Odd and Ends 2-9-2012

Fighting off a sinusitis flare up makes getting up and out to get a haircut more of a travail then it should be. Despite that, I survived and am no longer shaggy. In theory I am more presentable, but theories and reality are very divergent I find.

Currently I am working on HD screen captures from Captain America: The First Avenger for a review of the Blu-ray and DVD release. As I suspected, the film looks better in 2D than 3D. I cannot wait for that fad to die out again and from the way theater attendance has dropped the studios will be forced to give up within the next couple of years.

So far subscribing to Hulu Plus has been a good decision. I am finding things of interest that are not on free Hulu and have begun to dip my toe into the waters of Korean dramas. The show I started watching last night is particularly interesting because it blends a 17th century historical setting with The X-Files. If it sounds strange, that is because it is! Secret Investigation Record follows the investigation of an honest magistrate in the corrupt government trying to unravel a sighting of a mysterious glowing giant gourd flying through the sky and the disappearance of an entire village. So far it has been very good.

Silent films are another thing I have been getting more into and Hulu Plus has a good selection of classics there as well. It has been decades since I have seen Nosferatu or Phantom of the Opera and as an adult I think I will appreciate them more.

There has been controversy over the Obama administration issuing waivers to some states in regards to the No Child Left Behind standards. For once, I agree with them on something. The program has done nothing to really improve public education despite having noble intentions. As it is, I suspect we are drifting toward the Japanese model of having private schools as the only way up and out, with public schooling being a death knell to one’s prospects. That is in the very long term, unless the coming economic collapse hastens things. Our systemic education issues will not be resolved through the government, I am afraid.

I am not sure how I feel about Smith Brothers Warm Apple Pie throat drops. If it were not for the cinnamon bits in them, they probably would be disgusting. As it is, they serve to remind me how much I like cinnamon.

One has to love translations from one language to another and the misunderstandings that can be involved. In this case, I just opened a booklet to a multimedia device and the second thing listed under notes says:

Avoid strong beat and collision.

But what if I want to put some techno on it?

Causus

My father and I went to the local Republican precinct caucuses tonight and I  noticed that the local high school had put up signs directing the two parties to their assigned rooms. Both signs spelled caucus as “causus” much to my amusement and despair. Boy, public education is really working out well, is it not?

In a somewhat more serious vein, it was a fairly mellow caucus with only a little bit of angry debate on resolutions. Normally there is much more than what occurred. Rick Santorum was the big winner in our part of Houston County and it was not even close. This was no surprise and went the way I expected.

I will admit I was one of two “Other” votes, for I wrote in Sweet Meteor of Death aka (SMOD) to register my extreme lack of motivation/approval/endorsement of the remaining candidates. It really looks like the GOP is determined to assist in the Obama re-election efforts in every way possible and I am very weary of it.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Scandal Silver Lining?

Check out The New York Times article via Instapundit for the details.

Quotes that indicate something good may have come out of this fiasco:

The events of the past couple of years, though disheartening to chronic fatigue syndrome patients, may have a silver lining: Research into the disease, much of it privately financed, is ratcheting up.

and

“The disease had languished in the background at N.I.H. and C.D.C., and other scientists had not been paying much attention to it,” said John Coffin, a professor of molecular biology at Tufts University. “This has brought it back into attention.”

Dr. Coffin, who at first supported the mouse retrovirus theory but later disputed it, noted that the illness “does seem to have characteristics that would suggest infectious origins” and that other retroviruses could be involved.

It has been a bleak thing waiting for medical science to come up with anything to deal with the illness and I stopped holding my breath for even a treatment a long time ago. It is one of many things that caused me to lose what little faith I had left in government organizations to solve problems, but only one. My hopes are that the private sector’s ability to innovate will eventually pay off though I doubt it will be in my lifetime. So little is truly understood about the immune system that the science involved can only be considered to be in its infancy.

Bleach Ep. 14: Back to Back, A Fight to the Death

The duel between Ichigo Kurosaki and Uryu Ishida is finally resolved in an episode dominated by combat. However, more questions are raised than answered as events careen from serious to silly at a frenetic pace. While it may be a conclusion to a small arc, the episode feels like a setup to something bigger.

 

Bleach is something of a high wire act, with rapid mood swings the norm and events usually threatening to go out of control. Yes, I do believe the word “manic” applies to the series and this episode in particular. The last Quincy, Uryu brings out the worst in substitute Soul Reaper Ichigo and vice versa with an entertaining mess being the result.

Going Intellectually Bankrupt

One of the more interesting chapters in the Intellectual Property (IP) wars was the takedown attempt of the Pirate Bay website. While Sweden sent the creators of the site to prison, it did not really end the site. Conspiracy theories abounded about the Unites States government being involved and now it has proven to be true. It is interesting material for those fascinated by IP laws getting out of hand, but there was a talkback post by an anonymous person that lays out the real reason this is going on. Read the whole post, but this is the best paragraph:

The drive is to twist the world into accepting intellectual property as if it were something tangible. The US pushes this hard because it is the only thing they have left. The idea is not to own the methods of production, but to own the instructions for the methods of production, and make others pay for using the instructions.

In a nutshell, that is exactly the situation and why Hollywood has disproportionate say in Washington, D.C. When NAFTA was passed back in the 1990’s, it was the beginning of the end for American manufacturing and, in my opinion, nation security/stability. What we are seeing today is the final result of believing in getting money for nothing.

And that is not going to end well.

Shades of Orwell

The FBI has a new flyer out suggesting people watch other Web users at internet cafes. If this isn’t playing Big Brother, I do not know what is. The vague definitions of what you should watch for cover a wide range of legitimate behaviors. For some reason I no longer mock people complaining about a growing police state.

Sigh.

Found at DSL Reports forums.

Reading

Over the past couple of years, my book reading has dropped like an ACME balloon launched by Wile E. Coyote over the precipice of a cliff. Since late December, I have taken steps to rectify the situation. Step one actually predates that and was the result of my realizing just how many books I had started without finishing them. So no more reading multiple books at once!

Step two was lining up the started ones and knocking them off, except I ended up inserting  Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom at the top of the order. So much for that part of the plan. It has turned out to be a compelling read that is also dryly technical, oddly enough. If I did not have so very many books to read I would get the rest of his writings.

Next up will be finishing The Confessions of Saint Augustine. It will be more of a chore, since  I find him to be a rather dull writer. While autobiographies are narcissistic by definition, there is a tendency to be pedantic in this book. But I will persevere.

After that I will be inserting a gift from my paternal aunt and uncle, Founders by Ray Raphael. Little did they know it, but accounts by and of forgotten players and everyday people involved in the Revolutionary War are my favorite parts of history from the period. I am looking forward to it a great deal and it will spur me to finish The Confessions.

Following it I will finish The Histories by Herodotus, which I started years ago. Yes, it is the book that gave the name to accounts of the past and I find Herodotus to be an entertaining author.

On the spiritual side of reading, I am keeping up with at least two pages of scripture a day along with the King James version of The Apocrypha. So far I have not found much of value in the latter, but I have only begun Esdras II. I finished The Old Testament straight read through in January after many years of nibbling at it. It doesn’t get the attention it deserves these days and I think many a Christian would benefit from reading every book contained in it – as would anyone trying to understand Western law.

The more I look at my bookshelves the more I believe a Kindle would not be a good thing for me to get. Maybe when I finish off every book I own, but they will have to come up with a way to extend my lifespan for that to work out!