Fred Flintstone and the people of Bedrock were the very FIRST to employ biotechnology.
(I mean, you can't get much hardcore than using a velociraptor for a garbage disposal...)
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
HE DID IT!! Heang Uy completes epic bike ride across America
On June 23rd, Heang Uy departed from Cannon Beach on the coast of Oregon on his bicycle. He's been pedaling ever since.
Two day ago and 3,578 miles later...
...Heang arrived at Folly Beach, South Carolina!
Here's Heang's account of reaching the finish line for his amazing journey.
Congratulations Heang! You were always uber-kewl in my book, and this accomplishment puts me in awe of you even more bro :-)
Thursday, August 12, 2010
BIOSHOCK INFINITE coming in 2012
I was going to write a review of BioShock 2 months ago but never got around to it for various reasons. One of them being that I wanted to play it again to properly absorb it all. Personally, I loved BioShock 2. Even with a few issues (I had hoped to be able to explore around Rapture more) I thought it was a superb follow-up to 2007's BioShock: a title that is on my short list of greatest video games ever.
Well today, like a bolt out of the blue, Ken Levine - the guy who created BioShock in the first place (but didn't work on the sequel) - and his Irrational Games announced that BioShock Infinite will be landing in 2012.
Here's the trailer. And I have to ask: "What. The. %@&#?!?"
HOW does the BioShock saga go from being set in Rapture, a city on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 1968, to a city floating at 30,000 feet... in 1912?!?
"Okay Chris, take deep breaths. Remember: Ken Levine is back at the helm of a BioShock game. Trust him."
I am completely wog-boggled by the direction that BioShock is taking. And at the same time, more intrigued by an upcoming video game than I can remember being in quite awhile.
Remember my post last week about solar flares and earthquakes?
Here's the link if you wanna look at it. It was about the massive discharge of highly-energized particles that the Sun threw out at the Earth early last week. As a result there were some astonishingly brilliant aurora reported at the northern latitudes.
Well anyway, in my post I wondered aloud if there might be any earthquake activity that would happen as a result, 'cuz I've noticing for the past few years that whenever this planet gets hit by particles from a solar flare that it seems to agitate the inner workins enough to cause pretty good rumblin' soon afterward.
I wrote that last Monday, August 2nd. Today, August 12th, there have been two earthquakes reported in the past several hours. A 6.0 quake hitting the island nation of Vanuatu and then a short while ago a 6.9 quake striking just over a hundred miles away from Quito in Ecuador. No reports of injuries from either earthquake.
Not adding any further commentary. Just wanted to pass along the information for anyone interested in such things.
What I've come to realize about denominations in Christianity
There is no such thing as "denominations". Christ is not divided.
There is, however, a great many perspectives of Christ, Who is too magnificent for any one person or group of people to fully comprehend.
As it should be.
Who is another or others then, to tell me - or anyone else for that matter - that my perspective of Christ, as one of His followers, is the wrong one?
Slow day today...
And since it's been asked for by a number of you, here once again is a photo of my ravishingly beautiful and sweet cousin Lauryn! As an added bonus, you also get to see my equally beautiful and sweet cousin Karissa, who just got married this summer!
Thank you ladies. You have contributed some much-needed loveliness to this site :-)
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Thoughtcrime: Music festival organizer PRE-sues bootleggers
If you're going to attend the Mile High Music Festival this weekend in Denver, don't even think about bootlegging the music. Merely considering the notion means you've already been sued by event producer AEG Live. The company has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against "John Does 1-100, Jane Does 1-100, and XYZ Company" for illegal bootlegging... which hasn't even been committed yet. Since nobody exists (yet) to contest the lawsuit, it moves ahead in court. It also means that AEG Live can get "law enforcement involved by using the lawsuit to ask the court to order US Marshalls, local and state police and even off-duty officers to go ahead and seize and impound the bootlegged material."
