An Inconvenient Truth

Well, did you really expect him to be less of a total hypocrite than all the other politicians?

Me, I'm sitting back waiting for further warming, which has been long coming, so we can see a brief resurgence of the wine industry in south England before nature being her cyclical self goes cold again. It's happened before, it will happen again, with or without us.

So power up Al Gore!

Sort of like how Iceland is in the northern hemisphere between Alaska and Sakhalin

quoth the stupefied from the article: "The electromagnetic spectrum runs from long-wavelength radio at one end to high-energy, short-wavelength X-rays and gamma rays on the other. Between microwaves and X-rays, lie T-rays, or terahertz radiation."

In reality, also between microwaves and X-rays are infrared, visible light, and ultraviolet and in fact, these come after T-rays. T-ray sit beyond far infrared.

Did you know that New Mexico sits between California and South Carolina?

Cruel and Unusual Punishment for Fish

What a crappy way to treat your scaly friends. Sure the water will keep them from smelling the odors but the last thing they need to see is your sweaty soiled behind as you go to wipe. Bonus Problem: your average immature male will be tempted to give them a shower when they go for a whizz.

Where's Betty White and PETA on this?

Sometimes they jump out at you...

"You can disagree with me about Iraq all you want, but you gotta admit I got some big ones. Even Condi here thinks so."

From the We Couldn't Get This Lucky Department...

Well, I think this makes sense in a weird way...

Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can't Index

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA-Executives at Google, the rapidly growing online-search company that promises to "organize the world's information," announced Monday the latest step in their expansion effort: a far-reaching plan to destroy all the information it is unable to index.

BBspot - Internet to Observe National Holidays

BBspot - Internet to Observe National Holidays

Further Not Getting The Point Admissions

This yokel is yet another inductee. Farenheight 451, a book about a future where books are banned and burned, is protested for having dirty language in it. Quote: "If they can't find a book that uses clean words, they shouldn't have a book at all." Exactly the sentiments of the government burning books in Farenheight 451.

Duh.

Further Idiocy, Re: Disturbed Covers Land Of Confusion By Genesis

What the heck is this stuff? Well, I can only surmise some people have played way too much Monopoly, watched way too much History Channel, and gotten way too high on some serious drugs.

Yup, common folks are victims of some pasty white cigar smoking guys behind a lot of murderous mutant soldiers bringing war and death on the people. Little girls who look like Dora the Explorer are being urged to strap bombs on themselves by strange beardy guys. And when the revolution comes, there will be more murderous violence by the supposed downtrodden and in the end it will all be about money.

Does anyone else remember the war of San Ysidro when the US Empire opened fire on milling starving Californians, leaving a bloody mess of Jordache jeans and Birkenstock sandals? No? Me neither.

I hear Dora is nicely unexploded as well.

Handicapped Safety in Meriden

This was an impulse shoot as I left Meriden City Hall. In a city that hassles homeowners for minor infractions regarding the conditions of their houses and yards, especially poor neighborhoods like mine, I thought this was priceless. South side of Meriden City Hall, improperly installed, and completely defective current state. Put full adult weight down on this laterally as one might do in a fall, and it will go down. Note the improper Sonotube® usage. First, they are too small and guaranteed to crack with any appreciable lateral force. They should have been eight to ten inch size instead. Second, the posts must be properly centered for maximum strength. These are basics known to anyone who has ever installed a new mailbox post. How did this construction crew miss it? More to the point, how did this pass inspection? Welcome to the dystopia.

My take on... D&D Online Stormreach

This is very preliminary so I'll make it quick.

After my first evening of the 7 day free trial my verdict is: VERY GOOD, KEEP IT UP!

It was very quick to register, my cable modem got a workout downloading the 1.7 GIGABYTES of data to start, and then I waited another half hour for it to update after installation on first run. Thereafter, smooth, no crashes, pretty straightforward.

