It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
I just installed and sorta tested Chad Everett’s MT-Notifier. If all goes as planned, you can now subscribe to comment threads either when you post a comment or without posting a comment. I could make it possible to subscribe to all the comments posted on Popone, too, if there’s a deluge of demand, but I’m kinda not anticipating one.
Oh, and I have six gmail invites, first come first serve.
Judicial Watch has requested an investigation of Kerry’s activities after his release from active duty; namely, his discussions with delegations from North Vietnam in Paris. They’ve also joined the howling pack that would like to prove that Kerry’s medals weren’t earned. I don’t particularly feel the need to waste my time debunking these myths — you’ll note that it is not illegal for servicemen to speak with officials of foreign governments, and while it is illegal for them to negotiate with such officials, it’s hard to figure out how an ordinary citizen on inactive duty would have the power to negotiate anything. What I would like to do is discuss the claims that Judicial Watch is “non-partisan.”
The Judicial Watch case page lists 110 separate cases. Of those cases, 70 involve Democrats. 42 of those involve Bill or Hillary Clinton. Another 6 of them were filed at the right time to be directed against the Clinton Administration, but there’s not enough detail to be sure.
14 of them involve Republicans. 19 of them aren’t directly related to either political party. There are several cases involving Democrats which were filed during the Bush Administration. There are no cases involving Republicans filed during the Clinton Administration.
So while I applaud any group, partisan or non, that spends a lot of time filing lawsuits to make government agencies follow through on FOIA requests, I do think that Judicial Watch might want to stop pretending that it doesn’t have any political leanings.
Every now and then I use my cell phone camera, meaning to upload the picture and share it immediately. The sharing part never happens. This, then, is housekeeping.
It’s tough to make out, but this sign (which was on a gas pump) wants me to “click www.87rewardme.com.” I tried, but I couldn’t find a mouse. Or a screen.
Arrr! Pirates, me hearties! A game of Pirates of the Spanish Main under (heh heh) full sail.
My car hits 100,000 miles. This actually happened as I pulled into the parking lot at work; this picture was not taken while driving. In case you were worried about my sanity.
Show up at a Bush event with a Kerry/Edwards T-shirt: get thrown out.
Show up at a Kerry event with a Bush/Cheney T-shirt: nobody cares.
Same person, same day, same state.
Edit: er, different state. Just very close.
Once again, it’s the politics of fear. This time, it’s Zell Miller talking about how desperately afraid he is.
And like you, I ask: Which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower and, yes, the backbone to best protect my family?
The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight. For my family is more important than my party.
There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future, and that man’s name is George W. Bush.
And that sounds very noble, at first, if you don’t think about it too hard. It sounds like a man who’s making hard choices. But it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, really, does it? He’s saying that he will do anything, including turning on the Democratic Party that gave him a Senate seat, in order to keep his family from harm. (Miller was appointed by the Democratic Governor of Georgia to fill a vacant seat; he owes his current seat to his former party rather than to the voters.) He doesn’t care what it takes; he wants his family safe. At any cost. He’s chosen safety over freedom.
And yeah, it sounds noble. Unless, maybe, you think about the families who have paid the price to protect Zell Miller. A thousand Americans dead; 6,500 Americans wounded. So what he’s saying is that he trusts Bush to keep his kids safe, at the cost of sending someone else’s children to Iraq — and he’s too numbed by danger to remember that Iraq was never a threat to his children. That Iraq had no WMD. That Iraq was controlled by sanctions.
This is what fear breeds: men who will do anything, however immoral or unwise, to keep their families safe.
“For about $10 million, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world’s largest wireless Internet hot spot.”
135 square miles is 3,763,584,000 square feet. Let’s pretend each access point is giving us about 50 feet of range That’s 7,853 square feet per access point, or 7,500 for easy calculations and to allow some slippage. So… around 502,000 access points. That’s 20 bucks an access point even if you don’t allow for wiring costs. But the article says “hundreds, or maybe thousands of small transmitters.”
Am I woefully underestimating the range of each access point?
