The New Road

Deep Sea 3D

Deep Sea 3D has Megan's name written all over it. She loves 3D movies. And she is apopletic when it comes to fish, sea life, really anything to do with water. She will want to see it again, and again, and again. And thought I might think the third time is a bit much I think I might enjoy the first viewing myself. Hey, it's got Johnny Depp.

Speaking of movies. Looks like I will be going to one tonight. And I'm choosing between the Mars Rover IMAX movie, which is a scant 40 minutes. Or the blood soaked killing fest Running Scared. I wanted to see Freedom Land, but the reviews it's getting are so bad. 

Doom

I didn't want to spend the $10 to see Doom in the theatre, but a couple of bucks to rent the DVD piqued my interest. First let me say that this movie is dark. But not in the twisted way, I mean in the "somebody turn the fracking light on" way. In some scenes only small portions of faces thinly lit appeared from the milky blackness. I suppose that fits since the number one complaint about the game was that it was too dark and had people all over the world cranking up the brightness on their monitors all the way to 11.

This movie is like Dragon Slayer dark, but a lot, lot worse. I wouldn't mention it, except for the fact that it completely ruined the whole movie experience for me and thus rendered all other salient points of interest around the film irrelevant. Clearly this is not a good movie. What I saw of the acting was bad, and what I understood of the plot was a joke. But I knew that going in. Hell, I saw Resident Evil in the theatre! I know from bad. But at least Resident Evil I could see!

So... my suggestion... unless you want to spend hours cranking the brightness on your TV skip this movie. You may just find that when you can see the picture, you won't care enough for it to have been worth the effort. 

It's so sad, I didn't play the game becuase it was too dark. And now I hate the movie, because it's too dark. What? Are there some fans of deep dark images that are only vaguely recognizable out there? I'm sure there are, but why do they feel the need to torture us by creating eye strain... Ah, I get it... This was probably executive produced by some Lasix guys. They could stand outside the theatre with flyers; Now that you have screwed up your eyesight and can't see shit, visit Dr. Hanly just up the stairs to the right. Watch your step! 

The Ports Deal

I find the political calculations behind this port deal really interesting. The Bush administration never does anything without judging the political cost. Oh, wait, there was Harriet Myers. Well, anyway, almost always judges the cost before jumping on things. So why stand so firmly behind the Dubai ports deal?

My guess is this. They think they can win over the hearts of the base, and in so doing, look like strong leaders who support unpopular positions even if they are right. Which is a good way to go into the mid-terms.

Clearly they are loosing at the moment, since 70% of people think the ports deal is bad, and 58% of Republicans are in that camp. And Bushs poll numbers are really, really bad. He has a 34% approval rating at the moment. 

But I figure it this way. Leaving out the Myers thing, let's talk about recent successes. The NSA wiretapping thing is a watershed. It's an issue where almost everyone agrees that it's bad at it's core. But the administration was able to use it's media muscle to bring the conservatives on board with it. I'm guessing they think they can do it again. And they really don't have that far to go. If you just count Republicans than 58% isn't bad. And believe me, this administration only counts Republicans.

So the idea would be to use the 45 days to do wall to wall spin on Fox, Hannity, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Sunday morning shows, church rallies, et al. and try to pull this thing out. They need to find one hook, and that's probably the racism angle, that really sticks and just drive, drive, drive it home until people just moan the mantra that being against the ports deal is being racist.

Not only will Bush come out with a lucrative big dollar deal for his cronies, but he will also look like a civil rights hero. Oh, joy! 

Changing drinks

I'm changing up from lattes to capuchinos. There is less milk and a stronger coffee flavor. My barista over at Peet's says the best way to get one is to ask for a dry capuchino, which he says has the most coffee flavor. Cool. I'm not up to a straight espresso shot yet, but I'm getting there.

