The Blue Screen of Searing, Cosmic Death Okay, I'm at risk of sounding like a Mac user by making the above comment about a cool, robotic, non-invasive surgical tool simply because the user interface is running on a Windows XP platform, but I'm not sure that I want to trust it quite that far when it comes to the possible consequences of a freeze-up. I suppose the patient's really in the hands of the dedicated software in the robot, which should still follow default safety settings, so things should go smoothly providing no one types "John Connor" into the patient's name field.
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"Go, Habib!" Word's out that the US Army is working on a comic book series to distribute in the Middle East . It will be based on "the security forces, military and police, in the near future in the Middle East" and is being produced by US Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. The article also mentions the Egyptian-based comics company, AK Comics , which I mentioned here last month . While AK is attempting to create indigenous superheroes, though, so as to give the people in various Middle Eastern nations homegrown Captain Americas, Supermen and Wonder Women, the US Army's project sounds more like a more international GI Joe team idea, though I imagine they'll quickly inspire this sort of treatment .
Gone, gone... ... Terri Schiavo's body has finally gone the way of what made her her , but I don't see the battlefield clearing too quickly. The general public is wrung out on the story, but the news media never likes to walk away from a cash cow and there are many reputations that have been put on the line during this battle. That appellate Judge Stanley Birch Jr. rebuked the White House and the primarily GOP-driven legislature for such a high level of improper interference isn't likely to be quickly forgotten by those officials. That the parents were denied access during the final moments seems harsh on the face of it, but I'm not sure how much of a problem they may have been making of themselves, and it wasn't as if she passed away on a schedule. The level of attentiveness of a guard on duty outside a room door and one inside a room to make sure no one tried to slip a temporary IV line in are two very different things. At least in the story above and in her obitu
The Stuff of Dreams A friend is feeling a little sick, and in a note today he mentioned "odd dreams when I nap that indicate I may have a slight fever." Part of this struck me as quite natural - not only have I had fever dreams , but TV sitcoms have been decades teaching us that we have pastiche nightmares when we're sick - but when I checked it with my experience I also realized that the only time I have any dreams that I recall it's when I've gone back to sleep for a second time for the day -- ie when I've taken a nap. I can only rarely recall waking up from the main night's sleep with any memory of a dream. If I wake up for even a short time, though, and then go back to sleep, I always wake up from a dream. I briefly posited (most of the following) on a likely, media-driven fever dream du jour: The Burger King commercial with the "Big Rock Candy Mountain" knock-off plays, but there are unsettling changes. The Black, singing cowboy ( D
Shoot first, make up stories later... I must confess that I'd only given the case of the Italian journalist Giulana Sgrena who was held for a month by an Iraqi resistance group, freed, and then shot by US troops on the way to the airport. The reports by US media generally soft-pedalled it, taking the US military's line about a checkpoint and an accident, and I must admit that the perspective I came away with was just that - an unfortunate accident caused by a mixture of tense soldiers in an environment that constantly threatens to turn deadly in an instant, being faced with the journalist a driver and an Italian intelligence/security agent who felt the worst was behind them and wanted to get to the airport quickly following a long ordeal. I'd heard some reports on the fringe that suggested otherwise, but those were generally framed in an exaggerated, absurd way, suggesting that the journalist's car was deliberately targeted by US troops. While I remain firmly in opposi
Weekend... With Chocolate It's another Saturday, so the feel of "holiday weekend" is largely behind me since there aren't anymore weekdays off in the mix. Tomorrow will see a trip to my in-laws for dinner, which is nice in its way but travel & family obligations on a Sunday... eh. When Sundays hit there's already such a stench of moribund weekend and impending Monday that the time almost seems gone as it is. A couple hours travelling back and forth, and visiting... augh. I'm just not one for most get-togethers. I'm much better with them if there's still at least one more day off afterwards. So, well, I'll focus for now on it still being Saturday (yeah, yeah, it's like taking solace in a Lifesaver's candy...) and the sudden influx of candy (pounding the theme mercilessly) tomorrow. As you've noticed, I've added a banner for 24 Hour Comics Day up top. I'm aiming to observe it in some way this year, whether it's going
