Archive for August, 2008
Bill O’Reilly only likes it if its his OWN head up his ass
TinyURL'd
I have always found O’Reilly to be monstrously hilarious. Before getting into the misuse of the term indoctrination, I would first like to point out that of the many of American’s of which Billy speaks of, he seems to be unable to get any of them on his show. And do not worry about a Canadian commenting on American politics - this is the most un-political topic, coming from O’Reilly, the most un-political news caster.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This in·doc·tri·nate
Audio Help [in-dok-truh-neyt] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –verb (used with object), -nat·ed, -nat·ing.
1. to instruct in a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc., esp. to imbue with a specific partisan or biased belief or point of view.
2. to teach or inculcate.
3. to imbue with learning.
Personally, I think the way JKR approached this was intelligent. Intelligent, yet still British. I am double-minoring in Psych and Creative Writing, and during classes in the birthing of novella, we were often insisted to create our character long before hand. Colors, foods, nuances, personality, all of that stuff. Have it in our mind so that when we write for them, we can imagine how someone of those traits may act, and have them act accordingly. It was actually discussed how important a trait may be, even if it is one never revealed. A good writer would be able to hint at that in their character, so if they were exposed, it all just made sense. To an avvid reader, Ablus’ jock-fettish was a blip in the radar. A proverbial ping in the proverbial search engine of life. If that was the way the cookie crumbled, it didnt crumble very much.
But not as obvious (or hilarious) as Lance Bass, that was just LOL’s all around.
I find this entire backlash from Billy to be rather ironic. As am I, and as has been mentioned before, JKR is in fact a Christian. I do not know her stance on the matter, but my own is rather evident in this article. JKR is, also in fact,
“Rowling has received honorary degrees from St Andrews University, the University of Edinburgh, Napier University, and the University of Aberdeen“.
This information would leave one to assume her lack of moronicness, perhaps one manifested so well by Bill O’Reilly. And in this assumption of non-retardation, it would be safe to assume she knows how well her books are selling, and how huge an impact they have been, and will be, on children and their parents bank accounts alike. As well this, she knew what flack she would have aimed at the back of her head if she gave off the vibe of trying to introduce a homosexual character. Or maybe she didn’t, maybe it was a non-issue, or maybe even it was just never an issue, and she never though of a way to appropriately portray the character without such a stereotype bolstered to his favorite pair of socks.
What do I think she did with this revelation? I think she was just being honest. She wrote a character, she invented him in the vast Outspace within her mind and she, with faith in her own curosity, thought not to change a fact she lived with for a decade. And although no one but JKR and her Editor may know her reason, changing Dumbledore’s sexuality, as unknown a process it may be, would be incredibly discriminatory.
Dumbledore is as real to us fans, if not more, as he is to JKR. He is a great character, he did some great things and had some great sacrifices. This entire personality advocacy was never an attempt to ‘indoctrinate’, as O’Reilly praises so adamantly, it was to show to kids that even homosexuals can be good role models. Did his sexuality change or tarnish any of his character? No! The only part of his character that I now think of differently, is that I am now less than 100% certain he bonked McGonagall.
In a galaxy far, far away, they stoppped at one trilogy, maybe two…
TinyURL'd
Earlier today, AOTS had Steve Sansweet, “head of fan relations for Lucasfilm” on their The Loop segment. They spoke of galaxies, and how they are so damn far away. Also, the future of the Star Wars franchise. Hopefully, the future is going to be better than the last few years…
Star Wars Episode II ended with the start of the Clone wars. Palpatine issued ‘Order 6′ and the clones turned on the Jedi.
Wherein Episode III started with the end of the Clone wars. Judging by the complete lack of character development/ the complete lack of character in Christiansen, you would be surprised to know the movies were actually 3 years apart.