Cute Megan pictures for the day

Completely Zonked

The East Bay is chock full of tough hikes in the hills. Toughest among these is the Mission Hills hike which goes up about 3,000 vertical feet in around 2 miles. The first time I ever tried that hike it wiped me out for two days. Months later I was hiking it twice a week.

This even I feel like the aftermath of that first Mission Peak day. I'm completely wiped out by walking the Lake Chabot course. It's not long. It's just hilly. Very, very hilly. It's the golf equivalent of a miedevil torture device. There is almost never a clean shot. And getting from shot to shot will tire you out so much that even swinging becomes a problem after a while. It even has quests, like finding the blue tees. Which are often set so far back as to require their own paths. I can only think of two holes where the tee and the green were on the same plane. On the 9th hole the green is a sheer 300 foot drop from the tee box. Were it not for the scrub you could probably tee of with a putter!

I got there at 6AM, tee'd off alone around 6:45 and finished around 9:15. By the 11th I took my jacket off to find my shirt was just all sweat. The Dungeon Master, er Marshall, finally found me on the 15th just after I had a great drive. He said that even at his fittest he only walked 9 holes before getting a cart. The 16th was a hellish affair where you drove to a fairway across a wide unplayable ravine. And then there was the par six 18th. I lost three balls on that hole alone.

That's not to say that I hated this course. Quite the opposite. I loved it. And for $22 it's an absolute steal. The dilemna is this, you either walk the course and get a super workout, or you drive the course and get a super game. Unless you are a fitness freak with a locked in swing I don't think you can do both for 18 holes. 

Say One Nice Thing

So here is a crazy little idea I had this morning. I'd put together a very simple site called 'sayonenicething.us'. The home page for the site would be a two column layout. One one side it would be nice things that people on the left say about people on the right, on the other side nice things that people on the right say about people on the left.

Adding an item to either list would require registration, which is free, and would take your name, your email and where you live. Registered readers can also comment on each entry, and give it a rating (0-5 stars, thumbs up or down, or something like that.) You don't have to say whether you are right or left, you just post where you want to post today.

And that's really it. I can imagine that there would also be RSS feed URLs for either left, right, or both together.

Honestly, I think it would be self-regulating. When people post nasty stuff, which they surely will, the comments will kick them back in line. And frankly, somebody stepping out of line and getting bopped by both sides may just be the kind of remedy we need. 

Anyway, the idea is to get back to what's common with all of us. We all love baseball or football, we all love barbeques and days at the beach. We all want a nice place for our kids to grow up. We all get choked up when they play the anthem. And we all love it when we win at the olympics. So why are we letting these politicians and pundits, on both the left and the right, rip us apart? The nation suffers, we all get ulcers, and they get rich! So screw 'em. Let's talk again and find out that we are all more the same then we are different. 

One Nice Thing

Ok, maybe I'm having a personal turn-around here, but from now on I'm going to try and think of one nice thing to say about Republicans or "Red States" any time I make a political post and put that along with it. This is going to be my way of toning down my rhetoric and bridging the gap a little.

So my first one is this; I love that Southern tradition of eating peanuts in bars and having shells at the bottom of the bar stools. It makes the bar feel like home. Even though I don't eat peanuts and leave the shells out at home. ;-) 

Bill O'Reilly on gays

Bill O'Reilly had this to say about gays recently; "Brokeback Mountain seeks to humanize gays." I didn't know that the right had already won and that gays had been de-humanized already. Sick. These people are sick.

New car fluff

I've been seeing this around town recently:

I guess it's a count of folks and critters in the car. But, seriously, what's the point? Is it some qualitative measure of a life. We are heterosexual and we bred! Is longer better? I've seen some pretty long ones. Another variant is the Christian one that has a big cross and then the family all kneeling in a line behind it.

For myself I find this pretty annoying. But then I found the whole Baby On Board thing annoying as well. 

Is this just a California thing, or has it spread?

