Vote No For Bizarro

So I've been talking to friends about this strange idea that popped into my head a few weeks ago. Remember I said weeks ago. They were talking about McCain's campaign for the Presidency. About how it seemed to be making stupid attacks that were easily thwarted, and in the countering made the attackers look stupid. We discussed how much of it doesn't seem to make sense, and how he is nothing like the McCain of 2000. I mostly listened and made a couple of small points. Most of the race has been so asinine I can't stomach more that a small amount. They seemed ripe for it, so I shared my crazy idea.

John McCain is trying to throw the Presidential race.

There I said it on the record. He doesn't want to win. He is specifically catering to the extremist elements in the party. The very same elements that hung him out to dry in 2000. He is letting them screw themselves over. I also think he specifically knows the Republicans cannot have a President in office for another 4 or 8 years if the country is to survive and start recovering. He waited until Hillary was assured to be out of the race and then the weird and stupid stuff really started happening.

This thought entered my mind over 2.5 weeks ago. Look back at the past year of politics and see what you think.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Water, Metal, and Religion

I finished Startide Rising by David Brin. This is the third book I’ve read from Brin and the second in the Uplift Series. After reading the first one, this book was a little more like the normal SF books I’m used to. Read my initial review for some background on this universe and its history.

This book follows the first spaceship crewed by advanced dolphins. Of course there are also some neo-chimps and humans on board as well. This historic test mission has hit a snag though. One thing that Humans have started doing is testing the veracity of the Galactic Library. They have been doing random spot checks and have found it lacking in accuracy of detail. That simple mapping mission led the crew of the Streaker to an enormous find. They found a derelict fleet of ships the size of moons that appeared to be billions of years old and the mummified body of one of the aliens. By eavesdropping on a transmission to Earth, Galactic religious zealots have come to the conclusion that this is the fabled return of The Progenitors. These super powerful races have now chased Streaker to the water covered world of Kithrup. Now Streaker’s crew has to survive Galactics, an ocean poisoned with heavy metals, dissention among the crew, and a secret the planet itself holds.

This was pretty sweet. The book revs up pretty good so that about halfway through you don’t want to put it down. The intrigues, plots, and plans are well executed and smart. I can easily see why so many people call this an excellent series. I can’t wait to start the next one.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

The Face of Hundreds

Well I finally finished reading The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin by H. W. Brands. I tell you what that took me a long time. The thing is over 700 pages long and I swear it’s like 8pt font. I read it in 3 goes. I broke those up with fiction books in between. It helped to take a bit of a break from the flood of information.

Well I’m not exactly sure what to say here. This was a darned good book. It’s well written. It covers an extremely important person in American history. And I really liked it. The reason I don’t know what to say is that the book just covers so much. Franklin lived a long time and did more in his life than most people could imagine. This is one of the people that helped make the US the country it is today. And some of the things the thought of and helped institute are very modern ideas even by today’s standards. So if you like history and good writing then you should pick this one up and give it a read.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Eternal Knight

As you can tell I’ve finished Fall of Knight by Peter David. A can’t believe that it’s been over two years since I read the previous book of the series, and the first before that. I’ve been eagerly awaiting this one, but in actuality it has been sitting on my shelf for a little while. I kind of stopped reading for several months there, but I’m trying to make a comeback. I took a pause 1/3 of the way though the Franklin biography. It’s good, but I needed a respite from 700+ pages of 10 point font.

This is the third and probably final of the series. This book is more like the previous one than like the first. Look at my previous review for what I’m talking about. Most of what I said about the quality of the second book applies here as well, but first the plot points. Basically this book starts a couple months after Arthur fights for the Grail and heals his wife Gwen. She and he are keeping a low profile alone on a sail boat in the Pacific. I mean how can Arthur explain the miraculous recovery of the former First Lady after a sniper round to the head? Surprise of surprises they are found out and rumors start flying all over the place about secret government treatments not available to the public and such. Arthur comes back to Washington and comes clean about what happened. Pilgrims start surrounding the White House wanting help from the Grail. Arthur goes into hiding, Merlin disappears, and some yahoo shows up with the Spear of Destiny. They seem to work something out about using the Grail to help people, but then all Hell tries to break lose. In the end it goes to show that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book as much as the second. It gets a bit darker, and some won’t like it for some of the religious stance it takes. I mean come on it has the Grail and the Spear of Longinus in it. How can it not be controversial? If differing ideas don’t daunt you then I recommend this to anyone who likes the genre.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Articles of Interest

Reading today, since it was my day off, I found several related items that I wanted to pass along.

