The Rikonian Rant

Atari fucking sucks

2003-10-18T23:53:00.000-04:00

FUCK ATARI!!!!
That was the extend of my vocabulary for about three hours today as I was forced to uninstall and reinstall Neverwinter Nights and the expansion pack Shadows of Undrentide. And why did I have to do this?
I'll tell you why. Because I was stupid enough to download a patch file and expect it to actually improve my game experience instead of, oh what's the word I'm looking for? Oh yeah, totally FUCKING EVERYTHING UP!!!
It's not Bioware's fault. It's Atari's fault. Der Fuhrer Atari. Forcing Bioware to put this fucking SecuRom shit on their games now to prevent people using cracks. But you know what? If you have a problem, that's about all you can do. Use a crack. Well do that or do what I did: spend three fucking hours sitting in front of your fucking computer fucking uninstalling and reinstalling the fucking thing, which for some fucking reason crashes the first couple fucking times you try to install it. Now that I can blame Bioware for. So fuck Bioware too. But to a lesser extent than Atari.
Anyway, I will not be buying Hordes of the Underdark, the third expansion. Because it will have SecuRom in it right out of the box. And I do not want to have to buy a new drive or download illegal crack programs just to make a game work after I buy it.
In fact, I shall never again purchase any product with the Atari logo on it. Nice to see that the mongoloid who greenlighted the ET game still has work though. Hey, come to think of it, didn't Atari make Enter the Matrix? That piece of shit 50 dollar DVD with a shitty menu disguised as a "game"?
I still look forward to Bioware's non-Atari projects however. It is sad that such an otherwise good company had to be dragged down by Atari's raping of Nolan Bushnell's corpse.

Rise of the Machines

2003-10-10T23:03:00.000-04:00

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2003/oct/09/515720079.html
The Air Force is testing robot drones for border patrol.
The Terminator was just elected Governor (Governator?) of California.
Coincidence? :)

Are We In Another Cold War?

2003-09-24T23:57:00.000-04:00

I had some fun with some lighter topics tonight, but now it is time I addressed a more serious topic. I would be remiss if I did not turn my focus briefly to a very important development in the War On Terror.
Guantannamo Spy Probe Expanded (from CNN)
A U.S. Navy airman accused of spying on us. A U.S. military chaplain accused of spying on us.
Both of the men already caught for spying were spying for Syria, which is listed as a "State of Concern", which is a politically correct way of saying "Rogue State".
And there may be others as well. In fact, it is looking very much like there is an active conspiracy of infiltration, and not just a few fringe loners.

But Syria itself is not the enemy. Well, not the whole enemy.
In the original Cold War, our enemy was a system of government. Communism. It seems almost quaint today to think of the "Red Menace", but one need only look at China or Cuba to see why defending oneself from communism is important. Would you want to live in China or Cuba?
But communism is pretty much on its last dying gasp. Cuba is a backwater nation that doesn't really have much of an impact on the world: in part due to the embargo, of course, and in part due to its brutal and inefficient communist regime. And China is beginning to make strides toward a more capitalist society.
When the Berlin Wall fell and Russia embraced glasnost, many people came to the conclusion that the Cold War was dead. And they were right. However, the conclusion that the end of the Cold War meant we could become complacent was not correct. Just as World War I was not "the War to End All Wars", the Cold War as well seems to have a successor. Instead of communism, we now find ourselves facing Islamic fundamentalism.
The sooner we face that fact, the better prepared we will be for this conflict.

There is hope though. We won CW I, we can win CW II as well. But we have to drop the politically correct pretense that we are not in a cultural conflict. We are. We have been since 9/11. And I hope this probe of Guantanamo Bay is the wake up call.

Kazaa Makers Sue RIAA

2003-09-24T22:57:00.000-04:00

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/09/24/kazaa.sues.ap/index.html
Apparently the RIAA, which is trying to stamp out unauthorized digital intellectual property, did its big name grab using unauthorized digital intellectual property.

Machines Talking To Machines

2003-09-24T22:56:00.000-04:00

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/09/19/your.tech.machine.talk/index.html
Machines will soon be able to talk to each other without human intervention. Which is why Armhold Musclehugger must be made Governator of California to protect us from these time travelling menaces!
Well, I was kidding about the second sentence (I am rooting for Arnold, but not on the time travelling cyborg platform), but I'm not kidding about the revolutionary new technology called Web Services (which is not an Internet technology, although it could be applied to the Sky, er, I mean Internet).
Basically put, it will be a universal language computers will use to describe the world in objective digital terms. This sort of program infrastructure could allow computers to understand and interact with the physical world in very useful ways, such as machinery which knows when a part fails and alerts maintenance itself, or various aspects of a supply chain updating the others on the exact status of manufacturing or shipping.

Is That a Cobra In Your Pants Or Are You Just Happy To Be In Australia?

2003-09-24T22:24:00.000-04:00

And now, a lighter note:
A Swedish man was arrested for smuggling cobras into Australia, which is the gayest country ever.
I am so glad I'm not one of those cobras :)

In a related story, Oklahoma District Judge Lee West has said that there is no man-dating in Australia.

The National "Hey, I Said Not To Call Me, Goddammit!" List

2003-09-24T22:00:00.000-04:00

http://money.cnn.com/2003/09/24/technology/ftc_donotcall/index.htm?cnn=yes
Oklahoma District Court judge Lee West has decided to try to block the Do Not Call list, just days before the Oct. 1 start date. The judge said that the FTC did not have a clear congressional mandate.
Now, I don't know what passes for legal education in Oklahoma, but one would think that even the dimmest legal bulb would see the passage of a law called, oh, let's say, the "Do Not Call Implementation Act" as such a mandate.
Oklahoma may be OK, but their District Court is far from it.
But I'll tell you who is OK: House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin, R-La. he is already pushing to get the list back on track.

Are We Too Tolerant of Religion?

2003-08-26T21:28:00.000-04:00

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/aug03/164862.asp
It's been a while since I was inspired to write here, and, this is a bit of a departure for me. Normally I'd write a humorous article and you'd get a chuckle. Well, I'm sorry, but that won't happen now. I saw something today on Drudge that disturbed me greatly. And I feel that this is a very serious issue and failing within our society that must be addressed.

An 8 year old autistic boy is dead. Killed by his own church in what they call an exorcism. In the ritual, the boy was covered in sheets, and several church members sat on him, including a church elder who say on his chest. This was done repeatedly, because apparently they believed they could cure his autism by "driving the demons out" and this was how they went about it.
Ray Hemphill, the aforementioned church elder has this to say: "Terrance's death is a great tragedy. However, it was not a malicious act on the part of the church. If you believe in God and his word you have the right to believe he can help you, through prayer."
So that's your definition of prayer? Suffocating an innocent child to death?! The scary part is, there's a chance that these people will not be punished, because they did this in a "prayer session."
Now, I'm not one to say that people can't believe in God, but if you commit an act like this, the law should not shield you from the consequences just because it's your religious belief. These people killed that kid. This is even worse than those cases where some Christian Scientist's kid dies of a treatable disease because the parents ddon't believe in doctors. This kid was not in any danger of dying. Until he was taken to that church. This isn't neglect, it's homicide.
And just so we're clear, the Christian Scientist example I mentioned earlier, that should also be prosecuted. Religion should never be a shield against responsibility for one's actions. If these people are acquitted, then it will be a colossal failure of justice.

We tolerate too much on the basis of "not persecuting religions". It is not persecution to punish people for crimes they commit. Look at the Catholic Church. A handful of people go to prison. And none of the higher-ups who knew about this and conspired to keep it secret were sent away. Now, if instead of a church, a daycare chain or amusement park company had done this, there would have been a LOT more arrests, including many directors and executives, and the place would probably be shut down or at the very least have federal investigators so far up its ass that it would think it was an alter boy.
But, since it's a church, it gets a slap on the wrist. I say, enough is enough. If people commit vile despicable acts, let us hold them accountable, and not allow them to hide behind their gods.

End of (Word) Plays

2003-08-24T22:17:00.000-04:00

Fox news has apparently decided to issue a commnd(o) to take an eraser to any cheezy movie references their reporters might make when covering his role in California's total recall.
This decision may have some collateral damage in the late night talk show circuit and might terminate a large portion of several upcoming Conan O'Brien monologues.
This decision has also caused much distress to several junior news directors, who are feeling so rundown that watching Batman and Robin could actually cheer them up.

2003-08-24T15:06:00.000-04:00

Bandit is a smart, smart, lil' panda. :)

I would vote for the pr0n guy

2003-08-08T16:17:00.000-04:00

Why you ask? Besides Arnie, which of the guys is a multimillionaire? Which of them built a finacial empire and won a supreme court case?

God knows the rest of the government doesn't have to make a profit, but I'd be more than happy to finally find someone that can atleast properly cover the cost of operations while in office.

2003-08-06T17:02:00.000-04:00

I know if I lived in California I'd be more likely to vote for Larry. I don't see how the founder of Hustler could be bad.

I Recall... California Governers In Fall...

2003-08-01T22:44:00.000-04:00

Guess who's gonna be running for California governor
Larry fucking Flynt! Running for governor?! Yep. Larry "the most ironic person ever to be paralyzed below the waist" Flynt could very well be the next governor of California, running on a platform that includes using slot machines to raise revenue. And why the frel not?! I like the idea of voluntary taxation.
Also running are over 250 other people. And most of them aren't famous for being time travelling cyborgs or smut peddlers. Andy Warhol said that in the future everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. Of course, he said that in that past, so he could be talking about right now, and at the rate things are going, a good chunk of us will get our fifteen minutes running for governor of California.
Speaking of the California governor's race, Shwartzenegger probably won't run in the recall, but I predict that he'll be back! At the end of the current term, when he will run. And he'll probably win.

Now that's a racket!

2003-07-30T00:31:00.000-04:00

Check out the release date in the Avilability field for the Ben Stiller Show DVD
Yes, Dec. 31, 2025. But you can order it now and they'll ship it when it arrives. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Music Now? Maybe Later

2003-07-29T23:08:00.000-04:00

Since the RIAA is suing over 900 filesharers, you may be looking for a legal alternative.
I was never much of a filesharer, and I didn't look up any Britney Spears crap. Although, in a few years, after she runs out of money and is forced to resort to resort to "filmmaking", that might change.
However, I figured, hey, since legal firesharing is gonna finally take off, maybe I should check into it. So I surfed over to Music Now, and thought, what the hell? I'll look into it.
So, I checked the FAQ, and discovered that to take advantage of the service, I'd have to pay 10 bucks a month PLUS a buck a download.
Plus, take a look at this from their service agreement:

If you select the Add button, the On-Demand Track will be downloaded to the hard drive of your computer and become part of your collection and appear in your media player. When an On-Demand Track is added to your collection, you may listen to that On-Demand Track as authorized as long as you are a subscriber, even if you are not on-line at the time. FullAudio will renew your right to listen to each On-Demand Track that you add to your collection each month that you remain a subscriber when you log on to the Service.

Like, zoinks, man! I don't want to pay money for tracks that I can't listen to after I stop sending money to those people, but it looks like that's the score.
So fuck them.
iTunes is a mac thing, so I won't even be looking at them (since I don't have a mac, and apparent, according to their site, you need a mac to use iTunes). So I won't even give them a link. Fuck them too.

Now, I haven't looked at all the legal download sites yet, but, before I do, I figured I'd spell out what I'm looking for. If you have a legal download site that fits the bill, let me know via the forum.
What am I looking for?
First off, I will accept a low monthly fee, or a reasonable fee per download, but why both? Screw that. Either 5 or 10 bucks a month OR 30 cents to a buck a download. But not both.
Second, when I download the track, I want to have that track, for as long as I want it, on any device I want it. I don't want any of this "rights management" bullshit that only lets you play it on one computer or prevents me from downloading it to a CD as a CD audio track or as an MP3 track. I also better be able to download it to my Archos. In other words, I don't want any technical restrictions at all on the MP3 once I buy it.
Third, I don't want to have to get a freakin' mac.

If you know of such a site, then post a link in the freakin' forum along with a brief description of your experience with the site.

OK, Who Had July 29?

2003-07-29T22:34:00.000-04:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64157-2003Jul29?language=printer
The terror stock market doesn't have a future after all.
So now the question is, does Adm. John Poindexter?
Admiral John Poindexter is, of course, the architect of the TIA program, which is under fire from privacy advocates for putting average Americans under the microscope.
For those keeping score, he was also a key Iran Contra figure.

No! That that Contra figure!

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita offered reassures to Poindy, "At the moment, Admiral Poindexter continues to serve in DARPA."

Terrorist betting pool, and you'll never guess who's running it

2003-07-28T23:09:00.000-04:00

http://www.thewbalchannel.com/news/2363276/detail.html
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20030728_1880.html
There is a site that will be coming online soon that will allow people to bet on terror attacks and other mayhem in the Middle East. I know that this is probably not a surprise to many of you. It certainly doesn't surprise me that someone would set up a betting site about it.
What did surprise me, however, was who is setting it up. The Department of Defense. I don't know who greenlighted this project, but, well fuck, I don't really know what to say to this. It reads like an Onion article. My hope is that this is a spoof article that, urban-legend-like, propogated through legitimate news services.
So, does anybody want to place some bets on whether this ill-conceived program actually takes off?

2003-07-23T22:55:00.000-04:00

"I got your courriel, Rik."

