Klyfix's Journal Thingy

Firecrackers on a Plane?

klyfix@aol.com — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 22:39:53 GMT

So I was watching the BBC World News on PBS and saw that some silly person on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit set off fireworks as they were coming in to the Detroit airport.

What I wonder is, well, why?

A guess, assuming that they're not just a crazy person, is that they thought this was the quickest way to get their Fifteen Minutes.

Of course the other issue is security; how was this person able to get on a plane with explosives, even weak ones? Does the airport in Amsterdam have the same sort of security procedures as the Vatican where a person who lunged at the Pope last year at Christmas Mass did again this year?

Huh, okay, now the news on Channel 4 is saying that it was actually an attempt at blowing up the plane, and Homeland Security is stepping up the threat level. Oh joy.

Ah, the Spirit of Christmas.....(Politics)

klyfix@aol.com — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 00:00:37 GMT

And sort of a comical bit from TPM. Apparently a woman named "Bunny" called a C-Span program to say that she was taken down her Christmas Tree and Christmas lights in some kind of protest over the Health Care Bill. Because of those "Death Panels" or something, dontcha know.

And related kind of to that, Sarah Palin objects to an assessment of her as "Liar of the Year" in relation to that Death Panel comment. Well, and probably for some other stuff; she seems to be a very Truth Challenged person from what I've seen.

We live in Goofy Times. Calls for a Christmas Song:

Happy Winter Holiday! and Is it the end of the decande or just the year?

klyfix@aol.com — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 04:11:47 GMT

I'm inclined to think that a winter celebration of some kind is a Good Thing.

And it's approaching the end of the year. I'm a weirdo who thinks that ends of decades and centuries should be on a year ending in zero 'cause we count from one to ten, not from zero to nine and because we don't have a Year Zero. Still, it is the end of the Double-Oughts, and we've not had one of those since, well, before Europeans were using Arabic numbers.

And hopefully the next ten years will be way better.

Silly Observation

klyfix@aol.com — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 01:23:29 GMT

Christmas specials should all be narrated by Boris Karloff.

Granted that might be difficult....

Okay, "Trollhättan"?

klyfix@aol.com — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 00:17:58 GMT

You see Trollhättan and what comes to mind is perhaps some Shadowrun setting where pretty much everybody in Manhattan turned into trolls. Well, no. Turns out that it's a city in Sweden (web site here) where home office of Saab (noted in the sixties as "made by trolls") is/was; saw that in a story about Volvo getting sold to a Chinese company. And the name apparently does come from supposedly trolls having lived around there according to legends.

Hmm. It would be amusing if the Swedish part of my ancestry came from there; maybe I'm part troll? :)

One going to the first link might note the title of a movie made in the city; hmm, didn't know Swedish had that particular term.

Also note that it's possibly where in legend Odin acquired wisdom; go figure.

(Hey, I'm easily distracted and amused these days.)

T Accidents; Is It Just Me....

klyfix@aol.com — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:18:21 GMT

Or are there more these days? I see on the news just now that there was a derailment on the Red Line near Alewife. And there's been others this year; remember the one in the spring (I think; this was when I was in the hospital) where the Green Line driver was texting? I'm getting an impression that there are more incidents going on these days. I have to wonder to what extent this is because of the funding shortages. largely because somebody got the idea that tying the MBTA's funding to a portion of the sales tax rather than the previous system where its deficits were covered more directly by the state. And, yeah, there is the whole issue of overly generous contracts for T employees. Not sure what can be done about this. It would be nice if mass transit in general got a lot more funding from the federal government; after all, if we have goals of reducing carbon emissions and energy imports one of the best ways to do it is reducing the number of cars on the road. Granted that as a non-driver I want to have a well functioning mass transit system in Boston, and people who aren't in heavily urban areas aren't directly benefiting from it. On the other hand, it ain't as if they're not getting other goodies. Oh well.

Ah, so that's how it works....

klyfix@aol.com — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:07:18 GMT

This perhaps explains much.

