The Pope has ordered his bishops to set up exorcism squads to tackle the rise of Satanism.

Link.

So I'm sitting here, and I'm thinking, "YES!"




Witch hunters and Exorcist tanks are exactly what we need!

No, seriously fuck him.

"Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,’ I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."

"If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be."

Way to drop the ball...

edit: However, I do give him credit for being a true blue conservative as opposed to a neo-con; though one has to wonder how much of an improvement that really is in this case. Scratch that, he's gone far enough out to be libertarian. On the crazy scale, that ranks higher than Communism.

Two screens are distracting...

Further amending my list of things I do instead of homework:

1) Learning Ruby.
2) Researching voting histories of Republican presidential candidates.

I think Canada needs to have a equivalent to Project Vote Smart. Then again, it becomes kind of a moot point when MPs almost always vote along party lines.

Addendum: Man, fuck Ron Paul. Way to drop the ball, internets.

Wikipedia revisited:

Wikipedia has added a few new notices:

On that note, they're condensing all the Pokemon articles into blocks of 20 and shortening the information to about a paragraph each. I know individual articles can get excessively large for popular franchises, but for me truncating articles to that level removes a lot of the usefulness from Wikipedia.

I say that as an avid user of Wikipedia.

I don't mind making the pages more readable (because face it, a lot of pages are written like crap and it's really dumb when people put links to Final Fantasy characters from pages on Greek gods), but I don't like them restricting their content. What makes Wikipedia so great that it's largely written by democracy. Generally speaking, the more people are interested in a subject, the longer it will be. If that happens to be Pokemon, then so be it. They will never be treated seriously as a academic source due to the nature of the system, they might as well pander to the internet community. It's the only one they have.

René Magritte has totally just become one of my favourite artists!

The Treachery of Images

La Grande Famille

What English calls rhetoric, Science calls fallacy.

Yeah, I suck ass with literature.

Battlestar Galactica

I've never seen a Star Trek movie or an episode from half the series'. I've started watching the Stargate movie once and never finished it. I have no clue what Babylon 5 is about, but presumably it would be about Babylon--and there would be five of them.

Yet I find this series incredibly compelling. It doesn't get mired in traditional sci-fi's technobable, inexplicably numerous alien species or deus ex machina centered around reversing the polarity of a satellite dish. It explores topics that are otherwise ignored by its peers: terrorism, torture, racism, ethics and morality. Incidentally, the cheesiest aspects are reminiscent from the original.

Also, it features some of the best choreographed dogfights ever. In part 1 of Resurrection Ship, not a single shot was fired but the engagement was completely thrilling. Part 2 of Exodus with the atmospheric re-entry was brilliant.

The conclusion of Season 3 is executed fantastically.



There must be some kind of way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief

Gertrude Bell, unrecognized genius:

Here's a history lesson, courtesy Wikipedia,

Bell's influence led to the creation of a country inhabited by a Shi'ite majority in the south, and Sunni and Kurdish minorities in the center and north respectively. By denying the Sunni Kurds a separate, autonomous area or state, the British tried to balance the heavy predominance of Shi'ites in Iraq and keep control of the potential oilfields in their territory.

The British thought that Sunnis should lead the Iraqi nation, because the Shi'ite majority was regarded as volatile to govern due to its largely tribal and nomadic base in Iraq, and hard to assimilate because of an unyielding religious bias for the "Ali" faction of the Muslim schism. "I don't for a moment doubt that the final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority," Bell once said; "otherwise you will have a ... theocratic state, which is the very devil."

She had a great idea there; putting three distinct religious and ethnic groups together in a precarious balance of power. I could see no possible way this could backfire--except for maybe civil war. Perhaps that little part slipped her mind?

Thought Medley

Apparently Barack Obama (D-IL) is refusing monetary contributions from lobbyists. Hurrah for political integrity!

Also my channel 37, previously CNN, is now BBC World. This makes me more excited than it should. Hurrah for journalistic integrity!

On a somewhat unrelated note, some German military officials gotten themselves in trouble for a racist video. I would take it more seriously if the premise wasn't so hilariously ridiculous:

"You're in the Bronx, a black van pulls up in front of you and three African-Americans get out and start really insulting your mother... act!". The soldier then fires his gun several times and shouts obscenities in English, as the instructor encourages him to curse even louder.