A woman in the great state of South Carolina has filed suit against the RIAA. It looks to be an interesting case, but I really only mentioned it because you don’t see SC in the news about stuff like this very often.

Also the RIAA lost a case where the defendant didn’t even show up. It’s kind of unusual for that to happen to such a large organization, but it sets an interesting precedent for anyone seeking to fight them in the future.

Autodesk, makers of AutoCAD, is being sued by a man whose eBay account was disabled, because he was trying to sell legitimate copies of software. The thing is they used the DMCA to have the account shut down. This case is interesting because it take on the DMCA usage and EULA, End User License Agreements. Anyone who uses software, or some books, has supposedly agreed to a EULA. Well for a while the legitimacy of the items and rights signed over in the EULAs have been under attack. This one may further erode the huge EULAs that you have to agree to whenever you install anything.

Finally, a report probably overestimates the revenue generated by Fair Use. However, it does give good reason for lawmakers to pause and look at how protecting copyright too vigorously could cause much more damage than it prevents.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Myopic, Lethargic, and Rapacious

I’m reminded of a quote from Abraham Lincoln that goes, “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” I thought of that, because I just finished read Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond this past weekend. That quote sums up a great deal of what the book is about. The other measure of the book concerns studying the past in order to understand ourselves. I recommend reading the reviews of friends here and here.

This is the second of the books by Diamond I have read. I reviewed Guns Germs and Steel earlier. Whereas that book coved why certain civilizations became the world conquering powers of today, this one explores the civilizations that didn’t make it. Well that’s not true. It covers some that made it and some that didn’t. Then it delves into the differences between the two.

This is a long book and it took me longer than normal to read it. I was distracted by other things and had to steal time away to read it. However, it was well worth it. GGaS may have won Diamond a Pulitzer, but I see this book as more important. Almost anyone who can read a book of this length can understand where Diamond is coming from here. In chapters he lays out societies from early civilizations to pretty modern nation-states that that have collapsed due to essentially mismanagement of their environment. He then examines similar societies that survived, and in some cases thrived, because they undertook the steps necessary to secure their future.

As my friend Smitty commented in his review, the brilliant thing is that Diamond doesn’t get preachy about saving the horned owl or some such thing for its own sake. The point he does make is that saving a little money right now by ignoring pollution, overpopulation, overfishing, and overworking the environment is going to cost taxpayer a hell of a lot more money down the road. He explains it all in dollars and cents manner rather than appealing to altruism. I think that method will appeal to far more people than most others.

So as you might be able to tell I really liked this book. It’s probably one of the best I’ve read in a long time, and I think most people should read it. I let my father borrow GGaS to read, and I’ll probably send this one after that.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

And a Hush Came Over the Wire

For those of you that didn't know, today is a voluntary day of silence for Internet Radio stations. It's to bring attention to the problems being caused by a new royalty rate increase that will cause most Internet broadcasts to cease due to inability to pay. Ars Technica has an article up about it with lots of good links, descriptions, ans discussion. I suggest you take a look at it. As someone who listens to a radio stream, 99x out of Atlanta, during work, I hope this will call attention to a misstep that should be corrected. Go to savenetradio.org if you want more information.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Showing My Ars

I haven’t posted anything about my favorite web site Ars Technica in quite some time. Well here goes.

Ars had a nice article about a project to use some knowledge of thermoacoustics to develop a inexpensive, robust, and simple device that can use such a common item as a cook fire to provide the energy needed to provide rudimentary electricity and refrigeration. For those that don’t want to look at the article the goal is to apply acoustic cooling and high efficiency thermodynamics to create essentially a highly engineered tube that when one end is heated the other end cools and electricity is generated. And all of this with a minimum of moving parts. It’s a fantastic use of modern scientific and engineering understanding to create a simple item that can change people’s lives everywhere. It reminds me of an article in the NY Times not to far back about a man who spearheaded creating a solar charging flashlight for poor people in 3^rd world countries without electricity. The flashlight left in the sun all day provides about 8 hours of illumination. It allows them to read school lessons, cook, scare away animals and thieves, and any number of other things we take for granted. It also allows them to stop using soot producing lamps and such to light the dwellings. Both of these are good examples of industrialized nations footing a large development cost for a simple item that could help millions of people.

