Can't Change my Spots
I'm amazed .... this is fairly nerdy so watch it only if nerdy stuff impresses you as much as it does me.
link courtesy of Biggles (who can do some of this stuff)
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February 25, 2008
Idle Hands
If ever there was proof that evil exists I think this would have to be it. Go ahead, go take a look and then come back so we can talk about it....
Done?
Ok, what on earth makes people think that it's ok to make a little girl look like a burn victim with fuzzy blonde pigtails? Or her father look like some sort of clown rapist? Dear God, when in history was this ok?
link courtesy of Dr Germ
February 22, 2008
The Long Goodnight
My time at Faceless Corporation is numbered. We've discussed this again and again and again - and yet it never seems to happen. I'm not the only one who's frustrated, even the trade media are losing their patience and you can read it in their tone! Discussing the cancellation of yet another press conference (this one in Paris) to launch NewCo:
Why is the press conference delayed? When will it be rescheduled? [Presse releases] did not seem to know. No good answer could then satisfy the restless and inquisitive spirit of editors, which takes us into the worlds of imagination, speculation and inspiration.We shall then attempt to solve that mystery. Are Paris air traffic controllers planning another strike? Is the conference center closed for renovation? Has [the CEO] other plans on Feb. 26, like admiring Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile in the Musée du Louvre?
Or. Could it be that the closing of the deal to form [NewCo] on March 28, 2008 will once again be delayed to a later date? Are [Equity Vultures], [Faceless Corp] and [Cannoli Corp] facing difficulties in putting together the financial package? Are [Equity Vultures] dragging their feet?
All this bitterness and they don't even have their jobs at stake! What are we poor unfortunates supposed to feel here in the trenches? I suppose all we can do is to mull over their parting shot at the end of the articles:
After all, if [NewCo] creation is once again delayed, we will only have to think that the longer is the wait, the greater will be the joy.
February 21, 2008
Mind Games
I didn't think it'd happen so soon but it seems that an Australian company has finallly come up with a non-invasive neural controller. Yes, the future is here and within days news of meals in pill form and flying cars should be reaching us. Even if I can't have my beef stroganoff in a time release capsule this should totally make up for it, though! I mean think of the possibilities. The question is when I can get my spinal jack?
February 19, 2008
Not Pretty
I'll just come out and say it - I am not a big fan of Christopher Buckley Jr. Like a lot of the better writers of the Right end of the American political spectrum he holds a lot of views that I don't agree with. But unlike many of those writers he has at least had the common decency to coat his distasteful views in tart language that made it much better to read. Having said that, I was impressed to read his commentary in today's New York Times of the current state of discourse on the Right surrounding the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain.
From the beginning of the campaign back in the 2005, he's been poo-poohed by the usual suspects (the Fat Idiot Limbaugh, the Cadaver Coulter, everyone on the payroll at Fox News). The complaints ranged from complaints about his age, to his "electability", but finally settled on his being not-Conservative-enough. This of course echoes some of the initial shots at Obama's not being "black enough".
aside: electability has become a very convenient method for shunting candidates out of political races. It's specifically used to marginalize candidates who may actually have a chance of swaying the electorate with their message. Take a Nader or a Kucinich whose actual policies overlap with the desires of the American people, they are deemed "unelectable" due to their appearance or the simple decision of the party bosses that it's "not their turn". Subsequently they get no coverage in the media - harken back to Mike Gravel's observation about the podiums at the debate that were so far to the end of the stage that they were effectively off camera. Which is not to say that all candidates are Presidential material but they deserve equal access to media so that the electorate can make an informed decision about their policies... but that's not what I wanted to talk about ....
Mr Buckley righfully calls out these folks, and expresses my own disgust at conservative mouth-peices in the process. He correctly points out that a lot of current cult of Reagan-worshippers had branded Ronnie with a lot of the same ephithets that are currently getting lavished on Mr McCain. Finally, he points out their out and out hypocrisy - which is the worst part of course. The glee with which some of these tin drums proclaim their desire to see the mess that the country is in land in the laps of the opposition begs the questions, "who got us into this mess in the first place?" and "how has the party of personal responsibility so quickly metamorphosed into the party of the hot potato?"
All of which is really nuts since for God's sakes McCain is in the end an old line Republican! McCain's major crime is his refreshing refusal to engage in the high school pettiness that the mainstream of the Republican party have been going in for lately. Of course this leads to the chorus of Mean Girls turning on him. Grow up, people! Co-sponsoring legislation with Democrats doesn't mean you agree with their every tenet. Condemning torture doesn't make you "soft on terrorism". Get a clue you mouthpeices and look forward to the first election in a good long time when most of us can look at either candidate and honestly say that we'd be fairly pleased to have either of them.