The Snow

klyfix@aol.com — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 20:31:41 GMT

So, how'd everybody (around the East Coast) handle the big storm?

I was in the position of having to move snow despite not really being physically up to it. Fortunately, this was a "dry" snow so I could mostly sweep the snow. Unfortunately, it kept snowing and snowing and snowing so as with my current physical limits I really couldn't just wait until it all piled up I was up all night from Midnight on periodically pushing the snow around. We had rather a bit of pain, but with the whole sickness thing I'm well acquainted with pain.

Things That Strike Me Funny: Boston Pizza

klyfix@aol.com — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 04:34:21 GMT

Not any property of the pizza around here in Boston, but a Canadian pizza chain. Why it's called that, I have no idea. The American stores are called "Boston's The Gourmet Pizza" and there aren't any here in Massachusetts. I was amused to see that there's one in my old homestead of Rapid City SD (out on East Disk Drive) but none in Boston. One might wonder how I stumbled on this; well.... In the December 19th strip of Realms of Ishkaze Arashiko explains that everybody's avatars look like "Ishi Babies." In the comments that's explained as a reference to "Muppet Babies" and notes that Arashiko has shoes and socks like Nanny character of that show. I looked up Muppet Babies and noticed there that one of the voice actors was Howie Mandel. And there it was noted that he did ads for this Boston Pizza chain. Hmm, and he was in the Boston set medical drama St. Elsewhere; maybe that's the Boston connection? Ehh, probably not. Anyway, we get distracted by silly things.

Oh, the Strange...

klyfix@aol.com — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 20:21:55 GMT

And now for some Weird Japanese Thing. I'd heard of this before, but the BBC picked up that story about the Japanese guy who "married" a character from a dating sim. It's somewhat amusing that "SAL9000" (the guy) doesn't give out his real name out of chance of embarrassment; goodness, he did the "wedding" on the Internet and he's in a BBC news story. Not exactly the way to hide yourself. I did note some eons ago that the about the only reason to have a realistic human looking robot was for a, umm, companion. And with this, and what I've seen of progress towards more human robots it's going to be the Japanese who finally do it. Klyfix is now recalling an episode of the second Ghost in the Shell TV anime in which there was a club of people who do kinky relationships with androids; I recall one of the Tochikoma asking another (this was in the English dub) "Are these what they call perverts?" Well, an odd thing, at least, but maybe in a few decades, not so much.

The Fifth Most Popular YouTube Video in the UK

klyfix@aol.com — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:56:48 GMT

Saw this BBC story on the most popular YouTube videos and the most interesting to me was this one:

Hey, There's An Idea (Politics)

klyfix@aol.com — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:04:19 GMT

I see from TPM that a Republican Senator is forcing the reading of a single-payer amendment that Senator Bernie Sanders proposed. The reading continues until there is unanimous consent to stop.

Hmm.

The Democrats should run with this. If the Republicans are going to force this reading, well, the Democrats should force the Republicans and Joe Lieberman to actually do the filibuster on health care reform. None of this "Oh gosh golly we can't get cloture to stop debate so we'll just give up" crap and instead make them try and talk it to death. No faux filibuster, make them do it for real. Naked, in a snowstorm, while being attacked by wolverines.

Umm, okay, not the stuff in the last sentence but if the Republicans and Joe Lieberman are going to kill health care reform they should be made to work for it.

Of course the Democrats really should say "The heck with this filibuster nonsense" and do away with it, and then do a health care reform that would really work without being crippled by compromises to appeal to a tiny number (Three? Five?) of Senators who probably won't vote for the thing anyway. Yeah, if they kill the filibuster the Democrats will be at a disadvantage when the Republicans retake the Senate, but maybe they can hold on to it longer if they actually accomplish something.

More Bad Christmas Music and a Wild Tangent

klyfix@aol.com — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:47:19 GMT

As I think I've noted before, I'm not fond of a lot of Christmas music. It's the most annoying thing about the season, well, at least close to the most annoying thing about it. And if one goes shopping one will surely be pummeled by Christmas songs.