Single biggest problem: movement controls. I HATE those mouse+keyboard systems ala Doom and always have. That will never change. The ubiquitous nature of twin joystick gamepads is something they needed to take into account for a first person/third person ghost run around game like this. Why is it that the only game making proper use of a gamepad on a PC that I've yet tried is Rayman 3? One stick to control camera, another to move, several buttons to control and fire and jump. This game cries out for gamepad compatibility. I'll have to try creating a Logitech profile for this game.

As I said, VERY GOOD. I intend to buy the full game by the end of the trial. Seems worth it for the sheer amount of things to do. There's literally a quest around every corner.

My take on... Neverwinter Nights

I picked this up after seeing it on the shelves at a mall store. I'd recently gotten into playing games again when they were to be found at Best Buy for $2.99 to $5.99. Demon Stone, Silent Hill 4, so on. Not too shabby. One of the games was Baldur's Gate II, Shadows of Amn with Throne of Bhaal and I liked them a lot. They were somewhat complex to the uninitiated but I got used to them. I beat Demon Stone in two nights of after work play by the way. I highly recommend it.

Anyhow, I decided to try out Neverwinter Nights after seeing a blurb in Baldur's Gate II that you could import characters from there to Neverwinter Nights. Well, they did plan it at the time. Didn't turn out that way. They figured that since the initial module reset your character to level 1 and no inventory, why bother? Still, it would have been nice for the modules that didn't reset it. They didn't consider it at the time.

So I bought the Diamond edition and eagerly tore into it.

Whoa. Nice game. Magic weapons easily gotten, good armor, decently matched enemies and a storyline not too insulting to my intelligence.

So I beat the first adventure, finishing at level 16. Played into some of the others like Hordes of the Underdark and then went on to Infinite Dungeons and have since downloaded and installed the newest one. Go check it out for yourself, I won't tell you anything, not even the name. Two words though: rideable horses.

If you want more, just search out the site hosting tons of player made modules. I personally recommend Dances With Rogues, a really well done ADULT module centered on a female player character.

Yeah, it's short, so sue me. I never said this would be a big write-up, just my take. That take is: BUY NEVERWINTER NIGHTS. PREPARE FOR NEVERWINTER NIGHTS 2 COMING AT THE END OF THIS MONTH.

A couple things that caught my attention...

Jack Thomspon still sucks. Like this wasn't a no-brainer. One wonders when someone will come up with a game where the target is to assassinate the most ambulance chasing lawers with a stunning likeness of Jack included. Thompson you moron, Pac Man was considered GAMBLING in my home town and by local ordinance they banned arcade game playing by those under eighteen. So we rode our bikes from our (somewhat) nice suburb into the nearby nasty drug and gang infested city to play instead. Did I turn into a gambler? No. Did I become a monster for all the blowing up and shooting things during decades of playing? Did I become a murderer because I play AD&D? Or a Satan worshipper? Self-righteous fuckers never understand and only help spread the idea that we aren't responsible for ourselves whatsoever and need someone to think for us. No thanks, I can think for myself.

Smokers less well treated than other parents? Yup. I grew up with a father, stepmother, stepfather, and sister who all smoked cigarettes. I smoke pipes and cigars. Did they cause this? Fuck no. Anti-smokers encouraged me. If there's anything I hate, it's being told by totally obvious hypocrites what to do and what not to do in a patronizing "you're too stupid to think for yourself" way. Tell me porn is wrong? Well, I'm downloading that bisexual orgy video. Drinking is wrong? I'm cracking a 40 my man. Tell me I can't smoke? I'll puff in your face. If they wanted to convince me not to smoke, self righteous assholeness was not the way. Come to think of it, that's one of the big turnoffs I see in the environmental movement. Not surprising that they and the left in general are so well liked by people who can't wait to wallow in hypocrisy themselves like youthful twits who dress in black and whine and moan all day about the lack of niceness in the world, but treat other people with discourtesy and rudeness at the mall. Not me. When I saw some anti-semitic claptrap the other day, I immediately thanked G-d I married into a Jewish family. Tomorrow, I think I'll spend lunch smoking and revving my gas guzzling SUV's engine while farting methane. After that, I'll go home and eat a 2/3 pound burger and burn some leaves and inhale the smoke. Fuck off you self-righteous twats.

