KERA - If we don't do it, well, cable already did.

Seeing El Anadón Ingobernable's post about how wonderful KERA is reminded me of how they can suck.

Going through the next two weeks of programming on my TiVo to see what I wanted to record, there's plenty of:

• Suze Orman - I can get that from CNN or MSNBC these days
• The Rolling Stones - VH1
• Jerry Lee Lewis - Seriously?
• Doctor Who - not the kickass old Doctor Who that you can't find anywhere else. No, KERA's got to prove their irrelevance by showing the Christopher Eccleston stuff. Seriously I blew that off on BBCAmerica because I'd already seen every episode on SciFi.
  

But since it's frakkin' pledge drive, there's narry a Nova or Frontline to be found. They'd better hope their funding doesn't get cut off from the state, because if they can't run what I want during pledge drive, I'm not giving them a dime.

Seriously, I've learned more about food and food science by watching Good Eats on the Food Network than I ever did watching Julia Childs and Yan Cooks Cats on PBS.

Where they still hold up is science and nature programming. Discovery Channel is sometimes doing good work here, but Nova is still the gold standard, with Nature not far behind. And while Frontline is still probably the best current events issue show out there, shows like Anderson Cooper 360 are starting to give it a run for its money.

A smug little treatise on the value of a spontaneous, unplanned economy

Central planning could never come up with an idea as pure in its post-modern geniusiosity as this.

The iBreath. The Soviet Union created some clever chess players, but there's no way in hell they'd have come up with the idea of an integrated breathalyzer/FM transmitter which attaches seamlessly to your iPod. You can now play you iTunes through your car stereo, and be sure you're legal to drive.

Hat tip to The Agitator.

Free the Boston Two!

One of these things is not like the others

Can you tell which one of these is not a bomb? If you picked the one with the lite-brite cartoon character on it, you're qualified to replace Assistant Attourney General John Grossman, who is rumored to be stepping down after discovering that he is, in fact, a moron.

From the AP story on Ignignoktgate:

"This device looks like a bomb."

Some in the gallery snickered.

If you want to kill people you don't make your bomb flip people off. You probably make it look like a massive government transportation and construction project. But I guess that's already been done.

State Attourney General Martha Coakley, Assistant Attourney General John Grossman, and Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke all refer to this as a bomb hoax. Well a hoax is an attempt to make something look like a bomb. This was an attempt to make people see a light that was a funny shape. We've already spent $750,000 shutting down Boston because the police couldn't tell that these weren't fake bombs, but were just funny signs. That is an honest mistake on their part. But once it was clear how the signs worked, and that they were intended to be seen at night, they really should have gained a little perspective. As it is, they're going to waste another $500,000 or more of taxpayer's money prosecuting people with criminal charges for something that is at worst misdemeanor disturbing the peace and maybe vandalism, although it is clear that some care was taken to see that nothing was damaged.

Coakley's already doing a terrible job investigating the malfeasance on the Big Dig project which actually did result in loss of life. Maybe spend a little more time on crimes and less on what is truly an innocent misunderstanding. To do anything else is criminal.

Sometimes this internet shit works

"It's almost like this Wicca shit doesn't even work"

Hat tip to Hit&Run.

Children of Men (some mild spoilers)

Holly and I were lounging about on New Year's Day, when she suggested we go see a movie. We narrowed it down to Children of Men and The Good Shepard. The Good Shepard was listed as almost 3 hours long, which seemed more of a movie commitment than we were prepared for that day, so we opted for Children of Men.

I knew that it was set in near-future Britain, and that the basic premise was that worldwide infertility had left mankind childless for 19 years. The 'youngest person alive' has just been the victim of a celebrity murder at age 18. The story follows Theo Farron, a former radical who's turned his back on the revolution to become a disinterested government worker in a Britain which is the last western power to resist total collapse. To support their island paradise, the British government has instituted a massive and brutal campaign to remove all illegal immigrants and non-British refugees. Britain is determined to live out her last days in prosperity, and will not share that with Poles, Frenchmen, Germans, Russians, Africans, Americans, or anyone else. If you're not British, you are ruthlessly hunted down, and thrown into concentration camps, where you may be deported if you're lucky.

