I've always thought the original Star Trek series was dreadful, so I enjoyed the hell out of Fred Reed's take. Here's a sample:
The transporter always made them disappear in a cloud of little flashy light thingies. The trouble was, they always reappeared somewhere else. I figured it was a design flaw with transporters.
It's worth reading the whole thing.
Ian Hamet at Banana Oil! informs us that The Fountainhead is now available in a Chinese edition. I agree with him, this is fantastic news.
Possibly my favorite part:
CREW: Oh shit, they shot up all our friends' planets too!
OPERATIVE: This is all your fault. We're making a better world. And by the way, I'm totally fucking psycho.
MAL: *snaps* OK, fine! We're disguising ourselves as Reavers and going to Miranda!
SERENITY IN REAVER DRAG: *sneaks through Reaver fleet*
CREW: Oh please, oh please let this work!
JAYNE: *Cradles gun* Oh please, oh please don't let me piss myself!
CREW: Whew. Wait, this planet is full of people who died for no apparent reason.
JOSS WHEDON: *points camera at Wash for no apparent reason*
FANS SEEING THIS AGAIN BECAUSE JOSS WHEDON IS OUR MASTER: AAAUGH! Whedon, you bastard!
WOMAN IN VIDEO: We meant to make everybody calm and happy. They got so calm they happily lay down and starved to death. We didn't mean it, honest!
OFFSCREEN IN VIDEO: GRAAAR!
WOMAN IN VIDEO: By the way, some of the people did not get calm and happy and lay down.
NOT CALM, NOT HAPPY PERSON IN VIDEO: GRAAAR! Munch munch munch.
(Hat tip: Paul Hsieh at NoodleFood. As he says, it contains lots of spoilers, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, don't click through).
Jonah Goldberg posts this on The Corner:
From a reader:
Harriet Miers has been staring down into the legal abyss created by the War on Terror for four years. She's no doubt more acutely aware of the strains in our Constitutional system than any of the heavyweights the President passed over. There are those who are serious people because they need to be serious people, and there are those who are serious because they are called to seriousness by events, not by a mere predilection to be so.
True, true...but we also have frivolous people, and George Bush is one of them. For a guy who spent much of his own military service not serving, he sure seems to believe that the military is the cure for everything. Not just Afghanistan (which I supported) and Iraq, but also Syria and Iran...and Katrina and Rita and avian flu.
Not the border, though. Oh no, not the actual US border, no need to protect that. Except from prescription drugs imported from Canada.
From The Times:
The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible.
“We should not expect to find in Scripture full scientific accuracy or complete historical precision,” they say in The Gift of Scripture.
Duh.
So the Bible is the inspired word of God, but not, I guess, inspired to, um, accuracy. Heh. Consder this, though: the Pope is infallible (when he speaks under certain circumstances), but the Bible -- which predates him by, oh, a few years, at least -- is not. It'll be fun to see how this plays out.
...but they can be pissed away.
Good points made by Tim Lynch:
The Sept. 9 court ruling concerning Jose Padilla, an American citizen locked up in a military prison in South Carolina for three years, is a case in point. The ruling should send shockwaves through the American public since the decision seriously undermines constitutional rights.A federal appellate court ruled that constitutional rules that apply to the police do not apply to military personnel. That is a sensible proposition when the military is conducting operations in a war zone like Iraq, or in a disaster zone like New Orleans, but it is an alarming idea when the U.S. military is given carte blanche.
Richard Nixon? Please. Well, he did try, didn't he: "If the President does it, it's not illegal." Oh yeah, I'd love to trust him.
Jimmy Carter? Outstanding: the President who spent his time in the Oval Office schedulinguse of the White House tennis courts, who thought we could invade Iran with...wait, how many helicopters was that? Dream on.
George Bush the First, he of "Read my lips" infamy? Get real.
Bill Clinton? It is to laugh. Remember how his minions treated his female accusers? Remember, too, that he didn't want to trust you to find your own doctor, or to own a weapon which looked as if it could fire full auto. Score this guy a miss.
And George Bush? Right. This guy won't even trust you to buy your own prescription drugs from Canada or Mexico, so why should you trust him?
Let's not forget the also-rans, either: McGovern. Mondale. Dole. Gore. Kerry.
/Shudder.
If you want to trust any of these goons, go right ahead. But don't involve me.
