When I’m at work, I’m forced to watch (on weekdays) the Weather Channel or CNN.  Most the time, I try to watch the Internets instead.  Wherever I look, I learn new things… not all of them intended.

5) “How to look for news”

CNN this morning was looking for ways to exploit and sensationalize the death of four young teenage boy scouts in Iowa.  As they found ways to go between panicky “how could this happen” and “tales of heroism” they found time to teach me “How to look for news.”  This consisted of a guy standing in front of a TV that showed an internet browser.  The guy then proceeded to tell me, the viewer, where there were internet sites that I could read that might tell me more about the news... the news I assume THEY were supposed be reporting.  “The Boy Scouts Website just has a little bit of information on it; look at this they don’t want you calling if you don’t have family there…”   COME ON!

4) YouTube is not an acceptable form of research. 

This one really grinds my damn gears.  Years ago, when someone of merit to society passed, somebody went to the vault and dug up old footage.  Impressive artifacts of someone… a true remembrance of them in their prime, and what their legacy meant.  Now what do we (the news) do?  Show streaming video.  Pixilated, craptastic streaming video.  And they don’t just do this for the dead.  They do it for stuff from other stations.  They do it when they’re too lazy to get rights.  “Courtesy of YouTube” my ass.  I go to YouTube because I don’t have access to the backlog of information you, the news media does, you lazy sluts.  And that’s what they are.  Lazy folks who are not sexually discerning.  Slutty, no?

3) Polls.

Today I saw a poll on who people thought was better on the economy: McCain or Obama.  While this is an interesting question, if we have to have this sort of polling for the next FIVE MONTHS, it’s gonna get old.  Fast.

2) Fox News DESTROYS MY SOUL.

Baby-Mama. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/11/fox-news-calls-michelle-o_n_106655.html

Ain’t nothin’ racist here.

Terrorist Fist-Jab:  http://mediamatters.org/items/200806060007

HOLY SMOKES!  I mean… REALLY!?  A damn fist-pound is a terrorist fist jab to be examined?!  I’ve been pounding fists since junior high!  If this display makes me a terrorist, watch out world.

1) MSNBC soothes me.

The other day as I watched Keith Olbermann’s latest “special comment” (see: “Edward R. Murrow wanna-be rant”… not that there’s anything wrong with that, and if you don’t know about that period in history see “Good Night and Good Luck” for an awesome take on it all) I asked myself, “How am I any better than a Faux News fascist who yanks it to Bill O’Riley?”  There I was, on my socially liberal channel, enjoying a good smack-down.  And then it dawned on me… I wasn’t afraid.  Keith Olbermann doesn’t want me to run someone out of the country.  He didn’t want me to be afraid of people who thought differently than me.  He didn’t want me to persecute.  Yes, he points a finger at who he thinks are the bad guys.  But he doesn’t tell them they hate America for disagreeing with him.  

I’ve recently had a lot of people in my circle enjoying MSNBC election night coverage and debates.  And I hear I’m not the only one: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117987208.html?categoryid=14&cs=1

Tom Brokaw drops by, Brian Williams, Tim Russert… heck, Chris Matthews is less of the “problem” he used to be back when Jon Stewart levied that oh-so-right criticism of the way he divided people previously.  I’m not gonna say MSNBC is perfect, but in a world where any news I have to watch has to be re-filtered through 10 other sources before I feel like I’ve made it close to anything resembling the truth… I feel like I can shave off a few filters at MSNBC.  I like this.  It feels more like the news.

**

Well Mike you brought this on yourself.

Top five things to do when you have a shitty job and want to find a better one or get a 2nd one.

1. Read the classifieds. I know this seems pretty obvious, and it is. But the truth is that there is no way to tell if you're going to like a job or even be able to do it with what they give you in that little snippet in the paper. For example, the one month job I had as a telephone survey caller guy. I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I applied for it, or even after the 30 second interview in which the qualifications for the job was to have a pulse and speak english. Needless to say I got the hell out of there and am now much poorer for doing so.

2. Go to places you want to work at and fill out applications. If I could get a job at John's Sport Center I would be ecstatic, but they are NEVER FUCKING HIRING!!!!

3. Get raise/promotion at current job. This wouldn't work for me because I am currently waiting tables and unless one of the managers dies I'm SOL.

4. Bitch and complain. Read article

5. Relocate to greener pastures. Well I don't have this option either being the primary caregiver for a crippled 60 year old man and an 85 year old woman.

That is all.

It's a wonderful morning on the Interwebz today, and all is well. I hope all of you are enjoying the start of summer. Emily has just started full-time work and I'm putting in 40 a week doing research related things and getting ready for the class I teach next semester. Wedding planning is going, that's all I'll say on that.

This past week also saw the ending of my phone contract coming closer. I didn't want to wait, so seeing that I indeed had permission from the almighty phone company to upgrade my phone before the contract ran out, I decided to ditch my poor old Samsung flip phone of boringness. It had Tetris and a Jimi Hendrix ringtone, and that was about the best of it.

