Author: Nate

It would’ve been a Wonderful Life

Sunday’s Maureen Down column in the NY Times:

RUMMY, dyspeptic: Holy mackerel! Take me to Dick!

CLARENCE: Dick and Lynne run a bait, tackle and baton-twirling shop in Casper, Wyo. You didn’t exist, so you never gave him those jobs in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and he never ran for Congress or worked for Bush 41 or anointed himself 43’s vice president. W. chose Chuck Hagel as his running mate. So without you and Dick there to dominate him, he was guided by his dad and Brent Scowcroft, who kept Condi in line. Colin Powell was never cut off at the knees and the U.N. and allies were never bullied. There was never any crazy fever about Iraq or unilateralism or “Old Europe.” Here’s Colin now, heading for the Oval Office.

Yep, it’s an “It’s a Wonderful Life” parody. Worth reading, and get it while it’s hot since it’ll disappear into the pay-only archives soon. (Requires login 🙁 ) Via AMERICAblog

Today’s blatant shilling:
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History by Stephen Jay Gould
It’s a Wonderful Life the classic film.

A bit of blatant shilling…

I’ve added a link to my Amazon wish-list and an Amazon search box. The former is mainly for my family although I suppose if some anonymous fan of the blog out there wants to get me a gift you’re welcome to do so. The latter, well, is there if you are going to be ordering from Amazon anyway and don’t mind my making a few cents off of it. Lastly, I’ve added a WP plug-in which should let me link to various items on Amazon for convenience or the off chance you actually want to order them and don’t mind my making a few cents.

Harmless, and in good fun I hope even if I never make any cash.

Rolling over in her grave…?

Well, not quite — Ursula Le Guin is very much alive, and has thoroughly (and IMO deservedly) panned the film Earthsea which is loosely based on her novels Wizard of Earthsea, Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore…

I stress loosely… I saw the first episode last night, and it’s entertaining enough, although I’m glad it’s been ages since I read the novels. The differences were obvious pretty immediately… they switched the hero’s “true name” and his social name from the books, added plotlines. I’m watching the second episode as we speak, and the changes only get more obvious and to some degree, more silly.

Ah well.

The Lord of the Rings films weren’t perfect, but they were at least relatively true to the spirit of the novels… I think Tolkien isn’t rolling over in his grave, and might even be pleasantly surprised at how well they translated. But this is one of those Hollywood rewrites, and the kindest thing I can say about their choices is that it’s nowhere near the perversion that Starship Troopers was.

There’s a good thread on this on rec.arts.sf.fandom which also supplied the link to Ms. Le Guin’s site.

Update, a few minutes later: Replaced the link with a better one to the same short essay on her site. Here’s a link to the film on the Sci-Fi channel’s web site though heck, they really don’t need the free advertising.

20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA

“Did you know….
“1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

“2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

“3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

“4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”

“5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

“6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

“7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush’s vice-presidential candidates.

“8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

“9. Diebold’s new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

“10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

“11. Diebold is based in Ohio.

“12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.

“13. Jeff Dean, Diebold’s Senior Vice-President and senior programmer on Diebold’s central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree.

“14. Diebold Senior Vice-President Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a “high degree of sophistication” to evade detection over a period of 2 years.

“15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.

“16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold’s claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See the movie here .)

“17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.

“18. All — not some — but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.

“19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President’s brother.

“20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida — again always favoring Bush — have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.”

from Angry Girl at NightWeed.com (with links to references!) via Idle Thoughts

The FCC Song

Old news, but I was just reminded of it, and it remains funny as heck… from the Python Online site,

Eric Idle presents… The FCC Song.
“Here’s a little song I wrote the other day while I was out duck hunting with a judge… It’s a new song, it’s dedicated to the FCC and if they broadcast it, it will cost a quarter of a million dollars.”

Download Here (3.1MB)

Red-state vs. Blue-state Christmas movies?