Oh yeah, and Nancy Grace is completely loco. On a scale of one to Coulter I'd give her half an O'Reilly.

Context

First, an article:Pearls Before Breakfast

tldr; World class violinist Joshua Bell participates in an experiment where he plays near the metro which in proximity to several government offices during rush hour. He plays classical violin solos (with a Strad) and despite large volumes of people, very few acknowledge his existence and fewer notice his talent. There's embedded video in the link for those interested in how he sounds.

What I really want to talk about is art and context. What is art without the context? What is the value? That's all a matter of subjectivity so bear in mind that I am simply giving my viewpoint, I'm sure many philosophers have debated this over the course of centuries.

Nothing can be fully appreciated without understanding first. To how many people does bebop sound like a random jumble of notes unaware of the intricate construction of chords and arpeggios underneath? How many people dismiss black metal as just so much noise? Actually scratch that, black metal still sounds like noise no matter how much I listen to it, only as slightly more bearable noise.

This is also why I suck with literature; I am terrible at analyzing literature.

Then what about context? Placing a picture in a museum does nothing to inflate its value, but it does mean that the audience seeing it likely has a greater appreciation of its forms in the first place. That is the problem with Bell playing 14 minute movements in a subway opening. If there isn't a catchy lick in the minute where people hear him, no one will appreciate it save for the occasional musician or classical aficionado. For those that believe the issue at hand was the necessity of getting to work on time, bear in mind that the experiment had been replicated at a Belgium boardwalk to even poorer results.

I suppose then with respect to context that black metal is pretty good from the perspective of an anti-Christ.

Would I have stopped? Maybe. It's evident in the video that he is playing a highly complex piece very well and he has great tone. On those merits I would probably stick for a bit, but in all honesty I'm not very into classical and having a solo means the characteristic counterpoint of baroque music is lost. Personally, I think that violins are too piercing alone, strings should come in trios or more. I will also be the first to admit I had no idea who the hell Joshua Bell is until I wiki'd.

The French have won after all...

Click for large; in your face America!

It's also funny that Isreal is ranked lower than Iran and North Korea.

The lowest form of communication...

Behold, the YouTube comment section!


Et cetra...

edit: Actually, this is a funnier way of saying it.

Microsoft? Moer liek microsuck!1

Is this what you've been working on for the past year and a half? Way to go, Microsoft.

For those of you who went Tl;dr, the gist of it is that Vista's DRM protection causes system instability, cripples hardware, degrades playback quality and of course, all of this is being marketed as a "feature".

In irony, this probably encourages pirating as it makes legitimate users jump through hoops. I know which choice I'd make between torrenting something or buying it and then having the quality degraded intentionally because my system doesn't conform to Vista's specifications. Hell, it sounds like the AOL of operating systems.

In fact, it's almost guaranteed that I'm not going to support Vista now. I'll probably go Mac or throw 98/XP/Linux on a PC.

  "The PC industry is committed to providing content
protection on the PC, but nothing comes for free.
These costs are passed on to the consumer" -- ATI.

As an addendum, I don't actually hate Microsoft irrationally. In fact, I think Bill Gates is a nice guy, leaving his job to start a charity and whatnot.

Time Cube

"When the Sun shines upon Earth, 2 - major Time points are created on opposite sides of Earth - known as Midday and Midnight. Where the 2 major Time forces join, synergy creates 2 new minor Time points we recognize as Sunup and Sundown.

The 4-equidistant Time points can be considered as Time Square imprinted upon the circle of Earth. In a single rotation of the Earth sphere, each Time corner point rotates through the other 3-corner Time points, thus creating 16 corners, 96 hours and 4-simultaneous 24 hour Days within a single rotation of Earth - equated to a Higher Order of Life Time Cube."

http://www.timecube.com/; it's funny because he's not joking.

Into the Daaanger Zone!

I suppose everyone is well aware of the inherent dangers in the Wii nun-chukkas (apparently dangerous enough to be banned in Wal-Mart demo kiosks).

But what I've run across here is the inspiring story of a guy who broke his knee while playing Guitar Hero.

