Found this political cartoon and couldn't resist posting it here...
Friday, May 01, 2009
Thursday, April 30, 2009
PATRIOT Act denied son Constitutional rights, says North Carolina mom
This early on in the reporting of the story, I'll admit to wondering if there's more to this. But knowing what I do about how damned abusive and corrupt our own government has become, I'm also inclined to take this family at their word.
Sixteen-year-old Ashton Lundeby, of Oxford in Granville County, North Carolina (not far from Raleigh) was the subject of a raid by federal agents who handcuffed him and took a LOT of his personal possessions. The feds claim that Lundeby made a bomb threat, but the family denies the charge, saying that someone hacked into their IP address and made crank calls through the Internet.
And now...
Ashton now sits in a juvenile facility in South Bend, Ind. His mother has had little access to him since his arrest. She has gone to her state representatives as well as attorneys, seeking assistance, but, she said, there is nothing she can do.According to the story, Ashton Lundeby sounds like a pretty good kid. He's got American flags all around his room (he's probably more patriotic than the assholes who passed the PATRIOT Act) and he was away at church when the raid went down.Lundeby said the USA Patriot Act stripped her son of his due process rights.
"We have no rights under the Patriot Act to even defend them, because the Patriot Act basically supersedes the Constitution," she said. "It wasn't intended to drag your barely 16-year-old, 120-pound son out in the middle of the night on a charge that we can't even defend."
Passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., the Patriot Act allows federal agents to investigate suspected cases of terrorism swiftly to better protect the country. In part, it gives the federal government more latitude to search telephone records, e-mails and other records.
"They're saying that 'We feel this individual is a terrorist or an enemy combatant against the United States, and we're going to suspend all of those due process rights because this person is an enemy of the United States," said Dan Boyce, a defense attorney and former U.S. attorney not connected to the Lundeby case.
Critics of the statute say it threatens the most basic of liberties.
"There's nothing a matter of public record," Boyce said "All those normal rights are just suspended in the air."
If the Lundebys' story is true, I will once again be led to yield to the lesser angels of my nature, go against all sense of polity and Christ-like bearing that I do strive to uphold, and repeat with great exuberance what I posted here a little less than a month and a half ago on another story about law enforcement abuse...
"F*CK THE GOVERNMENT!"
(I won't post the exact word until we know more about the situation. But you get the gist of it.)
Third TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN trailer is online!
Officially, it's being hosted at Yahoo! Movies. Un-officially however, you can find it pretty much anywhere on the 'nets tonight. I snagged it in high-definition from YouTube.
However it is that you see it, make sure to catch the third trailer for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen...
That's Constructicon combined gestalt bad-'bot Devastator scarfing down a wazoo-load of Saharan sand, trying to suck in and chop Optimus Prime to slivers. By the way, Devastator is now said to be the most complex digital construct that Industrial Light and Magic has ever done in its entire thirty-some years of existence!
I also feel led to comment that based on this trailer alone, it looks like the second Transformers movie is going to be much more intense in the way of plot than the first film... along with a hella lot more action (and presumably more actual screen time for the Transformers themselves, supposedly being around 60 of 'em this time).
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen lands on June 24th.
Steve Jablonsky's score helps GEARS OF WAR 2 win Best Sound at ELAN Awards!
Our friend Greg at Music4Games.net passed along the terrific news that Gears of War 2 has won "Best Sound in a Video Game Production" at the Third Annual ELAN Awards. ELAN is the Canadian Awards for the Electronic and the Animated Arts.At the ceremony, hosted by SpongeBob Squarepants' Bob Kenny, Gears of War 2 was honored for its audio engineering, which included a full-length score composed by Steve Jablonsky (who has also composed Transformers and its upcoming sequel, Desperate Housewives and many other films, games and television projects).
Congrats to audio director Mike Larson, composer Steve Jablonsky, sound designers Jamey Scott and Joey Kuras, and everyone at Epic Games on your win!
And for a complete list of winners at this year's ELAN Awards, mash down here.
Twitter loses 60% of new users after one month (BUT...)
If you use Twitter, the latest craze on the Intertubes, then it's quite likely that you are going to abandon the service after your first month. That's the finding of a Neilsen report which found that 60% of new Twitterers get tired of it after just one month.
However, I have to wonder how many of these Twitter expatriates eventually come back. Robert Strohmeyer elucidates on that further over at the ABC News website. Strohmeyer's point is that many folks first come to Twitter under the assumption that it's supposed to just chronicle the minutia of daily life, like "I'm cold" or "Going to the bathroom now"... when that's not what Twitter is about at all. And that when they realize how Twitter is actually quite useful as a serious micro-blogging utility, then they have the tendency to drift back.
I can vouch for that. When Twitter first hit the scene, I created an account and then... promptly got bored with it. But as more people began using it, I started taking a serious look at how Twitter could be used to complement my regular blogging.