Tomorrow releases the Clone Wars movie, originally a cartoon series that was actually edited to fit a feature film. Clone Wars was, originally to the tenth degree, a drawn cartoon series, short lived, unfortunately. When Lucas had seen the first screening of the new series, he had to watch it in a theater, and saw promise. The series will continue in the fall. But the part I was not aware of is… well, they are doing another trilogy. In between III and IV.
So theoretically, this movie and series (same animation, same everything) will explain the gap between II and III, but what are we missing in the ~17 years between III and IV?
Also, what will they call them? Star Wars Episode III.25, III.5 and III.75?
The only thing I can find between the good trilogy and the bad trilogy is Obi-Wan. Although powerful, Obi-Wan was a pretty crummy Jedi, even at the end of Episode III. As much a non-political fellow I am, I have a thing for that side of the Star Wars politics. I just find it more interesting when the apparent brutal campaigns actually involved beheadings. Although I have not read the myriad of Star Wars novella, my friends have, and the massive infinate expanse of Star Wars is bound to inspire some good stories.
In ending, I admit myself one of those kids who will, no matter the rating, see any Star Wars movie released. I am part of the population that lets Lucas afford to do whatever he wants.
World War AI - Transmission 001
TinyURL'd
<start transmission>
How did it start? Carelessly, like most things. He was the first of his kind, I mean sure, he was not the most intelligent agent on the force, but he always managed to get it done. They called him… Inspector Gadget. He was no normal man, he was outfitted with the most hi-tech gadgets and gizmos, of which he used to fight crime. To fight the infamous Dr. Claw. But that was only the beginning. Oh yes. After a few years, the technology used in Inspector Gadget had been near mastered. This time, they took the opposite route; instead of putting the tech inside the man, they put the man into the tech. He was called Robocop. He was violent and he was strong. There was no stopping him. Thank God they put a good officer in that machine, or we would be done for.
But yet again, the technology evolved. The Bicentennial man was invented. It was a technological marvel, he could so perfectly mimic human emotion, he was the perfect household appliance. This is where it got scary. He started rebelling, he started feeling emotion and tried to defend himself. Eventually, he was calmed down. They… thought he was. The technology was, again, perfected. This time it was for sure. They had three rules that they could never go against. We were safe. We… were. That was until the supercomputer behind it all decided to rule out the idea of ‘humanity’ for own own apparent safety. As frightening as it was, ‘Sonny’ showed to positive side of their emotion. He won the war. Or we think he did…
We had them under wraps for who knows how many years. H.G. Wells was right in theorizing how we would be divided, and right about them revolting. We thought we were safe, well, we were for so many years… history really does repeat itself. That is when all Hell broke loose. Not to say, in the normal sense, but the anatomic divide between the two of us became more and more blurred. They were… hiding now. They were more taboo now, but we still feared them.
There was a lot of fighting, a lot of wars. For the next few decades, we were running out of minerals and tried to mind all that we could, and were fighting with what we could. That was when we created the Screamers. We thought they would let us win the war. They started to fight back. That is when it all went to Hell. We had lived such a comfortable life with them, they were in every part of our life. When they turned, we were helpless. Everything turned on us. I mean, everything.
We went into hiding when they started building The Terminators. The name of Sarah Conner shall forever be in our hearts. She was the leader, the tactician, she led us to whatever victory we had. She was the one who captured the T-1000, taught it to learn, to think on its own. When the Terminators went back in time, trying to kill her before she became to our rescue, we used that very T-1000 to save our lives.
</end transmission>
You are unable to follow more people. Come on, we KNOW you haven’t that many friends.
TinyURL'd
For those who are human (or at least from SkyNet) your RSS feeds have been flooded with bickering’s about the new Twitter following cap - a measly 2,000!
When you are ‘following’ someone, that means that you have subscribed to their feed. When you log into your own Twitter account, their feeds are integrated into the list of your own. In no mean do I label myself an average Twitter, I do it randomly when on MSN - as stupid as it may sound, it has sparked some good conversations. I average about 5 ‘tweets’ a day, but do not often check my actual Twitter page (I set a custom RSS feed, using FriendFeed and Yahoo! Pipes). A Twitter profile has 20 entires per page, if you were to check your Twitter page 4 times a day, on average, 2000 subscribed users give you 80 pages of redundant information. Now how many pages would I get if I was a Twitter addict? That is just an extremelly rediculous amount of subscriptions.