Techdirt has more about this legally ridiculous situation, including the full text of the filed lawsuit.
(How soon will it be before we start seeing companies like Viacom using this sort of tactic against YouTube users? Can't help but wonder about that. 'Course, I of all people have more than enough reason to wonder...)
BACK TO THE FUTURE timeline chart... and two graphs that (might) help ya understand INCEPTION!
A substantial majority of my two or three regular readers (yeah looking at you Ed and Eric) are hardcore fans of Back to the Future and its two sequels. Well, all that mucking around with history can be a pain to keep up with for some people, so a smart dude named Sean Mort has put together a terrific timeline chart of the Back to the Future saga, taking into account the events of all eight different timelines! Seriously, I had no idea there were so many until I saw how Sean put it all into proper perspective. I'm gonna print this out to have handy when the Blu-ray set comes out in a few months.
And with Inception still going strong at the box office, plenty of people might still be trying to figure out its labyrinthine structure. Cinema Blend has put together a great illustrated guide to the five levels of Inception's plot. And an artist calling himself "dehas" has come through with an Escher-esque "Inception Infographic" that has already become widely popular as a reference guide to the movie. Check 'em out... but do beware of spoilers if you ain't seen the movie yet.
(Same goes for that Back to the Future chart... but if you haven't seen those movies yet, what the heck is wrong with you?!?)
Color photographs of the Great Depression
How easy it is to think of eras gone by as being more drab and subdued than our own time. Especially the Great Depression: I think imagining it as being all black and white must be the "default" setting in the minds of many.
And then photos like this of a grocery store in Washington D.C., taken in 1941, show us otherwise...
Between 1939 and 1943 the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information made some of the only known full-color photographs of small-town life during the Great Depression and early years of World War II. These became part of a Library of Congress exhibit in 2006 called Bound for Glory: America in Color. And now the Denver Post has made them available online. Some of the photographs are curiously sweet. Others are especially haunting. And each of them brings to stark crisp life a forgotten facet of the way we used to be, once upon a time...
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The ______Act of___ passed by U.S. Senate
That's it. I've had it. Throw the whole sorry lot of 'em out. ALL of them. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war. Show them no quarter.
And whoever among our legislators were so irresponsible in voting for this, should have the word "STOOPID" branded into their foreheads so that the rest of humanity will know to steer clear of them forevermore amen.
Call it "The Law With No Name" (sounds like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington directed by Sergio Leone). Nancy Pelosi has brought the House of Representatives back into session for an emergency vote on a bill that, well nobody has any idea what the hell is in this thing. And the Senators who approved it didn't even bother to give it a proper name. It's officially listed as "The ______Act of___".
And if you ask me, this bill is a ________ pile of bull____.
Click on over to Slashdot to read more about this... thing.
(Obviously, the question arises as to whether this bill was read aloud in the Senate... or if it was even read at all.)
A new model of quantum physics has begun formulating in my mind
It had been percolating across my gray matter for the past several weeks. It started when I found myself contemplating certain problems with the forces of gravity and electromagnetism.
About 3:30 a.m. this morning a possible solution was hit upon. Doesn't look like it's the re-invention of Wheeler foam. Not yet anyway. I can't help but think it's too much like that and at the same time it's more than a tad different.
I'll probably be pondering it at length throughout the rest of the day. Particularly as I am reclining in the chair at my friendly neighborhood dentist's office later this morning.
For now though, my beef with gravity and electromagnetism is satisfied. Until I no doubt wind up chucking the theory out because of one tiny little incongruency that will certainly invalidate the whole thing...
(Why can't I have a normal mind like everyone else?)
Monday, August 09, 2010
One state's wonky finances: Hawaii has $1.4 BILLION in unspent revenue (but the politicians want MORE taxes!)
