Jopsy's JOurnal of PSYchotic ramblings...

Fighting Words

2011-01-12T12:08:00.000-08:00

I'll try not to repeat anything others have already said regarding the recent tragedy in Tucson.

We all agree, 'murder' is wrong, always. Always. Except well, maybe...

... as a punishment for those unrepentant of heinous crimes.

.... in self-defense.

..... in times of war.

....... if it will save a child.

Murder *IS* okay when enough people come together in agreement. We, as a society, glorify the shaping of boyish minds into brave soldiers, who go to other countries ready to kill. We, as a society, knowingly send many of them to their deaths, hoping they will beat the odds and return alive.

The point is this: We humans allow the unallowable, forgive the unforgivable when it comes to murder when we decide it is in our best interests. We make it 'okay' by vilifying and objectifying a 'common foe', who will stop at nothing to destroy us.

We make it clear that it is kill or be killed. If we do not act, they will vanquish us, they will harm our children, they will dance on our graves, etc, etc.

The violent rhetoric is merely the tip of the iceberg. The hate-talk industry has long been vilifying, objectifying, marginalizing "the liberals" for years. The same way they do Arabs, Gays... not because of what we do, but because of who we are.

We verbally attack the right because we see them abdicating power to big money interests. They favor big corporations who are sending our jobs over seas... and companies who are replacing full time jobs with benefits with part time jobs without, because it's cheaper. Companies that are taking out life insurance policies on their employees for their own benefit. Companies expertly wringing every cent we've made or ever will make out of us through predatory lending tactics. And all the while they're cutting funding for education, and programs that would help us be a smarter more capable country.

And... what evils are the Left guilty of? A little too much compassion? A few too many social help programs? Unions? Being educated? Being pro-choice, anti-gun, anti-war? Being for affordable healthcare that's NOT run by former pirates and mobsters?

The rhetoric they use is that the Left is attacking them, that we are threatening the safety of their children, that we are unrepentantly guilty of heinous crimes [like not showing unconditional love for our country always, or because we overspend due to bleeding-heartedness, communism/socialism, etc, etc].

Right-wing hate-talk is *daily* laying accusations against the Left that is synonymous with the justifications used to allow state-sanctioned murder.

It's not just the 'violent' rhetoric that needs to stop... what needs to stop is the right-wing propaganda machine that is successfully peddling a compelling justification for civil war.

Expiration of Bush Tax Cuts

2010-08-02T23:13:00.000-07:00

Well... the "Bush tax cuts" are due to expire and there's a lot of whiney rich people complaining that if they don't get extended it'll be 'bad for the economy'.

Even Greenspan recently admitted that tax cuts don't "pay for themselves" as the GOP loves to tout.

Economically, to me, it makes more sense to let them expire.

Big tax cuts encourage businesses to gouge their customers and screw their employees so they can squeeze more profits out to their stock holders.

Higher taxes encourage companies to build their equity, re-invest their profits in better tax-sheltered ways, R&D, business expansion, hiring people, pensions. Stockholders don't do so well, but it's better for the company, better for the employees, better for the customers.

Oh, but why would stock holders bother investing if they're not going to get richer off owning stock? They will anyway, but unlike the 1990's .com boom, they'll have to be a little more patient, you know, like they did before the dot com bubble.

So I say, hell yes. Let the tax cuts lapse. Tell the whiners to actually do some work rather than letting their money do all the work for them. ;)

http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/10-republican-lies-about-bush-tax-cuts

Venhattanice

2010-07-29T16:24:00.000-07:00

My dreams are filled with architectural metaphors which usually echo my state of mind, from crumbling cliff top towers to solid sprawling industrial facilities.

This morning I dreamt I was visiting Venhattanice, a city that was half Manhattan and half Venice Italy. Ornate towers of bizarre design, their lowest floors half filled with water. Bars and stores with people floating about in delicate single occupant teacup shaped boats.

I rented a brass and canvas contraption that was mostly bicycle, equipped with small sails that could both float and fly, and took off exploring the city with my ?compaion?pet? a small feathery creature that could fit in the palm of my hand... wingless, it had characteristics of both penguin and seagull without being either... and it literally bounced with curiosity and awe.

It would dash back and forth in the wire basket of my flying sail bike pointing which way to go with its funny little beak, and I would pedal our way from one strange neighborhood through even more bizarre and curious places buzzing with people all going about their business on a warm/cool early summer day.

Night fell, I returned the flying-sail-bike, said goodbye to my companion and woke... and I've felt the same sense of giddy, warm, happy, goofy, wonder for hours since, and on my daily walk through the neighborhood, I watched it infecting the people around me.

Hard to imagine a more perfect day. =)

Pescepollovegan?

2010-03-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

On a lark I went googling to see if there's a 'diet' (either ethnic, religious, or what-not) that describes my own particular dietary intolerances, restrictions an preferences.

I didn't find an answer but compiled a fun list of different selective diets I stumbled across (and some made up):

omnivores - creatures (including humans) able to eat both plants and meat.
carnivores - animals that eat nothing but meat.
herbivore - animals that can not eat meat.
Kosher - excludes pork, predators, scavengers, and a complex variety of other things.
Hindus - exclude beef.
Lacto-ovo Vegetarians - (or just 'vegetarians') exclude all kinds of meat, but will eat eat milk, eggs, honey, and other foods created by animals.
Vegans - exclude all kinds meat and all foods produced by animals, (like milk/cheese, eggs, honey). Unsure where they stand on (human) mother's milk.
Raw Vegan - insist on no-meat, no dairy, no eggs AND no cooking.
Flexitarians - "almost"-vegetarians who infrequently include a small amount of meat in their diet.
Gluten-free - a diet that excludes most grains.
Pescetarians - exclude all kinds meat except fish.
Pollotarians - exclude all kinds of meat except birds/chicken.
Veganarchist - radicals that want all humans to act like herbivores.
"Picky Eater" - a flippant term used by veganarchists to refer to anyone with dietary restrictions without being completely meat-free.
hors d'oeuvre-ovore - someone that only eats appetizers, finger foods and other bite-sized treats. May include sushi. (my term)
meat-and-potatoes - simply that. Often 'greens-o-phobic', some are rather prejudiced against to vegan/vegetarians.
blancotarian - someone that only eats white or pale foods, bread, dairy, mushrooms, chicken, pasta, potatoes. (Typically excludes cauliflower.) (my term)
nicocaffetarian - a diet dominated by coffee and cigarettes (my term)
Theophage - a God-eater, (see: "transubstantiation" ;)
hematophage - a blood eater (for example: vampires and Catholics ;)
cannibal - one who eats members of their own species

Apparently, there is no word for someone that (for ethical or dietary reasons) refuses to eat mammals or creatures that nurture their young... but are okay with eating other animals like seafood, birds, perhaps even reptiles, or bugs...

Sure... I'm a "Picky Eater". But with good reason. Dairy (milk/cheese/butter/cream/whey) and pork in any form are so toxic to me I'd rather to starve. I can eat (but prefer to exclude) eggs, honey, and other mammals. This limits my diet to: plants, seafood and fowl.

When I dine out, I refer to myself as "Vegan PLUS fish/fowl".

I tried saying "NO DAIRY, NO PORK"? But far too often the wait staff interprets that as "no cheese, no ham/porkchops". Food shows up slathered in butter, topped with bacon bits anyway and it forces me to be the annoying "Take this back and do it right!" customer that everyone hates.

If you don't like my term, or have a better suggestion... you're welcome to pipe up in the comments.

The Ultimate Vegas Live Stage Show...

2010-02-10T10:50:00.000-08:00

It's Cirque du Soliel, Sigfried & Roy, and Blue Man Group... combined!

The Case Against Prop 8

2010-01-11T16:56:00.000-08:00

Today is the first day of the Trial against Prop 8 (more).

I can't help myself... rant time. A number of small unrelated rantlettes follows:

---

One of the statements made today was that same-sex marriage "De-institutionalizes" the institution of marriage, [thus, I presume, harming the marriages of heterosexuals]. What absolute utter bonking absurdity.

---

In blog comments, I saw a slippery-sloper argue "If gays are allowed to marry, what next? We'll have to let siblings marry each other!"

For the sake of argument... let's ignore the 'inbreeding' angle for a moment. Siblings are already 'family', automatically imbued with state and federal recognition of their of their relationship. As "Next of Kin" they have legal rights that have, in many cases, TRUMPED the rights of a sibling's domestic partner. For siblings to marry each other would be, honestly, somewhat redundant. All they need do is NOT marry someone else.

---

I swear, if I hear one more person complain about the "liberals attempting to re-define the institution of marriage", I'll scream.

Think back for a moment... who were the two biggest advocates for Prop 8, trying to entrench their "one man, one woman" definition of marriage? The Catholic Church, and ancient order of unmarried men who have a shameful history of harboring pedophiles... and The Mormons who got their start believing that women were so utterly inferior to men that guys should be entitled to multiple wives.

If you ask me, both groups have 'issues' that render them unqualified to be 'defining' marriage for anyone.

They're welcome to believe whatever they want. It's a free country.
... or it was until they joined forces to impose their beliefs on the rest of us.

The next shift...

2010-01-07T16:41:00.000-08:00

Been thinking about the next Geek Culture shift.. (Tech Geeque?) and what flavor it is likely to have.

Certainly it will have something to do with AR (augmented reality).

If you look at the evolution of music 'technology' and 'usage' you have:
* LIVE - nothing but live performance for centuries, limited to what local culture preferred and what talent could offer
* RECORDED - musical recordings made a wide variety of music available to anyone at almost anytime
* BROADCAST - broadcast music made music easier to access and built an economy of scale for popular performers
* PORTABLE - listening to music became portable thanks to smaller devices and car stereos
* PERSONAL - music became more diverse and more intensely 'personal' thing thanks headphones/earbuds
* PERVASIVE - internet radio stations at work, car stereos, music in stores, it's inescapable

To a limited degree much the same has happened with movies, which use to be more of a social phenomenom, now with home theaters, netflix, iPhones, tivo, LCD screens running commercials at gas pumps... watching visual media has also becomes portable, personal and pervasive.

Person to Person communication, from written correspondence, books and newspapers to email, twitter, facebook, and (video) blogs on the 'text' side and on the voice side you go from hit-or-miss shared party-line bake-a-lite house phones to blue-tooth earpieces. Both being more portable, personal and pervasive than ever.

Even computing resources, which started off as large timeshared systems are now laptops, tablets, PDAs, and of course, more portable, personal and pervasive, etc.

Same will be true with "Augmented Reality". At the moment it's little niche-y instances like "hold this postcard up to your laptop camera and on the screen you'll see some 3d model spring out of the page. Or the iPhone app that uses GPS to provide you a clairevoyant view of transportation/services around you. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps49T0iJwVg)

As rendering/display technology gets cheaper, lighter, smaller, faster it won't be long before semi-transparent glasses with built in displays become available, tied via bluetooth or something like it to a key-fob sized processor allow us to view the world through filters that we select. You like noire? Stroll through downtown and through your lenses all the buildings will be dark with red velvet drapes in every window. Jog through the neighborhood and use the sky as your big screen to watch the music video that goes with the music you're listening too. Easily see the names of friends at crowded events.

* driving, you could have lanes of traffic or off-ramps haloed in red, yellow or green depending on reported traffic conditions, and have 'personal signs' added to the side of the road guiding you on your way

With simple eye-tracking controls you could, for example:
* activate a digital zoom, night vision, or digital 'x-ray' view, snapshot or record video of what you're looking at
* go shopping and look at UPC codes as you pick up items and price compare, or count calories, or manage your shopping list.
* scan and mark your personal calendar nearly instantly
* be reminded of names and notes of people you encounter with face recognition

As phones are rapidly becoming 'hands free' devices. It's only natural that PDA's will too, eventually.

9/11 terrorists coming to trial in NYC

2009-11-14T14:15:00.000-08:00

Apparently the right wing is all up in arms about how terrible/awful/bad/unsafe/disrepectful this is --> http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/alleged-911-masterminds-be-tried-nyc

Only because they rely on their strength of numbers can they get away with this cowardly ignorant un-American hypocritical protest.

We are a nation of LAW. Bush undermined that by fiat when he ignored due process, and the rest of our government was too shocked/intimidated/confused or sold-out to protest as they should have. So much for liberty and justice for all.

