan into professional sports. While he never played football, he lit up the tennis courts, popularizing a practice known for a short time as "gipping," before the National Tennis Association outlawed it for being against the spirit of the game, not to mention a violation of animal cruelty laws. His rapid barring from professional tennis inspired a generation of young tennis stars to protest in his honor, sponsoring a short-lived annual charity tournament that encouraged participants to "win one for the gipper." Their efforts were unsuccessful in convincing the board of the NTA to overturn their ruling, and Reagan would continue to be barred from professional tennis as late as the mid 70's.

Reagan's movie career began when Marlon Brando, engorged from a midnight feast that depleted a small herd of Holsteins, was unable to take the stage in a Broadway production of "A Musical Tribute to Floss." Reagan's homespun take on the popular dental hygiene tool won the hearts of audiences for three seasons, and practically assured him of a movie career.

It was on the set of "Tugboat Annie Sails Again" where Reagan experienced an epiphany, an experience he would later call the defining moment of his life, delivered to him by what he claimed was a small gnome by the name of Screwy. The two would converse late into the night, spending equal time in the actor's trailer and the gnome's magical cavern, hammering out a secret policy document that would be of inestimable aid to Reagan's rise to power. Once it was complete and typed by a team of secretaries the two, Reagan and Screwy, repaired to the trailer where they shook hands in a solemn ceremony. Then Reagan, tears in his eyes, dropped Screwy into a specially-prepared blender, turned it on, mixed him into a smoothie, and quickly drank his former friend, granting him an all-important permanent +2 to his Charisma score, which would, much later, prove instrumental to his bid for the presidency.

It was also on the set of a motion picture that Reagan met his eventual wife, Nancy Milhouse Nixon. Their marriage would not take place for another seven years however, in which time Reagan served as a narc, an agent for the CIA (This information made available under the auspices of the Freedom of Information Act), and an ambassador to the planet Remulax, where he was rumored to have presided over the sacred Smungging of the Schmorgg, an event said to have scarred him for life.

Hitching a ride home on the back of a friendly spacemech by the name of Gravitron, he was soon appointed president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), due to the twin influences of the demand from his incredible rapport with audiences and the threat of Gravitron's mighty particle cannon. During his time there he instituted numerous reforms, including workplace protections for porn actors and actresses and the provision of up-to-spec doughnuts on on-set snack tables.

Soon after his stint as president of the SAG he ran into Nancy once more, now under the tutelage of an astrologer going by the name of Mesmer Rasputin Svengali, and before long the two were married under his auspices. (He was legally recognized as able to perform weddings due to being ordained as a minister by the Exalted Ministry of Scienetic Dianology.)

He rode his ever-increasing popularity into the Governor's Mansion of California and is remembered there as a harsh, but fair, ruler. He was the one to institute the office of the Governor's Guard, a team of elite commandos operating on the grounds of the mansion, originally as a provision against the periodic incursions of cybernetic assassination-droid governors traveling back in time from the early 21st century. Reagan's legislative record in California was mixed, having been thwarted multiple times from carrying out his primary campaign promise, the abolishment of Venice Beach.

The rest is common knowledge. How Reagan defeated Carter handily in the U.S. Presidental election by campaigning under the insightful "No Malaise" ticket. His legendary battles with Premier Khruschev both on and off the chessboard. His landslide victory against the Mondalebot leading to his second term. His eventual passing of the office to his protégé and vice president George "Not The Current One" Bush and his subsequent retirement from politics.

In memory of his recent passing, and speaking completely seriously here for a moment, I think we can all agree upon this: no matter how much you may disagree with his politics, with how he ran the country, with his goals and the basis from which he led our nation, he still did an infinitely better job at it than our current President is doing.

As The Headlines Turn

2004-06-05T21:06:00.000-04:00

Internet Week: News: Porn More Popular Than Search
Original Article

But what percentage of people searching are looking for porn huh, tell me that! (Answer: considerable.)

And what percentage of porn viewers were looking for search? I'm waiting! (Answer: Not as many. However, there are an amazing number of domain parkers with sites that are just one letter different from Google's, try misspelling www.google.com on purpose and see what you can find!)

I wouldn't put a lot of faith in this story, in that it doesn't specify how Hitwise, the company supplying these figures, came up with them.

news.com.au: Entertainment: Mini-Me Married Me: Model
Original Article

This is the most messed up story I've read in a while. Let's look at it from the perspective of the thesis and its inverse:

Thesis: The actor that played Mini-Me, Verne Troyer, was at one point married to a "leggy blonde model," Genevieve Gallen. He's seeking to end this marriage, hence the annulment. Were this true... well, let's just say that it's not likely, even if Troyer has a winning personality and controlling interest in a sex toy company. (Hey wait, could what "they" say about short men actually be true?)

Antithesis: The model was never married to Troyer, but wants people to think that she was for some bizarre, sorrowful reason, probably related either to fleecing him for some of his vast piles of cash acquired from being in the Austin Powers movies, or for... um... career advancement?

There's something more to this story, something pertinent fact the intrepid "correspondents in Los Angeles" sited as sources have not revealed. Um-hum, mark my words. Isn't it such a shame that I couldn't care less what that fact is? Leave it to People Magazine, I've got work to do.

Honest!

Better Late Than Headlines

2004-06-04T20:55:00.000-04:00

Fox News: Business: McDonald's, Sony Team Up for Free Song Downloads
Original Article

McDonald's Corp. and Sony Corp. Thursday teamed up to give away free music downloads, in a move analysts said raised questions about McDonald's long-standing relationship with Walt Disney Co.

I wouldn't want to admit to having a long-standing relationship with the Walt Disney Company. It's like your name being attached to the phrase "willing to suck ass," furtively scrawled on public bathroom tile.

Sounds to me like Coke's annoyed at having missed the Pepsi iTunes promotional bus. (Which, by the way, rocked. Because of that promotion I now have a recording of Jack Kerouac himself reading a snippet of his writing. It's all I can do to stop myself from levitating out of my chair out of sheer smugness!)

Reuters: U.S.: KFC Promises Not to Make Unsupported Health Claims
Original Article

Yum Brands Inc.'s KFC unit promised on Thursday not to make unsupported health claims as part of a settlement with U.S. regulators over ads touting fried chicken as a good choice for dieters.

But unsupported health claims are so much fun! Suppresses cough symptoms, prevents unwanted pregnancies and builds strong bodies seven different ways! Sharpens the workings of your eyes' rods and cones even while it cures liver spots! Cleanses your pores and is medically equivalent to a colonic irrigation! The Secret Recipe is a sovereign remedy for whatever ails you. Available over-the-counter, or by prescription.

Zap2it.com: Movies: Movie News: Jackson Cleared of Molestation Charge
Original Article

Michael Jackson has been cleared of charges that he molested a Los Angeles boy in the 1980s due to a lack of evidence.

Isn't it a relief to be know that Jackson is a normal and completely non-creepy human being? Speaking of which, take a look at his skeletal mug at the top of this page and tell me, honestly now: if you didn't know he was the ostensible King of Pop, wouldn't it be easy to mistake him for some aging, decrepit movie queen?

Celebrity Cafe: Features: Movies: Gibson Bent on Raising Hell
Original Article

Hard as it must be to follow a controversial film like Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, the devout Catholic is reported to be trying to do just that with a big-screen depiction of Britain’s warrior queen, Boudicca.

Your cinematic prognosticator weighs forth on the film! The following three things are certain to be true about this project:
1. 50% or less of Boudicca's body will be covered by clothing, thus fulfilling the definition of the word "half-naked."
2. The Romans will not come well out of it. This will not be a movie that will humanize anyone; the heroes/heroines will be noble and austere, the villains, ravaging and snarling.
3. Someone will be tortured and killed in a gruesome manner, and the torture will be presented vividly, almost longingly, up on the screen.

NOT headlines! Instead, a new Nethack patch

2004-06-02T16:42:00.000-04:00

Nethack, of course, is the ever-popular open-source roguelike game.

The patch (diff format) adds a new type of room to the game, the "island."

Yes, this is why blog updates have been a little slow lately. Yes, I'll be getting back to my usual incoherent self shortly.

Link: Daily Reason to Dispatch Bush

2004-05-30T18:05:00.000-04:00

On McSweeney's, the daily reason to dispatch Bush is a pocket universe of sanity in a political landscape spiraling smoothly down the commode. Every one of the issues mentioned on the site is seriously important, and seeing them all in one place makes clear just how much harm Bush has done to the office of President. What get me is how people complain about Kerry in the most pitiful and stupid manner (Vietnam vets don't like him? Puhleeze.) while every day Bush commits more crimes against rational behavior. I cannot name a recent president, Democrat *or* Republican, as loathsome as Prezzy B. I'm amazed anyone who's not a Bible-thumper would vote for him.

Stay Tuned for Max H-H-H-H-Headlines

2004-05-28T19:16:00.000-04:00

Forbes: Lifestyle: Health: Salsa a Bacteria Stopper
Original Article

And salsa moves up to the semi-final round! This one could be tough: can it kill burly, danger-drinking extremophile bacteria found in geothermal vents on the ocean floor?

Next week on Spicy Food/One-Celled Organism Face Off! Who would win in a fight, wasabi or a Metroid? My money’s on the Metroid, but then, I’ve never discovered the fabled Sushi Beam when playing Zero Mission....

(Gratuitous video game reference of the week: check!)

Reuters: News: U.S.: Authorities Search Detroit Home for Hoffa's Blood
Original Article

Ding Dong
"Hello, we’re from the county police. (flashes badge) Do you have any blood of Jimmy Hoffa here?"