Bush often speaks about his desire to bring freedom to the people of Iraq, but some of his policies are undermining freedom here at home. Make no mistake. The Padilla precedent constitutes a break in our constitutional levee, which protects liberty by restraining government power. We should not wait until our constitutional levees collapse to appreciate the danger that the "laws of war" pose to freedom in America. Free societies do not just "happen." They must be deliberately created and deliberately maintained.
(Hat tip: Diana Hsieh
Ian Hamet on one very appreciated aspect of Firefly:
Another very nice aspect is the science fiction. The science isn’t emphasized, but this might in fact be the first truly hard SF show on TV. No FTL, no humanoid aliens, no races so advanced as to be indistinguishable from gods, none of that. And the parts that might be fudged are very pleasantly not overexamined — what kind of solar system does this take place in, and how the heck could so many planets and moons be made Earth-like? It’s possible, but the writers never go out of their way to open the question. It’s just there, and since the characters accept it, so does the audience. (Another possible area of fudging — how do ships escape gravity wells so easily? I simply take it as advances in propulsion, but it’s a stretch. Would have liked to see at least the Alliance worlds have Beanstalks as their ports, but I’m a geek.)
Indeed. No wormholes or time travel either. Not all the food is reliably tasty and, as in Brazil and (to some degree) Anthem, although it's the future and the high-tech touches are there, it's not all high-tech, not all of the high-tech stuff works, and little of it works wonders. When Serenity is damaged, she stays damaged until repairs are made. Finally, as Alexandra points out, there's another very nice science-y touch: the out-of-atmosphere ("atmo," in Firefly talk) explosions are silent. And even the Reavers, we're reminded (especially in the Serenity film), are human, not alien.
And my own observation: in having no aliens, Firefly avoids one truly goofy Star Trek howler, that of characters who are supposed to be alien-human offspring. Give me a break. We can barely get cats and dogs to live together, and Star Trek would have us believe creatures from different planets mating and reproducing? Thanks, but I'll take Firefly.
I'm getting pretty bleeding edge lately...checking out RSS and subscribing to stuff... got a copy of The Game before its publication date...saw Serenity the night it premiered (no, I didn't get to one of its blogger pre-screenings)...hey, I'm just a wild and crazy 21st century guy.
The latest thing I'm looking at is podcasting. I never tried audioblogging, but last fall, in a hotel room in Killeen, Texas, I began reading about podcasting and Adam Curry's iPodder application. Sounded pretty exciting: another use for my iPod Mini, the whole portability thing, no FCC concerns, etc. So it had to be checked out.
This weekend I checked out the new podcast features of iTunes, and also looked at iPodder X and iPodder Lemon (which is what everyone is apparently calling Curry's iPodder), and downloaded a few programs and listened to them.
I liked some of what I heard, but I was struck by a few things:
1. None of the three applications offer really intuitive commands or menus. I haven't come to hate any of them, but I'd like to settle on one and use it all the time.2. Podcasting is going to be bigger than audioblogging ever could have been. I'm not saying that I know how big it'll get, because I don't. But: an iPod Mini, for example, is smaller than a pack of cigarettes, and portability is power.
3. There's more commercial radio stuff available for download than you might suspect -- and it's available free. Public radio stuff, too (well hell, that material should be free -- we've already paid for it). And if archives are maintained, you'll still be able to hear some Air America programs after that outfit goes belly up.
So it's an interesting area with lots of potential. I'm already thinking of a podcast version of The Anger of Compassion...
Early in my blogging career, I lamented the moribund state of the Bill of Rights. I haven't had much reason to change the views I expressed then, but I did notice two things this morning...
First, Charles Hill points to Tamara K.'s "Bill of Rights for the 21st Century," and I like it:
You have the right to freedom of certain approved speech, at certain times that aren't too near elections. There is freedom of the press, as long as certain things aren't printed, and the internet is understood to not be "the press." And please understand that you are being monitored so that certain things you say or print may be being gathered as evidence just in case you are ever charged with anything down the road.You have the right to keep some arms, as long as they are a flavor the government approves of, and in some places you may not keep arms of any kind. You may bear these arms in the field and forest if you have paid money to the government. You may bear them on a licensed shooting range. You may bear them in public in some locales only if you have been photographed, fingerprinted, investigated and taxed. In many locales you may not bear arms even then.
You have the right to be secure in your person, house, papers, and effects unless a paid informant has suggested that you may have something the government doesn't want you to have, or Fluffy the Uberhund alerts on your luggage, or you fit a certain profile, or a policeman asks you.
