Uh.... Yeah. I'm still adjusting to a shift in schedules from regular 8-5 last week to a 10pm to 10am this week, and my brain is still not used to functioning at 3:38am.:)
You know, I kind of figured that it was a misplaced quote. Famous quotes often are. But I find it interesting, in any case, that a continent that brought us the likes of Voltaire and Des Cartes would lead itself down this path. I think the main reason is that Europe has always wanted to be seen as forward-thinking, even if it might mean looking badly in the eyes of the future.
Comedy Central ran a massive marathon of Warner Brothers cartoons a few months ago. I watched for Rabbit of Seville, but I never saw it. (I did learn that I sleep very well to these cartoons, though, as I fell asleep in front of the TV.) My love for the soundtracks of the various shorts I used to watch is what inspired me to get into listening to classical music. (And thanks for the references to the other two works. I'm looking for them now.)
You're too right about the current generation of music videos. A friend of mine always wants me to watch the videos on MTV-X, and I can't understand what she sees in them. They're almost painful to watch.
I didn't bother asking them about Felix and Popeye, because those shows had dropped off of TV (at least in Southern California) before they were born. When in elementary school, I woke up at 6:30 to watch Felix.::sigh:: The good old days.
Felix the Cat
The wonderful, wonderful cat
Whenever he gets in a fix,
He reaches into his bag of tricks!
Felix the Cat
The wonderful, wonderful cat
You'll laugh so much your sides will ache
Your heart will go pittery-pat
Watching Felix the Wonderful Cat
I'm 99% certain that's right. I haven't seen the show in probably 18 years.
You're right about Rocky and Bullwinkle, though. I should ask them.
Wasn't it Voltaire who said, "I may not believe in what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to do so?" (Or something along those lines)
I remember my Saturdays used to start at 7am to catch cartoons, and Bugs Bunny was always the centerpiece. Sundays started at 8am with Popeye. Now when I go to look at any of broadcast networks on the weekends, I see news, I see infomercials, and I see some really off-the-wall 'educational' programming, and I realize that there is an entire generation of kids growing up without the wonderful experiences I had.
The first purchase I make when I find out I'm going to be a dad is a massive collection of cartoons from Warner Brothers and the like. My kid's not growing up on Spongebob Squarepants.
There used to be a Warner Brothers store near me, and they had hanging on one wall a large image of a number of classic characters standing in the shadows, the spotlight on a microphone with nobody there to use it. It was a memorial to Mel Blanc, and even now when I think of it, I get a little misty-eyed. In an odd way, I look forward to the tribute that will be paid to Chuck Jones.
What I find saddest, though, is a conversation I recently had with a friend's kids. They're 8 and 6, and they know who the Rugrats and Spongebob Squarepants (that one scares me) are, but they barely know who Bugs Bunny is, thought they knew Daffy and Elmer, recognized Yosemite Sam, but had no clue who the Tazmanian Devil, Marvin the Martian, Wile E. Coyote, the Road Runner, or Sylvester are. (Oddly enough, the younger of the two knew of Marvin's dog, and described him enough to convince me. Weird.) Even the youngest are being pulled so far into the "NEW NEW NEW" mentality pervading media culture that they have no clue what led to the current generation. Some of them don't even know about Mickey and Minnie, but they know everything about the Little Mermaid or the Lion King.
My children will know the classics. Oh, yes. They will know.
Not having tooltips. Tooltips are good. Use them. Everywhere.
True to a point. There are a number of programs I use that are simple, and yet use tooltips. I don't need them after a while, and they can start to cover up useful things. While I agree that tooltips are a Good Thing in general, having tooltips and an option to turn them off is a Very Good Thing(TM).
As I remember it I was told that by someone who was in Vietnam (a Huey door gunner, specifically), but I could be mistaken. I also should have clarified that I was referring to direct-fire weapons, and not mortars, grenades, rockets, etc.
I actually have most of the Geneva conventions and related and similar treaties in a series of text files. I should go sift through them.
IIRC,.50cal/12.7mm and above are often classified as anti-vehicle. International rules of warfare prohibit intentional use of anti-vehicle weapons against humans.
Doesn't stop it in practice, and if all you have is such a weapon when others are shooting at you, it's hard to go against you even if someone did bring charges.
Damn you people. You made me have to go look up that Powderhorn silo. Now my head hurts just THINKING about that kind of capacity. I hope whoever uses those is EMP shielded, too.