"I see... would you mind if we had a look around?"

I’m sure the article makes boring, typical sense of the headline. But by itself, it possesses a whimsical, heartening charm rarely seen in a news article. Do scientists want to clone Hoffa? Are they trying to appease a hungry vampire by adding to his midnight repast just a dash of aged teamster? Are Hoffa’s bodily fluids not approved for use as a building material?

I’m reminded of Thurber explaining how interesting life had become for him without his glasses. You can read the above article and get the scoop behind the headline if you so choose. With no offense intended towards Mr. Hoffa and his family, me, I’d be much happier without it.

The Book of Headlines, Chapter Four, Verses 16-20

2004-05-27T16:52:00.000-04:00

It's time for the culturally-insensitive joke of the week!

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Nation/World: Thousands line up to see Buddha finger
Original Article

Tens of thousands of people lined up Thursday to see one of Buddha's fingers - on loan from China for 10 days - and although they were herded past in a hurry, many said the relic offered Hong Kong fresh hopes for peace and calm.

How do these practices get started? I could be mistaken, but I strongly suspect the Buddha didn't fill out an organ donor card. Remind me, if I ever start a massively-popular religion, to put a clause in my will that my cooling remains are not to be diced-up and parceled out to believers as part of membership drives, fund raisers, revivals, healing ceremonies, crusades, museum exhibits or theme park rides. I do not believe mere cremation would fix this problem, as I'm sure whatever religious organization I could possibly found would have no compunction of selling molecules of Harris Ash for dissolving in your morning coffee. (Rich in seven essential geek minerals!)

And lest you think this story is just another version of "Those Wacky Asians," remember the Catholic Church has made serious gravy from fragments of the corpses of saints for centuries. Because just as the horn of a rhinoceros can cancel-out impotence, the knuckle-bone of Saint Peter is a sure-cure for whatever ails you. I think it should somewhere in a manual for up-and-coming Messiahs: remember to teach that it is absolutely forbidden to cut off your private parts, box 'em, and make them available in the gift shop.

I'm sure Jesus must have said that at some point. It'll all come out in the upcoming Director's Cut of the Bible.

Back to the Catholics, you've got to admit, even ordinary visits by the Pope these days carry with them a subtle air of necromancy. (Translation: He's old, folks!)

The Official Holy Severed Finger of Buddha Tour is brought to you by the Chinese Government and Clark Bars.

Putin Promises to Restore Unity in Russian Orthodox Church
Original Article

President Putin said Thursday his government will not interfere in church affairs, but will take all steps possible to create conditions for a revival of the church and the restoration of its unity.

That's got to be a lot harder than just providing plenty of sunlight and the occasional shot of Miracle-Gro. I'm curious how a government would go about that in a non-evil fashion. Can you imagine how frightening it would be to hear the American President seriously discuss church revival?

Okay, I admit it, that one was cheap.

ChibiHeadline

2004-05-26T21:23:00.000-04:00

Kansas City Star: Nation: Hippo sweat contains stinky compounds that act as sunblock
Original Article

Well at least hippo drips aren't yet considered an aphrodisiac like practically every other giant animal residue and organ.

Being an animal with a large-phallus-resembling body part is so likely to get you hunted to the brink of extinction, in fact, that the shape is almost certainly being selected against. The meek certainly will inherit the earth, because if you're in any way big and bold, worried impotent men will pay any price to attempt sympathetic magic with your honker.

MSNBC: Georgia governor roots for American Idol

2004-05-24T19:02:00.000-04:00

MSNBC: Entertainment: Governor urges people to vote Georgia ‘Idol’
Original Article

The governor of my own state of residence, Sonny Perdue, urges Georgians to vote for Georgia resident Diana DeGarmo in the upcoming American Idol showdown.

To this, I say: What? Is this a joke? It seems on the level, it's on the MSNBC website.

Further down, from the article:

"I think history will judge me as a man who was neutral in 'American Idol' competitions when decorum called for it, but now the rubber is hitting the road. I am standing by Diana DeGarmo," Perdue said in a statement Monday.

I think history will judge him for being a bloody stupid man if he's going to use his office to influence the outcome of a reality program. What a moron! I still hold out some hope that this is all a joke. Continuing:

He signed a proclamation declaring Tuesday as "Dial for Diana DeGarmo Day." The proclamation was accompanied by detailed voting instructions.

It's gotta be a joke! It's exactly like an Onion article, except this is free and The Onion is now subscriber-biased! Someone tell me this is a joke, I can't believe even the governor of Georgia could be this much of a putz. Doesn't he have enough on his plate, like boosting our abysmal public school system, without loading it up with such ignoble gravy?

And the Headlines Came Back, the Very Next Day

2004-05-23T14:21:00.000-04:00

Witchita Eagle: Business: Do-it-yourself ringtone software encroaching on potential profits, some record labels say
Original Article

All together now:

Duh!

Of course it encroaches on potential profits. Everything encroaches on some version of potential profits. The fact that we breathe free and available oxygen encroaches on the potential profits of air-sellers. This is as if all the doors in your home were licensed on a "per use" basis! It is unethical to expect people to pay you merely to pass by their arbitrary technical barrier.

To me, the selling of ring tones is just about the dumbest business model in the world. You pay someone in order to have a few notes of a song play whenever their cell phone rings, and you pay more for each potential song that could play. That people shell out such cash for these things, to me, demonstrates the danger of having a stupid-based economy.

But then, I don't even have a cellular phone. Maybe when you sign up you have to agree to a Terms Of Service clause that requires you to obsess over those things. Don't people read the fine print?

CBS MarketWatch: News & Commentary: All Computers sues Intel over patent
Original Article

I love catching grammar mistakes! Shouldn't that be "All computers sue Intel over patent?" Where did this writer go to school? Can't CBS afford to hire a copy editor? Why I oughtta....

Five minutes pass during which Joyce, the blogger's long-suffering, typewriter-capable house fern, asks him to read the whole article, explaining on a 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper that "All Computers" is the name of a Toronto-based company.

Okay, uh.... I hate software patents! When I think of land grabbing coders putting claim signs on huge swaths of our technological mindspace my blood boils, these people should....

Three minutes later, Joyce has explained that this has nothing to do with software patents, and everything to do with patenting an aspect of chip design, which is not at all the same thing.

Um. Never mind then! All is well! Go back to your homes, secure in the knowledge that I am on watch, eye on the horizon, hand steady on the tiller....

Joyce sighs, swivels her pot back around towards the T.V., and resumes watching Amazing Stories on the Sci-Fi Channel.

The Australian: Business: Time Recovers From AOL Wreck
Original Article

Glad to see they're finally pulling themselves out of the rubble of one of the most spectacularly bad business decisions of the past ten years. While knowledge of AOL's past, and the Commodore hacker split-personality I have rummaging back around the dustier parts of my brain, makes me slightly teary-eyed about the fate of erstwhile QuantumLink, I'm consoled by the knowledge that AOL's current troubles are a just reward for their crappy, proprietary Internet service. Get a load of these quotes from the articles, taken from none other than Time Warner chairman Richard Parsons:

"AOL is not only righting itself but is also becoming a serious engine of growth."

The only things growing for AOL at the moment are the piles of install CDs and a mysterious rotting stench.

"Our challenge is to articulate to Wall Street that there is a Yahoo inside AOL so that some of that internet fairy dust gets sprinkled on AOL."

Oh, that poor Parsons. Somehow he thinks that Yahoo! is the hip web place to be, completely ignoring a certain six-letter-named company with a colorful logo. That's exactly the kind of technology insight that convinced execs Time Warner should merge with AOL in the first place. And by referring to "Internet fairy dust," he betrays just how faddish he considers all this f/shmanchy web stuff to be.

Oh, and the article mentions that Parsons got an eight million dollar bonus last year. But I'm sure he works his sweet little heart out for it, the dickens!

Faster Than a Speeding Headlines

2004-05-22T19:36:00.000-04:00

CNN.com: U.S.: Bush falls on bike ride
Original Article

Chevy Chase could not be reached for comment.

seattlepi.com: Commentary: Is torturing war prisoners a betrayal of U.S. values?
Original Article

Nations don't have values. People have values. I live in the U.S. and I couldn't torture a fly, though I should add that may just be me not being able to catch the darn things. However, living just a short distance from my Dad's home in Brunswick, Georgia are people who, concievably, could torture flies, Iraqis and, statistically-speaking, a good percentage of their spouses. Let's just say It happens that these people are also, again statistically-speaking, more likely to join the military.

Is torturing war prisoners a betrayal of U.S. values? Possibly. Is it a betrayal of military values? Not as likely. A betrayal of redneck values? Ever see Deliverance?

NPR: All Things Considered: Big Tobacco Ordered to Help Smokers Quit
Original Article

I like the term "Big Tobacco." I imagine a giant anthropomorphic cigarette, Mr. Butts on the scale of Godzilla, laying waste to both the countryside and urban air quality.

The tobacco industry, it should be noted, has already been running anti-smoking ad campaigns, to try to curtail teen smoking. When I watch those commercials, somehow I am not filled with a great degree of confidence in their message.

Stupid Movie Lines

2004-05-22T16:15:00.000-04:00

With an eye out for the onset of the summer blockbuster season, and taking a cue from Roger Ebert's Little Movie Glossary, I've begun trying to catalog the various stupid movie (especially action movie) lines and phrases that pop up repeatedly in the periodic celuoid morons with which our warmer months are cursed.

Ebert's book finds names for common movie cliches (of which there are hundreds). My aim is more subdued: I seek only specific phrases, or near-matches of those phrases, that crop up time and again in many movies.

