Late last night, I watched a movie on cable that I hadn't seen in a while - Starship Troopers. Those that know me well know that I'm a sci-fi buff and love movies with space ships, interstellar travel, laser beams and whatnot.
I hadn't seen Starship Troopers since it first came out on the big screen, as an adaptation of a book by Robert Heinlein. And it's a bit freaky to see it in a post-9/11, War on Terror world. I think that's because we see things in the movie that show a very different future world than what we might like to see, not just in terms of having a bunch of scary aliens around that want to wipe us out, but in terms of how humanity might respond to a threat to its existence.
In Starship Troopers, we see a future Earth that has embraced many of the tenets of fascism, including two separate classes of people - "citizens" and "civilians" who enjoy different rights and privileges, aptitude tests that essentially determine utility for everybody and determine one's place in the social heirarchy, the idea that certain people are good for only certain things, and the abandonment of many "common good" social principles in the name of survival of the species.
It's a scary thing to see, because for me at least, I could see humanity going down that path, especially in response to a threat to its very existence. We're reminded several times during the movie of the reinforcing mechanisms that hold many of these fascist principles intact:
The movie also showcases many of the elements that have traditionally supported many real-world fascist political structures in the past, including a propaganda machine, the continual reminder that the political system is necessary to survival, the notion that people should follow the orders of their superiors without question or moral reflection, etc.
It's an especially scary movie to see while the real-world America carries out its War on Terror, because the movie not only showcases fascism, but also humanity's embracing of fascist principles and the justifications behind them. The best works of science fiction show a future vision of humanity that comes across as realistic, and with Starship Troopers, one could easily envision humanity evolving politically and socially along fascist lines out of necessity - and it's quite scary to see that in one's own species.
Contrast that to the comparatively rosy future in the Star Trek universe, where humans have conquered poverty, war among themselves, many diseases and the vast majority of social problems encountered by humanity. Humans have found ways to peacefully exist with their neighbors, by and large, and are the driving force behind two political structures (the United Federation of Planet and Starfleet) that hold equality, self-determination and peaceful co-existence as core principles.
If Starship Troopers shows an evolution toward fascism, then Star Trek shows a human race that has embraced many of the principles of the progressive movement. When I'm done watching a Star Trek movie or TV episode, I often think "Wouldn't it be great if humans could get to that point in their evolution?" When watching Starship Troopers, I think "Wow. Humans have given up on many of the things that make them human, out of pure survival instinct. I sure hope things don't turn out like that..."
I ordered this new thrower from Cabela's online. It's terrific and was easy to assemble. There are two launchers on the front that can throw singles, doubles or side-by-side pairs. And both launchers are 3/4 cock. Once you pull, those little yellow counterweights swing out so that they re-cock the trap most of the way. (No more reaching out and struggling to pull springs back.)
The whole apparatus can slide into a standard receiver, so you can haul it around with your truck and not have to deal with packing it away in the bed.
I can't wait to head out to the range and try this out.
I'm finishing up Bullfinch's Mythology and am most of the way through the "Age of Chivalry" section. I remembered a lot of this stuff from a Spring Term class I took on Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. As I was reading through the sections about the quest for the Sangrail, I was taken back to a daydream I had in the Malory seminar about how much of a pain in the ass Galahad had to be to deal with. I mean, here we have this holier-than-thou chaste-as-can-be dude rubbing it in his Dad's (Launcelot's) face that Launcelot didn't have a prayer of achieving the Sangrail, given his indiscretions with Guenever and his pursuit of material things. Meanwhile, he's Launcelot's kid, dammit. And if Launcelot didn't do the things he did, Galahad wouldn't have even had a chance to do the whole "go right to heaven - Do Not Pass Go" thing. Meanwhile, here are all these righteous knights sitting around lamenting their past sins, getting all upset about how they can't even SEE the Sangrail because they're not worthy. And the whole time, Galahad is bragging about his life of chastity and purety, even when God layeth the smacketh down on his own Dad for trying to sneak a peek at the holy vessel.
Never really brought that up in class. Oh, well...