Bush on Dubai

Bush is now working a two pronged offensive on the Dubai debacle. Claiming that he never heard about a deal to change the ownership of American ports, perhaps our most vulnerable target. And also attacking anyone who speaks against this deal as, in effect, a racist.

Clearly, security is not a number one issue with the Bushies. What is it that Karl Rove said? Oh, yeah, after 9/11 the Republicans went hunting terrorists and the Democrats went to psychiatrists or some such stupidity. Obviously the correct statement is that the Democrats wanted to hunt and kill bin Laden and the Bushies just wanted to milk this thing for all the crony money they could.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that it would be in the best interest of the Bushies for America to be attacked again. Their party loyalists somehow manage to regard Bush as strong on security even though 9/11 happened on his watch. Another attack would only drive them further into their camp. It certainly worked in the microcosm with the terror alerts. Like lemmings off a cliff.

Only an idiot would say that we should hand over control of our ports to a foreign government, particularly one that funded 9/11 and provided two of the hijackers. But hey, that's the Security President for you.

NASA Report

No need to bury my interim report this time. I scored a 4.35 out of 5.0. Which is apparently in the 88th percentile. Which is a B+. A B+! Sweet. Anyway, they asked me back for another lecture. Hopefully I can have the topic changed to PHP application development, which is my actual strong suit. I've never really cared all that much about security. I dig that it's important, but I'm all about making the end-user smile, and security never gets smiles. The only reaction security gets is frowns when it fails.

NASA Ames

The NASA Ames talk went well this morning. Though that is just my take. I'll actually be getting feedback forms from the woman who set it up. How cool is that? It's like a report card... for adults. If it's bad I'll just bury it in the back yard like I did with my middle school interim report that said I was flunking math (bright kid.) Hopefully the fact that I steered clear of any rocket scientist jokes will get me a few points.

One thing that I was surprised by was the interest in Ruby on Rails. I'm a big supporter, even though I was there to talk PHP. Rails has a huge buzz factor. I think I'll have to start writing some articles on it. 

Anywho, back to Ames. It's an interesting facility. Some of the buildings are straight out of the 50s. And other enormous buildings, like the wind tunnel and the massive hanger, going mostly unused. I'd have taken more pictures if there was stuff to take pictures of. Generally it's just a mass of oddly shaped buildings with big tubes emerging from one building and then drilling into others. Inside it felt a lot like the University buildings I used to work in early on in my career.

I did get a chance to interview the director of nanotechnology about what they are trying to do at NASA with this exciting new science. He had some very cool things to say, and he was able to make it accessible to me, which means it should be accessible to almost anyone. ;-)

NASA Ames

I'm giving a lecture on PHP this morning at NASA Ames! How cool is that? I've never been there before. This is going to be so cool! After that I'm going to interview their director of nanotechnology research for the O'Reilly podcast.

Lots of article email

I was wondering why I was getting so much email on an article that I wrote recently for Developerworks. Turns out it was Slashdotted, and I didn't find out until this afternoon when an old friend from Macromedia told me about it. Cool!

Sickest prenup evah!

This contract of wifely expectations, whatever that is, defies words to summarize it. To say that he is objectifying his wife is an undeserved kindness. This is potentially worse than some of the sex slavery stuff I saw in a recent Frontline. I first read through the contract, then read through the stuff on the first page that sets it up. The back story explains a hell of a lot. Whoever recieved this document should use this man's face as a punching bag.

Dance, Bushie, Dance!

Bush just told the press on Air Force One that he supports Dubai taking over our port security. Obviously the White House is way out of sync with their own talking heads. The right wingers have been pounding on this issue to try and drown out the 'Cheney shoots man in face' scandal. And the call seems unanimous on both the left and the right that this Dubai deal is really, really stupid. And in particular, it's stupid on a gut level, where the right wingers so often live.

Clearly Bush is on the payroll of the middle eastern oil cartels and it's starting to show. 