Here are the first two:

"It's more (X) than you can possibly imagine."
Recently guilty: Hidalgo

Sakes alive, how many things are there in this world that we can't possibly imagine? I suspect more than any of us realize, but I doubt a typical lobotomy-patient action film is an appropriate guru to seek out for such enlightenment. This one is so overused that it's quickly shooting up to "In a world where..." status, in other words, infallibly indicative of movie lameness.

This one crops up both in movies and in trailers. No one expects great writing from trailers, but the movie itself should know better.

To "call" this phrase, in case you're engaged in some sort of drinking game, it must at least contain the word imagine or a derivative of it, and the implication that the movie, or something within it, defeats imagining. So for example, also fitting this structure is anything that is "beyond imagination."

"You can't kill me... I'm already dead!"
Recently guilty: Van Helsing

The undead are constantly gloating about their status to mortals. Well, I guess I'd have reason to gloat too, if I found a way to send the laws of thermodynamics packing and had applied it to the workings of my internal organs.

This also comes in the form of a question, like "How do you kill what's already dead?" The answer, obviously, is: "You don't have to. Go have a cookie." If you're dead and still walking around, then the authority that's doing the dead-declaring in your area is incompetent, and you should be directing your complaints to the local morgue.

Movie Review: Van Helsing

2004-05-22T15:24:00.000-04:00

This was originally published in the George-Anne, campus newspaper of Georgia Southern University.

VAN HELSING
Rated: One Star

When one of the first statements in the vampire movie you're watching is that moldering chestnut, you can’t kill what’s already dead, you know you’re in for a hard slog.

“Van Helsing” must have seemed like a great idea on paper. Take the most famous character from the novel Dracula other than the big bat himself, and put him up against a rogues’ gallery of baddies: Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein’s Monster, a wolfman, and Dracula and three brides. In other words, an entire league of extraordinary monsters. After all, why stop at one monster when you can use every toy in the box: it’s not like any of these characters are under copyright anymore.

The result is a special kind of awful. For starters, this Van Helsing has nothing to do with the character in the classic horror novel except for the fact that he fights ol’ Vladdy. They cooked up such a putrid stew of rotting character fragments, and the rankest hunk of meat is the simmering corpse of Van Helsing himself, who has been turned from a great, learned Victorian man of science justly fighting an evil creature into a sort of late 19th-century James Bond, sponsored, not by England but by the Vatican, and with a standard-issue mysterious past.

Yes, the Vatican, complete with an M-like mission assigner with an honest-to-god slide-projector, and a Q-like gadget man, Carl, who sticks around the whole movie in order to remind us, over and over, that he’s not a monk but a friar. (Fortunately, Drac brought the briquettes.) What we have here is Ian Fleming’s Dracula.

The story goes that Van Helsing’s this guy who’s lost his memory, then was found by the Vatican and trained as a monster hunter. They know who he really is, hell Dracula knows too, but he doesn’t, so Drac Daddy can reveal it to him later in order to set up a moment of crisis at the beginning of the third act. It turns out later that he’s actually a really old Roman guy who killed Dracula originally. Like the first time. Before he became a vampire.

I’ll wait while anyone who knows anything about the novel Dracula picks their jaw up off the floor.

The movie drags on with a thousand stupid wonders. The prologue fight against Dr. Jekyll and Mr. CGI. The gross-out baby vampires, about whom you would be forgiven if you thought they must have been sneezed into existence. It seems that baby vampires are born dead, which must make for a lot of depressing evenings in the Dracula homestead. And it turns out that you can jump-start baby vamps by hooking them to a werewolf, but to keep them running for good you need to pop the hood on Frankenstein’s Monster.

The female vampires seem to exist primarily to alternate between being evil and motherly. They like shouting “FEEEED!” at the top of their undead lungs as little vamplings adorably cart away villagers. It’s a shame that, despite their raft of demonic powers, they’re so easy to fool with the Ol’ Fake Carriage Trick.

At the end we have a very special episode of Animal Face-Off: Head Vampire vs. Huge Werewolf, an argument that’s run through the brains of a thousand Dungeons & Dragons fanboys made visible, reeking, on the screen. Oh, and the big prize for winning is eternal salvation for Helsing’s girlfriend, a story point that’s just got to be making a certain Son of God violently clear his throat.

The movie also shows a blithering disregard for consistent accents. Why does Van Helsing speak with a perfect American accent when he’s never been near the States? My guess is the ancient Rome Van Helsing came from must be the same one that birthed Russell Crowe.

Even with all this crap so vividly realized up on screen, the movie could have worked, in a goofy, lighthearted way. The director was Stephen Sommers, the guy who directed the pretty-good “The Mummy,” before helming the rather-bad “The Mummy Returns.” It’s as if Sommers thinks directing the same old schlock with ever-increasing degrees of deadly seriousness equals maturing as a director.

Sommers! Come back to us from the dark side! I’m sure Brendan Fraiser will let you direct him again if you ask nicely!

The Mate was a Mighty Sailing Man, the Headlines Brave and Sure

2004-05-21T20:32:00.000-04:00

TechNewsWorld: Global: Napster Is Back - And This Time It's Legal
Original Article

And this time, it's evil.

Of course Napster's been "back" for a while now. The original popular peer-to-peer music sharing platform, the software that put P2P on the map for most people, has been rejiggered and conflabulated into an iTunes-ish music purchase system without a lick of file sharing to be found. It's only called Napster because Roxio bought the rights to the name. And now, it's available in the U.K.

Congratulations, Brits! You can now pay to hear a selection of studio-approved music, to which all access evaporates once you stop paying. I'm sure there will be dancing in the streets.

Massachusetts Seeks to Halt Some Gay Marriages
Original Article

Nooooo! We have too many gay couples as it is, no more! We have been overwhelmed by the gigantic quantities of sodomy now taking place within our borders! Please stop coming here, as we're already dangerously close to the "gay couple smite-threshold" ominously alluded to in multiple places in the Bible. We figure that even one more legally-sanctioned gay couple could tip the balance! If this tide is not stemmed soon it could very well result in instant and massive divine retrib--
-ZOT!-

IPS: Agriculture: Canada's Top Court Backs Monsanto Against Farmer
Original Article

A plucky farmer committed the heinous act of planting seed resulting from the growing of genetically-modified canola purchased from Monsanto, your friendly neighborhood Humongous Multinational Agriculture Company. The upshot is, not only are genes patentable, but companies may also take legal steps to ensure plants, and presumably other organisms, containing those genes are not grown. Meaning you'd better not save that seed in order to plant later, or you'll be attacked by Monsanto's legions of giant, malevolent squash.

But let's get back, for a moment, to the idea that genes are patentable. I can't wait until that starry, fabulous Jetsons age when babies born with engineered anti-disease genes have a small U.S. patent number tattoo installed in the birthing room. Ain't the future swell?

MOVIE REVIEW- Happily ever... Follow-up is Shrektacular
Original Article

Shrektacular, eh? We have Steve Warren to thank for the above headline, folks. In one sentence, he has set back the beleaguered cause of movie reviewing by at least six months.

The most important things, if you want to be taken seriously as a reviewer, is you watch your praise very carefully, you do not incorporate cutesy little puns in your column, and you *don't* put the movie's title into the pun in such a way that the film's marketing engine can scoop up your fetid little mail drop and convert it into an advertising quote-line.

Reviewers everywhere, heed my call! No matter how many yummy Hawaii junkets you could scarf up for giving those fork-tongued, spade-tailed, cloven hoofed film promoters a sticky catch-line for Torque, please desist! A luau only lasts a few hours, while the stain on your soul may never come out.

Out, Out Damn Headlines

2004-05-19T19:06:00.000-04:00

Bloomberg.com: News & Commentary: U.S.: Texas Executes Mentally Ill Man, Rejects Parole Board, AP Says
Original Article

A mentally-ill man is executed by the State of Texas, the objections of the state parole board ignored by Texas Governor Rick Perry.

I'd hate to be the one to pull the switch. If you had a job as a state executioner, what do you fill out on your resume? Do you go to church and honestly believe the Great White Beard will think it's just peachy that you inject poison into human beings because the Governor says it's okay? How does the act of pulling The Switch wind its way through the plumbing of our legal system in order to avoid those pesky life deprivation laws? I'd imagine you'd need to be awfully sure of your moral standing to do something like that.

Reuters: Soldier Gets Year Jail Term for Iraq Prisoner Abuse
Original Article

I like how skeptical the Iraqis are over this trial. The White House may claim they're not ready for democracy, but I think they're coming along quite nicely -- they're already at least as cynical as my democratic citizen yardstick, jaundiced from having lived in a huge democracy of over 270 million people for over 31 years. Namely, me. Isn't it amazing that they've been out from under Saddam's humongous thumb for just over a year and yet they're already they're showing a canny immunity to propaganda? Wherever could they have picked that up?

The Register: Internet & Law: Online church smites sinners
Original Article

The Register is a tech journal, so it's kind of weird to see talk of religion there. (Unless you're talking about the Church of Emacs, of course.)

Okay, the Methodist Church recently started a 3D "virtual" church. You may have read about it. Their homepage is http://www.shipoffools.com/church/, and anyone can go there.

You can get the full story from the church themselves, here. Before going to that page, take a deep breath, and sit quietly and think to yourself: if you gave a pack of unruly, socially-deficient fourteen-year-old boys adult bodies, made them invulnerable to all harm, then set them loose in a church, what would happen? Believe me, you'll get a lot more laugh value out of the list of things they've forbidden, and the reasons for the forbidding.