Santa Claus is strictly a red-state hero
MSNBC Commentary by Erik Lundegaard

The best part is at the end:

Finally, for Democrats everywhere, I’d recommend those Christmas movies whose message is more cynical than simply putting aside common sense to have faith in Santa Claus. In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” George Bailey wishes he’d never been born; in “A Christmas Story,” Ralphie wishes for an official Red Ryder range-model air rifle; in “Home Alone,” Kevin wishes his family would just disappear. Each gets their wish. Each doesn’t like the results. You don’t have to leave the Christian faith to find the lesson here. It’s St. Teresa of Avila: More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered prayers. Hopefully, over the next four years, 51 percent of the country won’t have to realize the wisdom of her words.

I have too darn many DVDs

I just finished re-cataloging them, and if I’m counting right and have removed all the duplicate entries properly, well over 400 of them (I had an exact number there but have already noted duplicates and omissions).

A list, for the truly masochistic (or those who want to gloat that they’ve got even more) after the break. Actually, it’s mainly for family to make sure that any Christmas gifts don’t duplicate ones I already have.

Continue reading “I have too darn many DVDs”

If you need it, this is the coolest tool ever

We had a partition table wiped at work last night, and I had a hell of a time finding a tool to recover it.

Well, TestDisk does it, and it’s free/GPL. The commercial tool I sometimes use for partition stuff DID have the ability to recover deleted partitions or reconstruct the whole table but didn’t support ReiserFS.

The only downside is that the first version I tried (4.0) while it came on Knoppix (which was very handy) didn’t support current ReiserFS either (it did support Reiser 1 and 2). But the current version (5.5) does, along with a plethora of other file systems (but not XFS, at least not yet.)

Very much worth adding to your toolkit.

A quick technical note

The system was down for upgrades for a couple of hours tonight. Hopefully the memory issues I’ve been having will be fixed, and things won’t be any slower for you folks out there (if anyone’s reading *lol*). Since this is running over a DSL line, I doubt the changes will be noticeable, but there may be some lower performance in the Apache set-up. Let me know if it bugs any of you, and I can try to tweak them up instead.

34 Things to do before Bush’s second inauguration

Taken directly from AMERICAblog

I didn’t write this, don’t know who did. But it’s good. Feel free to add your own:

Some things to do Before the Inaugural:

1. Get that abortion you’ve always wanted.

2. Drink a nice clean glass of water.

3. Cash your social security check.

4. See a doctor of your own choosing.

5. Spend quality time with your draft-age child/grandchild.

6. Visit Syria, or any foreign country for that matter.

7. Get that gas mask you’ve been putting off buying.

8. Hoard gasoline.

9. Borrow books from library before they’re banned – constitutional law books, Catcher in the Rye, Harry Potter, Tropic of Cancer, National Geographic.

10. If you have an idea for an art piece involving a crucifix – do it now.

11. Come out – then go back in – FAST!

12. Jam in all the Alzheimer’s stem cell research you can.

13. Stay out late before the curfews start.

14. Suck up to your neighbors now, BEFORE they turn you in to Homeland Security.

15. Go see Bruce Springsteen before he has his “accident.”

16. Go see Mount Rushmore before the Reagan addition.

17. Use the phrase, “You can’t do that – this is America!”

18. Have that last drink with your Muslim friends.

19. If you’re white, marry a black person; if you’re black, marry a white person; if you’re gay, get married in Massachusetts; if you’re transgendered, move to Canada.

20. Take a walk in Yosemite, without being hit by a snowmobile or a base-jumper.

21. Enroll your kid in an accelerated art or music class.

22. Start your school day without a prayer.

23. Pass on the secrets of evolution to future generations.

24. Learn French (it’ll help you learn German later on).

25. Take a factory tour anywhere in the US.

26. Take photographs of animals on the endangered species list.

27. Take photographs of Democrats.

28. Visit Florida before the polar ice caps melt.

29. Visit Nevada before it becomes radioactive.

30. Visit Alaska before “The Big Spill.”

31. Visit Massachusetts while it is still a State.

32. Download a copy of the Constitution on an encrypted CD-ROM and hide it.

33. Play with a dreidel.

34. Masturbate, before Chief Justice Scalia makes it illegal.

Also found via AMERICAblog today: School sued for awarding cat with MBA