Not just about the game

I had an hour or two this afternoon to go out for nine holes. Once I got to the course it became painfully clear that the rest of Fremont had the same idea and it was going to be a slow, slow day. I played with another guy who I had played with a few months ago. After a while another twosome caught up and joined us. I thought it was a father son combo, turned out to be a middle aged guy like me and a kid who had a hell of swing. The kid was a natural, but his golf etiquette sucked. On the 7th hole, my last hole, he teed off four times, after a perfect first tee off. I was kinda happy to get out of there, actually. if I had stayed around and he had kept up with the hijinks I would have slapped him.

Virtual Earth

Microsoft is out with their Google Maps killer. I like the resolution on the satellite images. I can even see my own truck in my driveway and the umbrella we have with the grill in the back yard.

Fetal cells protect mothers

Here is a fantastic story that I heard on NPR about how fetal cells from babies stay in their mothers for decades to protect them against disease.

Katrina report thoughts

I looked through the 520 page Katrina report. Here are a few thoughts:

• Didn't the hearings end yesterday? They had time overnight to write 520 pages? And if this was canned, then why hold hearings?
• There are lots of pictures but Bush is shown only twice. The Air Force One picture is not there. And the two images of him look cherry picked to make him look his best.
• There are no pictures of any dead bodies. There are well over one thousand known dead with another three thousand missing, but there are no pictures of them anywhere in it.
• Sean Hannity's insistance that thousands of busses were available (pulled exclusively from a single image which is included) is debunked. There were only hundreds and 80% of those were under water and unservicable.
  
• The report does say that Bush's insistence that nobody could have foreseen the damage that could be caused by levee failure are "not consistent" with the facts.
• Bush is hardly mentioned, actually, having done a search on that term. The Air Force One flyover isn't mentioned. Nor is the party he attended the day after landfall, or the guitar he recieved as a gift.
  

I'll probably spend the time to dig a little more into it. From what I can see it tends to uphold the basic "state and local" line while adding in Brownie and Chertoff for good measure. It debunks the more ridiculous Republican lines (e.g. the busses).

I liked the 9/11 report. But I think that was a lot more balanced than this. 

Brokeback to the future

This satirical trailer is funny as hell.

Frontline

Frontline is the best hour of television I watch. The reporting is in-depth, light on fluff, and the topics are always relevant. Yesterday's Frontline, on the meth problem in America, is a fantastic example of this. They cover the mechanism that meth uses to stimulate the brain and addict it's users from the first hit on. They also do a great job covering the timeline of meth in America and the governments involvement in the supply chain of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine. The show was produced in conjuction with The Oregonian who first published the haunting faces of meth. A piece which opened a lot of eyes, including my own.

I thought meth was on the way out. Unfortunately it's not. Meth really scares me because of what it does to the people who use it and how it destroys communities. Everyone should watch this show.

Hide and seek

Megan is all about the hide and seek again.

This shot is from when we played hide and seek after I got home. We even play hide and seek when we walk the dog.

3/4 swing

I've been playing about one game a week now for a couple months and I haven't improved as much as I would like. And what I re-discovered over the past two days is that my swing went back to be over-long on the backswing. So I chopped it down to a 3/4 swing and it has really tightened up. I went to the range tonight, set down five balls in a row and used my rescue 2 iron, and hit all five out to 220 with real consistency. And out of 85 balls I only hit one really off. I think I made a huge improvement in my game here. I can't wait to take it to the course.

NaDa

NaDa has changed the way I think. It was so easy to not use. I can't wait to not use the 1.0 version.

Whittington jokes going stale

Mr. Whittington has suffered a mild heart attack because of a lead pellet that lodged in his heart after Cheney shot him. O'Reilly and Hannity's jokes about him now seem a little cold. But not as cold as Cheney who apparently stood silently aside as Whittington received medical aid, then went to dinner with his hosts. That's concern and compassion for you.