As anyone who's spent time on IRC knows, when you allow anyone to enter your little real-time Internet gab solution, pretty soon anyone is just who you get. So now they've been forced to exclude people from services for hitting on women (sometimes obscenely). They've also had to disable the "shout" feature during sermons, for reasons that are probably hilarious. Now, according to the church's site, "Disruptive people can now only be heard by their immediate neighbors, rather than disturbing the whole room." I think it'd be very entertaining to watch one of those services; you'd be able to quickly see who the problem people are by the halo of empty space forming around them.

Supplemental reading: The Original IRC Logs of the Bible

Cool Site: Gmail Swap

2004-05-18T17:58:00.000-04:00

Link

Damn it! Makes me wish I hadn't used up my to invites right away! I'd love to swap an invitation for a fairytale (as proposed by one person), or 40 hours of copy editing by an English teacher (though I'd actually probably just give her the invite with my blessings).

I don't think you get additional invitations once your invites are used up. Ah well, at least I know cool people got them.

Headlines of the Lost Ark

2004-05-16T17:53:00.000-04:00

One long one and two quickies:

Gay.com: Fox gay reality show courts controversy
Original Article

20th Century Fox, owners of the wackiest ship in the navy, are planning a reality show in which men compete with each other to try to convince people that they're gay. I swear that's the premise of the show, just as I swear that that's really name of the reporting website.

If I was writing this five years ago then I'd probably be ranting right now about stupid reality TV shows. But there's been too much crap under the bridge since then. We've seen "real people" try to "survive" on "deserted islands" by playing stupid little games and conniving against each other in shameful ways. We've seen women compete to marry a non-millionaire. We've had one show try to destroy the relationships of several couples while the producer stood in the corner making little cash-register noises. And what was that show again, in which a beautiful woman was forced to choose between multiple "average joes," then introduced a non-average one at the last second so she could pick him instead... I remember now, it was called WHAT IN HELL WAS THE POINT?! And let's forget recent hits such as Stereotypical Eye for the Male Cultural Norm and Wild Animal Death Match.

Does that sound harsh? I recognize that I might be displaying some amount of anger here, so let me attempt to express my feelings here as reasonably as possible:

If you watch these reality shows with any degree of regularity, I believe it is unavoidable that you are a brain-deficient, kitten-eating slime-blot, with bad skin and too much free time, who drives a carriage drawn by a team of six white SUVs through orphanages, and who also chortles at fart jokes. You'll probably never get into rich-people's heaven, but you might still qualify for regular heaven, where live the servants of all dead rich people.

Hollywood.com: News & Views: Paltrow Has Baby Girl Named Apple
Original Article

These merchandising tie-ins are going too far. But that's nothing, I hear Madonna's next kid's gonna be named Microsoft.

I'd like to present Harris's First Law. What you do is take the number of people in your nation who are sincerely interested in the name of the Gwyneth Paltrow's child by rock star (oy) Chris Martin, or any similar piece of pseudo-news, and put on the top half of the fraction. On the bottom half, put the number of people in your nation who perform real work: building things, designing things, researching, thinking, etc. The resultant figure is the chance that your nation will invade Iraq this decade.

Time: Business/Viewpoint: Why a Dose of Inflation is Good For You
Original Article

I'm sure Jimmy Carter will almost be as thrilled to hear about this as he was to hear high gas prices aren't really so bad at all.

The International Prototype Kilogram

2004-05-15T18:18:00.000-04:00

Kuro5hin Article

I've always found it kind of fascinating how units of measurement are defined. The kilogram, it seems, is the last SI unit to still be defined by the weight of an actual object -- everything else has been switched over to some physical principle. in some way.

So, the fastest way to lose a lot of weight, so long as you're not in the U.S., is to find some way to destroy that particular platinum-iridium cylinder. Which is probably why they keep it in a vault.

Headline

2004-05-13T18:31:00.000-04:00

Just one this time:

Washington Post: Politics: Federal Page: ACLU Was Forced to Revise Release on Patriot Act Suit
Original Article

Ooooooh Nelly! The FBI demanded, under the aegis of that ever lovin' PATRIOT* Act, that the ACLU take information out of a press release saying what information it was they, the FBI, had demanded! They did this by sending them the PATRIOT Act version of a Cease-'N'-Desist, a "National Security Letter." Dontcha just LOVE that name, folks?

Do you realize this means we have a law that, itself, effectively contains information you're not allowed to know? Just when did life in these Untied Stakes turn into such a great idea for a Monty Python sketch?

And the silliest thing about it all is that the information you're not allowed to disperse is just CENSORED

* PATRIOT is spelled here in allcaps because it's an acronym, like just about every other evil law released these days. That's right, the letters stand for something, namely: "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism."

The U.S. Congress: For those moments when you just aren't experiencing enough simultaneous laughing and shaking in terror.

Headlines

2004-05-12T17:51:00.000-04:00

Herald Sun: Tiara fits princess-in-waiting
Original Article

And then, with a sound like a thousand tinkling bells, the magical Strawberry Fairy flew down on a cart drawn by four sparkle-stallions, and bestowed upon the princess three wishes! Afterwards, a contigent of Gingerbread Guards from Honeylark Lake escorted the girl to the dance, where were gathered all the noblemen and women from all the land, and the handsome prince was waiting for her, and....

Wait, I'll stop! Anyway, Denmark's Mary Donaldson. Princess tomorrow. Silk-brocade gown. Wowed kings and such. I swear to god this information's in the story. Bah.

A previous Herald Sun article apparently says: "She oozes royal class and has clearly transgressed the line from the ordinary to the magically non-ordinary with grace and intelligence."

Ah, royalty worship. I'm American, so I'm honor-bound to remind you that disdain for this uniquely human act is almost genetic for me. I must admit, when Lady/Princess Di bought it, I wouldn't say I was happy, since after all human beings had lost their lives, but no part of me was prepared to mourn to any degree beyond that.

Stories like this, for me they're non-news. But that's probably obvious by now.

One more quote: "We finally got an insight into the person Mary Donaldson. A strong and yet fragile person, a human being who can laugh and cry."

That Mary Donaldson. She's real people. Or she was, before she got to the last rank in this big mobius chessboard and got Promoted. "How wonderful it is for her," we can tell ourselves as we squirt out our Slurpees at 7-11, scribble meaningless numbers on our bland little scraps of paper, and plunge out our commodes when too much base, nutrition-emptied matter has passed through us.

She will see and do things of which most of us can only dream. Because you see, she's rich. Rich people can do, be, and are more than us lowly peasants dare. When you're rich, everyone likes you, newspapers write about you, and people dream about being you just before they wake up, and get on with the long, dreary, necessary business of carrying you on their shoulders.

Well that was darker than I intended! What's next....

Reuters: Net Pirates Show Passion for Mel Gibson Film
Original Article

So is it morally wrong to seek a free copy of a religious film? Shouldn't Mel Gibson simply rest secure in the knowledge that His Message is getting Out? I figure that'd be too much to hope for, despite the conspicuous lack of commandments against Peer-To-Peer in the Bible.

What I find disturbing here is the continuation of the popular propaganda that file sharing is basically equal to piracy. The last paragraph is:

BayTSP said there were an average of 2.9 million daily Kazaa users and 2.2 million daily eDonkey users in April, revealing Internet movie piracy has held steady since the start of the year.

I'm sorry but that's a non-sequitur, seeing as how there are obviously plenty of files to trade that are not pirated, for example, the Paris Hilton video.

Houston Chronicle: Street fight in Dallas suburb started in chat room
Original Article

In a modern-day version of West Side Story, rival gang members exchanged harsh words and set a time for a rumble.

Because on the Internet, no one knows you're tone-deaf.

"It's the first time that we have seen it," said Officer Joe Harn, police spokesman in the Dallas suburb of Garland. "They didn't have to come together to down each other (with profanity). They simply could do it by typing on a computer. Finally, it escalated enough where they decided to get together and fight."

What with the seriositytm of flamewars these days, why has this taken so long to happen? Is it because most chatroom participants have the fighting skills of Joe Besser, Stinky from the old Abbott & Costello show?

"Most gangs, when they do the disrespect thing, it's either face to face or through graffiti," said Steve Nawojczyk, an Arkansas gang researcher who tracks trends on his Web site, www.gangwar.com.

"Do the disrespect thing." That's the clunkiest sentence I've seen in a long time, and I watch lots of action movies. And so another unfortunate template phrase continues its inexorable spread across our culture: "Do the [blank] thing," where [blank] isn't even an adjective. I shudder to think that, a hundred years from now foreign students trying to learn English will have to muddle through a textbook filled with structures like that.

I think our only hope is to move all communication to a spoken version of C. Human communication taking the form of a programming language, of course, is difficult for anything other than the imperative tense, but the way we're going these days, I figure it won't be long before most of our language exists in that form anyway.

Nintendo at E3

2004-05-11T17:44:00.000-04:00

Word from the boyz at N-Sider indicates that Nintendo has some absolutely awesome software coming in the pipe, including:

A realistic-looking Zelda! More than realistic-looking, it looks absolutely incredible. Look at the detail on Link's tunic! Not that I didn't love Wind Waker's art style to pieces, mind you, but this should at least satisfy a certain breed of loud, whiny gamer who, sadly, composes way too much of the US video game market.
The new Namco-produced StarFox looks great, though I didn't notice any space levels. Still, the Rare-produced Star Fox Adventures looked swell, even if it didn't really have gameplay to match, and this game might remedy that stain on the series' history.
The Picto-Chat application for DS looks very, very cool, and seems to purposely blur the line between game system and PDA-like wireless communications tool.
A Metroid Prime-style game for DS! No word yet if it's a secret Retro Studios project.
Animal Crossing DS! With graphics equal to the Gamecube version (which was a simple N64 port anyway)!
MarioKart DS! Though I consider the N64 version's race mode to be a low-point of the series, this could be real swell. Real.
Advance Wars for GameCube (aka "Cube Wars"). Advance Wars made turn-based warfare cool again for the US market, and this has the potential to be great. I have a number of friends who simply cannot be dragged off of Advance Wars 2. Collectively, they've probably logged over 1,000 hours into that thing.
A four-player version of Super Mario 64?! Incredible.

