Haditha Massacre

An incident of bad behavior on the part of US troops is in the news recently. Apparently some troops were driving through the shitty town of Haditha when they came under attack. In retaliation the troops whacked a family. Thats the story. Many people see in this incident evidence of some sort American genocidal conspiracy. I don't. I see something much much worse. The problem was that the US troops acted like Iraqis, they went native. Mass executions on flimsy grounds are traditional in the Muslim world. Not enough repression on the other hand in a country like Iraq can only encourage civil war as every like tribe, clan, party and sect grabs for power.

Non-Role Models

I am always amazed that athletes, professional and otherwise, are assumed to be role models. I don't know anyone who ever had a pro athlete as a role model except for maybe aspiring athletes. Twelve years ago Charles Barkley did a Nike ad in which he expounded on the theme of not being a "role model", look here for (noncanonical) text. Here is an interesting story about how female collegiate athletes have been absorbed into the male drunken jock lack of culture. Apparently one fan got so annoyed with athletic scum that he started a blog about sleazy athletes, drunken athletes, and molesting coaches. Bob Reno's Bad Jocks has the same kind of cruel joy that Frank magazine in exhibits.

Big F-ing Gun

BFG is a gamer term for a big powerful gun. It was used in Quake as the formal name, not nickname, of one the most powerful gun. I think it was also current among gamers but I have no proof as yet. A custom gunsmith, Serbu Firearms, who used to sell silencers, has named their .50 cal BFG-50. It is has been rated higher than even the famous Browning.

Here is a video of a lawnmower getting what it deserves.

Counter-Strike Existentialism

Counter-Strike is an odd game. No matter how good you are, and I am not, you will die and be reduced to ghosting. Counter-Strike doesn't intoxicate you with power in the way that god games like Civilization do. Instead I am always reminded of the fraility of life. All of us despite skill and luck can be sniped down, fragged, drown, trip. Here is a machima short Deviation that is currently doing the film fest circuit. Here is the Boingboing link where I found this film.

Manufactured Sawed Off Shotgun

The Americans have an interesting (gun) culture. The sawn off shotgun above is manufactured that way. The copy on the website advises how legal it is to buy and sell, in the US, "...can be transferred with a $5 stamp!". A holster is also advertised that kind of looks like Han Solo's. The Canada's governing Angry Redneck Party has announced that it wants to gut gun control laws. Is this gun in Jane/Finch now? Or will it be there soon legally?

Video Games as Alternative Life

In Slate there is an article, Love Thy Playstation, Love Thyself, that attempts to explain the falling birth rate. The column is called the Dismal Science, examines the cost/benefit of everyday life. This article counts the entertainment value of computer games, average user 8 hours a week, to the cost and rewards of "true love".

Renaisance Man: Tomás Luis da Victoria

This week's Composer of the Week is a Spanish composer of polyphonic church music. Tomás Luis da Victoria was a priestly composer. In otherwards he would have treated my ancestors badly. He was an original Jesuit.

There is something quite new agey about polyphonic music with its choirs of sliding voices. Give it a listen.

Bill Maudlin

In looking around for more images of this iconic pair to the left I happened upon a Tribute To Bill Maudlin at the US Library of Congress. Also included is a bibliography about and by Maudlin.

Personality Survey

A friend of mine is has a posted an online survey as part of her Psych studies.

Soft Headed Defense of Terrorism

A panelist on DI in a report for The Fraser Institute suggests that if people want to come Canada they should give up there previous country and wars and only identify with Canada. He also wants a law in place to deport people who commit or surport terrorism acts.

All the women on the panel had a problem with dealing terrorism. They had problem with defining terrorism. They had problem with deporting people with terrorism, they can be charged. They had a problem with charging and not deporting for terrorism. One moron defended terrorist surporters as a human rights campaigners. She even defended the Tigers as a multifaceted organization that was involved in tsunami relief. The Tamil Tigers pioneered suicide bombing. Then she defended people involved in "legitmately pursuing national rights", like the Pali bombers. Now is a terror group that has bake sales, free clinics and a political wing harmless, or are they just terrorists with good PR.

Blown Up Real Good

A gaming company, Airtight Games, has created an engine that can model material deformation in game time. The movies on their site is from a superhero game. The image above is from oil bursting out a pipe and floating shipping crates around. There is also a plane crashing apart.

Be a More Successful Chain Saw weilding Manic

Here is ad from STIHL that actually refers to Leatherface, you know the most famous chain saw user. HA HA

Update: Bestadsontv stops you from going to the page you want. They are probably worried about being screenscraped. To get to this ad go to the page it was on, then click on the image of Leatherface.

Computer Audio Services

I listen to a lot of online audio. Mostly I listen to streaming audio. Here are some of my favorite stations. The another station I listen to, am listening to right now is David Byrne Radio. Every month David Byrne is focused on type of music. One month it is classic disco, another month it early country music, this month it is latin music.

That is the view of audio services from a consumer perspective. You however want to be a broadcaster. The software to create your programs are reasonably cheap and can be managed from midlevel machines. Your station or podcast can be listed for free in the various directories, shoutcast for streaming audio , and itunes for podcasts. The cost, the limiting cost is hosting. If you are providing a streaming service you will be paying for a streaming server. Your charges will be based on the audio quality and the number of listening slots, see more here for details. With podcasting the cost is based on total volumn downloaded. However I just come accross a podhosting company, Audio Blog, with unlimited downloads. Quite unusual. Streaming works well with music podcasts work well with speech the begining of sentences are sometimes needed for comprehension. Generally it can cost a dozen dollars a month up to hundreds, depending on bandwidth, to host your own audio programs. This is additional to any web costs to get online.

