Dark Center of the Universe

Why They Sound Like That

2011-01-28T00:14:00.003-07:00

Cassie plays the bassoon, so I have to poke some fun. I've discovered the secret to that unique bassoon sound.

Habañero Death Chili

2011-01-26T01:02:00.004-07:00

Okay, so here's one of those recipes I promised. This is my own. I looked up a bunch of chili recipes and decided to make my own out of stuff I like in some recipes with none of what I don't. It's my recipe, I can do what I want! And what do I like? I like spicy. The spicy you can only get with habañeros. What do I don't want? Tomatoes. Tomatoey chilis are good, but I'd rather just have the beans, meat, and peppers. One recipe I found had three different meats, so I started there. Here's my recipe:

Habañero Death Chili:

1/2 lb bacon
1 lb ground beef
1 lb ground pork
1 green bell pepper
1 yellow onion
6 jalapeño peppers
6 habañero peppers
6 anaheim peppers
2 cloves garlic
1 1/2 Tbsp ground cumin
1 Tbsp crushed red pepper flakes
3 Tbsp chili powder
2 Tbsp beef bouillon
2 (16oz) cans kidney beans
2 (16oz) cans black beans
2 (16oz) cans pinto beans
1 (12oz) bottle beer
2 cups water

Finely chop onion and peppers (the hotter the pepper, the finer it should be chopped). Fry the bacon until it is crispy; blot the grease and chop fine. Cook the ground beef and pork until half done. Drain grease, add chopped bacon and vegetables, continue cooking until meat is done. Place meat and vegetables in cooking pot. Drain and rinse beans, add to pot with water and spices. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and let simmer 20 minutes. Add beer, simmer additional 20-30 minutes.

If you have reservations about cooking with alcohol, use a cup of water or broth instead of the beer, or add it earlier to let more of the alcohol cook off. It is a popular ingredient common to many chili recipes. I've made a couple of these, and let the alcohol cook off (most, not all, cooks off, but the remaining amount is not significant), and it adds a good subtle flavor to the chili. At the recommendation of a friend, I used Fat Tire, but almost any non-lite beer will have enough flavor to work well.

If you prefer less heat, use fewer habañeros. Nearly all the heat in this recipe comes from those. The other peppers don't add a noticeable amount of heat, only flavor. Cheese and sour cream also serve to balance the heat a bit.

Orphan meat may be used as a substitute for ground pork, as it has a similar but richer, juicier flavor. It is hard to come by, though, and illegal in some states.

It goes really well with macaroni & cheese!

Or, better yet, a macaroni chili dog. Yes. I made one. Here it is. It was the best thing ever.

Feel free to play around with it and offer suggestions. If you make it, please give me feedback!

New Year, New Blog

2011-01-15T17:39:00.002-07:00

Well, my blog apparently died again three months ago. But it's back! With a new look! I decided I wanted a new picture, and with some of the new design tools Blogger has implemented, I was able to take a photo of the Eagle nebula, darken and stylize it so it's not unreasonably hard to read text over it, and here we go! I even got to use about the same color scheme as before, which is good.

So what's next?

I've tweaked the layout of the links on the right. As you can see, I only have two links so far under "Good Recipes". This is going to change. I've come up with my own really hot chili recipe, and as soon as I name it, it's going on the list along with other foods I've been playing with lately.

I've split the movie review list into two categories: Good Movies and Bad Movies. I prefer to review good movies, since that's what I'd rather see; but when I see a bad movie, I like to get something positive out of the experience by trying to decide what exactly went wrong. Also, some movies are so bad I need to rant about it, and some movies that are quite popular are actually terrible and it's up to me to let everyone know, of course. Duh. So the Good Movies list will likely stay much longer than the Bad Movies list, expect them both to grow this year. I've seen a bunch that I've been meaning to blog about, but I've been busy being lazy and procrastinating. Priorities first!

Expect more music talk, including hopefully in the not quite so near future some recordings I plan to make. I've been picking up Bach's cello suites on the bass Trombone and would like to get some of them recorded.

There'll be more politics, too. I must admit, I've never been more frustrated by the topic. It's hard to organize my thoughts, but I've got some new stuff to rant about. All are required to read my rants and agree with me.

That's all for now!

iTunes 10

2010-10-04T21:34:00.004-06:00

Everyone is allowed to make mistakes from time to time, so long as they learn from them. Even the best of us make mistakes, and in this case the best of us is Steve Jobs. Yes, I am a long-time fan of Steve Jobs. Pretty much every good thing to ever come out of Apple was his idea. Even better, Jobs is responsible for making Pixar the company it is today, having bought the company from Lucasfilm, then partnering with Disney. This is largely what has made Apple the media powerhouse it is today, which includes iTunes. iTunes is not only the best media player available, but it has the easiest user interface I've ever used. It's easy because it's simple and intuitive, but powerful.

But the new version goes too far. When you have a perfect interface, taking buttons away doesn't make it simpler, it makes it more confusing. Also, the convenient colorful interface made navigation easy, but now iTunes is... gray. Just gray. It's surprising what a difference the color made!

So what now? Switch to something else? No thank you. I've used WinAmp, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Player, and even at its worst iTunes is far more powerful and easy to use. But I want my color back!

Here's the good news: You can fix it, partly. Not entirely. If you use Windows, I don't know a solution other than to switch to Mac (but I'm sure there is one); but if you are on MacOSX, it's really easy. Download this file I found and unzip it. Quit iTunes 10 and find it in the Finder, right-click on it, and select "Show Package Contents". Navigate to the "Resources" folder, and move the file named "iTunes.rsrc" to your desktop in case you need it again. There's a new file with the same name in the folder you just downloaded and unzipped; put it in the "Resources" folder where the original file was. Close the windows, and open iTunes back up. It's not a complete fix, but at least the playlist icons are colorful again.

Now I have something else for you guys... What do you think of the new iTunes logo? I hate it. I understand Jobs' reasoning... we're moving beyond CDs, so let's get rid of the CD icon. But the old one was recognizable and iconic. The new one is bland and... Windowsy. Really, the first time I saw it, on a friends laptop, I had no idea it was iTunes. It's not ugly, it's just stupid. So just to rub it in Jobs' face even more, I made my own iTunes logo. What's more obsolete than CDs? 8-tracks, cassette tapes... vinyl! Here is my gift to my readers, my homemade iTunes Vinyl logo:

On a Mac, download the .png and open it in Preview, "Select All" from the "Edit" menu, and "Copy". Find iTunes 10 in the Finder, and "Get Info" from the "File" menu. Click on the lame logo in the upper-left corner of the Info window so it's highlighted, and hit "Command-V" to paste it. The old logo will still be in your dock, but you can drag iTunes out of the dock, then open iTunes, right-click the icon in the dock and select "Keep in Dock".

I think changing icons in Windows is pretty easy, too, but I don't remember the process.

The downside is that you may have to do this again when you update iTunes... but there's hope. One thing I respect about Apple is that the company learns from mistakes. The Windows-looking logo is probably here to stay, but we may get a better interface back. Remember the iPod Shuffle? It's known for being the smallest .mp3 player, but a couple years ago they took it too far. To make it even smaller, they took away the buttons, making it unusable without special headphones. This was a bad move, but Apple learned and the new iPod Shuffle has the old buttons back. So keep hope!

A New Record!

2010-10-02T13:35:00.004-06:00

I haven't blogged in almost two months. It's a new record! It makes me think of this, from one of my favorite bloggers, Dan Bergstein:

"[I'm] going to start a blog called "Sorry I Haven't Updated in a While" and it will only feature articles apologizing for not updating more often. Sample: Sorry I haven't updated the blog in a while, but a spider hopped into my mouth, laid eggs, and now I'm pregnant with spiders."

Meanwhile, I've been back at ISU for a month now. This has been/will be a busy semester. I'm focusing on my music minor, which I've just started. That means music theory, which I haven't studied since high school... ten years ago! Music theory. Aural skills (sight singing and dictation, both of which I've been doing on my own for forever so it's easy). Trombone lessons with Dr. Brooks (I'm playing the bass Trombone this semester, and it is so much fun!). Mr. York coerced me to join the marching band by telling me there was a $400 scholarship (there was). So far there are a lot of sentences in this post that end with a statement in parentheses (like this one). In addition to marching band, I'm in the symphonic band, both jazz bands, and a brass ensemble (that's five total ensembles). Busy times! I also have a couple geology projects I'm trying to get done, but time and computer access has been an issue.

That's what's up in brief... enjoy this photo of my now eight-month-old beard!

The Blue Angels

2010-08-09T23:36:00.001-06:00

So, that thing I said I'd post about that was fun instead of political but I needed to go through all the pictures first? Yep. Here it is!

I've blogged before about the excellent air show put on annually in Rexburg, one of the few worthwhile things to see there.

This year they skipped the air show, because the Blue Angels came to Idaho Falls, and no matter how good your show is (Rexburg puts on one of the best), you can't compete with that. So several of the planes that regularly show off in Rexburg were in Idaho Falls, instead. And this time, I had a great camera to capture it all!

I'm going to try doing this a bit differently. Instead of embedding dozens of high-resolution photos in this post, and making the page take forever to load, I'm just embedding a few of my very favorites. The rest I've sorted and posted to my gallery at deviantART, and I recommend you check them out there. You can download the full resolution images to use as desktop backgrounds or whatever. I'm thinking of ordering one or two as prints, and if I'm satisfied with the quality for the price charged by dA, I'll make them available there as prints, too.

Any of you who know me or read my previous air show post know that the best plane ever is the P-51 Mustang. Also, this is my favorite plane. (That it's the best is a fact; that it's my favorite is just my opinion.) A particularly cool thing at this airshow was a flyby of a Mustang with the more modern F-16 Fighting Falcon, which served a similar role to the Mustang:

There wasn't as much emphasis on the Mustang at this show as there is in Rexburg, but at least it was there, and had its chance to show off. Greg Poe was there to do his aerobatic routine, which is always fun to watch:

A popular act at the air show each year is an aerobatic routine in a Beechcraft Model 18, popularly known as the "Twin Beech". The reason this routine is so unique is that it is a plane not at all suited to aerobatics (it was designed for such uses as cargo carrying and aerial firefighting). Flying this plane like they do at the show is like drift racing an eighteen-wheeler.

Kyle Franklin was there to fly his Twin Beech, and did not disappoint:

And, with a hint of what's to come in this post:

Are you getting excited? No? Look at that picture again. How about now? Good!

Kyle Franklin wasn't done, though. He followed this up with another routine, in which his wife Amanda stands on the wing of his "Mystery Ship", and performs a "pirate" show. This was tons of fun:

I have a new goal in life: Stand on top of an airplane while the pilot performs an aerobatic routine.

There was more, too, but those were the best highlights except for the final, main act: The Blue Angels. Ooooooh, yes. I have wanted to see these guys for forever. You'd think that having expectations set so high for so long can only lead to disappointment, but you'd be thinking of things not as cool as the Blue Angels, 'cause they lived up to the hype and then some. My brother and I managed to get pretty much as close as was possible to the show without being in the special VIP area for friends and family of the performers. We were just a couple hundred feet, if that, from "center point" of all the maneuvers.

These guys are amazing. Angels 1 through 4 perform fly-bys in formation, and while they circle around 5 and 6 play chicken, performing "knife-edge" passes. Except for a couple slow "dirty" passes, all the maneuvers are at 400 to 600 mph, and at that speed they fly at a "minimum separation" of 18 inches apart. That's close enough that if they could open their canopies, they could reach out and grab their wingman's wingtip. And when they fly by a mere couple hundred feet away at 600 mph, the thunder makes every bone in your body shake. It is a truly awesome experience, and if you ever have the opportunity to see them perform, take it.

In fact, I predict that a man can find himself at the final Judgment after he dies and hear these words: "Well, you've lived a perfect life, except for one thing: You had the chance to see the Blue Angels, and you decided to feed homeless people and take a stray sick puppy to the vet instead, and also you ended war forever. What are you, stupid? We can't let you in to Heaven, sorry."

That last picture reminds me about how I forgot to take sunscreen, and I got super, super sunburned, and didn't even care because it was totally worth it.

I took quite a few photos, and these are the best of the best, but the rest of the best are here in my Airplanes folder at my deviantART gallery. Please take a look!

Big Media, Big Government, and Manufactured Crises

2010-07-30T11:22:00.000-06:00

Guess what? I have fun stuff to blog; but while I get the photos ready, lets' get the first of two major "See, I told you so"s out of the way first.

Last month, in a post about the BP-Obama Oil Spill, I shared the following important quote by Rahm Emanuel, mastermind behind the deceptive but brilliant tactics that put Nancy Pelosi in place as Speaker of the House in 2006, and current Chief of Staff to President Barack Hussein Obama (the first racist president in my lifetime, and the first I know of to have declared open war on the United States):

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that, it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before." - Rahm Emanuel

This quote came before the BP-Obama Oil Spill, but was validated as the central tenet of liberal political tactics as Obama's response to the spill consisted of refusing cleanup help offered graciously by foreign countries, forbidding Bobby Jindal from building sand berms, refusing to utilize cleanup boats from other parts of the country because "they might be needed where they are", and delaying BP from testing and using the cap that finally stopped the leak as long as possible. Meanwhile reporters were denied access to "oil-soaked" beaches, while Obama made an appearance between golf trips to a Gulf Coast beach to pick up tar balls (there are always tar balls on those beaches; they are a natural occurrence, due to natural seepage of oil that has nothing to do with drilling, and the recent oil spill consisted of light crude unlikely to form these balls!).

This "crisis", however, shows that the liberal philosophy goes far beyond simply capitalizing on a crisis. Rahm may as well have said "If there's not a crisis, but an opportunity to manufacture a fake one, don't let the opportunity to fool those stupid plebes that voted for us go to waste!" This was the perfect opportunity to use a net of lies to continue Barack Hussein Obama's war against America's private sector, and fire a volley of unconstitutional decrees aimed at destroying the economy of the Gulf Coast.

The BP-Obama Oil Spill was universally throughout the mainstream media and Big Government billed as the greatest environmental catastrophe in the history of the United States. The Obama Regime felt secure in making such outrageous claims because Big Media is always on the side of Big Government. In fact, Rush Limbaugh has coined a term far more descriptive of Big Media: Partisan Political Operatives.

There were several voices, either completely ignored by Partisan Political Operatives or dismissed as "anti-environment" or "crazy" or "invested in Big Oil", etc., who insisted that this "environmental crises" was anything but. I summarized it last month, a couple weeks before the leak was stopped:

"The Ixtoc I oil spill, about the same size as the BP-Obama spill and also in the Gulf of Mexico, occurred in 1979, and almost no-one remembers it today. This spill is bad, but it will be little more than a sentence or two in our children's history books. Even with the higher estimates of about 130 million gallons of leaked oil, the Mississippi River pours that much new water into the Gulf every 38 seconds. The Gulf is huge. Even without drilling, millions of gallons of oil naturally seep into the ocean daily, and the seawater destroys it. This is far more concentrated, but even with no action whatsoever on our part, in a couple decades it would be cleaned up naturally. The surface of the Gulf is 615,000 square miles, and the volume is 660,000,000,000,000,000 gallons. That's 660 quadrillion gallons, more than any mind can conceive. This spill is tiny, and the Earth isn't even noticing it."

The current evidence from the Gulf of Mexico seems to show that even that was an understatement! Just days after the leak was finally stopped (by BP, not the government!), there are already very few signs that anything ever happened out there. It's such a drastic contrast that even the Partisan Political Operatives who pretend to report news can't ignore it. All over Big Media, they're all scratching their heads, saying "Where is the oil?", and are desperate to find any evidence they can of environmental harm, but it's just not there! The current media template is that "the oil seems to have rapidly evaporated and been broken down by bacteria, but there has to be some sort of long-term damage, and we need to wait to resume drilling until we figure out what it is." If the media had been doing the job they claim to do, reporting news rather than pushing the political agenda of the Obama Regime, they would have been saying all along that "once this is capped, nature will take care of it far better than we can, and in a few months all will be back to normal". Instead, it's a shock and a surprise!