Ah, but I see that my writing style has devolved into Raving Fanboy. Apologies, everyone.

Headlines

2004-05-11T17:40:00.000-04:00

Cincinnati Post: Delta is using 'B-word'
Original Story

This just goes to show that context is everything. The implication of this headline depends perilously on what you take the word "Delta" to mean.

Delta Airlines:
Buy-out? Bonus? Boneheaded? Bankruptcy? (That is the actual meaning.)

Delta Burke:
Broadway? Buttocks? Boobies? Bitch?

Not that I intend to imply anything about Delta Burke, mind you. I'm just using her as an example. I could just have easily used the mathematical concept of delta, that is the little triangle that indicates a change in some quality. Except I can't think of any remotely-relevant math B-words.

Which I consider to be a sign that my life is headed in a positive direction. Moving on!

ZDNet UK: New Sasser variant indicates copycat script kiddie
Original Story

Ah, yet another tale of the conqueror worm. (Poe: great writer, but a real drag at dinner parties.) This story concerns a Sasser clone written by a wannabe virus writer, who just took some of the text strings in the original and muddied them a bit. Not particularly newsworthy, of course. Not due to threat-level because only systems that could have been infected by the original can possibly be infected by the newbie. Not due to novelty because all you need is a quick perusal of Slashdot to see that the only field of study more laden with upstart, copycat young aspirants is, possibly, Pokemon Trainer.

Twice now I've referred to hackers, collectively, dismissively, who knows maybe even humorously, as JEDIMASTABOB. My proposed name for hacker-wannabes: sITHlORDsTEVE. Begin using it on my mark- three... two... one... now!

Alan King Dies

2004-05-11T13:39:00.000-04:00

Link

I remember his show on Comedy Central "Inside the Comedy Mind," dating back to when it was "CTV," or maybe even before to the Comedy Channel days. It was an interview show that dealt solely with comedians. Honestly I didn't watch it much, since it was one of the least funny things on the comedy network, but then again it didn't try to be. It was still more interesting than the standup comedy marathons that passed for half of the station's other programming at the time.

Maybe Comedy Central will pull some of those old interviews out of mothballs. I wouldn't mind seeing them again. But I'm pretty sure they won't.

Headline Hating, May 7

2004-05-07T18:47:00.000-04:00

United Press International: "Analysis: A very different 'Shock and Awe'"
Original Article

A very toasty article. Reading this brings into sharp relief the problems with the Bust administration's handling of Iraq, and indeed, their handling of everything else from environmental issues to stem cell research.

Because they just don't listen. As Jon Stewart said on Al Franken's Air America program, Bush is sure. That's what the divisive debating of the past several decades have given us, surety. Matters are argued between the two encamped sides, and each seeks to undermine the other in any way possible, because otherwise the other side'll do the same. Against that thinking you must be deadly sure of yourself, because it's war, political war, and pansy-ass things like reasonableness, concession and self-examination have no place in a pitched battle. Will you take a bullet for your country? A stray vote for your party? This is the climate that has produced Bush, but it's produced lots of other politicians as well, many of them in Congress. It's personal conviction above due process. It's the fear of being wrong over the willingness to consider what's right. And, while both sides are guilty, it seems like a disease that afflicts the right more than the left... for now, at least.

Washington Post: Government IT Review: "Electronic Hanging Chads?"
Original Article

NOT THE CHADS AGAIN ARRGH MY BRAIN!

California has decertified one model of voting machine, and ordered modifications to others to be used in upcoming elections. A lot of people seem upset at that. Many California voting officials, at the local and state-level, other states, the "Information Technology Association of America," and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, not to mention Diebold, makers of the machines in question, and let's not forget an uncounted, anonymous legion of computer hackers, they're all in favor of using the touch-screen voting machines and moving forward into the twenty-first century, and the election, in 2008, of our old friend JEDIMASTABOB, running for the B1FF Par-tay.

Because as we all know, a touch-screen, a colorful interface, snappy fonts, and hundreds of millions of dollars in the pockets of e-voting manufacturers is more important than the accuracy of electoral results.

This article also quotes another article (A quote in a quote, lookit me Mom, I'm postmodern!), from the Washington Post, "Paper Receipts Opposed for Voting Machines," in which Los Angeles election chief Conny McCormack waves a 37-inch long paper recepit in the air, saying, basically, "You expect people to read through this to make sure their votes are counted? What cretins you are!"

That statement is such a winner I figured I'd respond to it individually. First, if the machines don't produce receipts currently, where'd you get that yard-and-an-inch strip of paper you're waving about? Also, what on earth is on it? A voting receipt need not be longer than a list of numbers and vote selections, and some basic, identifying information! I mean come on, a punch card is also a strip of paper with marks on it, with a lot of redundant information to boot - all those unpunched choices! Why a computer printer could not be more representational in a given space than a punch card is beyond me.

Wired News: TechTV to Lay Off 285
Original Article

TechTV, formerly ZDTV, is basically closing up shop in preparation for being acquired and subsumed by Comcast's G4 network, focusing on video and computer games.

I've never seen G4 except from some quick and rather idiotic clips spotted on an X-Box* demo disk. So I went over to their home page, which was actually rather hard to find. For the record, it's http://www.g4tv.com/html/home.asp. Here are my reactions to their web site.

1. Their tag line is "TV 4 Gamers." Oooh, interesting use of IM-speak in the slogan for your multi-million-dollar business. I bet your marketing department told you that was "hip," "trendy," "fashionable," "cool," or maybe even "awesome." Myself, I refer to it as "stupid." Strike one.

2. Now playing: Players #308 - Got to Hal. "In this episode of Players, it's a fragging good time with Fear Factory. Then, Hal Sparks gets Gauntleted, the Lakers' Luke Walton brings his 'A' game for a game of Halo, and Last Comic Standing winner Dat Phan dances the show away." Is this a show about watching other people play video games? I've learned from long, painful experience that most people, especially potential girlfriends, do not particularly enjoy that activity. Still, nice to see Hal Sparks is still finding work.

3. Schedule: Filter #215 - Bad Boys. "Which game character dishes out the most attitude? Why is it good to be bad? And, who's badder... Will Smith or Martin Lawrence? It's time to take a look at some guys that are too cool for school, as we break down gaming's biggest bad boys, on this week's episode of Filter." Woah now, Will SMITH and Martin LAWRENCE! GOOD to be BAD? Too COOL for SCHOOL? Hold on a moment, let me set my Tivo, there's no WAY I could bring myself to MISS such an OBVIOUS example of QUALITY television. I'm SURE this would be SO interesting to watch FIRST-HAND, if I only didn't have so much LAUNDRY to do, FINGERNAILS to clip and NOSE-HAIR to pluck. Why don't I just GLUE my EYELIDS open, turn it to G4 then smash my remote with a HAMMER to ensure that I don't MISS even a MOMENT of this GOLDEN VISAGE.... Gasp, that's enough heavy sarcasm, I had no idea it took that much out of you. I'm parched.

4. Schedule: Electric Playground #1203 (really?) - Another World. "The worlds of science fiction and fantasy collide with psychic powers, transforming robots, serious shooters, and superheroes!" That's just what I need, a psychic shooting super-robot set in Piers Anthony's Adept novels.

Wait a second, no it isn't! This sounds exactly like a hundred thousand ill-advised webcomics!

5. 2:00 to 4:00 A.M.: Paid Programming. Ah, it's nice to see that there's something here paying the bills. I figure it's only a matter of time that the accountants, looking over what's profitable on the network, make the decision to switch to the All-Infomercial programming model.

I'd watch it! But then, you probably already have your suspicions about me.

* Note: X-Box is not the proper spelling for Microsoft's video game console. The proper way to write X-Box is "XBox," without a dash. Always be sure to spell X-Box as "XBox." Never spell it as "X-Box." Failure to properly refer to Microsoft's game system in the way that Microsoft's trademark department specifies will naturally identify you as uneducated, dim-witted and cretinous. You wouldn't want that, now would you? Please reader, always make sure to write X-Box the proper way.

Mmm-mmm good, that's what Headlines soup is, May 6

2004-05-06T17:19:00.000-04:00

Comedians on the political campaign
Original Article

LENO (Mod +0, Trite)
Ah, Leno. I like him, I've always liked him. I don't think he's funny anymore, but he's likable! That's all you really need these days, isn't it?

Okay, I do like the Flordia line. And okay, the Nader line. But overall I think his jokes could stand a few more words. I mean, I appreciate the need for a punchy line much as much the next guy (who happens to think way too much about jokes), but political jokes, they can take a little meat. You just can't say that much in less than thirty words.

Then, I think that gets to the crux of the problem right there. He's not up there to say things, he's up there to get laughs. Unfortunately, he'd be getting more laughs if he were saying things.

KILBORN (Mod -1, Lightweight)
Only one political joke?! Craig, Craig, Craig. I never thought I'd see the day when I said the Daily Show is better off without you. You've got style, wit, a killer delivery, but really, you don't seem to say much. The Daily Show switching to Jon Stewart seemed like such a mistake at first, but now it seems like providence. Oh well, maybe he (or his writers) just had a bad day.