Look, ma, I upgraded to Movable Type 3.1! It’s cool. I am pondering my commenting options; it seems not impossible that I will set the blog to post TypeKey-authenticated comments immediately while screening non-TypeKey-authenticated comments; the legitimate non-TK comments would still get posted, just with a bit of a delay. Or maybe not, since I haven’t had a ton of comment spam recently. Thoughts, bearing in mind that the easiest thing for all of you (no screening, no worries) requires more effort on my part (deleting spam comments)?
When someone sets a pipe bomb off at a biotech lab doing stem cell research? That’s what I would call terrorism. This is a company that’s trying to find a cure for diabetes, and someone hates them enough to try and kill people. I am so tired of this hatred for science.
Those of us who miss the Warren Ellis who wrote Stormwatch, Excalibur, and Transmetropolitan should check out Ultimate Fantastic Four. I, obviously, already have. The run starts with issue #7 and it is superb. Ellis likes to dislike superheroes, which is a real pity, since it’s his best genre. He’s doing cool things with the Fantastic Four which boil down to “what if they transformed while they were kids,” and it’s working very well.
Hero is exactly as good as everyone says it is — oh — then, well, curse you Stephen Hunter, for screwing up my schtick. Do these movie reviewers know no shame?
In point of fact, Hero is infinitely better than Stephen Hunter claims it is. More on the politics of Hunter in a nonce, so that those uninclined can skip that. First, we’ll meditate upon the movie, which is lush beyond imagining both in color (my second Christopher Doyle-lensed film in two nights, so if I am intoxicated with the magic of the projector, do forgive) and in martial arts. Lush is the proper word: I believe that the structure of the movie was concocted in order to provide the opportunity for Jet Li to fight Maggie Cheung more than once, and for Maggie Cheung to clash with Zhang Ziyi in more way than one, and if Donnie Yen only gets the one fight scene, well, it’s one of the better ones in the movie.
Yes, of course they’re good martial arts scenes. Jet Li is a master, Zhang Ziyi is getting her feet under her, and everyone else has been around Hong Kong long enough to know exactly what they’re doing. I.e., not only can they wield their swords and spears and fists with athletic grace, they can continue acting while they do so. Each motion has, as purpose, both furthering the flow of the battle and heightening the intimacy of the emotions.
It’s stylistic as all get out, so you shouldn’t expect Kill Bill; Zhang Yimou is building on top of the Shaw Brothers engendered tradition of historical martial arts movies, not imitating them. Thus, while Jet Li and Donnie Yen battle as fiercely and as quickly as anything you’ll see on screen this side of Ong Bak, the camera is as interested (not more) in the way the water drops onto the stone courtyard in which they fight as it is in the swords. It’s a duet.
And it’s very beautiful. Again: Christopher Doyle, and so on. I’d start to think that he was a one-trick pony, said trick being exquisite color filters, except he’s not; vide The Quiet American. I don’t think he could make a grungy movie, but there are plenty of people who can and not enough who can capture the light filtering through a dozen falling silk curtains the way he can, so it all works out and balances.
Now the politics are about to start. Be warned.
I am inclined to agree with Stephen Hunter when he says that one should not kill thousands of people in order to attain peace. As he says, “That’s the justification of all tyrants — tyrants in nations and tyrants in offices…” However, I wonder if he agrees with himself; one might ask, with some justification given that he takes a shot at Kerry in the course of the review, whether or not he thinks it was worth killing 10,000 Iraqis in order to attain peace in Iraq. Or, closer to home, whether he approves of Abraham Lincoln’s decision to start the Civil War.
He fails to note that, whatever the failings of the King of Qin, Qin is not the country employing three deadly assassins. (In fact, aren’t Flying Snow, Broken Sword, and Long Sky terrorists?) But then, it’s easy to decide that the victors were the bad guys from a perspective two millennia in the future. I suspect, although it is merely speculation, that Mr. Hunter’s real quarrel is with Communist China and that he has failed to separate past from present. But that’s the danger of mixing politics with movie reviews —
And damn, there I go tripping myself again.