Not too long ago I went shopping and over the speakers came the tune "Santa Baby." This is a song that should be sung in a somewhere between seductive and sleazy style (seriously, c'mon) but the version they were playing was, well, more modern and with less punch. Bland.

So I went looking for a video with the tune being sung by Miss Piggy, didn't find one worthwhile, and instead went for a song originally sung by a Scottish band but in this vid sung by a Japanese music program meant for J-Pop. Yup, the umpteenth Hatsune Miku video. I'm a silly person.

Klyfix Has a Horribly Offensive Opinion

klyfix@aol.com — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:22:46 GMT

Well, maybe.

For some reason I looked up Greenland on the Wikipedia. And I noticed a couple of things. One that they were making steps towards independence from Denmark, and the other that Greenland gets a subsidy of about $633 million, around $11,300 per Greenlander.

Umm, yeah. They want independence, but they have a huge subsidy from the Danish government.

How, exactly, are they supposed to function as an independent nation?

There are a number of countries on our little dirtball that have minimal populations, and/or minimal resources and cannot function as a modern society without outside assistance and connections of some kind. Greenland is huge of course (although mostly under humongous glaciers, at least until Global Warming wipes them out) but most of these countries are teeny tiny islands.

Why exactly should they be striving to be full-fledged nations? Why should the rest of the world be treating them as full-fledged nations?

Not saying that they should have no control over their local affairs, but I don't see much reason that they should be trying to be actually independent with their own currencies, foreign affairs, military, independent economy.

Near as I can figure it's a misguided nationalism; the idea that they should be a country even though they really don't have enough to really be a country.

Eh, it's a silly thing to wonder about. And with global warming and rising seas most of those postage stamp sized countries will be gone before long.

Maybe the Dumbest Question Post Ever

klyfix@aol.com — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:08:21 GMT

And it is....

What stories feature the notion that all the poems of Emily Dickenson can be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas"?

I'm aware of at least two:

1. "The Soul Selects her own Society: Invasion and Repulsion: A Chronological Reinterpretation of Two of Emily Dickinson's Poems: A Wellsian Perspective" by Connie Willis from the collection War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches (although I'd read the story earlier in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine).

2. "Day of the Dead" by Neil Gaiman, a Babylon 5 episode.

Those both use the same poem, "Because I Could Not Stop for Death."

I'm guessing that this is either a sort of meme and thus occurs a lot in stories or Gaiman saw the reference in Willis' story and borrowed the idea. I'm also thinking that this might well be a very common meme and I just don't recall that.

So, the Ultimate Test of Faith is Christmas Shopping?

klyfix@aol.com — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 04:35:08 GMT

Okay, a little bit of hyperbole there. But it appears that there are still people thinking that it is important that stores say (presumably in big glowing letters) Christmas and not Holidays. Never mind that the Puritans in Massachusetts actually banned Christmas and some Fundamentalist these days regard Christmas (and Easter; it's Ishtar dontcha know); it's as essentially pagan. There is a "Stand for Christmas" website rating stores on how well they honor Christmas.

Hmph. For practical purposes Christmas is a secular winter holiday about family, generosity, celebrating, and of course shopping and gift giving. I'd prefer to have the religious holiday separated from the essentially secular holiday, making two separate holidays. When I suggested that someplace years ago one person proposed the secular holiday be called Greed Day. Not quite what I mean, but oh well.

Found by way of the web comic Shortpacked; it had a strip on this sort of thing. Most of what I learn these days comes by way of webcomics or TV Tropes these days, it seems.

Klyfix's Adventures Dec. Whenever: Shopping

klyfix@aol.com — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 13:37:16 GMT

Friday we went out to do a wee bit of shopping, and to do other stuff. As much as anything this was perhaps a necessary getting out and about thing; I still have some trouble getting around and need (I suspect) to actually try and go farther than I have been.

