Archive for 'The World at Large' Category
Olbermann
27 September 2006Where did this guy come from? (Click the links, ferserious.)
I must admit, regarding the whole quagmire that is our current political landscape, I’ve just felt resigned about it all lately. It feels like the whole system, the one party with the chimp in the office, and the other party who can’t seem to organize well enough to beat the chimp, it’s all just one big self-sustaining loop that we, the American people, are left out of entirely. Maybe in dire times, it takes someone like Keith Olbermann to be a beacon.
You can’t exactly credit the guy with originality… Olbermann clearly patterns himself after Edward R. Murrow, but then, why not? The man is regarded as one of the best journalists of all time, so perhaps patterning one’s career after him as opposed to that of modern “journalists”–O’Reilly, Limbaugh, even Franken–isn’t a bad idea. Watching his stuff, I wonder if maybe the American people are capable of sitting in one spot long enough to listen, not to soundbytes, but to ten minutes of well-reasoned, empassioned, enlightening crticism. They just haven’t known where to find it.
I think I’m gonna have to start watching MSNBC.
Edit: Just ran across an article mentioning that, apparently, Olbermann received a suspicious envelope yesterday containing a powdery substance. The substance was harmless, but obviously meant to scare, with an included note reading the package was “payback” for some of his commentaries. Because, y’know, the threat of lethal substances is fair payback for truth-telling. :P But if you can measure the mark of a journalist by the amount of feathers he ruffles, I guess I’m not the only one who thinks Olbermann’s doing a good job!
On the Drift
15 August 2006
Ok, it’s been a while since I’ve geeked out about Firefly/Serenity stuff, but between hanging out with Naomi, Lisa, The Cap’n, and some other Browncoats, and being alerted to the freely available Done the Impossible fan documentary, I’ve been on a kick again lately.
So, I’ve made a supremely geeky purchase: On the Drift, music “inspired” by Firefly and Serenity, performed by the Bedlam Bards. The Bards are “Renfolk” musicians–or in Captain Dummy talk, the sort of guys you might hear at a Renaissance Festival–but are also pretty fervent Browncoats, and have compiled a CD of tracks that are either instrumental elaborations on the Firefly soundtrack, or folk songs about the characters and the Big Damn Show/Movie itself. They were among the fans interviewed in the documentary, and I was interested enough to seek out their music. I came for “Hero of Canton (The Man They Call Jayne)”, stayed for a really beautiful instrumental, “Saffron’s Wedding Dance”, and was sold by “Leaf on the Wind”, a tribute to the late Hoban Washburn.
It’s all a bit rough around the edges, but hey–it’s folk music. Real folk music, in the sense that they’re singing about larger-than-life legends not unlike the original folk, the chanties and Celtic melodies sung hundreds of years ago. In that way, I think these guys really tap into the spirit of the ‘Verse itself: worlds of our past trapped in a future setting.
Oh, and if you’re riding the fence, the Bards will donate a portion of their profit from every CD to Joss Whedon’s favorite charity, Equality Now. So go check them out!
Gimme That Nut (or, A Random Lesson in Causality)
8 August 2006Wow, I was on a streak of nearly all personal, non-political posts for, what, a few weeks? Time for a relapse. :P
So today on Google News one of the top stories is that “Fans of Crude Music Have Sex Sooner“. Apparently there’s a correlation between kids who listen to raunchy lyrics (defined as lyrics that are both sexual and derogatory in nature) and kids who have sex earlier than other kids. Ok, makes sense. But here comes the flawed journalistic logic that I’m all too sick of: “Adolescents who listen to a lot of music containing these objectifying and limiting characterizations of sexuality progress more quickly in their sexual behaviour…” Or, in other words, kids have sex earlier because they listen to raunchy music. Wuzzah?
I never listened to much raunchy music (although I must admit to enjoying a bit of it, from Eazy E to The Thong Song) and it’s no secret that I was far from being a sexually active kid. So it would seem that I would’ve fit the pattern of no-raunchy-music, no-teen-sex. But I cease to believe that music will simply compel a kid to have sex.
First of all, why’s the kid listening to raunchy lyrics to begin with? I never found the appeal in it, aside from the sheer silliness of some of it, which is not unlike how I’ve felt about sex. If someone’s listening to that music, and really enjoying it, I’ve got to believe their mind is already in the gutter, that they listen to that kind of music because they’re already thinking about the subject matter, or are at least unusually curious about it. See, just because A and B are true, does not mean that B is the result of A.
Don’t get me wrong… I’ve thought for a long, long time that we live in a culture that is way too sex-obsessed in many ways, and unfortunately quite immature about most of them. But I think to blame music or movies or television on it is too simplistic & too short-sighted a point of view. To what extent this is a true “problem” in terms of negative impact on society, the solution is to reinforce better priorities amongst kids and amongst ourselves.
Critics with ‘Staches
20 July 2006So who read about Joel Siegel going all Terets-style during a screening of Clerks 2? Apparently, 40 minutes or so into the film, as the titular clerks are spectating a “donkey show” (apparently some lewd act referenced in Bachelor Party), Joel couldn’t take it any more. He leapt from his seat and made a mad dash for the door, but not before yelling: “Time to go! This is the first movie I’ve walked out of in 30 f***ing years!”
Now granted, despite being otherwise quite enthusiastic about the film, I’ve been more than discouraged by the notion of an act of beastiality–even an off-camera one. And to boot, despite running a fairly well to-do movie review website, I’m not a professional film critic, thus free to act like any other idiot moviegoer. Yet, even if I despised Kevin Smith, and if I abhorred Clerks 2 and insisted on walking out of it (I’m not opposed to walking out), I would have more decency than to interrupt the witty ass-banter playing out on screen.
