Success!
(Mostly)
Though due to other matters coming up and consequently a late start, a few frustrations (the modem gave me fits until I realized I should try unplugging it for 30 seconds, after which it cleared up and went smoothly) so it was well past dark when we finished. The new system is up and running, the router in place, both computers can now be connected to the net, along with one or two game systems. Travis is currently blasting away at opponents online in Halo2. (The game and a year’s access to their online play arenas were one - two? - of his Christmas presents.)
Despite having unplugged, replugged and even going so far as to uninstall and reinstall it, the CD drive on the older computer still will not recognize any discs. This means that Nick still isn’t able to run either of his new PC-based games (Doom 3 and Half Life 2) on his computer, so I might deign to allow at least one of them to be temporarily installed on this new system shortly, let him play with it h...
Posts
How do You feel about being an unwitting contributor to Jeb Bush's presidential campaign? Among the items to greet me during my morning news check is word that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will be travelling with Colin Powell to the tsunami-ravaged areas of South Asia and Africa . Purpotedly he was chosen because as the governor of a state that has witnessed so much hurricane damage he would be better qualified to make first-hand evaluations of the situation so that the government can better decide on the follow-up amounts to the $35 million in disaster relief already pledged. To Hell with that -- send a civil engineer and perhaps an experienced building contractor, not someone who'll doubtless be accompanied by Secret Service agents as part of the help from his incumbent brother to gain a higher threshold of visibility in order to better have his shot at the White House. After all, the family always thought Jeb was the one who would make that run. They didn't anticipate Dubya ...
The slippery slope at the legal edge of the grave
Tammy passed along this cheery bit concerning the opinions of Baroness Warnock, "Britain's leading medical ethics expert." The piece finds me looking askance at what this says about the state of ethics in the UK and the sheer definition of the term. As part of an interview she says:
"In other contexts, sacrificing oneself for one's family would be considered good. I don't see what is so horrible about the motive of not wanting to be an increasing nuisance.
"If I went into a nursing home it would be a terrible waste of money that my family could use far better."
In the end I suppose I must commend her on her candor, as at least she's bringing the full spectrum of the issue to the fore. Those who are against euthenasia under any circumstance - a position I find to be too extreme - often remark that to allow it at all is to set foot on a slippery slope that would lea...
Ho ho! Holidays?
(Mike pisses and moans. It's a tradition!) Aside from having put in just over half a day at work on Wednesday – knocking out some reports that were requested for this week, and getting a better grip on where matters will stand when I go back next Monday – I’ve theoretically been on vacation since Thursday night, December 23rd.
I tell you, it certainly doesn’t feel like it.
Finding myself singularly unprepared for Christmas this year, there was much running around at and just after the last minute. A raging headcold moved into my chest, and an eczema flare-up left me best suited to medicating myself and trying to get comfortable enough to be unconscious. Battling the eczema involves taking regular doses of antihisthamines, which tend to make one drowsy. I finally saw a doctor (which is generally a waste of time with colds, since they’re viral and antibiotics are useless against anything but bacteria) on Monday in order to get a better decongestant and becaus...
Wave of the Future?
Earlier today Dwight Williams , largely in light of the growing death toll in the wake of the recent earthquake-drive tsunami in Sumatra, etc., sent me a note concerning a piece by Gwynne Dyer he’d read concerning the possibility of a similar event striking the Atlantic Coast of North America. This echoed some concerns of my own, having read a few years ago about one or more Atlantic Ocean undersea landslides just waiting to happen -- think of huge, steep inclines in the floor of the ocean and remember that massive landslides can happen there just as they can in any mountainous region -- and relatively recent research that had uncovered evidence of similar, mega-tsunami events to befall this landmass over the past hundred millennia or so. Others are focusing almost solely on the Pacific coast – largely due to greater techtonic and volcanic activity, but even there most seem content to mark any such concerns as alarmist … which I understand - people along the Paci...
Merry Christmas, all!
Never in 14 years as a parent have I gotten within a day or two of Christmas as ill-prepared as I was this year, but I seem to have made up much of the lost ground. Still, there's wrapping to do yet tonight, and a communications problem's resulted in a key element needed to make a couple of the gifts truly functional isn't here yet... but we'll muddle through.