Here it is from the New York Times, "On the Surface, Gulf Oil Spill Is Vanishing Fast; Concerns Stay":

"The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected, a piece of good news that raises tricky new questions about how fast the government should scale back its response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster."

"The dissolution of the slick should reduce the risk of oil killing more animals or hitting shorelines. But it does not end the many problems and scientific uncertainties associated with the spill, and federal leaders emphasized this week that they had no intention of walking away from those problems any time soon. The effect on sea life of the large amounts of oil that dissolved below the surface is still a mystery."

"[...] understanding the effects of the spill on the shorelines that were hit, including Louisiana’s coastal marshes, is expected to occupy scientists for years."

"The gulf has an immense natural capacity to break down oil, which leaks into it at a steady rate from thousands of natural seeps. Though none of the seeps is anywhere near the size of the Deepwater Horizon leak, they do mean that the gulf is swarming with bacteria that can eat oil."

You get the idea. This was known before the BP-Obama Oil Spill, so why were those voicing these opinions treated as fringe kooks? Because that opinion wouldn't hurt Big Oil the way the Obama Regime and his Partisan Political Operatives wanted. Now, the truth is inescapable, so suddenly these people have a voice, but "don't be too hasty saying this is done, 'cause there has to be a problem and we're going to investigate until we find one or make one up!"

From the Washington Post, "Majority of spilled oil in Gulf of Mexico unaccounted for in government data":

That would leave slightly less than 4 million barrels missing.

The best-case scenario is that much of this amount has been eaten by the gulf's natural stock of oil-munching microbes. Several scientists have said they are concerned that these microbes could cause their own problems, depleting the oxygen that gulf creatures need in the water.

But Wednesday, NOAA's Lubchenco said oxygen-free dead zones have not been detected so far. And Ed Overton, a professor at LSU, said he believed the microbial process, supercharged by summer heat, was helping. "We have made a gigantic biological treatment pond in the gulf," Overton said. Because of its work, he said, "we're well, well over the hump. I would say that the acute damage -- we've seen it, it's [already] been done. And that the environment is in the recovery stage."

Notice how they set the tone right from the beginning, suggesting that this is a mystery, and not obvious. The oil is "missing", "unaccounted for", not broken down by bacteria and taken care of by nature, even though the quotes shared say that's what happened. Don't let facts and evidence get in the way of the message!

Another Washington Post article, "Oil in gulf is degrading, becoming harder to find, NOAA head says", says this:

"The light crude oil is biodegrading quickly," NOAA director Jane Lubchenco said during the response team daily briefing. "We know that a significant amount of the oil has dispersed and been biodegraded by naturally occurring bacteria."

Lubchenco said, however, that both the near- and long-term environmental effects of the release of several million barrels of oil remain serious and to some extent unpredictable.

"The sheer volume of oil that's out there has to mean there are some pretty significant impacts," she said. "What we have yet to determine is the full impact the oil will have not just on the shoreline, not just on wildlife, but beneath the surface."

But much of the oil appears to have been broken down into tiny, microscopic particles that are being consumed by bacteria. Little or none of the oil is on seafloor, she said, but is instead floating in the gulf waters.

The head of the NOAA is herself a Partisan Political Operative (that's how you get that job), and so of course is a good source for Big Media, saying here "yeah, looks like the seawater is taking care of it, but... there has to be significant impact, and we're going to look 'till we find it!"

It's not a surprise. Those of us with perspective of history and previous similar events and a dose of common sense knew this was a tiny blip in the big picture, and nothing remotely resembling an environmental crisis. The real crisis is the war being waged on American prosperity by the very man whose responsibility it is to represent the country he despises. Barack Hussein Obama, you and your big ears may have won this battle, but the war will be decided November 2010, and the Last Battle for America will be fought November 2012 (I'm starting to think the Mayans were right, and the world will end in 2012, but it won't be with tidal waves and solar flares, but with the last free country conquered by socialist dictators!).

Meanwhile, here's something ironic: It seems ethanol production isn't so good for the environment, but since ethanol is supported by the Regime and the Partisan Political Operatives, stories like this are rare: From the San Francisco Chronicle, "Dead zone in gulf linked to ethanol production".

(I thought of a clever t-shirt/bumper sticker: "Ethanol: Goes in your mouth, not in your car!")

Some Awesome Things

2010-07-20T08:16:00.005-06:00

Before I begin, thank you for the feedback on my recent Twilight post, both here and on Facebook. I haven't responded yet, but there are some interesting comments that might warrant a (hopefully brief) follow-up. I don't want to post about the same thing so soon, though, and there's so much I want to say about politics but am too frustrated to write about, so it's time for an intermission. Also, I have some crazy insomnia going on , so I'd like to share with you some awesome things I have found on the internets. Let's go!

Let's kick things off with a trailer for probably the best movie ever that I haven't seen yet but really want to because it looks like it is full of all things that are awesome except bears and flame-throwers and laser beams. You are not prepared for Sharktopus! It's part shark, part octopus, and it apparently feeds exclusively on girls at the beach, and I want one for a pet.

What a catchy tune! "Sharktopus won't be kept at bay, and you can never never never get away!" Did I mention this is a documentary? Yes, better even than Planet Earth. "Greatness comes at a price, it always has." So true. My birthday is soon; please get me a sharktopus. Also, please get me one of these chainsaw rocket launchers:

Thank you in advance.

Shifting gears, Firefly gets a retro facelift!

It seems that someone got overlooked... but that's because Dr. Simon Tam is starring in his own new spin-off!

I would watch it. I would even buy it on the VHS.

And now some puppets that would make the coolest Halloween costumes ever:

And I thought they smelled bad... on the outside! (I'm tired, give me a break.)

One more. Abbott and Costello, probably the greatest comic duo of all time, debate math:

"Did you ever go to school, stupid?" "Yeah, and I come out the same way!"

Maybe I can sleep now? Nope.

If I Had a Time Machine

2010-07-08T02:09:00.003-06:00

...I would not use it for the good of mankind. That's for losers.

First, I'd use it to get lots of money. That's pretty much a given. There's no point going back in time if you don't have any money, so get that thought out of your head right now.

By the way, my time machine would of course be made from a DeLorean (duh):

So, now I have a (hypothetical) time machine and unlimited wealth. Next I conquer the world, right? Wrong! Really, I'm disappointed in you. You should know me better than that; I don't want that headache! I'll stick to complaining about the people who do run it, thank you very much.

No, once I've used my time machine to obtain untold riches, I'd leak the text of the first several chapters of Twilight onto the internet while Stephenie Meyer was still trying to sell the manuscript. Apparently that's enough to stop her from publishing a book. (I guess I lied, I would use my time machine for the good of mankind, but only for selfish reasons.)

That's not what I'd need the money for, though. The money is so I can go back to really good concerts that I wish I'd had the time/money for. Like Metallica's concert with the San Fransisco Symphony in 1999 (before I was even a fan of this amazing band):

If you skipped those videos because you're not interested in metal music, you might give them a try anyway as they could serve to broaden your horizons. These recordings helped open my mind to the idea that metal really is music and not just noise. In particular, this next song is a good door to ease your way into appreciation of metal, and was my first favorite Metallica song:

After enjoying that concert several dozen times (and saying hello to the other dozen me's there, and saying "man, this concert was awesome, you're really going to enjoy it!" and "I've seen this concert three times already, is it still as good the tenth time?" (the answer is yes)), I'd go back two more years, to the east coast this time, and see this one a few times:

Beth Gibbons' voice gives me the shivers, it's so perfect... I've tried to see if I'm in the audience several times while watching these, but I'm not sure. If you see me in the audience, let me know! That would mean that someday I will have a time machine.

There are many concert's I'd selfishly go to (I'd follow an entire tour of Pink Floyd, for examle), too many to post here; but I can't leave this out:

There, did you see me? Right there around 5:04, I'm totally waving at the camera! Go back, see? Right.... there! I knew I'd get a time machine some day!

In between concerts, I'd go back to pivotal points in history to watch how they really unfolded. Also, I'd go way, way back and watch as the Earth formed. I don't have footage or photos to post yet, but I'll blog it when I do, I promise! I also might get cameos in classic films as an extra, and play pranks on famous scientists (go back and read or re-read Darwin's Origin of Species and watch for mentions of pizza). I'd also stop Fox from canceling Firefly and Dollhouse, using Marty's strategy for getting his dad to ask out his mom in the first Back to the Future movie.

Meanwhile, I'll have to make do with YouTube and my DVD of that Portishead concert. That's the closest I have to a time machine at the moment.

Independence Day 2010

2010-07-04T00:16:00.000-06:00

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

If there is a single sentence that embodies the essence of the United States of America, it is this one, near the beginning of the Declaration of Independence more than 200 years ago. It is the statement on which our nation was founded. The Declaration goes on to say that the sole purpose of government is to protect these rights. These rights are given to us not by any man or group of man, not by any government or institution; it is made quite clear in our founding document that these unalienable rights are given to us by God. It is made clearer in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution that the government's role is not to grant rights, but to protect them; and that the purpose of our founding documents were to protect the people against abuses of power by government:

The Ninth Amendment: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

The Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

It cannot be made clearer that government is to be limited. A bloody war was fought to throw off the chains of an oppressive government, and it would all be a waste if we were to become as oppressive ourselves as that government so many sacrificed their lives to free ourselves from.

Sadly, we are doing just that. As we prepare to celebrate our independence from the British Empire, our Congress is preparing to confirm to the Supreme Court Barack Hussein Obama's nominee, Elena Kagan. When asked her opinion of "natural rights" not specifically stated in the Constitution, Elena Kagan responded, "To be honest with you, I don't have a view of what are natural rights independent of the Constitution." In other words, if it's not stated in the Constitution, it's not a right of the people.

But this is the opposite of what the Constitution actually says! Many states refused to ratify the Constitution without the inclusion of a Bill of Rights to specifically limit the government from taking powers, concerned that if the Constitution didn't say the people had a certain right, the government may someday assume it wasn't a right at all. Others countered that if the Constitution did contain mentions of specific rights, that the government might someday assume that those not specifically mentioned were up for grabs. We'll never know what course our history would have taken without the Bill of Rights, but it is clear now that those who argued against the inclusion of a Bill of Rights were justified in their fears.

The one and only purpose of the Supreme Court is to be sure that the Constitution is upheld. Yet we have a Supreme Court who recently only upheld the Second Amendment (right to bear arms) by a margin of a single vote when called on to judge the Constitutionality of an illegal ban on guns in Chicago; and now we are about to confirm a Justice who refuses to acknowledge the specific wording of the Declaration of Independence and the Ninth and Tenth amendments.

This Independence Day, it is time to look back not just to the Constitution, but to the Declaration of Independence. I'd like to quote Abraham Lincoln in a speech given in Peoria, Illinois on October 16, 1854:

"Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave others is a "sacred right of self-government." [...] Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. [...] Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. [...] If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union: but we shall have saved it, as to make, and keep it, forever worthy of the saving."

Read it again. Lincoln's thoughts at the time were in regards to abolishing slavery, but it is every bit as relevant today. In exchange for government benefits we have bit by bit surrendered freedoms to those whose purpose is to protect those freedoms, and have come to a tipping point at which we may soon lose them all or fight to save them. To quote Tom Waits, "There's always free cheddar in a mousetrap; it's a deal, it's a deal!"

Read Lincoln's words again:

"Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. [...] If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union: but we shall have saved it, as to make, and keep it, forever worthy of the saving."

In short, my point is this: Nathan's makes delicious hot dogs, but I don't like sauerkraut.

(click for full-size)

I Feel Sorry for Stephenie Meyer and You Should, Too

2010-07-02T03:44:00.001-06:00

Yeah, more Twilight. If I despise Twilight so much, why do I spend so much time on it? A couple of reasons. First of all, you can't avoid it! Eclipse came out a couple days ago. Everyone is talking about it. It's all over Facebook. I hear about it several times a day. Multiple theaters in Boise have huge signs advertising a Twilight/New Moon double feature preceding the midnight showing of the new movie. Speaking of Boise theaters...

Wow! I can't remember the last time I've been to a real movie theater. There's probably a good one in Denver, but back then there was no way my family could afford that; and most movies aren't worth a first-run showing anyway, especially with passable "cheap" theaters and, even better, waiting for the DVD for a dollar at RedBox to watch in the comfort of your own home with your own snacks and good friends. Sometimes it's good to get out, though, mostly just so you got out. I know this makes me sound like a small-town hick, but Boise has a theater as big as some of the "malls" I've been to!

Back to my point about the futility of avoiding Twilight, I went on a date to see Prince of Persia at a first-run theater last Wednesday. The movie was excellent, but I'll talk about that another time. What I'm trying to say is, the theater was packed with Twilight fans waiting all day for the midnight showing. Long story short, it was 100% worth the elbow to the ribs I received from Cassie to, as we walked past a pack of girls wearing Team Edward shirts, manage to be overheard saying "Man, who knew Edward would actually come out of the closet in the third movie?" Hehehe, I'm evil...

But there's another reason. Had Twilight fandom quickly evaporated as it should have, it would have escaped my attention; but it escalates and escalates, demanding investigation. I read the first book, have seen the first two movies, and am well versed in the details of all but the last book. I have done my research, and if I am to be as objective and intellectually honest as I can be, Twilight fandom is not healthy. It is so unhealthy, in fact, that I genuinely believe it is a favor to society to speak against it. Not with "Oh, it's so dumb, if you like Twilight you're stupid!" but with reasoned, thought-out arguments against the elements of the story.

What are those elements? Twilight revolves around the most bland, empty-headed, your-face-here central character I have ever encountered. I'll get back to this soon. This main character falls in lust (Meyer calls it "love") with a vampire who is over 100 years old and has accomplished nothing in his life, has no personality, likes her for no compelling reason, and is emotionally abusive and controlling (not to mention a creepy stalker). He's a boyfriend who likes her because she smells like steak cooked just how he likes it. But she also likes a warm, fun-loving, easy-going, potentially healthy relationship but also has a dangerous side werewolf. The characters don't learn. They don't develop. The books are 90% fluff (not an exaggeration).

The poor lessons girls (I wish I could say teenage girls, but it spans all ages) learn from these books could be the subject of volumes, and maybe I'll go more into that another time. So many people have already done so.

But this post is about feeling pity for Stephenie Meyer. So back to my point about Bella's lack of personality. It is painfully obvious that Stephenie Meyer is Bella. Meyer looks like her description of Bella. The books were "inspired" by a dream of Meyer's. Meyer spends so much time on Edward's and Jacob's physical descriptions, that the books read as a play-by-play daydream of Meyer's (which they are).

This is my point: Meyer is not well. Stephenie Meyer needs serious help. Before you get all offended, I am not disparaging Mrs. Meyer. We all have our problems. I am saying this out of genuine concern. The abusive relationship between Edward and Bella is Meyer's actual ideal of "true love". This is her fantasy relationship. If she views all the things Edward does to control Bella as okay "because he loves her" and because Bella understands that he loves her, I wonder how healthy Stephenie Meyer's real-life relationships are. Especially her marriage. It's not my business to pry into her marriage; but having been in and seen many unhealthy relationships, I can't help but wonder and have genuine concern.

That's the more serious reason I feel sorry for Stephenie Meyer, but there's also a second reason:

Twilight fandom has stunted Stephenie Meyer's growth as a writer. Twilight was the first thing Meyer ever wrote. Considering this (Twilight fans who think I am closed-minded, listen closely!), Twilight is amazing. Yes, I said it. Twilight is very good. For a rough draft of a first attempt at any form of creative writing, it is excellent. (Keep track: I used "amazing", "very good", and "excellent" in conjunction with Twilight.)