Coincidentally, I got an e-mail from W&L today about the strategic plans they're putting together for the future. They asked for some feedback, and I mentioned Spring Term as something W&L should never change. Some of my favorite classes were short, 6-week seminars during Spring Term that allowed me to explore cool stuff like Arthurian legend, in-depth reporting and advanced design outside the encumbrances of the typical 12-week term. 'Twould be a shame if they got rid of it, as they've been trying to do for several years.
Among the boner pill, Canadian pharma and porn comment spam this week, a couple stuck out like sore thumbs...
NetFlix and McDonald's.
I'm not asserting that either of these two entities are responsible for spamming. However, if they did hire an unethical SEO firm or commit a blind buy or two, this is exactly how it would manifest.
It occurred to me that most of my comment and Trackback spam links to garbage domains that either host co-reg forms or redirect links to affiliate sites. Why wouldn't somebody go after the owners of those domains and try to synch up their IP addresses with the IP addresses of the incoming requests to the web servers of those domains, in order to build a case for shutting them down? Seems to me that if you can take out these garbage domains fast enough, the spammers lose their ability to collect affiliate commissions and such, thus ruining the economic incentive.
Good idea? Bad idea?
My machine has been fouling plugs quite a bit recently. During the last snowstorm, we were out for about four hours zipping around on the snow-covered trails and having a ball. I got the quad back to the house and tried to start it up the next day, but it wouldn't turn over.
This weekend, I replaced the plug and then addressed the larger problem - no machine should be fouling plugs every couple hours. Craig suggested it was probably dirty injectors, brought about by trying to run it on old gas that had been sitting in the tank for a while. I dumped in some fresh hi-test and added some STP fuel treatment to the tank. The machine sputtered a bit, but started right up after a few tries. I left it running for about 20 minutes yesterday so that plenty of the fuel additive would get to the injectors and clean things up in there. Everything's running nicely now, just in time for the fresh snowfall we got overnight. I might hit the trails for a couple hours this morning.
You learn something new every day. Dennis and Cami were telling me that Colin goes through about 10 diapers a day. I had thought a diaper was something you changed maybe twice a day. We've been working on the online campaigns for A+D Ointment for a few months, and we're trying to get across the message that moms can use A+D with every diaper change to prevent diaper rash. 10 times a day? That's a lot of ointment...
Any of you other media buyers noticing that some of the asshattery of the mid- to late 90s is starting to creep back into the industry? I'm noticing a bunch of reps starting to pitch inventory with 1998-esque terms and conditions, among them:
It's really frustrating that we built relationships back up after getting burned by many of the dot coms in the 90s and now we're back to the same behavior that caused those relationships to go south in the first place.
I'm completely uninterested in revisiting the Myer Berlow days of "What? You want to negotiate this? Your CPM just doubled..."
Anyone else seeing crapola like this?
When I used to go to the videostore when I was a kid to rent videocassettes, there was this stupid horror movie that no one ever checked out called The Driller Killer. I was reminded of this ugly little film as I was coming back from the range on Sunday and it started to feel as if someone was taking a 3/8" Speedbor to my right temple.
Evidently, this was my first migraine ever. And it came at a really bad time, when I was just getting over this nasty cold I've been harboring for a week.
As we left the range, I felt sharp pains in my temple that were so excruciating that I held my head in my hand and had to rub my temple repeatedly. That was the only thing that made the pain manageable. If I stopped rubbing it, even for a second, the pain became unbearable. When I got back to the house, I immediately downed three aspirin and helped Craig put new mud flaps on his truck in the driveway. Craig finished up in about 15 minutes and I went inside to rest. About two hours later, the pain was still completely over the top, so I took two Aleve.
I laid down for another few hours and Kim gave me two Excedrin Migraine pills at about 7. This brought the pain down to a manageable level for a bit, but it still felt like the Driller Killer was going to town on my temple. Mom and Kim think I need to get over my distrust of doctors and head over to the Walk-In Medical place. I fell asleep until about 11, when I woke up in significant pain again. Somehow I managed to get back to sleep.
This morning, the headache is still with me, but the pain isn't nearly as bad as yesterday. I'm hoping this thing goes away soon, otherwise I'll probably end up going to the doctor.