Then Theo's old underground contacts get in touch with him. They need his goverment contacts to get transit papers for one person to get to the coast. He agrees - for the right sum of cash. Immediately, plans begin to fall apart, and he's got to escort a young girl, secretly pregnant with the first child in two decades, to a rendezvous with a shadowy organization rumored to be working to restore human fertility. They're being sought after by the government and their former comrades in the underground.

The sci-fi elements of the movie are understated, but the pacing and tone are kept up brilliantly. There are some ham-handed allusions to the current Iraq war and to Abu Ghraib, but they are forgivable. The final act of the film is very powerful, and not for the faint of heart. Without giving away too much of the ending, I will say that there are several scenes of brutal violence, and the tension builds right to the very end of the film.

There were several collective gasps from the packed house that I saw it in. While we were waiting in line to get into the film, the previous screening was released, and several people in that group were visibly crying as they left. Our group was no different. One filmgoer who was walking in front of us leaving the theater had been to see A Night at the Museum before coming to this film. His companion remarked, "Wow, that has to be one hellofa contrast." He allowed as how he wished he'd done it in reverse order, as he could do with something light after Children of Men. Holly and I agreed.

Highly recomended.

Little bluebird in my backyard

My parent's backyard is more or less rife with wildlife. While Holly and I were there over Christmas, there was a large flock of bluebirds that would come and go with some regularity. They were fond of the birdbath on our back deck, and this guy was clearly having a good time. There were often 30-50 bluebirds that would be taking turns at this and other birdbaths in the back yard.

That leeeeettle blob in the middle of the picture...

To put that previous post in perspective, this is a straight shot at full zoom with my little camera, sans binoculars.

Eagle sez "Meh. You have my leave to go."

Holly and I went canoing at Goodale State Park last Friday afternoon. We'd gotten out there late, and the park staff were kind enough to take a break from some serious tree-removal work at the entrance to let us into the park and let us rent a canoe. The lake at Goodale is an old (1830s, if our info is correct) mill pond on Big Pine Tree Creek. Much of the lake is now a cypress swamp, which makes for fun paddling in amongst the trees. We'd been paddling for about 10 minutes when I caught a glimpse of a very large bird taking flight a ways off through the trees. I wasn't sure, but I thought it might have been an eagle. It was just too big to be anything but that or an osprey, but my gut was just saying "eagle." Ospreys are rare enough that seeing one would be a treat, but I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've positively seen an adult bald eagle in the wild.

A few more minutes of paddling brought us pretty close to where I thought the bird had been, and we were also close to the edge of a fairly wide expanse of open water with just a few trees scattered through it. In the distance, in a lone cypress, something big was sitting on a bare branch up at the top. When I got the binoculars on it, it was unmistakeably a bald eagle. After passing the binoculars to Holly so she could get a good look, I went about trying to get a photo to record this critter for posterity. Zoomed to the full extent of my little pocket camera's lenses, I got a great shot of the branches of the trees a few feet from the boat, with a nice eagle-shaped smudge in the background.

So I decided to try digiscoping it, which involves taking a picture through hand-held binoculars. I have trouble getting this to work standing on dry land with a clear shot of my target. Sitting in a rocking canoe drifting back and forth among the trees in the middle of a swamp lent the process a level of additional challenge that can only be described as 'maddening'. But about twenty minutes of wailing and gnashing of teeth and about 10 shots of smudges or trees that have just drifted into the field of view later, and I had two blurry-but-marginal shots and the one above.

It would've been nice if the one good shot didn't look quite so much like America was giving us the cold shoulder.

Police want to burrow into your head

OK, not literally. Well, probably not your head, anyway. The AP reports that police in Beaumont, Texas want to compel 17-year-old Joshua Bush to submit to surgery to retrieve a bullet lodged in his forehead. They suspect that he recieved the gunshot as he participated in an armed robbery of a used car dealer.

Now, the body cavity search is established legal territory. Anything the police can reach with their fingers and some lube, they can get, so long as they have a search warrant. The question becomes, do they have the right to compell you to submit to a medical procedure you do not want, just to retrieve evidence they believe is hidden within your body. We are not talking about pricking with a needle to draw a blood test. This is surgery. Not life-threatening surgery, as this is nowhere near any major organ or blood vessels. However, since it is in his forehead, and bone has started to grow around the bullet, Bush would need to be put into full anaesthesia.