New way to answer questions about the extreme

The Bushies have taught me something new. Here is how you handle questions about hypotheticals and extremes, just say that your happy you don't have to deal with it, then burn time giving the same stock line. That's what all the apologists are doing about the NSA domestic wiretapping scandal. If someone asks them if the President can now open peoples mail, they just say that it's a good thing that we aren't dealing with that question, then go back to the same line about how we all must give up our civil liberties in exchange for their awesome security.

So next time somebody asks me about how well my code will scale in the future, I can just say; "I'm just glad now isn't the future. It scales really well right now." 

More fun with Creationism

This article from the L.A. Times on creationism is lots of fun:

Ham encourages people to further their research with the dozens of books and DVDs sold by his ministry. They give answers to every question a critic might ask: How did Noah fit dinosaurs on the ark? He took babies. Why didn't a tyrannosaur eat Eve? All creatures were vegetarians until Adam's sin brought death into the world. How can we have modern breeds of dog like the poodle if God finished his work 6,000 years ago? He created a dog "kind" — a master blueprint — and let evolution take over from there.

I love the facts that this guy presents. I don't remember the whole vegetarian dinosaur thing in the Genesis portion of the Bible.

Republicans : Endless war

Condeleeza Rice lecturing us about how governments should "tamp down tensions" in Iran is rich. Her, Bush and the cronies have been stoking the fire for World War III with Iran, North Korea, Syria and more for years now. Axis of Evil? And Bush's other inflammatory rhetoric about Iran. That's not building tensions. Please.

What is the Republican view on Diplomacy, or on understanding your enemy? Is it ever appropriate. All I can see from these people is more war, more torture, more death, more white phosphor used on women and children. Do Republicans ever talk about peace? Is the only answer in the Republican playbook war?

Olympics

I didn't think I was going to watch much of the Olympics, but it's addictive as always. Though I find that the video quality is not very good. I think the problem is that they are videoing everything in HD and then downgrading it to NTSC for us non-HD folks. And the result is an oversharp image. I found this particularly annoying in the men's half pipe on Sunday night. The grain of the snow was just plain nasty.

Of course, we should just go HD, but it's a lot of money to go HD on the TiVo. I wonder if, since DirecTV covers our TiVos, if we can ask for an HD upgrade. I think our big TV will handle it. But if not it looks like big HD TVs have come down dramatically in price.

Golfing in the fog

I went out for nine holes at Mission Hills very early this morning. The first hole was clear but as I was wlking the fog roled in hard. Visibility varied between 30 and 80 yards making even par threes guess work. On the sixth hole, which is par four 320 yards, I usually slice off to the rough on the right. I lined up to the left and let it rip. It looked like another slice as it disappeared in the fog, but as I walked down the fairway I found it sitting 70 yards from the center of the pin right in the middle of lane. What a shot! I could't get a good read on the distance though so I over hit the approach and ended up getting a par. But it felt good to get that super sweet drive anyway.

More Coulter comedy

More insanity from Ann Coulter masquerading as comedy:

"I think our motto should be post-9-11, 'raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.'"

"If we find out someone [referring to a terrorist] is going to attack the Supreme Court next week, can't we tell Roberts, Alito, Thomas and Scalito?"

Wow! Now that is funny. Or... wait... what's funny about this? Or is it satire? Oh, yeah, I forgot, Republican comedy = hate speech. 

Is this what the Republicans are talking about when they say that they are raising the tone of the debate in Washington?

Big bad day for Madonna

Madonna needs some people around who will tell her when she looks like an idiot. Woo hoo! You go with your Pippy Longstocking self girl!

Dealing with dehydration

A few months before Lori and I left Australia I started an exercise regime and lost around 80 pounds. But at the same time I was in a tremendous amount of pain from an un-diagnosed anal fissure. A week after we got to San Francisco I went to the doctor and they performed an operation to fix the problem. But the symptoms lingered for years after that. I could work out a couple of days, then I would get some symptoms and back off for a week or two, then try to work out again, and once again have problems.