Yes. The terrorists are not U.S. citizens, and technically not protected by our constitution or bill of rights. Ask yourself this... they committed the crime HERE. Where should they be tried? HERE. How is that not blatently obvious? Even the supreme court seems to agree (in Boumediene_v._Bush)

"But American lives will at risk if they get off on a technicality". Excuse me? Imagine you're a terrorist who helped bring down the world trade center... and now you have a chance of being set free... Which is the LAST city on this planet you'd want to be set free in? Hm? If you paused even a moment before saying "New York City" you're an idiot.

Will "Americans" be hurt by these trials? Likely yes... the bastards that ignored American law and principles may be be exposed for what they are: instruments of a tyranny. They are people that brought shame on this country in how they responded to this attack and have disgraced us in the eyes of the rest of our planet. They made hypocrites of us all.

To use some of the right's vile rhetoric: "We invite future terrorist attacks by..." by showing we're so quick to disregard our laws and ethics... things that we, as a nation, hold to be an inherent definition of what we stands for.

Not to make light of 9/11, but if we forget who we are anytime some jihadist knocks down a few buildings... they're going to continue trying just for the sport of it, like a malicious child tormenting ant hills to see the fury and chaos that results.

Bringing these people to trial is a good thing. And they all should come to trial, not some of them secreted away to 'military tribunals'.

It is time to stop playing at their level and return to our own.

Aion

2009-09-28T17:44:00.000-07:00

For anyone else that may be playing (or interested in playing)... Aion.

I currently have 5 Asmodian characters, all on Yustiel:

Jopsy - Chanter
Tortis - Templar
Jopster - Spirit Master
Jormungand - Sorcerer
Presto - Mule (err... Spirit master)

gmail = amsterdam?!

2009-09-16T16:59:00.000-07:00

Okay, just minding my own business here, tried to access my gmail stuff and got no response from their servers. (A rare enough occurance that my curiosity spun up).

So, I wanted to know if I was getting through to the gmail servers... and if there were problems between me and them.

Turns out... I'm being routed to AMSTERDAM?! I can't get my email because it's at a pot bar somewhere? ;)

Bizarre. San Jose I would have expected... but Europe? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
traceroute to gmail.com (74.125.79.83) ...
1 192.168.5.1 (192.168.5.1) ...
2 98-99-121-165.sbx14022.sandica.wayport.net (98.99.121.165) ...
3 12.90.139.97 (12.90.139.97) ...
4 cr83.sffca.ip.att.net (12.122.110.102) ...
5 cr1.sffca.ip.att.net (12.123.15.109) ...
6 ggr3.sffca.ip.att.net (12.122.137.21) ...
7 att-gw.sanfran.level3.net (192.205.33.78) ...
8 vlan79.csw2.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.68.18.126) ...
9 ae-74-74.ebr4.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.69.134.245) ...
10 ae-2.ebr4.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.135.186) ...
11 ae-94-94.csw4.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.134.126) ...
12 ae-91-91.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.134.77) ...
13 ae-3-3.ebr4.Washington1.Level3.net (4.69.132.93) ...
14 ae-94-94.csw4.Washington1.Level3.net (4.69.134.190) ...
15 ae-92-92.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net (4.69.134.157) ...
16 ae-44-44.ebr2.Frankfurt1.Level3.net (4.69.137.61) ...
17 ae-2-2.ebr1.Dusseldorf1.Level3.net (4.69.132.137) ...
18 ae-1-100.ebr2.Dusseldorf1.Level3.net (4.69.141.150) ...
19 ae-2-2.ebr1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net (4.69.133.89) ...
20 ae-11-51.car1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net (4.69.139.130) ...
21 GOOGLE-INC.car1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net (212.72.46.230) ...
22 209.85.254.250 (209.85.254.250) ...
23 64.233.175.246 (64.233.175.246) ...
24 72.14.239.199 (72.14.239.199) ...
25 209.85.255.118 (209.85.255.118) ...
26 ey-in-f83.google.com (74.125.79.83) ...

Unintelligent Design

2009-09-15T19:16:00.001-07:00

Whoever was behind the intelligent design initiative was absolutely brilliant.

What better way to promote a sense of martyred solidarity among the faithful than to offer a seemingly 'reasonable' middle ground between creationism and evolutionism. One that was obviously laughable, ludicrous and offensive to the 'fact-based' scientific community.

Perhaps we were wrong to laugh them down so savagely, it seems to have only further polarized the country along creationist/evolutionist lines more than ever.

There isn't even room for debate any longer. People are on one team or another and they just don't talk about it... and it seems like more of this country is swallowing the 'ignorance is bliss' tainted kool-aid dished out by the likes of Glenn Beck and blow-hards like BillO'Reilly and the mega-churches of the religious right.

Who cares if you're right, as long as the mob is on your side. Speaking of mobs, what the hell is it with the "no public option" loonies? I have yet to find a single coherent logical argument AGAINST a single payer public option. I've looked. And Looked. No one can put it in terms that make any sense to me. Maybe I'm an idiot, how would I know?

Rant rant rant. Anyone want to help me understand the opposition a bit better? Please?

More Aion...

2009-09-06T20:49:00.000-07:00

More on Aion ... "Open Beta Week" is over, the above images are my now deceased characters: Frodo (a ranger), Jopsaro (an assassin), Sethgreen (a gladiator) and Elamont (spirit master with his water pet there). (click on them to enlarge)

I know I said I was going to be on Triniel with my Asmodae characters... but apparently that's now considered an 'east coast' server. Considering that I tend to game late at night, I may actually jump into the Oceanic server 'Nezekan'. I'll still use Vaizel for my Eloys characters if I bother with that side. It seems Asmodae are *far* more popular at the moment, that could be a balance problem for Aion.

Aion is fun to play and beautiful to look at.

It's a shame their login system is such a spewing mess of festering dog vomit!

The "Pre-select" phase started at noon today. The point of this is to allow pre-order customers to reserve names and servers they want to play on. Due to "Technical issues" that were not present during either beta phases, I haven't been able to get into Aion to pick my server or names today. "Can not connect to authentication server." is the error I keep getting, when it bothers to give me an error at all. The rest of the time it just silently sits there doing nothing after I attempt to log in.

Somewhat disappointed. More annoyed at how much time I wasted today trying to figure out if this problem was on MY side or not.

YES my dsl link is working fine.

YES my copy of Aion is fully patched.

YES I completely re-installed Aion FROM SCRATCH.

YES I tried it without my firewall up.

YES I tried sacrificing a chicken at midnight. (okay no, not really).

YES I sent a barking mad ticket in to ncsoft tech support... maybe I'll get another unhelpful auto-reply from them someday.

ANYWAY. It's not like I can actually PLAY.. still have to wait for Sunday for that. Assuming I can actually log in on Sunday. (I'm not feeling lucky at the moment).

ANYWAY... sorry. Grumpy. (This blog is for random ranting after all. There you go.)

So, a report card, CLOSED BETA performance compared to OPEN BETA performance:

Graphics: No change, still excellent. I'm embarassed to say I've got over 500 snapshots from the game on disk now, which is very unlike me. Maybe part of the photofrenzy is based on knowing my beta characters would soon be gone forever and I wanted some record of having them.

Gameplay: No change, still love it... Glad so much of the content seems to be solo-able and pick-up groups come together easily enough for the few areas where soloing is suicidal.

Chat "content": WORSE. This isn't a technical issue, it's a "newbie behavior" issue. It's better just to turn OFF the region and LFG channels to avoid the trolls. Conversation is dominated by WoW-fans/deserters. Hopefully now that the beta tourist/trolls have to subscribe and pay to blather on things will calm down a little.

The Chat System itself in Aion, frankly, still blows chunks:

The /ignore command. We have no choice over how we use caps in our names, why is this command case sensitive? Sorry but that just utterly moronic. Fortunately there doesn't seem to be a limit to how many people you can ignore.

Local chat prefix is /s, (or /normal ?) It was too much trouble to add /say as an option? Way too many people are confused by this... and obviously so because of #3...

unknown /slashcommands should NOT be echoed to the current chanel. They should generate an error "command /whatever unknown". or something.
Chat system NEEDS WORK.

Voicework: Somewhat more annoying. After a week of listening to the clerics yelling "Dombraro" I have to admit I liked whatever they were chanting before. The shriek of the female in their battle cries is just over the top annoying. Fortunately I think that kind of voicework can be easily reduced in volume in options.

Music: IMPROVED. more nicely integrated than last time. More subtle, less stage-stealing/repetative. Yay! =)

LAG: SAME, little to none. Almost non-existant in my experience, had 20 minutes of rubberbanding around midnight and a disconnect, but the rest of the day was smooth as butter. The complaints about lag, (from what sounds like ComCast customers) was unending though. (Unfortunately they weren't lagged enough to completely silence them. ;)

FPS: SAME. very decent with mostly maxed out settings on my 4 year old box. Max-rez tends to make the video cut-scenes stutter some, so I stay on a slightly lower rez setting, with the other params maxed.

New Character Appearance Options: IMPROVED. Heh... Without intending to at first, one of my characters started looking like Seth Green, so, well, I tinkered with his face a bit more and have been getting compliments in game for the resemblance. (er, well, green skin not withstanding) =) oh, and because we can't have spaces or caps after the first letter in names, he was merely dubbed "Sethgreen". Sigh. Anyway.

Questing Choke Points: MUCH IMPROVED. No where near as big an issue as it was in Closed Beta, they apparently added several more 'channels' (parallel instances of the newbie areas)... definitely a better experience than in closed beta where a standing group of 30 people were standing around cutting in line to grab a quest completions item in a few spots. (they only spawn once a minute it seems)

Logging In: STILL AWFUL. The loading screen takes *FOREVER*. Far too often progress never advances from the LOGIN page to the EULA page because the authentication servers are overloaded. Heck you don't even know if the game is hung or still trying half the time. I've waited for EULA page to come up for 10 minutes with no feedback. Bad... bad... bad... terrible.. unprofessional... bad. Add progress bars or *something*. @)#%&)#*$#. I've been trying to get into the pre-select for 45 minutes now. 50% of the time, the login page hangs, 50% of the time I get a auth server not responding. *grr*

Crafting: (no experience with it in closed beta). As a long time Secondlifer, the idea of crafting in MMO's seems more like collecting ceral box-tops and mailing them back in for prizes to me. Normally, I can't be bothered with it. Even so, I dabbled with "crafting" in Aion a little during the open beta, and may play with it further in the live version. The apparatus is nicely modelled/animated, the system seems reasonable. Fair activity to engage in while watching a movie or something on the side. ;)

I still need to shop around to find a large casual mostly PvE, guild of level-headed gamers to join up with. My goals are to explore the classes I've picked to play to their fullest and to see the world... not to farm the same content over and over. That may not be compatible with a lot of guilds.

Yellowstone

2009-09-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

The trip to Yellowstone was quite enjoyable. And it most definitely did not suck having a room on the 3rd floor of the 'old' part of the Old Faithful Inn facing the infamous geyser itself! =)

While I normally tend to leave the photography to people with better cameras, I did a little myself, and, for fun, created some "Crossed Eye Stereograms". To view them, click on the image to enlarge, sit back a little and then cross your eyes so that you "See Double". If you see four images you're over-doing it.

If you have trouble, make sure not looking at the image from an angle, hold your thumb up midway between you and the image. Focus on your thumb and then slowly move your thumb closer to your nose. At some point your focus should 'lock on' to image behind your thumb. =)

Some if the images work out better than others.. the one with the trees and the river seems to work best for most people.

Still culling through the rest of the pics, and will post a few more when I've whittled the set down to 5 of the best.

Aion

2009-08-17T20:14:00.001-07:00

Aion: Tower of Eternity (by NCsoft) is yet another entry into the "swords & sorcery" style of MMORPG. Already released (and apparently quite popular) in Korea and China... I've had a chance to dive into the last two 'closed beta weekends' that preceed the US/EU translated version, slated for Sept 22, 2009

Without a doubt, Aion is the most photogenic game I have ever seen. Stunningly beautiful avatars, outstanding use of lighting, delicous water effects, tasty magical combat, and fluid animations. While some corners were cut on some effects and (at times) the world's detailing relies more heavily on images instead of modelling, but the overall effect, especially the artistry in the architecture makes me salivate like a kid in a candy store, and runs quite well even with the graphics settings maxed out on my "no-longer a spring chicken" desktop system

Music: Sadly, I'm not as wild about it as others seem to be. It blatantly proclaims it's 'anime' roots which isn't a bad thing at all, but it loops rather obviously and, at times ramps up into these pompously/over-dramatics swells in otherwise very mundane situations, calling unnecessary attention to itself. It's like having a charming child nearby that disrupts conversation every few moments because they want attention, tolerable up to a point, annoying thereafter. (I admit, as far as sound transitions and relevance go, I was spoiled long ago by the game "Sacrifice" released by Shiny). I know from experience that music plays a strong role in how often and how much I play a game... we'll see if that becomes a problem for me with Aion or not.

