Cause it's the [chat] of Destiny

You know it will be rockin' cause it's fucking insane!

Doh?

Americana from overseas.

Gaiax Ending

Apparently it is a term which has an established definition.

lol cat

I found kitty. He heppin my IS.

Update: kitty is apparently incapable of meow, but he's very good at purring. He also just discovered computer mouse's on-screen antics.

WoW Patch 2.3

WoW Patch 2.3 has been released and the Patch Notes are available.

Oh my god.

- The Gods of Zul'Aman
- Guild Banks
- New Town and 50 quests added to Dustwallow Marsh
- Easier leveling from level 1 - 60 (Less xp required, more xp given)
- Vendor Discounts
- The Requirement for Heroic Keys has been lowered to Honored.

All sorts of other changes.

Anyone want to play?

You Lose, Edison!!!

What? What's that?

Today, Con Edison will end 125 years of direct current electricity service that began when Thomas Edison opened his Pearl Street power station on Sept. 4, 1882. Con Ed will now only provide alternating current, in a final, vestigial triumph by Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, Mr. Edison’s rivals who were the main proponents of alternating current in the AC/DC debates of the turn of the 20th century.

That's right! Suck it, Edison. Tesla won!

Because Justice and Good will always triumph over Direct Current. Even if it takes 125 years.

Rock Band Downloadeable content.

The Rock Band Downloadeable Content schedule is out:

Week of November 20, 2007: (*--asterisk denotes a cover version)
Metallica Pack
"Ride the Lightning"--Metallica
"Blackened"--Metallica
"And Justice for All"--Metallica


The Police Pack
"Can't Stand Losing You"--The Police
"Synchronicity II"--The Police
"Roxanne"--The Police

Queens of the Stone Age Pack
"3's and 7's"--Queens of the Stone Age
"Little Sister"--Queens of the Stone Age
"Sick Sick Sick"--Queens of the Stone Age

Individual Tracks
"Fortunate Son" as made famous by Creedence Clearwater Revival *
"Juke Box Hero" as made famous by Foreigner *
"Bang a Gong (Get It On)" as made famous by T-Rex *
"My Sharona" as made famous by The Knack *
"Cherry Bomb" as made famous by The Runaways *
"Joker & The Thief"--Wolfmother


Week of November 27, 2007
David Bowie Pack
"Moonage Daydream"--David Bowie
"Heroes" as made famous by David Bowie *
"Queen Bitch" as made famous by David Bowie *

Week of December 4, 2007
Black Sabbath Pack
"N.I.B." as made famous by Black Sabbath *
"Sweet Leaf" as made famous by Black Sabbath *
"War Pigs" as made famous by Black Sabbath *

Week of December 11, 2007
Punk Pack:
"Rockaway Beach"--Ramones
"I Fought the Law"--The Clash
"Ever Fallen In Love" as made famous by Buzzcocks *

Week of December 18, 2007
Individual Tracks
"My Iron Lung"--Radiohead
"Buddy Holly"--Weezer
"Brass in Pocket" as made famous by The Pretenders *

Price:
Rock Band will still feature preselected three-song packs for download, but they will instead cost $5.49 (440 Microsoft points on Xbox 360). Songs will also be available individually for $1.99. Harmonix has said future songs will be sold individually for as little as $.99 (80 Microsoft points), and as much as $2.99 (240 points). However, "the vast majority" will come in at the standard $1.99 price point. The developer did not say how much full-album downloads would be, or when the first albums would be released.

Teapot > Flying Spagetti Monster

There is an article on MSNBC.com about a talk on the Flying Spagetti Monster which is to occur at this year's meeting of the American Academy of Religion.

While the Flying Spagetti Monster is neat enough it bothers me that it gets all of the attention when Russell already did the same thing with his teapot.

It is interesting that the manner in which an idea is conveyed matters so much. Pasta Monsters gain attention while teapots are ignored even though they are arguably the same thing.