I'm not planning on stirring from here for the next few days, and that's a good thing in more ways than one. This cold's moved into my chest, making me feel as if I'm operating on one lung. This gives me a valid pass to going to the in-laws on Sunday (the last thing they need there is someone passing this on) so I suspect I'm going to be doing a lot of reading and napping. I need to shake this, and do it as pleasantly and quickly as possible. I want to enjoy this patch of holiday. Aside from a half-day planned for Wednesday (I'll need to do the c...
What's up?
Not me. A headcold that won't give up continues to dog me. I don't have/haven't taken the time to attempt to sleep it off, so I continue to medicate myself and plod on. Work deadlines have to be taken care of, especially if I'm to get the holiday break I have planned.
The weekend did see me keep Legends on schedule. Deadline was Saturday and the mailing went out Monday. Nothing else has gotten out, though, including a small box of some promised clix that will be headed for H - not part of a trade, but just part of a "you're looking for these? I have extra" exchange. He sent me some I was missing the week before last. Packages, holiday or otherwise (aside from the APA mailing) won't be going out until tomorrow, so we'll see how well the Priority Mail shipping does this time of year. Addition: I did want to note that I made the time on Sunday to play in a Heroclix marquee event for last month's Mutant Mayhem . I did very we...
Dead and wounded: People or propaganda?
Thanks to Abby for bringing this piece concerning the casualty count and those who attempt to do the counting . During the wind-up for the recent assault on Fallujah I'd noted the "this time around, the American military intends to fight its own information war" quote but in the rush of life had forgotten to bother posting anything about it. The phrase and the controlling lock-down of hospital facilities were highly suspect and have to raise questions even in the minds of those who would automatically dismiss anything coming from al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya or Muslim clerics.
A simple Twist of fait accompli*
I had known that comics mogul Todd McFarlane had been taken to court by former NHL player Tony Twist over the creation of a violent mob boss character, Antonio Twistelli, in his Spawn comic, but hadn't bothered following the case. Well, it appears he lost the case and is now seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection following a $15million US jury award . How could that possibly be a fair award? I don't want to know badly enough to have to read back issues of Spawn , but... man! What did Todd have Twistelli do that would defame the image of an ex-NHL player ? (Thanks to Mr. Washington for the tip.)
* I plead lack of sleep and excess of head cold.
Para-diamond shift
Is it just me, or by the end of this piece have your sympathies shifted from the women to, well, if not to someone else then at least away from them ? I don't envy anyone dealing with the singles scene. Most days it seems that 99.9% of human beings are ultimately loathsome creatures.
That I would pop up with something like the above during such a busy week is best taken as a sign that I'm far too busy to get into anything important. It's not that there's any shortage of important matters going on in the world, but merely that I lack the time to do them any justice. I'm closing in on the last of the holiday shopping (even though I know I'll still be rushing about after some other bits next week), trying to get as much done as I can for the next Legends issue, and trying to make some headway on work around the house.
Dem Bones
While taking a quick look over at Cocktaildoll's site (December 29th she'll have her C-section -- good luck!) I saw a link to an interesting study of the skeletons of cartoon characters (click on each image to enlarge it.) It's a bizarre study by artist Michael Paulus , which is on display this month in a Portland, Oregon gallery according to the artist.
Bloody Moronic (or "What's really at stake?")
Having paid for three tickets and sat through it I’ve probably punished myself enough, but I want to stop to note the latest Wesley Snipes vehicle from Marvel Entertainment – Blade: Trinity . If this movie's on your list of holiday fare -- I know how many of us like to hit the movies a couple times during the holidays -- then stop reading now .
Fair enough.
If you’re looking for a flood of special effects, gunplay, explosions and choreographed sparring set to techno-tracks, then this could well be your movie. The only requirements are paying for the ticket and turning off most of your brain so that the meddling gray niggler won’t spoil the fun. This sort of film has its time and place, and if you enjoyed most of The Chronicles of Riddick then this one will probably be fine, too.
It’s very simple (heh): They’ve decided what is required for a semi-supernatural action adventure, and a well-thought-out plot wasn’t on...
Ah! Good. I was afraid he'd gone soft in the head.