Now I have a sleek new shiny phone! It's a Palm Centro! This sucker's pretty fan-damn-tastic. It's still small, but it has a great visible shiny bright touchscreen. QWERTY layout on tiny buttons that I'm getting used to. I was surprised how not bad it is to type. It runs Palm OS, obviously, which I'm used to since the Palm IIIxe days. Ah... IR pool in geography. Those were the days. With the Centro I have fulfilled my tech desire for a few devices. One, I get a planner with all the calander/task/memo goodness. I get my silly tetris and solitaire games that I MUST have so that I can waste time when I need to. It has a music player so I don't have to go get a separate Mp3 player. The camera on it isn't something I had to have, but it's a feature, and following good engineering principles, you add more features till things break. MicroSD expandability is good, it has bluetooth but I can't seem to get my laptop to like it... something about making virtual serial ports isn't going so well. I don't need bluetooth to sync it, but c'mon, it's there, you gotta play with it. 

As far as smartphones go, this was my pick of the bunch. I could have gotten a blackberry, I guess, but the 8120 or 8130 just weren't my style. Although, they're still grabbing much more market share than the iPhone. I have no wi-fi, and I don't do e-mail checking, but at work I'm by my computer all the time anyway, so those aren't necessary. If I do need the internet, I just pay whatever the hell AT&T says I should pay. It's ready to do GPS once I buy a bluetooth GPS thingy. Which I might do much later when I have more money.

Now, onto a Top Five list, since I think this site needs more of them. 

Top Five Singers\Styles I Want to Sound Like:

1. Robert Plant: Aside from a kick-ass voice he has great screaming vocals. Go listen to the end of No Quarter or to Dazed and Confused, Whole Lotta Love, and especially Immigrant Song. 

2. Stevie Ray Vaughan: Great blues singing has been something I've always wanted to do. Texas Flood and Can't Stand the Weather are amazing. It's a kind of heartfelt and soulful vocals that lets you use any lyrics you want and still sound fantastic. Check out any ZZ Top blues song for this point proven. Also, go find Joe Bonamassa. 

3. Gordon Lightfoot: For all your ballad and folk song needs. Sundown is a personal favorite, and there's obviously The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald and Don Quixote. Cat Stevens and Simon & Garfunkle would work too. 

4. Chris Cornell\Maynard James Keenan: (Soundgarden & Audioslave \ Tool & A Perfect Circle) Hard rock, alternative metal, art rock, or whatever you want to call it. I enjoy it and am always singing along in the car to this stuff. 

5. Grace Slick: Gotta love Jefferson Airplane. She doesn't have some silly girl's pop singing voice like we always here. It's a hardened drug fueled power plant of vocals that just sounds amazing. Janis Joplin would work too. Hell, I could settle for Stevie Nicks.

Thoughts? Musings? Your own wacky top fives? I know Nolan's probably bursting with possible ones...

-Mike 

Okay, I hope mentioning WoW in the title of this post didn't scare too many people away, because it's actually (I think) going to be a pretty interesting read.

First off, you might be asking yourself, why the hell does Riley want to talk about World of Warcraft? I heard he hasn't even touched that game in like 3 or 4 months. Well, you'd be correct. But, the thing about WoW is that it's like a drug (more on that later) -- once you've used it for as long and as much as I did, it never completely leaves you. Seriously. I still get the occasional urge to fire up my client and log in just to start a "new toon" for "fun". It's scary.

Anyways, I didn't really want to just write this article about how addicting WoW is, although that's part of it. I just wanted to discuss hobbies in general. What makes one hobby "good" and another "bad"? Why do we have them in the first place?

Honestly, I don't know the answers to these questions, but I thought possibly comparing two of my hobbies (one most would consider "good", the other "bad") and seeing the similarities and differences in them would be a good place to start. So, submitted for your edification, golf vs. WoW. Let's start with the bad, first.

World of Warcraft

Pros:

• CHEAP: It only costs $15/month, guaranteed, whether you play it for 10 hours or 200 hours in that month. Granted, you can occasionaly get into buying gold, but that's rare and not remotely necessary.
• Social: You play with a lot of fun, great people. I think that's the reason that it really appeals to me -- I basically get to hang out with my friends, people I enjoy being around, for like 8 hours a day. And we get to do and accomplish things together. It's good times.
• Relatively high rate of success: Honestly, if you're willing to devote enough time to it, you're going to be successful at it. Even the "super tough" boss battles are really just a matter of practice, practice, practice -- even the worst guild on Earth will eventually master the end-game content giving enough time and perserverence.
• Easy to do: I can turn on WoW anytime I feel like it. I don't even have to leave the house.
• It's FUN!: I will give it this: WoW is a lot of fun. Especially for the first year or so that you play :). This is before doing the same end-game dungeons at level 70 over and over again, for literally the 30th time (that's twice a week every week for about 3 months), seriously. That's when it starts to get really, really old. Let me put it this way: for $15/month, you're getting a great deal. When you look at the sheer AMOUNT of content in WoW; I mean, you're talking leveling from 1 - 70, having something totally new to do, for about 400 - 600 hours of gameplay. That's amazing. And when you first hit level 70, you have about another 600 hours of stuff to do. But after that 1000 or so hours of original content, you start just doing the same crap over and over again.