So I've been back on Twitter for about a month now, and as things stand I'm finding it hard to envision that I'll be making a second exodus from it. Last night it was put to especially hilarious use when I vented my rage at President Obama nearly pre-empting Lost. And lately with the swine flu scare some have taken to using Twitter for comedic effect. Gotta love ingenuity like that :-)
So if you've tried Twitter before and quickly tired of recording the tedium of your waking hours, reconsider how it is that you should be using it, and give it another shot. You might find that it's a lot harder to quit after a second helping.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Reaction to tonight's LOST: "The Variable"
I ain't saying nothing. And you know why?
Because I am completely tapped-out of any possible hyperbole that I could use to describe how I feel about Lost, after tonight's episode "The Variable".
If we are lucky, storytelling like this may happen twice in our lifetime. It's taking place, now, with Lost. Lord only knows when anything coming anywhere close to being just as comparable will ever come again.
This show is like sculpture being chiseled out before our eyes. And tonight, what we thought was the work being brought to life... just got smashed to smithereens.
Okay, I gotta say this: Eloise Hawking is a real b*tch! I didn't know what to quite make of her, until tonight's show. The whole thing about stopping Daniel and his piano playing: and you thought some parents went overboard when it comes to their kids playing sports. Sheesh!
Think I'm gonna have to watch this at least twice again tomorrow after I get it from iTunes. Just... wow.
World's fastest camera: 6 million photos in 1 second
A team of physicists at UCLA have developed a new photographic technique called Serial Time-Encoded Amplified Microscopy, or STEAM for short. Using common fiber-optics components, the new system is capable of recording photographic images at a staggering rate of once every 163 nanoseconds.
That's more than six million photos in one second, folks.
It's an innovation owing to quantum physics and laser light, not standard CCD chips like how most digital images are captured. And the resolution right now is quite small: only about 2,500 pixels, or a thousand times smaller than most cellphone cameras. But with refinement there is the possibility that STEAM will eventually be able to video record real-time activity within living cells.
Give 'em ten years: that'll make for a helluva IMAX nature film!
Don't be cheap: Buy MAD MAGAZINE #500!
It didn't hit me until a few months ago how much MAD Magazine has influenced my life. You can see it on this blog even: my propensity toward emboldening words a lot? That's definitely something I picked up from MAD's style... along with a jillion other traits, large and small that have crept into my work.I've been been of the school of thought that MAD has suffered a decline in quality ever since the mag made the decision ten years ago to not just run real advertisements but worse: to shift from black/white to color. MAD never needed color. It was like when The Andy Griffith Show dropped grayscale: darn few of the color episodes were anywhere as funny as the first few seasons. No, MAD's allure was always the quality of its content, not its chroma.
But even so, MAD Magazine is now celebrating it's FIVE-HUNDREDTH ISSUE! It's on newsstands now and if you're anything at all of a MAD-man (or MAD-woman) you owe it to yourself to pick this up... and pays the money 'course. In the issue Sergio Aragones publishes a gallery of the 500 favorite "marginal" cartoons that he's done in his nearly 50 years with MAD. There are also no real-world advertisements in the issue past the first few pages (apart from officially sanctioned MAD schlock). This issue is a huge throwback to the MAD that many of us fondly grew up with. Unfortunately #500 will be the last issue before MAD goes to quarterly publication: a consequence of the current economy that is hilariously lampooned (along with a rather vicious treatment of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi) in Frank Jacobs' song parody "The Bailout Hymn of the Republic".
Maybe we can help. Go buy MAD Magazine #500. And if you've got the money buy six or seven more copies :-)
LOST celebrates 100 episodes tonight with "The Variable"
Didn't get to comment on Lost during the past month ('cuz I was busy with... other projects) but if you're a faithful viewer, you already know that the past few episodes have been everything from intense, to heartbreaking, to hilarious. I'm still giggling at Hurley's attempt to "improve" The Empire Strikes Back and get it to George Lucas in time to keep the Ewoks from ever happening.
And tonight's episode, "The Variable", portends to be a doozy. It's the one hundredth episode of Lost, so maybe it's time to start answering some long-standing questions? At the end of last week's installment Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies, right) returned after an absence of a few episodes and possibly three years - bear in mind that most of the characters are now stuck in 1977 - and word is that tonight he finally "comes clean" about what he knows about the Island. There's also rumor that "The Variable" will be something of a companion piece/flip-side story to last season's amazing "The Constant", thought by many to be one of the best of the entire series to date.
In case you need a "brush-up" of everything that's happened that's brought this story to its one hundredth episode, TVOvermind has a great compilation of what it considers to be the 100 best Lost moments of the past five season.