Mothers cover their childrens ears and hurry them along and across the street, screaching and moaning at the lack of manners in society today.

"The way young people talk these days boggles the mind, it does."

Yet Another News Roundup

2003-07-21T22:15:00.000-04:00

The French government has banned the word e-mail, seeking to replace it with "courriel", which sounds like a skin rash if you ask me.
This time, the ban only applies to actual government correspondance, not to the general public. And some French people have expressed a bemused indifference to the ban (or, "le ban"). So this means that Homestarrunner won't need a special menu page sound file for its French viewers.

Roboshark 2 moving into aquarium with real sharks. A robot shark? Didn't they do this on the TinFins Sealab 2021 episode?
The robot shark has a sophisticated brain which controls it's swimming speed, movements, and insatiable hunger for human flesh.

Australian scientists have discovered a way to let computer users log onto their PCs just by laughing. Word is, their next project is a way to automatically forward a bug report to Microsoft when the user says "God damn this fucking blue screen!"
That's not all that our upside-down, crocodiule-hunting, shrimp-on-the-barbee-throwing, boomerang slinging friends are up to, however.
Australian crooks steal two bags of rubbish. This may sound stupid and pointless, but if they can smuggle them into England, they can probably get lots of money from a British art gallery.
Australian scientists are also investigating the health benefits of masturbation. Men who ejaculate five or more times a week are less likely to get prostate cancer. No joke here. Just thought I'd give some balance to all the stories about blindness and hairy palms.
An Tasmanian man was encouraged by the Australian government to apply for a job as a female prostitute. Also, a woman got a job suggestion to be a sperm donor, but she needs to work on holding her breath first.

Doctors in Vienna have performed a successful tongue transplant. This technology could help many people, but could also force Gene Simmons to go into hiding.

Japanese scientists have created a dancing robot. So when robots go berzerk and kill us all, at least they'll be capable of doing a victory dance.

A Florida defendant trying for the insanity defense was removed from court for going "cuckoo, cuckoo" and mooning the jury. This is not expected to work, however, as that sort of behavior isn't really all that unusual in Florida.

Wal-Mart, Definitely Wal-Mart, Yeah

2003-07-21T21:57:00.000-04:00

Wal-Mart has decided to forego it's evil plot to put microsurveillance equipement in their merchendise.
The plot, for those of you who missed it, was going to go something like this: Wal-Mart would put microtracking equipment in its merchendise (starting in this pilot program, with Gilette projects. Gilette, the best an evil spying megacorp can get?), and the equipment would be ostensibly disabled when you left the store, but you'd have no real way of knowing that. Nor would Wal-Mart really have any legal controls forcing them to disable the devices. This development, needless to say (but I will anyway) caused privacy advocates considerable alarm.
Well, Wal-Mart decided a few days ago, not to put it in stores. They will still use the technology, but now they will just use it to track their pallets in their warehouses.
Now, one might think that I would take this opportunity to say "all hail Wal-Mart!" But then, Wal-Mart is the entity that came up with the idea to put the tracking devices in in the first place. So instead, I say this: I won't praise Wal-Mart, but I will commend them for coming to their senses.

2003-07-21T21:32:00.000-04:00

I have no doubt that George W. Bush did suffer some form of brain damage. I voted for him in the election.....basically because Al Gore scares me on many levels, not the least is his level of pussy whippedness. That's beside the point though. I try to avoid the news, but there is something different about Bush lately. Maybe it was always there and after being office this long he is finally comfortable enough to let it out.....but I will always blame the pretzel.

Bush's head

2003-07-21T21:19:00.000-04:00

I supported Bush in 2000, but the Bush we see now is a little bit different. It's a subtle sort of thing.
In the last few months, he's seemed a little bit, what's the word, oh yeah, scary.
As I was awakening from my after-work nap, a notion suddenly hit me. A notion so simple, so scary, and so topical to this blog's mission statement, that I felt compelled to post it here.
Last year George "Dubya" W. Bush choked on a pretzel.
Now, we all had a nice laugh about it. Leno and Conan got some material, and we forgot about it. But lately, it has me worried. He lost consciousness for a brief period of time. He possibly went for some time without oxygen. And he hit his head. He says he was unconscious only seconds, but his only barometer is his dogs' position. Quite frankly, I've seen dogs stay motionless for hours.
This has me wondering. Is it possible that he has some form of subtle brain injury, which is causing a slight behavioral shift? And how would we go about getting him to take a CAT scan to alleviate our concerns?

I Wanna Live Forever! I Don't Care Much About the Fame Bit Though...

2003-07-19T22:45:00.000-04:00

In a previous blog, I discussed a few of the methods of achieving immortality.
But, what would life be like in a world with immortals? Well, I suppose it depends on how prevalent immortality is. If only a few people have it, then there would be a lot of strife. I don't think such a prospect would last for long, however. The scientific advaces which bring us immortality would become cheaper to produce as time went on. This is common for most forms of technology.
As for artifical price inflation: Between intense lobbying, protests, and also possible violent unrest, which would result from the vast majority denied immortality, there would be tremendous pressure to change the situation.
I may be being overly optimistic here. But in either case, I find the prospect of many immortals to be more interesting. Imagine a world where your life span is potentially infinite. And so is everyone elses. What would life be like? We'll be stuck with it for a long time, so we may as well examine it.

First off, we would have to have some kind of population control. The most obvious first step is simple. Mandate that you cannot give people the immortality treatment without first sterilizing them. Also, we could have rules where any sort of public assistance for immortality is reduced for each child someone has had since a certain cutoff date. Whether we have more concrete procreation controls or not I can't say for certain. Although I do predict that controls on procreation would become stricter after a while.
The "American Dream" of a house, wife, white picket fence, and 2.5 children would be a thing of the past. But we still have the dream where America has to take a final exam, and hasn't studied or even been to the course, and shows up at class and realises that it forgot its pants and Florida is dangling out for all the other countries to see.
Public policy would change. Look at how long it's taken for serious talk about alternative energy in the halls of power. We've known for a long time that fossil fuel reserves are finite, but it's only now that we're seeing results. I don't think it's because we're thinking ahead, though. I think it has more to do with trying to get ourselves less dependant on a politically and religiously unstable region of the world. And I'm not talking about Texas.
It often seems like politicians today don't think about things like limited fossil fuels, pollution, or other very long term concerns. They have a valid reason for that. They're old. They'll be dead long before then. Hell, with his heart problems, Dick Cheney probably doesn't need to worry about the world of next Tuesday, much less the next century. But, with the advent of immortality, politicians will start thinking long term. Why? Because we all will. The future will not be some forever unobtainable fantasyland, but a very real and inevitable destination. Kind of like death is now. Only not as depressing.
How else will we be different? Well, war will be less of a factor. I have a theory about war. War is easier to wage, the shorter the lifespan. Look at the middle ages. The average age wasn't much higher than 30, even if you discount those who die in war. Look at the third world, where most people die young anyway. War comes easier to societies like this. It's simple cost/benefit analysis. If you're 20, and your average life span ends in a decade, you'll be more ready to risk death than if you have an average of 50 more years. Now, imagine that your average expected lifespan would stretch hundreds or thousands of years hence. Or perhaps the concept of average lifespan is irrelevant because lifespan is infinite. With more to lose, people will require a more pressing motivation to face death.
Of course, with the advent of robot soliders and remote control battle drones, this may not be as big of a limitation as one may at first think.

OK, so we'll have less kids, smaller armies, and we'd drive electric cars. But how else would our lives change?

For the first few years, things wouldn't be much different. At about 30, life would begin to be really different from what it is now. That's about when people now start noticing that things aren't working quite right. Little minor things like knees that hurt after a game of tennis, eyesight starting to get blurry. Being sick in bed for days after a simple meth bender. You catch my drift. But immortals wouldn't have any of that.
There are other changes that come into play around here too. As most people approach 30, they begin to freak. "Oh my god! I'm almsot 30, and what have I done with my life?!"
30 is an arbitrary number, of course. But it still points to a very real concern for many people. Their time is running out, and they won't be able to follow their dreams. But immortals would not have that problem. Still haven't written that novel or become an astronaut at 30? Big deal. Still waiting at 60? No problem, you have time. Pushing 90? Well, without immortality, you'd be drooling on yourself in a home wondering where your life went, but with the miracle of immortality, you have time. Hit 120 and just finished astronaut training? Great, you can start writing the novel while you're waiting for takeoff.
Say goodbye to retirement. Retirement is a depressing idea anyway, if you think about it. "I'm going to die soon, and I think I have enough money to last until death's cold hand clutches my heart in a final lethal embrace."
Retirement will be replaced with sabbatical. Allow me to explain the difference. In the status quo, you save up until you have enough to last until you die. With immortality, you would still have mutal funds and stocks and a savings account. But you would save up for a temporary break. It would probably last about as long as a retirement does, but you could enjoy it a LOT more. Because you would be young. Instead of spending your time contemplating mortality and drooling, you could be hitting the clubs, having sex (with someone who doesn't resemble the Crypt Keeper), and maybe taking up a new sport. All without havign to worry about breaking a hip.
Also, if for some reason, your savings account goes south, you don't have to be a geriatric fry cook.

Also, think about the typical life. Most people have a single career, or maybe change careers one or twice. But remember when you were younger? When you had so many possibilities before you? You could be a programmer, or an actor, or a writer, or a scientist, or maybe a businessman. But you had to choose one. An immortal would also have to choose one, of course. But as an immortal, you would have time to choose another. And you would. I'm a computer prgrammer, and I can't imagine writing code for a living for centuries. As an immortal, I would have time to branch out into new avenues. Maybe I'd become a physicist. Or an automobile designer. Or a porn star. But I would go through some career changes in my immortal life. And so would you.

How else would things change? Well, religion would have less of a hold on people. With more time on Earth, people would have a less immediate drive to contemplate the hereafter. The hererightnow would be enough of a handful.

As to how else life would change? Well, the same way it changes now. Gradually with the occasional quantum leap. But you'll live to see it. Interstellar travel? Yep. Sentient robot sex slaves? Check. Dyson spheres and ringworlds? Check.
"Greetings, my friends. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friends, future events such as these will affect you in the future." - Criswell, Plan 9 From Outer Space

Changes at the Rikonian Rant!

2003-07-19T20:26:00.000-04:00

Tonight I will be posting my next bit of pontification regarding the subject of immortality.
But that's not all you can look forward to from the Rant, faithful readers.
For I am taking the Rikonian Rant in a bold new direction. For now the Rikonian Rant is the flagship blog of Team Rikonian!
Team Rikonian is myself, and others, who you will meet as they post in here. It's a select group, and I think that you'll find their insights and views as compelling as you do mine.
There are also now TWO (count 'em, two!) Rikonian blogs. This one is going to be for the more topical, introspective, and thought out articles. The Rikonian Alliance will be more of a hangout type place.
So, enjoy the new blog additions, and watch for those author names on each article. I chose those people because I think they have the capacity to enrich this site, and I think you'll agree.

The Zero Factor: When You Mix Politics and Terrible Dark Occultic Forces and Don't End Up With Ross Perot

2003-07-17T22:47:00.000-04:00

In my last article, I talked a little about the promise of immortality. Of life. But now I shall take you through a darker concept. Death. A very particular set of deaths, which has been attributerd by many to the power of a dark and evil curse.
There have been eight Presidents thus far to die in office.
Seven of them were what has come to be known in parapsychology circles as Zero Factor Presidents.