The Aion back-story in a nutshell: A planet where the sun/god (Aion) is at the center, and the people live on the inside of the 'shell' around it. The world was split in half by war and treachery. One side, the Eloys, live in eternal light, they are beautiful and little changed by time. The other side, the Asmodians, live in shadow and have evolved claws, talons and spinal manes, and darker skin. Both sides fight a more ruthless outside force (The Balur, a draconian/serpentine race) and each other.

Reconciliation between the human factions is certainly impossible, the Eloys attempted peace talks with the Balur, which resulted in the cataclysm that split their world. They blame the failure on Asmodian treachery. The Asmodians blame the cataclysm on the overly trusting Eloys for lowering their world's defenses and inviting in the destructive Balur. Neither Eloys or Asmodian are clearly 'good' nor 'evil', and they display traits of both. There are hints that the Eloys are vaguely more 'lawful' and the Asmodian's embrace 'chaos/anarchy' more, but even that is clearly present in both factions. Artistic styles aside, both factions proceed through the first 10-15 levels doing relatively similar things though in stylistically different environments.

Asmodian for me... I'll definitely be on the dark side. Claws, talons, manes, glowing red eyes, black wings and life in the shadows appeals strongly to my style of play, more so than the Eloys which inhabit a world where you'd expect to find unicorns and butterflies around every corner. When the game releases, my Asmodian characters will live on the USA server that starts with "T" (which rhymes with T which stands for TROUBLE). My Eloys characters will be on the USA server that starts with "V" (for virtue?). Can't have characters of different factions on the same account on the same server. Spies and double agents must get second accounts for that. ;)

Scope, Scale & Levelling: The world feels much smaller than other MMO's (like:WoW, EQ, V:SoH) and there's definitely a sense that one could, in a reasonable amount of time, actually see all of it. Levelling seems is relatively quick, there's still a bit of grinding, (it is an MMORPG after all) but play seems to evolve in nice cohesive and interesting 'chapters' with very clearly optional side-quests/activities rather than scads of contrived unrelated errand quests. The lower levels are very obviously training for the PvP heavy upper levels.

Voice work is nice, though there's definitely a palpable 'hostile/condescension' received from non-player contacts until they warm up to you. (and sometimes not even then).

Richness: backstory seems packed into everything it seems, random books in homes, libraries, quest-drops and such sometimes evoke cut-scenes and insights into past events. Normally, I tend to blast past that kind of stuff as just 'fluff' in most games... but in Aion I find they really draw me in more than usual. The story/theme/setting/culture/history is very well integrated, internally consistent, and seens well thought out, unlike the random bland/banal/inconsequential/formulaic fluff I typically find stuffed after-the-fact into other MMO's.

Character creation is definitely a delight... some of the toons I haven't included here actually resemble various familiar celebrities. Avatars range from sublime to comical, ageless to ancient, petite to ogreish, with subtle nuances that will definitely seperate those with an artistic eye from those with a bit more distorted perspective.

Sadly, my cute mage characters are now headed towards the bitwise equivalent of a black hole... I'll particularly miss Jopsan (the white/gray haired Asmodian sorcerer pictured above), JopsAndon (the dark-haired Eloys spiritmaster pictured above).

Unions and Reunions

2009-08-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

This seems to be the year of (re)unions... starting with:

* A beautiful trip to the beach near Beaufort, SC for a casual week with the extended family

* Then, a trip to Flagstaff, AZ to meet up with the brilliant friends that I was lucky enough to fall in with during those crazy formative years known as "College"

* Then, ComicCon - while not technically a reunion... it feels like it. Getting to see some of my favorite artist/writers for a few moments and to collect the last year's worth of new material, especially the latest issue of Phil Foglio's Girl Genius.

* I've just returned SLCC09 in San Francisco, and what an excellent trip! Met way more Residents, Lindens and fans of my Particle Laboratory than I expected! And it was a chance to finally meet the 'carbon-based' versions of some of my favorite 'silicon-based' friends. And, as with all conferences, made new friends and associates who will undoubtedly inspire many SL projects yet to come!

* Next? Off to Yellowstone for geek & geyser time with an old friend from DragonMud who has been the catalyst for both my relocation to San Diego and my involvement in Second Life.

* And then? Coming up on the 20th anniversary of DragonMud... and while that reunion will undoubtedly occur online, it will certainly be 'a trip'.

And in between all this... I'm still slaving away, trying to get my Vehicle Laboratory in Second Life open to the public... and indulge in a bit of guilty non-productive gaming that I'll blog about next.

Public Option

2009-08-06T11:00:00.000-07:00

Apparently corporate shills are staging "grass roots" protests at town hall meetings, trying to quash support for the public option bill. As someone who doesn't currently have employer paid-for healthcare... the public option is an issue I have a great deal of interest in.

If you run into any "Deathers" people who claim that the public option would ruin America, here's a few of my favorite soundbites:

"The public option gives US the freedom to choose... Are you against Freedom?"

"Competition will drive down the cost of healthcare. Cheaper healthcare would be just like giving American businesses a huge tax break... you're in favor of tax breaks right?"

"I'll take the Apathetic Bureaucratic Government instead of Blind Corporate Greed when it comes to my healthcare coverage, thanks."

2009-06-03T11:22:00.001-07:00

I read a lot of incendiary stuff over on CrooksandLiars that makes me boil for a minute or two, a sentiment I'm confident is shared by many who visit the site. This latest, however, I find repulsive on a whole new level. If you're interested:

Christianist Group's Billboard Compares Atheism To Murder

Truth in Advertising?

2009-05-29T18:19:00.000-07:00

I've been working on my marketing material for various products that I sell in the 3d virtual world known as Second Life®, and as my usual curious self was wondering "Does Truth in Advertising" apply to me promoting an entirely virtual product?

So I went a-googling, found a nice F.A.Q. on advertising and the Federal Trade Commission.

Which got me thinking... (oh dear) ... Isn't it time the FCC adopted some sort of "Truth in Broadcasting" statute?

Fiction, parody, etc, all are fine, free speech and all. But to knowingly assert or imply something blatantly false, as FACT in a "News" or "Social Commentary" setting? There should be *CONSEQUENCES* for reporting deceptive and unsubstantiated claims and passing them off as substantiated truthful facts. Especially if such 'stories' are likely to influence voters.

They're welcome to continue lying their asses off the government shouldn't have the right to censor them... but if a news agency and the interests it serves are benefiting from the mis-information they disseminate... there should be heavy TAXESor FINES on those activities to balance them out.

It goes without saying which "News" corporations I think would be the least interested in seeing such legislation passed.

Seperate is NOT EQUAL

2009-05-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

"Same-sex couples retain all of the fundamental substantive components encompassed within the constitutional rights of privacy and due process, with the sole (albeit significant) exception of the right to equal access to the designation “marriage,” a term that — for purposes of the California Constitution as it now reads — the people have decreed is to be reserved for an official union between a man and a woman. Although Proposition 8 does diminish the rights of same-sex couples under article I, section 1 in this one respect, it does not have the sweeping constitutional effect suggested by the Attorney General’s argument." -- GEORGE, C.J. Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court

Domestic Partnership is not the same as Marriage with a different name. (from wikipedia)

	Domestic Partnerships	Marriages
Can file without being required to share a residence?	NO	YES
Available to minors with parental consent?	NO	YES
Can be filed without witnesses and not included in public record?	NO	YES
Partners of state employees eligible for the CalPERS long-term care insurance plan?	NO	YES
"Putative Spouse Doctrine" ?	NO	YES

Going Postal

2009-05-14T15:47:00.001-07:00

I've just sent a one page LETTER to the California Supreme Court Justices, who have until June 5th or so to render their opinion of Prop 8. An actual real paper letter. It feels so antiquated... and official.

A week on Harbor Island

2009-05-01T15:29:00.001-07:00

So, despite threat of Swine Influenza... I'm on the non-left coast for the week... at the peach colored house in the middle here:

View Larger Map
The panorama from the back porch:The view from the front porch:

The wildlife out here is something else. "The beach is a buffet... and everyone's on the menu." We could see everything from the Osprey carrying off fish... the dolphins and sharks churning up the surf... the pelicans and ?herons? smacking into the water... pale white ghost crabs scuttling around at night... and the horseshoe crab mating season. (photo borrowed from my cousin Sam).

Tea for 2

2009-04-15T19:49:00.001-07:00

Happy FOX syndicated "TEA bag day". Snort. A few hundred people gathered in Boston... and small groups of loyal FOX ditto-heads around the country. Woot.

Kind of pale in comparison to the 80,000+ that gathered in San Diego in protest to Prop 8 passing and other cities. But anyway.

Neologasm of the day: Astroturf. A false 'grass roots' uprising.

Random rantage: There's a rash of 'pro-(traditional/exclusive)-family" videos appearing lately. Far from the worst but the most infamous of which starts with "A storm is coming..." and goes downhill from there.

Over and over folks are decrying that their religious freedoms are being threatened by gay marriage. Best counter argument I've heard yet:

Some churches WANT to perform same-sex marriage... but LAW forbids it in most states. Now.. whose religious freedoms are under attack here? Really?

Tea bagging

2009-04-03T08:56:00.000-07:00

Apparently there are a bunch of people planning to hold a 'tea party' on April 15 because they object to bailouts and paying taxes. I won't link to the right-wing nutjobs frothing at the mouth over it.... but I will re-post my comment on their follow-up thread:

More than he asked for...

2009-03-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

I'll be nice and not reveal the name of the person who asked me this in Second Life(tm) today. (chat posted without permission from the other party).

From "A curious resident": Heya jopsy, if your not busy, can you make a script for me, im to lazy to figure it out myself atm. If you can, all i want is it to generate keys starting from NULL_KEY to all z's. Not that hard but i can't think of a way to script it to change all the places of the key, and yea, all keys range from 0 to z each letter.
oh, and it must start at the end of the key and work it's way back to the start (end to index 0)

TRANSLATION: I want the secret unique name for EVERYTHING in Second Life, and every possible name for content that hasn't yet been created too. Every image/texture, person, group, object, sound clip, ... everything. (I'm guessing he wants this so he browse through other people's content and use it without their permission)

I initially replied with: May I ask what you intend to do with these keys?

Regardless of what he replies with... this is the answer he's about to get:

For starters... The list you're asking for is about 10 billion times larger than necessary. (Digits in keys only go up to F, not to Z)

Since each digit has 16 possible digits, and there's 32 digits, your list will have 16^32 keys in it, easy math.

Of course, 16^32, is just a simple, non-scary way of saying: 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456
(that's more than 340 "Undecillion" keys. I had to look the word up, actually.)

If you have 100 scripts, each generating 100 keys every second... your list will be done in 107,902,830,708,060 BILLION CENTURIES.

On the positive side, after we've left Earth and it's been consumed by our sun after it goes supernova, maybe we'll have technology that will store that much data.

So anyway. You still want that script?

(I could have just said "no", but where's the fun in that.)

P.S. He replied... and is trying to write something so that he obtain a resident's key from their name. (which is actually probably the only partially legit possible use for something like this.) I softened the message slight upon delivery. ;)

Pillar of Salt

2009-03-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

I'm no biblical scholar... but I recognize exaggeration and cover-up when I see it.

The story of Lot in Genesis (wikipedia) is about the nephew of Abraham. Because of quarrels between Abraham's and Lot's shepards, Lot moves his family and business to Zoar (which is soon destroyed along Sodom & Gomorrah and two other cities). Lot persuades angels to spend the night in his house instead of on the street... and when the depraved of the town came to his door to 'meet' (original word sometimes translates as 'rape' apparent) the angels... Lot offers them his daughters instead. The townsfolk weren't interested. Hmm. In thanks, the angels warn Lot the city would be destroyed, and they should flee and not look back. He flees with his two daughters and wife. The wife looks back, turns to pillar of salt. Later his daughters get their father drunk, sleep with him and get pregnant, giving birth to sons. Sons that later become patriarchs of the nations of Moab and Ammon.