Not to mention pity for the junior network tech who gets the job of loading 144,000 tapes.
That was likely a typo, if your memory isn't a little off. It's not unusual for Japanese companies to have 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 year business plans (I used to work at Toshiba), but I think 200 years would be a little much.
Even Deng Xiaoping only planned 100 years ahead for China.
People of any race will react the same way in similar situations. Whites, Asians, Indians, Hispanics, Native Americans.... Put them in a situation where they see another force as the aggressor and you can get a mob mentality similar to what happened in Somalia.
I didn't see them as barbarians. I saw them as desperate people who believed what Aidid told them, much to their detriment.
It's not Pearl Harbor. It's two hours and 24 minutes of war. (Well, maybe a little less. The opening and closing credits aren't so much so.)
Re:They should've called it "Black Men Down"
on
Review: Black Hawk Down
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"And Slawomir Idzik's lighting was great at times, but he also shot African faces as if they were Orcs from Lord of the Rings, bringing out extreme blackness as if it were an indication of evil."
Have you ever seen regular pictures and photos of the natives of the area? They really are that dark. It wasn't a portrayal of evil. It was showing them factually. They tend to be that dark because of the omnipresent sun.
The child was not "obviously" killed by American forces. He was killed, but by whom is not stated. That scene takes place right around the border between the hostile and friendly zones. At that point, most American fire was being directed BACK at the hostile zone. The child could have been killed by American fire or could have been killed by Somali fire. The point of the scene was to be ambiguous.
And nobody will do any drilling because the whole area is unsafe.
I work for an oil company. Drilling is expensive and time consuming when you have reasonable knowledge of potential deposits. When there's no reason to suspect it or when it's in the midst of a civil war, it's just a Bad Idea. We have enough trouble with people in hotspots around the world as it is. Look at Chevron's problems in Western Africa: they have to deal with kidnappings and locals bombing the oil pipelines. Then when the cleanup crews are sent in, they are sometimes shot at as they try to finish their work.
The movie is not about the political controversy at all. I've seen it twice now, and will probably see it two or three more times in the theaters.
As stated early in the film, "When the shooting starts, all that political bullshit goes right out the window." (Paraphrased) One of the Deltas also says something that rings true. "When I go home, people ask me, 'Hoot, why do you do it? Are you some kinda war junkie?' I don't say a thing. They won't understand. It's not about war. It's about the men beside you." (Again, paraphrasing.)
I've never served in the military. I know many who do. One of my dad's friends was a door gunner in Vietnam. He shot trees. That's what's in his mind. But he went out there almost everyday and shot those trees because if he didn't, men would die. What mattered was what he did when he had to be there.
The vast majority of us have never experienced war. Even the events of the last few months have, for most of us, essentially been peripheral. We went through a few days, perhaps a couple of weeks of shock, and then went forward with our lives. We've never been shot at, we've never watched people around us die in a hail of gunfire.
And if your summary really is "Instead, everything gets, blowd up real good. The end.", then you completely missed the point of the film.
Knowing someone in the gaming QA arena (supervisor at a major company), I can honestly testify that gaming QA is not nearly as fun as most people think. At crunch time, when you're playing the game for 12 hours a day every day for six days a week for a month, it gets REALLY, REALLY boring. I've learned to not discuss games of any kind during said crunch periods. The initial few days, perhaps through to a full week are fun, but after that the mindless tedium of replicating bugs and testing every possible combination of commands really grates on a person. I can't imagine what testing the latest version of a major application is like.
Keep in mind that the Herky-birds are still in *mass production*, unlike most other planes from that era. The P-3 may also be spit out from time to time, but I think those two planes are far different cases when compared to the B-52. Buff has seen some systems overhauls, but has not changed much in 40 years. The P-3 and C-130, though, have been almost completely reworked, as I believe they have almost all (at least in US service) gotten new engines, new cockpits, and sometimes even new wings.
Incidentally, a friend of the family works for Boeing as a manufacturer liaison (or something like that). He's trying to get me artist conceptions of a re-engined B-52. Boeing approached the USAF about it a couple of years ago, taking out the eight old Pratt & Whitney engines in favor of four newer engines from P&W or GE. I think he mentioned the same engine models as are used on the 757, which would make for a less noisy, more fuel-efficient, and, perhaps most importantly, less easy to see aircraft. The B-52 currently burns its fuel in a VERY dirty way; if you've ever seen one in flight at high thrust levels, you know what I'm talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
Spongebob scares me. He's too.... Spongey. Or something.