William Henry Harrison: 1840
Abraham Lincoln: 1860
James Abram Garfield: 1880
William McKinley: 1900
Warren Gamaliel Harding: 1920
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: 1940
John Fitzgerald Kennedy: 1960

There was only one non-Zero Factor President to die in office. And that was Zachory Taylor.
But is this a legitimate phenomena? Or are we getting too worked up over what is, essentially, a statistical anomoly?
From 1860 to 1960, every President elected in a year ending in 0 died in office. This happens every twenty years, by the way. Ronald Reagan was the first President to survive. But he did not emerge unscathed. He suffered cancer, and was shot by John Hinkley Jr. in a poorly conceived plan to impress Jodie Foster.
Some people say that Ronald Reagan broke the curse, but I don't think so. I think Reagan just proved that the Zero Factor is not unbeatable. The Zero Factor won't necessarily kill you if you're unlucky enough to be elected in a 0 year, but it will take a shot or two. Ronald Reagan gives us all hope that subsequent Zero Factor Presidents can also live through their terms.
But what causes the Zero Factor? Some say it's an astrological event where the planets or stars or some such line up in a certain alignment that for some reason causes bad things to happen to Leaders of the Free World. But a more popular explanation is that it is the result of a curse by the Indian chief Tecunseh. And you thought he was all innocent all those years he was hanging out in the doorway of the Cheers bar!
Another explanation is that it's just a coincidence. But let's look at the math here.
There were 43 Presidents. I am not including George Bush II in this discussion, since his term is not yet over, so there are 42 Presidents available for our discussion. And 33 of these were during the Zero Factor era.
Of those, the Zero Factor didn't start until 1840. So when we try to derive probability by looking at the numbers from the history of the Presidency, we'll have two numbers. The probability derived from the whole run of the Presidency and the probability derived just by looking at the terms starting with the 1840 election.
There have been 53 terms prior to George Bush II. There have been 40 terms since the Zero Factor started. Zachory Taylor died during the Zero Factor era (but not in a Zero Factor year).
Now then, there were 11 more terms than Presidents.
There have been 8 terms in both time buckets where the President died in office. So, that could be considered to indicate a 8/53 (or 15.09%) chance of a term ending in death if we look at the whole timeframe.
And there is a 8/40 (or 20%) chance if we look at the Zero Factor era.
Now then, there were 15 Presidents to be re-elected. 10 of these were during the Zero Factor tenure.
Now, looking at the whole span of Electoral history within our bucket, there were 27 single-termers, 14 2-termers, and 1 4-termer.
Looking at the Zero Factor bucket, we have 23 single-termers, 9 2-termers, and 1 4-termer.
Now, before we continue, it's not really fair of me to include FDR in these calculations, because he was a 4-termer. And a 4-termers is far more likely to both be elected in a 0 year and to die in office. Of course, since he is being ignored, when we get to looking at the Zero Factor cycle, we will have to ignore that particular cycle as well.
So, if we look at the whole span from Washington to Clinton, and ignore FDR, then we get a probability of 3/27 (11.11%) of death in office for a one term President and a 4/14 (27.27%) chance of death for a two-term President.
Within the Zero Factor bucket, we have higher odds of tragedy. 3/23 (13.04%) for a single termer and 4/9 (44.44%) for a two-termer.
Now, what are the odds of the Zero Factor occuring?
Well, we need a little more statistical data here. The odds of a given President being a two-term President is 14/41 for the whole picture or 9/32 for the Zero Factor era.
The odds of a given President being a Zero Factor President can be determined by this formula: ( (prob. of single termer) * (prob. of a single termer dying in office) ) + ( (prob. of double termer) * (prob. of a double termer dying in office) ).By plugging in the numbers, we get these:
For whole span:
( (27/41 * 3/27) ) + ( (14/41 * 4/14) ) = 17.071%
For Zero Factor era:
( (23/32 * 3/23) ) + ( (9/32 * 4/9) ) = 21.875%

Now then, not counting FDR, there have been 6 fatal Zero Factor cycles and one non-fatal Zero Factor cycle.
Since the Zero Factor started, there have been 8 cycles. One of those is FDRs, which is a Zero Factor cycle, but in the interest of fairness, we're not counting it. However, I am counting Reagan, as the attempt on his life, in my opinion places him in the Zero Factor camp. And I can't think of any Presidents who were shot during their office who were not Zero Factor Presidents, so I don't think I'm skewing the numbers too much.
Now, there are 7 Presidents who fit into our criteria (elected ina 0 year between 1840 and 1980, and are not FDR). Six of these died, one was almost killed. The odds of this occuring are equal to the odds of a single President dying in office raised to the 7th power. This is 0.002396826%. And that, my friends, is not very likely at all.

Another interesting factoid: Four of the Zero Factor Presidents were re-elected.
Abraham Lincoln: 1860 and 1864
William McKinley: 1896 & 1900
Franklin Rooselvelt: 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944
Ronald Reagan: 1980, 1984
Interestingly, it seems that whether a Zero Factor President gets multiple terms alternates between each cycle. There is less statistical meat to this, since we have a smaller sample size.

What is my advice for someone elected in a Zero year?
First: Be extra vigilant. Get regular medical checkups. Increase security screenings. Take care in setting up public appearances and photo ops. Also, watch out for potential fatal accidents. A lot of people die every day from falls. So don't climb ladders and get some of those sticky pads for your shower.
Second: Don't despair. The Zero Factor is not infallible. Ronald Reagan is living proof that the Zero Factor can be beaten.
Third: Don't press fate. If you survive the first term, think long and hard about whether you run again. If you believe that this is just silly superstition and coincidence, or if you believe that you stand a good chance of beating the Zero Factor, then go ahead. But be very careful.
In fact, if I were elected in a 0 year, I would make it very clear that I was running again, but I would be deliberately lying, in hopes that whatever evil force I am dealing with is not telepathic, and would wait until the second term to make its move. Then, at the last minute, I would go "nope, not gonna run for re-election. Suck on it, evil spirits!" Of course, if I said that last part in public, I probably wouldn't have to worry much, because being heard saying the phrase "suck on it, evil spirits!" would probably make me unelectable.

Who Wants To Live Forever? Me! That's Who!

2003-07-16T23:55:00.000-04:00

We owe much our science to occultic disciplines.
For example, astronomy is the direct descendant to astrology. And chemistry is the direct descendant of alchemy.
Alchemists had many goals, but two in particular stand out. The overly cliched, turning lead into gold is the most obvious. But alchemists also quested for immortality. Immortality, after all, is one of our oldest dreams. And that's all it is. Or is it? There are many people, from several different walks of life, who offer immortality. But how do the various paths to immortality stack up? In this essay, I will look at a few different potential sources of eternal life. In a future entry, I will examine the social implications of immortality.

The first item in my Yahoo! search was Alex Chiu's Immortality Device. To quote the title page: "Alex Chiu knows what causes you to age" and apparently it's not wearing refrigerator magnets on your pinkies. Alex does sell the rings, but his site also tells you how to make the rings yourself. Just think, you could be one trip to the Discovery Store away from eternal life! I don't have any magnets to make the device with now, but if I get to the science store, I may just make some and let you know. If I die, I'll tell you it's a scam.
I want to discount this notion, but he was featured in the Weekly World News, and that is a newspaper which is at least as credible as the New York Times. If you check inside his site, you can find a scientific treatise explaining how magnets can clear cholesterol which is caused by cuts. This principle is illustrated with what appears to be sophisticated diagrams created by the advanced image rendering technique of asking a fourth grader to color with crayons.
Quoted from Alex Chiu's site:

If magnetic forces are applied, cells attract to each other more strongly. Ugly scars disappear. Cholesterol, which jammed in damaged areas, slowly desolves! If cholesterol desolves, blood circulation is liberated. With blood circulation liberated, enough food and oxygen goes to every cell of your entire body. Then, at this stage, you turn physically younger or stay physically young FOREVER. You will have a never ageing body. Your body condition stays the SAME for years and years!!

Of course, experimenters have tried to use magnets to create immortality since at least the 1800s. And I don't recall seeing anyone from the 1800s walking around lately.
Estimated Credibility Factor: 2 out of 10.

There is also the work with telomeres. Telomeres are the tips of your chromosomes. You can think of them as like those little plastic things on your shoelaces. When you lose the plastic thing on your shoelace,t he shoelace unravels. Something slightly similar (but really different) happens to your chromosomes when your telomeres are lost. You lose some of these with each cell division. When they're gone, chromsomes tend to get a lot more errors when they reproduce.
quoted from the article:

So, what did the researchers do? Working at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, they took two human cell lines and inserted an extra copy of the human telomerase gene into them. These extra genes were under the control of a DNA sequence that ensured the cells would make plenty of telomerase, providing a test of the idea that the loss of telomerase is responsible for aging. In their paper in the January 16, 1998 issue of SCIENCE, the researchers reported that both cell lines continued to divide for at least 20 generations longer than normal. Putting it another way, they remained young!

Well, there you have it. Or do you? The article goes on to mention a transgenic mouse which didn't even have telomeres! And it lived a normal life. So maybe telomeres aren't everything. Which begs the question, did they give the mouse little tiny magnet rings?
Of course, telomeres are a component in cellular immortality. But then, cancer is cellular immortality. So using this to make a complex organism immortal would probably be a very tricky prospect, if it is workable at all. In fact, some medical treatments may even call for telomere inhibitors. I can almost hear Alanis Morissette singing about this.
Estimated Credibility Factor: 3 out of 10 alone. Maybe up to 8 out of 10 if combined with other biological therapies for a combined treatment.

Nanotechnology is another possible avenue to immortality. The basic gist is, illness and aging are the result of microscopic damage and flaws in our cells. Really small robots could fix this damage our cells, just like surgeons now fix damage to our organs. APplications include killing cancer cells, and fixing damaged cells. Even providing articial mitochondria ("Hey, my cells are cyborgs!"). It could also perform less exotic but equally useful maintenance such as clearing out cholesterol. Kind of like Drano for your arteries.
Estimated Credibility Factor: 8.5 out of 10.

Then there's the Hans Moravec option. Mind uploading. I don't like this idea. It's not me living on if I get this done. It's a copy. And while the world would obviously benefit from an eternal copy of my prodigious intellect, I wouldn't benefit. If you create an immortal emulation of me, this me would still grow old and die. And probably be really jealous of that damn immortal robot "me" out there in its shiny robot body that probably transforms into a jet and does other really cool stuff that humanoid flesh cannot. Screw that shit! Or in robot terms, I guess I would say "Interface with that depleted uranium!"
Now, there is an interesting notion (search this link for "nanotechnology method") whereby tiny robots would be injected into the brain. These robots would replace the neurons one by one. Let's compare the two methods:
Upload: Makes a copy of me in a robot body. This me would still have to deal with the whole growing old and dying bit, unless I find another method, in which case, why would I need a damn robot upload anyway?
Nanotech Neuron Replacement: I lose a neuron, but it is replaced by a nanotech "cell". This "cell" would probably move alongside the neuron, copy all of its connections, and then kill the neuron. This is a gradual change. At no point does the "me" stop being "me". I don't make a copy, I make myself into a robot-brained immortal.
Estimated Credibility Factor: Upload: 0 (Capacity to make ME immortal)/9 (capacity to make a damn dirty doppelganger of me immortal)
Estimated Credibility Factor: Nanotech Neural Replacement: 8

Well, that's my thoughts on some of the various methods of immortality. Of course, combing them could be problematic. For example, if you make yourself a robot, then perhaps the Alex Chiu device would just make you kind of dizzy. The rings probably won't make you immortal, but they might get your robot self a nice buzz.
In a future column, I'll talk a bit about the ramifications of a world where people can actually live forever.

The Rikonian Rant Message Board

2003-07-13T13:58:00.000-04:00

I re-instituted the forum (which is why there is now a link to a forum at the bottom of each article on this blog).
This is phase 2 of the planned re-engineering of this site. Phase 1, template editing, is already done.
Phase 3 is to create a graphical link bar or something.
Anyway, feel free to discuss any of the posts on this blog (even the old ones) on the board.

Amputation, It's the New Sensation!

2003-07-13T03:26:00.000-04:00

Slate Amputee Article
I've heard of people who have a fetish for amputees before. I never understood it. "Well gee, I like Wendy, but damnit, she has two legs. I can't be with a chick like that." It doesn't make sense to me.
But it makes more sense than what I learned about in this article. People who want to be amputees.
Yep, you heard me right. Well, you read me right. These people want to actually get parts of them cut off.
Now, I could understand wanted to get your leg cut off if they had really cool kick-ass bionic legs available. I would do it then. Actually, I'd get both cut off. Having just one bionic leg would be kind of pointless. Sure I could run at super speed, but I'd look like Jerry Lewis on crack after a massive head injury while I did it.
What really bothers me though, is the fact that there are doctors who prescribe amputation for these people who want it. If you're a shrink and your patient says to you "doc, I really think my life would be more complete if someone lopped off my left arm," it would seem that the logical ethical response would be to tell them that's a bad idea and try to treat them. Instead of just saying 'duh, ok, go ahead."