Um. Riiiiiiight.

How about this interpretation:

Lot moves into a new town and sets up business pimping out attractive young men and women. Not content with that, he and his hustlers engaged in theft and other illicit activities. Conflict and trouble with the authorities soon follows. Lot's crew sets fire the town and escapes during the chaos. There likely was no wife to turn into a pillar of salt. Lot retires in the mountains with two of his prostitutes. The greedy young hustlers decide to move on to another city, where the cycle of theft and arson continues until they're caught or disband.

And that bit about Lot's daughters' incest fathering the patriarchs of Moab and Ammon? Just mudslinging against neighbor nations.

In the news

2009-03-05T15:16:00.001-08:00

I couldn't watch the whole thing, it was just awful.

California Supreme Court appears likely to uphold gay marriage ban - from the Mercury News - in brief, Ken Star (defending prop 8) was slick and articulate.... Christoper Krueger, the senior deputy assistant attorney general (challenging prop 8) was incoherent and acting like he'd never spoke in public before.

Justice Joyce Kennard nailed why they'll likely not decide in favor of the challenge: "opponents of the measure would have the court choose between 'two rights ... the inalienable right to marry and the right of the people to change the constitution as they see fit"

Which goads me to ask, what the fricking hell do we have justices for if they will not stand up against changes to law and constitution that are UNJUST.

Without the direct involvement of the judicial branch of government, the democratic process is no better than a lynch mob with a paper trail.

Magic and Betrayal

2009-03-03T13:43:00.000-08:00

Bear with me as I bring this up... again... to say something a little different.

CA's supreme court is in the process of reviewing the legality of Prop 8... and my mind is drawn back to the topic.

First off, a very minor point, I marvel at the 'magic trick' being pulled by the dogmatic types. They cry out that their religious freedoms are being threatened... and demand censorship of all things gay. Imposing religious oppression is not one of the freedoms enshrined in the constitution last I checked.

The Gung-ho Prop 8 supporters are fighting to preserve their right to pretend that homosexuality is some exotic addictive sinful vice like heroin. The moderates, (people that likely voted for Prop 8 on a whim), are more likely to feel that they just don't want homosexuality paraded about in front of children. (I wouldn't want children seeing heterosexuality in practice either.)

Ask any straight guy what they think of two guys having sex, and they'll probably look disgusted. A reaction not unlike the one you'd get if you asked them what they think of their own aging parents having sex, actually. Funny that.

The cornerstone issue for me is this: Appeasing the homophobes by pretending to be straight is wrong.

Pretending is, at best, a temporary thing. The truth inevitably comes out. When it does, people feel betrayed, lied to, respect and trust severed, and in some cases marriages ruined.) The usual daytime soap drama... but with real lives destroyed instead.

In a world where people talk freely about their wives or husbands... gays remain silent and pretend to be single (if they aren't)... or claim to have opposite-sex partner (if they don't). Lying to friends, family, co-workers puts one constantly at risk of exposure, blackmail, extortion... even attack and retribution.

Not to mention the self-loathing that results in leading a duplicitous life.

The lying and betrayal of trust done by those that feel they must pretend to be normal is (in my strongly held opinion) THE root cause for all the other self-destructive things attributed to the so-called "gay lifestyle".

So, pretending that sexual orientation is "no one's business"... or relying on "Don't ask don't tell" merely makes matters worse, not just for gays but for the people who will some day find out they were lied to.

And... without State and Federal recognition of gay marriage, people will be compelled to lie to be successful in society... and others will continue to have the "Freedom" to blackmail and attack them merely for being different.

Not necessarily the kinds of freedoms our founding fathers had in mind either.

/mute ... /ignore ... /ban4life

2009-01-08T12:57:00.000-08:00

Firefox, or Google's Chrome browser need a plug in that silently omits any blog posting that includes any reference to Ann Coulter or Bill O'Reilly. (like this post for example)

So tired of blog-o-sphere being regularly swamped with the latest outrage from these boring old hate-mongers. I'd add Kathy Griffin to the list of negative-attention-whores... but she delivers 'the funny' at least sometimes.

The Globlal WARming Hoax

2008-12-18T16:08:00.001-08:00

Stumbled across some random post stating that arctic melting is proceeding faster than scientists predicted, and saw, rather to my surprise... number of 'global warming' denier trolls spewing illogical irrelevant drivel in response. Are these people paid to spread doubt? Is it some religious conviction that drives them? Are they so enamored of their hummers and top-of-the-food-chain wasteful consumerist habits that they fear eco-friendly policies will threaten their freedom to trash the planet?

Who knows.

To use an analogy... it isn't the driving around at unsafe speeds that kills you... it's the loss of control and the collision with an unavoidable object.

The climate IS changing, and rapidly. Ice that has been carbon dated back centuries ago is melting away, this isn't some "natural cycle" or that ice would have melted off in a previous cycle and wouldn't be there to measure today.

The question isn't "are we causing this" it's "where are things going at this rate?"

As the global climate begins to spin out of control, are there big nasty immovable obstacles it's going to run into? What kind of planet are we going to have 50 years from now? How many stronger storms and record extremes can we withstand before it starts causing problems for the industries that feed the rest of us?

And the deniers? Probably conservative seniors who still believe they'll see The Rapture before they kick the bucket, so who don't care if the world burns.

If I ran the world... Deniers would be denied air conditioning in the summer. See if that gets them to change their tune.

Continental Divide

2008-12-17T19:27:00.000-08:00

Ran into a little surprize on my way back to San Diego today... *SNOW* Whee!

Recent Citings...

2008-12-04T04:20:00.000-08:00

My new device in SecondLife had a wonderful mention on the NPIRL blog this week...

And I was intereviewed for a very an extremely flattering French article at Territoire-Digital.com (Machine-translated English Version)

(and even if you don't care much about SecondLife, the pics on both are very nicely done and worth a peek =)

De-B8

2008-11-25T08:40:00.000-08:00

At last. This has been brewing for a while, and I hope this will be my last rant on Prop 8. For now.

My open letter to Prop 8 supporters (and opponents as well):

Please tell me who is the man and the woman in this line from a very popular 80's song:

I can't stand this indecision, married with a lack of vision.
Everybody wants to rule the world...

Tears for Fears (1985)

Then, GOOGLE for "married it to" and try answering the same question for the thousands of pages you see "married" used in regards to concepts, technology, music, food, ideologies and more.

The term "marriage" is OBVIOUSLY not limited to humans. It is a term, like "mixing" "adding" or "combining" that has a clear and specific meaning, for which no other word is adequate.

And you ... you flagrant hypocrites ... YOU accuse US of attempting to re-define "marriage"?

When it is YOU, running around like crazy doomsday prophets, screaming "Only 1 man and 1 woman!" You act as if that one statistically dominant characteristic of marriage is MORE important then the love, the oaths of fidelity, the commitment, the joining of two together for life, and all the many other aspects of marriage.

This is like trying to define "human" as "only bipeds with opposable thumbs". Yes, the vast majority are lucky to fit that definition. Your pathetic definition does not make the unlucky "non-human". If you are going to re-define things like crazy people, you might as well believe that "Socrates is a dog" and wash your hands of logic and reason entirely.

And, speaking of definitions, have you even bothered to check a dictionary lately? Here, try http://www.merriam-webster.com, or http://dictinary.com Go on, read the ENTIRE definition. I'll wait.

So anyway...

Congratulations. You have successfully crammed your sanctimonious thumbs into the eyes of the government of the State of California, effectively blinding it so that it can no longer recognize gay marriage, even though it is clearly standing right there in plain sight.

You've even fooled many of the citizens into thinking that gay marriage requires state recognition.

I say: IT DOES NOT.

In this country, we are guaranteed Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion. Despite your attempts to destroy the beliefs of nearly half the voters in California, you can NOT take away:

Our right to SAY that we are married.

Our right to BELIEVE that we are married.

Our right to LIVE as married couples.

Some day the state will recover from the McCarthist Freedom-Destroying attack that left it blinded to reality. Until then...

We may not be recognized by the state.

But we will be HEARD until we are SEEN.

Anti-8 Rally

2008-11-15T14:41:00.000-08:00

Mr.-Flier-Destroyer failed in his mission to avert today's rally.

My camera phone is tragic... these shots don't properly convey the magnitude of the march. It stretched from the north end of Balboa Park to downtown, (2-3 miles). It was packed with chanters of "What do we want? Equal Rights! When do we want it? Right now!" and "Gay, Straight, Black, White, Marriage is a Civil Right!".

I saw less than five Yes-On-8 counter-protesters along the route. Volunteers successfully encouraged the marchers to just ignore them... (though there was this nine year old girl spoiling for a confrontation... but her parents reigned her in).

I jumped out of the parade a few times to get a good vantage point, and could see neither the head nor the tail of the procession. Of the people I could see, I would guess around 80,000, with unknown more further ahead and behind. And, yes, there were many black people marching with us.

This had none of the flamboyance of a pride parade, the mood was much more serious.

The message was clear: We believe that America is about Justice and Liberty for ALL.
.

Yet more prop 8 hate.

2008-11-13T16:26:00.000-08:00

(no this isn't my last rant as promised in the previous post, that's still brewing).

I was physically assaulted (pushed, grabbed and shoved) today by some un-Christ-like fundie freak.

I had seen him tearing down rally flier after rally flier, and got fed up with it, so I stood between him and one of the fliers. Clearly he interpreted that as an attack and responded physically.

The fliers are for the national Protest Prop 8 rally this coming Saturday. (more on that at: http://protest8sandiego.wordpress.com/)

Anyone that destroys the just freedoms and liberties of others...
deserve to have their own freedoms and liberties revoked.

Taxing their intolerant churches would be an excellent response.

Prop 8

2008-11-05T07:40:00.000-08:00

#&$##*%$*%#$&$#.

So close, and yet.

This isn't over.... and I have one more *major* Prop 8 rant coming after this one.

I still have hope that some day this piece of ... religious bigotry will be erased. Unfortunately we have to wait for most of the selfish, petty & closed-minded to die of old age.

Way to go people. Screw "Live and let live". Forget "Thou shalt not judge." Embrace "Hate thy neighbor" and save the children from your imaginary harms.

As if same gender parents is worse than being a child of divorce. Prop 8 perpetuates the need for conservative gay Californians to LIE and let themselves be wrongly trapped in straight marriages. Marriages that often fail years later.

I strongly believe that Churches deserve to lose their tax exempt status for pushing Prop 8.

Let that be next election's Prop 8, I'll rally for it.

8 = H8

2008-10-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

Some random thoughts on Prop 8, the "marriage = 1 man + 1 woman, only" amendment to the California Constitution.

1) It is both sad and funny that this "Conservative Christian" initiative is being pushed by groups of people that statistically have HIGHER divorce rates than the educated/liberal/left people that oppose it.

2) Prop 8, in my opinion, is a massive violation of the 1st amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances

3) If marriage were only about sex, we'd call them honeymoons instead. Sex is a small part of marriage. It's about love, commitment, trust/fidelity, support, companionship/partnership, stability and growth. It is about society and government having recognition and respect for two people who have publicly declared that they have joined together, both legally and financially, with the goal of being together for life, and, if their beliefs support it, eternally.

4) Jesus warns that the kingdom of heaven does not await for people that engage in self-destructively immoderate behaviors like: pride, envy, drink, sex, greed, rage, idolatry, fraud, dishonesty, violence, cruelty, arrogance, folly, pandering, prostitution, hatred, ambition, discord, and the like.

A human is less likely to lose himself or herself in 'wicked' behavior when he is actively participating in a committed, caring and loving partnership, with a spouse that guides and relies upon him (or her). Because of this, I really do believe that Jesus may have had some essentially "pro-gay marriage" comments... but they were either omitted or edited out of the bible by people who were not ready to accept such unfashionable ideas.

"My Friends"

2008-10-13T16:42:00.000-07:00

Time once again for "Fun with Photoshop" (click image to enlarge)

Ethereal Slate

2008-10-12T13:19:00.000-07:00

Second Life update: A recent land deal with a virtual neighbor to my north, carefully co-ordinated with my virtual land trust 'silent partner' has concluded successfully, which has slightly more than doubled the territory where my creative impulses can run wild.

An excellent write up of the acquisition event (with snapshots!) is available at the Not Possible In Real Life Blog, courtesy of the incomparable Bettina Tizzy. =)

And further details at Prokofy Neva's "Second Thoughts" blog.