Global Warming Caused By Man?

According to this Yahoo news article, we are now nearing the warmest point we've seen in one million years. Of course, Earth HAS been warmer, much warmer over its FOUR BILLION plus year history. Not just during the hellish earlier phases either. Are CO2 levels being caused by man? Going by the venerated Vostok ice cores, used as and when convenient by the chicken little global warming brigades, I'd say not. Check it out for yourself. Note the graph on this Wiki page.

Note the regularity of the graph? Did mankind somehow send CO2 back in time to cause previous spikes? Or could Earth simply have a regular cycle of CO2 buildup, washout, and rebuild? Oh no, we can't consider that. We are the supreme creatures of the universe and all that happens must somehow be caused by us. Look for continued attempts to find a link between mankind and the SE Asian tsunami, Mt. St. Helens, and extragalactic supernovae for that matter.

EDIT: This just in! Whoa, when did we, mankind, cause this one? Did we send nuclear waste to the sun? Did the Enterprise make a booboo? Oh, that was TV. Right. Nevertheless, look for blame to be laid on the avaricious west and straight white Christian male hegemony. Save the sun!

Today's Long Lost Post

The Alliance for Sweden wins the Swedish general elections. This sounds better than the Alliance for Fresno winning, so... good job. Well done.

In another dramatic turn of events, the Pope recently referred to a more than six hundred year old interfaith religious discourse which trotted out the FOURTEENTH CENTURY idea that Islam was a violent faith. Taken aback, aghast, and otherwise flustered, Muslims around the world gave the response that this was not true. They were a religion of peace, and if the mention by the Pope wasn't taken back, throats would be slit, Rome and the Vatican would be destroyed, and all infidels would drown in a sea of their own blood. We of the Unified Effort for Equal and Identical Fighting Against Conformity welcome them to the Not Getting the Point Club. They join our other major religious member, the born again Christians seeking to stop killing at abortion clinics using firebombs to kill everyone at the abortion clinic.

In the area of music, tastes and brain power continue to lessen. Not content with allowing Metallica to obliterate all of what little artistic credibility there was in Bob Seger's original version of Turn the Page, which included a fleeting shot of Ginger Lynn Allen shoving the business end of a dildo up her nether regions, the music world now gives us Disturbed covering Genesis. You may begin your betting pools on when Alien Ant Farm will cover Eye in the Sky.

Let this be a lesson. Quiet ignorance of Murray Head is not a solution to that damn song and if we'd only been a little less negligent, maybe this could have been avoided.

In closing, I wish to put in my two cents on the old question, What is America's favorite pasttime? The number one pasttime is avoiding responsibility. The number two pasttime is excoriating everyone else for the first one.

Hot juicy beef with a generous helping of sauce

Say that title while holding a fresh cooked burger from McDonald's or Burger King and people will think you're doing a commercial joke and not a very good one. Say that while holding your crotch and leering, and you're likely to be punched out.

It is in that spirit of noticing differences being dependant on circumstances and context that I note the new Burger King BK Stacker sandwich. A quadruple bypass meal of up to FOUR beef patties, cheese by the truck, and a good helping of bacon on their usual seeded bun; this new concoction might constitute your daily recommended calorie intake for a week and your fat intake for a month.

Did I mention the "Stacker Sauce"?

Feel free to write your own porn jokes.

Addendum: Go look up and see how many people in the USA have the last name Stacker with a first initial of B.

Internet Dickery

Is Internet Dickery a justification for requiring people to strap on a stun-gun circuit attached to their PC before posting online? Most days, the Internet certainly makes you think so, doesn't it?

Of course, the worse dickery to me is in the abject hypocrisy of the embracing of the blogging phenomena by people who abuse the shorthand "tl/dr" which means "too long/didn't read" everywhere else, and often enough in replies to blogs be they Blogger or Live Journal.