STEWART (Mod +1, Insightful)
Not afraid to go around the block to make a joke, but that works for him. There's an understatement there as well, I can just imagine his delivery of the "industrial park made out of twenties" line. The best thing on Comedy Central, and, strangely for a show that professes indifference to actual news, rather good commentary.

What to do about the Sasser Worm
Original Article

A T.V. news site, hmm. Eh, what the hell.

The truth of the matter is, despite what this story implies, if you're infected by many worms you won't notice anything different. It's against a worm's best interests to let on to the user that they're installed, since the sooner the user finds out the sooner the nest gets tossed out, and their authors know this. Random pop-ups usually come from spyware, which almost always rides along with installed, unethical freeware, though open source software is usually safe.

Interesting the play-up that Windows is flawed, it's strange to hear that revelation from a news broadcast website, and even stranger since they give what are presented as Microsoft's recommendations as to firewalls to avoid the problem. But oops, the first firewall listed is BlackICE, which is itself victim of a worm targeted specifically against it! Note that all the firewalls listed are either for-pay or trial versions, not even mentioning the free-beer version of ZoneAlarm (the Pro version is the one linked to from the article). And I guess Microsoft forgot that their own software, Windows XP, has had a built-in firewall, ICF, that only needs to be enabled....

Cable Critics Blast 'Gore TV'
Original Article

I think this could be pretty cool, if the flood of miffed cable heavies in the room at the announcement even let him on the air. PBS for the MTV generation is exactly what I'd watch, though maybe with a little less MTV. And I think people are worrying too much that it not be political- the truth is, with Fox News broadcasting every goddamn hour of every goddamn day, it'd take the McLenin-Castro Newshour to balance-out the cable news teeter-totter.

FTC testimony highlights file-sharing dangers
Original Article

What's the FTC concerned about? It's not what you're thinking!

Nothing to do with pirating any of the hundreds of things that can be pirated, the FTC is worried kids might get access to inappropriate material over file-sharing networks, including and most especially things that are mislabeled. Oh for the love of strawberry-flavored Howard Phillips Christ!

You can say all same things about the World Wide Web, and-- no, wait. I didn't say that. Er, the Web is nothing at all like that, and should certainly not be censored, pruned, crippled, fastened, folded, stapled, spindled, mutilated or denuded of any interest factor so that six year old kids won't see breasts! Honest and truly and just all over patriotism and star-spangled goodness and glee! Please?

Thousands of other people have already pointed out the folly of trying to protect the public from themselves. You'd think the people doing things like this, seriously wringing their hands that kids might find porn on Kazaa, would listen to them, but they aren't. I'm reasonably certain they won't listen to me either, so why don't I save my breath?

But you know, I can't help but think that should the Democrats win on November, that all these strange and unflimbert policies and drives on the behalf of various fragments of the Executive Branch will suddenly wither and fall away. Anyone care to place a bet?

(Definition of "Unflimbert," a word I just made up: would be hilarious if it weren't so dangerously wrong-headed.)

Memories of Christian Renewal Academy, or, My Water-Wings For Use in a Sea of Crap

2004-05-06T15:27:00.000-04:00

Originally posted on Plastic. This took me so long to write that I figured I'd try to get a little more use out of it.

This was written in as a comment to a story entitled Good Riddance, Or Good Lord! Southern Baptists May Pull Kids Out Of Public Schools, and discusses my experience attending a similar type of depressingly theological educational institution (Wow, eighteen syllables in four words!) as those Baptist kids may be attending.

I attended a Christian high school, Christian Renewal Academy, back in my home town of Brunswick, Georgia. Allow me to explain what it was like, though keep in mind that not all Christian private schools are like this.

The curriculum were these workbooks called "PACEs," sprinkled through with obnoxious Christian cartoon characters, all dressed eternally in formal churchwear, the boy characters even with ties. Ace (pronounced "Aee-cee,") was the all-American star achiever, the emulation goal for students. I don't remember all the characters' names (it's been over a decade), but I do remember "Happy," blond, with a buzz-cut and buck teeth, who was occasionally depicted in the included comic stories as kind of dim. And I remember the "unsaved" characters, one male and one female, who were invariably drawn as a little ragged, with messed-up hair instead of the plastic pre-fab hair-styles, and who did nebulously-defined "drugs." These characters persisted in the books from first grade all the way up through twelfth, being drawn to match the age of the reader in each grade. But they all that that same hyper-clean, uniform-width drawing style, like all the characters in all their poses were taken from a big clip-art book, and the dialogue, in addition to being incredibly inane (there is nothing on this Earth as sad as Christian humor) was written in the most boring, plain sans-serif font you can imagine. Like someone had found a way to extract whatever little personality there is to be found in Helvetica.

We sat in little wooden desk-like structures called "offices," though now I know the proper word is "cubicle." They were long structures, seating three students each, with wooden partitions between the desk portion of the seats, giving the students a small amount of privacy. The backs to the desks were open to the room, however. Each desk had a little chart pinned to the back (which was a cork board) with the student's name on it and a big grid, marked out by week and month, on which stars were stuck whenever a workbook was completed. The books were designed to be completed at the student's own pace. They were even called PACEs, you see. The idea was that students who were smart enough to work through them quickly would finish them early, and get more accomplished. I have to say that it was not a system well-suited to my own work habits, as it took me an extra year to finish there. I just wasn't that motivated.

Some more description of those offices. Each contained a little schedule we were supposed to fill out with our own idea of the day's events, that often went unused. They also contained two flags, an American one and a "Christian" one, which was white with a blue field at about the place it is on the American flag, but instead of stars a red cross. A student would put one of these up on top of their desks to indicate to the "supervisors," the adults in the room, that they either wanted to visit the restroom (Christian flag) or wanted to check work at the check tables (American flag). The check tables were where we students went to check the answers we had entered into the PACEs in the answer keys. After marking them right or wrong, we'd return to our desks and, if we had gotten 80% correct, continue to the next section. If not, we'd have to correct answers until we got it right. The books were not particularly well-written, so I remember having to correct some areas multiple times.

When a book was completed, we'd turn it in to the supervisor, and get the test for that book, and after taking it we'd check it in the answer key. Passing it (getting 80% or greater correct) meant proceeding to the next book, failure meant taking it again. You can guess that this system was rife with opportunity for abuse, and most students cheated profusely. I was not one of those kids, though I kind of wish I was now.

Every morning was led off with a prayer session, a reading from the Bible and a talk from the supervisor. The Bible reading went through a chapter of Psalms or Proverbs a day. Now these are not books of the Bible that are always up-front with their meaning, or so after the reading we had a session of "interpretation" provided by the supervisor. Sometimes this interpretation had to go through great lengths. This was one of the things that caught in my rather unruly, intellectually, brain: if the Bible is supposed to be the literal truth, in all ways,then why is interpretation even needed? And some of the things which were ignored because they were "obviously" didn't mean what they appeared to be saying made me wonder, since the Bible comes down to us over thousands of years, and many things that were obvious then are not now, and vice versa. Now I see that was one of the best experiences I could have possibly gotten, though I suspect not in the way the school intended.

Our supervisors came and went roughly once a year, and I can remember five supervisors we had in our classroom:

Art Girard was the first, and best of them all, a man who had come to Christ because of personal tragedy, the sudden deafness of his daughter Stephanie, who I never met (she was home schooled). A genuine Christian, not one of those people you might see who claim religion but art no better than your average homo-sapiens or worse, he was a Good Soul. Eventually he moved to California. I sent him a letter, and received a very nice reply that I wish I still had, but at that time I was rather uncaring about reminders, a trait I now rue almost daily. If all, or even many, Christians were like Art Girard then I'm sure we would not be in Iraq right now.

Doug Watson was pretty good as well, but I'm not sure what happened to him. He became principal, then left. Mr. Williams and Mr. Lewis both had military backgrounds. Lewis has a daughter who attended the school, an awkward, glasses-wearing young woman, rumor had it with a mental imbalance, who was ruthlessly picked on by the other students. There were some good kids there, but this is only slightly urban Georgia we're talking about here, and a lot of the kids were not, shall we say, particularly kind-hearted individuals. One day when we came in after lunch, I was rather startled by an outburst from Mr. Lewis, who suddenly began shouting at the class in general -- apparently something had happened to her, and he shouted down the entire class because of it. Anyway, Mr. Lewis wasn't around after that day. The final supervisor was Joni Cruise, who was okay.

Most of the subjects taught were given in the form of those PACEs, but two that weren't were Geometry and Algebra, which was taught by another Mr. Williams, not the retired army guy mentioned before but an architect. Williams was a great guy, perhaps not in Mr. Girard's league but soft-spoken, and very sharp. His courses were the only classwork in that school that actually caught the attention of my scattered brain, and I did very well in them, especially Geometry. There was something about doing proofs that appealed to me, and I managed to solve a couple of problems in that class of great difficulty. It was an interest that was to evaporate in college, where I didn't get to take anything like Geometry at all, and when I hit Calculus eventually I fell off the Math wagon altogether, although my lack of a good calculator (which were starting to become expected by the textbooks) may have played a pivotal role in that. A couple of years ago I visited the old school for a few minutes over the Summer and found out Mr. Williams is now the principal, and they've since abandoned PACEs and moved to a more traditional classroom setting. However, it must be said that he attempted to make sure I was still Christian. I'm sure it was from his own concern for what he consider my well-being, but I can't help but say that it hurt my opinion of him, a little -- back in Geometry and Algebra classes, he had barely mentioned Jesus.