This purchase is certainly a non-trivial commitment... but one I'm happy with.

Religulous

2008-10-10T22:35:00.000-07:00

Saw it. Funny... nothing new to me though. I've long been an Apostle of Uncertainty after all.

Bill's message kinda boils down to "This world isn't big enough for both Religion and WMDs". And neither one is likely to go away peacefully. He calls to the 16% of us "nonreligious" types to step up and get involved. (Shades of "We are all Indpendent!" there.)

And just how would a "Global War on Ignorance & Superstition" play out? Badly, of course.

As far as I can tell, Atheists place a HIGHER value on human life, especially their own. If there is no afterlife or re-incarnation, this one life is all each of us get. No do-overs, no 70 virgins, no St. Peter & the Pearly Gates, just compost filled with preservatives and no noble self-sacrifice can make that inevitability seem any more pretty.

No "Army of Reason" can survive long against the legions of people willing to kill and die for old words in old books. To have a fighting chance, they would have to pick up the tools of the enemy: To believe in their purpose so fervently that they're willing to kill and die for it. Sadly, we're past the point where we can safely fight fire with fire.

As a species and a planet, we're doomed.

There will always be people that will abuse belief to get others to fight for them, and we, as a society, glorify the instigators that are on "our side" and demonize the ones on "that side". When instead we should have a zero tolerance towards those that promote any kind of violence at all. We should collectively shun them, ignore them, disassociate ourselves with them. Of course, both sides of a conflict need to do that or it doesn't work. Which is why it never will.

Prop 8

2008-10-08T13:16:00.000-07:00

Two of the best video's I've seen against Prop 8:

The Funny One:

The Serious One, which speaks directly to those "party line" types that are most likely to vote *for* Prop 8:

Debait

2008-10-07T21:39:00.000-07:00

What a painful debate. The more I watch McCain the less I like him.

Bill vs. Barney

2008-10-03T14:32:00.000-07:00

I normally avoid anything to do with the unstable attack dog that Olbermann refers to as 'Bill Orally'.

I made an exception because I wanted to see how Barney Frank weathered the assault.

Frank may as well have been muted. O'Reilly's voice was nearly twice as loud, he yelled and shouted over everything, complete with spittle and hand chopping mannerisms that were very much like Hitler.

... No, no, I'm NOT "comparing" O'Reilly to Hitler... I'm just saying they have similar speaking styles.

Ultimately though... the above clip is a blatent piece of gay bashing thinly veiled under an economic/legislative issue.

And, as much as I'm disgusted with the waste of space that is Bill O'Reilly...

I don't see him as the problem.

The problem is that this country has a large market for his particular brand of infantile illogical egotistical hate-mongering and bullying. He wouldn't be where he is now if that weren't the case.

And that same demographic apparently gravitates towards McCain.

There can be no Liberty, Justice or Freedom in places where tyrants and bullies are glorified.

It's time for the 'average angry emasculated white males' to take their prozac and calm down.

Too long they've been clutched by the feverish fear that they've lost their exhalted position of priviledge to 'those greedy overweening minorities'.

And in their fear, they've elevated 'angry white men' like Bush, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, & Co. in the misguided belief that they're all on the same team, that while they may be intolerant bullies, at least they'll look out for their own.

Which is as foolish as blue collar working families supporting the 'Capitalist' party that consistently exploits them, instead of voting for a more 'Labor' oriented party that would be more supportive of their plight.

Anyway. What is it... 87.5% of people that are incapable of anything but 'Group Think'?

We need better "Group Leaders" and it's up to the remaining 12.5% of us to find and help them.

Gaff-tacular!!

2008-10-01T02:45:00.001-07:00

(click on image to enlarge it)

I've no confidence in this senile flip-flopping gaffer. None.

Regarding Germany: "[I was at a conference with] President Putin of Germany"

Regarding Spain: (Would you meet with the President Zapatero?) "... all I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us, and standing up to those who are not, and that's judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America, and the entire region."

Regarding Venezuela: "... ensuring that America is secure, and not dependent on oil from people like Hugo Chavez or other parts of the Middle East."

Regarding Iran: "... it's common knowledge and has been reported in the media that Al Qaeda is [being trained by Iran]. That's well known."

Referred to the "situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border."

Regarding his involvement with the Keating 5: "I was judged eventually, after three years, of using, quote, poor judgment, and I agree with that assessment."

Took credit for passing substantial deregulation legislation in 1999. Which, along with Bush taking office in 2000, ended the Dot-Com era and started the Dot-Bomb era.

Regarding the wall street meltdown: "I promise you, we will never put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street." (Sorry, this was your third strike as far as I'm concerned.)

Regarding (not) getting the bail-out bill passed: "I will do whatever is necessary. I just did it. In case you missed it. Heh, heh. I'm sure you didn't. I will do whatever is necessary to get this going again."

And my favorite recent gaff: "I wish interest rates were zero!" (boy, would that be great for economic growth. Not.)

To be honest, however, I wouldn't put it past the democrats to sour the bail-out deal so that McCain couldn't take credit for getting it passed, and can't fault them for not wanting to commit political suicide by passing it without bi-partisan support. I strongly suspect that the Republican's didn't intend to pass the deal regardless of Pelosi's speech.

There's an underlying gambit in play here, and I haven't sussed it out yet.

.

MCLXXVII

2008-09-29T16:30:00.000-07:00

Curious to see what I should be expecting from Netflix this week, I took a peek and added a few new discs to the queue.

And noticed I've rated 1177 movies/shows so far. I'm averaging almost one disc a day at this rate. Geez =)

Palin Relief

2008-09-28T14:30:00.001-07:00

More fun with photoshop, whee!

Trails

2008-09-25T11:39:00.000-07:00

More fun with photoshop.

Off the campaign trail to destroy the paper trail.

As Letterman pointed out... shouldn't his VP candidate carry on the campaign while McCain "Takes care of business"?

If she can't... how can we expect her to fill in for McCain if he gets elected President?!

More Spore

2008-09-23T00:05:00.001-07:00

Kind of stuck in a 'Dark Crystal' style with spore... and having fun with it. =)

Scroll through the above to see various critters I've made if you're interested. =)

Let Lying Dogs Sleep

2008-09-21T16:24:00.000-07:00

The Republican party has gone insane.

They condemn Liberals... but grant unchecked liberties to wall streeters.

They claim to be conservative... but squander trillions on war, earmarks and bailouts.

Our government is neither 'smaller' now, nor less costly than before.

But... American's love to watch a good train wreck, which is why I'm convinced that Obama hasn't got a chance in hell of getting elected. This Palin/McCain fiasco will win the day.

Comedians will be the only ones with guaranteed jobs... until the First Amendment follows the rest of the Bill of Rights into obscurity.

Over Time

2008-09-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

I'm decent at remembering where I know someone from, even if I tend to be very average about remembering their name.

Today, however, I was asked "Where do I know you from" by a young man operating a cash register.

I had no clue.

He had the kind of eyes that I would not quickly forget, so I assumed I didn't know him and he must have mistaken me for someone else.

Then he remembered where he knew me from.

He lived with his dad next door to me (2000-2003ish) and must have been just starting high school. Everything about his face seemed different... except his grin.

I always get a kind of temporal vertigo when I run into an adult that I last saw as a child. I feel like I've jumped forward in time quite abruptly.

It was very cool to run into him again, and I hope his dad is doing well. The neighborhood hasn't been the same since they moved away.

Super Sporific

2008-09-13T16:58:00.000-07:00

I've been playing Spore since it arrived this Thursday evening. Above you see my first three to reach the Space Exploration Stage, each along different tactics: Religion, War and Economic.

The game play is fun, some stages fly by to quickly, some drag a little. Chief complaint is not being able to reverse the up/down controls. The "SIM-speak" the creatures yabber in while in the Tribal Stage cracks me up every time.

The final stage, the space exploration part, seems endless and diverse, from diplomacy to colonization and terraforming, trade to conquest, improving your ship and fleet as you advance.

I've already run into creatures created by several real-world friends at various stages in the game. Sadly, many such friend created creatures went the way of extinction. They will be missed. (Mainly because they were tasty.)

9/11/08

2008-09-11T11:09:00.000-07:00

Never forget how the Republicans used 9/11:

... to bully the Democrats into silence for four years.

... to invade Iraq.

... to spy without oversight into the private lives of Americans.

... to suspend The Great Writ of Habeus Corpus.

... to get re-elected by claiming they alone can save us from another 9/11.

... to violate the Geneva convention and institute the practice of torture.

... etc etc etc.

9/11 gave the weak Bush administration strength it did not come by honestly. And they abused it more ways than we may ever know. Those abuses of power will most certainly go on, unpunished, if this country elects McCain/Palin.

Lake of Fire

2008-09-06T01:39:00.000-07:00

I can't describe how much I dislike the idea of Sarah Palin as Vice President.

Can we please pick leaders that take Christian End-of-Times scripture with a bit of salt, instead of working to bring about the rapture?

She is not a "Maverick". She's a loose cannon, with the words "Holy War" scribbled all over it.

Bad Apples?

2008-08-29T15:04:00.001-07:00

More fun with photoshop.

I laugh everytime I hear the righties spew their fearful: "But is he ready to lead?" Obama-attack tactic, because clearly their candidate is "No Longer Ready To Lead." (if he ever was at all)

We don't need yet another blundering mouthpiece of corporate interests, rubber-stamping our country into financial ruin.

The Grotto of Lost Souls

2008-08-25T15:00:00.000-07:00

I just ran across an excellent video clip made by Dizzy Banjo of my exhibit in the "NPIRL Garden of Delights" (NPIRL is a collective of artists and fans experimenting and exploring things that are "Not Possible In Real Life")

The event is over and the exhibit only exists in storage now, so it's very nice to have some visible recording of it still around. =) Take a peek at:

Metamusic Podcast 04 - The Grotto of Lost Souls by Jopsy Pendragon

Taxes?

2008-08-18T02:08:00.000-07:00

My mind wandered seriously far afield while perusing some of the Obama / McCain ads.

So, I went a-googling around a bit with some random questions and got rough answers:

The national debt is roughly three times the national budget. (Imagine having a credit card with 3x your annual income racked up on it!)

Fortunately, only 10% of our tax dollars go to making the minimum interest payments. (It'd be 20% to 30% of our income if we owed 3x what we made yearly!)

10% of our yearly tax dollars.

That's more than the annual budget for Education, Transporation & Vet Benefits combined.

That's around of the budget for the Military... for half a year.

And that 10% doesn't help reduce the debt... or help pay for those "must have now" expenses of years past.

Think of it this way:
* You *NEED* a spiffy new $1200 large LCD television, so you use your credit card.
* Every month you make the minimum payment of $10. ($120 each year).
* Ten years later, the TV breaks down, you need another.
* Your check your credit card statement. It says: You still owe us $1200.
* You lament in vain: But I've already paid you $1200 for the TV!
* You take your credit card to the store and... buy a new $1200 television anyway,
* 10 years later you've paid enough in interest to buy two new TVs.
... and you haven't even started paying for the ones you bought yet.

Now... see, the government wanted this spiffy new war back in 2002. Had to have it. Of course, they probably haven't even started paying off the loans for the previous war... or the war before that.

The only way for the government to rack up more debt (and still manage to pay for everything else) is to devalue the U.S. dollar. Weaker dollar means higher prices, demand for higher pay and.. of course, more tax dollars. With enough inflation, the government could keep the ratio of tax used for interest payments around 10%.

Which works fine until dollars bills become cheaper than toilet paper.

Which reminds me... San Francisco is considering christening their largest sewage works the "George W. Bush Sewage Plant". Hmm.

Wanna bet?

2008-08-14T15:20:00.000-07:00

I can't help but assume that the recent tragic shooting of democratic super delegate Bill Gwatney was perpetrated by another unstable loner who spent too much time listening to the blatherings of O'Reilly, Hannity, Savage, and Limbaugh.

Why else would he pick the person he did to lash out at?

I'm not getting the "jealous ex-lover" vibe off this situation.

The "R" Word

2008-08-13T13:49:00.000-07:00

There's a stink over the word "retard" in the new Ben Stiller movie "Tropic Thunder".

Some angry people want the word "retard" banned, and they want the movie boycotted for using it 17 times in a way that could be viewed as derogatory towards developmentally challenged people.