One wonders what will become of mankind when in the modern western world attention spans have shortned to less than those of a chihuahua on amphetamine at Starbucks when to actually think and then act on that ability by communicating what one knows has become a target for idiot dickery and insults. When the mere ability to think is regarded by the shallow and superficial as showing off, and the conveyance of one's intelligence is regarded as subtle bragging, then something has clearly gone wrong.

Of course, we knew that years ago. I guess the Internet is just good at reminding one that thinking, speaking, writing, and other endeavors requiring any sort of intellectual labor are ill regarded these days and that brainless thoughtless gliding through life is celebrated.

Oh well.

If anyone in my huge readership of two or four people are paying attention, you will have noticed that I've replaced the Emo Philips banner with an RHCE quiz. Why? Well certainly not because I like Emo any less. Emo Philips I mean. Emo music I detest. The reason is that I intend to have Linux+ certification by the first of August, LPIC I certification by the first of September, and LPIC II certification by the first of October. By the first of December I intend to have RHCE and by spring of the following year, RHCA. Ambitious for me, less so for some, more than for others. In the middle of all that I also intend to get Network+ and Security+ and maybe A+ along the way.

One needs goals I think even if we don't reach them. The true goals are the journey to the goals we make up for the journey.

In the name of the environment and saving mankind, mankind negates what makes it special: democracy and free will

At what point did the energy efficiency movement abandon the principles of a democratic republic that power flows from the people to government and not the other way around, and that government exists for mutual needs in concert with individual rights?

Taxes are now accepted as a way of *forcing* other people to do what we want now? Not by me.

It is the job of the technologists to come up with solutions to problems, the job of businessmen to find what will sell, the job of social-public writers to convince people of free will to make changes, but it is not the job of any one group of people to get the government to impose its police powers on the people to force them into compliance with a given set of ideas.

Even less so when those ideas are on the level of faith and beyond discussion or argument which much of the energy efficiency sector's behavior demonstrates and has since the sixties. It comes down to: "Earth will die if people don't do as we say, don't argue, do what we say."

This flies in the face of rational scientific exploration never mind democracy. History has many times heard the argument that doing/not doing X will result in Y hence our solution Z must be implemented or catastrophe will result. None of them ever ends well.

To demonstrate the ramifications of this insistance on abuse of governance to force specific economic and political beliefs, what do you think would happen when the tax suddenly nuclear skyrockets the cost of doing business for cable, satellite, phone, electrical, and other utilities' field services?

Will a simple five minute truck roll costing $200 be worth it to you? Put *your* money where *your* mouth is. If you truly believe a milage tax is okay, start adding a little extra to your utility bills today. Do it at the store too because everything came by truck. And tip everyone you do anything with because they'll be paying more.

I have faith in science and human tendency to come through in the end. I will not be cowed by nonsense pop-environmentalism and fear of catastrophe into giving up on that. We heard dire warnings in the 70s that were supposed to have finished us off by the 90s. I call bs on this and am confident that mankind will overcome.

I think it sets a new standard in irony that arrogant anthrocentrism is leading towards saving humanity by annhilating democracy and free will without which humans are no different than an internal combustion engine.

Fedora Core 5 Verdict

Not that anyone was asking for this, but I feel obligated to say it. With a little over two months of work with it, I have to give Fedora Core 5 an A+++. Excellent repos, much improved stability on KDE, and automatic installation slickness that rocks.

Right now, I have FC5 on a P4 2GHz box w/768MB RAM, and 2x250GB drives as software RAID 0, w/Ext3 on LVM. Samba took only the usual minor configuration to make work as an NT4 PDC for a Windows LAN. I now have what looks like a very stable household file server that kicks some serious ass.

My hat is off to the Red Hat and Fedora Core people on a job well done.

I would only like to request that FC6 contain an option on install to use an encrypting file system with LVM and software RAID to increase security as well as some sort of Gnome/KDE gui goodness to make Samba sit up and bark without tedious smb.conf editing.

Ghost in the Shell thermoptics getting closer

One can hardly wait to go out in one of these for a game of touch football.