Band of Brothers (Pacific)

In the wikipedia entry for With The Old Breed there is a reference that the same crew/production team that created the miniseries Band Of Brothers has been filming a new series, The Pacific, partially based on this book. I haven't finished reading it, With the Old Breed, beyond knowing the author survived WWII, thank you Atom Bomb, I don't how it turns out.

Free DNA

Today at Mininova one of the featured torrents is human DNA, Homo.sapiens.DNA.NCBI36.53.Fasta.Gzip-Ensembl-OpenSci. Download and be the first on your block with human DNA. It is quite amusing that what is now available for free right now a generation ago or so was out of reach of evil geniuses, James Bond villians and the KGB. It was only possible for ET, Dr Who and the Federation to mess around with genetics.

Those Devilish Canadian Sheet Music Pirates

slashdot has a story, originally from BestActEver, originally from a New York Times report from 1897, about Canadian sheet music pirates. The current concern that Americans have about IP is ironic since for much of the 19th it was place that observed no foreign, no non-American, copyright. The slashdot commentators outdo themselves in making comments as if this was contemporary news report.

mangu points out the damage that Canadian pirates have already done to the music industry.

• The more things change, the more they stay the same. Did these "evil pirates" kill the music industry, as was proclaimed they would?

They sure did! In the 1890s there was a great market for piano rolls [wikipedia.org]. Where can you buy piano rolls today? Conclusion: pirates killed the music industry.

sakdoctor complains about the marketing tactics of printer makers.

I hate the way they sell those Gutenberg presses as a loss leader, then gouge you on printing plates and ink refills.

Finally HungryHobo gets to problem that improved communication technologies pose to existing media companies.

I think these PaperSharing M2M(Mailbox2Mailbox) systems which allow just anyone to swap files, folders and even whole books should be banned immediately before they destroy all that is good and pure with our country!

Mediocre But Arrogant - The MBA

ABC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has a new documentary about the uselessness of the MBA, MBA: Mostly Bloody Awful.

Madness from the Fans of the ChiComs and other Commie Bastards

What is with Adrienne Clarkson? In the Globe and Mail on Friday she pens praise to the crazy madman commie Norman Bethune; Remember Bethune? Apparently not. In the Sunday Toronto Star, Let's elect our head of state; she is positively referred to in an op-ed by a committed Canadian republican, in other words in the writings of a traitor. Let us leave the case of the madness of republicanism, if the fact that "el presidente" is a the title that most despots of the last 50 years have held cannot convince such ideologues.

Norman Bethune was a great man. He pioneered the technology of mobile blood banks. He was in the Spanish civil war on the side of legitimate government. I myself attended school in the same building that he was educated. Yes, he was a great man. But to turn to communism in the age of Stalin shows a distinct lack of sanity. Because of WWII many remember Stalin somewhat positively. He helped the west defeat Hitler and Nazis and the then occupied most of Hitler's Eastern European conquests. Except we, in the west allied with a regime that had killed 20 million defeat another regime that was going to kill 10 million. In China there was another dilemma. Norman Bethune and other commies helped to replace a corrupt and incompetent regime with an incorruptible and competent tyranny. Mao eventually, after the death of Bethune, went on to kill 20 million plus people. Like Stalin. Like Stalin his name is not a curse of the world's lips. Instead, like Stalin, Mao corpse squats in the centre of his conquered capital.

Evil Paleontologist Robber Baron

The Times of India business section has a slide show of the worst American CEOs. Unfortunately they confused Stephen Jay Gould with Jay Gould.

Some Things are More Precious Than Life

You shot my car You BASTARD!

Gene Hunt, Ashes to Ashes S01E01
after renegade police constable
shot out driver side door window.

Gun Criticism from a Mob Boss

An Uzi! I'm not from South Central fuckin' Angeles. I didn't come here to shoot 20 black ten year olds in a fuckin' drive by. I want a normal gun for a normal person.

Harry the Mob Boss in In Bruges to
Uzi the gun dealer of Bruges

Test Your Nerd Level

On AH.com someone posted a link to a questionnaire on Asperger's Syndrome. Most of people on the thread at AH.com scored around nerd, or 22. A few outliers scored either very high or very low. I scored a little over borderline into Aspereger territory.

Weird New Ways to Make Music

Gizmodo has found ten ways using as instruments things varied as scanners, phones and buildings. The music above is made with water filled beer bottles and a R/C car.

Somalia - The Self Failed State

(Brian Gable of the Globe and Mail, April 14, 2009)

Many sensitive well meaning people wonder that if we could just address the grievances of criminals crime would disappear. Well no actual. Very little crime is the hungry stealing bread. Some theives might start that way but mostly crininals is the well fed stealingf luxaries. The Somali pirates style themselves as a coastguard of a failed state. The rewards of piracy is seen as proper repayment for depleted fish stocks. Fishing can provide a hard dangerous living, piracy on the other hand is hard and dangerous but could provide fortunes. The other point about the sheen of legitimacy when Somali pirates style themselves as a "coast guard". Yes Somalia is a Failed state. Failure wasn't thrust apon Somali, Somalis in all walks of life worked hard to fail as a country.

The MBA / Preppie Indictment

Andrew Lahde is a retired hedge fund manager who in last year earned 1000%. For his success he thanked:

"The low-hanging fruit, ie idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking," he wrote. "These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government," he said.

"All of this behaviour supporting the aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America."

This list also describes the credentials of the last 4 US presidents. At this point one should be leery of any "leader" from Harvard or Yale.

There is a Reason Why They are Called REDS

(from Jeff Danziger 03/03/2009)

Wile E. Coyote and Death Metal

Get a Car So You Don't Have to Discover Fire

The Evil of Vacuum Cleaners

(from Overboard 11/04/2009)

A Very Silly Blog on Bathroom Humour

The Poop Report is a blog that is dedicated to "intellectual appreciation of poop humor".

How to make money

Sometime you think we could just hit em over the the head, rob em and throw throw their bodies in the creek.

Al Swearigan, Deadwood S01E05,
talking about proper customer relations.

I am watching Deadwood new for the first time.

Extreme Sheep Herding

Migrating Penguins