Here's what should have happened: Twilight gets picked up by someone at a publishing agency, who reads it and thinks "This has potential. The Harry Potter phenomenon will soon come to a close, leaving a vacuum for young adult literature, and this could fill it; but it needs work." The publishing agent should have written back to Meyer and said "You have the workings of a really good book, but it needs more character development, better internal logic, a more present and driving conflict, and more believable motivations for the characters. Also, you need an editor." Meyer and an editor should have gone back and forth through several drafts, finally resulting in a very good teen romance novel with a fantasy twist. The end product would be a well-written book worth reading that I am simply not in the target audience for.

Instead, crap is rewarded with high praise and rabid fanaticism. Yes, I just went from calling it "excellent" to calling it "crap". What changed? The context. Twilight is a horrible final product. I hear Host is much better, and will someday read it out of curiosity; but my expectations are very low. Stephenie Meyer could have been, not the next J.K. Rowling, but the next best thing; but because of the high reward for minimal effort, she has been elevated to a status she has not earned. I consider this to be a genuine tragedy. All you Twilight fans, and especially Little, Brown and Company, are responsible for destroying (or at the very least delaying) the potential of what could be a talented writer. I hold you all responsible for depriving the literary world of what could have been good, and seriously annoying those of us who respect art.

Stephen King has famously said that Stephenie Meyer "can't write worth a darn". I disagree. Meyer probably can write, but she has been encouraged not to.

Twilight fanatics, you should be ashamed of yourselves. To those of you who simply enjoy the books (do you really? Do you own a Team Insert-Flat-Character-Here shirt? Be honest with yourself!): you're not really the problem. But there are millions of you who are. I don't mean to offend. I only hope to inspire critical thinking. Let me have it in the comments if you'd like.

Sad face.

Prince of Persia was very good!

Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste

2010-06-24T01:12:00.000-06:00

It's time to name this disaster for what it is. Calling it the BP Oil Spill is not entirely accurate. From now on I am calling it the BP-Obama Oil Spill; BP because that's whose rig it was, and Obama because that's who has assumed responsibility for control of the aftermath and is profiting most from this crisis. Wait, profiting? How dare I make such a claim! Oh, but it's not just me; listen to the man who is the brains behind the Obama Regime in his own words (the relevant quote is in the first twelve seconds of video, but the whole clip is interesting):

"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that, it's an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before." - Rahm Emanuel

These words were spoken long before the current situation in the Gulf of Mexico, but they are revealing of the mindset of not just the Obama regime, but of liberals in general. Crisis = Opportunity. To Barack Hussein Obama, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is not a crisis, but an opportunity to do something he was not able to do before, which is to cut "Big Oil" down to size, and grab power far ahead of schedule. This follows a pattern with this regime: Housing Crisis = opportunity to seize and control banks and loan agencies; GM Bankruptcy = opportunity to gain control over a major car company; Health Care Crisis = opportunity to seize massive, near complete control over private sector insurance, hospitals, and many aspects of the way we live our personal lives right down to what we eat and whether our children are breast-fed, as well as an opportunity for massive tax increases.

The pattern boils down to this: Any crisis is an opportunity to increase the dependence of the people on the government. It is a self-sustaining pattern, as well. The more people depend on their government for help, the more often they will look to their government to bail them out. This is what I meant a year and a half ago when I wrote, as it was announced that Barack Hussein Obama had won the election, that we had officially voted ourselves a totalitarian socialist government. What frightens me is how quickly Obama is dismantling our economy and subverting the rule of law. In fact, it is amazing that I am frightened at all! I have never before had to say that I am afraid of my government, but now I am.

Back to the BP-Obama Oil Spill. How do I justify my statement that Obama is profiting from this? Just look at his (in)action. It was more than a month before he actually began to do anything. Meanwhile, though the CEO of BP gets raked over the coals for daring to participate in a yacht race during this crisis, Obama gets a pass for spending so much of his time golfing or bowling. He was already working on pushing through cap and trade legislation aimed at seizing control of the energy sector when this oil spill gave him the golden opportunity to paint Big Oil as a very visible villain and put this power grab on the fast track. Ever tar ball, every picture of an oil-soaked pelican, every minute of live coverage of oil gushing from the sea floor is another victory for Obama at the expense of the American people.

But it hasn't been complete inaction. To his credit, Obama has acted on this spill. What has he done? First off, he refused aid from other countries, offered as pure good will, to clean up the spill. It is estimated that cleanup using US ships alone will take nine months, as opposed to four months if aid from thirteen countries that offered it had been accepted. Why did he do this? Because the paperwork from the countries offering aid wasn't in compliance with the Jones Act, which was passed in 1920 to protect union jobs from being outsourced to other countries. If Obama cared about the solution, rather than the bad PR for Big Oil the longer this thing lasts, the Jones Act would never have come up.

The rest of Obama's time has been largely spent propping up BP as a villain. Yes, rather than solve the problem, the Obama regime prefers to point fingers. It's bad enough when the president of our country can fire a CEO of an American company, but now Obama has brought his Chicago mobster political tactics against a foreign company. Joe Barton was absolutely right to call Obama's treatment of BP as a "shakedown". Let's hear more of Rahm Emanuel's words:

"BP originally was going to do one relief well. We forced them to do a second relief well. They weren't going to do that. BP originally had a plan on -- on capturing, uh, a certain amount of oil. We forced that, as you know, today's reports they're up to 25,000. They originally weren't thinking about $20 billion and they originally weren't thinking about an escrow account and forcing them to do that. There are certain things that they had to be pushed -- not certain things, a lot of things that they had to be pushed -- to do."

That's right, our government "forced" BP to do what they have done. BP is an oil company. They know about oil. Rahm Emanuel and Barack Hussein Obama are politicians. They know nothing about oil. It's hard to understand, but some people actually believe that Big Oil is evil, that they care for nothing but profits. Even if that were true, it is in the best interest of BP's financial bottom line to have this crisis over and done with as soon as possible. They were already above the obligatory amount paid to victims of the disaster, with more money to come, and were already working to drill the single necessary relief well. No one knows exactly what words were said in their meeting with Mobster Obama, but it was enough to extort an unprecedented $20 billion. Make no mistake, this money was not needed for any relief effort; this money was needed to punish BP. This was not due process of law, this was extortion. Meanwhile, I don't see any fuel tax money going to pay for this, and I don't see Obama offering the one million in campaign donations from BP to clean this up. Thank goodness for "obscene" oil profits, or there would be no money to clean up the spill!

More recently Obama's regime has taken action to stop Louisiana from building berms to protect their coasts from oil, because of a dispute over where they were dredging for sand! So, you can't clean up the environment, because that's... bad for the environment.

Obama's Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, has pulled a page from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's playbook, by requesting a comprehensive report from scientists, and adding at the last minute a recommendation that drilling be halted for six months in the Gulf. This is after the scientists had signed the report! Naturally, these scientists are quite upset, and have spoken out against the moratorium on drilling as short-sighted, and a bad idea.

But if drilling caused this disaster in the first place, how can a moratorium be bad? First, it will completely destroy the Gulf Coast economy, which is dependent on petroleum. Hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost. Second, the equipment will go somewhere else to drill. It won't just sit there or in a dock, wasted! These rigs will go to South America or elsewhere, and drill wells for Hugo Chavez. Meanwhile, Americans will still need oil, so we'll have to import it! Remember Exxon-Valdez? Tankers are a spill threat, too, and we'll see more of them if we don't drill our own oil. In six months, the moratorium would be lifted, but the equipment would already be engaged elsewhere. Fortunately, we have a hero, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, who is willing to declare the moratorium beyond the scope of the executive branch, and a bad idea. Thank you, Judge Feldman! Don't back down!

There is so much more to say, but this post is already running long, so one more thing to close. We need to put this spill in perspective. Yes, it is bad. It is a disaster. There is nothing good about millions of gallons of crude oil spewing into the gulf, and causing damage to the environment, not to mention the economic loss even before Obama capitalizes on this crisis. But we need the proper perspective so we don't panic and handle this poorly. As bad as this spill is, it isn't that bad. It's easy to show pictures of oil-soaked birds and real-time feed of the spill at its source, but it isn't that bad. Here's what I mean:

The Ixtoc I oil spill, about the same size as the BP-Obama spill and also in the Gulf of Mexico, occurred in 1979, and almost no-one remembers it today. This spill is bad, but it will be little more than a sentence or two in our children's history books. Even with the higher estimates of about 130 million gallons of leaked oil, the Mississippi River pours that much new water into the Gulf every 38 seconds. The Gulf is huge. Even without drilling, millions of gallons of oil naturally seep into the ocean daily, and the seawater destroys it. This is far more concentrated, but even with no action whatsoever on our part, in a couple decades it would be cleaned up naturally. The surface of the Gulf is 615,000 square miles, and the volume is 660,000,000,000,000,000 gallons. That's 660 quadrillion gallons, more than any mind can conceive. This spill is tiny, and the Earth isn't even noticing it.

Bottom line, this is nothing to panic over. It is bad, but it's not that bad. Not worth hasty actions that will have a lasting impact on the U.S. economy without any measurable environmental benefit. Many people are calling Obama incompetent. I wish that were the case. Obama is successfully carrying out his real agenda, the strategic dismantling of the United States so it can be rebuilt in His Image. Obama's actions (and inactions) are purely evil. BP is not the villain. Our own government is.

Meanwhile, this man's idea to stop the leak by meditating the well closed is a far more realistic and effective idea than any action taken by our government.

Remember the Obama Regime's philosophy: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

D-Day 2010

2010-06-13T17:29:00.000-06:00

Well, it was a whole week ago, but this year's anniversary of D-Day, when Allied forces invaded franceland because franceland decided it was a good idea to avoid war by not fighting Adolf Hitler, was a fun one. The highlight was having the opportunity to watch a reenactment of Allied forces attacking and capturing a German gun emplacement at the local military base/museum. It took a bit on account of slow internets, but here are photos!

"German" forces march in front of the audience before the battle.

All their equipment was authentic from World War II.

It's a BMW! This reminds me of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

This really makes me want to get to work restoring my Jeep, which is 1943, like this one.

The German 75mm anti-tank gun fires at Allied troops.

Allied troops fire back, and destroy the gun.

The main gun down, Allied forces advance on the "German" forces taking cover behind these fortifications.

Allied soldiers flank the German position, and bring out shotguns for close-quarters combat.

Pistols are also good for close-quarters.

Take no prisoners! I mean, totally take prisoners. They might... know stuff. (They did the re-enactment twice that day, and after the second one the Allies shot all their prisoners just for fun.)

This guy is cleaning and maintaining the German MG34 machine gun, the predecessor to my favorite machine gun, the MG42. These are very finely machined, making them not the most reliable in the field. The MG42 was almost the same gun, but much less precisely machined, making them less likely to jam in the heat of battle.

They were firing blanks, of course.

Yeah, I totally got to heft the MG34! Sadly, I didn't get to fire it.

The soldier/actors after the battle, posing for a photo.

They gave rides in the BMW. I didn't go on one, but couldn't resist this photo. They really made this guy's day!

It's the fat cigar that really makes this photo.

During the second reenactment, there was a flyover by authentic WWII era A-10 "Warthogs".*

There were quite a few old vehicles at the museum, but of course the 1943 Jeep is my favorite.

*Haha, had you going. "Warthogs" aren't from WWII; they're quite modern, and the flyover was unrelated to the reenactment.

Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.

2010-05-31T03:10:00.003-06:00

Fact: Bears eat beets.

So, thanks to Netflix, I can finally do something I've wanted to do for a very long time: Find out what's the deal with Battlestar Galactica. I remember it being on TV a few times when I was very little, but I never watched. Of course it's mentioned on The Office all the time, but also I have several friends who are very in to the re-imagined version of the show. I've read some very interesting bits online comparing the shows, and am curious to see how they really compare, and I'll blog my opinion when I've watched both series. As always, my opinion is correct and definitive, and so all others must comply.

Speaking of comparisons, whenever I see Lieutenant Starbuck (I'm currently halfway through the original 1978 version; I hear he gets a sex change sometime between then and now), I can't help but think of Lone Starr from Spaceballs.

"I'm Starbuck. I'm so cool."

"So, Lone Starr, now you see that Evil will always triumph, because Good is dumb."

Of course, then I think of Starbucks.

I'll leave you with this. I can't get enough of the theme music. It's classic! Such a great fanfare and anthem, so inspirational. I've liked this music ever since one of the first CDs my family ever bought over fifteen years ago was a collection of sci-fi themes (yes, nerdy, I know, but good music anyway). It's odd that it's taken me so long to start watching a show I've loved the music for so long.

Dentists, Mechanics, and Lawyers, Oh, My!

2010-05-23T16:32:00.004-06:00

Before I let another month go by too lazy to post anything, I should at least give a quick update. I intend for this blog to be a place for me to voice my opinion on topics I enjoy discussing, such as movies, music, books, politics, etc., and a place to share photos and accounts of places I've been and would like to be. This is not one of those blogs where I share my deep feelings and personal issues with the world in a desperate show for attention. However, giving the big picture of what's going on now and then is worthwhile, since the three or four people who follow this blog are friends and family (then again, that means you guys already know all you need to know and more, at least in theory...), and a lot has happened, so here goes.

First, to get the biggest and worst of the news out of the way. Most of my friends are aware of this but it seems a few aren't. I regret to say that after exactly five years and one week having been married to Kathryn Matthews, I am now divorced. Yep. To quote the narrator of Fight Club, "I suppose these things happen." Those who need to know details already know them, and they don't go here. Suffice it to say she's back in Missouri living with her family, and this is a good thing that had been coming for a few years now, and we're both moving on.

Next, as an unforeseen consequence of the aforementioned divorce, the all-knowing, all-wise and benevolent administrators of Brigham Young University - Idaho (most of you know how I feel about that place, and there's more to come...) felt that they were better qualified as my ecclesiastical and spiritual leaders than my own bishop, and decided that with one semester left before receiving my B.S. in geology, I'd best continue somewhere else. Even though this was a poorly made and inappropriate decision on their part (I even had Dr. Dan Moore, my department chair, fighting for me to stay at BYU-Idaho; there really are a lot of good people there, and most of them are in the geology department), this has also proven to be a good thing overall, and not just because now I get to grow out my beard again.

I am now attending Idaho State University in Pocatello, have made several good new friends, and am in an environment that feels much more comfortable to me. It's proven to be a difficult transition back to the single life, I couldn't have asked for better help making the change. I found an amazing apartment in Pocatello, a mile from campus and very affordable, and four of the funnest roommates I've ever had. Additionally, since I need a certain number of resident credits before I can claim my degree from ISU, that means my education is delayed a couple semesters at least. That sounds horrible at first, but it's really great.

Two of my biggest complaints about BYU-Idaho involve their approach to putting students "first" by rushing them through the system so fast it's amazing you can learn anything there. Semesters are crammed into about twelve weeks, making a full 14-credit (as opposed to the traditional 12) load feel closer to 20 credits, resulting in fast burnout of students and a faculty nearing the point of rebellion (they don't even get a semester off!). The other is that they limit the total number of credits you can take to 140, meaning there's no opportunity to broaden your horizons by taking interesting classes unrelated to your major to help become a more balanced person. I suppose they consider education to be a nonrenewable resource, not to be squandered?

Now that I have no choice, I have a perfect opportunity to take classes I could never have fit into my schedule at BYU-Idaho, and have decided to minor in music. There are really only two things that make me feel truly content in life: the view from the top of a mountain after a long hike or from the highway during a long drive, and when I am performing music. This makes a geology major and music minor the perfect mix for me. I've already begun working on a project I've wanted to do for a very long time, which is to make brass arrangements of songs by Björk and other artists I admire. I'll post recordings when I manage to make good ones!