One day, in Christian Renewal, Mrs. Cruise addressed the class. She talked about falling behind, about the need to keep up. She mentioned making sure to stay on track with the PACEs, and not to end up having to take an extra year to finish. She said that it might not seem like a big deal now, but that it would put us a year behind, and the loss would ripple forward through our lives, and haunt us to the end of our days. As I write this, I'm 31 and just finishing up my B.A. English, so I guess she was talking to me.

But so far at least, I recognize now that most of what that high school taught was bunk. Despite the Christian background, a Christian family and extended family, and the Christian school there, I consider myself atheist now, or at least agnostic. The great tracts of evolutionary propaganda, for that's it was, the positing of fringe scientists as somehow leading great armies of renegade, right-thinking thinkers, the subverting of the scientific method by adding a God-clause, those vaguely Orwellian cartoon characters, all this in the PACEs, and all the Bible-reading and interpretation in the school, eventually I escaped these things, despite not knowing enough to not believe them, then.

In summary, there is no mistake of upbringing that cannot be undone with enough critical thought and a good Internet connection later in life. What matters is the will to examine what you've been told, to determine for yourself honestly if it's what it presents itself as being, and to put into perspective the people and culture who are the sources of your own knowledge.

Unfortunately, I doubt most of the children who would be affected by a Baptist pullout will end up with those advantages.

Dear Diary

2004-05-05T19:54:00.000-04:00

Well, today two people who are of equal rank on my personal "best friends" roster, and had been married for over ten years, officially seperated. Worse is that the male half of the relationship has depended on the female half for practically everything, and yet is basically the initiator here, claiming a need to succeed on his own, and that she's going through a hard time due to the breakup. Bad is that he's thrown ten years away, worse is that I'm unsure either will find anyone better anytime soon.

Of course, it's possible either will be able to recover and successfully resume dating. I tend to be pessimistic about these situations because of my own impoverished social life. I am what you might call "work minded," in that I'd much rather spend my time writing, or brainstorming, or cooking up some crazy game design, thanhanging out in bars (which is just about the only avenue for singles in this microscopic college town). Unfortunately, I can't say that this obsessive focus on output has improved my employment prospects either.

Sorry for the lack of funny this time. There needs to be some way to separate these ruminations into a different page. Maybe with multiple blogs, hmm.

Headlines, May 5

2004-05-05T14:44:00.000-04:00

New York Times on the Trail: "On The Road"
Original Article

A visit by the president kicks up a lot of dust. When confronted with the tremendous ruckus of helicopters, armament and SUVs passing by, one woman "who was mowing her lawn ran indoors, leaving the lawn mower idling in her yard," thus winning a special place in my heart, and the hearts of all timid people who cringe at rock concerts, find a blank wall to stare at when a megaphone or loud person is aimed at them, and generally feel helpless and hopeless when confronted with any loud, obnoxious hullabaloo.

It's also interesting to note that there's still someone in this country that can still afford to drive an SUV.

Mr. Bush's aides made no secret of their joy that he was using the sardonic tone about John Kerry that until now has been reserved for Vice President Dick Cheney to use.

It's no trick to adopt a sardonic tone. I think I myself have proven any wiseacre with a website can do it just dandy.

And it worked: The president's most rousing reception was in Cincinnati, where 16,500 people jammed into the Cincinnati Garden (it cost the campaign only $19,000 to rent it for the night, a bargain in their view) and cheered every jab at Mr. Kerry.

Take note Kerry: the cost to rouse a person in Cincinnati is slightly more than a buck fifteen. Of course that assumes that you rouse in bulk, and already have available sufficient rousing capital, such as speakers, aides, podiums (podia?), weapon-studded bodyguards and gigantic American flags (sold by the Patton Gigantic American Flag company of Beijing, China).

"The other side hasn't offered much in the way of strategy to win the war," Mr. Bush said. The large and enthusiastic crowd shouted back "Four More Years."

There is a difficulty in responding to this statement: it's too easy. A phantom Kerry could respond to it by saying "Who got us into this war in the first place," or "I intend to get us out of Iraq, not keep us there," or "If this is a war what nation are we fighting, and please don't insult me by saying 'terrorists,'" or "Just what was that big 'Mission Accomplished' banner for exactly," or even "Go to hell." I myself have a particular fondness for that last one. But they're all kind of lame when used against Bush, because it's impossible to debate someone who's unwilling to even listen to a word you say. He is a master of the non sequitur. In some circles that's called conviction, in a diminishing number of others, psychosis. Homestar Runner would make a better president.

He took a few tame questions at an "Ask the President" event that was filled with a largely invited audience. He used the moment to cast Mr. Kerry as a huge spender, without ever mentioning the large government deficits run up over the last three years.

See? But enough of that, there's gotta be something other than politics in Newsmap today....

Google under closer privacy scrutiny post-IPO
Original Article

You can bet a spooky "Look out, Google's gonna getcha!" article that quotes Daniel Brandt, a.k.a. the Google-Watch guy, will have a high kook-factor, even if it's printed in Forbes. But don't take my word kook-factor-wise, go to www.google-watch.org and see for yourself. (An even more enlightening site could be www.google-watch-watch.org.)

But that's not particularly funny, is it? And for that, I sincerely apologize.

Disney stomping on Michael Moore's movie Fahrenheit 911

2004-05-05T04:26:00.000-04:00

Found on BoingBoing. New York Times link

This is the most infuriating thing I've heard in months! Moore's previous Bowling for Columbine was critically acclaimed, did very well for a documentary, and is one of my favorite political movies. Disney claiming they don't want to distrubute Moore's movies because their controversial... come now, controversy is pretty much Moore's stock-in-trade. Did they think he'd make them a cartoon? This is the man who brought us Roger & Me!

Disney has a lot of explaining to do.

Headline Hammering, May 4

2004-05-04T17:22:00.000-04:00

Bush Hammers Kerry, Promises Better Days for Ohio
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=5037024

Interesting use of an action verb in political headline, Reuters!

The story's about a press conference in which Bush criticizes Kerry about a half-dozen things that have nothing to do with Iraq. Bush complained about Kerry's SUV the day before, and now makes fun of Kerry for claiming that foreign leaders supported him, which I consider very plausible, for not mentioning who they are. Number of people converted into Bush voters: zero thousand, zero hundred, and zeroty-zero.

Microsoft Responds To Sasser Worm Threat
http://www.crn.com/sections/BreakingNews/dailyarchives.asp?ArticleID=49922

Oh god, is there another worm swirling around the Internet brainwashing Microsoft software? They get their teensy brains sucked out at the drop of a hat. They're the Patty Hearsts of the computing world! The other day I went to the school to look up classes and the Windows machine I was on suddenly displayed "YeS mAsTeR, hOw MaY i SeRvE yOu?" Really freaked me out, though I can't say my bank account is complaining.

I can't help but think Microsoft's days are numbered. OpenOffice is now almost as good as Microsoft Office, better in some ways (because you see, the thing that pops up and offers un-asked for advice isn't animated), and free. Mozilla, also free, has many cool features Internet Explorer lacks, like that amazing technological innovation called not displaying fifteen pop-ups advertising porn, with the added benefit of not losing its mind when a website entones the magic formula "ActiveX." Word processing and web browsing, right there you have the primary uses of 90% of all computers, and both Macs and Linux does them at least as well as Windows PCs containing MS Office. It's true that I myself still run Windows (so I'll be running home shortly before my credit card numbers get sent off to a guy calling himself JEDIMASTABOB), but I'm a special case. You know, because I'm special.

Will Windows Power the Living Room?
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,115977,00.asp

Oh-ho! Another segment of our lives for JEDIMASTABOB to piddle on! Imagine never being able to get your television off of a big, pulsating picture of the goats.cx guy! And everything must be a PC: your DVD player, VCR, stereo, T.V., dog. Your remote control will have a Pentium in it and mysteriously be unable to enter channel 12!

Hey wait, it does: "Also, it does not need a mouse or keyboard; all access is through an intelligent remote control that features a color screen, fingerprint reader, microphone, and speaker..."

It comes with an ever-lovin' fingerprint reader! I guess to make sure no one is watching (minor chord) UNAUTHORIZED TELEVISION. "I'm sorry, this program is not available to citizens of your security clearance." Great for checking up on the current security alert color on the Ashcroft Network.

A microphone! Why, all the better to badly recognize your voice and send you to the Playboy Channel when the kids get home from school, my dear.

A speaker! All the better for the microphone to pick it up, and the sound goes through and through like tigers, until your eardrums turn into butter my dear. Because feedback's a bitch.

And of course a remote control is a device just crying out for a speaker and a color screen. You can watch T.V. on it, and then you'll need to get a little remote for the big one and tie it to your wrist, so you won't have to lift your hand three inches to get to the big remote, or lift it, or risk dropping it and breaking the hundred bucks of circuitry inside it!

This article is full of fun stuff. Here's more:

"The improvements in Windows combined with new hardware will enable devices that we will be happy to put in our living room," Sullivan says. They forgot to add "in a monotone, his eyes glazed and showing little Windows logos."

Media Center PCs allow users to use a remote control to provide access via TV to photos, video, and music stored on their PC, as well as selected Internet services such as movie downloads. Ah, in order to "enable" a hard drive crash to destroy even more of your life. And who selects these services? I imagine a man in a business suit, poorly-drawn in the Dilbert style, named something like "Mordak the Selector."