Lousy IE

In the classic words of the Comic Book Guy, Internet Explorer is "the worst browser ever!" From Google news there are plenty of stories about unveiling of a beta for a new version of IE. What is surprising is the software press is not positive. A critic at a specialist magazine is expected to promote both the product of advertisers and product in general. Which is Why Adbusters has had problems placing their anti-car ads in auto TV shows and the like. Now an online magazine like Playfuls, which covers computer hardware/software has come with, Is Internet Explorer 7 actually a competitor for Firefox? And from PC Magazine, PC Magazine wrote the book on the IT promoting / covering / not necessarily crititicing computer magazine, has a story The Great Microsoft Blunder. All can say is to echo Nelson Muntz with HAHA.

Fashion as Antropology

I listen to the latest On The Media and there had on the fashion writer Robin Givhan from the Washington Post. She won a local press award for criticism. This is quite unusual for fashion writing which normally focuses on the look of clothes rather than their meaning. WAPO has put a selection of her columns, from last year, together on a separate page. Check out the interesting writing.

Who gets an Obituary on BoingBoing

Jane Jacobs died today. She also joined a select and rarefied group. Those whose obituaries appear in BoingBoing. BoingBoing chooses the people and things to highlight that are meaningful to them. That is why they had an obit for Johnny Ramone and Peter Gzowski, Peter Drucker and James Doohan, the Whole Earth Review and a overweight Lobster, Andre Norton and Will Eisner. The one type whose obit is rarely covered are the usual ugly gang of authority figures, VIPs, professional assholes and stuffed shirts that fill up most of the column inches on obit pages.

Moslem Murders Inc

Through a depressing site I fequent I came accross another depressing site. The site called is called the Religon of Peace. Also on the site is an updated list of moslem murders. Yesterday, on the 24 of April, moslems killed 61.

There is also a link to Penn and Teller video deriding conspiracy theorists as marooons, to use Bugs Bunny expression. In the short video a fire guy is brought in who is a fire chief, a professor of fire engineering and an editor at Fire Engineering Magazine. Unfortunately the fire magazine website is constructor in a Microsoft code so is best used with the terrible internet explorer.

Interesting Politician

I saw the movie The Ugly American on TVO last night. The movie was as prophetic and depressing as I remember it. In the movie Marlon Brandon is sent to a fictionalized south asian country. The country, Sarkhan, is verging on instability, the commies want to take over, the government wants to stay in power, and a non-communist populist movement wants reforms and influence. Marlon Brando as ambassador Harrison McWhite, can a name be more WASPy, is sent to a country where he shad a good war. After being shot down he spent time with a resistence group, learned the language and the friendship of a resistence leader Deong. The friendship of McWhite and Deong breaks down quickly with both sides spouting slogans at each other. McWhite can't belive that anyone who is friend would surport policies and aims that are his own nation's interests rather than the US. The figure who is half way between two poles is the Sarkhan PM Kwen Sai.

Oddly enough the Prime Minister in the movie was played by somebody did become Prime Minister of Thailand. Kukrit Pramoj was originally seconded to the movie as a cultural expert. In the end he played his one and only movie role as a PM a role he played 10 years later.

Free Music Scores

I was looking aroud the web for a/any piece of music by Erik Satie. I ended up a one site, which refered me a 2nd site. Both of these sites were "free". The secound site where I found the Gymnopédie No. 1 by Satie there was a problem with the PDF provided it was missing the 1st page. The problem was this was "free" site. After trying to reload the faulty PDF as was told. I would to pay to get membership. Finally after several days I went to wiki as should have done from the begining. From there I connected to something called Mutopia, music+upotopia?, and I find the piece(s) I am looking for.

However I still have a problem. The piece that I get is not really scored for a piano. Just look at bars 5-6 on the except above. The right hand has to sustain a chord AND play an octave above the highest note in the chord. I think that this, as it is scored, is really a piano/flute peice. remember Hinterland Who's Who those short nature films put out Enviroment Canada. This piece of music played in the backgroud.

Crazy Iranians

In the latest Grab and Maul, there is a long article on Iran's "democratically elected leader". In course of discussing Middle Eastern history he launches in to this odd paragraph.

We'll have to stop pretending we've done nothing to offend the citizens of the area. The Chinese and the Russians have done terrible things in the past, and have admit, but Britain and particularly the Americans are in denial acting like their actions have always been blameless.

The problem is that some powers have an overly positive view of their own history and motives that is not evil just human. However Russia and China have distorted and rewritten their own history. Both powers in the last century have engaged in have airbrushed history when certain old comrades have been forgotten or written out of a history. There was a time in the 90's when Russians actually looked at/could at their own past. See The Chekist, a horrifying movie about the early Soviet security agency, most of the film is executions. That the case for Russians, the Chinese Communist regime will not admit to or apologize for anything. The ChiCom do want to talk about what they did last week in the Sudan, propping up that government of murderous jihadis. To say nothing of the millions killed in Cultural Revolution or the Great Leap Forward or any one of many noble sounding mass murders.

And then the article goes on about the "military" past of the Ahmadinejad. During the Iran-Iraq War he apparently ran a unit of the Basiji. These units would perform human wave attacks to clear minefield, overrun machine guns and other cannon fodder activities. The average age of these soliders were less than 15.