Evangelical Wood – on Vinyl! I’m a Crypt Lea k’s been following some strange thread only to find it was a marionette string in the service of The Lord! Praise JAY-zus! This led him to someone’s collection of evangelical records, many of which are conceptually entertaining to heathens such as IaCL and I. A recurring theme of ventriloquist’s dummies couldn’t help but catch my attention. Click on any of the images to be taken to a little info on each. Each of them have a Left/Right button on its page so you can cycle through the entire gallery. Surely I can't be the only one to notice that one of the characters on the "Bible Stories That Live" LP cover bears a striking resemblance to Uncle Floyd 's sidekick, Oogie, seen here to the left. A relative, or the strange past of a single performer? Who - save Oogie -- can say? Did he have a falling out with the minister and strike out into show business? Was the seemingly benign and benevolent Uncle Floyd actually an age
And you think the dog gets excited when he sees you just pick up his leash or say, "go for a walk?" Just wait. While the comedic idea might have occurred to me I don't believe I would have spent time doing a product mock-up for Dog Condoms . The "meat-scented" variety seems one paw over the line to me. Still, these people appear to be serious. It's reminding me uncomfortably of the episode of South Park where we visited a PETA commune. (Though the germane part's only hinted at in the second paragraph.) Don't you know that every dog, regardless of how small, will be insisting his human friends buy him the Great Dane variety? I see plenty of therapy sessions to go around for all involved. They say they'll require "human intervention" to use, but I think that's just a challenge to pet owners. I e xpect that within a year of these hitting the market Pet Star wi ll have to come up with a form letter to reject all the people who want t
A time to sell, a time to buy I've set up a small wall of Heroclix auctions ! Unlike other times, though, these aren't to benefit me; they're a friend's extras I'm selling on his behalf in hopes of helping bridge a rough financial patch between jobs. One Hell and a half of a week continues, as work continues to pile in and every client -- and too many of the project managers on their behalf -- are convinced that they're a special case, and so are exempt from all restrictions of time, space and general propriety. Consequently, I'm beat. I have One More (likely) Long Day ahead, and then I'm taking Thursday off, followed by Friday's company holiday, and -- glory be! -- actually observing the weekend this time around! Only time will tell if this is pure delusion. However that is, though, the auctions are up and running, and each of them with a low, low opening price, so drink heavily and then start browsing.
I'm guessing Warner's plans to send an assassin robot back to 1981 to kill her didn't pan out This is one of those intellectual property cases I hadn't heard about. In this case it's word that a Black author, Sophia Stewart, has won a case alleging that the Matrix and Terminator movies were based on works of science fiction she'd submitted for consideration to the Wachowski brothers in response to an ad for new sci-fi work . Here's some interview material with the alleged author. The announcement of the lawsuit's settlement was reportedly made back on October 4th of last year, which is probably what makes it most interesting to me as such a huge (an estimate of $2.5 billion is referenced) settlement concerning such properties, one would think, would be difficult to keep quiet. Presuming the initial report is accurate (ie the settlement/court judgement is true) then it lends some credence to the message and tone of the first link c
If sex is in the eye of the beholder then maybe goggles are in order... First is one about some risks for strict letter-of-the-pledge abstinence people - reminding me simultaneously of various tales of Catholic school girls and the public debate concerning when sexual relations are and aren't sexual relations from a few years back. Then there's a situation creating a fuss among those who want to haul Ashley's friends out of Leviticus, among other places, as a reportedly racy Bible for 13-16 year old girls comes under fire . Discussing her friend "Emma," Ashley says, "The story is that she had oral sex with a guy friend of ours last week. Just for fun. They're not dating, although they've always flirted with each other a lot. Emma took one look at my face this morning, and she knew I knew." Maybe if she'd stop nervously wiping her mouth on her sleeve every few seconds. Ah, Catholic guilt. It lasts a lifetime. Before you blast me for
Whose Decision? Over on H 's blog (go here and scroll down to "A Last Crusade") he took a little time to note the Terri Schiavo case . (Here's a timeline on the events to look through if you're unfamiliar.) What follows is most of my comment left there, changed mostly to correct some date-related issues and add some links. It's a big enough issue both socially and politically to warrant making sure everyone is taking some time to think about it and discuss it with friends and especially family. It's certainly a far more important issue than all of the fuss being raised over steroid and other performance-enhancing drugs in major league baseball. The Terri Schiavo case has been at national news level off and on for a long time, so most are likely familiar with it. Obviously this weekend is the most recent and perhaps highest profile aspect of it, as not only is the Senate set with legislation to sign once something comes from the GOP-controlled Hou