Ten years ago this summer I went to work as a full-time reporter. It was with a... well let's just say they don't make outfits like this anymore. Probably one of the last of the newspapers with that old-school journalistic 'tude. Anyhoo, my very first assignment was to investigate the budget that the General Assembly had proposed for North Carolina's next fiscal term.
A full decade later and I still get fits of anger just thinking about the crap I found in those hundreds of pages of monetary monstrosity that I picked through line by agonizing line.
(A space shuttle launch complex for North Carolina? Really? And how much money did we spend trying to put that here when there's already a good working one in Florida?)
Even if it's a long drive and a fair swim away from the Tarheel State, what fellow journalist/blogger and friend of The Knight Shift Danny de Garcia II forwarded to me this evening about his home state of Hawaii brought back those memories of wrath and disillusionment from a decade ago. Danny and colleague Kyle Shiroma just went public with the findings of their investigation: Hawaii has $1.4 BILLION sitting unspent in its coffers... even while many of its elected officials insist upon higher taxation!
From the report at Grassroot Institue of Hawaii...
Hawaii’s taxpayers might be shocked to discover that while numerous voices in and out of the local political establishment are calling for an increase in the General Excise Tax to cover any future budget shortfalls in education or other state services, upwards of $1.4 billion dollars in unspent excess funds may be sitting in special funds, several of which were tagged by the auditor almost a decade ago for repeal.If this kind of financial mis-sight is going on in a state like Hawaii then... is it too far to assume that much the same - if not worse - is going on in other states as well?According to the Department of Budget and Finance’s “Reports on Non-General Fund Information: Fiscal Years 2006-2012,” some 186 special funds spread across twenty different departments hold an estimated $1,412,357,203 in unspent revenues over and above their operational requirements. In plain language, if the estimates provided by the Department are correct, the state has more than just pocket change stuck in its seats.
Until recently, few members of the public were aware of how many special funds existed, what their purpose was or how much money the State of Hawaii was holding in these accounts. For this reason, Grassroot Institute analysts decided to review the Department’s worksheets and itemize all the special funds to see just what they contained.
The Department of Transportation is reported as having $582,449,161 in unspent special funds (41% of the state’s excess balances), Department of Labor and Industrial Relations has some $327,412,159 unspent (23%) and the University of Hawaii holds another $119,225,732 (8%) making them the top holders of excess revenues.
The worksheets show figures such as $6,968,895 unspent in the Works of Art Special Fund (AGS 881) for public aesthetics and art education – a fund which was advised by the Auditor to be repealed in 2001 and its balances lapsed into the General Fund – and on the opposite end of the spectrum, zero balances in the Agricultural Park Special Fund Escrow Account (AGR 141HA) which also continues to exist despite a recommendation for repeal.
Why should taxpayers approve an increase of taxes to balance the budget when the state’s own reports show over $1.4 billion in excess sitting in their accounts collecting interest? If these excess balances were divided equally among the population, there would be checks of close to $1,100 going to every man, woman and child in Hawaii.
This kind of thing might... emphasis on might... entice me to give North Carolina's budget the hairy eyeball again for the first time since 2000. Provided that I have at the ready a glass of whiskey, a gun and two bullets. Just in case.
Arguments to the contrary are most welcome...
One who believes a vote must be chosen between two parties in order to win has already lost.
Movie posters rendered in LEGO
Hat tip to Chad Austin for the great find!
BLACKSTAR WARRIOR: A Star Wars blaxploitation trailer. 'Nuff said.
"Get between this brotha and his woman, and space ain't black enough to hide from him!"
About time somebody made a fan film about Lando Calrissian going up against the man!
Saturday, August 07, 2010
In memory of Mike Ashley
"The good die young."
Those were the words of my grandmother, twenty-five years ago this evening. And when those words were the most semblance of comfort that an eleven-year old kid had to grasp - even if he didn't really understand what it meant at the time - on what was at the time the absolute worst day of his life...
...well, they kinda stick with ya, even a quarter century later.