2003-07-13T02:50:00.000-04:00

Time Travel Gives Me a Headache - or - It's Not a Tumah!-nator
I saw T3 last week. And something dawned on me. Luckily, I'm not a vampire (yet!), so I didn't turn to dust.
Anyway, it occured to me that the Terminator movies have a very fatalistic time travel model. You can't change much.
Let's look at the movies:
T1: Faster than a cable modem, but you may have network... whoops, wrong T1. Anyway, in T1, Ahnauld goes back in time to kill Sarah Conner and thus prevent John Conner from being born. Kyle Reese goes back to stop him. Arnold is destroyed and John Conner is born.
T2: Liquid metal guy goes back in time to kill John Conner. Arnold goes back to protect him. The Conners get the idea to prevent SkyNet and seem to have succeeded. But...
T3: OK, the SkyNet thing didn't work out quite like John Conner thought, the SkyNet thing came about after all. There will be a nuclear (or nucular) war. Robots and humans will fight. And both sides will send naked people and naked robots back in time to kill people in the past. But at least now one of the robots is a chick.
The question is, does it all matter? Is there a point? Should SkyNet even bother trying to kill John Conner's past self? The answer I come up with is, no.
John Conner's very existence is partial proof that SkyNet is wasting its time by sending robots to travel through it.
Exhibit A) John Conner. Mother: Sarah Conner. Father: Kyle Reese. Wha-huh? The future guy? Yep. So we know that there are at least three timelines, just to get to T1. The first timeline (TL-A), where nobody got sent back in time. The second timeline (TL-B), where Kyle Reese got sent back in time, and knocked up a waitress. And the third timeline (TL-C), where an android gets sent back to kill the waitress before Kyle Reese can go knock her up, and Kyle Reese gets sent back to both protect her and knock her up. WHy would Kyle Reese be back in time, if not to protect John Conner? Did he just have a habit of vacationing in the 1980's and having sex with big-haired chicks? I can't say I blame him. 1980's hair is sexy. But more than likely, he was there protecting the rebel leader. Now, since TImeLine A is never mentioned and TimeLine B is just barely touched upon, this is all supposition, but my theory is, he was sent to insure the birth of the rebel leader: John Conner.
Now, I'm sure you're all saying "wha-huh?!" but let me explain. Sarah Conner was kinda easy. She hooked up with a guy, got knocked up, and had a kid she named John. The guy didn't stick around. Or maybe he did. Who knows. Either way, when SkyNet gets pissed off at the rebel leader, it can say "that bastard John Conner" in any timeline. Kyle Reese gets sent back to protect Sarah Conner and the boy's father. He failed in his mission. Well, sort of. Arnie kills John's father, but Kyle Reese manages to protect Sarah, and also finds time to have unprotected sex with her. Thus, getting her pregnant. So, the rebel leader is never born, but the timestream provides a suitable replacement.
In T2, we have a fourth timeline (TL-D) where SkyNet is apparently destroyed before it can get its start.
But in T3, we find out that all that happened was a delay of Judgement Day. (this text is wrapped in a font tag to avoid spoiling the movie for you. Select it to read). OK, remember earlier that bit with time making a new rebel leader to replace the one who was lost? Well, if cuts both ways. Think about it. In T3, the massive computer virus sets off the chain of events that makes SkyNet go postal. But, we are told that Judgement Day was supposed to have happened years earlier. Well guess what, there was no virus then! We were under the impression that SkyNet was some monolithic ubercomputer cone evil, not a network compromised by a virus. Sort of a HAL9000 on steroids. Well, we were right and wrong. The scientist guy from T2 must have used what he learned to take steps to help prevent the government from implementing an apeshit SkyNet. But Time will not be denied, so a computer virus pops up and makes a timeline where SkyNet causes big trouble. Oh yeah, and those leuitenents who got iced? Big frickin' deal. Other people will become John Conner's leuitenents. (end of spoiler text)
So, no matter what you do, time will pretty much be the same. At least in the Terminator universe. Kind of makes you wonder why SkyNet bothers. But on the other hand, evil psychopathic computers aren't known for being rational. Otherwise, they'd be evil logical computers. The rebels are just lucky that Shockwave didn't crash land on their planet and take over the machines. And so are we, because, stupid plan or not, evil computers in the future sending robots back in time to kill people makes for damn entertaining movies.

2003-07-12T00:45:00.000-04:00

Mathematical Meditations
I have made a terrifying discovery, which may or may not be true. If you are reading this, then you may very well be in grave danger. But do not worry, you are either not imperilled, or you are already doomed. There is nothing you can do either way. But I figured you deserve to know.
The universe is infinitely large, according to some theories. And even if it is not, there may be an infinite number of universes. If either of these statements is true, then there is an infinite number of people. Not all humans, of course, but we should probably still call them people. It's only polite, after all. And since so many aliens are giant exoskeletoned monsters with razor sharp fangs and claws, it pays to be at least a little polite, stupid.
Notice I was rude to you. That's because you are probably human, so I don't need to worry about fangs or claws or acid blood or evil death robots, because you don't have them.
We shall, for sake of argument, assume for the duration of this article that the universe is infinite.
But I am not here to insult you, or to warn you of an impending alien invasion. Though such an invasion may factor in your horrible fate, there is no indication that this is the case.
People are not immortal. They die. Maybe some species are immortal, but it's a safe bet that most are. That means that there is a certain percentage of people that die every day. This percentage is not 0%.
Any percentage of infinity which is greater than 0% is also infinity. So there are an infinite number of people who will die tomorrow.
The number of people is infinity. The number of people who will die tomorrow is infinity.
And now, I will explain why you may very well be doomed.
A number divded by itself is equal to 1.
The number of times something could possible happen divded by the number of times it will actually happen is equal to the probability of that thing happening.
Probabilities exist in a scale of 0 to 1.
Events with a probability of 0 are totall impossible. Like Bob Dole suddenly growing breasts and becomming a giant robot ninja or Carrot Top winning the Oscar for Best Actor, or Alyssa Milano showing up at my apartment unexpectedly begging me to let her give me a blowjob.
Events with a probability of 1 are absolutely guaranteed to happen. Things like the stone I drop falling to the ground, or like comedians making fun of Bob Dole because he takes boner pills. They should be glad that he will not really turn into a giant robot ninja, because, whether or not his new form has tits, he could easily crush them either way with his giant metal feet and giant robot sword. We should also be thankful that Carrot Top will never get that Oscar, but I digress.
Anyway, if infinity people are alive, and infinity people will die tomorrow, then the probability of a certain person (in this case, you) dying tomorrow is infinity divided by infinity. Which equals 1. I am sorry to be the one to tell you this.
Of course, this is only true if the universe is infinite, or if there are an infinite number of universes. If neither of these conditions are true, you will live through tomorrow. Or maybe you won't. Maybe you'll get hit by a car, or stepped on by a giant robot boner pill spokeman with giant metal melons.
Life is too short for bitterness, either way. Which makes me feel a little bad about what I said earlier about Carrot Top. Not because he deserves an Oscar, but because, well, what if we was reading it, and he was sincerely hoping for me to get that blowjob from Alyssa Milano. And here I am rejoicing on his lack of an Oscar.
No. You know what? To hell with Carrot Top. He does those damn phone number ads. So does she. So they must know each other. He had his chance to send Alyssa over to my apartment and he didn't. I hope the universe is infinite, because then that rat bastard Carrot Top will die tomorrow! Either that, or Bob Dole becoming the giant robot guy and stepping on his house.

2003-07-10T00:25:00.000-04:00

The New Rikonian Rant
Well, I can actually get back onto my blog page now (for a while there, for some reason, my computer would only show me a blank page).
Anyway, this will be a fresh start. I'll try to actually update this damn thing, and this weekend I may even fix the template to be something cool again instead of this crappy generic one I have now. Or maybe I'll just play Enter the Matrix and watch porn instead. The future is not written. or is it?
Also, since this is a new start, I'm going to be more bloglike. Or is that Bloggish? Blogalicious? Blogtastic?
Well anyway, to make my site more blogadelic, I'll try sprikling inane hyper links all over the place.

And I bring news again. Of course, if you get Comedy Central, you probably know about this. I was prompted to look this up after seeing James Watson being interviewed by Stephen Colbert. This is James "look at me! I have a Nobel Prize for discovering DNA!" Watson, not James "hey, I like to hang out with a limey cokehead who wears a funny hat and fight crime" Watson.
The notion that stupidity is a disease is a deep one, and we need to think about it. But first, I need to take a moment to put into cosmic perspective the fact that I just saw the guy who helped discover the fundamental core structure that determines the fractal pattern destiny of all life on Earth talking to the guy who voices Reducto on the Harvey Birdman show.
OK. I'm ready now.
First, is stupidity a disease? Well, what is a disease? Dictionary.com defines it as this:
1. A pathological condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterized by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms.
2. A condition or tendency, as of society, regarded as abnormal and harmful.
To better understand #1, we need to look up pathological, which is defined as "Relating to or caused by disease."
OK, that second part was not very helpful. But we are ready to ask question #1: Is stupidity a disease?
Well, it's a condition of the brain, which is an organ. It results from various causes. Infection can make you stupid. Genetic defects? Yeah, that too. We all know people who are fucktards, and have kids who are fucktards. I suppose environmental stress can make one stupid too. Most managers are stressed, after all.
Are there identifiable signs or symptoms? Yes. Like renting or buying Chairman of the Board.
OK, so stupidity can be called a disease. But should we cure it? Well, that depends on how easy the cure is to administer. If they discover an easy, affordable way to cure stupidity that doesn't turn too many people into raving psychos or evil psychics, then yeah. We could cure ugliness too. Just as long as we can transform the already existent people by retrofitting their genes.
That'd be cool, wouldn't it? No more stupid people clogging up our highways or checkout lanes, because the stupid people could go to the doctor and get their smart shot. Either that, or the crazy evil pyschic guys would have killed them in a blind rage. Either way, I could get my shopping done in half the time.
And as for curing physical imperfections? Well, Cliff Yablonski would need to get a new gimmick, but I could get all my minor facial imperfections cured. Little things like the way my nose goes a little to the left. Or the impossible to work with wire-thin hair that is the product of mixing German, Irish, British and Indian blood. Or the giant horns sticking out of my forehead. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a sombrero that fits if you have giant horns?
Some would argue that stupid people are part of the natural order. But then again, so if bad eyesight, but we have glasses, lasik surgery, and we are very close to viable bionic eyes.
Of course, I doubt that a genetic cure for stupidity is possible, because the factors contributing to stupidity are likely to be legion. Is Bobby stupid because this brain doesn't process oxygen properly? Because of different size and shape of the various portions of the brain? Or because of some horrible trauma? We may be able to cure some stupid people. maybe even most of them. But something tells me that there will still be stupid people in this world.

2003-03-06T23:43:00.000-05:00

The new line of war weapons is in, and kicking ass has never been so kick ass!
OK, I'll preface this by saying, yeah I am a geek. Also, I couldn't think of anything funny to say about the GPS bombs, but thought they were cool.

The new gear includes bombs that use GPS to be self guiding, and are so accurate that they can be dropped from above antiaircraft range and hit their targets more accurately than the bombs dropped from dangerous low-flying runs over targets in the last Iraq war. Also, the bombs are smaller, so we can put more on a plane, and there's much less chance of collateral damage. All of which means a more effective, more precise, safer way to blast their military targets to hell.
Also, they have new e-bombs. No, we're not going to drop pets.com sock puppets on them. It's a warhead meant to simulate the EMP of a nuke, but without all the flesh-melting heat, rending concussive force, and lethal radiation. Tastes great, less killing.
There's also a wicked cool "skeet" bomb. Int eh old days, if you wanted to blow up a tank in your fighter, you had to fly toward the tank, and shoot it. Meaning you could only destroy one tank at a time and you risked getting shot down yourself. The new "skeet" missiles fly toward the general area of the tanks, and break up into several smaller bombs, self guiding their way to the target. Awesome! Just like the missiles in Robotech. Now if only the jets turned into giant robots.
There's also a "net centric" communication link that lets soldiers communicate over wider distances, allowing them to be less convenient targets and cover more ground. It can also be used as a powerful offensive weapon by turning the screen toward the enemy and deploying the top secret cyber weapon known only by the internal code-name "Project Goatse"

2003-02-16T01:48:00.000-05:00

A Question of Genre

What is horror? What is Sci-Fi? What is fantasy?
We know that Star Trek and Star Wars are sci-fi? But what about Superman? I've seen it in the sci-fi and the fantasy aisles? What about Alien? Sci-Fi or horror?
To answer these, first we would need a definitive criteria for these genres.
We'll start with horror. What makes horror? Monsters trying to kill you, eat you, take over the world, eat your soul? Well, Alien had a monster. Is it horror? Some would say so. Mortal Kombat had monsters out the ying-yang. Is it horror? Somehow I doubt you could call it that.
And what about stuff that doesn't have monsters, but is still scary? Is Cape Fear horror? Halloween? The original Friday the 13th? Or are they just thrillers?
Still, ome things are pretty standard right? Like vampires. Vampires are horror. But Forever Knight wasn't horror. It was more of a sueprhero cop show. And what about John Carpenter's Vampires? I have trouble calling it horror. It was more of a vampire/human war movie.

Mortal Kombat annihilation counts, but only if one refers to the experience of viewing it.
Science fiction is all about aliens and robots and funky science right? Well, what about Superman? He's an alien, but he has powers that are kinda out there, even for sci-fi. Is it fantasy?
The best definiton of sci-fi I've ever heard is that it is stories that take scientific knowledge/theories, and builds on them. But what if those theories change? Also, what about that old black and white Man in the Moon movie? It's been woefully discredited by science for a long long time. But it was at one time sci-fi. If the sceince is discredited, does it stop being sci-fi? Myths were extrapolations on existing knowledge/theoreis of reality. So if works do not move out of the sci-fi genre, then would that not make Hercules or the Odyssey sci-fi?
And if our understanding of quantum physics shifts radically and things once thought beyond the realm of possibility become real? Could Lord of the Rings someday become sci-fi? Well, not if we don't allow works to shift from their initial genre.
And how advanced must the science be to make it sci-fi? Stuff set 100 years away with starships and lazer guns is obviously sci-fi. But what about James Bond with his Q-branch gadgets and often mutant rogues gallery? Or Tom Clancy-type stuff set 5 years ahead with advanced airplanes, submarines, and funky combat suits and advanced weapons?

And what is fantasy? Magic, sword and sorcery, D&D kinda stuff is fairly obvious. But is all stuff with magic fantasy? Is Buffy fantasy? I know I've had fantasies about almost all the female characters on that show (even Joyce a couple times. She was a milf), but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm asking, does a show with witches, vampires, werewolves and demons qualify as a fantasy show? Even if it also has robots and undead cyborgs and paramilitary organizations?

So where are the lines drawn? I've thought about it, and I can't see any lines. Blurry, wavering zones of demarcation, but no lines.

2002-10-27T01:15:00.000-04:00

Ah... how you say... ah... house arrest! (and other weird-arse takes on the news):
A Russian officer has been let go after it was revealed that he was beating soldiers on the head with a large black dildo he had purchased at a sex shop. In a related story, if you ever go to a Russian military bar, do not order the "Black Russian."