Now that I am single again, I've also finally been able to pay more attention to things that had largely been ignored due to financial situations and the difficulties in resolving those between a married couple. My Jeep is finally getting the attention it needs to stay functional and hopefully not fail catastrophically like it did last year. Also, while we'd been waiting years and years hoping to be able to afford visits to the dentist for major work, now my parents have been generous enough to pay for my teeth to get a major workover. To quote Scott Lewis (dentist I recommend in Rexburg), I had "a mess in there". Not anymore... over this past three months I had a standing 1pm appointment every Monday, and the major stuff has been taken care of. This includes finally having my nightmare wisdom teeth removed last Thursday (oh, right, there were a few non-Monday visits, too). To put it mildly, I feel like a krillion bucks (and my parents have that much less money!).

Finally, the last bit. Last Friday I moved to Boise for the summer. I got an internship working for the Forest Service making maps of environmental road hazards, and I start tomorrow. For the first week I get to camp and receive field training, then it'll be office work with ArcGIS. I also just found out that my good friend Scott Bergendorf, who was at field camp with me last summer, will be one of the field crews reporting to me, which will be cool. I spent most of yesterday just driving around Boise, and maybe it was the weather affecting me (it was raining and sleeting and snowing, and mid 30s, awesome weather!), but so far I love Boise. I need to buy a new camera, so I can take pictures. The drive from Rexburg to Boise couldn't have been timed better, as I got a perfect mix of storms and low-angle light to show off the mountains spectacularly, and I got to see Craters of the Moon for the first time. It was enough to remind me why I am a geologist.

Okay, enough of this! That's the update. I've got movies to review, concerts to talk about (I got to see Muse last month!), politics to discuss. I'll get to it!

Project Mayhem: Rexburg Chapter

2010-04-29T13:53:00.003-06:00

I have some new heroes, in Rexburg of all places. Sadly, my heroes, shortly after performing their epic heroic deed, were defeated by the minions of one* of Rexburg's most evil organizations of villains: The City Government (specifically the Police Department, the government's enforcers and tax collectors). I wish I had been there to help, because these true heroes pulled off what I have been wanting to do for years, which is to make all the parking signs in the entire town disappear over night.

They didn't quite pull off something so dramatic, but they did accomplish something that makes the same point: four Rexburg Citizens took down 60 parking signs around BYU-Idaho campus, tossed them over fences or under cars, and left a bag full of the nuts and bolts used to hang the signs on the front steps of City Hall. They also posted a three-page manifesto, ransom note style, on the door of City Hall. Aside from demands that Rexburg's ridiculous parking regulations be relaxed, it makes several other quite reasonable demands, such as lowering the town's legal smoking age to 6, and having a town baby sale.

Here's the mistake our heroes made: They pulled off this stunt while still living in Rexburg. This is something you do after graduating school and moving away, to minimize the chances of adverse consequences at the hands of the City Villains, the armed meter-maids. The heroic deed was discovered early Tuesday morning, April 20th 2010. I propose that 4/20, aside from the typical activities engaged in on that day, be also known as Annual Rexburg Anti-No Parking Civil Unrest and Peaceful Protest Day, or ARANPCUPPD. Double park, park nose-in in the back-in spots, park where you don't have a permit, etc., etc. Of course, the villains have more power than we do, so only do this if you are prepared to pay tickets, etc., because until enough people participate, we won't have power to truly protest these laws, and there are too many people in Rexburg who fear their government, or at least do whatever they're told.

Also, next idea for a good deed: Leave the back-in parking signs up on 2nd street in front of campus, but re-paint the parking lines back the way they used to be, so that to back-in park you have to cross a lane of traffic. Mwahahahahaha!

*The other evil villainous organization is the BYU-Idaho administration...

Wrong Number

2010-04-06T18:46:00.004-06:00

It's fun to mess with people. Here's a short text conversation I just had with a wrong number:

Wrong Number: "hey dad i am hungry and isaac said that you were going to bring pizza"

Me: "Well son, I have been looking for you for a long time, and now I've found you, it figures you just want free pizza."

Wrong Number: "Hey who is this think i got the wrong number"

Me: "Haha, yeah, you did."

The end.

Amazing True Facts

2010-04-01T20:31:00.003-06:00

Normally I like to keep the content of this blog completely original, but this is too good. Here is a list of incredible facts that you can impress your friends with. I got this list from blogger Dan Bergstein at Sparknotes. Enjoy:

When placed in warm milk, raisins re-plump into grapes.
The metal backs of iPods are made from recycled zippers.
Eskimos don't believe in bridges or tunnels.
Every sixteen minutes, someone named Richard dies.
Billy Bob Thornton's grandfather was the first person to own a television.
Dolphins kill more people annually than sharks and influenza combined.
On a dare, former President Rutherford B. Hayes declared war on Chile for 17 minutes.
The original title for Catcher in the Rye was Hey, Look, a Carousel!
Professionals call the top socket on an electrical outlet the "Martha," and the bottom socket the "Jasmine."
In the archives at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C., there are two identical snowflakes preserved in a freezer.
Three out of every ten nickels has been in someone's mouth.
If you hold one nostril closed for 72 hours, you will slowly lose the ability to see color. (Your sight will instantly return to normal when you release your nostril.)
Wave a magnet at the lower left corner of a vending machine to receive a free soda.
The glossy paper from the backs of stickers can be used to soothe sunburn.
To be a train conductor, you have to cut off one of your own toes during a loyalty ritual.
The Z in Jay-Z's name stands for "Zeppidemus."
Jean shorts were invented three weeks prior to the invention of regular jeans.
Whispering instead of talking on cell phones saves significant battery power.
In Austria, the traditional Christmas colors are not red and green, but purple and clear.
Benjamin Franklin coined the phrase "Baby Mama" in a satirical poem published in Poor Richard's Almanac.
If you take the first letter of each word in the Monopoly board game instruction manual, they spell out an X-rated sentence.
The original name for the laptop computer was "Hinged Smart Slab."
The average person inhales 3 pounds of spider webs in his or her lifetime.
When first introduced to the public, plastic laundry baskets cost $75 each.
Winnie the Pooh started out as a non-fiction account of mental illness.
Reading backwards for twenty minutes burns the same amount of calories as walking a half-mile.
The Q in Q-tips stands for "quantum," as the small bit of cotton on the tip contains more atoms than the entire human body.
Revolving doors were first invented as a way to keep horses out of department stores.
Peru and the moon weigh the same amount.
Human beings and anteaters are the only animals that can snap their fingers.
If you soak a baseball hat in coke, and then let it dry on someone's head, over a 3-hour period the hat will shrink with skull-denting force, causing intense pain and irreparable damage.
Clouds cannot travel south southwest.
In sign language, there are 72 ways to say "drawbridge."

The Most Worthless Film Technology Ever

2010-03-25T21:18:00.004-06:00

You were expecting me to post something about health care next, right? Close. This week has been a fury of debate over Facebook, and as I distill the comments and points to write something coherent and relevant, I'll share something completely different.

It seems like every movie coming out these days is filmed in 3D. This irritates me, because almost invariably the movie becomes about how 3D it is, instead of how good (or not) the plot and characters are. And is it really more immersive and realistic? No. The audience is constantly reminded of how immersive and realistic it is, 'cause look, it's in 3D, remember? This is self-defeating. But someone else recently put it in much better words than I could (Orson Scott Card, of course), as an aside to a review of the new Alice in Wonderland movie. He makes some very good points, writes entertainingly as always, and gives 3D technology a fair shake while concluding that it is worthless and distracting. Once again, he has plagiarized my brain, and I hear my words all polished up, coming from his mouth (keyboard). Enjoy:

What about the 3D in Alice in Wonderland?

Some of the problems have been solved. When I put on the glasses I did not get a headache within the first three minutes. I never got a headache at all, though it was certainly a relief to take the glasses off.

Also, the filmmakers used restraint -- there were almost no leap-from-the-screen gotcha moments, which always break the audience's trance and destroy believability. The 3D is mostly taken for granted, which is the only effective way to use it.

Because each lens of the special glasses filters out a portion of the spectrum, the total amount of light reaching the eyes is significantly reduced -- the film is darker and details are harder to see. Still, by filming with more saturated light, the result is still watchable.

And my evaluation says: This is the most worthless film technology ever developed, with the possible exception of smell-a-vision.

The idea of 3D is to replace the flatness of the screen with something more akin to how we really see the world.

The gimmick of 3D is based on binocularity. Flat films have only one lens; 3D uses two, the way the human brain does, as it checks out the world through two eyes.

But the purpose of two eyes, evolutionarily speaking, is not binocularity, it's redundancy. You can lose an eye and still see. By having two eyes, you double your chance of survival in a world where lack of vision can kill you.

The binocularity effect is, while mildly useful, fundamentally trivial. It's a biproduct of the fact that two eyes cannot occupy the same spot. It might help you negotiate tricky grabs while swinging about in trees; but it is not the dominant feature of our vision.

We don't see the world in 3D. We conceive the world in three dimensions, but images of the real world come flat to our retinas.

We perceive distance primarily through focus -- when we focus on near things, far things blur a little; when we focus on far things, near things blur. Our peripheral vision does not have to be in focus; the spot where we're looking is always in focus.

In a film, however, the focus has to be the same for all viewers, because you can't control where people are going to look. Focus is embedded in the film. So every layer of the 3D film is in focus at the same time, no matter where you happen to look. This is so contradictory to our normal visual experience that 3D movies are more unreal than the pastel colors of filmed musical comedies.

You never for one instant think you're seeing something real. You can't -- it's slapping you in the face all the time that you are not. Whereas the old-fashioned 2D movie is much, much closer the way we see the real world, because the lens focuses the way our eyes do -- when one thing is in focus, farther and nearer things are less in-focus.

In other words, we have a medium -- flat film, even black and white film -- that has always done a superb job of reproducing our visual experience of the world, yet in the name of "greater realism" we replace it with a fundamentally unreal worldview that turns everything artificial.

Hollywood is so excited about 3D that some people want to use it to make every visual-effects-centered film. I think this is a horrible mistake, except with films like Alice where we want to have the sense of being in an unreal dream-state.

Every time someone says, "Hey, Ender's Game needs to be filmed in 3D, so the battleroom sequences really jump out at you" I shudder and do my best to change the subject. Because Ender's Game depends on letting the audience become absorbed in the story and characters, and 3D would be an enemy -- a constant distraction.

Imagine if the Harry Potter films were in 3D "so the quidditch sequences will look good." Aren't the quidditch games among the most boring moments in each movie? Yes, it's exciting for about ten seconds. Then we're ready to get on with the story.

And for those ten seconds -- or thirty, or ninety -- we have to watch the whole rest of the film in a medium so unreal that we will never really forget ourselves and fall into the audience-trance that makes storytelling arts an essential part of human life?

3D makes you watch the film instead of forgetting the film and watching the people.

And that's why it's a deadly mistake. Only in films where the special effects or cool, unnatural designs are the star is 3D an asset. The rest of the time, it's worthless at best, detrimental at worst.

And even when they don't give me a headache, I hate the glasses. When am I ever going to lean back in my chair at home, ready to watch a film on DVD, and be glad to put on a special pair of glasses? I don't think "never" is too strong a word.

- Orson Scott Card, 3/14/2010

Necromancy: This Blog Needs It

2010-03-15T01:26:00.007-06:00

Yes, this blog actually died. I think it's safe to say that after two and a half months of no posts, this blog died. But it isn't completely dead, just mostly dead, and it will come back! Not yet... this is just a precursor. As usual, the main reason for the dearth of posts is laziness; but this time there is also more going on. It's been major life crisis for me lately, and while I keep personal stuff to a minimum on this blog, there will be a few details in a forthcoming post.

For now, I just want to share some music that's been getting me through the tough times, since I tend to express myself better with music than in words. I'm not going to elaborate much if at all here, just share the music and the lyrics, with my favorite lines in bold print, that is all. Enjoy, and if you are tempted to skip a song because you don't like the band, please at least give it a shot. I didn't like some of these bands the first time I heard them, either, and now they're some of my favorites. For example, this new(ish) song from Metallica, which is my new favorite from them:

The Unforgiven III by Metallica:

How could he know this new dawn's light
Would change his life forever?

Set sail to sea, but pulled off course
by the light of golden treasure;

Was he the one causing pain
With his careless dreaming?
Been afraid, always afraid
Of the things he's feeling;

He could just be gone;
He would just sail on;
He'll just sail on.

How can I be lost, if I've got nowhere to go?
Search for seas of gold, how come it's got so cold?
How can I be lost? In remembrance I relive;
And how can I blame you, when it's me I can't forgive?

These days drift on Inside a fog,
It's thick and suffocating;
His sinking life, outside it's hell;
Inside, intoxicating;

He's run aground, like his life;
Water much too shallow
Slipping fast, down with his ship!
Fading in the shadows

Now a castaway;
They've all gone away,
They've gone away.

How can I be lost, if I've got nowhere to go?
Search for seas of gold, how come it's got so cold?
How can I be lost? In remembrance I relive;
And how can I blame you, when it's me I can't forgive?

Forgive me, forgive me not;
Forgive me, forgive me not;
Forgive me, forgive me not;
Forgive me, forgive me,
Why can't I forgive me?

(Guitar Solo)

Set sail to sea, but pulled off course
By the light of golden treasure;
How could he know this new dawn's light
Would change his life forever?

How can I be lost, if I've got nowhere to go?
Search for seas of gold, how come it's got so cold?
How can I be lost? In remembrance I relive;
And how can I blame you, when it's me I can't forgive?

And now, quite possibly my new favorite song by Muse, for both the awesome piano part and especially the lyrics:

Hoodoo by Muse:

Come into my life,
Regress into a dream;
We will hide,
Build a new reality,
Draw another picture
Of the life you could have had;
Follow your instincts,
And choose the other path.

You should never be afraid,
You're protected from trouble and pain;
Why, why is this a crisis in your eyes again?

Taught to be,
How did it come to be,
Tied to a railroad!
You'll have to set us free;
Watch our souls fade away,
Let our bodies crumble away;

Don't be afraid,
I will take the cold for you.

And I've had recurring nightmares
That I was loved for who I am,
And missed the opportunity
To be a better man.

One more from Metallica before I finish with the song that I most identify with right now:

No Leaf Clover by Metallica:

And it feels right this time,
On his crash course with the big time;
Pay no mind to the distant thunder,
New day fills his head with wonder, boy;

Says it feels right this time,
Turned it 'round and found the right line;
"Good day to be alive, sir,
Good day to be alive," he says;

Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel
Was just a freight train coming your way;
Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel
Was just a freight train coming your way;

Don't it feel right like this?
All the pieces fall to his wish;
"Sucker for that quick reward, boy,
Sucker for that quick reward," they say;

Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel
Was just a freight train coming your way;
Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel
Was just a freight train coming your way;
It's coming your way!

Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel
Was just a freight train coming your way;

Then it comes to be,
Then it comes to be.

And finally, the song that has most often been in my head the past few months, from the Canadian band Stars. The quote at the beginning has nothing to do with anything, it's the video right after it and the song that are so amazing. If you give no other song in this post a shot, please listen to this one, because it is so well done:

Your Ex-Lover Is Dead by Stars:

God, that was strange to see you again,
Introduced by a friend of a friend;
Smiled, and said "Yes, I think we've met before,"
In that moment, it started to pour;

Captured a taxi, despite all the rain,
We drove in silence across Pont Champlain;
And all that time, you thought I was sad,
I was trying to remember your name.

This scar is a fleck on my porcelain skin,
Tried to reach deep, but you couldn't get in;
Now you're outside me, you see all the beauty,
Repent all your sin;

It's nothing but time, and a face that you lose,
I chose to feel it, and you couldn't choose;
I'll write you a postcard, I'll send you the news,
From the house down the road from real love.

Live through this, and you won't look back;
Live through this, and you won't look back.

There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave:
You were what I wanted, I gave what I gave;
I'm not sorry I met you, I'm not sorry it's over,
I'm not sorry there's nothing to save;

I'm not sorry, there's nothing to save.