If I thought that banning certain words would bring about the end of xenophobic bigotry, I'd get on board. However I think the effort is doomed to backfire. Instead of bringing people together, the protests further divide people, ruining any chance for mutual respect to ever develop. It creates conflict that drive people into their 'us' and 'them' trenches, where they will stubbornly stay with their peers, heads down and shooting blindly at "those damned outsiders".

Protesting certain words, in reality, makes them more effective tools to offend others. And when looking to give offense, people are going to grab the most effective tools at their disposal.

Besides, if using specific forbidden word results in career suicide and social exile, people will simply gravitate to other words and use them to mean the exact same dismissively hateful thing.

What needs to be banned is the attitude that "together, we can disrespect and dehumanize people that aren't like us".

And we can't do that by taking a black sharpie to the dictionary.

Wooo!

2008-07-29T11:44:00.001-07:00

Earthquake! Wheee!

Shooter

2008-07-28T10:23:00.001-07:00

In the past several months I've skipped over a number of rant-worthy issues. I can't let this one go by without comment though:

Accused shooter hated liberals, expected to be killed

Traitorous right-wing warmongers have declared a "Culture War" on U.S. soil against American citizens.

These instigators have been recruiting with the traditional Christian war-call of "We are the victims!", "THEY are Godless Unrepentant Sinners!", and "Think of the Children!" and anyone daring to express dissent becomes the enemy, treated as if they turned their back on God, Family, Marriage, Country and Decency.

This war is waged with ceaseless vilification of the "Left", the "Liberal Media", the "Gays", the "Immigrants" (legal or not), those "Equal Opportunists putting White Men out of jobs", the "Feminazis", and the "welfare loving Democrats", and any other non-party-line-carrying scapegoat. Regardless of how illogical and implausible the blame may be.

The slippery slope argument comes up again and again threatening that gay marriage will destroy existing marriages and lead to rampant beastiality, incest, pedophilia, ... (and possibly even necrophilia!).

I doubt this culture war crap has anything to do with ethics or morality. It's all about money, power, blame and political CYA. The trail isn't hard to follow:

The current "Economic Situation" (gas prices, foreclosures, weak dollar, national deficit, job losses, Iraq, Bin Laden at large, etc, etc, etc) has made some people very rich and their political accomplices very powerful. The culture war is their get-away plan, so they can sneak off quietly with their ill-gotten gains and let someone else take the fall.

They are (and/or have paid off) big media networks to furtively and irrationally shift the blame onto a bunch of scapegoats and pad with so much substanceless fluff and redherrings that viewers are overwhelmed and bamboozled by it all.

And what better demographic to take the fall than those that usually vote AGAINST the corrupt reigio/corporate/military/government combination known as the American Fascist Party. (I mean the Republicans.)

Godwin's Law states "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.") ... but I can't help myself here. I do see several parallels between the vilification of the Jews in Nazi Germany... and the vilification of Gays and "the Left" in the U.S.. It is the dissimiarities that are important here though. The right-wing movers-and-shakers have learned one lesson that Hitler missed:

"An inefficient virus kills its host. A clever virus stays with it." -- James Lovelock

Or, paraphrased for politics: "A living scapegoat can carry more blame." -- me.

Of course, not everyone got the non-violence memo. Some idiots are so steeped in the sewage spewed by the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, and Rush Limbaugh that they think shooting up a church is a great way to go out in a heroic blaze of glory. [edit: revealed today: books by O'Reilly, Savage and Sean Hannity were found in this guys house as well]

I'm quite certain that as this stupid "Culture War" continues, there will be more hate crimes and fatalities perpetrated by idiots that buy into the madness.

Gays can't retaliate with violence, we're inherently too peaceful. We haven't the majority/massive numbers for a Ghandi-esque strategy of passive resistence. Nor do we have the enduring organization for a masonic-style secret government order. (so much for that Gay Agenda).

Our weapons? Hollywood, a little extra discretionary income, and the Bush-enfeebled Judicial System. Faaantastic. :(

The only way to end this stupid culture war is to make it considerably unprofitable to those waging it.

SD Comic Con 2008

2008-07-24T18:52:00.000-07:00

Well, today was the day. Procrastination gypped me out of a 4 day pass, so today was it for me. Curiously enough, I think things worked out better this way. I got there earlier, found my favorites and kept moving.

Various memories of the day:

One of my favorite artists, Colleen Duran, was here for the first time in several years.
Phil Foglio, has a new Girl Genius book out... Woot!
Will Wright (of TheSims fame) gave a fantastic (albeit veryfastwithoutstoppingtobreathe) talk on the insanely anticipated new game Spore, which left even jaded folks like me salivating. He showed some of the "late game play" aspects, as well as a gallery of some of the most creative/bizarre creature submissions from folks... someone even created a "companion cube" style creature... ha! He pointed out that it took users on the internet only 18 days to create a number of species roughly equivalent to how many known species inhabit the earth...
Got to the City of Heroes booth in time for an in-world "special disguise power"... oh yeah, and an invite to a party Saturday night. (me? party? hrm.)
Saw the new up-coming "Ghostbusters" game, which was drawing a lot of attention.
Worn out from canvasing the exhibition floor, I sat through both Capcom's "Street Fighter IV" session (because it was in the room that would have HBO's "True Blood" panel, both of which paled in comparison to Will Wright's session).
Saw costumes galore, but the ones that got the biggest chuckle out of me were: A plushie "headcrab" (from "Half Life 2") and another guy in a suit&ski-mask with a paper cut-out mask strapped to his face that looked like a distinctive texan engineer from Team Fortress 2. "Hey! That Engineer's a SPY!"

Anyway... sad that I only had one day at the con, but still feeling rather satisfied.

Up next: A quick review of some utterly absurd things recently seen for sale.

Befuddlement of the day: "They" say that 666 is the number of the beast. Shouldn't that be DCLXVI instead? Or do biblical warnings use Arabic numerals, then switch to Roman numerals, and then switch back to Arabic numerals? Hrm.

Summer Issues

2008-06-24T14:08:00.000-07:00

Haven't had much to say lately. Things are serene and satisfactory, personally, though I'm a bit sad that George Carlin is no longer with us.

I recently heard a quip, I forget where: "If God opposes gay marriage so much... why is the mid-west being punished instead of California?" (referring to the flooding).

I'm sure there are those that will think that it was their job to stop California.

I'm still somewhat befuddled by the nay-sayers, those defense of marriage, 'one man one woman' types.

Why is it they fail to understand that Gay marriage is quite simply None of Their Business.

Whom I trust, whom I confide in, whom I sleep with, whom I love... whom I CHOOSE to build a life with (or not)... is no one's business but my own (and whomever might be directly involved.)

If that partnership resembles a lifelong loving commitment which government and religions normally refer to and treat as 'marriage' ... then it would be dishonest and deceptive to call it anything else... regardless of the personal arrangements of fleshy bits.

The possibility to produce offspring 'naturally' is not a requirement for 'marriage'... if it is, then the marriages of infertile couples should be annulled... and no woman past menopause should be allowed to marry.

"The Bible Says..." ... many other things that modern society flat out chooses to ignore as irrelevently outdated. But people still look for those loopholes that allow them to exploit other humans under their God's laws. Salome Witches... Canaanites... Heretics... Muslims... anytime grabby greedy people get ambitious they use religion to empower their faithful... and prey upon the 'outsiders'. How 'Christian'.

So... two men are seen holding hands walking down the street, and some five year old child will ask why. Not because it's unusual... but because children ask 'why?' about EVERYTHING. Does it do "violence to children" (as the pope implied about same gender parents) to see two people holding hands affectionately? No.. the fear is that the children might think that that behavior is 'acceptable' if exposed to it. God forbid.

But 'acceptability' has nothing to do with Gender Identity and Preference. (note: Being 'gay' and being 'transgendered' are NOT the same thing. I know men who wish they were women who also happen to have little to no interest in men.) People harbor 'unacceptable' longings for things they can not have, whether it's being a different gender, or the love of someone unavailable or incompatible. Attraction to another human being ranges from unwavering repulsion to lascivious obsession, with a large middle area of "just not interested either way".

Can some people choose to form a lasting 'loving' commitment with someone they are only marginally attracted to? Certainly. Can that happen if there's an unwavering revulsion? Rather unlikely.

What I must conclude from the "hide the gays from our children" types is that they want their potentially gay child to grow up in ignorance, and to 'settle' for someone they find utterly unattractive. I'm sure that'll make for a lasting marriage.

I've said it before... somewhere... "If you want to defend marriage, do something about the divorce rate first."

Obligatory trite cliche: "Blowing out someone else's candle doesn't make yours shine any brighter."

Griefers

2008-05-06T15:56:00.000-07:00

A few non-ranty thoughts about 'Griefers'. (a slang term used to describe a player in a multiplayer video game who plays the game simply to cause grief to other players through harassment.)

Griefing, has many parallels to bullying and verbal assault. Most griefers will stay within the letter of the law, (but ignore the spirit of it), which makes it difficult for authority figures to intervene decisively. It is not uncommon for victims to feel that calling for help shows weakness.

Griefers attack people's self identity, their pride, their values. Like an angry drunk at the bar, spoiling for a fight, they'll play nice long enough to ingratiate themselves with a target, and then, bit by bit, turn nasty. Most often, they rely on small subtle comments that provoke over-reactions from their intended target.

The goal, usually, is to make the confrontation seem to be the victim's fault.

Often the victim will pick up on this tactic and fight back even harder trying to take the high ground in a battle where they've already been knocked off balance emotionally. The more the victim cares, the harder they struggle to 'win' the conflict, the more they expose tender targets for the griefer to hit... and, ultimately, the more hopeless the situation becomes for the victim.

Griefing is almost a martial art in its own right, requiring balance, focus, objectivity, practice, discipline, knowing your opponents weaknesses and exploiting them, etc, etc.

Recognize the signs of a potential griefer early. When they bait you with taunts, ignore them or laugh them off by agreeing in a jovial self-deprecating way.

Only a master of articulate wit has a chance of one-up-ing a griefer sufficiently to win a battle, but the war is still lost. The griefer, having found a worthy opponent, will return and attempt new gambits.

Engage in combat with a griefer at all, and they win. They've made you play their game, not your own. Even if you one-up them until dawn, they've hijacked your focus, your concentration, your time and effort for however long the conflict took place.

The only way to 'win' against a griefer is to recognize that their jibes and taunts for what they are, and disregard them. Unless, of course, you're spoiling for a fight yourself, in which case, enjoy.

Make like a Tree

2008-04-11T10:39:00.000-07:00

... and leave? This morning a landscaping crew came by and chainsawed down the palm trees lining my street. True, they were just poles with little poofs at the top, offering only a little shade and a little absorption of traffic noise... but now my street looks just that much more bare and sad. =(

If this is a pre-cursor for them sinking the utility lines, fine, but I'm still grumpy about it.

Yayzerama!!!

2008-03-28T14:27:00.000-07:00

Everybody's favorite Linden, Torley Linden, just submitted a new video tutorial to the official Second Life blog!

*VIDEO* Tip of the Week #28: Particle editing magic!

Which was filmed at my Particle Laboratory learning center! Woohoo! =)

Thank you Torley!

Okay fine

2008-03-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

I'm *finally* feeling recovered from the twelve-day cold from hell, and in time for a nice warm dry allergy-tickling Santa Anna. Yay.

A few micro-rants:
* McCain's "Senior Moments" are terrifying. Please, no more morons in the White House.
* Bush gutted the executive intelligence/surveillance oversight group. More shameless CYA.
* Easter and Spring are bringing the "anti-gay-marriage" bigots out in record numbers.

I recently watched 'Southland Tales' (by the same guy that did 'Donnie Darko' of which I'm fond). I'm not sure how I feel about Southland Tales so far and will give it another shake to be fair.

It certainly embodied the distracted chaotic self-entitlement and absurdity that so much of the world seems wrapped up in. There are times when it feels like the inmates have taken over the bus... too busy fighting over the driver's seat to notice the "Bridge Out!" signs.

Anyway. If the beginning of spring is this hot... what will summer bring?

Oh... and to top it all off... someone seems to be spoofing email spam about "Replica Watches" as me. Great. Grrr....

Colds and Spam

2008-03-13T10:46:00.000-07:00

So, what's it like having my free time optimized for a whole week now? Honestly, with colds, fever, chills, sweats, coughing etc... no different than taking a week of sick time. But with less guilt.