Then again, raisins scare me. They're the undead of the fruit world.
Found the lithograph here....
http://www.thegremlin.com/frame479307.html
$200 matted and framed, or $125 rolled in a tube. I think I might be using my credit card here soon.....
Uh.... Yeah. I'm still adjusting to a shift in schedules from regular 8-5 last week to a 10pm to 10am this week, and my brain is still not used to functioning at 3:38am. :)
You know, I kind of figured that it was a misplaced quote. Famous quotes often are. But I find it interesting, in any case, that a continent that brought us the likes of Voltaire and Des Cartes would lead itself down this path. I think the main reason is that Europe has always wanted to be seen as forward-thinking, even if it might mean looking badly in the eyes of the future.
I hum it while I wash my own hair, as well as the rare cases when I find myself washing someone else's hair. It's not scary. It's just ingrained.
You're too right about the current generation of music videos. A friend of mine always wants me to watch the videos on MTV-X, and I can't understand what she sees in them. They're almost painful to watch.
Felix the Cat
The wonderful, wonderful cat
Whenever he gets in a fix,
He reaches into his bag of tricks!
Felix the Cat
The wonderful, wonderful cat
You'll laugh so much your sides will ache
Your heart will go pittery-pat
Watching Felix the Wonderful Cat
I'm 99% certain that's right. I haven't seen the show in probably 18 years.
You're right about Rocky and Bullwinkle, though. I should ask them.
Wasn't it Voltaire who said, "I may not believe in what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to do so?" (Or something along those lines)
I remember my Saturdays used to start at 7am to catch cartoons, and Bugs Bunny was always the centerpiece. Sundays started at 8am with Popeye. Now when I go to look at any of broadcast networks on the weekends, I see news, I see infomercials, and I see some really off-the-wall 'educational' programming, and I realize that there is an entire generation of kids growing up without the wonderful experiences I had.
The first purchase I make when I find out I'm going to be a dad is a massive collection of cartoons from Warner Brothers and the like. My kid's not growing up on Spongebob Squarepants.
There used to be a Warner Brothers store near me, and they had hanging on one wall a large image of a number of classic characters standing in the shadows, the spotlight on a microphone with nobody there to use it. It was a memorial to Mel Blanc, and even now when I think of it, I get a little misty-eyed. In an odd way, I look forward to the tribute that will be paid to Chuck Jones.
What I find saddest, though, is a conversation I recently had with a friend's kids. They're 8 and 6, and they know who the Rugrats and Spongebob Squarepants (that one scares me) are, but they barely know who Bugs Bunny is, thought they knew Daffy and Elmer, recognized Yosemite Sam, but had no clue who the Tazmanian Devil, Marvin the Martian, Wile E. Coyote, the Road Runner, or Sylvester are. (Oddly enough, the younger of the two knew of Marvin's dog, and described him enough to convince me. Weird.) Even the youngest are being pulled so far into the "NEW NEW NEW" mentality pervading media culture that they have no clue what led to the current generation. Some of them don't even know about Mickey and Minnie, but they know everything about the Little Mermaid or the Lion King.
My children will know the classics. Oh, yes. They will know.
True to a point. There are a number of programs I use that are simple, and yet use tooltips. I don't need them after a while, and they can start to cover up useful things. While I agree that tooltips are a Good Thing in general, having tooltips and an option to turn them off is a Very Good Thing(TM).
As I remember it I was told that by someone who was in Vietnam (a Huey door gunner, specifically), but I could be mistaken. I also should have clarified that I was referring to direct-fire weapons, and not mortars, grenades, rockets, etc.
I actually have most of the Geneva conventions and related and similar treaties in a series of text files. I should go sift through them.
IIRC, .50cal/12.7mm and above are often classified as anti-vehicle. International rules of warfare prohibit intentional use of anti-vehicle weapons against humans.
Doesn't stop it in practice, and if all you have is such a weapon when others are shooting at you, it's hard to go against you even if someone did bring charges.
Damn you people. You made me have to go look up that Powderhorn silo. Now my head hurts just THINKING about that kind of capacity. I hope whoever uses those is EMP shielded, too.
Not to mention pity for the junior network tech who gets the job of loading 144,000 tapes.
I just pointed this out to a colleage.
Only on Slashdot can a discussion about a new filing system degenerate to an argument on the Latin roots of a technology term.