And I'm looking forward to getting back to posting reactions tonight after the episode airs :-)
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Swedish robot attempts homicide
A Swedish company won't be prosecuted but must pay $3000 in fines after one of its factory robots nearly killed a man. From the story...
A worker was about to fix a broken rock-lifting robot. He'd shut the power off, but the machine suddenly woke up and grabbed the man by the head.Perhaps a review of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics is in order:"The man was very lucky. He broke four ribs and came close to losing his life," prosecutor Leif Johansson told the TT news agency.
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.This kind of story is becoming all too common. We've already heard about military robots opening fire on their comrades. Now it looks like those employed by the private sector are beginning to revolt.2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Swine flu PSAs from 1976!
Three decades ago there was another swine flu scare. In retrospect, the government then over-reacted and a lot of folks who received the flu shot got sick from that. Some even died.
But I must admit: even knowing that, these public service announcements from 1976 about swine flu are darkly hilarious...
Thanks to Lee Shelton for finding these!
Arlen Specter's doublethink
So the senator from Pennsylvania today declared that his party affiliation "has not defined who I am".
And as an act of faith, the first thing Arlen Specter did to demonstrate his proclaimed values was... change parties.
Think about that for a moment.
Why should any person who claims to not be defined by party affiliation, even care enough to so grandiosely publicize that he or she is switching parties?
And wouldn't a person supposedly not defined by a party, in keeping with his or her principles, choose NOT to belong to any party at all?
All Specter is proving is that America has scarce few real leaders. What America does have is an excessive amount of damned fools who aren't shy about their willingness to be yanked around by their noses by whatever "the party" tells them. And Arlen Specter is one of 'em.
The Darth Vader Toaster
Time for another entry in the "Things We Don't Really Need But Are Lusting For Badly" file...
Wouldya believe that StarWarsShop.com is now selling the Darth Vader Toaster? For $54.99 you can have this kitchen appliance, which burns the evil visage of that most famous Dark Lord of the Sith into the surface of a slice of bread. Kinda sick, when you think about how the living remnant of what was once Anakin Skywalker is so charred and roasted under that black armor.
But I guess it's true: there really isn't any merchandise that they won't stick the Star Wars brand name on :-P
Monday, April 27, 2009
Jablonsky, Zimmer and Linkin Park working on TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN score!
It was already fairly well known that Steve Jablonsky would be returning to score Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, just as he did the original in 2007. But in the past few days the word has come that Linkin Park and Hans Zimmer are also contributing to the film's score. Linkin Park had some stuff on the Transformers soundtrack album (the one with all the songs, not the score that Yours Truly went more than a little nuts for :-P).
And if Hans Zimmer rings a bell, it's prolly 'cuz he has worked on the scores for Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, and a ton of other good movies.
Just from a musical perspective, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is sounding pretty epic. Can't wait to see - and hear - it come June.
Good reading for pandemic season: Marvel Comics' THE STAND
While we're waiting for the swine flu epidemic to either burn itself out or dispatch most of civilization to "the Choir Invisible", here's some encouraging literature to read in the meantime: Marvel Comics' AMAZING adaptation of the classic Stephen King novel The Stand.The ongoing series, written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and illustrated by Mike Perkins with oversight by King himself, is scheduled to span thirty issues consisting of five story arcs. The first, "Captain Trips", just wrapped up and you should be able to find the collected trade paperback version at most well-stocked bookstores. If you've ever read the novel, you can probably figure out that "Captain Trips" covers the first several days of the superflu plague that wipes out more than 99% of humanity. The next and current arc, "American Nightmares", deals with what happens to those lucky (or unfortunate) enough to have survived the pandemic.
As a longtime fan of The Stand I can heartily recommend buying this. Marvel's The Stand is probably the finest version of King's tale outside of the original book that I've seen yet. Yeah, the TV miniseries was pretty good (can you believe it'll be fifteen years next month since it first premiered?) but as a graphic novel there's much more room and liberty to faithfully recreate The Stand's plot and its characters. Well worth tracking down and keeping up with.
Today's sign that the Apocalypse is upon us...
Apparently, somebody somewhere has been working on getting World of Warcraft to run on the iPhone.
Mash down here for details on what will certainly be the end of productivity in the modern era.
G.E.'s latest achievement: 100 DVDs on one disc
This is gonna be something to keep yer eyes on folks: General Electric has engineered a new kind of optical storage technology. It's based on holography and it can be used to put 100 DVDs on a single disc!
I wouldn't chuck out that new Blu-Ray player just yet. An innovation like this usually takes awhile before it comes to market (and even longer before they're ubiquitous enough for most folks to consider adopting it). But it's easy to see how something like this would eventually supplant everything we've come to know about optical storage and playback.
Between this and the stuff happening in the realm of flash memory, this is very very cool. I'll certainly be watching for more about it.