Feeling somewhat better now, and catching up on email now, I'm beginning to notice that blowing the spam out of my mailbox is not unlike blowing the snot out of my nose. I use SpamAssassin, which works reasonably well, catching about 75% of the garbage. But that still leaves me about 50+ spam messages a day to wipe up with tissue.

And, of course, it's spring.. the time of year when a young spammers fancy turns to thoughts of sending offers of cheap v*1g-ra.

yay.

*HONK* sniffle snort.

More GOP hate, part 2

2008-03-11T10:39:00.000-07:00

Sally Kern has issued a statement regarding the feedback she's gotten from her speech. (here)
And once again, I'm sending email. Not that I expect it to make any difference what-so-ever, but merely because it feels good to bark back:

To: sallykern@okhouse.gov

Beliefs do change over time.

Take USURY for example: "Hath given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase: shall he then live? he shall not live: he hath done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him." - Ezekial 18:13

It's one of the few things that actually caused Jesus to fly into a violent rage, knocking over tables, kicking money lenders out of the temple. It's not only that they were in the wrong place... what they were doing was deemed a sin, period.

Only centuries later was usury re-defined as "loaning money and charging excessive interest". (A change that was no doubt dearly paid for by money lenders.)

So, how many of the constituents (you know, the ones you personally represented with your hate-speech) were left homeless because of the sub-prime mortgage crisis? How many have gone bankrupt, indebted to consumer lenders because of medical expenses that their insurers refused to cover?

The 'money lenders' have completely taken over our great country and are squeezing it dry.

And yet there you are... wasting time attempting to keep suppressed and invisible the most attacked and non-retaliatory minority in American. Way to go.

You want to get biblical on something? Go attack the people that are immorally extorting Americans with unfair lending practices.

Picking on gays is for cowards. Do something important with your life and attack the REAL sinners: the money lenders, the banks, the insurance agencies, the credit card companies, ...

Or have you chosen to represent them instead, because they helped you get elected?
If so, that makes your 'moral' position utterly empty and revoltingly hypocritical.

More GOP hate

2008-03-09T16:46:00.000-07:00

Date: Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:57:00 PDT
To: sallykern@okhouse.gov
Subject: The Homosexual 'agenda'

The "homosexual agenda" is simply to stop getting maimed and bullied
by closed-minded intolerant bigotted black-hearted pretend-Christians
like you.

It is your kind of hate-speech that encourages and tacitly endorses
those that attackkind-hearted patriotic homosexuals in our country.

May God forgive and heal you of your hateful heart.

( This is regarding your speech, recorded in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFxk7glmMbo
if this was NOT you, or your words, please disregard this email. )

Ups and downs

2008-03-07T12:56:00.000-08:00

Spring Sneezes (or a cold) have pretty much made a wreck of me today.

Which balances out the 2 week early delivery of my new laptop. =) WooooOoot!

Emancipation Day

2008-03-05T16:50:00.000-08:00

Gone now are the familiar duties, routines and obligations.

From today forward, I am my own boss. =)

The New MBP

2008-02-26T14:55:00.000-08:00

Woot!! http://apple.com has finally announced the rumored refresh for their MacBook Pro line of laptops, just in time too, since the one I've been using will staying behind once my employment situation changes.

Pro-FISA nonsense

2008-02-22T09:15:00.000-08:00

http://www.gop.gov/ has a new video, that sends chills down my spine.

I'd rather live with the threat of terrorists than live in a police state where my own government can declare me an enemy combatant and vanish me without charges... just because I accidentally surfed to the wrong website.

FISA is anti-American. It gives the executive branch the power to spy on any politicians, of their own party or the competing party.

If you think that power hasn't been and won't be abused for political advantage you're not paying attention.

This is SUPPOSED to be a democracy... not a series of rigged elections pre-determined by unethical criminals who put their own political power-hungry goals ahead of the advancement of our nation.

Let's keep it that way... just say NO to retroactive immunity for telecoms that assisted in illegal wiretapping.

-------
P.S. Happy Birthday to George Washington and a specific someone that shares his Birthday. =)

Record Lows

2008-02-20T17:29:00.000-08:00

Amazing, beating Truman's 22% pathetic approval rating during the worst of the Korean War... Bush is the first president to have an approval rating drop into the teens! Worse even than Nixon during the Watergate scandal! Wow!

And just why is that?

FISA - illegal wiretapping - Homeland Security/Secret Police?

Debt, Deficit, Sub-prime mortgages, oil prices, healthcare?

Global warming denial, mis-use of the scientific community, relaxed EPA regulations?

Signing statements, recess appointments, nepotism, lame SCOTUS appointees?

Blaming Iraq for 911, ignoring Bin Laden, botching the Iraq occupation, Walter Reed?

Gitmo, Waterboarding, rendition, enemy combatants?

Links to corruption, scandal, enron, Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham, cronyism?

Threatening Iran, mis-use of the intelligence community, Valerie Plame?

Scape-goatism, Loyalty-first, some how mysteriously silencing the democratic voices?

Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rove, Paul Wolfowitz, hanging Colin Powell out to dry

FEMA?

I went looking for a list of scandals directly associated with or aided by the Bush Administration and found a list with 313 items, most of which I recognized.

Can anyone find a list of 313 good things that have come from this presidency? I liked the "Do Not Call" list... um... what else...

How quickly we forget unforgivable scandals, especially when we are given new atrocities to be outraged with each week that goes by. If it weren't for the smallish number of "My country right or wrong" right-wing loyalists and profiteers benefiting from cronyism, Bush's approval rating would likely be sitting at zero percent.

Whoever gets elected next has a phenomenal mess to clean up.

Phobia

2008-02-14T13:21:00.000-08:00

An openly gay 15 year old has been declared brain dead after being shot by a classmate Oxnard. The 14 year old shooter was described by another student 'as a calm, smart student who played on the basketball team. "I didn't think he was that kind of kid."'

So, did the 14 year old fear he was going to be forcefully sodomized by the effeminate older boy? Was he a brainless queer-hating jock? Neither sound too likely to me in this case.

So vile is the stigma of being labelled "queer" that some young men will go to absurd and irrational lengths to prove otherwise, whether they're straight, latently gay or 'questioning'. Perhaps, the shooter believed the victim was going to 'out' him, who knows.

'Out' is an appropriate term. It doesn't just mean "in the open", it also means "away from or not included".

'Coming out' means rejecting traditional 'normal' conformity and embracing another 'alternative' set of values, beliefs, ideals and behaviors. This event can cause an irrevocable severing of connections with some family and friends. Insults from strangers are easier to withstand than the glares of betrayal, disappointment, disgust from those nearest and dearest.

It's no wonder the suicide rate among 'questioning' teens is so high.

Nor is it any surprise that some choose to never face 'coming out' at all, and lead double lives, pretending to be happy, normal and straight. One little white lie after another turns into years of deception, and possibly, destructive infidelity.

The problem, as I see it, is our society makes such a big issue over "coming out". We need to live in a world where gender preference is no more remarkable or unusual than, say, a preference for a certain hair color, or whether mushrooms are preferred on pizza or not.

No amount of "God's Law" can justify the quantity of Gay-bashing, teen-suicide, infidelity, discrimination, and broken families that result from policies that perpetuate homophobia.

If fear of being labelled 'gay' is actually what triggered the savage event that ended Lawrence King's life, then we as a species, need to seriously re-examine what kind of values we're giving those that will follow us.

The Dharma-Mifflen Initiative

2008-02-08T17:10:00.000-08:00

Someone got lost on the way to The Office. =)
(click image for larger version)
(My apologies to the cast and networks mangled in this spoof!)

The inevitable sequel will be posted at some future date. Stay tuned...

The Particle Laboratory

2008-02-04T16:00:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about re-modelling my Particle Laboratory. The "floating raft" is nicer now that it has the "flying glacier" look. (Strictly seasonal, was more flying tropical island like in warmer months).

Here is the lab now in all it's cluttered glory:

and here's the slightly more structured "sci-fi very low orbit space station" style I'm thinking of moving towards:
As always, nothing ever is set in stone, it's all, (ahem) "up in the air". ;)

Dream home...

2008-02-02T18:01:00.000-08:00

If you know me, and a certain car issue, this will seem right on target.

In a dream last night, I was out for a nice long walk, through San Diego's "Little Italy" area. As happens in my dreams it wasn't exactly right, it was mixed up with someplace else, in this case, the Hamptons in NY. In this charming, beachy urban themed neighborhood I saw a house and then gasped, "Oh my god... I bought that house a year ago! How could I have forgotten?"

Sure enough the key on my keychain fit the front door, which was unlocked anyway. Inside was clean, but barren. Light wood floors, open airy rooms, I was filled with the pride of ownership... and a nagging concern that was justified the moment I went upstairs and ran into about ten squatters lounging about on floor mattresses. They were all between 20 and 30 years old. They looked like the cast of some MTV reality tv show actually.

I woke up at that point, and am still wondering how I would have handled the situation.

Fie on FISA

2008-02-01T01:09:00.000-08:00

Keith Oberman has an absolutely delicious, logical, laudable rant about Bush's threat to veto any extention to FISA that fails to include immunity for telcoms.

Dim the lights, put aside any distractions and enjoy.

... now, if only a certain occupant of a certain White House, were watching it with us.

The Sub-Prime Solution...

2008-01-30T16:09:00.001-08:00

I've just had a weird flash of insight... I've been worried about the 'bubble' that national and consumer debt has built up for months. How can I best defend myself against the mess that will follow when that finally bursts?

Well, I still don't have any good answers to that... but I'm suddenly feeling less worried and here's why:

Banks sell their bad debts to collection agencies. Those agencies collect what they can and then write off the rest. They pretty much treat it as "high risk investments".

I'm feeling certain that somewhere along the way, someone had the brilliant idea to dress up those bad debt "High Risk Investments" as good credit... and found a way to sell them off to foreign nations and companies.

I would not be at all surprised if our own government was complicit in this considering the influence of the money lobbyists.

Q: What kind of securities did we promise China in return for the money our government has borrowed?
A: The revenue from all these sub-prime mortgages, of course.

What a perfect Enron-esque scam!
That is... until China decides to come collect on that bad debt, of course. Hmm.

p.s.: Apparently I'm not the first to think this up 60 Minutes made mention of it too.

Zen and Sniglets

2008-01-30T12:09:00.000-08:00

How's this for Zen: Last night while I slept, I dreamed that I did NOT dream something.

(well, actually, I was dreaming that I woke up unable to remember how I had gotten home from a party I dreamed I was at earlier, and then realized, (while still dreaming) that I hadn't forgotten or blanked it out... it had never happened at all).

Very disorienting. It's like forgetting something you never knew in the first place.

Anyway. Today's post was brought to you by the words 'Scriptard' and 'mobiopath'

Scriptard, (like Blingtard) is derived from 'retard'. Which to me not only means a discernible mental deficiency, but it also means "slow". Blingtards wear so much digital-glitter that it makes computers struggle to render it all. Scriptards... are poor scripters that cut-n-paste other people's scripts together into a big lag-tastic monster, and then wonder why their virtual world is so sluggish. ;)

Mobiopath... a more 'gang' oriented form of sociopath. Someone who thinks it's okay to ignore laws, ethics, morality, common decency, etc... so long as they loyal supporters to back them up and help them lie their way out of trouble.

Whoops...

2008-01-29T17:47:00.000-08:00

How do you blog? Do you make outlines, notes, plans... do you save and hash out a draft and when all is perfect finally hit that 'Publish' button?

Or... are you more like me, an unformed idea just insists on being let OUT! You dash some words together, think it looks good enough and so you just slap that 'Publish' button the moment you're done? And then, of course, you re-read the drivel you just typed, now that it's out there for everyone to see, and panic. You whack that 'Edit' button as fast as possible, correcting punctuation, removing duplicate words, changing entire sentences, etc.... all with manic urgency.

The (obsolete) term "posthaste" seems all too appropriate, I think.

And... thanks to Adam Marker in Second Life, for both the discussion that sparked this entry... and for pointing me at a very silly YouTube clip spoofing 'current issues' in Second Life, called: Hitler Explains SecondLife

Team Fortress 2

2008-01-26T01:53:00.000-08:00

I've been enjoying rounds of Team Fortress 2 enough to look into tossing together a map or two... here's a snapshot of my very first tf2 map in action (I only started playing with 'Hammer' the world editor this evening). Oooo dramatic spooky lighting. ;)

It'll get better, I promise.