Ars also mentions a report that the Center for Naval Analyses released in which it calls global climate change a national security issue. It’s definitely an interesting article. I like that the report states that the military most often must take action and plan for worst case scenarios when there is usually a limited amount of information. They approach the problem from a tactics and logistics point of view. It promotes that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Climate destabilization can cause governments to fail and new enemies and wars to crop up. It would be far cheaper to offer technology to the countries we can help stabilize than it would be to fight in dozens of conflicts. It’s a good smart read.

And finally Ars mentions that Illinois’ citizenry are paying a rather hefty price for defending a law that they should have known was unconstitutional. Most probably the law was seen as a way to garner votes for election time by “Protecting the children.” I hope the tax payers of the state rise up and kick their government’s collective ass. Taking money from the welfare and public health to pay bills on stupid laws. I’m actually surprised SC didn’t end up doing something like that.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

His Shadow

Well finally, after two months, I finished reading American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph J. Ellis. I’ve read two of Ellis’s other books, Founding Brothers and His Excellency. I can’t believe it took me that long to read the book. I guess I got distracted and found it difficult to get back to. I probably only read the book for about 2-3 weeks, with breaks in the middle. I’ll ramble out a review after the link.

It’s funny. Ellis wrote Sphinx first followed by Brothers and Excellency, but I read it last. Also, I should mention that Sphinx also won a National Book Award complimented by the Pulitzer Brothers received. Anyway, the first thing you notice when you compare the books is that this one is much thicker. The paperback I have is 440 pages long. But you must realize that the last 70 pages are index and notes. Even with that, it is much longer. I assume being the first may have something to do with it, but there are other reasons.

Ellis decided that others had written much more expansive biographies of Jefferson before, and that he didn’t want to duplicate that. He wanted to do what he has continued to do in the later books. Ellis wanted to provide better understanding of the man named Thomas Jefferson rather than simply communicate dates. Therefore the book covers some things in detail with much analysis, and it skips other things. The book doesn’t always follow chronology either. Both can be somewhat annoying, like when he talks about something that happens later or skips the second term only to disperse some of the information in later chapters. It makes me want to read another biography just to fill in the gaps.

However, Ellis does an excellent job at what he sets out to do. As you get into the book you start to realize the reason for the length. It’s necessary in order to help you get a grasp on one of the most enigmatic characters in US history. Jefferson is often quoted by varied and conflicting groups in order to support their stance on certain topics. This occurs because people misinterpret Jefferson’s words, and because he seemed able to hold more than one contradictory ideal to be true without ever letting them touch or realize they were incompatible with each other or the realities of the world itself. It is truly amazing the complexity and peculiarity of the man.

I look forward to reading more about the Revolutionary Generation, and I thank God we were lucky enough to have them when we needed them.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Links redux

Several months posted about the FDA approving a new vaccine that I had mentioned the year before for several of the viruses that can cause cervical cancer. Well the NYTimes has an article up(signup required) about the Texas Governor Rick Perry signing an executive order mandating the vaccine shots for all girls entering 6^th grade, excluding those whose parents refuse to participate. I’m actually really surprised that Texas was the first state to do this, though the article says that Texas has the second highest number of women with cervical cancer. The executive order does offer the opportunity to bypass a lot of political wrangling in the legislature, and I don’t think there will be a big fight to eliminate it. Plus, the implementation conditions seem to be reasonable. I’m hoping Texas opens the door for a lot of other states to add this vaccine to the normal series of vaccinations women receive through their lives. Here’s hoping.

Several weeks back DailyTech had an article about a Naval rail gun test that passed the 8 Mega-joule range. I tell you I like that stuff. It bodes well for safer and longer range guns and a cheaper, more reliable plane catapult system. Where do we get those wonderful toys?