We were neck in neck in points... I had to do something special. I needed STYLE points. I breathed deep, my rock meter was maxed out and I was going to make this audience feel it. I twisted to the right and threw my guitar in the air! Instead of a roaring audience I heard a loud snap! My knee slid to the outside of my leg and my leg bent sideways as I fell to the ground.

Half the people in the room were concerned the other half called me a pussy.

A true inspiration for the rest of us.

Caught my eye...

Television commercials, the bane of many TV viewers, yet at the same time a form of art.

One that caught my eye was the Lexus commercial. Amid the roaring advertisements for trucks and SUVs making loud noises and tearing up mountain sides, it really stands out. It would've convinced me if I weren't so bent on Volkswagen (just for the sheer awesomeness of their factory in Dresden).

Also, the new recruiting commercials for the Canadian Armed Forces are pretty cool. Stark, simple and gets the message across. I like how the tone changed from "join the army for fun filled adventures!" to "you can make a difference--do something". I guess they realized anyone who would go to the army for adventures amid the current Mid-East quagmire is nuts anyways.

Remember those old iPod commercials? Of course you do. They've kicked it up a notch with some colour now. Which makes them absolutely fascinating to watch--in a high on LSD kind of way.

On a different note, the Lakota commercials have apparently been voted as the worst commercials on TV. They are pretty terrible, it's not even a real native!

Oh Wikipedia, how amazing you truly are!

I've always liked to point out how Wikipedia manages to have separate articles on every Pokemon, with subsections that include biology, appearance and their role in various media forms. All 493 of them, including ones that are unreleased in North America.

It becomes all the more hilarious while doing ISUs on Canadian authors; if Wikipedia were to be used as a indicator of the impact of subjects on the general public (which may not be as farfetched as it sounds), then Bulbasaur would completely school them all in its significance by many magnitudes (it even has "Statistical Analysis of Bulbasaur" under citations)!

For the critics, yes I do use Wikipedia for formal assignments provided that I follow these rules:
1. Never cite it as a source. Ever.
2. Never write something from it without a legitimate source backing up its claims.

Predictions; Grand Old Party is grand no more!

Election fever!

I predict that:

a) Democrats will take the House
b) Republicans will keep the Senate

Unless something really screwed up happens, the Democrats are most likely going to have no problems winning a House majority. They'll probably take a chunk out of the Senate but need to catch a few swing states in order to win a majority; not impossible but I don't expect it. Anyways, lets sit back and see what happens.

edit: So, I was correct on the first. But it's turning out close for the second with the Democrats slightly ahead and both vying for a recount. Also Rumsfeld retires, all he did was screw things up anyways.

Holy crap, double reed! Double reed!

I'm talking about Rahsaan Roland Kirk, a jazz musician who not only plays saxophone, but multiple saxophones at once. Not only that, he sometimes plays with multiple saxes and an oboe too. Not only that, he's also blind.

...

HOLY CRAP!

Seriously check this guy out. The quality is pretty terrible, but the point is he actually pulls it off while sounding good. Plus, that alto he's got is way cool.

edit: As I was was telling someone about Kirk, it was mentioned sarcastically in disbelief that I'll claim he played with one arm after losing it in a war. As it turns out, he actually did lose the use of his arm after a stroke and continued playing afterwards.

Yes, I put double reed in the title just for that one sentence involving an oboe.

How do they afford these things?

Did you know that we actually spend more on our armed forces than Isreal? Personally, I'd say we're getting a bit gypped here. What, with buying flaming submarines from the Britons and last generation tanks from Germany.

Actually, we're down to our last submarine (HMCS Windsor) and it can't fire torpedoes because the ones in stockpile don't fit British torpedo tubes. It's kind of like the time Diefenbaker bought a bunch of missiles but refused to equip them with nuclear warheads and we ended up with a bunch of expensive fireworks. It's rather impressive how much money we manage to squander (not to say that America doesn't, but at least they manage to look intimidating while doing so).

Increasing the budget probably isn't going to fix things. Besides, what are going to use it all on? It's not like we're doing much peacekeeping nowadays (way to go Harper) so much as cleaning up the quagmire that Afghanistan has become.

There used to be a point here, but my train of thought fizzled out. So now you have some anecdotes instead.