We went to Marshall's in the Back Bay and got some gloves. Rather a necessity since it is unspeakably cold and I lost my gloves (and cap, and new coat, and glasses) during my hospital stay. And I went to Borders across the (Newbury) street. They've moved stuff a whole lot since the last time I was there. Comics, graphic novels, and manga are now upstairs by the DVDs and CDs. I saw a few things that stuck me funny or otherwise.

1. Glenn Beck has a Christmas book out. Huh. From what I've seen, he's about as crazy as one can be and still have anybody outside a sort of cult base take him remotely seriously. Does his book for I guess kiddies feature right-wing conspiracy notions?

2. Lemony Snicket's The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming. Uhh, what? (Yes, I know what a "latke" is.)

3. I noticed in the DVD section that "Action/Adventure" and "Science Fiction" are lumped together. Best Buy if I recall correctly lumps together "Horror" and "Science Fiction." While there is surely some overlap between Horror and SF (particularly if Fantasy is put in the SF section), SF has more of an Action/Adventure heritage, at least in the 20th Century.

4. I saw, in the Science Fiction section a novel titled Flashforward. The author's name, Robert J. Sawyer, seemed familiar to me and yeah, he wrote some stuff I've read and he was on an Arisia panel that also featured Barry Longyear; he was memorable for going off on a rant about writers and assumptions that they're not being original when the third author on the panel (forgive me, I'm too lazy at the moment to dig up who) asked Longyear if his character Guy Shad was inspired by Howard the Duck. I figured that Sawyer, like many writers, had done a novelization of the TV series pilot. Much to my surprise, the novel was from 1999, way before the TV show. The series is loosely based on the novel. While I should have known this before, I didn't. Go figure.

5. When I went to the checkout (I got a couple of magazines) amongst the items on display was something about purchasing some brand of coffee and contributing coffee for the soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hmm. The government doesn't have enough money to give service people coffee?

Later in the day I went grocery shopping at Johnny's Foodmaster. Noticed something called "Panko" in the ethnic food area. Never heard of it before. Looked at the box, and it turns out to be Japanese bread crumbs for like fried food. in another area they had more of this panko; the Progresso brand had regular and "Italian style." Uhh, Italian style Japanese bread crumbs? Then again, considering what the Japanese do with pizza, why not?

And at Johnnie's there was a thing for donating to get the soldiers winter socks.

At that point I was finding this weird.

I've seen stuff to the effect that it'll cost around a million dollars for each soldier the US has in Afghanistan. A million dollars, and the soldier doesn't get coffee and wool socks? Am I crazy, or is something really wrong here?

Adventures in Japanese Commercials

klyfix@aol.com — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:34:53 GMT

This one is most strange, although perhaps not so much if you think about it, kinda. Really. Granted that Japanese families probably aren't usually that, uhh, diverse...

And there's this from the same company, featuring a certain famed American director/actor. Not subtitled, with maybe three Japanese words I know.

Human Progress Marches On

klyfix@aol.com — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:44:36 GMT

I had the TV on and saw one of those ads that the Jimmy Kimmel program does before the show which are a skit featuring Kimmel and others from the show. The product being pushed this time was something called Yoostar; it appears to be a video camera and green screen system for you computer that allows you to put yourself into movie and TV and other scenes. The thing cost around $170 and also includes some scenes to use.

Hmm.

Not sure if it's clever or silly. And it's not as impressive a technological achievement as flying a leek waving vocoloid figure on a rocket. But it fits the times, I suppose.

Excitement, Adventure, A Klyfix Craves Not These Things: Episode 1

klyfix@aol.com — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:02:12 GMT

Umm, yeah.

Not much excitement. Went to vote (for Khazei); I was the only voter there at a bit after 1 and there wasn't much in the way of signs and no candidate supporters doing their thing. A whole lot more people were around for the mayoral election; I guess that was a much bigger thing for Boston people.

My voting place is a fair walk from home. And annoyingly I am way far from being where I was before I got sick so it feels as if ran all the way there and back. Well, no, worse than that (and of course I can't run even if I wanted to); we hurt a lot these days, but in a general tolerable way.