February 12, 2008
Replacing Waterboarding
After my brother lived in Atlanta he would drink nothing but Coke. Now thanks to this stunning expose of soft drink cartel practicesI know whow he was made into their Manchurian candidate.
February 11, 2008
A Musical Interlude
Just read about this composer - Nico Mulhy - and thought you folks might enjoy a selection of his works. It's quite modern with some hints of Stravinsky in the midst of the all the minimalism.
Betrayed: A Play
I read an article in the New Yorker last year about the people who have the most to lose from the Iraq debacle: the Iraqi staff and interpreters who have risked their lives helping the American forces. Some were motivated by patriotism, some idealism and some by profit but all of them have put themselves into the line of fire to try to bring their country out of the mire of its Ba'athist past. The article's author, George Packer, has written a play based on is interviews with those folks, and a clip from it is available here. It's very poignant and I suggest you guys take a look.
February 8, 2008
Canterbuy Tale
Interesting news today that the Archbishop of Canterbury has called for possible incorporation of Sharia law (so-called Islamic law) into the British legal code. That's before the backlash. At first blush this seems like a brilliant idea, and quite legally progressive in the sense that it reflects the change in the demographics of the country. Moreover it would only be in place for family law cases and some financial dealings. But in retrospect I'm not quite sure. The legal code of a country is more deeply embedded than that and demographic shifts may not be sufficient for such a radical change (we're talking about legal systems that come from two different sources). More importantly which parts of so-called Islamic law do you put into practice?
Looking for more recent examples of such a nesting of legal systems, I hard pressed to think of anything more recent than the Ottoman empire at the turn of the century. Prior to the reforms forced by movements such as the Young Turks, non-Muslims in the Ottoman Levant were allowed to govern themselves by whatever laws their religions mandated as dhimmi communities. Hence the Jewish community in Damascus in 1890 (for example) could marry, divorce, inherit, etc, based on the laws of their faith - so long as they paid their taxes. Yet such an example may not necessarily be easily transferred to a modern democracy where human and civil rights are explicitly guaranteed in the constitution or other founding documents. In order to ensure equality for all its citizens such a system perforce has to be less complete and more generic.
Still it is an intriguing idea, and one of the more interesting by-products of such a decision would be the more wide-spread teaching of the Islamic jurisprudence system in British univerisities. I would think that this would lead to some better cultural understanding of the Muslim world. Hopefully it would lead folks in the Muslim world to realize that this is a two way street - but who knows?
February 2, 2008
Less Satisfying 3 Ways
The internet has always been a clearinghouse for all the most pornography you could imagine. If there's a sick fetish that has sprouted in the febrile imagination of some drooling deviant out there then you can bet your bottom dollar that there are 42 websites out there that extol the virtues of the fetish, give particularly graphic examples and link you to the next in the ring of iniquity that you've chosen to trap yourself in. I had thought myself somewhat inured to the shock that tawdry wares hawked all over the web could engender until Dr Germ forwarded me this link.
Yes, gentle readers, it's a report about the most unacceptable sort of menage-a-trois - the genetic 3-way. These sick people aren't satisfied with groping each other in a sordid tangle of limbs, creating an unholy chimera of frenetic sex. They can't stand to be separated even by the soft cushion of electrons that come between them.
Seriously though this could really change the way people understand parenting. I mean when you have a surrogate mother that complicates things a lot so what happens when you introduce someone else's genetic material in addition to the two "parents"?
Black Pharaohs
I saw an interesting article in National Geographic this month, and thought I'd share. It's about the so-called Black Pharaohs of Egypt, who were actually Nubians from the kingdom of Kush in what is now the Northern Sudan. Their capital was actually outside of Nuri, the village where my father grew up.
Growing up, my Dad would constantly be telling me about Taharqa, the Nubian king who is mentioned in the Old Testament. In the Book of Kings he is referred to as a fierce warrior, and he saved Jerusalem from the Assyrians. At one point the Kushites' kingdom extended well into the Levant. He would tell me all the local words we had for things that weren't Arabic but derived from the "old languages". I guess my old man was trying to give me a sense of where our people came from, and to form a bond of pride. When I visited the village the winter before last I took a walk with my cousins down by the river and we came upon a sandbar that someone had inscribed with this figure seated on a low platform. The platform could be a low bed made of wood and rope, sort of like the ones that my grandmother sat on in her house.
There was text below saying "Taharqa, King of Nuri".
February 1, 2008
Luke's Arm
Not that I have ever wanted my arm to be cut off, but I just read about a new prosthetic arm modeled on the one that Luke Skywalker was sporting in Star Wars. The new generation of prostheses seems to be more closely approaching the functions of a natural arm. Coupled with the news of better than Olympic level runners, this could mean a whole new life for many people sidelined by sever injuries to their limbs - that is, if these prostheses can be made cheaply enough.