I don't know what these songs will mean to anyone listening to them beyond just good music, but they are songs I felt the need to share, especially that last one. Hopefully I will be able to get over this hump and get this blog rolling again, but until then, enjoy this music.

Christmas Thoughts 2009

2009-12-28T23:28:00.005-07:00

So, an... interesting holiday season is almost gone... some random stuff, then.

First, my awesome sister-in-law Liz made me the coolest Christmas present ever: a very good replica of Jayne Cobb's orange and yellow poofball hat from Firefly. If you don't know Firefly, it is quite possibly the greatest television show of all time, and definitely the best show to not make it past one season (stupid Fox... first Futurama, then Firefly, now Dollhouse... lame!). Borrow it on DVD from a friend (I don't think all 14 episodes are on Hulu anymore but it's worth checking), and then watch the movie, Serenity. It's well worth your time. Serenity also works fine if you don't watch the series first, but it's even better if you have. Meanwhile, some context for the hat:

Jayne being hired by the Serenity crew (one of my favorite scenes from the show):

Jayne gets a gift from his mom in the mail:

And some artwork from DeviantART of Jayne looking threatening in his hat:

And now mine, home-made by my sister-in-law Liz. They even put it in a white box with fake straw and a note with roughly the same wordage as the one Jayne got:
And, finally, a picture of me failing to look as menacing as Jayne in the hat:

How's it sit? Pretty cunning, don't ya think?

Another random Christmas thought... usually I like to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas as a Christmas tradition. This year I watched It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart at my parents' house. It really is a good movie until it starts snowing again (if you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about). If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. It is much better than I remember from last time I saw it forever ago, very well done for all its tackyness at the beginning and end.

But it brings up an interesting problem... in the movie, the angel assigned to help the main character has to do this good deed to "earn his wings". However, the movie also states "every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings". Well, how does that work? Do you do a good deed, then wait for a bell to ring? Are there enough angels that this really works for every bell ring? Or, when a bell rings, if not enough angels have done good deeds, does an angel compulsively do a spontaneous good deed? Or if there aren't enough angels with good deeds under their belt, and someone tries to ring a bell, does it go silent? What if we run out of angels? Now I have a headache. Thank you, Jimmy Stewart.

Another Semester Done

2009-12-18T23:06:00.003-07:00

As I've somewhat vaguely alluded to by the title of this post, I just finished another semester. Academically it was one of the easiest semesters I've had, but overall one of the most difficult and stressful ever (there may or may not be more on that at a future date). A few things of note, I picked up a new musical instrument this semester and performed my first concert (with the BYU-Idaho Symphony Band) on the euphonium, which looks you can see on the left (also, I may do more with pictures than center them from now on, who knows!). "Euphonium" is from Greek, meaning "good sound", which it certainly has, but Trombone is still more fun and no matter how many instruments I learn I will always be first and foremost a Trombone player. Also, Trombone is the only instrument that gets to be capitalized like a proper noun. The concert was fun, and I got to play some of the most challenging music I've ever played on an instrument I've now only played for a semester (though to be fair, I knew the fingerings from a summer with a drum and bugle corps back in 2000, right out of high school, but that's all the experience I brought into this). Next semester, hopefully, I will be in both the symphony orchestra and band on campus.

Also of note, I am now a semester behind posting field camp stuff! I need to get on that, since I've finished my compilation of all 17 students worth of mapping. The geology is suspect, but it's fun to see it all come together, and I'll post it when I get to it. I also plan to post a very cool physics project I did with a couple other geology students for the most useless physics lab class ever.

And now a bit of bragging... my science writing class turned out great this semester, and I got perfect scores on not just one, but two major assignments, both of which the professor plans to use as student examples for future semesters. Part of that may well be that I chose a unique topic, with which you may be familiar if you follow this blogs: "They" want to take away your hot dogs!

Remember, I had an interesting "debate" with another geology student over this supposed conspiracy theory. Well, I did some research, found quite a few sources, and decided to use it as the topic for my persuasive policy paper. Our professor had us actually address our paper to a real policymaker and send it to them, so my letter (which you can download here) has been mailed to the Secretary of Agriculture, and I fully expect not to hear back. But if I do, you'll be sure to read about it here!

That was one perfect score. The other was our "web writing revision", for which we were to take our persuasive paper and adapt it for online consumption, since that's where most reading happens these days. So guess what? I've got another blog now! Unlike this blog, which receives regular, I mean sporadic, updates, this blog is basically "finished". I may add a news link section, but if you want to see a perfect scoring website based on hot dogs and featuring Adam Sandler and Chris Farley at the end, check out Death and Hot Dogs. The name is a play on the two certainties in life: death and taxes. I wanted to call it "Keep Your Hands Off My Wiener!", but decided a bit more professional a title would be better in this case.

Anyway... that's my update for now. One quick note to anyone attending or planning to attend BYU-Idaho: TAKE AS MANY RELIGION CLASSES AS YOU CAN FROM RANDY HAYES! After many semesters of frustration with religion classes I'm required to take but do nothing for me, my last one finally is a winner. Aside from my geology professors, Bro. Hayes is hands-down the best teacher I've ever had, and there wasn't a single day I attended his class that I didn't hear something I needed to hear. His ability to fit the Old Testament into the big picture of history is amazing, and the guy is absolutely hilarious. From three years of dreading another hour wasted in a useless religion class, from the first day my religion class became my number one favorite class of the semester. Just in case I haven't made it clear: Take your religion classes from Randy Hayes whenever possible!

That is all.

The Sleeping Giant Sleeps Again

2009-12-08T01:43:00.003-07:00

I got caught up in schoolwork and missed posting on Pearl Harbor Day, but I'm going to post anyway a few hours late. I only have a couple quick thoughts, but highly encourage you to re-visit my post from last year, in remembrance of December 7th, and if nothing else just look at the photos and remember (you don't have to have been alive for the bombing to "remember" it... I wasn't, certainly).

On Friday, November 27th, I attended my grandmother's funeral in Riverside, California. I won't write about that in this post other than to mention that my grandfather who survives her is one of the few remaining WWII veterans, having served in the Marine Corps on Guam, Guadalcanal, Okinawa and Iwo Jima and received four Purple Hearts during the war. It is said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and I'm afraid it is true. The press tries hard to downplay and forget 9/11, and soon I fear that December 7th and September 11th will both just be dates in books that students memorize for a test and don't learn from.

The famous line from Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve" may or may not ever really have been uttered, but its truth was apparent in the complete and total defeat of Japan in World War II. We were filled with resolve, and did all that was necessary to bring a stop to the ability of Imperial Japan to wage oppressive war on the world, and succeeded in spite of their attempt to take us out of the war before we had even joined it. We brought them down completely, and in its place today we have a strong friend and ally, who never again will be a force of evil in the world.

The sleeping giant was again awakened on September 11th, 2001, when terrorists waged war against a completely civilian target and killed thousands of innocent Americans. This time Americas resolve was brief, and if not for strong and determined leadership at the very top, the attack would have carried no consequences for the enemy. However, with a more difficult to define enemy, this war could not be fought on the same terms as World War II. But we have fought it successfully for nearly eight years anyway. Until now.

I won't go into any specifics on Obama's Afghanistan speech, because it has been hashed to death already everywhere, and I don't have the patience to address anything this man is doing to this country. Just think about this: What would the world be like today if, after a wearying and costly campaign of island-hopping in the Pacific, America's leaders had decided that their political careers would be more secure if they had suddenly announced that all troops would be coming home in the next year or two, leaving Japan's war machine wounded but intact? Is there any chance Japan would suddenly have implemented a timetable for withdrawal of their troops in China, who every month of the war killed 100,000 to 200,000 Chinese civilians? Will Al-Qaeda at some point resolve by vote that the war against western civilization is unjust and illegal?

If we don't fight this war completely and totally, it will only result in a less stable middle-east than we began with, and one with greater resolve to destroy America. Is it any wonder Iraqi civilians weren't happy to see us come to liberate them, when the job wasn't finished the last time? The only major drawback to term limits is that it makes other countries justifiably wary to conduct foreign relations with us. How would you feel making a controversial treaty with a country that might change its mind in four years? And if that treaty meant committing military troops to a risky theater of war?

The American giant has decided it's time to go back to sleep, while his enemies are being filled with resolve and courage that if they just wait long enough, their foes will give up. Thank you, Obama, for ending George Bush's "illegal" war, and making the world a safer place for everyone. Also, that last bit was sarcasm.

Velociraptors Are Serious Business

2009-12-01T00:39:00.000-07:00

Back in April I wrote a post on Velociraptor Awareness Day to spread word on the increasing danger of velociraptors. I have recently come across a very funny web comic, called xkcd. The author of this web comic (a physicist and former NASA contractor) shares my velociraptor paranoia, and has made raptors the subject of a few of his web comics, which I will share here:

I have decided this is the best web comic ever. Of course, it was already pretty popular before I discovered it, but hey. Here are a couple more I thought were particularly good:

If you've never seen this comic before, I highly encourage you to check it out. I'm not going to embed any more, but here are some links to a few more of my favorites:

Sympathy Tips for Physicists

Movie Narrative Charts

Extrapolating

Alternate Currency (This one is for anyone who has ever used the Romney Computer Lab)

The End Is Not for Awhile

Holy Ghost

Impostor (The Sociology frame is my favorite)

Macgyver Gets Lazy

Babies

Zealous Autoconfig

Nerd Sniping

Brick Archway

Action Movies

Highway Engineer Pranks

Right-Hand Rule

Ninja Turtles

Guitar Hero

Love

Hitler

Okay, that's more than enough. Trust me, there were a lot more I wanted to link to, but it's near overkill already. Enjoy!

Madagascar: Another Place I'd Like to Visit

2009-11-25T04:20:00.003-07:00

If anyone thinks the only place I ever want to visit is Iceland, well, you are so wrong. So very, very wrong. Iceland is just number one on the list. While surfing the internets the other day I came across some amazing pictures of some limestone in Madagascar that looks like the ruins of an ancient city, and Madagascar is now officially on my list of places I'd like to see. I can only embed one picture here, but it is spectacular:

The whole set can be found in a photo album on National Geographic's website, and I highly encourage you to take a look. You don't have to be a geologist to appreciate these. Also, this might be the worst place in the world to fall out of an airplane, even with a parachute. Maybe especially with a parachute.

If you do happen to be interested in the geology, here's an article about how these form, with a very well-done diagram.

Don't Times Me, Bro!

2009-11-24T00:38:00.003-07:00

I just want to take a little time to share an experience that has gotten me thinking of a few grammar mistakes that make me cringe. A week or so ago in GIS class we were learning how to manipulate rasters. You don't need to know what that means; all you need to know is that rasters can in some ways be treated like numbers, and two rasters can be added together, subtracted from one another, multiplied together, or divided by each other. With this in mind, you'd expect that when accessing a list of operations available to manipulate rasters, you'd see "Add", "Subtract", "Multiply", and "Divide" in the list. You'd be wrong. What you'd find instead are "Plus", "Minus", "Times", and "Divide". Even worse, the progress window will say something like "Performing Minus on raster blah blah blah."

This sort of talk is annoying enough when it comes from junior high kids, but it really gets to me finding it in a professional program. Any time I hear someone say "You're supposed to times those numbers together", I just want to grab them by the collar, shake them violently, and say "It's multiply, you idiot, MULTIPLY!" You see, you can multiply numbers, but you can't times them. Saying "four times five" means you have the quantity five, but you have it four times over. "Four times five" is the same as "four multiplied by five", but there's no such thing as "four timesed by five". You have no idea how hard it is even to write it wrong.

So that's one thing. My other biggest grammar pet peeve is the misuse of "you and I". I'm pretty sure this started out a generation or so ago, with far too many kids saying "Billy and me are going to the playground", and their parents/teachers appropriately correcting them, saying "You mean 'Billy and I' are going." These kids grew up thinking that "him and me" was never appropriate, and that "he and I" was always appropriate.

Unfortunately, this has led to a whole generation, my generation, saying things like "Mrs. Williams gave Sarah and I a Wal-Mart gift card for our anniversary." This is very wrong, and I cringe every time I hear an example of it. The correct way is "gave Sarah and me". How can you tell when to use which? It's easy. Just think the sentence as if it only applied to yourself. In this example, that means saying "Mrs. Williams gave I a gift card." Does that sound right? Only if you're a Rastafarian. "Mrs. Williams gave me a gift card" does sound right, so me works. On the other hand, does "Me got a gift card from Mrs. Williams" sound right? Only if you're a caveman. "I got a gift card" sounds much better. It all depends on who is doing the action, and whom the action is being performed toward. (See what I did there? I did a dangling participle! No, they're not incorrect.) So, to review, you can say "She and I received a package in the mail", or you can say "A package came for her and me." In the first sentence, "She and I" are acting, and in the second, the package is doing the acting (grammatically speaking).

Another that deserves a paragraph or two: "less" vs. "fewer". I often hear people say things such as "There sure are a lot less people here this time than last time!" Interestingly, I don't think I've ever heard anyone misuse "fewer". "Less" is used if the subject of measurement is continuous, such as a volume of water. You'd never say "There's fewer water in the lake this year." You'd say "There's less water in the lake." "Fewer" is used for discontinuous data, like people. I've rarely seen a fraction of a person; usually they come whole. So to return to the first example, you fix that by saying "There sure are a lot fewer people here this time than last time!" Much better.

One more major, major irritant: "would of". I think this comes from hearing people contract "would have" to "would've", and writing it down the way it sounds. Hearing it is bad enough, but seeing it typed makes my brain want to leap out of my skull and hide under a desk. You'd think that once a person types that, they'd think to themselves, "Hmm. Would of... the 'would of what'? What is a 'would', and what might it be of? I thought it should be 'would have'." Then, of course, it would click, and they'd understand. Apparently this doesn't happen very often, though.

Those are my four biggest grammar pet peeves, especially in speech. There are plenty of other irritants, such as "effect" vs. "affect", proper apostrophe use (it's vs. its, using an apostrophe for a plural such as "egg's", etc.), confusing homonyms (there vs. their vs. they're, to vs. two vs. too, etc.), and using adjectives in place of adverbs ("don't take it personal" vs. "don't take it personally")... you get the idea. Oh, "If only I would have known" is incorrect, while "If only I had known" is okay.

Oh, yeah, and while "irregardless" is actually a word, it doesn't mean what people who use it think. It has both a negative prefix and a negative suffix, which cancel each other out. Basically, it means "without irregard", which is the same thing as regarding something. It is always used when the speaker really means to simply say "regardless". One of these days I will manage to use "irregardless to" in a sentence to mean "in regard to", and it will be awesome.

Anyway, I would blame elementary school teachers for this whole issue, but then I realize that they made it through college making these mistakes and are now passing them on to children. So instead, I blame elementary education programs at universities. It is at that level that change can be effected.*

Okay, I'm done being a grammar Nazi now.

*If you think I just used "effect" wrong... think again. It's a verb in that sentence, not a noun. How do you "affect change"? Make it a different kind of change? Melt pennies into copper slag?

My Dream Car

2009-11-17T11:09:00.003-07:00

Some friends of mine were watching clips from Top Gear in the computer lab today, which made me think of my all-time favorite episode of this show, where Jeremy Clarkson drives the world's smallest production car, the Peel P50, to work. And at work. In the office. If you have nine minutes and want a good laugh, this video is well worth the time. If you want it in high quality, click on it to see it at YouTube.

50 of these were sold, and about 20 are left. I want one.

Funny Stuff

2009-09-29T00:15:00.005-06:00

I don't know about you, but I could use a good laugh right now. So here's some funny stuff I've found recently.

First off, I recently found a blog in the tradition of the FAIL Blog, called People of Wal-Mart. Basically, the idea is that people see funny people in Wal-Mart, cars in the parking lot, or general funny/weird stuff at Wal-Mart, they take a picture, and submit it to the blog. It can be hit or miss, but now and then something truly bizarre and hilarious shows up. Here are a couple of my favorite examples:

Okay... there's something personally funny about this last one. I haven't posted anything about my geology field camp class yet (I'll fix that soon, I promise!), but here's a photo of me pretending I can slackline after a hard day of hiking and mapping:

Okay, I'm scared now....