Heck, I can even still remember what I was wearing that day, what Granny was wearing, the most miserable dinner of pizza that I would ever have, all of the vehicles like neighbors' cars and the ambulance and the deputy sheriff cruisers that descended on our farm that afternoon. I can even tell you what show that I watched on television that night, trying and failing to lose myself, to stop thinking about it all...
...but most of all, I remember crying. Being inside the house with my sister and our two dachshund puppies, watching from the windows. I still remember calling my life-long best friend Chad, telling him about what happened: now I realize that I was desperate for a voice to talk to. And I couldn't stop crying. Harder than I ever had before until that day.
It was the ambulance arriving that first made me panic. The lady who took care of my other grandmother in the house across the road, she came to our front door. The first words that came out of me were "Did something happen to Dad?!"
No, Dad was okay.
But Mike had been killed.
Mike Ashley: 19 years old. Brown haired, a little bit of a mustache. As upstanding and Christian of a young man as you were ever likely to meet. He knew Dad because Dad had been friends with his father. And early in the summer of 1985, Mike started working on our dairy farm as a hired hand.
Being able to say that I grew up and worked on a dairy farm: that is something that I am very proud of. And with each passing year I realize how much happiness there could be found in that. I couldn't do too much, being about ten when I started. But on occasion Dad did let me help a calve to be born. And I can honestly say that I have milked cows by hand (go watch that scene in Witness where Harrison Ford's character is up at 4 a.m. to milk the cows on that Amish farm... and then imagine your friend and humble blogger doing that :-).
It was the people that Dad hired to work on our farm that I remember most vividly. Maybe that had something to do with my outlook on human nature, 'cuz at a very early age I had come to know so many kinds of people. They were white. They were black. They were migrant laborers from Mexico (some of whom spoke not a word of English, but we all seemed to understand each other somehow). They were my cousin Craig and my Uncle John. Some of them were characters in their own right. Others were - in their own way - downright silly. All of them worked hard, sometimes for a season and then going back to whatever or wherever, sometimes coming back to work again.
Mike Ashley though...
He worked as hard as anyone. Always cheerful, always smiling and with a twinkle in his eye. He was looking to go into farming as well, so this was kinda like college for him.
He was with us on the farm for two months. And in that time, well...
...he became the closest thing to an older brother that I would ever have.
I fast came to look up to Mike. Maybe it was the noble qualities that he had: qualities that in retrospect, I decided that I wanted to have in my own life. He became a role model to me.
And the thing is, I was admittedly pretty offbeat even as a kid. Mike was the first "grownup" who I had any extended time with who was sincerely interested in the things that I was interested in. And that had a lot of appeal to me.
So a lot of times in the afternoon, after Dad and Mike and whoever else had lunch and Dad took his usual nap before the afternoon milking, Mike would want to see the books that I was into. He enjoyed reading my comic books. He really loved going through my stash of MAD Magazines. And he even thought that my Transformers toys were very cool.
That is the last, best memory that I have of Mike. He was in my room on the afternoon of August 6th, and I was showing him how to convert my army of Autobots and Decepticons into their respective cars, trucks, guns, cassette tapes, what have you. Mike was instantly hooked on them! Pretty soon he was transformin' 'em just as well as me or anybody.
That was the afternoon of August 6th, 1985. And that night I found myself thanking God for the friendship that I had with Mike.
It was the very next day that Mike died on our farm.
He had been on a tractor, scraping cow manure into a manure spreader. And if you don't know already cow manure is some of the best fertilizer imaginable. On a small farm it is a very valued and precious resource. And it was something that had been done like a zillion times.
It worked like this: the manure spreader was parked below the high end of a ramp. Whoever was on the tractor would tow a bladed attachment and scrape manure that had come out of the barn and cattle stalls, off the ramp and into the spreader.
That is what Mike was doing.
To this day we don't know what caused it to happen. Maybe he saw a deer off in the field and was momentarily distracted.