Antonio Banderas is in a labor dispute with a Mexican labor union after some of the workers at his new Pancho Villa movie were fired for working too slowly. Not a very good way to beat cultural stereotyping there guys. It's about on par with a French union suing over workers being fired for being rude. Or a Russian military commander union suing over not being allowed to hit people with dildos.
The union wants Banderas to be put under house arrest to keep him from leaving the country until after it is resolved.
Why are they making a movie about Pancho Villa anyway? He always had Norm do all the work.

2002-10-25T01:38:00.000-04:00

Sudden Random Horrifying Thought:
I was watching TV, and that ad for the new Sandler movie, Punch Drunk Love came on. The movie won the Cannes Film Festival.
It suddenly occured to me, we could be hearing this in the near future: "And the Oscar for Best Actor goes to... Adam Sandler!"
I'm not a religious man, but that seems like it'd almost have to be a portent of the Apocalypse...

2002-10-24T22:08:00.000-04:00

Storytellers: Billy Idol (CD review):

I just got the Billy Idol Storytellers CD (the CD from the VH1 Storytellers series).
Now, when you get a CD with the word "storytellers" in it, you would expect the performer to, oh I don't know, tell some frelling stories or something?
An amusing anecdote, perhaps something with strippers and drugs or one of his motorcycle crashes. Or maybe the time he got all coked up and crashed his motorcycle into a stripper. Or the time he got really coked up and crashed his stripper into a motorcycle.
Or a bit of backstory on what he was thinking when he wrote some of his hits. "Well, I was writing Mony mony, and I suddenly realized, hey, this song's already written! Then I did some drugs and got laid."
But no. The whole CD was just the songs. Songs which, with the exception of two, I already had from the frelling Greatest Hits CD.

2002-10-24T22:06:00.000-04:00

After a long absense, I have returned:

Whew. A long time with no update. Well, Morrowind can take the blame for a lot of that. Morrowind is basically digitally encoded, 3D rendered crack.

Anyway, I'm back now.

2002-08-31T21:20:00.000-04:00

80's Redux

This is the first of two new cartoon reviews. I'm not a reviewer, but the two latest offerings from Cartoon Network: He-man and Transformers: Armada; both retooled versions of classic cartoons from the 80s. Viva la, er, Viva la OctoDeca, er, something

Transformers: Armada:
Anyway, the Transformers Armada cartoon is one I was looking forward to, but not much. I used to love Transformers when I was a kid. It was, without a doubt, my favorite cartoon. My life's ambition for years was to become a giant transforming warrior robot. I even had hope, thanks to Hans Moravec's notions of human/robot mind transfer. And just think, he came up with that idea without giant transforming jets and guns and sportscars to inspire him. Just think how fixated the average 1980's American boy was on robots. And I was geekier than my contemporaries. By far.
Then, a couple years, ago, I saw something called Robots in Disguise. Finally, Transformers were back! I was happy as hell. Until I saw the damn cartoon. The frelling thing sucked donkeyballs. In fact, it sucked donkeyballs z. Sure, the giant robots were always a little bit on the doofus side, but R.I.D. bad guys were retarded.
Part of me said "Armada will redeem Transformers!"
Part of me said "Armada will suck also."
And part of me said "Dude, you're almost 27. Quit obsessing about transforming robots, you geek!"
The first two parts of me ganged up and beat the living hell out of the third part. Unfortunately, that's the part that knows mathematics, so I have to carry a calculator until it recovers.
But I've digressed enough. Transformers Armada sucks.Having only seen one episode, I cannot say for sure whether it sucks worse than Robots in Disguise, but it's a close race. We need to get R.I.D. of this stupid retooled overly cutesy Transformers crap and get back to the basics. Giant robots that beat the shit out of each other, then turn into other things and beat the shit out of each other in different ways. R.I.D.'s animation owed a lot to Pokemon. The annoying kids who hung out with the Autobots looked like those annoying kids. And the bad guys all looked like some kind of Pokemon type crap.
But, as Penny Arcade pointed out, Armada is Pokemon.
I was almost willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt when I saw the annoying human sidekicks. But when I saw the first appearance of a minicon, with it just standing there in fornt of Megatron, making stupid cutesy anime faces for two minutes, I decided that Armada is not on my list of shows to watch. Ever, under any circumstance. Well, maybe if the women from Friends all showed up and told me I could do whatever I wanted to them, for as long as I want, whenever and wherever I want, for the rest of my life, if I just watch one episode of Armada, then I would consider it.
Rating: 0.0 tardbots
Viewing Advice: Don't. For gawd's sake... DON'T!!!

He-Man:
The second cartoon I'm reviewing is He-Man. The retooled Master's of the Universe. How retooled is He-Man?
Well, the original cartoon sucked balls. Or maybe, as one site suggests, it ate them. I'm not exactly sure.
The new one kicks arse. And no, it doesn't eat arse. Transformers Armada has that covered.
The original MOTU was just plain stupid.
First off, in the original series, He Man was just Prince Adam with no shirt and a tan. For the sake of his secret identity, I hope he never decided to go to the beach. In the new series, they actually look a little different. Go to the show site on Cartoon Network and click on the character profiles. Compare the Prince Adam and He-Man pics. They look alike (which makes sense, because they are the same guy after all), but they also look different. Yes, in this new version, when you have a magic sword that gives you the power to be a big musclebound steroid-freak, the sword actually adds muscle mass to you, instead of, er, turning the muscles you have tan.
The writing is also better. Since we haven't seen He-Man yet, I cannot tell you whether they are going to be doing the incredibly stupid "He-Man punches thing, thing falls down, repeat until credits" crap. But the fights we did see actually made sense. The animators actually managed to make Beast Man look useful, which is a major accomplishment akin to making Carrot Top a Nobel Prize-winning physicist (although he does have the hair).
Oh yeah, no He-Man yet. Adam still hasn't accepted the sword, obviously, they are going with the reluctant hero, which makes sense, because if you're a spoiled rich kid, you probably aren't very eager to go gallavanting around getting into fights with guys with their faces dissolved off.
The new character designs look a lot cooler. Sure, part of that is just the natural progression of animation, but some of it is just much better character design. For example, the Sorceress' original design looked like a retired stripper's costume. The new Sorceress actually looks like a mysterious mystical chick. Skeletor looks cooler (although we have yet to see his skull face, he keeps it covered with a cloak for now).
Remember when I said that Beast Man wasn't totally useless? Well, so far, Man At Arms is also showing much less total uselessness than we're used to seeing from him. A good sign for the show.
Of course, Orko is still a total 'tard. But then, some things never change.
Also, so far, the new show is nowhere near as gay as the original show. In support of the Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy and Gayness; which states that matter, energy, and gayness can neither be created nor destroyed, only dispersed; the gayness fromt he original Masters of the Universe appears to have migrated to Transformers: Armada.
Rating (still tentative, since this is part 1 of a 3 part intro): 4.0 magic swords. Oh yeah, that's out of 5. I waited until now to mention it because when you give a show 0.0, it doesnj't really matter what the scale goes to, now does it?

2002-08-31T11:56:00.000-04:00

Hotmail: more useless and annoying every day

I went to check my hotmail account today, and damn, the new site is ugly. Go there now. http://www.hotmail.com for the cyber-illiterate.
From their site:
"A New Look for Hotmail!
To improve the Hotmail sign-in experience, we have updated this page with a new design."

Yes, that sure improved my hotmail experience. I recall so many days that I would check my email and sigh wistfully, thinking to myself "oh, if only my email serivce web page looked more like a tacky retirement center wallpaper..."
It occurs to me that, if they didn't have some graphics design team dicking around with the layout and color and font scheme every couple months, maybe they wouldn't be so hard up for cash that they'd have to keep bugging me to sign up for their frickin' premium service every week or so. "Dear hotmail user, your account is almost full..." Well no shit! You fuckers keep sending me email.

Hotmail: More useful every day.
Actually, this statement is true. We're just not reading it correctly. The way it appears, it seems that they are saying hotmail becomes more useful every day than it was the previous day. In other words, that its usefulness quotient keeps going up.
In reality, according to top secret Microsoft documents that I illicitly received from an unnamed inside source (we'll call him Beve Stallmer to protect his identity), the actual standard for comparison is a rusty spike through your penis.
So yes, every day, hotmail is more useful than a rusty spike through your penis.

2002-08-07T00:22:00.000-04:00

Grand Theft Siltstrider III

I have not posted for a while. I haven't done much of anything online for a while. I am certain that some of you thought that I had perished in some freak Net mishap. Perhaps swept away in a message board flood, or caught in the crossfire of an attack by the evil Emoticons.
No, the truth is far more sordid. I have faced the, uh, face of addiction. An addiction so insidious, so powerful, so, uh, addictive, that I was actually pulled away from the Net, which is kind of like being so hooked on meth, you forget to take your coke.
The addiction: Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
This is, by far, the coolest, most kickass video game I have ever seen. I almost didn't buy it, because I'm not really all that into the whole fantasy epic genre, but this game has many great features (some stuff may be a spoiler, so I blacked out that text. Highlight it to read it). Game designers, and aspiring game designers, take note.
It is, at the core, the basic "hey buddy, you've got some kickass destiny, and you're gonna save the world from the Great Big Evil Scary UberMegaMonsterDemon Not very Nice Guy" type game.
However, the game has scores of side quests that, unlike in other RPGs, have pretty much nothing to do with the main quest. You can finish the game without ever joining the Fighter's Guild, or the Thieves Guild, or the Morag Tong.
The side quests are pretty much like Grand Theft Auto 3 (the whole "bounty" thing is also kind of like the Wanted Level"). You have a whole bunch of guys you can go to to get jobs to do, ranging from boring and stupid "get me 4 types of mushrooms" to "hey, go get this magic item I want" to "hey, go kill this guy." Finish the job, and get your next one. Of course, you can have several jobs going at once. Each guild has different agendas and job types. Mages Guild is, of coruse, all about magic and scholarly stuff. the Thieves Guild makes you steal stuff, the Fighters Guild is all about kicking butt and taking names, and sicne your Journal does the name tacking automatically, you can focus on the butt kicking. The Morag Tong makes you go track down specific people and kill them. And the Temple Guild is a bunch of wankers.
And if one guild pisses you off, don't worry. You'll probably be asked to kill a bunch of them sometime soon. Or, you can subtly manipulate events so that rival guilds set aside their differences and become friends. Of course it helps that you can pretty much take over any and every guild in the game if you play your cards right. And, for those of you who played Final Fantasy 8, don't worry, there aren't really any cards in Morrowind.
But the game is even more open ended than that. My first experience with computer RPGs was Final Fantasy, for the NES. My party was the one recommended in the manual. A Fighter, a Thief, a White Mage and a Black Mage. I distinctly remember playing this game, going to the weapon shop, seeing a suit of armor for several hundred more gold than I had, and thinking "this is so freakin' stupid! I have a damn Thief in my party, and I still have to pay for everything?" I was angry and depressed for hours. This proves two things. First, I was an incredible geek. And second, computer RPGs, for the most part, suck.
But not Morrowind. If you want, you can rob the weapon shop guy. If that mouthy NPC is too annoying, you can kill him. Heck you can even kill Vivec, who is this major pwoerful and popular god guy you're supposed to be working with. That's a very open ended game right there. In fact, you can attack just about anyone. The only people left in Seyda Neen (the first town) are guards, and the few people in the tradehouse and census office.
Also, you level up each ability by using it. Use a long sword a lot, you become a god at the long sword, but it doesn't help your archery any. The result is, even though every character can do pretty much any type of action (just not always very well), you quickly find your character becomming specialized to the aspects of play that you consider important. Makes much more sense than just randomly slapping numbers onto various stats after you kill x number of monsters.
Also, unlike other RPGs where the cast shuffles several characters in and out of your control, in Morrowind, you are one dude (or chick). This allows you to truly immerse yourself. You're not telling a bunch of schmucks with swords to go kill that monster while you sit and direct from on high. You are directly controlling that schmuck with a sword. You are that schmuck with a sword! And the character interactions are much better than other games. Compare these examples (Morrowind PC dialog is extrapolated).
MORROWIND:
"Hey, what's your background?"
"I am an Ordinator"
"Disiddent Priests?"
"Did you hear that [blah blah stuff about dissident priests]"
"Hey, nice armor!"
"Yes, it's true!"
"And nice boots too"
"Your tone lacks sincerity"
"Oh yeah, well fuck you then, you tin plated asshole!"
"Prepare to die!"

FINAL FANTASY TYPE GAME
"Hi"
"There are monsters in the ruins to the north"
"That's nice, so where can I find the magic shop?"
"There are monsters in the ruins to the north"
"Yeah, OK, uh, what about..."
"There are monsters in the ruins to the north"

And the dialog options actually unlock if you interact in certain ways. You have to actually make your character learn things by picking the right conversation topics, and you can often do it all in one conversation.

The weapon skill specialization is a nice touch. I am a master at the long sword (100 percent skill rating, and strength attribute is 100) and I'm learning marksmanship and short sword.

You can put any magic effect you know into any weapon, armor, or article of clothing simply by enchanting it.

When you kill someone, you can loot their bodies. You can also leave stuff on them. And if you leave clothing, then the corpse actually wears it! I have taken to robbing the houses of the female characters in the games and carring some dresses, just so when I kill a guy, I can leave one on him, so his friends all think he was a transvestite.

You can make your own spells by combining effects you've learned. Beware my Ice Lightning Of Daedra Summoning!