Earlier this week I'd seen some crowing articles proclaiming that noted academician and outspoken atheist Antony Flew, now 81, had come to accept the existence of God, apparently overwhelmed by the complexity of the universe, etc. I'd considered posting it for a moment, but decided not to at least until such time as I was able to check out his own statements rather than some being passed along and represented as his. Happily, upon being tipped off to the scurrilous rumors, he's stepped forward to say "Sorry to Disappoint, but I'm Still an Atheist!"
I appreciate the fact that he also makes a point that the term atheism is not the "anti-theism" that many misconstrue it to be. Just as being asocial is not the same as being antisocial, it simply indicates an indifference to, a lack of need for, something. Indeed, the atheism label has become such a misconception that I gave up in frustration ye...
Raise a glass to the higher survival rates! (If you have something to raise a glass with ...)
This timely piece is something of the glass half empty side of the tale to the reports I was hearing touted yesterday concerning the drop to 10% mortality rate for wounded in Iraq as compared to the 30% for World War II and 24% for Vietnam. The key's been surgical care as close to the front lines as possible, which should make fans of M.A.S.H. feel strangely in tune with this.
While the military and administration's been generally reluctant to say much about the over 1400 military deaths they've been saying even less about the nearly 10,000 wounded. Lives have been saved because of prompt medical and surgical treatment, but the result's been a doubling of the amputation rate, and the word that's been leaking out for a while is that many of the wounds have been horrific. People will not be bouncing back from these. Aside from amputations, a full 20% of the wounded tre...
Meet another of Bush’s base
Next Monday, Alabaman Republican state legislative representative Gerald Allen will be meeting with Dubya for the fifth time . The recommendation from this self-supposed moral paragon for what to do with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and The Color Purple ? “Dig a hole and dump them in it."
Spend a little time with this esteemed man who has the president’s ear - part of Bush's base - and be reminded that some of the older definitions for base are “lacking or indicating the lack of higher qualities of mind or spirit” and "deserving of contempt because of the absence of higher values." ...which is initially ironic, but then one recalls how virtuous and beloved of God the Nazis thought themselves to be.
Treading carefully, steadily, towards the truth about the elections
Checking in at Blackboxvoting.org I started to catch up on things, as I'd heard Bev Harris mention on the radio the other day that they'll be presenting more information late in the week. I see that she's advising strong caution regarding a piece alleging widespread software fraud which I'd noted earlier in the week . She's advising that it reads like deliberate disinformation. While it could be simply an overzealous attempt to make things fit, it could also lead to something like the Dan Rather/CBS News/Bush National Guard service debacle. We saw how that ended up, giving the Bushies something to point at and ridicule while leaving the rest of the media too afraid of being tarred by the same brush to follow up on the legitimate case against Bush. The forces behind nudging Bush into office would like nothing better than to see momentum build behind a weak story so that it can collapse spec...
Zoom through harsh worlds
Go here . Once it loads, click and drag to move through nested worlds, none of which looks inviting. A fun little diversion some people obviously spent time on, and brought to my attention by Tammy. Update: Loads of traffic have shut that down for the moment, you might still be over to see it here . If not, here's a brighter, older, more seasonal zoom piece to tide you over.
More Heroclix marketing
In a continued push to keep the fan buzz going, Wizkids revealed three new team abilities scheduled to show up in next March's DC expansion: Legacy .
Calculator: Members of this team act as wild cards. They can use any team ability that any friendly character on the battle map possesses. They may use this ability once each action.
Outsiders: Once at the beginning of your turn as a free action, a member of this team chooses a target friendly or opposing character within 10 squares; the member must have clear line of fire to the target. Until the beginning of your next turn, the target may not be the target of powers or team abilities that modify its combat values. This team ability may not be copied by wild card team abilities.
Crime Syndicate: Members of this team have Probability Control. Each time a member uses this ability to reroll a die or dice roll, give an action token to a friendly character that has zero or one action token. This team ...
When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will cast votes in swing states From today's Undernews : "GEOFF DOUGHERTY, CHICAGO TRIBUNE - A Tribune analysis of voter records suggests that more than 5,000 dead people remained on the rolls on Election Day in New Mexico. The presidential election there was decided by 6,000 votes. And New Mexico is not alone. The Tribune's review of voter data there and in five other key states--Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota--found widespread flaws in the integrity of voter rolls.