The tractor drove over the top of the ramp and flipped over. Mike was killed instantly.
It was Dad who found him a short while later. He saw smoke coming from behind the barn. And then he saw the overturned tractor with Mike pinned beneath it.
A short while later the emergency vehicles and lots of cars and trucks started arriving. Mom got the call at work and rushed home immediately. She dropped my sister and me off at her mother's that night.
That's when Granny remarked that "The good die young."
Twenty-five years later and I'm still trying to suss it all out. I'd still like to know why God took Mike away from us: so young. So upstanding. So good...
He would have been 44 now. He should have known what it was like to be a husband and a father, 'cuz there's no doubt in my mind that he would have been the best. He should have had all the opportunities that a person as sweet and virtuous as he was... well, I think good people deserve more, anyway!
It's enough to make me question my own life. I'm now 36. Still young (and like to think that I'll always have that childlike quality no matter how many years go by), but I've had many more years than Mike ever got. Almost by twice as much. I look at myself and I don't see a necessarily "good" person. I see a flawed, messed-up guy who... doesn't deserve anything at all.
So help me, I have told God more times than I can count how unfair it is. That He would take someone like Mike Ashley from us and leave me - a complete screw-up who fails too many times more than I've ever succeeded - still here.
(Yeah I'll go ahead and admit it, for the first time: I am now divorced. And there is more that I am feeling led to write about that and have been feeling it for some time, but for now God is making me wait on that. It's not something to be proud of but at the same time, I cannot but feel that God has used this period to grow and mature me and make me appreciate His grace more than I ever have before... but that's an essay for another time.)
My life has been one cluster-#&@% after another. Why couldn't God have taken me? Why, why did He take Mike instead? Why does He seem to always take the people who deserve to have long, full lives on this earth?
"The good die young."
That is the closest thing to an answer that I have ever had. Maybe more so now than I ever did then, I have to draw some comfort from them.
Because God's ways... really aren't our ways at all. We expect Him to hand out goodies to us, rarely stopping to understand that this world is still a fallen place and tragedy does come from it.
I might still question Him at times. But, I am no longer angry with Him. About anything that has happened in my life. At long last I can see, and be thankful, that in spite of ourselves God doesn't mess up. That from each thing, for those who do love Him and seek after Him, He will never cease to eternally labor for our benefit.
A quarter century later, and I am thankful to God more than ever before: that He put Mike Ashley into our lives, for however brief a span.
And now you know, dear reader, that once there was a man and his name was Mike Ashley. And that he was a good man. He was someone that I have long strived to honor (and often missing the mark) with my own life and my own actions. And if others had the honor of knowing Mike, he would have left them with just as wonderful an impression from his strength of character, his humbleness, and his enthusiasm.
He was taken from this earthly realm twenty-five years ago today. I still miss him. And I still love him as the older brother that I never had.
And I do rejoice that he was here... and that he will be waiting for us all someday.
Friday, August 06, 2010
ABC's V next season featuring the return of Jane Badler!
Yeah you read it right. And not only that but Badler will again be playing evil Visitor baddie Diana: the role that she is still notorious for nearly thirty years later. In the relaunched series however Diana will be the mother of Anna (Morena Baccarin's character), the Visitor who's been leading the invasion of Earth. So it's two different characters, but each named Diana and each played by Jane Badler. Got it?
Ain't It Cool News has more info, including the official press release heralding Badler's return to the V saga.
I'll admit that I've only seen a bit of ABC's V. It's shown some great potential, but thus far hasn't quite lived up to it. Here's hoping that the second season will have this series finally coming into its own. That Jane Badler is being brought back makes me cautiously optimistic.
But that's gonna be dashed to piece if the second season premiere (the first episode that Badler will appear in) doesn't have a scene like this one, from Part 1 of the original NBC miniseries V in 1983...
I was ten years old when I first saw that. And I still get wigged out just thinking about it.