Eventually I gave up on exercise because of a combination of that health problem, and with the advent of a new job that I decided I would dedicate myself 150% to. Eventually that dedication was rewarded with narrowly avoiding getting laid off and I learned some hard lessons about balancing work and home life.

Now I am back on the workout regimine and it seems to be going well. I haven't had any problems yet. But I know that it could come back. The strange thing about anal fissures is this, nobody really knows what causes them. Though it could be linked to dehydration. And what causes dehydration better than sweating for an hour during a workout routine?

So my question is, if you work out, how do you keep hydrated? Do you work out less and hydrate more intentionally? Do you just over-drink on water? If so, how much? Or do you drink sports drinks?

I know I sweat a lot, probably more than most folks, but this has to be something that active people deal with all the time. As it stands I'm trying to drink a couple of liters a day, and then add on water and gatorade at around a 50/50 mix every 10-15 minutes during exercise.

Cheney is the like

The National Journal is reporting that Cheney authorized Libby to leak Plame's name to the press:

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

Looks like the bionic man has a little splainin' to do.

Personally I still think it was Bush. Bush has that country bumpkin manner going on. But stories from inside paint a much darker picture. Remember it was Bush who asked for Osama bin Laden's head on a pike, literally, after 9/11. The CIA went so far as to send dry ice to Afghanistan in a box to hold the head. 

Worst/best thing evah!

Is this the worst thing ever, or best thing? Can't be sure. Either way, the guy is very dedicated to the Trek.

Spinning the heckling at the funeral

I love how the right wingers are going on and on about how disrepectful the dissenters were at King's funeral. I think it's just a reaction to having their beloved God/King meet actual Americans. Given that all of his appearances and speechs are in front of hand selected audiences of true believers.

Yes, a lot of Americans hate Bush. It's not just a small group of moonbat liberals. Did you see how they responded to Clinton with minutes of standing ovation, before he had even spoken. When Bush came up there was only polite applause and moans before he sputtered and drooled his way through his miserable fascist idiocy.

58% of Americans think that Bush deliberately lied us into war. That's a large majority of Americans thinking that the President did something impeachable. Far more impeachable than the blow job that the right wing spent eight years prosecuting. Yes, we hate this guy. And the number of people that hate him grows every day.

Mom's golf trip

When my mother got through her second bout with cancer I thought it would be good to do something really special for her. She is a golfing freak so I thought the best thing would be to give her a trip to Pebble Beach, one of the premiere golf courses in the world. That promise will come to fruition in late April when she first goes to see Jenny, Tom and the boys in Walla Walla. Then she will come down to see us, with her sister flying up from Los Angeles.

We were going to go to Pebble. But it's now changed into going to several smaller courses, around the Bay Area, and up in the wine region of Sonoma. I'm particularly looking forward to playing the course at Bodega Bay. The views will be absolutely breathtaking. When I went to Mendocino last winter I was in awe of the natural beauty and now I will get to play golf in it. It's a little piece of Irish coastline right in our back yard.

Another nice part of playing on the North Coast is that Lori, Megan and Carlos can tour some wineries or walk around the wonderful cities in Sonoma while we play. Then we can meet up for lunch, winerying (?) and dinner.

I think this will be a nice treat for mom. She has been through a lot and she deserves a nice time out with her family doing something she really enjoys. 

Battlestar

I've been listening to the Battlestar Galactica podcast. In this last installment they had two of the writers for the show on. Turns out the show was inpsired by Bah Bah Black Sheep, one of the books of the legendary fighter ace Pappy Boyington.

I'm impressed by how much background work these guys do; flying in simulators, doing extensive background research. It really shows when you watch each episode. It's also interesting to me that the writers originally came from the Star Trek show Deep Space Nine. That was easily the best written of all of the Star Trek shows.