Cons:

• HIGHLY ADDICTING: Seriously, it's like a drug. You tell yourself "I'm just going to play for a couple of hours today..." then the next thing you know you've just put in about 12 hours, it's 3 AM, and you're thinking how great it would be to call in sick to work tomorrow so you can play all day Friday and just turn it into a 4-day gaming weekend. I'm not kidding, this used to happen to me all the time.
• Time suck: I know this might seem redundant, but not only do you get addicted, but you can literally sink as much time as you want into it. You will never get physically exhausted from typing on a keyboard, unless you count lack of sleep. Some guy in South Korea actually died playing WoW, cause he didn't eat or sleep. Seriously. So, you can literally physically play WoW until you DIE.
• Anti-Social: While WoW may be social to the people you're playing with (and, truly, it is a very social game), take it from Ankit who spent a whole summer in the House of Orr while everyone there but him played WoW all summer -- if you're not playing WoW, people playing it don't socialize with you.
• You don't want to do anything else: see above. But, I'll just point out, WoW nearly killed Zook Mayhem.

Golf

Pros:

• Social: You may spend time practicing alone, but golf is a game that's inhernetly more fun to play in a group .
• It gets you outside: I'm not the biggest fan of the outdoors, but I do think everyone should get outside in the sun every now and again, and golf is a great way to do that in the summer (and who really wants to be out in the cold, anyways?)
• Not a time suck: You can't really go play golf 8 hours a day every day. I mean, not only would it get boring really fast, but on top of that I'm pretty sure unless you're Tiger Woods that's not physically possible. I consider myself to be playing golf "a lot" lately, and that entails hitting the actual course about 1 - 2 times a week (for about 2 - 4 hours at a time), and hitting the driving range 2 or 3 times a week as well (about 1 hour per outing). That means I play less golf in a whole week than I played WoW in ONE DAY.
• It's a physical workout: Golf may not look like the most physically demanding sport in the world, but walking 3,000 yards and swinging a club hundreds of times actually works you over pretty good, especially if you're used to spending all day in front of a computer like me'self.
• No end: You can't really completely master golf. Even Tiger Woods, considered by many to be the best golfer of the modern era, has his bad days (and streaks, like he's going through right now). There's always a newer, tougher course, or a few more strokes that can be shaved off your score. There's a lot more than 1000 hours in golf -- most folks play it their whole lives and never get it totally right. That could be a positive or a negative, I suppose, depending on your outlook on life :).

Cons:

• It's EXPENSIVE: I spend more money on one golf outing than I had to for an entire MONTH of WoW. When you factor in club purchases (so far totalling about $700 this year), it's WAY more expensive, by leaps and bounds. I will say, this is in my mind the biggest thing golf has going against it.
• Low rate of success: Let's face it, if any of us were good at golf, we'd be on the amateur PGA tour right now. You're trying to hit a tiny ball 300 - 500 yards into a hole that's about 6 inches in diameter. Not exactly something that would seem to be easy at first glance. Then, on top of that, they put in OBSTACLES like water and sand traps, and make the rough about 75 yards wide. Cruel bastards. So, golf can, at times, be very, very frustrating. And there's not exaclty a linear relationship between time spent practicing and success rate, like there is with WoW. I don't level up if I spend 4 hours at the driving range. Some days I might make real progress, others I feel I've lost my game entirely.
• Golf, too is pretty addicting. Not as much as WoW, but I do find myself sitting around wishing I could be playing golf, researching golf swing tips, watching viedos, etc.

So, what do these lists tell us? Well, we can see that the "bad" hobby is an addicting time-suck, that's pretty anti-social in the "real world", and has a tendency to interfere with other parts of one's daily life. The "good" hobby on the other hand is challenging, but expensive, and less time consuming. So, I would say the most obvious lesson to be learned here is that an ideal hobby should be something you enjoy doing, that you can improve at constantly, but that won't try to take over your entire life. It should be something that you can do when you have free time, but that won't try to take a mile when you give it an inch.

Of course, these "bad" hobbies aren't just WoW. Thats a good example because I know a lot of us have experience with it, either directly or second-hand, but really any hobby that becomes like a "second life" to you is just as bad. Being in a band, for example, can be a "bad" hobby if you never outgrow your dream of "making it big" and get a "real" job. Or Student Senate can become a bad hobby if you let it totally ruin your experience at KU (which it didn't for me, but I know for some folks it did just that).

