For those of you who have ever played “Whales Tails” in which it is an offense to be a “Slow Whale”, I present:
Month: July 2009
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Manhattan Airport
An amazingly detailed spoof. Check it out.
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Aliens in Postcards
Via SF Signal comes a Flickr set worthy of a look.
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Delta New Fee: Sucks to be Offline, or Poor
Delta, US Airways, United all enact a Poor Person’s Fee on checked baggage.
“But starting Aug. 4, Delta will start charging those who pay for checked bags at airport ticket counters, kiosks and curbs…”
The fee is an additional $5 if you don’t do it online.
Usually I try to keep my blog a bit free of the potty, but the only response I have here is “motherfuckers”. This one angers the crap out of me! I could swallow an additional fee if it were couched differently, but this one is so weasely worded it pisses me off.
So, if for some reason you’re not booking online, checking in online, doing everything online, you’re going to be punished by the airlines. Welcome to the brave new world. Now, where do I sign up for that chip in my head?
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Why Palin is no Good
This link sends you to a nice Vanity Fair edit of former Governor Palin’s resignation speech.
I acknowledge that I’ve never been a fan of Palin and think she’s the poster child for why the Republicans are on the shoals. I also acknowledge that public speechwriting is an art, not a science. I further acknowledge that Vanity Fair probably went overboard on the speech. Yet, I cannot disagree that her public statements are full of bland statements that are half-thought-out at best and erroneous at worst.
I hope that we do not see her raising her head on the national political stage again.
Update: Fixed the link above. Still haven’t figured how to make the email updates not shred the urls.
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Digital Rights Management and You!
Another horror story of DRM eating your privacy and ownership rights.
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Henry the MDCXXXIX
Many moons ago, I made a 2008 New Years resolution to “Write at least one crappy short story”.
As my linked post says, I did not get to it in 2008.
But! I have now written a crappy short story! I present it here, to you.
Yes, yes, I know it needs some serious editing. It’s got some issues that would be better addressed in a novella. It could use cutting down, but I figured I’d post it here and see what the reaction was.
For your entertainment…
Henry the MDCCXXXIX
Henry the MDCCXXXIX reclined on his barcalounger and counted cash.
If pressed he would defend the practice of collecting protection money. Royalty had been in that business for millennia after all. However, there was no one to press him. He was the King.
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Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Jenn and I went to see the latest installment in the Harry Potter movie franchise based upon the books. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was a worthy addition, better than all of them except the first movie.
They made great use of effects where it was called for (and some where it was not, you’d think they’d save the effects budget for important stuff) and stuck (mostly) faithfully to the storyline from the book.
Spoiler warning. I discuss here the movie and its ending at length. There are elements that are new and not in the book. If you don’t want to know, stop now, see the movie, then come back and tell me I got this all wrong.
Sticking to the storyline (mostly) was unfortunately my major source of criticism. There’s no way that the movie makers can faithfully recreate the book and keep the film under 6 hours. There is just too much going on. They tried their best to throw in all the scenes which diehard fans would have clamored for if excised. However, at the end of the film, I realized that a lot of those scenes were throwaway and didn’t advance the plot of the movie.
For example, they pulled out Quidditch again for this movie, I’m sure to appease the fans. The scenes were fun, but the important part of the Quidditch matches in this book were how they advanced the plot with respect to the Ron/Herminone/Lavender triangle and Harry’s growing realization of his feelings for Ginny. This was touched on briefly by linking Lavender and Ron at the post-match party, but then they threw it away and never revisited it.
Also, Luna Lovegood is a glorious character in the book, making important contributions to the feel and tone of several scenes. In the movie, she’s mainly a replacement for Tonks in the beginning (finding a bleeding Harry under the invisibility cloak) and comic relief.
This would all be forgiven in my mind if the end of movie hadn’t been rushed as much as it was. In the book, the scenes from when Harry and Dumbledore arrive back on the astronomy tower after securing the locket, to the scene with Dumbledore’s body are critical for story development (setting up several things for the final book), character development (we learn to what extent Dumbledore is willing to go to protect Harry and The Plan) and emotional impact. The running battle through the castle and then out to the gates showed that these Hogwarts kids, while not yet up to the standard of an evil league of evil adult wizard, can effectively work together as junior Order of the Phoenix members. Harry’s duel with the Death Eaters and finally Snape show that he’s a wizard to be reckoned with and also that Snape outclasses him. These elements and more are all dropped in favor of moving from Dumbledore’s plea to Snape (“Severus, please…”) to the offhand-feeling revelation that Snape is the Half-Blood Prince as quickly as possible.
If they had discarded some of the lesser scenes in favor of making the final battle a renowned action and dialogue sequence I wouldn’t hesitate to call this a great movie instead of an acceptable one. As it stands, the final scene leaves you feeling a bit empty, wishing for more.
Oh, and they burned the Weasley’s house down for no apparent reason. WTF?
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Big Whoop
It’s not news that States’ budgets are being hammered this year. In Georgia, everyone and their dog who works for the state government is seeing cutbacks and furloughs.
Well, just to make things even, the state legislators have decided to take a furlough day themselves.
I applaud the spirit of the move, but the reality is stupid.
Looking at the Georgia Code on Lexis Nexis, we find that the base salary for a Georgia legislator is $16,000 annually, with an automatic 8% yearly raise. To make things easy, I’m going to assume the $16k even though I know it’s low. There are 180 legislators in Georgia. They are paid monthly, so I feel confident in dividing their salaries by 250 (52 weeks, 5 days a week, minus 10 holidays) to get a total savings to the Georgia Taxpayer of $11,520. To put that in an APR, that is a 0.4% pay cut. My heart isn’t exactly throbbing with passion over this vast budget saving measure.
If they wanted to make a statement, they should have taken a furlough month instead of a day. That would have saved $138,240, or about 3 to 4 school teachers.