I wouldn't say that the podcast is a must listen to, but it does add an extra dimension to the viewing please of Battlestar Galactica.

Bush slammed on WMDs

Bush was slammed by Rev. Lowry at Coretta King's funeral. Ouch! All that and he rhymed it too!

The IT Crowd

The British comedy The IT Crowd, is fantastic. Well worth the download time, particularly if you work in technology.

Wine recommendation

Lori got me a couple of bottles of the Ferrari-Carano Sienna and it's fantastic. I highly recommend it. Very smooth, good complexity but not overly rich. Lori likes it too and she isn't a big fan of reds.

NSA hearings

I'm listening to the NSA hearings on C-Span. What a joke. The Republicans just want to give Gonzales and Bush more and more power, and the Democrats are the only ones asking any real questions. And when they do ask real questions Gonzales just blows them off with bullshit non-answers.

These are not the same type of Republicans that were in Congress during the Nixon administration. There is no accountability here. These people are in complete collusion with Bush and whatever illegal activities he wishes to understake.

Oh, there was just a protestor. Go baby, go! Fascist, hell yes Gonzales is a fascist. 

Weekend pictures

We had a fun day on Sunday. First Megan and I went to get bagels, which we have done since almost the day she was born. Then we all did a little cleanup around the house. To reward ourselves we went to the Japanese gardens in Hayward. Megan and I had been there before to do some geocaching, but it was new for Lori.

 

 

 

Turns out the Geocache had been discovered and removed by somebody who probably doesn't understand the game.

After that we went to a kids park in Hayward that has a petting zoo, pony rides, a bouncy house and a train. Megan loved the ponies. 

And really liked the carousel. We went around two times and she could have gone for five times more.

 

It was a nice day out.

At five our sitter came by and Lori and I went to dinner at the Red Sea Ethiopian restraurant in Oakland. Then to see Transamerica in Berkeley. I thought Transamerica was pretty dull in it's first two acts. In particular I thought Felecity did a great job playing a transexual, but I didn't think that character that she was portraying was very interesting. In the third act the script finally let up on the reigns and it became a lot more fun. 

 

 

Tip for the day

Don't put the super glue next to the visine in the medicine cabinet.

Another solid 18

I went golfing in San Mateo this morning with Winsha. We were paired up with two singles, John and O.T. I played what I think is a pretty solid round. I was getting some very good drives and approach shots. I only duffed the ball five or six times. I'm finding that it's a game of concentration. The longer that I can hold my concentration on the game the better I play. Today it started to wain for me on the last couple of holes. But I was able to still make a few good shots on the last holes.

It was interesting to see how Jim and O.T. approached the game. O.T. in particular had interesting club choices. Even on short par threes he would still drive off the tee. He would choke down on the club and do a very short swing. Both John and O.T. were short off the tee for me. I was playing forward on tee set, but even so I was consistently out driving them by forty yards. O.T.'s backswing in particular was very short.

Anywho, it's nice to know that I can compete against these guys that have been playing for a while. I need to start keeping score. 

More human hybrid stuff

Here is the source for all of your human/animal hybrid needs. Man the Interwebs are running fast nowadays.

Two character movies

Instead of watching the State of the Union I chose instead to watch "Two For The Money". That movie got a 20% Rotten Tomatoes score, so I wasn't expecting much and was pleasantly surprised. What I found really interesting was how the movie was spun in the advertising. It's really a character story about two men, one struggling with his own ambitions and insecurity, and another struggling with his addiction. It's a complex film with no clear bad guys or wins and losses. And I think that might have thrown some people off since the trailers painted it as yet another tough guy sports movie.

Last night on Lori's recommendation I went to see The Matador and it was also a character development driven film. Though in this case I found the central character, played by Pierce Brosnan, to be a little less convincing. Though given the script that could have just been a good acting job on his part.  I'm not too worried about the success of this film, it has a 80% Rottent Tomatoes score and is doing really well for an art house movie.