And we see that the results of the vote were massively non-surprising; Martha Coakley won the Democratic nod with relative ease, while Scott Brown won the GOP nomination almost as if he had no opposition. According to what I saw on the news he knows he's an underdog; what jumped to my demented mind was along the lines of "Does this mean he's going to take a super energy pill?" Yes, I'm a silly person. The election in, uhh, next year whenever, is going to largely be a walk for Coakley unless something really weird happens.

It might be interesting to see what the issues will be for the election. In the primary the Democratic candidates were running on who was the actual reincarnation of Ted Kennedy and who was the best supporter of health care. Obviously Brown isn't going to be running as the new Kennedy (well, then again....) and honestly, I think the health care stuff will be dead by the time of the vote. For me the main issue is that Republican Party at present is (probably not intentionally) the enemy of America's progress and even survival so there's not much of a choice here.

Okay, not the most exciting posting. Oh well.

Return of M.U.L.E.

klyfix@aol.com — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 01:38:40 GMT

Way back in ancient times, when home computers were eight-bit, there was a game from Electronic Arts called "M.U.L.E." It was a multiplayer (although it did have computer controlled players for single play) game that was something of an economics simulation in a sort of science fiction setting of a planetary colony called "Irata" (Atari backwards; it was originally for that system). Great game, didn't sell much, wasn't available for PCs and Macs although I did see on one site (that I can't find right now) a picture of a disc for the IBM PC Jr. Close to being my favorite computer game.

Well, a friend emailed me to tell me that it's back and in a legal form from here. The new game has pretty much all the same game play as the original; the only big difference I've seen so far is that the Crystite Pirates are now also Smithore Pirates so when they come the colony is really hurting. The graphics are updated and nifty, with the greater detail a modern system has. And for multiplayer gaming there's an online connection. It's free.

From my perspective this is Massive Coolness; YMMV. :)

Would This Actually Sell Games?

klyfix@aol.com — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:01:38 GMT

It's an Australian ad from 1987. Got the link from TV Tropes.

I rather liked the observation in the comments that the ad seems to suggest "Nintendo was made by SATAN AND THE DALEKS!!!"

Things I Wonder about: Criticism

klyfix@aol.com — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 07:07:46 GMT

That is, how legitimate is it?

What prompts this is, well, I was wandering around the TV Tropes site as I'm prone to do and come across a reference to a web comic with a link to it. The link went to a no longer active place so I went and Googled to see if it had moved or whatever. And found a "review" of it at a site called "The Bad Webcomics Wiki." The "review" was fairly scathing. Pretty much all the stuff I read was fairly scathing, to put it mildly.

Now one might wonder why I'm putting "review" in quotes. That's because it's not really a review site. It's more a "Let's trash this comic I hate. And not just the comic, but the motives and character of the cartoonist. And let's do it in as vulgar a manner as possible."

There's a certain appeal to mocking things of dubious quality; I like MST3K and some other parody and satire. But from what I looked at of the entries there, and the articles of what appears to have been something of a predecessor site that they have, the purpose seems less being comedic than to puff up the egos of the writers at the expense of others. Possible of course that I'm overly sensitive and suffering from a different upbringing, and I certainly didn't read every entry.

But from there we go to the whole idea of review and criticism. After all, what a reviewer/critic does is assess the virtues of the creations of others. To what extent is this valid, and to what extent is this of value?

A negative review is saying that the (maybe hard) work of the creator lacked value. But by what measure? To what extent is it because the critic/reviewer just didn't like it, and to what extent is there some manner of objective assessment? To what extent is there a factor of "Those who can't create become critics?"

Off hand, I'd guess that a review is of value if it gives some idea what the item being reviewed is all about and why the reviewer liked or disliked it such that the reader or viewer can get an idea about if it's worth a try. A positive review might well show you that the comic/movie/TV show/book is actually not something you'd want to try because it goes places you don't want to go. A negative review might give hints of virtues (by your own standards) that the reviewer downplays or doesn't care for. I recall vaguely Siskel or Ebert some years ago noting that one of their viewers/readers always went for the opposite of their picks, and they said that was valid. A review, I suppose, generally shouldn't be "This sucks, and anybody who likes this should be purged from the gene pool." And it shouldn't be "This is the Greatest Work of Humanity, and if you don't like it you are an inferior being."