Of course, it's not all kick ass good time gaming fun. There are some problems. They don't detract too much from the fun, but it's important to mention them, since this is, in effect, an open letter to game designers on how I want games designed from here on out.
1) It's possible to get your character stuck in an area, where you can't really maneuver out.
2) It would be nice if, when you use persausion ont he same character, it stayed on the option you're using. I have tried several times, to taunt someone into attacking me (so I could kill him and not have guards and Ordinators coming after me), and my finger slipped and hit Admire, only to have that one be the one that worked.
"You suck!"
"You take that back!"
"I won't take it back, because you're a stupid dickhead and you have stupid hair"
"I'm not listening to your foolish insults"
"You're a moron"
"I'm warning you..."
"You su... hey, nice shoes! DAMNIT!!! I didn't mean to do that!"
"Why thank you! I appreciate the compliment."
"I'm gonna go get drunk on Cyrillic Brandy and go hit on the Fighters Guild chick"
3) When you don't equip clothing, everyone says you're nude. You're not nude, you're wearing a medeival speedo type thing. It's a minor issue, but still, one that annoys me slightly.
4) You can't take that medevial speedo and bra combo off the female characters.
5) Vivec. I hate that frickin' city.
6) Vivec. I don't know why, but I haven't even met him yet, and I already hate that frickin' god.
7) Vivec. I hate that frickin' breakfast cereal.
8) The facial expressions never change. Never! Who knew medeival style kingdoms had such widespread access to Botox injections?
9) The Khajits all saying "What Khajit do for you?" Well, Khajit can shut up for me, or Khajit can bleed all over my sword for me. I'm sick of that stupid phrase!
10) Some of the names are silly. Nads Therin. Uryne. Percius Mercius.A good portion of the characters in this game must have spent their formative years getting the medeival equivalent of the "swirlie"

2002-07-27T00:11:00.000-04:00

Musical Mysteries:

First off, sorry about not updating lately. Work has been draining. I hope that it will calm down slightly now.
Speaking of work, on the way home today, the 80's flashback station (just one click behind Chatterbox) played Bryan Adams' song Heaven. This song confuses me.
When I'm lying here in your arms / I'm finding it hard to believe... we're in heaven
. . .
something something / it's easy to see, we're in heaven
OK, if it's so easy to see that he and this chick are in heaven, then why can't he believe it? Is this some sort of Canadian thing? "Not seeing is believing, eh!"
Or maybe he just can't believe that this situation, which is heaven, is really happening to him. But then, shouldn't he have said "we're in heaven, can ya believe it?!" ? And how the hell is one supposed to end a sentence that is a question and ends in a quoted sentence which is also a question?

If it were just Adams, I could ignore it, but it's not. There are other songs that do not make sense. For example, Meat Loaf's I Would DO Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That). Well, what the frel is "that"?!!! What?
I would do anything for love, but I won't... go to that damn Riverdance show?
I would do anything for love, but I won't... drink Mr. T's workout sweat?
Or maybe it's: I would do anything for love, but I won't... ever tell anyone what this damn song means!!!
I even bought the Storytellers CD. And he says he's about to tell us, but he doesn't. Clinton gave a cleaner answer when asked what "is" means.

And then there is Biz Markee's You've Got What I Need. Check out the chorus again.
You've........ got what I need!
But you say he's just a friend
Huh? OK, let's assume he's singing to a girl. She's got what he needs. Well, that could mean a lot of things. She has the love, she has a hot booty, or maybe Biz is dying of a rare kidney infection and she has a spare. Well, Biz comes off as kind of sweetly innocent here, so I doubt this is one of those "back dat ass up" songs. And if it was kidneys, then I'm sure blood toxicity level would be brought up at some point in the song. So what he needs is her love. Right? You would think so.
"But you say he's just a friend." OK. So there's a guy involved. Involved with her? Then him being just a friend would be good. He's not a rival to Biz. Maybe she just says he's just a friend, but Biz suspects more. But then shouldn't the line be "But you say he's just a friend, even though I know you're really lying to me" OK,o it doesn't flow as well, but still, it makes more sense.
Hmm. Maybe Biz doesn't need the woman after all. Maybe he's really singing about "him", whoever "he" is. This woman Biz is singing to has him, and Biz wants him, but the woman is telling Biz that this "he" guy is just a friend? Or maybe, Biz needs a... wait, that doesn't work.

Anyway, These three songs just annoy the hell out of me. Songs should not require flowcharts, Venn diagrams, and supercomputers to figure out, damnit!

2002-07-17T22:44:00.000-04:00

Blank vs. Blank

I was just checking Sci Fi Wire and saw a story about progress in the making of the long awaited Alien Vs. Predator flick. There was also a quiz about the upcoming Batman Vs. Superman movie.
Of course, this is just a few months after Jason X premeired in theaters. I mention it because it is rumored that if JX is successful, then the studio(s) will produce the also-long-awaited Jason Vs. Freddy movie. If not, then New Line will call Tom Green and see if he wants to make Freddy Krueger Got Fingered. And when you think about that glove of his, you realize that would probably hurt a lot.
That's three "vs" movies in the works, possibly for a relatively quick release. The only previous "vs." movies I can think of are Joe Vs. the Volcano, a few Godzilla movies, Kramer Vs. Kramer and Crow T. Robot's as of yet unproduced opus Earth Vs. Soup.
Does this mean that the "vs." movie is about to become the next wave of celluloid cliche (following in such austere traditions as the remake of old TV shows, the gritty cop on the edge, and the bad disaster movie guest-starring George Kennedy)? Or is this just a temporary fluke type situation?
Well, as a free service to the legions of Hollywood elite who I am sure read this blog religiously, I offer the following suggestions.

Spider-Man Vs. the 8-Legged Freaks: OK, this is a no brainer. I mean, the ads for 8LF all rip off Spider-Man anyway.

Batfans Vs. Joel Schumacher: A squad of angry fans confront Joel Schumacher, cut off his nipples, sew them on the outside of his shirt, then hold up a mirror, thus forcing him to admit that, yes, nipples on the outside of a shirt is a stupid look.

Joes Vs. The Volcano: Joe (Tom Hanks) goes back to the island, along with Joe from Joe's Apartment, Joe Fraser, Joe Piscopo, Joe Nameth, G.I. Joe, Mighty Joe Young and Jo' Momma!

The Airport Vs. George Kennedy: A mob of frightened passengers, realizing that George Kennedy is a harbinger of doom, frantically try to kill him before the flight takes off.

Joel Vs. the Volcano: The much anticipated sequel to Batfans Vs. Joel Schumacher!

The Satanic Vs.: Hollywood buys the rights to Salmon Rushdie's book, then in typical Hollywood fashion, they totally butcher the entire concept. The result: The Devil (Al Pachino), the Prince of Darkness (Jack Nicholson), Damien, Rosemary's Baby, and Little Nicky all vying for dominion over the mortal and infernal planes.

And finally, The Satanic Vs. Joel Schumacher, where Joel, having died in that volcano, now finds himself burning in Hell. His eternal torment? Being forced to watch Batman and Robin and Batman Forever in an endless screening.

So what did we learn today? We learned that sometimes Blank Vs. Blank can be fun, sometimes it isn't. We also learned that you should ask your travel agent to book you a George Kennedy-free trip (most reputable agencies provide this valuable service for a mere 5% more).
Hmm. "Blank Vs. Blank"? Matt LaBlanc, perhaps! LaBlanc Vs. Kramer! An epic battle of NBC ensemble cast members!

2002-07-16T22:53:00.000-04:00

The Rikonian Philosophy:
It occurs to me that I've had this blog for a few weeks, and I have never set aside any time to express my actually philosophy.
Well, the first step is to figure out what my philosophy is. It's not a slogan. All the time people try to sum up their philosophies in slogans. " 'Always be prepared,' that's my philosophy!"
" My philosophy can be best summed up by 'don't worry, be happy'!"
"You know, when I think about philosophy, and how best to sum up the true nature of life, and the universe, what really comes to mind is 'shit happens' "
Come to think of it, that last one makes sense. And why the bloody hell is it so damn hard to have a damn sentence in quotes that has another quoted sentence without it looking so damn awkward?!

Some people use philosophy to try to find the meaning of life. I don't. Why not? Because I don't think there is one. It's not that life is meaningless. It's just that everyone has to find their own meaning. Some people find meaning by learning. Some by creating. Some by just getting laid a lot.
So the only meaning your life can have is the meaning you define for it. Success is the same way. Some people define their success by how much money they have. Others by what they create. Still others by how much fun that have. As for me? I define success by posting to this blog at least one every two weeks. Seriously, I don't know exactly how I personally define success. I guess some combination of what I create and what I can accumulate.
Sadly, we can't choose consciously what we define "success" as. If we did, then my friend Chris from high school could define success as having an old broken down Camaro and a mullet. And damn it, he would be a success! He could write self help books and articles on how to get a really good mullet going, and the best ways to keep your aging Camaro running.
But you can't consciously dictate your meaning or success criteria. Because they are determined by what makes you you. And if we could change that, then there'd be a lot fewer assholes running around.

It's a very simple yet effective philosophy. And once you realize that you can't find some great external meaning*, then you can look inward, and find out what to seek to make your life meaningful. Who knows, you may already have it and not even know it. I'll wait while you go buy a mullet comb.

Oh sure, there may be some great underlying meaning of life. But if there is, then shouldn't it be a bit more clear? OK, maybe the meaning of life can't be clear or anything, but couldn't there be some kind of underground lost city or something with those Indiana Jones boulders and lots of snakes or something, where those who really wanted the meaning of life could go and quest for it?

2002-07-09T22:54:00.000-04:00

A Commentary on Commentary:
I just finished watching the Mr. Show DVDs that Amazon.com delivered to my apartment Saturday. I know I'm a bit behind the curve on ordering them, but I had other expenses for a couple months.
Anyway, one of the best things about these DVDs is the commentary. It's completely insane. I have long realized that DVD commentaries are a great feature. Sometimes you get a behind the scenes look at the making of a film, sometimes is just goofy riffs.
But it's not fair that they be limited to just DVDs. I mean, there's no Rikonian Rant DVD. What if you wanted some insights into the technical challenges that went into a rant? Or maybe zany recollections of antics and anecdotes that took place during the production of a rant? Well tough luck! Until now that is.
You see, a long time ago. I had a section on my Website called "The Rikonian Rant." As you can see, I don't like to think up names for things. Fans of my unnamed comic could probably have figured that out already.
Anyway, I have a classic rant about monkeys, and why you should not have sex with them. You can read the original, uncommentated version here.

And now, the commentated version (commentary is in underlined italics):

THE RIKONIAN RANT
Hi, this is Lord High Rikonian. And I'm providing the commentary to one of my classic pre-blog rants. Now there were interesting technical issues here. I had to use AOL and WS_FTP. Actually it was WS_FTPle, I think.
Don't Have Sex With Monkeys
I got an angry letter from Peter Tork. But when I reminded him that his group's name was the Monkees, and that I was not in fact advocating that no one have sex with them again, he calmed down a bit.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 3, 1999
Current Column
That "Current Column" text was actually a link in the original. It actually calls the main rant page again, which causes some "breaking out of frames" type code. If I knew then what I know now, I would have created a rant javascript include file