More than 181,000 dead people were listed on the rolls in the six swing states, despite efforts to clean up the country's voting system after the 2000 election. thousands more voters were registered to vote in two places, which could have allowed them to cast more than one ballot. Further, more than 90,000 voters in Ohio cast ballots without a valid presidential choice. Either they decided not to choose a candidate, the machine failed...
Homeless shelters becoming the destination for many Iraq war vets
Well, that pretty much says it all . The VA hospitals can't adequately deal with the new, acute cases, so anyone who can be discharged and sent out into the world is being handled that way. The need for long term physical and emotional therapy is being neglected.
Everything new is old again (or Keeping up with Methuselah )
It's good to see a piece like this, from Cambridge geneticist Aubrey de Grey . When I used to deliver much the same message back in the 70s I was just another nut.
I suppose this might solve some social security and retirement issues, but mainly by not giving anyone an excuse to retire aside from attaining sufficient wealth to rise above the cycle of debt and earnings. (Thanks for the link, Tammy.)
Ohio recount update
The push for a recount continues , despite obstruction from blatantly partisan, pro-Bush officials in Ohio.
Mahatma Gandhi once said:
"First, they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win."
They are no longer ignoring us. They are no longer laughing at us. They are fighting us now. And we're going to win. The right to vote will win. The Constitution will win. Democracy will win. Count every vote.
Maybe that explains his hair, too...
A Quebec pediatrician with perhaps a little too much time on his hands has speculated on the appearance of seeming eternal youth for Tintin , citing concussions and growth hormone deficiency. For those not familiar with Belgian reporter/amateur detective most information can be seen on the official site or dug up here .
[Once I take the time to see what resources come with my Comcast high speed connection account (something implemented two Saturdays back) I'll try to take the time to work more images into these posts. I'm going to be paying more than enough for it...]
Coarse & cuddly?
Little slice o’ life: This evening I came home to find that no one had done anything around here today and I wasn’t in the mood to do a great deal of housework and make a large dinner from scratch. Hot dogs sounded good enough to me. I had a pack of large ones (eight inches or so – insert White guy’s penis joke here) in the freezer, plenty of good, brown mustard, even some beef chili to heat up. I just needed some fresh rolls and some relish. Hey, if you’re going to have hot dogs you have to have the extras. I was lazy enough not to bother chopping up onions, but the rest would be enough.
So, I walked up to a nearby store for some rolls and the inevitable impulse items. A couple of good-natured but hard-drinking guys - the vapors coming off them were strong even when I passed them at a distance of a good ten feet - were deliberating over which which ice cream to buy. (They settled on Moose Tracks , btw., an ice cream with peanut butter-filled chocolate bit...
Was the election electronically rigged?
Here's a piece that attempts to describe a trail of corruption on the way to a software-manipulated victory for Dubya . (Thanks to Tony Collett for bringing this to my attention.) Spread it around. If it's true it's up to us to get it in front of enough people that it's thoroughly investigated. (Attention/update: Please note the related piece on Dec 9th that indicates this story may be deliberate disinformation.)
Buy a hotel! Abuse some guests! Do a silly walk for the German tourists!
I've just read that the Hotel Gleneagles is up for sale . This is the hotel John Cleese based the show Fawlty Towers on. More correctly, it was the former owner of the hotel, Donald Sinclair, that Cleese based his Basil Fawlty character on.
Cleese, who stayed there with the Monty Python team in 1971, described Mr
Sinclair as "the most wonderfully rude man I have ever met". Now there's a legacy...
Transmetropolitanimation
From Warren Ellis :
A test script I wrote, to hand out to animators pitching for the job of animating TRANSMETROPOLITAN for the web, many years ago, before the dotcom crash swept out the whole "webisode" thing. This was animated by Noodle Soup as a pitch to us-the-producers and Sony Screenblast -- only negotiations with Sony fell apart, and so I never got to see this until now. -- W
Best Buy Deception Less Than Entertaining
Months ago I was in Best Buy to pick up something or other - almost certainly a DVD - and the clerk asked me if I'd like to get 6 or 8 free issues of Entertainment Weekly magazine. I already subscribed to it (picked up a subscription via one of the magazine fund-raisers the kids bring home from school) and enjoy getting it each week. It's a wonderful, light source for current and upcoming pop culture, from music to movies to television and books. They've even taken to occasionally binding in a DVD of the premiere episode of a new or returning series ( Nip/Tuck , House , and Huff come to mind) -- and all in all I have little but praise for the magazine itself. So, I don't have the problem with EW . The problem's with Best Buy .