I occasionally do sort of kinda reviews of stuff. I base my assessments on my own reactions with maybe some input from what limited education I have and things I've read and seen. I doubt that I really rate terribly highly. My tastes are, well, maybe not quite low-brow but I tend to prefer things with a Fantastic Element over more literary or "serious" stuff, even if I'll admit that the SF/Fantasy/Skiffy story or show isn't as high of quality as the other work. The only new broadcast TV shows this season so far that I made a point of watching were V and FlashForward; make of that what you will.

In web comics, well, some of the stuff I read is on the "Bad Webcomic" site. I know that Achewood is supposed to be a wonderful strip but it generally leaves me cold (although I'm going to admit that the Dec. 5 strip is amusing). And I found the Bruno to be very well drawn and very well written but it just didn't get me into it. I still read Megatokyo even though for the life of me I don't know what's really going on (and I've read it from the beginning).

(clarification: of those three webcomics only Megatokyo is on the "Bad Webcomics" site.)

I think that establishes that I'm hardly an authority when I comment on, well, everything.

This Can't Be True, Can It?

klyfix@aol.com — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 10:11:27 GMT

I was looking at this post by Digby featuring Mitt Romney's economic plan and was struck most by this: "And, by the way, this is the guy who virtually everyone thinks is the only one who the Republicans could choose for 2012 who has a chance to win."

Seriously?

The guy spent huge piles of his own money to try and get the GOP nomination in 2008 and failed. When he ran for Governor here in Massachusetts my impression, roughly, was "I wouldn't buy a used car from this man." If anybody pays attention to his record they'll see that he says what he thinks the target audience wants to hear. And he's a Mormon, which is likely to be a major turn-off to the Christian Fundamentalist Right portion of probable Republican voters. How does he get the nomination, much less the Presidency?

I'm not saying I have a better (in the sense of a potential winner) for the Republicans, but goodness, they surely have better choices than Romney or Sarah Palin or the now disgraced (that whole business about him pardoning the guy who ended up killing those four cops out in Washington) Mike Huckabee. And if the economy is still tanking and the Afghan war goes badly, I'd think that there would be a number of Republicans with a chance of beating a limping Obama, particularly if the progressive/liberal voters get into their heads that it's better to have a Republican President than a not perfect Democrat.

At this point, and of course it's silly to make a prediction this early but I'm a Silly Person, I'd expect that there would more than a few Republicans who would have a chance to win by the time we get to 2012. I doubt that Romney would.

Things People Post When They Think Nobody is Looking

klyfix@aol.com — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 21:21:16 GMT

Well, at least that's what it seems. The mayor of Arlington Tennessee posted on his Facebook page (a "friends only" thing) that President Obama was a Muslim who announced the Afghan policy on TV in order to interfere with the showing of A Charlie Brown Christmas. He also asserted ""you know, our forefathers had it written in the original Constitution that ONLY property owners could vote, if that has stayed in there, things would be different........" which is of course wrong; the requirements for voting were set by the states.

His defense? ""It's ridiculous for someone to send my Facebook post," Wiseman said. "You guys are trying to make a mountain out of a molehill."

Hmm.

What this shows, I suppose is:

1. If you want something to be private you have to actually be private about it.

2. You really shouldn't say things that you're not willing to stand behind.

Which is roughly what an expert type says in the article.

Found by way of Talking Points Memo.

To be sure, who really cares what a mayor of a town of 2,500 people thinks? I suppose the interest comes from this kind of falling into the stereotype of Southerners as backwards ignorant hicks, and thus those of us who see ourselves as more educated and progressive can feel a certain superiority. Pumps up our egos to see that. Or maybe it's just kind of funny.