I just saw Outbreak again. Not the whole movie, but enough screen time to go "Oh hey look, it's Outbreak!). Anyway, Outbreak is a movie about Ebola. Only they don't call it Ebola. One of those "the names were changed to protect the innocent and lethal viruses" deals, I suppose. It was Mataba Maybe the Ebola virus didn't like the book and didn't give permission to use its name. I don't like that Ebola virus, it's a little bastard sometimes, you know.
I hate to say "I told you so," but after I wrote this, the Ebola virus has killed hundreds of people. I think it's currently serving time in Ryker's Island, pending an appeal. I wonder if that's the same Ryker from Star Trek, the Next Generation...
Anyway, in this movie, Ebola (or Mataba as they call it) comes from a monkey. And scientists say HIV came from a monkey. In fact, most diseases we have ultimately trace their origins to monkeys.
Another eerily prescient notion. MTV has really gone downhill, and can be thought of as a sort of "disease" with symptoms like Carson Daly, stupid half hour soaps, and interrupting videos so some schuck can go "I wanna give a shout-out to my mad-fly homies in the Brooklyn Accounting College! Woohoo!" And one of the driving forces behind the initial creation of MTV was Mike Nesmith. So, don't have sex with Monkees, either.
HIV is the worst disease to come from monkeys and really hit our species. The question is, how did it happen? HIV is spread primarily through sex, surgery with unsanitized quipment, and sharing needles. Now monkeys don't usually get operated on. They can't even get insurance. Think about it, they're MONKEYS OK, now this is an examople of the technical challenges that you, the loyal readers, often take for granted. The previous sentence took several takes. We tried italics, we tried underline. Special fonts. The Blink tag. The last one was good, but only Netscrape users could see it, and that was just unacceptable. We only had enough light left for one more take, and I decided to go with my instincts and use all-caps. And it was magic. Pure rant-making magic. They have all these funky monkey viruses like Ebola and Blue Cross is going to cover them? And monkeys don't do drugs either, to the best of my knowledge. There was a rumor about Micky Dolenz using heroin, but it was later proved false. So, HIV must have been spread from monkeys to people through sex.
"But no one is having sex with monkeys," you might say. Well, I might have agreed with you, but a friend of mine swears he saw a woman and a donkey in Mexico, and well hell, monkeys are closer to human than donkeys! In fact, I think she was really SUPPOSED to have sex with a monkey, but there was a typo on the animal request form (It is only one letter difference) and by the time it was delivered it was too late to go out and get a monkey, so she went with the donkey.
Still, why would anyone want to have sex with a monkey? Well I wondered too, until I recalled the ancient African legend of the Lost Explorer. This Lost Explorer was lost in the woods (well, duh!), and he started to get horny. He finally came to a village but there were no women. When he asked the tribal chief where their women were, the chief just pointed at this pen with a gorup of camels. Ah! Look! It's a spelling error! I made those all the time back then. "Gorup" should be "group". Well, you know, when your effects budget is only $2000 a rant, you can't really afford to make everything as pretty as a slickly produced site with corporate backing like Slate.com. Sometimes you trade techical capabilities for that "indy sensibility" The Lost Explorer was desparate, but not that desparate. OK, there's another one. "Desperate," not "desparate" So he left, but he kept going in circles and ending up back at this village. Finally he came to the village in the middle of the night. No one was around so he slipped into the camel pen and started doing his business with a camel, at which point it made so much noise it woke the tribal elder who came out of his tent, saw this and laughed. When the poor Lost Explorer asked what was so funny, the tribal elder said "If the Foo shits, wear it!" Oh man, we got letters about this one. The censors don't care these days, but back in '99, that was a controversial scene. No wait, that's not it. Oh well. Anyway, the Lost Explorer and the tribal chief probably had a good laugh about htis later. But maybe another lost explorer came upon this village, and before he could get back, saw a monkey sitting there. He might have thought "Well, it's not human, but it's closer than that ugly camel..."
Still, let's say you manage to find a monkey without any horrible plague. There is a classic blooper on this one. The original take, the line read "...a monkey with a horrible plaque" and what the hell is that? Some really tacky trophy? A sticky film on the teeth? Luckily, we had enough of a budget to reshoot that sentence, but we couldn't get the original location, so we had to make a fake set and match it exactly to the original location. There is still one more reason to avoid having sex with monekys. A very important reason. Even though scientists assure us that a pervert out boffing monkeys can't get one pregant, that is no guarantee that it won't someday happen. Well I have news for you. The world is full of people who were concieved when scientific insight implied that it should have been impossible. "I used a condom," "I had a vasectomy," "We're both guys," and "but she's a monkey." OK, the last two haven't produced a pregnancy yet, but that is no guarantee that they never will. And you know what happens when a human gets a monkey pregnant? Evil mutant supergenius talking apes! In recent years, it's been rumored that one of these super-ape hybrids may be running around New Hampshire That's what happens. So you may think that it's all right to have sex with monkeys, but if you keep this up this nasty behavior, it'll be a madhouse... a MADHOUSE!!! Yes, for those of you who may be wondering, that was Charleton Heston who typed in that last part. It was really amazing that we could get him to do a cameo in this rant. I still don't know how we pulled that one off
Sadly, there are negative influences out there. Influences which may drive an impressionable youth to sex with monkeys. Wizard Magazine, a popular comic book and sci-fi news magazine runs a feature showcasing the exploits of a "superhero" called Keep Squeezing Them Monkeys Lad. Sadly, squeezing monkes may lead to sex with monkeys. And even if it is accidental, once that evil mutant supergenius talking ape is born and gets his hands, er paws on that death ray, the damage is done. And who is going to save us from this evil talking ape? Wizard? Somehow I doubt that
Wizard Magazine subsequently dropped the Keep Squeezing Them Monkeys Lad character. Now, I'm not saying that I'm to credit for that, but you must admit, this rant did get people talking about what was wrong with the whole monkey squeezing issue.

Paid for by the Society to Prevent Monkey Sex

The Society to Prevent Monkey Sex was a great help here, because several sponsors pulled out of this rant after PTC pressure. The PTC is, oddly enough, a pro-monkey-sex organization. Incidentally, that little blurb is right justified with a p align tag, but there was no closing tag, so we had to add one in post production so that this comment wasn't also right-justified.

2002-07-06T04:08:00.000-04:00

Yet another frelling news roundup:
Me = bored. Bored and tense.
Too tense to come up with an original thought. Too bored to let that stop me from uploading a new blog.
So you get more Ananova links. Why Ananova? Because lately Drudge has gotten boring and repetitive.

A suspected burglar was really just some guy hired to dress up like a ghost for some kids. And he would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those pesky kids! Er, actually, that pesky bystander.
Damn. That seemed so much funnier before I typed it out.

A farmer has decided to let his 6-legged calf live a normal life. Lucky for it it's not a chicken, because I can guarantee you, no 6-legged chicken is going uneaten!

Chris Hoyle, a Dr. Who fan (and not the same Hoyle who did all those books on gambling) is making his own Dr. Who movie, which apparently involves two different versions of the Doctor from different times. Kind of like the Five Doctors, only there's 3 less, I guess. Anyway, if you're interested in seeing this film, or his other projects, check out his web site. Actually, looking at this site, these flicks look really cool. The screenshots look to have FX on par with the original BBC series, and, from what I've seen, this Chris guy looks suitable "Doctor-ish".
Sadly, I have not seen any links for a Dr. Who Meets Abbott & Costello video.
"I'm the Doctor."
"What's your name?"
"No. Who."
"That's what I'm asking! Who are you?"
"That's right."
"What are you, retarded?"
"No, my TARDIS is my time machine."

Speaking of things English, click here if you want to have nightmares tonight.

A Japanese man jumped from a moving train and landed, unhurt, on the rail platform. Officials are looking for him because he broke rail regulations, and because he has a promising career as a Ninja!

2002-07-05T23:44:00.000-04:00

All you need is love... and apparently a billion dollars:
Former Beatles guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says he has a plan to end world terrorism with good vibes, but claims he needs 1 billion dollars to do it.
Don't get me wrong, if I thought that this was on the level, I'd be all for it. If a billion dollars would bring peace, hey great! We spend a billion on one plane for war. But I have a hard time believing a spiritual leader when he claims he needs a billion dollars. He says he needs the money to train 40,000 "Vedic Pandit" meditators. Well, at a rate of $25,000, I think this may be more of a "Vedic bandit" situation.
Think about this. Why does it cost 25 grand per Pandit? Is the Maharishi going to send them to the exclusive Harvard Vedic program? It's not like you need a bunch of high-tech gear to be a Vedic Pandit. I'm not sure what a Vedic Pandit is, but the Vedas were written thousands of years ago. And I can't imagine these Pandits, whatever that is, being a super-recent invention. I mean, how did they train Vedic Pandits in the past? It couldn't have been that expensive.

It also occurs to me that, it's too bad that the Beatles got their spiritual advice solely from the Maharishi. I'm not saying they should not have consulted him, but if they had also gone to, oh say a Chinese martial arts guru, then maybe he could have taught them Chi Gung, and John Lennon would be alive today.

2002-07-04T16:12:00.000-04:00

On Independance Day:
Today is July 4th. The Fourth of July. 2002-07-04.
However you format the date, it's more than just a temporal coordinate, yet another 24 hour slice off of the fourth dimension.
It is a day that represents the beginning of the United States of America. Arguably the greatest country in the world. We're only a little more than 200 years old. The others have been around for far longer. Centuries, even a few millenia for some of them. Yet we, the United States, are so much more powerful than these other countries. We've never really lost a war (Vietnam was a tie!). Our economy is among the strongest in the world (even if it is taking a bit of a beating now, I predict that we shall return even stronger than before). Most of the inventions that shape our modern life originated here. The computer, the automobile, the airplane, space travel. Whenever there is trouble in the world, other nations look to us for leadership and/or assistance. Over the two centuries we have existed, we have gone from being a small ragtag collection of backwoods settlers to being the juggernaut that is the US of A.
But why? What is it about us that let us become more powerful, while other nations slowly declined? What is it about us that lets us shape so much of the world's destiny?
Is it because Americans as a stock are just inherently better? Well, America is composed of people from all over, so I suppose that hybrid vigor could be a factor, but I don't believe that genetics are a factor. There is something about America itself, the government, the society, the system, that is just a little better at bringing out our best. As a people and as individuals.
Some have said that we are better because God favors us. Again, I cannot endorse this argument. Not because God hates us or anything (as an agnostic, I can't even say if he exists or not, much less what country he would root for if he did). But because this is just the sort of thing that can never be proven or disproven. At least, not on the mortal plane. We sometimes say God is on our side. But most other nations do as well. Yet no one can offer any proof. There's no passage in the Bible that says "And lo, God shall be with the USA always."
To attribute our success (or our failures) to God, or any god, is, in my opinion, dangerous. Remember after 9/11, when Pat Robertson went on television and said that the reason we were attacked was that God lifted his protection from us because of gays and pagans and the like? Who does that sound like? If you said osama bin laden, then give yourself 25 XP for deductive reasoning. If God really operated like that, then wouldn't an asteroid have slammed into Vegas by now?
So, if it's not because of our genes, and it's not because of God, then why are we better? Well, remember earlier when I said it's just something about our system? I think it is time to elaborate on that. In America, we encourage people to succeed. The American Dream, they call it. Of course, we've never come to a consensus on what that Dream is. For some, it's a nice house in the suburbs with a white picket fence, pretty wife, and 2.5 kids (and someday, science will give little Bobby a new set of legs!). For others, it's a Manhattan penthouse apartment, a 7 figure salary, and lots of stocks. For others it's famous and fortune.
But regardless of what your American Dream is, this country allows anyone to try for it. Not all succeed, of course, but the opportunity is there. We allow the economic freedom to strive for success. We allow you to be an individual. To choose your own path to follow. Your destiny is yours to forge.
We also allow a lot of personal freedom. Not as much as Holland, but still... You can worship whatever god or gods you want, or none at all. Two (or more) consenting adults can explore their affection pretty much however they want behind closed doors. You can state your opinion without worrying about getting shot in the head some night by secret police. However, you may still lose your ABC talk show. You have the right to be an individual. To be you. The state exists for us, we do not exist for the state. And that is why we win. That is why we thrive.
However, the price of freedom is eternal vigilence. In today's America, it is not enough to simply pick a wing and enjoy the political ride. If you truly value your freedoms, the freedoms that made America great, you need to climb back inside the plane.
The Left Wing seeks to strip away the freedom to offend others and defend yourself. Political Correctness and the antigun lobby seek to chip away at the first 20% of our Bill of Rights. And leftist economic policies can only hurt our economy. Look at Russia. Look at Cuba. Look at China, a nation that is moving toward a more western outlook because that is the only way it can truly compete.
The Right Wing seeks to strip away the freedom to express yourself by imposing a moral code as rigid as those found in the Middle East. The freedom to be yourself. Your stock portfolio will be free, but you will not. Especially the religious right. I would hate to think that after we fought so valiantly against Islamic fundamentalism, that we would set up the Christian brand here. A taliban is a taliban. It doesn't matter which god they force the public to kneel to. Religion is and should be a personal choice. It is not up to the state, any state, to say what or who one should worship. If a god speaks to you, if you feel a special kinship with a deity, then great. Worship him. Pray to him. Let that divine relationship light up your life. Just realize that everyone else is also entitled to that right. The right to choose for themselves. Just remember this: It's not Islam that is the enemy. It is fundamentalism. Right now, the fundamentalists are in charge of the Islamic world. If we make America a theocracy, then we become that which we fight.
Of course, not every Democrat wants to turn America into Commieland, and not every Republican wants to turn it into Stickupyourassia. There are moderates and there are extremists. The key is to know which is which.

So, I guess what I am saying is this: We need to watch our leaders like a hawk. No, not a hawk. An eagle. With the keen eye of the eagle, we must examine the activities of those we elected to represent us. And I'm not talking about affairs with interns, or smoking pot and snorting blow. I'm talking about what they do in office. How they vote. What stance they take on the issues. Do they truly stand for the liberty that America was built on? Or have they sold themselves to lobbyists?

2002-07-03T23:49:00.000-04:00

News Roundup:
I decided to peruse Ananova.com, a fine news source from our friends across the pond. No. wait a second. Actually, England's across an ocean, not a pond. If it was just a pond, then the whole Mayflower trip wouldn't really have been such a big deal.
Anyway, there are three sections I read. Technology, Science and Discovery, and Quirkies.

Some interesting news in Thailand. Apparently, women at a Thai fossil site fainted and had to go to an exorcist. Were ancient spirits upset that they took little dino fossils? Local villagers say yes. Psychiatrist Inthira Puasakul (and yes, I did copy and paste that name. No way I'm typing all that) says that it's more likely that the group leader got scared, and this scared the others enough to cause them to faint. I don't know what the true story is here, but I'm kind of suspicious of that cantankerous old caretaker.

New Zealand's most dangerous spider is now endangered! Boo yeah! Let's see how you like it, you 8-legged arachnid bastard!

England's new ID cards could cause some serious problems. I don't like the idea of a national ID card, and America is debating such a course of action as well. But you know, I am kind of glad the UK is doing the ID card thing. That way, we Americans get to see if they bollux it all up, to use their parlance, before we institute our new ID card plan.
I also hate the "preffered traveler" idea. No article here, but I figured I may as well talk about it now. If we have a special airline account that lets people go through less security, then the terrorists will just get a few operatives into that program. I mean, look at the last batch. They had, for the most part, achieved respectable stations in the western world before they showed their true vile agenda. If the FBI and the CIA can't keep al quaida out, what makes us think that frickin' Airtran is gonna be a model of diligence?