Row vs. Wade

2008-01-25T14:05:00.000-08:00

This week marked the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, and there's been a modicum of newsy things about the issue. From pro-lifers complaining that Bush and the GOP candidates only gave them lip service, no real support during the annual protest to rather amusing youtube clips of interviewers asking passionate pro-life demonstrators "If abortion is illegal, what should be the punishment for a woman that has an illegal abortion?" (Nothing quite like seeing activists who've been crusading for years stumped with a simple question. Answers ranged from "Uh, never thought about it!" to "I think they've suffered enough")

Anyway. No child should be brought into the world by a mother that does not want it.

Life without love is not worth living... and forcing someone to be born unloved should be a crime.

... and ... for the obligatory Nifty-Link-du-Jour: "The ZoomQuit II" (drag the slider on the top right left or right to zoom in/out!)

Well darn.

2008-01-22T14:19:00.000-08:00

Heath Ledger died today? =(

That rather bums me out.

Trunk Monkey! come cheer me up!

Usury Suspect

2008-01-16T15:46:00.000-08:00

I couldn't resist. After watching "Maxed Out" and "In Debt We Trust", both of which seem to have the same very obvious message, I'm just amazed at the number of people that still let themselves be lured in by the temptation of easy money. Even when I was in my 'poor' phase, sharing a one bedroom apartment with four guys and surviving on ramen and peanut butter, I still managed to avoid depending on credit to get by.

Looking at consumer lending in America today, I get the impression that the mafia and the banks have joined together and bribed/pressured law makers to their will. It's just sick, and building a new kind of bubble that will burst in ways that will make the Enron scandal look mild.

"Never trust anyone trying to sell you free money." -- me.
(Google doesn't list the quote anywhere, so I'm gonna say it's mine!)

(and, no, I did not use "Helvetica" in the image in this post. ;)

4th Rez Day!

2008-01-15T12:09:00.001-08:00

Fun with photoshop, I love how the font (Viva Std) looks like thick printer's ink on my name. Harrington was used for the rest, still far and away my favorite font. =)

If it works out, I'll post a picture or two of the gondolas later on. =)
(drop by and bring friends if you like!) Make sure you use the WindLight client for SecondLife for best effect, and feel free to teleport over for a visit! =)

Failure

2008-01-10T20:03:00.001-08:00

I've been trying to be positive & upbeat lately. Negativity doesn't help anything right?

Watching "No End in Sight" however just blew that right out the window.

Many of the facts and opinions presented I was already somewhat aware of, having read "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq".

If even half of the material covered in "No End in Sight" is accurate or only marginally exaggerated I am still overwhelmingly ashamed and embarrassed by the actions of my country.

Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rice, Bremer, Slocombe... your decisions and actions have only weakened our country and given birth to people who will now stop at nothing to do us harm.

You are the terrorists that patriotic Americans should have been fighting to stop.

I hope some day you understand the full extent of the shame and harm you have done to this country.

Freedom from Reality

2008-01-04T16:20:00.000-08:00

Oh come ON! Huckabee?!

Hasn't 8 years of Pro-Armageddon politics been enough? @&$(@*#(*#@$%)!!!!

On a much happier note, I was recently interviewed for a very nice entry on the NPIRL blog!
(Not Possible In Real Life).

Very nicely done!

The Weighted Companion Cube

2007-12-22T03:56:00.000-08:00

"Portal" has to be one of the more fun puzzle games I've played in a very very long time. I went back and rescued my dear friend from the Aperture Science Enrichment Center.

Now all we need is cake.

On Freedom from Religion...

2007-12-06T15:59:00.000-08:00

Regarding Presidential hopefully, Mitt Romney's recent speach about his Mormon faith:

I do agree with most of the points he raises... except the bits that sound like the same thinly veiled contempt some "God Fearing Christians" express towards non-believers, secular humanists, atheists, polytheists, and agnostics, etc.

I suppose that contempt is present on both sides of that fence.

When exposed to Christian doctrine, people must choose for themselves whether they believe 'The Bible' is: 'Well-Intended Fiction', or 'Written by Mankind but Inspired by Divine Grace' or 'The Infallible Word of the Almighty Creator'.

So, why is it that those those pesky secular humanists can't just leave it as "well-intended fiction" and put up with a little "Under God" once in while?

Because, to them, it must make otherwise very serious matters sound absolutely childish and absurd. Imagine for a moment, if people went around saying: "In Aslan we trust", "Paul Bunyan Bless America!", or "One nation under Gandalf".

"I swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, may The Force help me."

Reflections...

2007-12-04T09:52:00.000-08:00

The SecondLife 'WindLight' client (still beta-ish), has really nifty looking water effects, ripples, sparkle... and Reflections!

Such a nice visual improvement that I've lept from my lofty sky platforms and have resumed tinkering down at sea level. The gondola seen above has been rebuilt and re-scripted and behaves as one would expect a boat like this to. It handles like a dream. You can even kick-stomp the keel to pop the nose for a quick 'bootlegger' turns!

I added a Ferro and a Forcola too. ;)

ID revisited

2007-11-29T18:29:00.000-08:00

The Texas Education Agency’s director of science curriculum was suspended for (and has since resigned over) circulating an "anti-Intelligent Design" email. (here)

The real issue seems to be over the director's displayed lack of 'neutrality' in front of non-TEA folks. My cynical nature is reading more into it than that, of course. But anyway.

Personally, I think that comparative religion SHOULD be taught in schools so that people better understand each the value systems of others, rather than the rumors and hearsay they get from their friends of the same faith. But if you're going to include that as 'science', well, may as well try combining 'reading&composition' with 'driver ed', and see how well that works out.

But no, no one can say anything about religion in public school. Must protect the ignorant minds from possible contamination. God forbid, they might get some wild ideas and actually decide to find out about cultures other than their own.

I can just imagine all the new email spam targeting worried preachers: "Are you insecure about your faith? Is your blessing not up to impressing your followers? Take Faitha1is! Guaranteed to have your flock singing Amen!"

You'd think, I dunno, maybe FAITH could help with all that insecurity.

Seriously, Science is not anti-faith. To me, the purpose of Faith is to answer the questions that science is incapable of asking, of which there are many.

The San Diego Reader!

2007-11-20T21:29:00.000-08:00

The Second Lives of San Diegans

The issue is finally in circulation! Woot! (And no, that's not me on the cover!)

A few comments about the article:

I haven't made any YouTube.com videos... those were created/submitted by other people, using things I've made. :)

I started in Second Life in Jan 2004, it actually started several months prior.

The "history of virtual reality" is "from my perspective". A historian I am not.

Officially, it is "Linden Lab" not "Linden Labs", I made that error myself ages ago.

The exchange rate was really around L$268 to the US dollar, not L$168, which makes my lamps "a buck or less", not a few dollars each. :) (some are *MUCH* cheaper)

I wish I were "one of the richest" residents in SL, but no. I do have a fair bit of land that I could sell for a decent price, but I'm still far from getting my initial investment back.

And, a very nit-picky pedantic clarification, Linden Lab didn't actually "disable" Starax's scripts, they reduced how many and how quickly any object can create new objects... The scripts in Starax's wand still tried to operate, but acted like a sports car racing down a freeway suddenly paved with speed bumps. Ouch! (Some of those limits were backed out later, I'm not sure whether his wand is still affected or not.)

Clearly, it is impossible to 'sum up' Second Life into anything less than a full book , but I think, but Geoff's article definitely captures some great perspectives on the crazy world we Second Lifers like to play in! =)

(Thanks to Caern, Khamon, Whystler, and others that I spoke of indirectly in the interview. :))

Coolest website ever...

2007-11-20T13:03:00.001-08:00

Definitely one of the niftiest ideas for a web site I've seen yet:

My only complaint is it should say "is most like" not "means",
but whatever. I've played enough to feed a large family for
a day or two at this point.

How high can you raise your "VOCAB LEVEL"? (it tops out at 50!)

FISA and such

2007-11-14T13:30:00.001-08:00

It used to be I couldn't care less about what was going on in politics. I find that is changing as I see this country sliding off into what I feel is a despotic direction. And though my little tiny electronic voice will be lost in a sea of manymany, I still feel the need to speak up:

Dear Senator Feinstein-

Please reconsider your stance on FISA.

The threat of terrorists pales in comparison to the threat of a government with the power to invade our private lives without the necessary checks and balances that have made this country great.

PLEASE, do NOT support amnesty for telco's that release private information without court ordered warrants and subpoena.

Thank you.

--
John P. Crane,
in San Diego.

Tick tock tick tock...

2007-11-12T22:44:00.001-08:00

Nothing like being in a really bad mood one day to give the moodswing pendulum a good push. I'm in *much* better spirits today. (not that it'll last long. ;)

Perhaps it's my giddy mood... but I had to share this... which gave me a fit of the giggles. (a bit slow at first... wait for it).

Then what?

2007-11-09T16:56:00.000-08:00

So, the sun finally broke through this afternoon. And so did my "end of daylight savings time" fatalistic and anti-social depression. I look around at the delicate harmony of so many humans living bumper to bumper... and the dawning "Season of Excess" and I wonder if the impending inevitable doom that I feel is felt by others as well. Each year the madness grows... how much further can we, as a species, indulge ourselves before we're slapped with a big fat reality check?

The way I see it:

The price of fuel and water is certain to go up and will certainly will force businesses to raise prices or fail. Inflation is following, with it the purchasing power of the dollar is shrinking. (and it will continue until it catches up with it's value outside the U.S. too)

As buying power weakens, the jobs that depend on shoppers will suffer. Anyone employed for Developing, Producing, Distributing, Promoting, Financing and Selling STUFF is going to have a hard time. And when they lose their jobs, their ability to shop goes away too... plunging us into a recession.

And then the banks start foreclosing on mortgages. Families thrown out to live on the streets. Crime will increase due to desperation. There won't be enough to tax to hire enough police and the great capitalistic experiment will grind to a great big chaotic bloody quagmire of poverty and starvation.

The government is already fiscally bankrupt and will be no help. Big business will continue to do well, they'll have the leverage to pick and choose among the masses for the indentured servants that will help them carry on. But the rest of the country is going to start looking a lot more like New Orleans after Katrina.

Yes, yes... I'm just being cynical, and everything will likely be just peachy. But right now all I can see in my mind's eye are great tracts of big suburban homes without power or water, and people standing in soup lines.

Sunless Diego

2007-11-08T17:01:00.001-08:00

Well, 'November' has the distinction of being San Diego's "Sunny-est Month". Other months are known for their overcast nature, like "May Gray" or "June Gloom", but November is typically bright, clear and, often, pleasantly cool.

The temps seem about the same, but it's been entirely overcast for days. Still looks like smoke y haze blowing in from the ocean. I get the impression that it's just getting shoved back and forth over us instead of blowing by. Damp, wet and likely, toxic. Great stuff.

Geldings

2007-11-05T00:45:00.000-08:00

I've been noticing a growing number of loudly disappointed American males that seem to feel as if they've been deprived of their God Given Right to be "A Real Man".

They blame everything from Ritalin to soy products... from women voters to political correctness... from equal opportunity employment to Hillary.

I certainly won't deny that there is something utterly lacking in machismo and testosterone to their whining and bleating. I wouldn't call it "girlish" though. Girls are tougher than that! ;)

To these disenfranchised, emasculated, effete, wasp-ish self-declared victims of reverse discrimination, all I can say is: "Come on guys... if you can't grow a pair for yourself, there ain't no one else who's gonna do it for you! =)"

Scandal and Shame

2007-10-30T15:24:00.001-07:00

How many more anti-gay advocates are going to be outed ?!

Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) - footsie with cops in airport bathrooms
Representative Mark Foley (R-Florida) - chasing underage boys
Representative Richard Curtis (R-Washington) - a transvestite hiring rent boys
Representative Bob Allen (R-Florida) - hungry for hot dogs in a public park's bathroom
Reverend Ted Haggard - substance abuse and paying for man sex

And oh so very many more...

These liars promote homophobia by championing anti-gay issues.

Are they trying to get themselves gay-bashed by the bigots they're helping?!

Too many kind, loving people with integrity have been harmed by intolerance already.

If it were up to me, "Thou shalt not commit hypocrisy" would be the first of the 11 commandments. These idiots need to be shamed and shunned... along with the rest of the offensive liars that refuse to live by the very laws they claim to hold dear.