Of course, that begs the question, can WoW be made into a "good hobby"? I would actually say "No." Mostly because, by it's very nature, WoW is too time consuming. Any avid WoW player will tell you that you can't just get on for an hour and get anything done, so the play sessions by their very nature end up being 4 hours+ long. The other problem is that although it's great WoW is a social game, that's also a lot of the reason it becomes such an overbearing force. While you're leveling, you end up having to block of large chunks of time because you want to quest and do dungeons with other players, and you don't really want to "abandon" them mid-event. You also end up trying to stay caught up in advancement with your friends. So, if one of you has a lot of time to play, everyone tries to match that playing time, even if it means putting off other things they should be doing. Then, it gets even worse when you reach the end-game. Most dungeons and guilds require 4 - 6 hour blocks of playing time 2 or 3 nights a week, bare minimum. With that time commitment already in place, you then spend even more time in preparation, plus doing other things you want to do in the game like PvP'ing. 

The only person I've ever seen play WoW without it taking over their life is Enoch Jennison. But, to be honest, Enoch also plays WoW more like a single player game with some fun chat built in. He's not concerned with keeping up with everyone else, doing too many group runs, and he's never done anything end-game. He just plays when he has time, lesiurely completing the quests and having a great time. Honestly, if I could be like that, I could get by with playing WoW "causally". Alas, for me, there's no such thing.

Well, I probably lost most everyon in there somewhere, but if you were a brave enough soul to make it all the way through, I'd love to hear some feedback on your thoughts, especially concerning what hobbies you have that you consider "good" or "bad", and why. 

This is more of a personal continuation on James's last post than an original thought of my own.

Guilt is a very powerful thing. It made us apologize for dropping 2 atomic bombs on Japan when in fact it saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of soldiers lives. It made me think twice about sleeping with this one girl who shall remain nameless in lieu of getting something that may require creams to get fixed. And it is guilt that drives middle to upper class white people to believe that buying carbon offsets  (PRINTED ON PAPER!) will do anything but increasing the demand for more carbon offsets. I think that the majority of this save the planet bullshit is nothing more than a scam, or the self involvement of people making a huge deal out of something that naturally happens in order to give themselves a sense of purpose.

THE PLANET ISN'T GOING ANYWHERE

we are.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_output_030320.html

This is just one article that I found interesting. It offers another explanation, or probably more accurately, another source of "global warming" Because if you want to believe that human beings alone caused it, thats fine, but please, wear a hat made of tin-foil so that I know who you are and stay the fuck away from you.

I also wanted to know who came up with ethanol, or biodiesel, or whatever else they are working on, as being the savior of our oil fiasco. Any organic material that will be converted into fuel will require what? HARVESTING! and to harvest it you have to use? OIL!/The same fuel that you are trying to produce. And in doing so you are releasing more toxins into the air/ ground.

So these are some thoughts I have had recently:

1. WHY? why, I ask you, is it considered perfectly sanitary to wash your hands once done taking a dump... but ONLY after you have rubbed your hands all over your clothes to put them all on?

2. Why are there hate speech laws? What makes them constitutional? I was under the impression that given the first amendment I could say what I want. I realize the whole "don't yell 'fire' in a crowded theater" thing, but dammit if I want to yell fire in a crowded theater I should be able to.

Besides, who defines what 'hate' is? Some people have stated statistics about race and crime, but it's deemed 'hate speech'. I think if someone from the KKK goes "I hate black people" then yes, that's hate speech. If someone goes "50% of crimes are committed by young black males who constitute 15% of the population" (MADE UP NUMBERS) then that's definitely not hate speech, but there are examples where people say it is.

3. What ever happened to Smoove B?

4. The 'metro', a paper published and distributed for free along the subway in boston had a survey of 2 girls and a guy about what they thought the big summer blockbuster would be. The girls both said "sex and the city". The guy said "ironman". Wow.. they surveyed idiots. Sex and the city will blow. Ironman is already out. And why didn't the guy think of "Dark Knight"? I demand that his Y chromosome be removed forthwith.

5. I wish people would cite sources more. I'm tired of seeing articles (I'm picking on environmentalism right now, but this applies to everything) that tell me things but don't tell me where they got it. Example:

"If you don't eat a hamburger today you will save 3 tons of C02!"

Really? REALLY? Prove it! Prove to me that if I don't eat a hamburger the effect will be that direct. Show me that the shift in meat demand will have the direct affect of the cutting back of meat plants. Maybe it will lower price and then shift distribution other areas? I don't know that.. but neither do those people! Let's think holistically here!

Secondly, show me that if I cut meat demand such that meat packing plants get shut down that I can do something useful with the land. People don't think about that so much, but their is a reason feed lots are were they are. This is generally because the land isn't so good for crops. This is also the reason why you can't believe the statistics about the benefits of cutting meat production on the production of plants because the land isn't interchangeable. (I learned this during a talk with a friend who was affiliated with farming).