Well I spoke before about the Real ID Act, with my opinion that the security problems and ability for abuse outweigh the potential benefits. Well Ars has an article up about the growing opposition to the act. Seems more people are getting concerned about it for all the right reasons, security, abuse, and monetary. Maybe the system does work occasionally.

Oh and for friends that like the ideas of wikis and writing Ars posted about a “novel wiki” taking place. So far it looks like a situation of too many cooks in the kitchen. Should be interesting to watch.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Florida gets Bully’ed

I put a post up earlier about Rockstar, their new game Bully, and Jack Thompson. I didn’t cover the topic in all the detail I felt like, because it was getting too long as it was. Well as it turns out the Judge has watched several parts of the game instead of the whole thing, and has decided to decline the move to restrict the sale of the game in Florida. Jack Thompson of course declares it a miscarriage of justice. The Judge said the game is no worse than what is on television. Thompson probably wants to shut down most of that as well. Basically the Judge came up with the same ruling that I was thinking about. The game is free to be sold, and it’s the parents’ responsibility to monitor what their children play. Wow what a novel concept. Too bad more parents don’t follow it. If you let your kids do whatever they want then you don’t get to gripe about the activities they choose afterward. Here’s a novel idea. Why don’t you watch them play some of these games? I’ve played a couple of RPGs in my life, but I’ve spent more time watching friends play. I usually play the part of lookout and provide assistance in problem solving and direction choice. Of course all that is with permission of the person playing. It becomes a socializing event much like some of the online gaming has become. Now lets see what happens next.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

“I cut you so bad. You no wish I cut you so bad.”

“Those are some bad roaches.”

“I blame the schools.”

Rockstar Games has been in the news a lot over the years. They garner a lot of attention because they have published a lot of games that depict or involve the user in violence, like the Grand Theft Auto series, Red Dead Revolver, Manhunt, etc. These games received a lot of finder and tongue wagging because “Depictions of violence are bad. MMkay.” In the past couple of years there was another big uproar about Rockstar. They were stupid enough to leave some code in the game that allowed a player’s character to have badly rendered and acted sex. The code wasn’t accessible in the normal game, but there are modders out there that live to make this kind of stuff work. Apparently it was alright for little Timmy/Tammy to shoot someone in the head, but God forbid he/she has poorly simulated sex on the screen. Basically it was a stupid mistake to leave the code in there to begin with, but the situation blew way out of proportion. The game was recalled, the code was removed, and the rating was upgraded. Which if parents had been paying attention to the rating in the first place young children wouldn’t have been playing the game. It just makes me angry and when I’m angry I ramble.

That got a small number of very noisy people worked up because they didn’t have any other way to make a name for themselves at the time or justify the existence of their organizations. They screamed that the ESRB, the organization that rates the games, had failed in their job. That started a whole bunch of bad legislation to “monitor” games, whose sole purpose was to waste taxpayers’ money and make it look like someone was doing something for the upcoming elections. Why bother trying to do something good when you can just make a showing. I say that, because most people in government knew the laws were unconstitutional to begin with. Haven’t we had that document tread upon a little too much in the past 6 years already? Personally I think the ESRB is doing a fairly decent job. They recently added punitive clauses to ratings agreements that allows them to fine companies for including material not disclosed to the ESRB. And more stores are following the ratings in refusing to sell some games directly to kids below the rated age level than previously. Plus I believe that there is no complicated situation that government regulation can’t screw up even more. The focus should be keeping it private, self regulating, encouraging store adherence, and educating parents. Maybe more lobbying will fix it with a little fight fire with fire. Think of the dent we could make in the deficit with the lobbying money spent in this country.

