The Evil Eyebrow

Month: February 2008

  • Favorite Photo of the Week

    Blocked

    On Tuesday morning this week, I learned that I wasn’t going to be at work on time.

    A strong, fast, thunderstorm blew through Georgia and my house was about 200 yards away from a particularly strong set of winds. Several homes in my neighborhood were damaged and three in the neighboring subdivision were playing host to trees in their living rooms. You could see the line the most serious winds followed by looking for the half-gone pine trees that had been snapped off. It was impressively narrow and straight.

    The morning fun involved me, my neighbors, and a chainsaw, just so we could get out of the subdivision. Thankfully, no one was hurt (according to Cobb County), and the clean up went remarkably fast. I got to see how the utility companies deal with problems on a crash basis. They don’t bother with making things neat, they just get it working ASAP. I saw one utility pole that had been chainsawed above and below the utility attachment points, then that stub was strapped onto a new pole. Quite entertaining to look at. They have subsequently moved the attachments to the new pole.

  • Windstorm

    We had an interesting morning today. At 6:30 AM we awoke to gust front of a storm. Actually, the gust front was the storm because we got barely any rain, but a significant number of lightning strikes plus some major down-bursts of wind. The neighborhood got hit pretty hard, with numerous trees down and several damaged homes and cars. I had to unleash the chainsaw to enable my quarter of the subdivision to get out.

    I’ll post some pictures later. Fortunately, no damage to our house.

  • Sunshine

    We finally got around to seeing the movie Sunshine”. In two words: It sucked. I wasted another two hours of my life on overblown trash.

    I’ve been looking forward to seeing this movie for 8 months and boy was I disappointed. The physics made no sense. The spaceship made no sense. The mission (even though it was a MacGuffin) made no sense. To top it off, it ended up being a monster movie. I’ll give you the last three, but why why why can’t they do the physics right? It’s not hard! Really! I haven’t been so disappointed in the physics of a movie since Mission to Mars.

    Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. I now feel better about watching The Fountain, because at least that movie was supposed to be weird.

  • McDonald's and Science

    Apparently, they’ve not fixed their problem.

    A ways back, I noted that there was a bit of a science issue with the Happy Meal Container.

    Now, Milowent has made the same observation.

  • Best Quote Since the Last One

    John Scalzi has hammered it deep:

    I’m feeling a little bit sorry for Hillary Clinton recently, because her campaign is caught up in an event it truly can’t control: the messianic fervor surrounding Obama. Clinton’s been trying to go negative on the guy, and it’s not working, because people literally just do not want to hear about it. At this particular moment in time Clinton could unearth a video of Barack Obama eating live kittens while wearing a nothing but an oiled thong at an S&M party hosted by Larry Craig, and she couldn’t do anything with it because if she did people would wonder why she was being so mean to Obama, and her polling would suffer.

    I love that man’s blog.

  • Robo Cop in Atlanta

    Read this.

    Hmmmm…

    I question the legality of using a remote controlled robot to spray people with water who might be violating the law.

  • Amused! Apply Directly to the Forehead!

    Cetic, the Webcomic

  • Children of Men: The Movie!

    This is such an old draft, I’m not sure why I never finished it. I watched this movie in October.

    Alert readers may recall that I read the P.D. James novel, Children of Men, last summer. I didn’t like it. See the link for why.

    Now, I’ve finally gotten around to watching the Movie that prompted me to read the book. I didn’t like it, but it was a good movie, I think.

    For one thing, it’s depressing as hell. I don’t really care for depressing movies, no matter how “quality” they are. Almost all of the major characters die (true to form from the book) but without the tragic majesty of Hamlet. Some of them die suddenly, some pointlessly, and some forseeably.

    For another thing, they flipped the bitch in the movie. In the book, it’s men who can’t father children. In the movie, it’s the women who are sterile. I’m not sure what that change was supposed to accomplish, except maybe the screenwriters agreed with my point from the earlier post that if a man was suddenly found to be fertile, go find him and get him to impregnate every single woman possible! Flipping that makes it much more about the pregnant woman, which lends to the drama.

    For a third thing…I’ve got no third thing. Did you read that note up above about how I sat on this draft for 4 months? Back in October I was all full of righteous fury; now, not so much.

    I wouldn’t watch this movie again, and I’d only recommend it to people who are interested in dystopian depressing movies. It’s not scifi in the sense that there’s any science fiction going on. The only SF bit is the assumption that every man is sterile, for some reason.

    But, that’s another movie off of my list of summer (2007) movies to watch. Maybe I’ll finish the list before 2009.

  • Email Spam

    I just received some email spam. The subject line was “New Job! Jargonizing!”

    I want a job where all I do is “jargonize.” It sounds like fun.

  • Religious Uncleanliness

    I’m all for religious tolerance, at least as long as the religion in question isn’t trying to impose it’s crazy beliefs on others, but there are limits. Say, the proscription from becoming sterile before operating on an open torso.

    Women training in several hospitals in England have raised objections to removing their arm coverings in theatre and to rolling up their sleeves when washing their hands, because it is regarded as immodest in Islam.

    I don’t want to have to start asking my doctor what her religious affiliations are before allowing them to touch me. That way lies bad things…