Another Saturday Night Well, at least I'm not in or near Southern Japan at the moment, so that's good. A very busy work week kinda sorta behind me, but I've gotten a good advance hit on next week's work. I have plans to take Monday and Thursday off -- Friday's a company holiday, so that's a given for me -- and it's taking a great deal of extra effort to pull this off at this time of year. I had to put some time in at work this afternoon and will be doing the same at some point tomorrow, but that's okay. I bring in discs and crank up my stereo, and there generally aren't any unwelcome interruptions, so all in all it's better and more productive than being there during business hours. The week ended up robbing me of a great deal of my own time, preventing - among other things - my getting a block of auctions ready in a series of simple steps. I could have rushed through the steps and gotten them up tonight, but I probably wouldn't have been p
Once you go black ... A first-stage report of an experiment in high energy physics may have created an extremely short-lived, miniature black hole in a particle accelorator. At this point in the game it's all too ill-defined -- that's why scientists publish, so that others can tear into the experiment to find other explanations and similar facilities can try to reproduce the effect. Still, my first, blue-sky thought was whether or not two or more beams of highly-focused gold nuceli travelling at near-light speed might conceivably be used to produce a similar, larger, controlled effect capable of essentially snuffing out a nuclear explosion? There's a great deal in that line of thought to go wrong, from the feasibility of even controlling such streams of nuclei over a long distance to the amount of energy required, to what sort of peripheral radiations one might expect if that much energy was being absorbed. I don't know if the radiant thermal energy desc
Free Comic Book Day continues to develop: 51 days and counting The 4th annual Free Comic Book Day , a sort of open house for comic book stores, when promotional copies of comics and other items are given away, is set for May 7th this year. In previous years it was set the day after the premiere of a big comics movie ( Spider-man or X-Men , say) in the hopes that a big comics-derived blockbuster would help open newspapers to looking for a related story, but if there's any such element at play this time I'm unaware of it. Perhaps this year they want to see if it can get any press on its own, or if it's less likely to be buried by editors who may have decided in past years that a big story on a comic book movie took up as much space as they were going to give to the genre for one Friday's paper? The mechanics of FCBD will work differently at different stores. Some will give away a single item to anyone, some will insist on the purchase of something before handing out on
Okay, a moment for Icons I'm taking a brief break, having noticed another announcement on the Heroclix front: WizKids announced their new starter sets and base set for the DC universe of clix: Icons . Much as was the case with the Marvel Universe starters, the Icons startes will sell for $12.99, conctain the rules, 2 dice, a ring (for turning the bases), tokens, a map (no confirmation on whether this will be a small map, as they put in the Universe set, or a full-size one) and six (6) clix found only in the starter, balanced into two (presumably 100 pt.) teams. Unlike the Universe set, Icons will be made up of new sculptures and dials (powers and statistics) rather than being re-issues of early, existing sculpts and stats. The set will be much smaller, though, numbering 60 pieces including the 6 in the starter and 6 "super rares" -- which we're presuming will be uniques, but who knows? The way it breaks down is that there will be 16 characters repre
Work for me, distraction for you I'm working through an impressive pile of folders with data from various projects, trying to get it all done on time. Next week's already a shortened week for me (we get Good Friday off, as unusual as that might seem) and I'm aiming to take one or two additional days off... but the only way that'll happen is if I get these projects done. So, I'll likely be fairly quiet the next two or three days. In the meantime, here are a few items: Remember, while some of you may be sick of winter, some people like it cold. Now there's even a spot for Mr. Freeze ...if he's willing to go to Singapore. Either this is a typo or some radical Creationist did the write-up on this "140-year-old dinosaur." Beware the Marmite, my son! "Dude, you're so good with those drumsticks." "There will be no singing and dancing Hobbits." Well, whatever will sing, they'll see it first in Toronto.