Anyway, it’s a complicated issue, which brings me to what I wanted to say. Rockstar has a new game coming out shortly, Tuesday in fact. It’s called Bully, and apparently it’s shoved a big hornets’ nest on a long stick up a bunch of people’s collective asses. Given Rockstar’s history of violent games and the “Hot Coffee” mod lots of people drew conclusions about the game way before anyone had played it. Now that is looks like it’s coming out, and some people have played it, their hyperbole about the game had shrunk, and they appear to be grasping at stuff to say about it. Surprisingly, Jack Thompson, of Penny Arcade fame (start at the second post on the page), gave an interview about the game and was surprisingly coherent, logical and showed some valid concerns. I think they may have finally gotten his medication straightened out. Well Jack has been spearheading a court case to allow him to see the game before it is released for sale. I’m not entirely sure why he and only he is qualified to judge the game for appropriateness, but apparently he is. I guess everyone else lacks the intelligence or moral fortitude to do it. So a Florida judge had ordered Bully brought to the court so that the judge can observe and direct someone playing the game. Considering the game is dozens of hours long, this could result in severe butt trauma. The real question is what does this mean for future games and other forms of entertainment. Will law suits and judicial review become standard fair for somewhat controversial games, movies, books, plays, TV shows, newspaper articles, etc? I’m waiting on the answers and hoping they will be good ones.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

That’s right Rebo

There’s a line in the episode “Day of the Dead” from Babylon 5 that Rebo, of Rebo and Zooty fame, delivers. I can’t remember the exact quote, but Rebo and Zooty are a fantastically popular comedy team, and they are thinking of getting out of the business and going into politics. When asked why Rebo explains that they didn’t make a difference, and they had wanted to help during a time the Earth President had declared martial law and disbanded or killed most of the Senate. One of the show’s main characters said that they had made a difference in helping give people strength to carry on. Plus he said they had said things on their show that no one else could say for fear of retaliation from the President. Rebo said that no one paid any attention to them. They said that comedians say serious things in a funny way and everyone laughs it off, but politicians say funny things in a serious way and get support. Anyway, they convinced Rebo and Zooty to stay in comedy.

I thought of that because last week I read an article on Ars stating that a study indicated that “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” apparently has as much real news analysis on it as most of the “real” news shows on television. I have suspected as much, and I have to say, that’s sad. Oh it’s good for The Daily Show, but bad for other news shows. I will admit that I don’t watch the news much. I usually don’t because it only deals with sensational stuff. I really should start checking out some of the few programs that actually teach the audience about the topics that are being discussed. It’s time to get the TV Guide and check out PBS some more. I’m sure Smitty has some good recommendations. I also need to find a way to add more hours to the day or give up sleep. One or the other. But I’m probably going to watch the election coverage that The Daily Show offers again this year. It’s just funnier and I remember more of it.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

First and Foremost

Whew, I’ve been busy, busy, busy with work and class and house. I’ve been finished with His Excellency for several days, but this is the first time I’ve had a chance to write the review of the Joseph J. Ellis book. The first book I read by Ellis was Founding Bothers that I reviewed over a year ago. That one was a Pulitzer Prize winner. After reading this one I bought American Sphinx, a National book Award winner itself. As you can tell Ellis knows his stuff about this era of American history, and has a knack for turning it into a good book. I’ll ramble on about the book after the link.

This book has been sitting on my ever growing pile of “To Be Read” books for a while. A friend of mine actually managed to read it before me and write his own review. I’ve been interested in history for along time, and right now I seem to be in a US history phase. I might switch to Europe or Asia later.

Washington is interesting as a historic figure because his influence is so great and yet knowledge of the man himself is so limited. He falls into that category of People that are known for centuries by one name that everyone recognizes as this singular individual. Someone would ask me what I was reading and I would replay, “A biography of Washington.” They knew immediately who I was talking about. There are a limited number of people with that much staying power.

Ellis has this knack in books of turning historical figures into people. There have been trends with History’s greats first of building them up to near godhood and then tearing them down to nothingness. Ellis admits this in the book. He takes a different tack. He tries to reconstruct the person and the motivations and experience that lead them to the points and decisions on which most of history focuses. What you end up with is a previously enigmatic persona that dissolves in the light of realistic human wants and needs. It discards the common view of the inherent “goodness or rightness” of some of these individuals to show how very fallible and self motivated people could do such great things. In my view it’s infinitely better than the mythos that normally surrounds the founding of this country.

So don’t read this book if you like all the divine goodness talk about the Founding Fathers. Do read it if you want to see history as closer to real life. And do read it if you really want to see how amazing and necessary Washington was to the birth of this country. For a long time people forgot that half the beauty a portrait are the cracks, flakes, and other distress marks.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.