The next funny thing is this music video I found. Any of you who know me personally or have read more than a few posts on this blog know that I have a thing for Icelandic music. Okay... I'm obsessed with it. Björk, Emíliana Torrini, múm, Ólafur Arnalds, GusGus, Sigur Rós... I can't get enough. But! It's not all good, and this is an example (though my wife claims she likes this one). I dare you to watch it all the way to the end. This video is for serious. Also, it was made in 2003, despite looking like it was made in the 70s and the music sounding like the worst of 90s white rap. The group is Quarashi, and the song is called Orð Morð. My favorite is the old guy in sunglasses that sings the chorus. If you watch to the end you get a good laugh at the drummer, but at least watch a minute; you have to see this to believe it:

You watched it, you can't unwatch it!

Last thing. Early last month I posted photos of my beard in a post called Pogonology. When I was on my internship, a friend told me of a website called Beards.org, and suggested I submit my beard. I did, and nothing happened. Yesterday I got an email saying sorry for the delay, asking what kind of school doesn't allow beards ("I have to assume that you are out of high school by now!"), and that my beard was now added to the gallery. So check out my now world-famous beard, and then go look at some of the others there. There are some really good ones!

Okay, that is all for now.

Adults Are Just Obsolete Children and the Hell with Them

2009-09-25T21:34:00.003-06:00

The title of this post is a quote by Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, about writing for adults. Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of Dr. Seuss' death, and I figured I'd make note of it. I grew up reading The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Yertle the Turtle, There's a Wocket in My Pocket!, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and other classics.

I don't have a lot to say on the subject, but I thought I'd share this video from Saturday Night Live shortly after his death. Sadly I can't embed the video here, but it is well worth one and a half minutes of your time to enjoy Jesse Jackson reading from Green Eggs and Ham as if it were a religious sermon. Yes, it's really him, and it is very funny.

By the way, if anyone tries to tell you that you're supposed to pronounce Seuss as if it rhymed with "Joyce", tell them they're dumb. The "Seuss" in "Theodore Seuss Geisel" is indeed pronounced "Soyce", but the "Seuss" in "Dr. Seuss" is supposed to be "Soos", to rhyme with "Mother Goose". The anglicization is correct in this case. Now you can annoy the rare person who might correct you on that by being nerdier than them!

Bilgeous Bogwallow

2009-09-23T21:18:00.003-06:00

Just a quick post to prove this blog is still alive. I am very busy with school, and since I am a glutton for punishment I decided it would be a good idea to volunteer to compile all the field camp maps into one map to present at the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous.

This year I am taking second semester chemistry, Applied GIS, Old Testament, a physics lab that is insultingly dull (think sixth grade physics) and a technical writing class as well as participating in the Trombone master class again. This semester will either force me to learn to manage my time efficiently or kill me. Or both.

I may post more on some classes later if there is anything worth posting, but for now I will just share an assignment from my technical writing class. Today in class we split into groups to practice writing effective paragraph transitions. To do this, Professor Williams had each group take a paragraph he'd written that began a ridiculously silly story and each member of the group was to come up with a paragraph, in turn, that continued the story. I typed it all up as we went. The next step was to improve the transitions between paragraphs, the challenge being that each paragraph had a different author. Our final result was more ridiculous than even I could have predicted. It is bad. Hilariously bad. Maybe you won't think so, but I think so. I actually contributed two paragraphs to the story. Here it is in its entirety, with the first paragraph being provided by Professor Williams, and my two paragraphs in orange:

Bilgeous Bogwallow was a very pretty little girl with an unfortunate name. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bogwallow, felt there was something poetic about the way it sounded when spoken aloud, which is why they settled on “Bilgeous” in the first place. “It trips nicely off the tongue,” her father said when Bilgeous first started to complain. “No Bogwallow could ask for better.” Bilgeous, who had endured an endless stream of taunting and ridicule since the day she entered kindergarten, couldn’t have disagreed more. One afternoon, as a crowd of third-graders chanting “Bilgeous Bogwallow boils bunions” pelted her with clumps of dirt and grass, Bilgeous decided that it was time for a change.

Bilgeous’ face flushed red with hatred as the chants grew louder. Bilgeous decided she didn’t like the way Jimmy looked. She thought Jimmy looked like a frog, and to the children’s surprise, he began to grow green. It started with his hair and spread down his face. Warts sprung up all over his skin.

As his dramatic transformation drew to a close, the crowd began to realize what had happened, and came out of their stunned silence. “She turned him into a newt!” Cried a student. Before long the other children had tackled Bilgeous to the ground, and were yelling accusations of witchcraft and devilry, attracting the attention of a nearby teacher, who came over to see what the ruckus was about. The teacher could not have known what she was in for.

To the surprise of everyone, Harry Potter came flying in on his Nimbus 2000 and turned the boy back to a normal boy. He told Bilgeous that she shouldn’t use magic in such a way. Then Harry told Bilgeous that she should come to Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to learn true magic. From nowhere, Draco Malfoy appeared and returned Jimmy to his newtish form, prompting a duel between Harry and Draco over Bilgeous and Jimmy.

Dumbledore appeared with a loud crack, broke up the fight, and confiscated Draco’s and Malfoy’s powers for having used them inappropriately. He then called everyone’s parents and told them of this dreadful event. Then Dumbledore changed Bilgeous’ name to Minerva McGonnagal, so she would never be made fun of again.

Unexpectedly, Minerva decided with her newfound powers Bilgeous was a fine name after all, and hurled a powerful curse at the school which promptly disappeared, leaving nothing but a crater. From then on, Bilgeous was known as a hero for ending the tyranny of school forever!

So there you have it. Yes, most of the characters from Harry Potter make appearances. No, this does not fit the Harry Potter canon, nor is it endorsed in any way by J.K. Rowling. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you didn't, well, you read it, you can't unread it!

Save the Hot Dogs

2009-09-08T20:51:00.003-06:00

School is about to start again. Even though it's technically only been six weeks since I was in class, that didn't feel much like school since the class was Field Camp, and the classroom was several locations in Idaho and Wyoming, where we camped and made geologic maps. If I weren't too lazy to keep this blog constantly up to date, the entry on Field Camp would have come a month ago, but I am and it didn't. You'll have to deal with it being out of order chronologically. Deal with it.

That being said, though the first day of the semester is Thursday, for a few of us it started last Monday. If you are one of my nearly half a dozen loyal readers, you will remember a post from last year about a field trip I took prior to the semester's start. I took that same field trip this year, but as a TA instead of a student. So this year, I got to visit the same places and see the same views, but instead of paying the tuition and being graded on my notes and quizzes, I got paid to go. All I had to do was drive, cook, and answer geology-related questions from the students. Not a bad deal.

The trip was a lot of fun. There were twelve students in total, six in my van, including my younger brother who is also a geology major. Since it is the same trip as last year, I will only cover a couple highlights. We missed out on Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone due to road construction, meaning we had to detour through the park to get to our first real stop. We saw buffalo on the road. I took pictures, but I had to take them with my brother's camera since mine drowned. I'll upload them to a follow-up post later.

The most memorable night was Tuesday night, when we camped at Boysen Lake near Riverton, WY. It started with a student reciting the entire plot of Avatar, and ended with everyone getting soaked. Also, it was chili night, but that's not important. The weather was clear enough every night that many of us, myself included, slept out under the stars. This class had used this campsite every year for five years, but this year camped at the other end because our usual spot was in use. Turns out this end has sprinklers. We didn't worry, though, since the camp host said the first of them went off at 10am, and we camped away from those. I set up my sleeping bag and blankets on a nice, comfortable picnic table, read for a bit, then went to sleep listening to my iPod.

At 1:15am, the sprinklers came on. I jumped up, grabbed my bedding, and took it to the dry road. Then I realized my iPod was under the picnic table, getting soaked. I ran back and rescued it (it is fine), and then helped move the two tents that were getting pummeled by sprinklers. The next morning we asked the camp host why it happened, and apparently a ranger had done maintenance on the system and accidentally set the sprinklers for am instead of pm. Oops. Still, it makes me wonder whose bright idea is it to have sprinklers at a campsite anyway. Sure, it was very green, but they were watering mostly weeds. Plus, even if they come on in the afternoon, what if you wanted to camp there for a week? You'll still get soaked unless you strike camp every day. Not the greatest idea ever.

Also, I lost my pillowcase.

There was another memorable moment, this time happening in the van I was driving. This one involves politics, and to those of you who get bored with this subject, please know that it is more important than it ever was, and the facts related in this discussion may be surprising to you.

There is a student in the class who is very intelligent, very funny, a great guy, but also very liberal, and he rode in the back of my van. My brother knew how this guy was with politics, having attempted a debate with him before, but I only knew he was left-leaning. A few of us got into a discussion of socialism, global warming, and health care, talking about the ridiculous things Congress is trying to shove down our throats. All through the discussion, my brother was bracing himself for the explosion he knew was coming.

The trigger was hot dogs. When I made the claim that there are political forces who want to ban hot dogs, a previously silent voice suddenly boomed out from the back of the van, "Excuse me, but that is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever heard!"

"What?" I said.

"They want to ban hot dogs? Where do you get your sources, the YouTube comments? Did you find this out at imafreakingidiotretardedconsipiracytheorist.com?" said this student, who continued in this same vein with hardly a breath for several minutes as I tried to interject reasonable arguments with real sources into the debate. The rest of the van was laughing very hard at this unexpected outburst of entertainment. The student kept saying things like "Who is this 'they'? Is there a secret panel of government officials who say 'let's take away hot dogs'? Do the hot dog gnomes come into your house at night and steal your beef franks?" (He didn't really say that last one, but it's on par with the other comments.) The best part came as I was trying to explain who "they" is, and finally as he asked again "who is this they?" my brother and I in unison said "CONGRESS!"

It's true. For serious. The student tried to point out how ridiculous this claim is, and I have to agree with him. It is ridiculous. I never thought I'd come to a point where I would ever with a straight face be able to utter the phrase "Congress wants to ban your hot dogs". In fact, at this point in American history, it is my opinion that the most patriotic thing you can do for your country is hoard up a stash of ammunition, incandescent light bulbs, and hot dogs. And I'm not even joking.

Real quick here, for those of you who don't believe me, here are the facts. There is a lobbyist group called The Cancer Project who has a press release with the following headline: "Doctors Seek to Ban Hot Dogs and Similar Meats from School Lunches; Federal Petition for Rulemaking Filed with USDA Just Before National School Lunch Week". So there's a major lobbyist group trying to get the USDA to ban hot dogs, citing studies that say it increases your chances of colorectal cancer (that's butt cancer, if you didn't know). One of the doctors involved in the petition says that "This would be a valuable first step toward encouraging the elimination of processed meat from the diet of all consumers."

What? I'm a consumer! He wants to tell me I can't eat hot dogs or bologna anymore? What right does he have? Sure, it's not the healthiest thing, but whose right is it to say I'm not allowed to eat it? For any given food, processed or otherwise, there are dozens of studies that say it will kill you next week, and dozens more that say it helps prevent something else that will kill you. For example, apparently the blue dye in M&Ms can help with spinal cord injuries!

In my opinion, it makes no sense to vilify the diet and lifestyle of Americans as getting worse and worse when contrary to what you'd expect if that were true life expectancies are getting better and infant mortality is down. I think that means we're doing something right. So eating a hot dog per day makes you a bit more likely to develop colorectal cancer. What about the benefits? Could it be that the nutritional benefits for people who can only afford processed meat outweigh the risks, especially considering that they can't often afford quality meat?

It's the same with fruit. I don't have the reference on-hand, but I read it in a brilliant book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjørn Lomborg, with dozens of scientific references. I highly recommend giving this book a look if you care about environmental issues. The claims are that eating fruit sprayed with pesticides increases the risk of cancer. It turns out that the increased risk of cancer is completely overshadowed by the benefits of affordable fruit for all Americans, who without pesticide-sprayed fruit would be at higher risk for not having fruit at all. That's right, the pesticides increase the risk of cancer negligibly, while the fruit itself helps prevent it quite a bit. Pesticides make the fruit more affordable, and therefore accessible, and therefore reduce the risk of cancer. Incidentally, organic food is actually no healthier than non-organic food. It's a scam.

Banning hot dogs is just the start, though. If they can ban or tax one unhealthy food, why not others? How about soda? Oh, right, they've tried that. New York Governor David Patterson recently proposed an 18% tax on soda, which fortunately was dropped. Congress right now is considering a tax on sugary drinks to pay for the health care plan. Supposedly this will discourage unhealthy habits and reduce health care costs as well, just like eliminating smoking was supposed to do these last few decades. Well, we've cut smoking in half, and have costs gone down? No.

As soon as Congress can decide what is and isn't a healthy diet, and ban or tax what they find inappropriate, our freedom to choose what we eat is gone. That is one of the most sinister things about the health care bill being discussed in Congress right now. It's not about health care, it's about control. A tax on hot dogs, soda, processed cheese, fast food, you name it, along with mandated exercise, is where this particular bit of the bill is headed. In fact, they want to tax you just for being fat. Yes, I have sources. Here's one, here's another one, and here's yet another one. Even beyond this, if certain diets are punished by Big Government, maybe other lifestyle choices will be, too. This is just the beginning.

Give me hot dogs, or give me death!

100th Post

2009-08-19T14:30:00.003-06:00

Guess what? As of this posting, I have written in my blog 100 times. Funny how this comes in the middle of me hardly posting anything at all... I don't really have any special or amazing Earthshaking topic to write about. I figured instead, considering that my audience of loyal followers has drastically increased since I started blogging last year (increased by several hundred percent if you look at it one way, increased from one to three or four if you look at it another way), I will highlight a few of my favorite posts over the last year and a half. Since every single post is brilliant and worth re-reading multiple times, I will have to be very choosy to select only a few to highlight.

So where do I begin? Google Analytics says that my extra-important post about Velociraptor Awareness Day has recently surpassed my post about the threat imposed on mankind by Polar Bears as my most visited post. Both are masterpieces of online journalism if I may say so myself. Also popular are my report on the Apocalyptica concert my wife and I attended, and the one about the health benefits of rhinotillexomania (eating boogers), even though I only mention eating boogers at the end of the post. In fact, this one gets Googled quite a bit, and it's funny to see how many ways people search for it. I bet most of those people leave as soon as they see I start by talking about the Olympics and Hiroshima.

But what are my favorite posts? Other than all of them, here is a top ten best ever posts in my blog, chosen by me, in reverse chronological order:

Pogonology (8/5/2009): Probably my most (as in only) anticipated blog post ever. Photos of my beard from a couple years ago, photos of my extremely huge five-month beard from this year, and interesting photos of me taking it off in stages. My favorite is the Ambrose Burnside look. As a bonus, more pictures of beards I admire than anyone ever asked for!

Live Free or Die Harder with a Vengeance (5/4/2009): This one mostly makes this list because of how proud I am that I came up with such a clever title for the post, meshing together the names of all four Die Hard movies. I justify putting it in this list because it's an excellent (I say) review of four very good movies.

Velociraptor Awareness Day (4/18/2009): This was just way too fun, and it's fun to see people Google image searching "velociraptor" and ending up here, because I did that search to find those images and put the best ones in this post. I still recommend doing an assessment of your Velociraptor attack preparedness, and joining the Velociraptor Awareness Coalition (VAC) on Facebook. You can never be too prepared.

Apocalyptica (10/26/2008): This is by far the coolest concert I've ever been to, not that I've been to a whole lot of this type of concert. These guys are one of my top five favorite bands of all time, and put on an awesome show, running around on stage with electric cellos, head banging with long hair to speed metal music played on cello. I never thought I could temporarily lose some of my hearing because of cellos, but it's possible. If you don't know these guys, watch some of the YouTube videos in the post (some may be taken off YouTube by now, who knows), and if you do know them, you will still enjoy watching.