Also, laundry detergent! They are all like "performs better than the leading brand". Who are they to make such claims? Besides, if brand 'A' performs better than the leading brand 'B', wouldn't that make 'A' the leading brand? But an object cannot be better than itself, by definition. Therefore I win.

6. I saw organic, environmentally friendly yogurt in a non-recylable plastic tube in which the volume of material used in making the tube was a comparable percentage of volume of yogurt.

7. Apparently no matter how paranormal an adversary, doesn't matter if it came from hell, from another dimension, or is invulnerable; it can always be killed with a rocket launcher. This pleases me.

8. DARK KNIGHT THIS SUMMER AAAAAH SO AMPED!!

9. Saw a drunk hobo on a subway. It was 10 am. He was drunk on listerine. He also rambled about flyin F-16s in 'nam (hint, look up when F-16s were first made). Also, he wanted to fight me.

That's all for now. Hope your weeks are going well.

Well I have had a great two weeks let me tell ya. I first off have to say it was great seeing Riley again, he's becoming an online ghost, and I am ashamed at Ankit for bailing on the memorial day float trip. He was thinking about going but then turned chicken shit. Oh well it was definitely a blast and there should be some facebook pictures soon.

 Well damn, I thought that I was making this post with the intent of talking about something important, but I guess not.

Hey all,

Not much of a long post, but Ankit showed me something this weekend, and the amazingness of it is just starting to sink it, so I thought I would pass it along to everyone else. Apparently, NBC and Fox started their own website a while back called "Hulu" (http://www.hulu.com). Basically, you can watch full-length episodes of select shows (including everything from Firefly to The Office to Battlestar Galactica). Which is pretty awesome. Then, I found out they are also starting to feature full-length movies. Now, these aren't all that great, and a lot of them are old, but there are some intersting ones. Girl Next Door (Elisha Cuthbert is hawt); Ice Age; Dude, Where's My Car; 28 Days Later; Me, Myself, and Irene; Reqium For a Dream; even Monty Python's the Meaning of Life. That's right, go watch those, and more, right now, for free, legally, in your browser. Apologies if you already knew about this, but I didn't, and I read the Internet a lot, so I thought I'd pass it along to everyone else just in case. And, again, props to Ankit for showing it to me in the first place.

My work productivity just took a nose dive of epic proportions. Seriously. 

It almost goes without saying that this has been an eventful weekend. Over 20 tornados touching down in Kansas, and similar weather shenanigans in Oklahoma. Nebraska, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Minnesota all got hit as well. There were tornado warnings right outside the Twin Cities. Freaky stuff. Hopefully this is all winding down.

Now on to something rant worthy! As some of you may know via a Facebook note a while back, I hold engineering and the sciences in very high esteem. As an engineer I value hard work and judge based on merit, efforts, and results. The only discrimination is against those who can't do the job. This discrimination is necessary since the hard sciences impact so many lives. We cannot make mistakes.

This is why I got so upset when I saw this article a while back. It amazed me that people would think there's this huge discrimination against women going into the hard sciences. More women graduate then men, and more women hold higher degrees. There's nothing that says women aren't capable of doing anything they want to do. It's just that in the hard sciences, the percentage of women is much less than that of men. You can read my note on Facebook for more on that, and in the article itself. 

Then on Digg today there was this. Many women stay out of science and engineering because many aren't interested in it. REALLY??? People don't do things they aren't interested in? And this is a controversial study? I know lots of guys who dropped out of engineering because they weren't interested in the math or the amount of time required for the classes. Why is this some big mystery that we have to figure out? Just because some job or field doesn't have the same percentages of sex and race that the population at large has, doesn't mean there's a problem. It just means people do whatever they're interested in.

I've never understood the idea that men and women have to be supremely equal. We're not "equal" creatures, we're complimentary. A man is not better than a woman, and a woman is not better than a man. The only equality that is necessary is that everyone gets equal opportunity. That's it. If a guy wants to enter a field that's stereotypically female, he should be able to. If a woman wants to enter a field that's stereotypically male, she should be able to. The only restriction on anyone is just whether or not they can fulfill the requirements of the education and of the job. 

I'm tired of people still fighting the old gender wars. So what if there's not a lot of women in engineering or sciences? They can have whatever career they want. Categorizing people into groups instead of viewing them as individuals will only make the problem worse.

Now here's the real question, if we need to change things to make sure there are more women in engineering and sciences, why aren't we starting programs to fix the huge gender gap in the humanities and social sciences? I mean, everyone has to be equal, right?

-Mike 

Hey guys, how's it goin'?

Just a reminder, this summer I'm in Wichita.  I'm working for Heartspring, and it really sucks.  I mean sure, the multi-touch surface development part of it is good, but mostly I'm fairly miserable.  Also, my realtionship with your mother continues in a steady holding pattern; it's very similar to the last time we spoke.

I thought today I'd share a couple links and give blatantly over-bearing opinions afterwards!

First up, this gem: 

God, I love that picture.  Isn't it perky?