A bunch of Washington DC protestors want to be made British citizens. Gee, it's a good thing they're not protesting ID cards.

A little friendly advice to fugitives: You may want to leave your bright orange "Hey, I'm a fugitive" shirt at home.
New orleans police are looking for drivers who stopped their cars to scoop up bags of money that fell out of an armored car. You know, I would have thought that an armored car, designed to keep money safe, wouldn't just sproing open the first time the driver hit a pothole. Shows what I know, I guess. The police do have descriptions of two of the money-grabbers. I bet one had an orange shirt.

For those of you who have accused Canadian pop star Bryan Adams of phoning in his work, congratulations, you're right!

Spanish scientists claim to have found a way to turn light into liquid. Don't get too excited though. It's all in a computer simulation. I hear they also proved that a merc can easily carry 5 rifles, 16 handguns, two rocket launchers, and a katana and still be able to punch and climb unimpeded.

A Croatian man was offered a settlement so large it would bankrupt his country (that's Croatia, for those of you who aren't paying attention). He only asked for 250,000 pounds, but was awarded 1.1 billion by the court. If he's awarded a lawsuit that would bankrupt the country, maybe they should just give him the country. I think this guy deserves props though. I don't know many people who would ask for such a low amount, even after the ubermassive damages amount was decided on. I know I would have asked for at least a few million.

Thailand is taking action against anti smoking ads paid for by tobacco firms, because the ads are actually promoting youth smoking. Wow. Ads paid for by cigarette makers are promoting smoking? It must be a mistake, I mean, I can't imagine why they'd do it on purpose. Next thing you know, the tobacco companies will start making stupid annoying "anti-smoking" ads over here that make kids want to smoke. And that's the Truth

2002-07-02T23:13:00.000-04:00

Bored:
Bored bored bored bored.
I'd just keep saying that, but then everyone would accuse me of copying Captain Murphy from Sealab 2021.
Listening to WinAmp right now. Beck's Loser just finished. I don't speak Spanish, but I've decided that "soy un perditor" means "Soylent Green is made of people! People!" I've also decided that Ace of Base's "Voulez Vous Dancer" means "You maniacs! You blew it up! You blew it all up!"
I watched some of that Macross Plus show on Action network yesterday. Maybe I should have watched the first 2 hours, because what I saw made no sense. Something about an AI falling in love with a pilot and taking over the SDF 1 or something. It had a fairly promising tentacle scene going toward the end, but they copped out. Oh well. At least the singer in this wasn't as annoying as Minmei, the Celine Dion of anime.
Not really much to talk about now either. My personal life is either too dull to mention, or stuff that I don't want you to know.
I made the mistake of looking at my 401K status page today. It had just gotten back the money it lost over the last two weeks, and now it's 300 down again after just two days. Somebody tell me again why I didn't just bury my cash in a coffee can in the backyard? Oh yeah. Because my apartment doesn't have a backyard, so I'd have to bury the coffee can under my neighbor's living room floor. That probably wouldn't go over very well. He's still pretty pissed about the goldfish.
The news is still craptastically dull and repetitive. The same dull stories over and over. Maybe to save time, we should just group them into one. Have MCI Worldcom send a few tanks into Global Crossing's corporate headquarters so Martha Stewart (the new head of Homeland Security) can tell us that we are now on Mauve Alert.
Well, there is some cool news. The freakin' sun is flaring up. Apparently we're in a 3 to 4 year "solar max", which is a new exercise apparatus which... no wait, that's SoloFlex. Solar max is a 3 to 4 year phase where solar activity is higher than usually. They only come around every 11 years. Of course, it'd probably be more newsworthy if the solar flare they're writing about was actually pointed anywhere near our planet. Not that I'm complaining, but why is this getting more airplay than the asteroid that almost slammed into us last month? Oh yeah, because that was about the zillionth one to almost slam into us lately.
Well, that's about all I have to rant about now. Later, my loyal readers.

2002-07-01T23:46:00.000-04:00

On Cattle Mutilations:
Argentina's latest cattle mutilations were finally explained. Rats. Not the alien Satan-worshipping medical experimenting McDonalds managers or whatever the hell the conspiracy theory set is hyping these days. Rats. I don't know about you, but I feel kind of let down. Like seeing the Loch Ness Monster and realizing it's just a log, or finding concrete proof of Bigfoot's existence and then having your friend explain that the Bigfoot everyone is looking for is an ape-man, not the short lived Pizza Hut meal.
Of course, this is assuming that Argentina's government isn't lying to everyone about the cattle mutilations.
Although, I do wonder. "But Senasa officials said the dozens of livestock whose genitals, tongues and other organs appeared to have been removed with surgical precision were victims of rodents, foxes or other animals."
So rats have surgical precision now? And I suppose that pigeons are laser-guided. Rats are horrid simplistic creatures with claws and fangs meant for rending prey. Not surgically removing bits of it, but ripping those bits out.
And check this out. "The strange circumstances surrounding the deaths -- one horse's hoof had a circle drawn into it and some animals were surrounded by charred grass -- led some locals to insist the deaths were the work of little green men, vampires or a satanic cult. Senasa gave no explanation for the burned grass and the circle on the hoof."
Well yeah, it's easy to explain things away if you don't bother to talk about the parts that don't fit your theory.

So now that I've mocked Senesa, which is Argentina's health service, not some person, just so those of you too lazy to click the article don't think I'm attacking a person here, I think I'll go into my thoughts on the cattle mutilation phenomenon.
Theory #1: Aliens did it. Why? I would think that an alien race advanced enough to cross the unimaginably empty gulf of empty space would have better things to do than slice up a bunch of cows. Of course, I would also think that they'd have better things to do than shove metal objects up farmers' butts, so maybe I'm not the ultimate authority on alien sociology that I pretend to be. Odds: 10 to 1
Theory #2: Satanists: Sounds viable, but wouldn't they be more likely to mess with goats? I mean, Satan is often portrayed as a goat. In fact, amny illustrations show the pentagram with goat ears, hoats, and point goat chin filling in the points of the star. Of course, maybe Satanists wouldn't want to cut up the animals that look like their dark lord and master (unless maybe Satan is in need of spare parts). So it's possible, but they'd be pretty goofy Satanists. Odds: 6 to 1
Theory #3: Vampires: I don't buy it. Vampires drink blood, but aren't often associated with abnormal meat consumption. Besides, you would think they would avoid cattle. They have a bad associaiton with steaks, after all. Odds: 15 to 1
Theory #4: The Town Chamber of Commerce: Think about it. You live in a dull, small redneck town that no one cares about. There's no industry, no tourism, just a few farms. So, maybe a little money under the table to pay for a couple cows, then you send the town surgeon to slice 'em up and leave them in the field. Suddenly, your town becomes famous for fifteen minutes. Odds: 4 to 1
Theory #5: Carrot Top: No evidence, but there's just something not right about that guy. And that precision cuttin is perfect practice for "dialing right down the middle". Odds: 3 to 1

So there you have it. Argentina's cattle mutilation was not rats, but popular prop-comic Carrot Top. The truth is finally revealed. Good night, and uh, OK, I still need to work on my signature closer line.

2002-06-30T01:39:00.000-04:00

Never mind my question in the last blog. I just realized, "brewing machine" came from "still"
Wow. Who knew the Japanese were so into moonshine. I would have figured saki and some kind of alcoholic tea, perhaps.

2002-06-29T22:25:00.000-04:00

Random Musings:
I'm checking my SiteMeter data (see the link on the column at left) and so far, no Mac users or Netscrape users have been here. Neither has anyone with Windows 95. But I've had visits from every other flavor of Windows with the exception of 3.1. Gee, does anyone still use that?
No Unix or Linux. No Eunichs either. The chart doesn't say whether any eunichs visited, but since none of the time zones in the report are in the Middle East, I don't think any sultan's harem guards have logged onto my blog just yet.
So far everyone speaks English. Which is good, as that's what I type in, and Altavista sucks at translating. Here, let me show you. I copied and pasted the above portion of this mini-rant and put it in Japanese, then back in English. Observe:

Optional Musings:
I inspect the link of the column which (looks at the SiteMeter my data with the left), for the present, there was no mac user or a user of the Netscrape here. Neither is anyone of windows 95. But there was a visits from all other tastes of the window in me excluding 3.1. The Gee, anyone uses brewing machine that, whether? UNIX the Linux. Eunichs. None of the time zones of the report where I do not think of that still it records to my blog exactly there is supervision of the harem with any sultan, but, every eunichs which how is visited being in the Middle East, you do not call the diagram. Everyone speaks English for the present. It is good or, either one, me type in does as that, as for the altavista there are some which are inhaled with translation. Here, me permit the fact that you are shown. I that and, and copy the above-mentioned part this small-sized rant and with the English which is placed with Japanese, paste. Observe:

Now where the hell did the "brewing machine" come from? Altavista is just making shit up at this point!
And if I do it again, it just returns "All your base are belong to us".

2002-06-29T14:47:00.000-04:00

Warning to Psychics:
I was bored this morning, as I often am on Saturday mornings, and most other mornings, and many afternoons, and, well, you get the picture.
Anyway, I get bored a lot, and when I get bored, I have thoughts like this.
A while ago, a magician called The Amazing Randi offered a one million dollar challenge to prove the existence of some paranormal phenomenon (I'm bored, but not bored enough to go to Yahoo and look up the year).
Anyway, the money is still unclaimed. So I was thinking, if I had a funky paranormal power that I could call upon on demand and actually prove in laboratory conditions, would I go look up old Randi and get my check?
Answer: no.
Why not? I could certainly use a million, right? Well, yeah. Short term it would rock. I'd probably also be a bit of a celebrity and maybe get an endorsement deal or even a late night talk show. My late night talk show would be different, however, because I would just sit across from the guest, ask the question, then read his mind and answer it for him. My talk show would be very popular with celebrities recovering from sore throats, suffering from laryngitis, or just those who have horrible voices.
But what then? I've seen enough sci fi movies and comic books to know that, if you have strange powers, and are indiscreet enough (and taking the Randi Challenge is pretty damn indiscreet), you end up in a government lab or being forced to work for the CIA or something. Not that being a covert psionic uberspy of death for the CIA wouldn't rock, but I'd like it to be my decision.
Am I saying that Randi is an NSA spook? Not at all. He's just a magician whose name sounds like a 19 year old porn star's. But if you get famous for being a psychic, and have gone so far as to prove it, then somewhere out there, someone will see you as a step toward completing his agenda, whatever that may be.
So then, are prospects too bleak for our intrepid psionic would-be mogul? Not really. There are plenty of discreet ways to make money with psi powers, that don't require you to go on national TV in a tinfoil pyramid hat holding an oversized novelty check.
Telepathy and precognition could both serve one quite well on the stock market. Oh, you probably won't be able to glance into the future to check your quotes on eTrade (btw, this mention of eTrade was free, but, eTrade, if you're reading, if you want the product placement gravy train to continue, contact me. I'm willing to offer very competitive rates), but if you get a flash of, say, hundreds of telecomm executives jumping out of 14th story windows, then you would know to sell those stocks. Is it safe to use your psychic gifts for stock purchasing? Are you kidding? In today's climate it may be the only safe form of insider trading left.
Or you could go on Jeodardy. Alex only knows those answers because he's got them on a card. And you only known them because you're using remote viewing to read that card. You still win. Especially if you use a subtle application of telekinesis to hold the other players' thumbs off of their buzzers. If you do take this route, all I ask is that you play the entire round using a Sean Connery impression.
This could also be good blackmail fuel. That congressman doesn't have to know exactly how you found out about his mistress or those illegal payoffs, all he has to know is that you know the access number to his secret Swiss account and have downloaded his transaction records.
Then of course, there's always gambling. Well, it's not really gambling if you've already foreseen that the Rams will win by 8 points.
Of course, some psychic powers might be a little harder to parlay into "legitimate" income. After all, no one really wants to buy your ectoplasm, and bent spoons are practically worthless, except perhaps as some form of weird sex toy. And if you're in the Matrix, then you can't even do that.
It's a good thing I thought of all this, because I just might be psychic. I had no idea how to spell "laryngitis" and just guessed, and what do you know, after checking dictionary.com, I find out I was right.

2002-06-25T00:23:00.000-04:00

This is the first blog. I don't really have anything to say at the moment, but that should change soon.
There are thinkers and doers. I'm a bit more of the thinker type. This site will, on occassion, have ideas that I think would make the world a better place. I envision a world of prosperity and knowledge and advancement. A world where science enhances the lives of the populace. A world where I have a flying car, dammit! It's already 2002!
OK, seriously, this site isn't all futurist rantings. It's also going to be weird stuff that makes no sense (or, as the former late night star Arsenio used to say, "things that make you go, hey, wait a second, didn't I used to have a career?!"), wicked satire and parody, and occasionally my thoughts on the paranormal. Plus the occasional bit on new movies, TV shows or comics. Basically, if you've ever read my old Rikonian Rants, you should have an idea of what this will be.
In other words, all things to all geeks. Well, maybe not quite that. I just reread the TOS and I can't post that hentai story where Omega Red takes on Buffy, Counsellor Troi and Dark Angel.