See, I figured that one of two things would happen. I'd either find my subscription extended by 6 or 8 weeks or I'd end up with a free extra issue I could add to the general reading pil...
Mutant Mayhem Excess
The work week’s over, now the serious work begins around the house. As part of it will include outdoor Christmas decorations some of that is literal. A busy week, I didn’t bother to post anything about my case of Heroclix’s latest Marvel expansion, Mutant Mayhem (most recently discussed in early November - including some pictures), that arrived this past Monday. As I’m watching for word from one friend that his case has arrived and he's torn into it, it occurs to me that I may as well post something about what I've pulled so far, primarily in my case. (Update: Though it must have appeared after I shut down late last night/early this morning, he did report on his pulls and reactions . He had a pretty good case, too, in many ways similar to what I puled.)
The case wasn’t terrible, though I’d likely have a dimmer view of it had I not had the padding of having pulled a Loki from another (pre-case) booster pull along with several other more statistically...
"...I am not a nut." (and I suppose Nixon wasn't a crook and Bill never had sexual relations with that woman...) Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the likely next Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court: Antonin Scalia . His statements at a Manhattan synagogue on November 22nd supported the view that he wants to infuse - or, to his mind, re- infuse - the US government with more religion, indicating that the Jews would be safer in a Christian nation one with an agnostic government. His view that European nations, where "God" supposedly wasn't referenced in government, proved unsafe for Jews while the US didn't ignores many things, not the least of which is that Hitler and the Nazi Party ended up referencing God quite a bit. As Thom Hartman notes at some length (more than what I have below): Scalia has an extraordinary way of not letting facts confound his arguments, but this time he's gone completely over the top by suggesting that a separation of ...
Oh Why-o, Oh Why-o, Ohio?
As reported here and in the following piece from the Washington Post , both on Wednesday, the push is on to have a formal recount of the Ohio vote, including a good look at what really went on. (Thanks, Tammy , for providing the text of the latter. Sites that demand regsitration are bad enough, but to do that and demand free and unfettered cookie access is entirely too much.)
" Kerry Team Seeks to Join Fight to Get Ohio County to Recount
Wednesday,
December 1, 2004; Page A08
Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign asked an Ohio judge yesterday to allow it to join a legal fight there over whether election officials in one county may sit out the state's impending recount.
A pair of third-party presidential candidates, who said that reports of problems at the polls on Election Day are not being addressed, are forcing the Buckeye State to recount its entire presidential vote. But David A. Yost, a lawyer for Delaware County, just outsid...
Trying not to put all the eggs in one basket (A little more stem cell-related news)
Mark Gibson noted news of a stem-cell derived medical treatment yesterday.
Today Tammy sent me a link to research on a parthenogenetic approach to possibly cultivating stem cells. The latter uses a method to trick eggs from a human female into responding as if they'd been fertilized, causing them to begin to multiply until, after 4 or 5 days, they reach a 100-150 cell blastocyst stage. The ethical advantage of the method is that it is supposed to avoid using an actual embryo. Some confusion is evident, though, as it's not exactly clear why a blastocyst built up of cells with two sets of the mother's chromosomes wouldn't be considered a potential human being -- unless it's just an artificially-induced clutch of female eggs and not a blastocyst at all. The trick appears to be one of causing the eggs to behave as if they were fertilized, treating both sets of...
Pandemic Watch: Bird Flu
The World Health Organization continues to monitor occurrences of bird flu, primarily occurring in Thailand and Viet Nam. Between the two nations they've monitored 44 infections, 32 of which were terminal. This is a mortality rate of 72.7%. Consider that SARS, which caused travel restrictions and some virtual quarantines in 2003, has a mortality rate of about 15 percent.
On the positive side, the disease is - as the name suggests - primarily a bird to bird malady, jumping occasionally to humans. Also, at the moment there's no solid evidence of human to human transmissions, though they are monitoring two cases where the infected do not appear to have come in contact with infected poultry. On the other hand, viruses mutate, and as with any cold you've ever had they tend to become part of an organism they've infected, passing from cell generation to cell generation, and could possibly be triggered to reactivate.
Appr...