You cannot be forced to be a witness against yourself, except with recordings of your voice, and various samples of your breath, bodily fluids, and small bits of flesh.
Your property cannot be taken for public use without just compensation, unless it'd be a swell place for a strip mall, or the cops need a new armoured car.
Cruel and unusual punishments shall not be inflicted, unless one considers being GPS/radio-tagged like a migrating seal to be cruel and unusual.
I especially like Tamara's rewrite of the Fourth Amendment, which is worth repeating here:
You have the right to be secure in your person, house, papers, and effects unless a paid informant has suggested that you may have something the government doesn't want you to have, or Fluffy the Uberhund alerts on your luggage, or you fit a certain profile, or a policeman asks you.
She's right on about Fluffy the Uberhund: I don't think I've ever seen a police dog, anywhere, that was very well-behaved. Think about it: don't cops normally tell citizens not to approach their K-9 partners? Why might that be? Jeez, I grew up with dogs, particularly with various flavors of German shepherd, and my dogs never bit anyone, nor did I ever worry about anyone approaching them. I have a German shepherd/Rottweiler mix, a four-year old named Athena, and you can approach her, too.
Two police dog incidents stand out in my memory: I was at a Marine Corps Reserve site in Tampa, Florida, where some law-enforcement type (Hillsborough County sheriff's deputy, I think) gave a demonstration of what his dog could do. And it was readily apparent what that dog could do: any damn thing he wanted. Fluffy was all over the place while his "handler" kept repeating "He'll do whatever I say." Yeah: unless you say "sit" or "stay" or "stop jumping, Fluffy." I laughed my ass off at this "demonstration."
The other Fluffy I saw was at Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix, Arizona, this past July. I didn't notice what rank his handler wore, but whatever it was, the "handler," once again, was clearly junior and subordinate to Fluffy, who pulled him along seemingly without effort. Was Fluffy a bomb-sniffing dog? Was he or she a drug-sniffing dog? I don't know. But I walk my two, untrained, dogs together, with far less trouble than this guy was having with his canine boss partner.
On a lighter note, Vin Suprynowicz this morning mentions a "Fourth Amendment Thong," which bears a legend reading "I Consent to This Search." Mmmm...
From TimesOnline:
RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.
The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.
Makes sense to me. Consider what religions have done to man throughout history, and it'll make sense to most of you, too: Christian leaders opposed anesthesia as recently as the nineteenth century, for example, and the Catholic Church is notorious for its opposition to all forms of birth control. Such positions are joined by Islam's proscription on representations of the human form, and both religions have historically not been known for tolerance of what they see as heretics, schismatics, and apostates. And atheism? Oh my...well, wouldn't want to say "Oh my God," would I?
The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.
“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”
Well, irrational beliefs and assumptions lead to irrational behavior, no?
On the other hand, if your society is composed of worthy believers, then perhaps you'll get to use the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch!
MOSCOW (AFP) - Historic Russian admiral Fyodor Ushakov -- a hero of Russia's wars against Turkey and Napoleon Bonaparte -- was designated the patron saint of nuclear-armed, long-distance Russian bombers by the Orthodox Church.Russian Patriarch Alexei II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, carried a reliquary and an icon of the admiral, who was canonised in 2004, into the Moscow chapel of the Russian Air Force's 37th Air Army in Moscow, Russia's RIA Novosti news agency said Monday.
"I am sure he will become your intermediary as you fulfil your responsible duties to the fatherland in the long-range air force," the patriarch said.
"His strong faith helped Saint Fyodor Ushakov in all his battles," the religious leader said, reminding his audience that the famous admiral of the 18th and 19th centuries never lost a battle.
Full story at Yahoo! News.
Is slavery good for business? Is it practical? What does capitalism have to do with the Enlightenment? What should and should not be privatized?
Prodos explores all of these questions and more in his interview with Dr. Andrew Bernstein.
I recently wrote that, since prices convey information, "price-gougers" keep shortages from happening. Economist Walter Williams agrees with me:
Suppose a family evacuating Houston chose to make a 146-mile drive to stay with relatives in Austin. Their car has a half a tank of gasoline -- plenty to get to Austin -- but just to be safe, they decide to fill up. What do you think they might do if they expected to pay $2.75 a gallon but when they got to the gas station they found the gas selling for $3.75? I bet they'd say, "The heck with that; we'll fill up in Austin."That's wonderful; they've voluntarily made gas available for someone running out of gas. In my book, for a motorist who's running on empty, gas available at $3.75 a gallon is preferable to gas being unavailable at $2.75 a gallon.