Comics movie news A site's opened with news and updates for Bryan Singer's Superman Returns movie, scheduled for release June 30, 2006. Singer, who walked away from the X-Men film franchise after directing the first two films, has been replaced with Matt Vaughn , whose sole directorial credit is 2004's Layer Cake , a film I'd never heard of. This news is sufficiently fresh that the imdb entry for X-Men 3 doesn't include it as of this posting. Finally, the film version of Man-Thing (stop that sniggering) shot by Artisan Pictures and apparently sitting on a shelf for a while now is going the route of a basic cable and then DVD. It will debut on the Sci-Fi Channel on April 30th, and then be out on DVD on June 14th for those who'll want to see what the original R-rated cut of the film was. Typical movie studio B.S. feeds us the lines that it received "positive buzz at screenings" but decided it wasn't a good idea to spend the money on
Geoff Johns on JLA Had I been paying attention earlier I'd probably have known this, but I just found out that Geoff Johns wil l be taking over JLA for at least one arc, starting with issue #115 . It's not clear if this means Kurt Busiek 's run on the title (which, as someone who waits for trade editions of JLA material, I've only read some general - mostly less than complimentary - commentary on) is over with #114's conclusion of "Syndicate Rules", or if he'll be back once Johns' 5-part Identity Crisis aftermath arc is concluded. The cover to the arc-opening issue is to the left, and here's the description from DC : "A star-studded creative team starts a 5-issue tale that has the JLA confronting the fallout from IDENTITY CRISIS! Fan-favorite writer Geoff Johns (JSA, TEEN TITANS, THE FLASH) is joined by The O.C. writer/producer Allan Heinberg ( Young Avengers ) for the first installment of this gripping adventure featuring visuals by
Falling Down I've quietly reproached myself for not pressing on about various political matters, but it's mostly so grim and I've fallen prey to the mood that mentioning things isn't doing much good. It all piles up so quickly. It's emotionally taxing to absorb so much grimness each day. What's the likelihood that the Pentagon audit's revelation that Haliburton overcharged by $100 million will see any refund - much less penalties applied? How many have heard that California Governor Schwarzenegger was caught producing propaganda pieces disguised as news stories , much as the Bush administration has been doing for nearly all of its time in office? Will anything be done about it? Probably not much as far as the public's concerned, unless someone can find something of a sexually illicit nature. Given his power in government, I wish more people took an interest in Tom DeLay's record . But, I'm sure there must be some subtle distinction I'
AOL IM Users: You May Be Giving It All Away I all but swore off instant message systems years ago. More accurately, I swore at and about them, as they leave one open to a miserable level of interruptions, and deleted them from my system. Still, I know many use them, and if one happens to use AOL Instant Messenger you might want to know about a recent change to the terms of service .
A Word of Sanity from the North Several words, actually. Mr. Vacation sent along word of an open letter to Condoleeza Rice from president of Winnipeg University and former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy. Many points of interest therein, including some questioning of the idea that the world should be continuing to bow to the remains of a world order established fully by force of arms following World War II. The letter was first published back on March 3rd. Since I'm not sure if that is soon to be withdrawn into a subscriber-only archive, here's a link to a reprint of the same letter done today; if the link above fails to work, this one still should.