Full anaesthesia surgery is routine, but hardly trivial. The medications can have adverse reactions, and infection is always a risk. Infections in the face, where there are no lymph nodes to filter toxins out before the lymph re-enters the bloodstream, can be quite serious.

So the question becomes, how far does one's right to medical privacy and right to make one's own medical decisions go? Does the police's power to collect evidence (with a properly granted warrant) override one's fundamental right to make medical decisions?

If we look at the history of Supreme Court precedent, I think the balance must lean toward the rights of the individual to control his own medical decision. Roe v. Wade and Griswold v. Connecticut come to my mind, although they may be too narrowly written to apply directly, what with all the IANAL and so forth.

Anyway, I certainly lean more or less in the direction of the defendant, although if he did sustain the bullet wound in the way the robbery victim says he did, he is a violent criminal, and one hopes that the police will be able to find the evidence they need to prove this one way or another without having to force him to let a doctor slice his head open and chisel out whatever is lodged in his forehead.

Merry Repeal Day, Everyone!

Happy Repeal Day, folks.

That's right, it's the 73rd anniversary of the repeal of alcohol prohibition in America.

Dewar's celebrates with a full page ad in the New York Times, and has posted a google video of a chilling alternate-history where prohibition never ended. Of course, would it really be that much more chilling than actual history? Prohibition by any other name still smells like shit.

Hat tip to Hit&Run

So Congress wants the words "Freedom" and "French" to be synonymous?

Your 'Do You Want the Terrorists to Win' Score: 74%

You are a terrorist-loving scoundrel who hates our dear leader and the values he defends. There are few redeeming qualities about you. You most likely celebrated when the evil-doers hit us on 9/11, then opposed the Iraq war when we tried to pay them back. You hurt us at every step and cause troops to die in the field by questioning Bush's decisions. You are most likely a lost cause, doomed to be a brainwashed victim of free thought and liberalism forever. No dose of Ann Coulter's prose can save you now.

Do You Want the Terrorists to Win?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

I don't call them Freedom Fries, but I have been know to freedom kiss, and like to laugh at the freedom ticklers for sale in those bathroom vending machines. The UN is run by euro-sissies and third world dictators, except when it's being our lapdog. I think deep down, the French wouldn't be too unhappy if the terrorists put America in its place. But damn if those surrendermonkeys don't make some tasty cheese, and I'll buy it if I damn well please.

Hat Tip to Sandy.

Historical Blogging II: Faretheewell Johnny Cash

Part II of my series where I recover various rants from blogs past. Without further ado, from September of '03, my long-distance elegy to The Man in Black.

Johnny Cash, We hardly knew ye

posted by lunchstealer on Fri 12 of Sep, 2003 [13:18]

OK. At least I hardly knew him. Growing up in a small town in South Carolina, I made a decision pretty early on to separate myself from all things redneck-related. Unlike almost all my peers, I didn't watch The Dukes of Hazard. And from an early age, I garnered a strong distaste for country music.

Well, for the most part, I was right. To this day I'm more into Progressive Rock than Country. Actually that's an understatement. I still frickin hate that crap they play on the Wolf.

Now, in accordance with Sturgeon's Law, most genre are mostly crap. But if they're mostly crap, then they're also slightly good. So there are artists and performances out there that kick ass. Johnny Cash was such an artist, and he passed away yesterday at the age of 71.

When Trent Resnor sang 'Hurt' he was angry Avant Garde guy. When Johnny Cash covered it, he was a guy who was 70 years old, and was looking back on a life of drugs, alcohol, and pain.

Here's to you, Johnny. May you be in Heaven half an hour 'fore the Devil knows you're dead.

Congress re-approves $20M to celebrate the flight of pigs

When at peace, prepare for war. When at war, prepare to party! Apparently, Congress had a little line-item in the 2006 budget to allow the Pentagon to spend $20,000,000 to celebrate victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. Well, that turned out to be a little premature, so they've re-upped that approval, for 2007. And they promise we'll get to spend it this time. For realsies. This isn't like that time they promised to give back that copy of The Big Lebowski they borrowed. Really, we're going to have a victory party. And who doesn't like victory?