My experience with doctors over the past few years is that there's not much they can do for you unless the problem is completely obvious, like you have a railroad spike driven through your forearm or something like that. And if there's one thing I can't stand, it's being in pain while doctors who are supposed to know what they're doing are scratching their heads and trying to speculate on what's wrong while they send you for expensive test after expensive test. Soon, though, I might not have a choice but to go in and let them poke me with needles and whatnot.
Does this Wired News story look like anything I might have written a couple months back? Seems the mainstream press is starting to catch on to the potential for abuse in online affiliate marketing programs, particularly when affiliates have license to drive sales and leads with whatever means they have available to them.
Spyware, spam, etc. - A lot of it is coming from rogue affiliates. One thing the Wired News story didn't mention is how some affiliate marketers let their affiliates run rampant and then feign ignorance when affiliates get called on the carpet. While CAN-SPAM does address some of that, I'm skeptical that it will be effective at controlling this "plausible deniability" scenario.
Spent all of today in my PJs, trying to get rest but inevitably failing to keep away from my computer. I'm never going to shake this cold. My day looked like this:
* Rest
* Check e-mail. Delete porn/gambling/boner pill spam. Decide to de-spam blog. Delete same from blog comments/trackbacks.
* Nap. Wake myself up with massive coughing fit.
* Return messages on office voice mail. Wonder how 12 messages can accumulate in 2 hours.
* Send sis to store for cold medicine and cough drops.
* Rest. Fall asleep reading lame Dean Koontz book because it's the only thing even remotely interesting to read in the house.
* Deal with weird-ass adserving glitch.
* Make frozen chicken patties on the George Foreman Grill. Consume massive quantities of water to try to flush nasty bug from system. Eat a Clementine for the Vitamin C.
* Craft new business proposal.
* Play Counter Strike: Source for an hour because I can't sleep but I don't want to work anymore.
* De-spam blog again.
* Take massive overdose of NyQuil. Go to bed.
Going to try to make it to the office tomorrow.
Of course, I wasn't able to get professional quality. But then again, I'm not a pro photographer.
This little Sony T1 is perfect for me. It's quick on the draw, takes great images and has a wide range of features. Can't wait to take it up to Maine or down to Florida on vacation, not to mention out on the trails.
Anyone else out there have this camera? What accessories have you bought? Seems to me like it could use a nice case. Also, if anyone else out there has a camera that uses the old Memory Sticks or InfoLithium batteries, I have that stuff in my old camera bag for ya.
A few weeks ago, I signed off one of my posts to a discussion list "TIA" (Thanks In Advance). Today, someone from that list e-mailed me privately thinking my name was Tia.
Maybe I'll name my first kid "ROFLMAO."
Love the new camera. It takes really nice photos, including this one of Sara. (I have a high-res version that looks terrific.) My only issue is that nothing from the DSC-S70 is compatible with the DSC-T1. I have a few Memory Sticks from the S70 that I could have used. Instead, I found myself having to buy a 256MB Memory Stick Pro Duo to use with the T1. Same goes for batteries - I had a spare battery for the S70 and now I have two batteries I don't need.
Some plusses of the T1 - First, I like how the camera is ready to shoot once you flick the lens cover on the front down. No missed shots waiting for the camera to "boot" like I did with the S70. Secondly, I love how small it is. With the S70, I found myself not taking a lot of pictures unless I was on vacation or something and remembered to take my camera bag along. The T1 can easily fit in a pocket, so I'm more likely to take it with me and actually take some pics.
It's a beautiful, sunny day in NYC. Might be a good day to go on a mini photo expedition at lunch...
Fresh install worked, so everything's back to normal here. (Relatively speaking.)
I couldn't get the new version of MT-Blacklist to work, so I've moved to moderated comments, which is better than no comments. (For my non-tech friends, this means when you post a comment, I review and approve it before it shows up on the site.) Moderated comments ought to keep that bastard comment spammer Bob the hell out of here.
Sorry for this, folks, but comments have been shut off for a couple days while I figure out how to get MT3.15 and MT-Blacklist working in perfect harmony. With MT-Blacklist kaput, I was getting so much comment spam that it became overwhelming.
Comments should be back up and running by the end of the weekend.