Taking it to the extremes

KSFO, our local super-fascist AM station, has ads on billboards and buses all around town that say this:

Support the troops
Stop the war now

I say yes to both. I support the troops, and I want them to leave right now. The only people who can bring peace to Iraq are Iraqis. 47% of Iraqis support an active war against Americans. The Iraqis are at war with us. It's not Al Qaida who is killing us there, it's Iraqis. There are only 1,000 Al Qaida in Iraq. This notion that if we leave that the 1,000 Al Qaida will take over Iraq is nonsense.

You could say that 'Stop the war now' is legitimately the view on the other side. But it's shown in the worst possible light. It's like saying 'pro-abortion'. Nobody I know is pro-abortion. I think it's sad when someone has an abortion, but I support their right to choose to take that action. So I am 'pro-choice'.

This is just a rhetorical game that conservatives play where they take a question and put it in the most favorable light for themselves, and put the counter argument in the worst possible light. It's insulting and degrading, but conservatives don't mind that since they are most often the ones doing the degrading.

But two can play at this game. Here we go!

On Iraq:

Iraqis bring peace to Iraq
Impose draft, war forever

On Iran:

Diplomacy with Iran
Invade Iran today

On abortion:

Support personal choice
Baptist rules for everyone

On gun control:

Enforce reasonable gun laws
Give Uzis to prisoners in jail

On prayer in schools:

Support religious freedom
Enforced religious education

On freedom of religion:

Support first amendment
Concentration camps for non-Baptists

On social security:

Fix social security
Elderly die in streets

On poverty:

Help the poor
Exterminate the poor

On wiretapping:

Wiretaps with warrants
President is above all laws

On bribery scandals:

Uphold bribery laws
Government by rich, for rich

On elections:

Fair elections
One party rule, like Communism

On intelligent design:

Science in school, religion in church
Earth is flat

On a social safety net:

Reasonable social safety net
You fail, you die

(Ed. Note: I would have like to have written one about Osama Bin Laden, where on one side you had "Kill Osama Bin Laden", which I fully support. But I couldn't write the other side. What the hell are the Bushies doing about Osama? Nothing. Why? He should be dead. Six feet under. In a pine box. Up in ashes. Gone. Dead. Forever.)

These questions where the counter-point is taken to the extreme are stupid. All of us will fall somewhere in the center. No thinking religious believer says that religion should be forced on anyone, and no thinking secularist believes there should be no churches. Religion is good if that is what you want. Not having a religion is ok too. It's a personal choice. Isn't that what America is about? I get to be me and you get to be you. And as long as we play nice together everything is cool.

I had a boss once who was extremely conservative on the technology side, which was bad given his position as lead engineer. Whenever I would bring up a new technique or design that I proposed using in a limited way, he would always take my ideas to the extreme. Which of course would imply lots of risk and time spent on what wouldn't be customer visible benefit. I would end up looking the fool, and he would be the pragmatic hero once again. In the end I did what all of the other engineers did, shut up, and innovation at that company died and remains dead today.

Human-Animal Wha? Who? Wha?

Love Bush or hate him, sometimes we just can understand him. For example, what the fuck was this?

A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners, and that recognize the matchless value of every life. Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research -- human cloning in all its forms … creating or implanting embryos for experiments … creating human-animal hybrids … and buying, selling or patenting human embryos. Human life is a gift from our Creator -- and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale. …

What the hell is that? I've never heard of that. Ever. And I've heard of a lot of stuff. Lots. But, you know, never, human-animal hybrid stuff.

And this was in the State of the Union. Can't we at least expect that these speechs make some amount of sense?

Perhaps this was Bush's way of making sure that we never ever create something like him again. Of course, even in that he was wrong, since he is a human/slime covered rock hybrid.