A pox on the House of MA17

The result of having a job previously held by MA17 is that I will periodically curse his name and unborn children as I bang my head on my desk in frustration. The reason for this is twofold. Sometimes I am bored. On other occasions, though, I will find myself in a "slack hole": A problem resulting from MA17 being a filthy, filthy slacker.

Today's quest was to create a new button for the homepage which was a longer version of the blue/yellow mouseover button we currently use:


The problem is that, for some reason, the format of these button images is not consistent:


As you can see from the image the yellow button results from applying a Bevel and Emboss effect to a yellow shape on a layer. The blue button, however, results from nothing. It has always and will always exist as an already complete image. There is no process by which that blue button can be created; it merely is.

So creating longer versions of these buttons is a partially simple task:



To make longer yellow buttons one need only apply the same Bevel and Emboss effect to a new layer. This is simple enough. Blue button construction, however, requires that one physically construct a new blue button from the body of the old; rending the poor blue button to pieces so that one might duplicate and reassemble those pieces into a new whole.

Granted, the blue-button-rending-and-reassembly process is not terribly difficult in and of itself. The difficulty is in trying to figure out why the two buttons were created in such a fundamentally different manner.

7/21/07 Guster in Indy.

Here are youtube clips from the Guster Concert we went to this summer in Indy:

Indy Rap:


BLUE CHAIRS:


MORE BLUE CHAIRS:


With Ben Kweller:


Parachute:


And.....THE DEPAUW CONCERT!!!! (With Cowbell Rant)

Some Guitar Hero III (wii) notes

I've been playing GH3 for the wii for about a week now, and i thought it would post a few comments. This is the first time i have ever played through the single player mode, so i started with easy. After a week am about half way through the mediam difficulty. I am having a lot of fun with it. My friend Sarah has it for her wii as well...hopefully we will get a chance to play through co-op during finals week.

1) the graphics are nice and clear. Ive not played 2 on on 360, or 3 on other systems. But i am impressed with the way it looks visa-vie the ps2.

2) i kinda felt like the wiimote intigration in to the guitar was gimmicy. But it works really well. the missed not sound and rumble adds a great cue

3) battle mode is lame.

4) i really like the set list - it is not till the slip-note song that there is a song that i could not play over and over

5) hammer on = way more easy -

Howard Stringer: NOT a breakthrough.

According to link "Over 100,000 PS3 consoles were sold in the US last week, thanks largely to the introduction of a lower-priced $400 version."

According to Sony CEO Howard Stringer, "It's the breakthrough we've been anticipating. We've been holding our breath."

Ok, Howard. No. This is not a "breakthrough". The PS3 was released one year ago. Since then there have been four versions released with two versions discontinued. The initial PS3 was $599 and the new 40 Gig PS3 (the version people are buying) is $400.

So, after one year, four versions, and practically a $200 price cut people are finally buying your console...in the month before Christmas.

You can delude yourself into thinking this is a "breakthrough", that you have overcome all obstacles. You can ignore the sales numbers for the Wii and Xbox 360. You can ignore the reviews of the PS3 and the lackluster sales of BlueRay disks. You can pretend like today's PS3 is the same as the initial version, now discontinued. You can pretend that last week's sales mean something if you want. That's fine. Your fanboys will embrace those same ideas.

But it doesn't make your idiotic delusions true. And it doesn't mean that your stupid "ladies and gentlemen" commercials are brilliant pieces of marketing art.

It just means that you've lowered the bar and declared yourself victorious.

/grats

DBZ Live Action Movie

Satan gave a green light to an American Made Live Action DBZ movie.

Yeah. On the bright side, James Marsters is going to play Piccolo. Wait, did I say "bright side"? I mean, "Oh fuck damn it."

Rick Santorum: A frothy mix of lies.

I was going to write about Obama eating a candy mouse today because it is cute and lighthearted. But then I read youaredumb.net and learned that Rick Santorum has a writing gig with the Philadelphia Inquirer. His first article? Rare welcome to a red-blooded conservative. Today is not a candy mouse day.