Secondly, this, which I found on reddit, my favorite Web 2.0 site. I have to say, I'm really jazzed about the possibilites opened up by the article to the field discussed within.  It really makes me realize how bright the future is, and how much I have to be thankful for.

Third.  Grrrrr.  Look at this site: HOW CAN SOMEONE THINK LIKE THIS!? MAN!  AAGH!  THIS JUST PISSES ME OFF SO MUCH!  THIS is what's WRONG with the world, and why we're all doomed!  Man, the world is in such a crappy place, and we're all gonna DIE!  I'm glad I think this instead!

I think that's all the links I wanted to share.  Oh, oh, howzabout a crazy life story!  So last month I was out with some friends at a nother planet and we saw a n alien.  My friend Nolan was like, "Haha, look at that creature of God' goodness".  At which point, we challenged each other to see if either one of us would ask it if it had a soul.  Turns out, I couldn't understand what it was saying, but my buddy was crazy anyway and didn't care.

It's like they say in Futurama; "It's not nuthin!"!!

Talk to you soon!

- Riley

*****

I will only give you my lasers if I get four of yours (because I'm posting enough for everyone, let's be honest).

--

I would also like to state that while I haven't posted a ton, I have posted plenty since this site opened. So there.

Hey guys, how's it goin'?

Just a reminder, this summer I'm in Wichita.  I'm working for Wichita State, and it really sucks.  I mean sure, the thesis part of it is good, but mostly I'm fairly miserable.  Also, my realtionship with Emily continues in a steady holding pattern; it's very similar to the last time we spoke.

I thought today I'd share a couple links and give blatantly over-bearing opinions afterwards!

First up, this gem:

God, I love that picture.  Isn't it perky?

Secondly, this, which I found on Fazed, my favorite Web 2.0 site: Clicky Pops
I have to say, I'm really jazzed about the possibilites opened up by the video.  It really makes me realize how bright the future is, and how much I have to be thankful for.

Third.  Grrrrr.  Look at this site: ANGER!!!
HOW CAN SOMEONE THINK LIKE THIS!? MAN!  AAGH!  THIS JUST PISSES ME OFF SO MUCH!  THIS is what's WRONG with the world, and why we're all doomed!  Man, the world is in such a crappy place, and we're all gonna DIE!  I'm glad I think THIS instead!

I think that's all the links I wanted to share.  Oh, oh, howzabout a crazy life story!  So last weekend I was out with some friends at graduation and we saw a B-2 Stealth Bomber.  My friend Tim was like, "Haha, look at that F-16".  At which point, we challenged each other to see if either one of us would win Gay Chicken.  Turns out, I won, but my buddy nearly had me by the balls.

It's like they say in my office; "Eat shit and die"!!

Talk to you soon!

-Mike

Ya'll are too quiet.  I mean, I know summer has started, but FFS; I need something to read over here at work.

So, I've written a blog FOR you.  I just need you to fill in the blanks.

*****

Hey guys, how's it goin'?

Just a reminder, this summer I'm in _____.  I'm working for ____, and it really sucks.  I mean sure, the ____ part of it is good, but mostly I'm fairly miserable.  Also, my realtionship with _____ continues in a steady holding pattern; it's very similar to the last time we spoke.

I thought today I'd share a couple links and give blatantly over-bearing opinions afterwards!

First up, this gem: ________
God, I love that picture.  Isn't it perky?

Secondly, this, which I found on ____, my favorite Web 2.0 site: ______
I have to say, I'm really jazzed about the possibilites opened up by the article to the field discussed within.  It really makes me realize how bright the future is, and how much I have to be thankful for.

Third.  Grrrrr.  Look at this site: ________
HOW CAN SOMEONE THINK LIKE THIS!? MAN!  AAGH!  THIS JUST PISSES ME OFF SO MUCH!  THIS is what's WRONG with the world, and why we're all doomed!  Man, the world is in such a crappy place, and we're all gonna DIE!  I'm glad I think ____ instead!

I think that's all the links I wanted to share.  Oh, oh, howzabout a crazy life story!  So last ____ I was out with some friends at a ____ and we saw a ____.  My friend ____ was like, "Haha, look at that _____".  At which point, we challenged each other to see if either one of us would _____.  Turns out, I ____, but my buddy ____.

It's like they say in ____; "____________"!!

Talk to you soon!

-_____

*****

I will only give you my ____s if I get four of yours (because I'm posting enough for everyone, let's be honest).

Read this. Make sure you get to page two.

Hokay.

So a guy who works for Team Catholicism came out and said it's cool to believe in aliens.  Not that any particular Team Catholicism proclaimations have much effect on me any more... somewhere between calling out the Muslims and a priest trying to explain to me how homosexuality and kleptomania were inherently the same thing, I stopped getting the memos (and on that note, grats to California).  Now, unlike my demi-hero Joss Whedon, I very much believe in the "sky bully", an afterlife, a meaning to "it all", etc.  Heck, I even still think Catholicism is a heckuva foundation-- which is why you'll find my religion beliefs listed on the book of faces as "Hare Club for Men" (I hope somebody out there gets that reference before they go to Wikipedia).  