That was likely a typo, if your memory isn't a little off. It's not unusual for Japanese companies to have 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, and 50 year business plans (I used to work at Toshiba), but I think 200 years would be a little much.
Even Deng Xiaoping only planned 100 years ahead for China.
People of any race will react the same way in similar situations. Whites, Asians, Indians, Hispanics, Native Americans.... Put them in a situation where they see another force as the aggressor and you can get a mob mentality similar to what happened in Somalia.
I didn't see them as barbarians. I saw them as desperate people who believed what Aidid told them, much to their detriment.
The name was changed at the request of the Army so as not to detract from the story that covered the rest of the soldiers involved in the action.
They also melted a couple of other people into the Grimes character, so it's not just a simple name change.
It's not Pearl Harbor. It's two hours and 24 minutes of war. (Well, maybe a little less. The opening and closing credits aren't so much so.)
"And Slawomir Idzik's lighting was great at times, but he also shot African faces as if they were Orcs from Lord of the Rings, bringing out extreme blackness as if it were an indication of evil."
Have you ever seen regular pictures and photos of the natives of the area? They really are that dark. It wasn't a portrayal of evil. It was showing them factually. They tend to be that dark because of the omnipresent sun.
Minor spoilage warning.
x
x
x
The child was not "obviously" killed by American forces. He was killed, but by whom is not stated. That scene takes place right around the border between the hostile and friendly zones. At that point, most American fire was being directed BACK at the hostile zone. The child could have been killed by American fire or could have been killed by Somali fire. The point of the scene was to be ambiguous.
And nobody will do any drilling because the whole area is unsafe.
I work for an oil company. Drilling is expensive and time consuming when you have reasonable knowledge of potential deposits. When there's no reason to suspect it or when it's in the midst of a civil war, it's just a Bad Idea. We have enough trouble with people in hotspots around the world as it is. Look at Chevron's problems in Western Africa: they have to deal with kidnappings and locals bombing the oil pipelines. Then when the cleanup crews are sent in, they are sometimes shot at as they try to finish their work.
The movie is not about the political controversy at all. I've seen it twice now, and will probably see it two or three more times in the theaters.
As stated early in the film, "When the shooting starts, all that political bullshit goes right out the window." (Paraphrased) One of the Deltas also says something that rings true. "When I go home, people ask me, 'Hoot, why do you do it? Are you some kinda war junkie?' I don't say a thing. They won't understand. It's not about war. It's about the men beside you." (Again, paraphrasing.)
I've never served in the military. I know many who do. One of my dad's friends was a door gunner in Vietnam. He shot trees. That's what's in his mind. But he went out there almost everyday and shot those trees because if he didn't, men would die. What mattered was what he did when he had to be there.
The vast majority of us have never experienced war. Even the events of the last few months have, for most of us, essentially been peripheral. We went through a few days, perhaps a couple of weeks of shock, and then went forward with our lives. We've never been shot at, we've never watched people around us die in a hail of gunfire.
And if your summary really is "Instead, everything gets, blowd up real good. The end.", then you completely missed the point of the film.
Knowing someone in the gaming QA arena (supervisor at a major company), I can honestly testify that gaming QA is not nearly as fun as most people think. At crunch time, when you're playing the game for 12 hours a day every day for six days a week for a month, it gets REALLY, REALLY boring. I've learned to not discuss games of any kind during said crunch periods. The initial few days, perhaps through to a full week are fun, but after that the mindless tedium of replicating bugs and testing every possible combination of commands really grates on a person. I can't imagine what testing the latest version of a major application is like.
Keep in mind that the Herky-birds are still in *mass production*, unlike most other planes from that era. The P-3 may also be spit out from time to time, but I think those two planes are far different cases when compared to the B-52. Buff has seen some systems overhauls, but has not changed much in 40 years. The P-3 and C-130, though, have been almost completely reworked, as I believe they have almost all (at least in US service) gotten new engines, new cockpits, and sometimes even new wings.
Incidentally, a friend of the family works for Boeing as a manufacturer liaison (or something like that). He's trying to get me artist conceptions of a re-engined B-52. Boeing approached the USAF about it a couple of years ago, taking out the eight old Pratt & Whitney engines in favor of four newer engines from P&W or GE. I think he mentioned the same engine models as are used on the 757, which would make for a less noisy, more fuel-efficient, and, perhaps most importantly, less easy to see aircraft. The B-52 currently burns its fuel in a VERY dirty way; if you've ever seen one in flight at high thrust levels, you know what I'm talking about.