Shouldn't there be some penalties for this? ...I mean, aside from the penalties paid by the public, who are dually betrayed by not only being lied to but having their pockets picked to pay the people who spin the lies? (The first link might involve a free sign-up at the New York Times website, but the others should be open to all.) More confirmation that under the Bush administration some 20 government agencies have been pumping out carefully-crafted public relations pieces pretending to be news reports. These bits of video number in the hundreds over the past four years, and package pro-administration messages in the guise of independent news reports. As I said, I don't expect this to be news to anyone , as it's been legitimately reported on and reported on repeatedly , but nothing appears to be being done about it as the pro-administration propaganda mill continues. It's bad enough to see that Dan Rather's replacement, Bob Schieffer, debuted in the anchor ch
Run Like Hell A news story out of Orlando (sometimes it seems as if it's always Florida, but idiocy recognizes no borders, folks) immediately reminded me of an early issue of Global Frequency and the sport of Parkour – sometimes called Free Running , though don’t call it that to a purist. The sport originated in France when some kids looked at their landscape of buildings as terrain and began scoping out the best way to travel across it, traversing rooftops, along ledges, etc. Participants generally call themselves Tracures and often refer to the sport by the abbreviation PK . While the intelligent ones completely scope out a route in advance, they try to make it seem very natural. The idealized approach is to keep in constant motion and never retreat. Here’s a more or less official site and here’s a video showing one of the sport’s aficionados that will demonstrate many of the techniques. It’s a mix of insane recklessness and ch
Somehow I Don't Think Jesus Would Approve Tony Collett has a post up concerning how Christian Broadcasting News is continuing its campaign of lies and defamation against the We Are Family Foundation . It would be bad enough if they were pressing their campaign even if it were true , but as it turns out the crack journalists behind CBN are seeing pro-homosexual messages even where there aren't any. As Tony notes, it's important to spread this information to counter the prevailaing tactic of repeating a lie enough times that people accept it as the truth. The Bush administration's been doing it for years and obviously to great success as the long, national nightmare continues into its second term.
A City Saved? Back in November I noted that Marvel Entertainment was suing online roleplaying environment City of Heroes for trademark and copyright infingement . Today a U.S. district court judge effectively gutted Marvel's lawsuit . The case is not completely gone, but several of the "allegations and exhibits were stricken as 'false and sham,'" and more than half of the claims made against NC soft and Cryptic Studios (the companies behind City of Heroes) by Marvel were dismissed.
Fantastic Forces (More geek game/comics chatter) The new Marvel Heroclix expansion has finally been announced, and it's called Fantastic Forces . The set will have 104 pieces, including uniques and 24 "oversized" characters. (And, presumably, 16 super rares since those are supposed to be standard in each expansion.) There's something confusing in the text, though, as the main solicitation refers to 8 super rares and doesn't mention uniques... Well, these things will sort themselves out. Every booster will contain one oversized character, either a giant-sized figure or a double-sized one (like the Ghost Rider shown here)... which means three clix per booster . That's the first potential downside to this that I immediately, see. It's going to take more boosters to complete a set. To put it another way, a case isn't going to cover nearly as much ground as the set will be larger and we'll be getting 75% of the pieces in previous sets and will appa
Batwinkle A few days ago Wizard made a special subsciption offer which involved a special Batman clix. Today they revealed its dial and stats. Well, if you ever wondered what a dial for a Batman who's high looks like, now's your chance. The sculpt is nice, but the dial has me dubbing this "Beefwit Batman." No Range, not a speck of Leap/Climb ... sure, he can hide on hindering terrain, but when he goes to move off it he's at half speed. Not even a single click of Outwit , and by the time he gets even close combat Incapacitate , his attack value drops almost immediately to 7. Charge is combined with Close Combat Expert , which don't mix , and then as soon as Charge disappears he gets Exploit Weakness ... which would mix with Charge... if it weren't gone. Yes, he has Super Senses , but he doesn't get them until his second click -- okay, I can at least understand that a little, as something's happened to put him on guard... even though an
Legacy: To the Moon! A check at Icon USA shows me that responding to word from Wizkids that Legacy will only have a single production run, they've already jacked the price up from the $205.20 and change (plus shipping) to... $335.66! At first I was concerned that the brick and mortar shops had continued to yell loudly enough that Wizkids had tightened the screws on the online retailers to limit discounts. So far I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and presuming that for pre-orders at least, they'll stick with their $205.20 -- Unleashed is still selling for that there -- but everything else (all of which are noted as being "Factory retired") is $239 or higher. Should anything significantly higher than $205.20 become the new, standard, pre-order price for a case, then that will mark the end of my being a collector of clix. For now, it's wait and see. Wizkids is still baffling me with the long delay between the release of Legacy and the official a