SooOOooo I see this news all over the place and think, "Good! Some open-mindedness!"  (And, honestly, reading that article, there are a LOT of statements in this press release I LOVE.  This guy is smarter on the uptake than many officials...)  But then I get to this gem, which not all the reports have been covering:

"There could be (other beings) who remained in full friendship with their creator"

And suddenly my knee-jerk reaction kicks in.

Aliens didn't commit original sin, eh?

I could be wrong on this, but I think the majority of people reading this blog ascribe to some theory of evolution.  They understand differences between micro and macro evolution, they get the reasons that particular fossil links are hard to find (because it happens very fast), and so on.  So, I'm not talking to any frakking fundamentalists, unless Riley's mum is lurking over his shoulder.  Which means we're all on the same page: the Bible is a good book.  Divine inspiration? Sure! Amazing message? Absolutely! Literal? Fack no. Heck, there's so much contradiction between New & Old Testaments, as well as the fact that the books that made the cut were chosen by just another bunch of humans, not unlike the bunch of humans that wrote the flawed books... if we are to believe that any free will was involved, we must believe there are some problems.

Not that creation as told in the Bible is a problem, if you're functioning above the intelligence of a properly educated junior high student.  It's a represenational story.  It says, in short, "God created everything and it was sweet."  Then the second item, "He also created us to be like Him, but the sweetness got messed up via choice."  I don't think that some evil woman tricked my species into falling out of grace.  It's a very anti-feminist world view, in my opinion. I'm more inclined to believe that myself and everyone around me was made very much like God.  When the first post-monkeys started to make choices that went against survival but instead towards emotion and intellect, they occasionally made choices, because of their freedom, that were anti-God.  And the beauty of that is that we really CAN choose (thank you, Lord).  

So, why does the concept of guilt-free aliens bother me?  For me, it assumes a full human-centric view.  Jesus came to save us, and nobody else. Paul had to write letters about this viewpoint problem from day one.  God came to save us all. Now, I'll give you He might have repeated the performance elsewhere, sure. I have no problems if you want to tell me about the planet Claxxon Five, and their Savior who was laser-beamed to death to save them from sin. 

BUT if you say there are intelligent beings out there, and they got a pass, there's something wrong there.  Either they are not intelligent beings, which means they work purely on survival, OR God made someone literally "better" than us.  Our He/She Lord allegedly made angels with will and reneged on the enterprise after one of them became a real asshole.  If extra-terrestrials got a pass, though, that would mean they were fully intelligent, and for some reason, they got the full story.  They realized, fully, that God was awesome, and so they just never-ever screwed up.

Maybe this doesn't bother you.  But think about this.  If you're a functioning Christian, you believe that when you die, if your ducks were in a row, you go to Heaven.  And there, you don't "lose free will" but you "gain eternal life".  So, you choose, forever, to play for team Holy.  If you're making said informed decision, that means you're closer with the big fella than any angel was, because when they had choice and strong communication lines they still had some people cut out.  So, while it's been theologically exemplified for sometime that humans > angels, we would now have a universal view that other > human.  I'm assuming both "other" and "human" would be technically made in God's image, so... it makes no sense.  Unless God made intelligent beings NOT in Her own image that were in better Communion with Her.  Which is kind of a self-defeating view for anyone in the Vatican to be taking on, eh?

Now, I know this isn't some religious decree that says, "THIS IS HOW THE CHURCH BELIEVES" or even the Pope speaking on the matter.  But it is someone in Catholicism, in a position of authority, speaking publically and saying something that is, to me, fairly damning.  Maybe Mr. Vatican Science Guy doesn't want the aliens to have free will.  Or maybe I'm making a mountain out of a mole hill.  

My rant is done.  What's your opinion, gang? 

Yo.

Just so everyone knows, I am safely in Boston (and Zarrin is safe, too). The apartment is nice (it's the first floor of a house). We have food now, and internet. Eating and surfing are the two most important things, and we have them. This is a good thing. 

Zarrin starts work tomorrow, I start wednesday.

Thanks to Nolan and Cayla for letting us crash at your place, it was very nice and appreciated. In case you care, after leaving lawrence Zarrin and I went to her folk's place in Virginia, and we visited DC for two days. I saw the Air and Space Museum, the washington monument, art museums, natural history museum, the capitol building, and the national archives. We also just walked around the city, but it was rainy and cold most of the time.

Ironman ruled... "The Bank Job" was alright. Jason Statham does his usual bad guy that you can't help but root for role.

Everyone enjoy your summers (or ends of semesters if you are still in school) 

Hey guys.