Polar Bears: Number One Threat to America! (8/23/2008): This is one of my pet peeve topics, Global Warming. It is one of the four main ways socialists are trying to take over America (the other ways are through government health care, the minimum wage, and the judicial system, though I'm sure there are more ways as well). The science has been pushed aside and drowned in politics, and the issue has been obfuscated to death. It is not, and never has been, about saving the Earth (which does not need saving and we couldn't if we needed to), but about power and control through the redistribution of wealth, and this power is gained by spreading fear and misinformation. This post is still relevant a year later, and will be for years to come, and it was also fun to write. This is a very important issue for every American to be educated on. I like all my political posts, but I try to space them out so this doesn't turn into a purely political blog, and I decided only to put a couple of those posts in my top ten list.

Peace through Superior Firepower (8/6/2008): Another important issue that people tend to be ignorant of. People like to say how horrible it was that we nuked Japan, not knowing how many millions of innocent lives were saved by ending that war as soon as possible with the complete unconditional surrender of Japan being the only viable option. Negotiation only works when you have something to back up your words. "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Or, as the villain in National Treasure says (roughly paraphrased), "the thing about bluffing is that sometimes you have to be holding all the cards." Saddam Hussein made a bad move bluffing to the world that he had weapons of mass destruction stockpiled when he didn't... it led to the toppling of his evil government and his death (better late than never). The world can only be stable if America is holding all the cards, i.e. has all the weapons.

Good Books and Bad Books (8/2/2008): Another great controversial post, about a topic I absolutely hate but can't get away from: Twilight (I like to pronounce it twih-ligt, like Dwigt). I really, really hate these books. They're not just annoying, they are detrimental to society. I am not happy about the fact that all four books are in my house on my bookshelf, but there's nothing I can do about it. I did, believe it or not, watch the movie, but I haven't reviewed it yet. It wasn't so bad, but is still not the amazing better-than-Harry-Potter thing that everyone says it is (that's what brought it to my attention, is that unforgivable comparison). I'm sure I'll have to see New Moon, but at least I don't have to read any more of the books. I may write more on this in the near future, since I have comments on the movie that I think are interesting and relevant to movie critiquing in general. Meanwhile, I will continue to boycott these books (not ban them, I am against banning these things on principle).

Fun with Global Warming (6/29/2008): This isn't the heavy political post you might think it is, though there's a bit of important social commentary that goes along with it. This is actually a humor post. It's a bunch of unintentionally funny statements from college students who, frighteningly enough, will be future elementary school teachers. This is worth a read if you want a good laugh. I actually have a new batch of these coming in the near future. I think so, anyway...

Why Is It So Cool to Hate Wal-Mart? (6/18/2009) and follow-up (6/19/2008): Another one of my pet peeve topics, the blaming of big, successful corporations for all of America's problems rather than giving them the credit they deserve for making our economy go. I hate hearing good companies made into scapegoats. Wal-Mart, Halliburton, McDonald's, every big oil company ever, etc. Without these companies our economy would grind to a halt, but successes like these threaten the dependence of us common folk on Big Government, the true source of all our problems.

Iceland (5/22/2008), More Iceland (6/19/2008), and More Photos of Iceland (10/11/2008): I am obsessed with Iceland. I will visit there someday. I love the music, I love the geology, and I love the scenery. Björk, Emilíana Torrini, Sigur Rós, múm, GusGus, and Ólafur Arnalds are all from there, just to name a few amazing musicians. These are quick reads, because all you really have to do is look at the pictures. You won't regret it. I'll probably find more photos of Iceland in the future.

So what is in store for this blog in the near future? Will I succeed in reviving it from its moribund state? I think so. I have many old posts to follow up on with new exciting things to say, and I have several dozen movies I want to talk about. I've also been very frustrated with the prospect of writing a political post, since things are moving along so fast and the destruction of this country by the most America-hating President we've ever had (i.e. the first one, who still hasn't proven he's even a citizen of the country he is governing) is just depressing to think about. I don't know where to start! This health care fight is the most important war our country has ever fought, and we are fighting our own President. We really may become the American Socialist Republic very soon unless Obama's inevitable overreaching happens soon enough. Enough of that... I'll save it for a future post.

Don't worry, if all goes well this blog will be alive and well very soon!

Follow-Up: The Sentencing

2009-08-13T23:54:00.005-06:00

Who killed my blog? It seems to be dead. Only six posts in the past three months? My only excuse is that I have been extremely busy with way too many extra important things (I've been playing a lot of Civilization IV lately). So quit complaining. Those pesky Zulu must be dealt with!

If you read the title of this post, you know it is a follow-up to something I've written before. You're probably confused about the other part of the title, though, unless you are one of the two or three people who diligently follow my blog (I am one of those people most of the time). So, now you're asking yourself, "what is he following up on?" or "sentencing for what and for whom?". (Who am I kidding; you're probably saying "who", not "whom", and you're wrong. Dead wrong. I'll deal with you when I finish conquering the Zulu.)

Almost one year ago, last October, I took a field trip to southern Utah (which you can read about here), and when I came back I found out that while I'd been gone I had been involved in an exciting high-speed police chase with shots fired, and I'd missed all the fun (you can read about it here). Not only did I miss out on my own police chase, I apparently missed the sentencing, too (and therefore the sentence!). Here's the story, from the newspaper a couple months ago:

Well, I have something to say, Rexburg Standard Journal. You still have my age wrong, and my middle initial, and my home town. Also, I absolutely do not drive a Silverado. I drive a blue Jeep. And if you ever tried to chase me, I would totally get away. You see, I am very good at Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and I know a few tricks (such as ramming cop cars head-on so they go flying and I speed through the roadblocks). Oh, and I didn't doctor the photo this time, so it totally doesn't look like me. At all. Also, I found more photos from the chase on the internet:

They tried to ram me off the road.

When ramming didn't work, the obvious next step is to try for deadly force.

The article from which I took these pictures said the chase started after a call of a domestic dispute and a pedestrian hit with the car. They found out later that no pedestrians were hit. The article states also that three cars were damaged in the chase: two Rexburg Police cars and one sheriff's car, completely neglecting to count the truck with the bullet through the windshield as a damaged car. Finding out these details, that the Rexburg Police would chase someone for hitting a pedestrian when none were hit, and that standard operating procedure in these cases is apparently shooting at the driver's head instead of the vehicle's tires, really instills in me great confidence in our local police force. It's too bad I missed out on all the action!

Pogonology

2009-08-05T23:32:00.001-06:00

This is way overdue (two months overdue!), but I am finally getting around to posting pictures of my beard. In fact, here's a whole post on pogonology!

So, here's the full story. Back in 2004 I decided to grow a beard because I was tired of shaving. I liked the look, but it was uncomfortable; so I was going to shave it off, but my girlfriend (now my wife) liked it and talked me into keeping it. I got used to it, and kept a short beard until starting school at BYU-Idaho, where there is a lame rule against beards. There's no rule against mustaches, so if you want to grow one and look like a pedophile that's just fine, just so long as you don't have a beard. Never mind that Jesus had one, and all of the LDS church presidents from Brigham Young to George Albert Smith, and they're not against church policy... these days apparently they're evil or something. Okay, rant over...

Of course when you shave off a beard, you can't just shave it off... you've got to have some fun with it! So here is my beard as it was when I started school here, and various stages as I shaved it off (these were taken with a really bad camera):

Here's me at the beach in California with a beard a bit shorter than usual. There's a better picture on Facebook, but I can't seem to find it to post here, so here's the next best one.

This is me going for a white trash look, kind of Joe Dirt-ish.

Handlebars!

Cop mustache. Of course I had to grab my Airsoft gun.

Okay, now let's take a short break and watch an educational video about beards (this is worth watching all the way through).

Now back to the beards! Even though while I'm at school I can't technically keep my beard, I decided while I was out on my internship in the oil field I would see what I could do in about five months. So here is the result of neither shaving my beard nor cutting my hair from mid-December to the end of May:

My wife, my beard and me.

Since I did the goatee and handlebars thing last time, and there was so much more beard this time, I decided to go for something different as I shaved it off. The obvious choice was the Ambrose Burnside look! Despite my lack of receding hairline, I pulled it off pretty well, I think:

After that I carefully cut around the mustache, and curled it as best I could for an old west look. I technically could have kept this and been "legal" at BYU-Idaho, but mustaches get in the way of eating, and I prefer the full beard anyway:

This next one may be offensive to some... I couldn't resist trimming the mustache down to an "Adolf Hitler" look. And if I have a Hitler mustache, of course I have to do a Nazi salute, right? If my hair type was slightly more suited to a Hitler mustache, I would be very tempted to keep it just to make a point at how ridiculous the BYU-Idaho facial hair policy really is, since while even a well-trimmed beard is not allowed, any sort of mustache is okay. Here is my Adolf look:

Next time I can grow one I think I'll try for a year and see what happens. Now that I've shown off mine, here are a few other beards that I find impressive:

Óðinn (Odin, the "ð" is pronounced like the "th" in "then"), king of the Norse gods. He is one of my favorite mythical characters, and this is my favorite drawing of him and his awesome beard. A couple random facts: Odin was sometimes called Woden, and Wednesday is a modern version of "Woden's Day", so the modern pronunciation "Wends-day" is inaccurate and much less cool. Also, Odin is the inspiration of popular fictional characters such as Gandalf and Dumbledore, both of whom also have awesome beards.

My other favorite Norse god is Thor. He has a huge hammer, and a huge beard. I'm not sure which is a more effective weapon. Since I know someone will call me on it, this awesome picture with his intimidating mane is technically a picture of the German version of Thor, called Donner (Thunder). I wish I could call on thunder whenever I wanted it! I also wish I had that beard and hair. And build. And hammer.

Here's the other king of the gods, Zeus. The Greeks called him that, but the Romans called him Jupiter. He could also call lightning. My guess is he knew a lightning bolt was ready if all the hairs of his beard stood on end.

Leonardo DaVinci was a cool guy, with a cool beard. He also had a cool hat, but it has nothing to do with the beard.

Socrates (pronounced "so-crayts", for those of you who have never seen Bill & Ted) was very smart, at least partly because of his beard. He is also one of my favorite philosophers (my very favorite is Jack Handey, who I doesn't have a beard but is very funny).

Charles Darwin, another personal hero of mine, for both his beard and his contribution to science. Yes, I believe in natural selection and evolution, and yes, I'm probably going to Hell, but not for my belief in evolution or for growing a beard between semesters at BYU-Idaho. I'm most likely going to Hell for not liking the Osmonds and 90% of the rest of Mormon music.

Ludwig Boltzmann. Look at the photo. What's not to like? He was a physicist from Austria, so he probably had an awesome accent to go with that superb beard and intense facial expression.

Henri Becquerel. He was french, but I won't hold that against him because he discovered radioactivity and has an extra cool goatee.

Karl Marx. This guy is not a personal hero of mine, but I think our President is a fan. He's in this post because he had an awesome look, made complete by a very impressive beard. Ironically, you can buy his book at your local Barnes & Noble, thanks to capitalism.

Another crazy Marxist. With faces like that behind it, you'd think socialism would have been more successful!

Joseph Wilson Swan invented the incandescent light bulb. This is all the more impressive when you consider what a fire hazard that beard must have been in the lab.

Robert E. Lee would probably have lost his war if not for his beard. Oh, wait, I'm thinking of this next guy:

Abraham Lincoln. One of our greatest Presidents, and also one of the greatest chin curtain models.

I should note that the Union general had a pretty sweet beard, too. Here it is at its best.

Saddam Hussein. This is the kind of beard you get when you hide in a hole for a few months. Saddam and his very awesome beard have assumed room temperature thanks to the U.S. military.

You think I'm done? I've got more! As I say, anything worth doing is worth overdoing. More cool people with beards, or at least people with cool beards:

Jerry Garcia of The Greatful Dead. When I had my beard, I was told I looked like this guy. I think I needed longer hair to go with my beard. Also, I can't play the guitar.

Bob Marley was better known for his dreadlocks than his beard, but he had one. I'm mostly using that as an excuse to post this most awesome photo of one of my favorite musicians. I wish I could pull off dreadlocks.

Johan Strauss. His music is somewhat famous, because of his sideburns.

Billy Gibbons. He's on the other end of the musical spectrum from Strauss, but both his music and his beard are famous.

Chuck Norris. I couldn't resist. This is an example of a really funny-looking beard. Then again, he's a funny-looking man. His beard really bothers me, almost to the point of pogonophobia. But not quite.

Robert Jordan. This guy is a real hero of mine, and not just because he makes a beard look good. His real name was James Rigney. When he served in Vietnam he shot down a rocket-propelled grenade headed for the helicopter he's in. He's best known, though, for writing the Wheel of Time series. This series is very long, but very good, and he died with the final book half finished. Brandon Sanderson was chosen to finish the series from Jordan's notes. Sanderson doesn't have a beard, but he's a good author anyway, and the series should end well.

Orson Welles wrote and directed weird movies. With that beard and extra intense expression he could fit right in with Marx and Trotsky.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore had an epic beard. If he hadn't already been dead when he fell off the tower, the wind resistance from the beard would have saved him. Dumbledore is also one of my all-time heroes, and was my favorite character in the Harry Potter series. My favorite Dumbledore quote, from The Chamber of Secrets: "It is our choices [...] that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

Hagrid also had a jealous-making beard.

Gandalf. I can't leave him out, he's another of my favorite fictional characters. My favorite Gandalf quote: "It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."

Gimli. He was a short little guy, but had an awesome Viking-style braided beard.

And to wrap this bit up, one of the best beards ever belongs to bass player Leland Sklar:

Okay, so that was probably overkill. What a long post! I had fun doing the research for it, though. I hope it was worth taking the time to read it. Good thing it was mostly pictures!

A Photo from Field Camp

2009-07-12T10:48:00.003-06:00

One more week of field camp! I am currently sitting in the computer lab making a preliminary map of my assigned area, and took some time to stitch a panorama of one of the coolest geologic views I have ever seen. On Friday, my friend Sally and I hiked up the northwest ridge of Goddard Canyon in the Beaverhead Mountains of Idaho with Dr. Little, which was a rare opportunity since the entrance to this canyon is on private property and we were lucky enough to get in contact with the owner of the farm and get permission to drive his road. Even the professors hadn't gotten to hike this ridge before, and when we got to the top and looked northwest into the next canyon over we got an incredible view of some intensely folded layers of rock, and we think we may well have discovered a new thrust fault no one has ever mapped before! While it's likely that only my fellow geologists will appreciate what all this means, I think everyone can appreciate this view (right-click to get the full-sized version in a new window):

There is more coming, once this class is over in a week and a half and I have more time!

Independence Day 2009

2009-07-06T00:31:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been a month since I've posted here, and lots has happened, but I've been way too busy to post about it. I've had a post half-written about beards for a few weeks now, but no time to finish it. There's more to say about my internship, and pictures of Pennsylvania to post, several movies and some books to review, lots of political goings-on I want to opine about, and many general updates to... update. Also, I'm nearly done with field camp, and that means I have several hundred photos to go through so I can post the best ones here. I am so super behind! This will all come soon. This post is mostly to say it's coming soon, and to say something quick about one of my favorite holidays.

I've decided Independence Day is much more fun when your country isn't in the process of being taken over by a tyrant. I'm looking forward to a new Independence Day, when America wakes up and realizes that when the President can fire the CEO of a major corporation just because, we are not living in a free country any more. When Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government our founding fathers had managed to set up, his reply was "A Republic, if you can keep it." We kept it for over 200 years, but we are selling it now for corporate bailouts, "free" health care, and to shrink our carbon footprint to solve a problem that doesn't exist. While much of Europe is shifting toward more conservative government, America is quickly becoming one of the most socialist nations in the world. Independence Day is much more enjoyable when you don't have to be afraid of your government, or when the head of your government at least has a single shred of pride in his own country instead of aggressively touring the world and apologizing for our greatness. It makes me sick.