Amelie Site
19 July 2006In efforts to separate business from pleasure, I’m taking my Amelie shrine off the SP server and hosting it here at Thom’s House. This is the new address:
I was thinking about expanding it a bit… I dunno. Maybe I’ll just clean it up, make it friendlier to visitors with high screen resolutions. Still pretty fond of it, though.
Shuttle Bug
18 July 2006Ok, so let me get this straight…
Shuttle Colombia vaporizes, and it’s enough to keep the rest of the fleet more or less grounded for three years.
We have ONE successful outing, in which one of these things doesn’t blow up, lose gargantuan chunks of foam, or disintegrate… and all of the sudden, the green light is on to re-enter the space race? Am I missing something?
You know, I drove 100mph once. Didn’t crash; didn’t kill anyone. Using NASA’s logic, that means I’m safe to continue driving 100mph, right? Don’t get me wrong: I love the space program. Went to Space Camp as a kid, worked for two years to get a scholarship to go there, too. Certainly, the space program was one of our country’s most innovative of the 20th century, paving the way for the ubiquitous nature of satellite communications, weather tracking, etc. Problem is, there’s no innovation left in it. Ok, let’s duct-tape our 30-year-old glider to keep it in the sky for a few more years… Huh?
Granted, I understand there’s only so much NASA can do with limited funding, and there’s no way they’ll keep their funding (let alone get more) if they can’t keep these birds in the air. I just don’t like them playing a crapshoot with their crew members’ lives. Sigh.
Who are we racing into space at this point, anyway? Uncle Sam should have the sense to continue some funding, give NASA a few years to develop a next-gen craft, and then get back up there.
One Gmail to Rule Them All
16 July 2006(How to use one Gmail account to manage multiple domain emails.)
After deleting all my spam and trash from Gmail, I thought it was time to reorganize what’s left. You organization nuts can file this as one of those “Get Things Done” type of solutions. (I never read the book, so don’t bother correcting me.)
I use Gmail for everything: personal mail, mail from my numerous websites, special addresses for sending to/from my cellphone, and what not. As my needs have increased over the past year, I’ve been haphazardly adding labels for this and that, but now I think I’ve got a pretty good system worked out.
Gmail: Select All… and then some!
16 July 2006Ok, just discovered this, and I know a lot of Gmail enthusiasts such as myself are really going to love this feature.
Got a lot of spam? Go to your Spam box. Click on “Select All”. Now look above the list of messages, and you’ll see a text blurb like this:
All 25 conversations on this page are selected. Select all 1318 messages in Spam
Wowsers! How slick is that? Sure, it should’ve been there all along, but Google has corrected one of the very few flaws in an otherwise perfect webmail client. BTW, it works in all folders and labels, too! Send your whole Inbox to the archives! Suh-weet.
Update: My friend Rob Worley has pointed out that deleting spam is even easier! Just go into the Spam folder and, above the messages, you’ll see this message:
Must’ve missed it in my haste. Thanks Rob… and thanks bigtime, Google!
Look out, Skype: …AIM Phoneline is here?
14 July 2006Ok, so I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a few days. As millions of other AIM users probably experienced last week (or am I the only one who didn’t register using a fake e-mail address?), AOL has unveiled a new AIM Phoneline feature that, amazingly, seems to give users a free and personal local phone number. Apparently, if you’re logged on using the proper AIM client, calls will ring in to your headset (or other audio setup of choice). Otherwise, they’ll be redirected to a voice mailbox, which you can later access either through AIM, or through your aim.com email address.
Now, this solution doesn’t suit my needs for three reasons:
- I use the Adium IM client for OS X (or Trillian on the Windows side).
- I would not, in a million years, use my aim.com e-mail address.
- I have a cellphone with free nationwide long distance.
Oh wait… Four reasons:
- I have Skype, and don’t really have a need for online voicemail, except potentially for call-ins to a podcast.
However, I can read the writing on the wall. This is a feature probably directed at that infamous Generation MySpace. It would, in fact, be useful for kids who aren’t stupid enough to divulge personal information but, for whatever reason, do want to talk to strangers on the Internet. Thing is, I just don’t see a business model in it. It appears you can’t make outgoing calls with the free plan, just the “Unlimited” plan ($9.95/month). But… What’s to stop someone from using Skype for outgoing calls?
Meh. I guess I shouldn’t be expecting spectacular business plans from a company like AOL. Their only successful strategy was to target unsuspecting, technology-weary consumers and charge them up the back-side for a shitty, locked down and proprietary service. I guess the trend continues.
Oh… While I was researching this post, I came across a company called jConnect. No live calling, but you can accept faxes and voicemails delivered to your regular email. (Their free phone numbers appear to originate in Idao, so long distance charges will apply for the vast majority of people.) When and if I get going with another podcast, I’ll probably give this service a try.
954k
11 July 2006Interesting… In the two-ish weeks since I’ve had Thom’s House up & running, it’s made it into the top million sites on the web, according to Alexa. Number 954,088, to be exact. (I must confess I was amused to find that’s actually a better rank than a certain other site I don’t care much for, which has had partial content up for several months.) Another new domain of mine, SmartPop.net, is somewhere in the Top 500,000. I’m pretty sure only two or three of us are hitting that regularly.
So this means that one “power user” such as myself can pull a site into the top million, two can pull it into the top 500k… I wonder if three or four will pull it into the top 250k and so on? I doubt it’s that easy… I think the atmosphere get’s pretty thick around the 300k mark. SMART-POPCORN.com has trouble floating in the 100-200k spot, and it’s pretty well trafficked.