First off, you should have read Nolan's Iron Man post below before diving into this one (which, by the way, I greatly enjoyed). However, as someone who's interested in these sorts of crazy things, now that both Iron Man and GTA IV numbers are available, I'd like to just discuss in a little bit more detail the whole crazy "ZOMG GTA IV WILL KILL IRON MAN" prediction that a lot of pundits and analysts out there were making.

First off, the cold, hard facts.

Iron Man

From Wikipedia:

"In its opening weekend, Iron Man grossed $98,618,668 in 4,105 theaters in the United States and Canada, ranking #1 at the box office, making it the tenth-biggest movie opening weekend of all time,ninth widest release in terms of theaters, and the highest-grossing opening weekend of 2008. It grossed $35.2 million on its first day, making it the 13th-biggest opening day. Iron Man had the second-best premiere ever for a non-sequel, coming behind Spider-Man. It had the fourth-biggest opening for a superhero movie.

As of May 8, 2008, Iron Man has grossed $225.6 million worldwide — $126.6 million in the United States and Canada and $99 million in 57 other countries."

"Estimates for the cost of marketing Iron Man ranged from US$50 to $75 million."

 "Iron Man received very positive reviews from fans and critics alike. As of May 9, 2008, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 92% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 177 reviews, with the consensus that "even non-comics fans can enjoy this smart, high impact superhero movie". Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 78 out of 100, based on 37 reviews. 

GTA IV

From Wikipedia:

 "GTA IV sold about 3.6 million units [Riley's Note: later in the article it states that figure at $310 million on day one] on its first day of release and grossed more than $500 million in its first week, breaking the first-week sales record of $300 million set by Halo 3. The release of GTA IV became the "largest launch in the history of interactive entertainment"

"The Xbox 360 version of GTA IV has received an average critic review score of 99% from review aggregators Game Rankings and Metacritic, while the PS3 version has received average scores of 99% from Game Rankings and Metacritic. As of 5 May 2008, those scores place the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions as the #1 highest rated games on their respective consoles on Metacritic, and as the #1 and #2 ranked games of all time respectively on GameRankings, becoming the first game(s) in history to surpass The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's score on that site.^"

"It has been reported to be the most expensive video game to develop at around a budget of 100 Million. There was a pretty good size army of animators and programmers working on this game for a very long time and it shows in a big way." (from http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/digitaljoystick/archives/138128.asp)

Similarities

After reading that info, there's a few things you should immediately come away with. First off, both of these products were incredibly well received by critics. I would argue that although Iron Man received a bit "lower" score, the movie industry has been around a very, very long time, has a wider overall audience, and its critics are generally more seasoned and "picky", for lack of a better term. I would honestly say that, subjectively, the 92% Iron Man received on Rotten Tomatoes is more outstanding than the 99% GTA IV received on MetaCritic. Of course, that's my personal opinion. So, they're both "cream of the crop" in their respective environments.

In addition, both of these products were heavily marketed. I don't know that GTA IV was as heavily marketed as Iron Man (video games don't do LG phone tie-in commercials, for example), but I think they both did a respective amount of solid marketing for their target audiences.

But here's where the similarities end.

Differences

What amazes me the most is the difference in income. GTA IV took in over $300 million dollars on DAY ONE. Now, granted, if we do a bit of math here, we can see that over the entire weekend, if we assume about $10 for a movie ticket, somewhere between 8 and 10 million folks saw Iron Man, while only about 4 million people bought GTA IV. So, you're saying "Well, yeah, video games are expensive. That's because they cost so much to make, right?" Wrong. Look at that statistic from the GTA IV review. The game was one of the "most expensive to develop" in all-time, and it only cost $100 million dollars to make. I'm not sure what the actual budget of Iron Man was (probably less than $100 million? Then again, the marketing budget alone was $50 - $75 million), but I think it's safe to assume that after making $500 million in revenues in the first week alone, GTA IV definitely made a tidy profit for Rockstar and Take Two.  

Why the pundits were wrong

First off, the pundits weren't wrong about GTA IV. In fact, it blew even the highest estimates away. There were 'whispers in the dark', so to speak, about breaking $500 million in week one, but most people thought that was crazy talk. But, it happened. And I'm sure when we get next week's numbers, we'll tack another $100 million or so onto that number. However, they were wrong about Iron Man. Even though people bought GTA IV, the SAME TARGET AUDIENCE still went to see Iron Man. I did both, for example. 

The pundits were wrong because they like to think that there's a finite amount of money in the world to be spent. It makes the movie execs feel good at night when a crap-tastic movie flops at the box office. Don't blame the writing, acting, or directing, oh no, it's the ECONOMY. As we can clearly see, even in a "recession", when movie income is down by tens of  percents over the previous year, if it's good, people will buy it.

And, on a final note, I'm not trying to take anything away from Iron Man, it's a great movie, and I loved it, but as far as "entertainment", GTA IV delivers in spades in ways a movie (to me) never will, and that's why I think we're going to start seeing more and more video games outperform the movie industry in the decades to come.