Through the fingerprint reader on the remote, the Home Center PC will automatically show an individual user's favorite TV shows and computer games. "Let's find out what Jimmy is watching down here at two a.m. ... OH MY GOD!" And if the computer games mentioned are anything like the ones Microsoft publishes for the XBox then I'll pass, thank you.

Microsoft has a grand vision for the Windows Home Concept. I note with sadness the cheapening of the word "grand." A new entertainment center is not grand. An Army of the Republic, now that's grand.

The screen on the remote will let users to (sic) select shows to record, even while the PC is doing something else. So if you're watching a show for an hour on Channel 4, but there are also shows on Channels 3 and 10 you can't bear to miss, you can catch them all and spend your whole evening in a happy, phosphorescent haze.

Aside from the Home Center PC, the Windows Home Concept also includes a Home Tablet PC that will come with a docking station and can synchronize with the Home Center PC. And we all know how well Tablet PCs have gone over!

"The Home Tablet PC is a more compelling scenario," Sullivan says. "Soon you will have no choice. Rejoice in the coming age! Ia, Ia, Cthulhu ftagn!"

Enough, I am drained! More news later, I need a drink.

News Sniping, May 3

2004-05-03T16:24:00.000-04:00

Nude Beach Sparks Barge Flip
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9462199%255E1702,00.html

Reported by Australian news site News.com.au, from an Associated Press wire, describing an event that happened in Texas (a.k.a. "Little Australia"). Just so you know, this sordid tale of ogling sightseers tumping their float has circumnavigated the globe on its way to your own sticky eyeballs. To those twin tyrants Amerigo Vespucci and serious journalism I say, take that!

New Okla. City federal building dedicated
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=New%20Federal%20Building

Unstated in the headline was that it was our very own kitty-tormented Attorney General himself, John Ashcroft, doing the dedicating. In his speech he said, "This gathering, this building, this city are clear evidence of the kind of spirit in America showing that men and women allowed to breath the bracing air of freedom will always come together to defeat tyranny and hatred."

Meanwhile on the other side of the world, the nation of Iraq detached from planet Earth and began its long, inevitable drift towards the billion-degree surface of the Sun.

California nixes e-voting
http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0503/web-evote-05-03-04.asp

E-voting! What a quaint and charming coinage! I know I'd never be able to decide whether to cast my ballot for Dr. Ben Oguejiofor of Nigeria or his honored opponent SUP3R V!AGRA NOW!!

Anyway, in case you're not up to speed on this, automatic teller vendor Diebold is in serious trouble these days for selling massively insecure electronic voting machines to the state of California, who it must be said seem to have enough problems with their legitimate votes these days.

Not long ago Slashdot had a link to a blog with pictures of one of Diebold's ATMs going down on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University, revealing it contained a copy of Windows XP, complete with Windows Media Player. Hoo boy! Can't make this stuff up folks. (Scroll a little down the page for the pictures.)

GMail Impressions, Wannabes

2004-05-02T14:06:00.000-04:00

I've been using GMail for about two weeks now. I got into the beta program because of this blog right here, right here that I'm writing on, now, and then I logged into Blogger and lo, there was the invite link. Apparently, you have to have been a Blogger user for a while (apparently I started my account over a year ago, though it doesn't feel like it), and have updated semi-regularly (which I have not, really, but I got in anyway). It's probably the first of those two reasons that's excluded poor bruce from the beta.

So far, I've found GMail to be really, really cool. The Javascript niceties, conversation grouping, and the fact that I haven't gotten a single spam message (except for a misidentified one from Yahoo) since starting the beta, make it almost fun to use GMail. I think they're on to something here, and they'll probably get a flood of new users once they go public.

One problem I've not seen anyone mention so far -- GMail doesn't allow you to send or receive Windows executable attachments. I seem to recall getting around this by zipping one, but Google's support staff says that that won't work. Interesting that Google has imperiously determined that users don't need to send executables. I don't know if this is to halt the spread of viruses and worms or an anti-piracy measure.

I've actually barely seen any of the ads Google's supposely adding to my messages. I've seen a few unpaid suggested links (which are a cool idea), but not even those show up for every message.

But a disturbing thing has started happening. I just got a second person mailing me-- well, perhaps I should let Robert speak for himself:

I saw your e-mail on a slashdot discussion regarding Gmail (http://slashdot.org/articles/04/04/25/1438250.shtml?tid=126&tid=95), and I have been doing a bit of research on it. I am very intrigued by Gmail and its technology, and I would be honored to get a Gmail account. You probably get these e-mails often, seeing as though not too many people have gmail accounts, but I wonder if perhaps you could send me an invite to Gmail? My name is Robert, I am 14 years old, and I am in the midst of starting a web hosting business.

I hope you will consider me as a candidate to send an invite to, I would appreciate it beyond words.

Thank you for your consideration John, have a nice day.

I would be very, very happy to get an invite fr

The cut-off tail is presented exactly as from the message.

Um. A startlingly well-spoken 14-year-old thinking about starting a web-hosting business? Even so, I wouldn't have thought that much about this except this is the second supposed early-teen to ask me for a Gmail invite. He has an e-mail address with a worksofmagic.com domain, but going to www.worksofmagic.com brings up a PHP error.

Years of being spammed to and decades of being advertised at have given me almost preternatural crap-detection powers, and my crappy-sense is a-tinglin'. That, and this just seems too weird for words. Look, kid, if kid you be, Gmail's cool, but it'll probably be public before too long. Just be patient, okay?

If you're not a kid, which I consider likely, what motive do you have for trying to con me into giving you an invite? Are you planning on running experiments with their spam filter? Going to start looking for ways to subvert their system for the sending of spam itself?

In both cases, forget it. I don't even have any invites left. So if you're really a kid, sorry, and if you're not, nyaah to you.

More news: May 1

2004-05-01T15:16:00.000-04:00

I had so much fun writing my little piddle-pieces on the headlines I scavanged off of Newsmap, which are in turn scavanged off of Google News, and they turned out so well, that I may end up doing it regularly.

So let's go, three more headlines!

1. Recording Industry Sues Music Pirates
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=19400047

So, what would be the logical inverse of this headline? "Recording Industry Doesn't Sue Music Pirates." I think that would be much more newsworthy, and almost less frequent these days. But in a way, despite being against the RIAA's tactics, I sort of want to wish them godspeed. Because remember, every song you download illegally is one less song you could be downloading legally from any of the thousands of unknown, independent artists who would be more than happy to give their music to you.

Supplemental reading: An Open Letter From Metallica, a classic piece from the Brunching Shuttlecocks.

2. Yesha to post babies at polls
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1083404949342

I saw this one in Newsmap, which only posts headlines, and thought: - the hell?!

Ah, but the title on actual article is really "Settlers to post children outside Likud polls." It turns out to be voting on a referrendum on those Israeli settlers on the Gaza strip, you know, the ones you hear about on the radio moments before your eyes glaze over.

Ah, but I'm kidding. But it's true that I'm not really up on whatever's going on in Israel at the moment. I heard on NPR that the Israeli government has been quietly promoting settlement there, I'm guessing specifically so when toss-out day came there would be sad-eyed families and crying babies to post at vote huts. That strikes me as rather cynical, but compare that to Bush's retcon realignment of his Mission Accomplished speech. Cynical public manipulation ploys are basically what politics is these days, seems to me.

Speaking of which:

3. Bush marks anniversary of 'end of combat' speech
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/05/01/bush.radio/

"President Bush Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of his rousing speech that declared an end to major combat in Iraq, saying that life is better for Iraqis 'despite serious and continuing fatalities.'" OOPS I'M SO SORRY, that last word should be "challenges," my bad.

Wait, someone at CNN thinks Bush's speech was "rousing?" When has Bush ever given a rousing speech? I didn't think he was capable of it. Maybe I should hunt up a recording of that thing, listen to it and see if I get roused. Though I should warn you I don't swing that way....
Another quote: "Bush contends that 'these groups have found little support among the Iraqi people.'" At least they got the verb right that time: contends.

While I call myself liberal these days, during those silent, honest moments in bed at night before drifting off I admit I'm actually moderate. But there are plenty of conservative candidates who would have made for much better presidents than Bush. That's why I am, and you should, be voting !Bush in 2004. (You pronounce it "Not-Bush.")

Vote !Bush in 2004! Because let's face it, wouldn't even Fidel Castro be a better choice?

News of the Week

2004-04-29T22:09:00.000-04:00

Mary Kate & Ashley get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/ontv/042904_ontv_olsen_twins.html
Or more accurately they each get half a star, I suppose. Just think: a hundred years from now people running for their lives in terror from the Giant Mutant Bugs swarming over California will pause for a moment on that gilt shape, think to themselves "Who the hell were they?", and then be devoured. A fitting tribute to their talent!

Woman drives dead mother to Florida
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040429-044103-2893r.htm
In other news, the Washington Times has a slow day. There's something heartbreaking about this story, it's true, but it's nothing compared to the fact they felt this saddening tale of insanity and woe needed a wide audience. Has there been an upswing in incidents of corpse-driving?

Survey: Bush's Rating Slips as Americans Debate Iraqi War
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=D846246E-02F7-450B-AE76D2823EAE0398
The American public displays a sluggish, yet inevitable, appreciation for the truth. According to a New York Times/CBS News poll, 47% of Americans think the U.S. did the right thing in invading Iraq, as opposed to 63% in November. Counting the only way I know how, I deduce that this means three hands and one finger's worth of people are having what are known as "second thoughts." I wonder, is this change of heart because of the conviction that attacking a nation that poses us no direct threat was wrong, or because things aren't going so well for us over there? Somehow I think it's the latter more than the former, but at least they might keep this situation in mind the next time a President decides to hold a splendid little war.