On a brighter note, while I couldn't afford any fireworks myself on account of all my money is gone because of cars trouble, Kate and I managed to meet up with some old friends and watch the fireworks show in Idaho Falls this year, which is so much better than the show in Rexburg. That was fun. Also, the Mustangs flew overhead during Rexburg's lame parade, so I got to see them again.

Okay, now back to packing for field camp. Two weeks left!

Cars Trouble

2009-06-06T15:35:00.002-06:00

I'm finally back in Rexburg, and it's been awhile since I've updated this blog. The last thing I had posted was that the transfer case on my Jeep had exploded on the highway and I was stranded in Towanda, PA. Well... in the end it took over two weeks and ten thousand dollars to get Kate and me home. Here's how it went down.

Rather than wait a week or longer for a new transfer case for my Jeep, Kate and I decided it would be best for her to drive to Towanda in her Ford Expedition and tow me home. We were planning to have her fly out and then make the drive home together anyway, plus my dad has more than one broken down Jeep with a compatible transfer case, so parts and labor would be free if I fix the Jeep myself. She made it out to Pennsylvania without incident, we disconnected the drive shaft on the Jeep and put it on a tow dolly Kate had pulled all the way from Rexburg (cheaper to borrow than to rent), and we were on our way. The only interesting thing at this point was that Kate's dashboard was acting up. If I accelerated hard, the thing would short out and all the needles would point to zero. Then it would click, all the needles would go to maximum, then it would click again and show accurate readings. It didn't affect how the car ran, though, so we decided that when we stopped in Rolla, Missouri to visit Kate's parents, we'd have it checked out. We didn't make it that far, though.

Just as we passed a city in Illinois called Effingham (I didn't make that name up), there were two popping noises from the dashboard of the Expedition, smoke came out of the dashboard, all the instruments went dead, and the car lost power. Traffic was heavy, but I made it through one lane of traffic without power steering to get to the shoulder and stop. We called AAA and got towed to a Ford dealership in Effingham, and Kate's parents drove three hours from Rolla to pick us up. Turns out the voltage regulator in the alternator had gone bad and had sent a power surge through the vehicle that fried the battery, the GEM module (controls the electronics in the car), the fuse circuit and the instrument cluster. Of course, they didn't figure it out all at once. First they replaced the battery and alternator, and still there were problems. Then they found the fried GEM, replaced that, still problems. Then they found the fried fuse circuit, replaced it, and now the car functions except that when you start it the anti-theft features lock it all up so it's not drivable. They tried reprogramming the instrument cluster, but it's fried, too, all data lost, and won't accept new data, so it has to be replaced. The problem is, it has to be programmed with all the original data specific to our car, same VIN, same odometer reading, etc., and of course the part is on backorder from the Ford manufacturing plant.

We waited a few days, but when it seemed unclear when the part would arrive, we decided we couldn't wait there anymore or Kate might lose her job and I might miss my super important field camp class. We considered flying home and coming back for the Expedition and Jeep later, but that meant not returning the tow dolly to the auto body shop my dad had borrowed it from, and they kind of needed it. We couldn't afford replacing it, so we couldn't leave it behind. My parents suggested that since they needed a new car anyway, maybe we could find one and buy it, use it to tow the Jeep home, and then they would buy it from us. So we found a 1998 Chevy Tahoe in Sullivan, MO, and bought it.

Of course, the guy wouldn't take a personal check, and it was already Friday evening when we found it and Kate's parents test drove it for us, so just buying it was an adventure. Kate and I had stayed a couple nights in a hotel in Effingham expecting the Expedition to be ready any time, but it wasn't; so Kate's parents drove three hours to pick us up at 8am, and we drove three hours back to get to a bank an hour before it closed, then get to the guy's place to buy the car, then take it to get a drive-away tag since we didn't want to license it in Missouri. Fortunately, a drive-away tag doesn't require an emissions inspection, which would have meant we'd have run out of time and would have to wait until Monday to leave. So all was well: we had a new Tahoe, we went back to Effingham and hooked up the Jeep, and were on our way.

Guess how far we made it? Topeka, Kansas. The Tahoe, which was in excellent shape with only 77,000 miles on it, drove fine at first, but the farther we got the wimpier it got. 20 miles west of Topeka it decided it couldn't make it up a hill. Not a big hill, a Kansas hill. Barely a hill at all. So I pulled over again, and it died, and wouldn't start. It seemed like it was out of gas, but there was more than half a tank. So Kate's dad drove six hours from Rolla to Topeka, we bought a new fuel filter and replaced it on the road... still nothing. It was Sunday, so nothing was open, but we managed to find a wrecker with a tow truck who pulled the Tahoe and the Jeep to the nearest repair shop, in Alma, KS. There's no hotel in Alma, so we stayed about 15 miles away in Wamego, which is apparently the Oz Capital of the World. On Monday the mechanic looked at the car, told us it was the fuel pump (which we had guessed when the filter didn't help), and said it may be a couple days before a part came. Fortunately we didn't have to wait, he got his pump that day, fixed it, and we drove away.

Guess how far we made it? The Tahoe lost power again and died on the side of I-70 a second time only 3.5 miles from the Colorado border. Yep, we didn't even make it out of Kansas. This time the battery was mysteriously dead, pointing to alternator issues. My dad decided at this point to call around to find local LDS church authorities who could recommend a mechanic in the area and help us get there, since we were again 20 miles from any town. It was about midnight, but early the next morning a local bishop came out and picked us up and took us to his place in Goodland, KS. Kate stayed there to wash up and rest while this bishop and I took a fresh battery out to the Tahoe. It started up with a new battery, the alternator seemed to be working fine, but I followed the bishop to a local Chevy dealer who tested the battery and alternator and said the alternator was good but the battery was bad. We got a new battery, the bishop gave us free food at the McDonald's in town (which he owned), and we were on our way.

Guess how far we made it? The Tahoe started losing power again, and I made it to the exit ramp for a rest stop at Arriba, CO, but couldn't make it onto the ramp. The alternator for the past several miles had stopped putting out power, and finally died at Arriba. My dad called around again (I could have if there was internet access on I-70, but there isn't), and was directed to an auto parts store in Denver with the appropriate alternator. He bought it over the phone, and another local bishop sent someone to pick it up and deliver it to us on the highway. I replaced the alternator right there on the road, in high wind and rain, and we were on our way again.

Guess how far we made it? This time we made it to Rexburg, and that was the last of the car troubles. Kate's dad couldn't stand the idea of his daughter being stranded on the highway, and after leaving us after the fuel pump in Topeka and hearing we were stuck again, decided he would tail us the whole way. He caught up to us in Cheyenne, Wyoming, and we all had dinner, and he stayed there for the night and waited to hear we'd made it home before setting off for Missouri himself.

So what is the bill? Parts and labor on the Jeep will be free, but there's $200 to borrow the tow dolly from the auto body shop. The final bill on the Expedition isn't in but will likely exceed $2000. The Chevy Tahoe cost $7000. A new alternator, new fuel pump, gas for the whole trip, hotels, food, etc., is probably close to another $2000 all together. So this trip cost over ten thousand dollars, not counting the money not earned during a couple weeks of not working. My Jeep broke on May 14th. We arrived in Rexburg around 5:30am on June 3rd. This whole trip took 20 days. Considering three cars broke down a total of five times, I call this "cars trouble" rather than just "car trouble".

Oh yeah, it's not over yet. Kate's Expedition is still in Effingham, IL, waiting for an instrument cluster. On Monday I start the major portion of my field camp class, which means for the next seven weeks I will be camping and making geologic maps, home only on weekends which will be filled with homework. Once that is done I will fly out and drive home Kate's Expedition. Let's hope nothing else goes wrong.

I Am Stuck in Towanda, PA...

2009-05-14T22:54:00.003-06:00

...because of this:

That is the transfer case on my Jeep. Coming home from work today I heard a metal clinking noise, and I looked in my rearview mirror to see chunks of metal bouncing down the highway. The chunks of metal I saw are the chunks of metal that are not in the above pictures. As I stopped to investigate, I suddenly heard the most awful scraping, grinding noise I've ever heard from a car, and it hasn't stopped. One of the mechanics that looked at it said it sounded like a rock tumbler. I now drive a rock tumbler. Awesome! So long story short, my car doesn't go until I get a new part.

Live Free or Die Harder With a Vengeance

2009-05-04T20:50:00.001-06:00

I've been getting a lot of hate mail from my fans lately saying "Why aren't you reviewing movies anymore? We're tired of this politics crap, tell us what movies we should watch so we can watch more movies!" Okay, okay, fine! Just stop sending me the hate mail! I know, I'm way behind with the movie reviews, especially considering the massive amount of time I've had on my hands lately to watch them. So here come one review of four movies!

About a month ago I had myself a Die Hard movie marathon. I was never interested in the Die Hard movies until I saw Live Free or Die Hard, and was impressed. So I got my hands on the other movies, and watched all four back to back in one day. That's right, in a twelve-hour shift I have enough down time to watch four movies relatively undistracted, and even get paid all the while because I'm working, too. And guess what? All four Die Hard movies are awesome, especially the first and fourth ones. Except the last one they are very heavy on the language, and the first movie has brief and completely unnecessary nudity near the beginning; but other than that, that is all you need to know. No need to read further (though you're welcome to), if you haven't seen them yet, don't wait as long as I did, go rent them and watch them. They are worth the time.

I originally avoided them because they looked like typical action movies with a predictable plot and unbelievable explosions and no real point except to show cool fight scenes. Well, they are your typical action movie, but Die Hard doesn't follow any formula, Die Hard is the formula used by so many action movies since. With this movie it's fresh and new, not as unbelievable as it could be, and Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman are believable in their roles. With action movies (and especially superhero movies), what really makes or breaks it is the villain. The reason most of the James Bond movies are merely fun, and no more, is that if the villains weren't completely incompetent James Bond would be dead about fifty times now. There's nothing satisfying about watching a hero, no matter how cool, go up against a villain who isn't truly threatening. Bruce Willis makes a great hero, doing an especially good job being a "regular guy" (well, a detective, and really tough, but deep down just a regular guy) who becomes a hero only by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even better, Alan Rickman makes such a believable, menacing villain, that it is very satisfying to see him brought down by the hero (even with 1988 special effects).

The overall plotline is mostly predictable, but along the way individual scenes throw some pretty fun curve balls, and there's great humor, too. The action is intense, and while there are the expected overdone Hollywood explosions, most of the action and stunts are plausible and the danger seems real without becoming an overload for the audience. Many action movies fail by being all climax all the time, and by the end are boring no matter how many bullets are flying, and others fail by trying to have too much deep dialogue and social commentary from the characters, and are boring that way. The pacing in Die Hard is perfect. I was riveted the whole time, and satisfied by the end.

The only real downsides were some lame acting from some of the supporting cast, and I can't help seeing the guy who played the cop who helps Bruce Willis and thinking "Family Matters". I can't take that guy seriously no matter what, and he's not that great an actor. Worse, Die Hard makes the classic movie mistake of having the cops bungle everything from start to finish because the police captain has an ego and insists he knows everything despite getting the inside info from Bruce Willis. Sure, this happens in real life, too, but wouldn't it be nice in a movie to see competent hero, competent villain, and competent cops? (Terminator 2 had that, now that I think of it... another great movie.) But even accounting for these negatives, it is still one of the best action movies I've seen, and well deserving of it's classic status.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder was also fun, but was in my opinion the weakest of the series. That's not a bad thing, Die Hard is a tough act to follow up. How do you raise the bar? They tried, but it didn't really work. It had it's plot twists, backstabbing and betrayal, and plenty of action, and was definitely a fun movie and didn't feel like a waste of time despite not having as solid a plot as the original. What made it work was Bruce Willis. The villain was pretty good, but no Hans Gruber, but Bruce was still Bruce, and fun to watch. Though there is a scene where he fails to save quite a lot of people and starts crying, and that's a bit uncomfortable. The incompetent cop formula is even stronger in this movie, though, and definitely getting old. You can skip this movie and not be lost in the next two, but I still recommend it. It is above average for an action movie.

One thing I liked about it is how well it made the point about the media in its quest for sensational, dramatic stories, does the public no favor and can make things worse. My memory is a bit rusty (that's what I get watching all four at once in one day and waiting so long to blog it, I guess), but I think the first Die Hard made that point as well, but it is in this movie that it sticks in my mind. It reminds me of a real-life example that happened ten years ago: the school shooting in Columbine. A friend of mine sent me a link to a very interesting interview with someone who studied that event, and one of the most interesting aspects is how the myths connected to the shooting originated from CNN coverage within hours of the shooting. Children in the classrooms were watching what was happening on TV, and as they came out they were interviewed by reporters as if they were eyewitnesses who knew the shooters personally when all they were doing is repeating what they'd just seen on TV and immediately reinforcing the myths. That's sort of a tangent, but it is one of the more interesting parts of the movie seeing the attitude of the news reporters trying to get the story that will make their career, oblivious to the panic they are causing and the leverage they are giving to the terrorists.

Die Hard With a Vengeance was a lot of fun, much better than the second movie. This one brings in Samuel L. Jackson as a character named Zeus, which is awesome by itself. Zeus is a very racist black man who only begins helping Bruce Willis to save his black neighborhood from unwanted negative publicity. When a terrorist sets off a bomb and threatens to detonate more unless Bruce Willis's character walks through Harlem wearing a sandwich board with offensive racial slurs on it, Zeus saves his life explaining that the last thing his neighborhood needs is another headline about black gang members killing a white cop.

I was dubious at first, letting the character chemistry between Samuel Jackson and Bruce Willis be enough to make the movie worth watching, but disappointed that it was just a typical sadistic villain out for revenge coming up with silly impossible scenarios to keep the cops guessing and the hero running. By the end I was impressed, though, because there is much more going on than that, and it starts from the very beginning though you don't see it. Or maybe I just didn't see it. This movie was also great in that finally we're allowed to see competent cops, making honest mistakes because even though they've thought it through they can still be wrong, not just stubborn and stupid in the face of obvious facts. There is also a very effective scene as a school is evacuated due to a bomb threat, where the bomb expert stays in the school trying to diffuse a bomb knowing he has no chance of success and is going to die, but refusing to leave as long as there are kids in the school. This was a really great movie.

Not as good as the last one, though! Live Free or Die Hard was the movie that got me interested in the series in the first place, and it was just as good the second time. All of the Die Hard movies are very patriotic (it is still amazing to me that Hollywood can pump out movies that clearly demonstrate why we can't negotiate with an enemy bent on our destruction, then they turn around and denounce the "illegal" war on terrorism), but this one is the most so. It also is the first of the series to moderate the language to the point that it is not rated "R", though there's an "Unrated" version that is hilarious in that language is added in when it is clear the character is not really speaking. It is also the first of the series that does not take place on Christmas; instead this movie takes place on Independence Day. Bruce Willis is much older in this film, and they work with that fact very well in the film. His partner in this film is the Mac guy from Apple's "Get a Mac" commercials, and plays a very convincing hacker, and is great in the film.

The story is great, the characters are great, the fights are very cool and above average for realism in an action movie, and there are some extremely cool stunts, not all of which strain your suspension of disbelief (though some do). My favorite part was watching throughout the movie as Bruce Willis is so impatient with the nerds he has to work with to stop the terrorists in this movie, especially when they meet the biggest nerd of all, who lives in his mother's basement and answers only to "Warlock". I don't know if I can say if this is my favorite or the first is my favorite, because they are very different movies; but especially if language in a movie bothers you, or you refuse to watch an "R" rated movie, Live Free or Die Hard is the one I would recommend the most.

Okay, four down, about two dozen movie reviews to go... another time.