He points the finger at Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, too. Good going!
Saw Serenity the other night. Excellent all around.
One problem with most action movies, and I know I'm not being original here, is that there are too many explosions and not enough characterization or dialogue. Die Hard had both -- and a great villain, too: Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber damn near stole the entire show from Bruce Willis.
Serenity rates up there as well. Excellent dialogue, well-crafted characterization, and explosions! And with The Operative, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, it has a Gruber-worthy villain. He's got a Les Miserables quality to him, too, if you remember your Inspector Javert and his motivations...
Saw this list mentioned at Dustbury. I have a problem with item No. 57:
57. During the recording of "The Dark Side Of The Moon", the guys from Pink Floyd wrote on little papers questions like "Are you afraid of death?" and gave them to everyboy that was working at Abbey Road studio at the time. This included all the roadies, sound technicians, the Irish doorman, and even Paul McCartney (who was recording "Abbey Road" with the Fab Four on the same studio). The answers to the questions were recorded, and the best ones were put on the disc. However, Paul's answers weren't put on the disc because "he tried to be funny".
Doubt it. Abbey Road was recorded and released in 1969, and, given that Dark Side of the Moon was done in 1973, they weren't done "at the same time."
There's a recently-released bug fix for Firefox. Check it out.
Also in browser news, Opera is now available without ads. I do like Opera and I'm now using it on my iMac. I like Camino, too, which is a nice-looking, OS X-only product, but Camino has decided not to allow me into my Yahoo! mail account any more, so it's now Opera for me.
From that admirer of modern art, Alexandra, we learn that London's Tate gallery won't be showing a certain item in a planned exhibit of conceptual artist John Latham's work, due to concerns that Britain's Muslim community could be offended.
The title of the offensive work? "God is Great."
John Latham's God Is Great consists of a large sheet of thick glass with copies of Islam, Christianity and Judaism's most sacred texts - the Koran, Bible and Talmud - apparently embedded within its surface.The work was due to go on display last week in an exhibition dedicated to Latham at London's Tate Britain, but gallery officials took the unprecedented decision to veto it because of political and religious sensitivities.
Ah, those "political and religious sensitivities." That means, dear readers, fear of Muslim violence.
Now, all religions are irrational, I'll grant you that, and they all have bloody histories behind them, and I'll grant you that, too. But what we're facing today are worldwide movements of Muslims dedicated to blowing people up in the name of their religion, acting on that decision, and buffered by Muslim "moderates" making excuses for the murderous ways of their fellow believers. At least in most of western civilization today, no other religion can be so characterized.
Who wails, for example, over the innocents killed because of "Piss Christ?" No one does, because no one died. An execrable waste of human effort, that one, but nobody died over it, not even its perpetrator creator, Juan Serrano. What the Tate fears, with plenty of justification, is that Britons could be killed over "God is Great" -- and not because of violence from Jews or Christians, but from Muslims.
The hypocrisy here is that the Tate fears violence but doesn't quite come out and say so; no, they prefer to say that they don't want to offend "political and religious sensitivities." And that fear of violence is pretty damn justified, too, as the recent attack in Bali reminds us -- but they don't say that, either. They don't say it, even though there are plenty of people, in Britain, in Bali, and elsewhere, who regard resorting to violence as justified, even mandated, by their religion.
Artist Latham wants "God is Great" returned to him. Fine -- that's a matter between Latham and the Tate. And everyone observing this story -- especially those who like to speak of "root causes" -- should be aware that the fear of offense, and resulting violence, could have been sparked by adherents of any of the three religions depicted, no one of which is any more rational than the other. Probably neither Latham nor the Tate's trustees are aware of the meaning of that irony. If Latham were aware of it, perhaps he'd not make noise about wanting that particular work returned to him. But such observations have already been put forward ("Christianity had its violent past, too, you know..."), and while there's nothing wrong with that, it's irrelevant. We didn't see thousands of Catholic rioters or squads of suicide bombers reacting to "Piss Christ," and the Tate's not worried about Church of England communicants blowing up themselves and others over "God is Great." Can the Muslim Council of Britain honestly, and credibly, say the same of their fellow believers?
Ultimately, faith and force are corollaries, a point which has been made before. Appeasement didn't end in 1938, and the Tate incident won't be the last, either. And it won't stop the bombings, or the threats of more bombings.