The youaredumb.net article covered in general the idiocy of the Santorum Article. One juicy tidbit of santorum, however, requires a rant all its own:

"It's an unfortunate fact that over the last decades, the institutional left - Hollywood, the mainstream media and academia - have not only become intolerant of dissent from their own orthodoxies, but also often attack anyone who espouses an opposing view."

Over the last few decades academia has become "intolerant of dissent" from its own orthodoxy and also often attacks anyone who espouses an opposing view?

...

This is something which often happened in the Theology classes I took in college. Persons would take a word such as "faith", which has at least seven different definitions, and completely ignore the seven different definitions. The person would pretend that every instance of the word "faith" means the same thing. This leads to the delightful, "I have faith that there is an invisible man living in the sky. You have faith that your employer who has paid you every other week for the past 3 years will pay you the next time a paycheck is due. Therefore we both use faith." argument.

That is what Rick Santorum has done with the word "orthodoxy" with regard to academia. In Rick Santorum's mind Religious orthodoxy and "scientists use empiricism" are the same thing. They are indistinguishable. I assume that this same "logic" would be applied to the ideas of evolution and creationism. They are both "theories", so they both belong in science classes.

Ok, that's not how words work. That's not how definitions work. That is not how argments work. These are not semantic debates; it is not the case that if one can find one word which applies to both sides of an argument the two sides become the same side. That's just idiotic rhetoric.

And even ignoring all of that, what the hell is Rick Santorum talking about? If we want to use the word "orthodoxy" with regard to academia what is the opposing view to academia's orthodoxy? In my experience the only orthodoxy I ever experienced in academia which was consistent throughout was, "People ought to read books, understand those books, discuss those books, and modify their world view to accomodate the new information." In what way is that problematic?

And as to academica attacking anyone who "espouses an opposing view"? Well...yes. But to espouse a different view is to say, "One oughtn't read books. One oughn't learn. One oughtn't ever change one's mind." So, yes, well-read individuals who spend their lives teaching and learning would probably attack that view. But, again, in what way is that problematic?

How would academia function in Rick Santorum's perfect world? In what ways ought academia be changed? What is, in Rick Santorum's mind, the orthodoxy of academia? What would be better than the present orthodoxy?

I mean, yes, adherence to an unfounded orthodoxy blinded by ignorance and uncompromising intolerance is wholly detrimental. Dedicating one's life to squelching new ideas and indoctrinating impressionable minds with lies is harmful to society. Attacking world views which differ from one's own and maintaining that one is the sole source of truth will lead to deterioration and death.

But between academia and Rick Santorum? I'm pretty sure academia isn't the party guilty of those acts.

I mean, this is Rick "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything" Santorum we're talking about. Rational thinking is not something at which is his adept.

Gay use to be such a lovely word.

I want to own a bit of Fry and Laurie.

Free Rice.

freerice.com

You provide definitions to words. They provide free rice to the United Nations.

Theology has no place in a university

Much to the chagrine of everyone Richard Dawkins keeps saying things. On October 1st in a letter Richard Dawkins said that Theology has no place in today's universities:

We who doubt that "theology" is a subject at all, or who compare it with the study of leprechauns, are eagerly hoping to be proved wrong. Of course, university departments of theology house many excellent scholars of history, linguistics, literature, ecclesiastical art and music, archaeology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, iconology, and other worthwhile and important subjects. These academics would be welcomed into appropriate departments elsewhere in the university. But as for theology itself, defined as "the organised body of knowledge dealing with the nature, attributes, and governance of God", a positive case now needs to be made that it has any real content at all, and that it has any place in today's universities.

While Dawkins' letter, nuanced and thoughtful as it is, may be less than compelling to individuals who can read at a college level what of the letter's main concept? Does theology have a place in today's universities or is it tantamount to, what was it, "the study of leprechauns"? Oh-ho! Leprechauns! Oh, Dawkins. You witty rascal.

Seriously, though. Ought Theology departments be removed from universities and the professors therein be transplanted to other departments?

Mr. Silent.

Orangina is for furries.

Orangina
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