We Control the Transmission A coming wave of problems for people used to having an increased amount of control over their television watching, including recording shows for later and repeated viewing, isn't a new problem but many facets of it aren't necessarily broadly known. Most of the problems involve the entertainment industry's growing paranoia concerning protecting their content, especially as high definition broadcasts become more common. The optimistic view is that we went through much the same thing over twenty years ago, when VCRs were ripping through the home markets and the entertainment industry started screaming about lost revenues. The pessimistic side is that now the tech is more easily and deeply embedded, and seeming alternatives will make it easier for them to justify the "protective measures" embedded in newer television sets and recording devices. The bottom line is that as much tech appears to be designed these days to restrict one's
Censorship: Torn Screaming From Today's Comic Strips (Thanks for Mark Gibson for alerting me to this one.) I continue to live in areas where the daily newspaper isn't worth one's time and money, and the nearest newspaper of any any note is the Philadelphia Inquirer , which is (understandably) largely consumed with news more of interest to Phildelphia, so I've given that a pass, too. In the end I seldom found the time for a daily paper anyway, so it became a wasteful outlay of money for what was ultimately a daily source of clutter. Besides, so many newspapers are accessible online that I tend to skim for information each day, and this has worked out increasingly well for me. One consequence of not having the daily paper as part of my life, though, is that I have virtually no contact with daily comics strips. The last time I followed any comics strips daily was over 20 years ago, and offhand I couldn't tell you which ones they were. It was all very casual, and I did
New Who Some comments concerning an advance copy of the launch of the new Dr. Who series set to air in a few weeks over on the BBC , landed in my mailbox late today from Warren Ellis . All in all it's encouraging, and while I was never a solid fan of the long-running series, it had its moments and an occasional place in my tv viewing. I see that Warren made a post of the email, so I'll just send you there . It's unfortunate that Sci-Fi hasn't opted to pick it up, though I can understand the economics of it. They've already been pouring more money into new series of their own, and have to be realistic about it. I wonder if BBC America will pick it up? If so, they're keeping plans quiet so far. I poked around over there and saw that there's a mechanism for asking about it/requesting it being added to their programming , so I just did that. Couldn't hurt.
Backwards, Into the Future Consider this a follow-up on Tuesday’s post . I’ve only been the most casual fan and viewer of Trek series since ended. Deep Space Nine. Voyager failed to catch my attention (at least in any positive way – there was seldom a shortage of things to ridicule) with either plots or characters, and Enterprise has generally struck me as a show with conflicting impulses. They have to try to show new adventures, yet since the show’s set earlier than all of the other series not only must the tech be markedly more primitive than that seen in the other series, but the threshold for new & strange becomes trickier. Sometimes they’ll introduce alien races we’d never seen in any of the earlier (our time)/later (in terms of Trek continuity) series, and other times they’ll play out some version of first/ early contacts with various races, from the Klingons to the Andorians. The feel is a little claustrophobic, creatively. However, it
Lil' Shakes Which is to say, no great shakes this weekend. Friday night and the case of clix was covered, and Saturday & Sunday's been taken up with family time (including an unbelievable 15th birthday for one of my sons) general housekeeping, food shopping, meals and catching up on some apparently much-needed sleep. Happily not a great deal of time spent watching tv, which so often ends up being the junk food of time. For word of more eventful times, browse around here ... or come back to the present and visit with the enemy .
Case O' Legacy True to UPS' word, the case hit here today and was waiting for me when I came home this evening. I took care of some other matters first, so that added another hour onto the delay, but I finally settled into breaking down the case after dinner. The downside of the case was that there was neithe r a KC Green Lantern nor a KC Flash in the mix, so I am disappointed. Clearly, someone else got my case... Well, either that or neither WizKids nor the universe owed them to me, it seems. I'll have to try to wheel and deal for them unless I happen to pull them either at the marquee later this month or in the four packs I ordered with this month's comics from Westfield -- whenever I'll see those . Still, it isn't as if I'm in a rush. I'm still missing some pieces here and there from the previous few sets, after all. Getting beyond that, I'm doing fairly well in this set. The only pieces I'm missing are: E & V Ravager , E & V Mr