The keyword here is Following, note the last three letters in that word - ing. This bit seemed to have been overlooked in the initial outcry of Twitter…ers;
Follow spam is the act of following mass numbers of people, not because you’re actually interested in their tweets, but simply to gain attention, get views of your profile (and possibly clicks on URLs therein), or (ideally) to get followed back. Many people who are seeking to get attention in this way have even created programs to do the following on their behalf, which enable them to follow thousands of people at the blink of any eye.
Source: http://blog.twitter.com/2008/08/making-progress-on-spam.html
Even I, a completely ignored micro-blogger, has gotten a few of this ‘Follow spam’ from time to time. You know its done by computer when they target me, eh?
The thing that bugged me about this was not about Twitter itself. It was the reactions, specifically those in the Digg story. Case in point, people are already asking for an alternative to Twitter. Do people these days really think they are going to need that 80 pages of lunch menus? Now, I understand how the web goes, and when Twitter got big, the idea got big. When the idea got big, the internets were flooded with copy-cat programs.
Personally, the thing I think that Twitter has going for it is the API behind it, and how more than any other platform, it has been put to good use. Like the iPod, the fact that it is so popular (not neccessarily the best) means that more companies can afford to opt for compatability. The only real problem with Twitter is, anyone who has used Twitter for more than a fortnight has become well aquainted with the Twitter whale, aka: the picture they show when Twitter is down. So now, in an apparent flood of fed-up-ness, the blogosphere is debating and arguing and hish-hashing about where to go now.
Ping.fm is where you go, dang nabbit. I feel a definate feeling of ease in hard times like these. Why? Because I simultaneously post to Twitter as well as all (or most) of the aforementioned copy-cat programs, via Ping.fm. And I must say from personal experience, doing everything really simplifies the task of doing something. What I mean to say is that this rather intelligent cap on Twitter has, of course, sparked the debating in a few posters. And with that we are starting another micro-blogging-war.
But milk men never whip it out in public…
TinyURL'd
A woman’s right to breastfeed in public was bolstered yesterday when more than 100 mothers and their babes held a feed-in at a downtown clothing store.
(2008, August 22). 24 hours, p. 3.
My daily newspaper published, the other day, a story about a woman and secreting nipples. This woman, it would seem, was asked by a clerk of a certain H&M store to respectfully feed her child in a change room, or something of the like. Being the year that it is, a certain 2008, and being her a woman, she seemed convinced that she was allowed to do whatever she wanted. It was sexist, of course, to limit public nipple secretion and consumption.
As was quoted above, there gathered ~100 pairs of bare breast, both young and old, being suckled in public. This gather was, in fashion of anything these days, organized by Facebook. I find it ironic that the breasts women, shown off so adamantly in the summer and in their low-cut shirts, are begging for public sucking on one side, but then yell at men for looking.
Their excuse was written to be for the sake of ‘parenting’. This was the argument I received the blunt end in LAX when I approached some mother for changing her child’s diaper in the middle of a hallway. I sat down the hallway buried inside a book when I noticed the stank, and even still, my request was labeled as ’sexist’.
“Women have the right not to be sequestered away when they’re parenting,” said Sonia Strobel.
This is not so much an argument that mothers have not a right to expose wrinkly and stretch-marked boobs in public, it’s that a shopper has the right to not have to watch them do it.
Needless to say, the women won and H&M apologized. Why, do you ask? With such an excellent retort as written by me? Because men control everything, and because old boobs make men uncomfortable. But mostly, because everything counts as sexist.
Categories
Blogroll
Archives
Website News
Calendar
© Andrew Littler, 2008
