Filed Under: Journal - General

Recently the prospect of ending up on CBC Radio crossed my plate when I was referred by a friend because of my admittedly anti-social, social smoking habits. This encounter was interesting, springing up in me several urges ranging from frightened to opportunist. What if I make an ass of myself? How can I fit George Bush bashing into it? What if I cough too much? Can I plug indi-media? I sneeze a lot and Grizzly always meows when I'm on the phone... oh good Christ!

Another feeling sprout up in me, though. After I spoke with the reporter doing the story it occurred to me that I was witnessing the distortion of the news first hand.

I should explain. In Montreal a ban on smoking in restaurants is imminent. This has caused the predictably mixed responses that any such freedom limiting, benevolent parent legislation brings about. I don't want to sound overly negative, I agree with the legislation whole heartedly. Ninety percent heartedly, at least. I've never been a big fan of government legislation of behaviour, but it seems to be that the market will always benefit from selling fixes to addicted smokers, and so public health and employee health be damned. In this light I'm pleased that the government is taking action to force the ethical position upon smokers. Of course, they aren't doing it for the sake of right and wrong, the government is doing it because the smoking profitability matrix has shown that long term care of cancer patients is out-weighing the short term gains of taxation on big tobacco. Besides, it is becoming more and more clear that big tobacco will find ways around taxation whenever possible. Follow the money.

Now what am I talking about in terms of the distortions of the media? I talked with a very nice woman yesterday who asked some tentative questions about my smoking habits, my opinion of the impending ban and its impending effect on my smoking habits. She was friendly, apparently intelligent and smooth and informal with her questions. In a very subtle way she was disarming, which while in this particular case wasn't necessary, I suspect it makes her quite a good interviewer. It was the result of the pre-pre-interview which struck me. I was told that I didn't meet the criteria of the story. I didn't smoke enough, and I didn't plan to "quit because of the ban" (paraphrased). I'm not particularly bitter that I was excluded, mind you, because I was terrified of doing the interview anyway. It occurs to me that I was too neutral.

Too Neutral

What does too neutral mean? I think it means that I answered her questions with an even keel. "Do I agree with the ban?" I hate government legislation of private behaviour, I say, but I think that businesses will never 'do the right thing' left to their own devices, so it is a necessary evil. Obviously employees will greatly benefit from this, if no one else. "How much do you smoke per day?" Average? Well, I smoke none per day, but when I drink I smoke a lot, so I guess somewhere around a pack every four or five days. "Do you think the ban will compel you to stop smoking?" Well, I'll smoke less because when I'm socially drinking I won't be able to smoke as easily, so it will reduce my smoking, but it has no real effect on my decision making.

Neutral. Every answer is neutral. It seems to me to be the kind of answers that people don't fight over. Of course I'm not sure, but it seems very likely to me that the radio program in question will have extreme viewpoints which virtually yell at each-other. There is no round table of misc. laymen interacting, but the editing will likely be like every other story I've read, seen or heard and will pit the blind opinions blindly against each-other in meta-round table format.

Is this important? Not really. Is this authoritative or researched? Not in the slightest. It does feel like a micro-chasm of every debate we see or hear about, however. Most importantly, it makes me wonder how many people are neutral, and so don't fit the story.

No one goes to a rally with a sign that says "A-Ok!", I guess, and there sure isn't any coverage of anyone who does.

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Filed Under: Journal - General

"A guy who the jury just two weeks ago found absolutely, if he'd been truthful, we could have stopped short that which occurred on September 11, is going to be allowed to live on my dime." -- Michael Smerconish

Unfortunately reality is quite different than this particular opinion given that people like Carie Lemack, daughter of America Airlines Flight 11 passenger Judy Larocque have said in no uncertain terms that they agree with the sentencing. In fact, all she wants is Moussaoui out of the headlines. Good job MSNBC.

My mother, Judy Larocque, was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11, and we're from Boston, and this is my first time at the Alexandria courthouse today. And I have to say I'm glad to see that this will be the last day that Mr. Moussaoui is in the headlines. He's going to be in jail for the rest of his life, which is exactly what this man deserves.

He's an al-Qaeda wannabe. And he does not deserve any credit for 9/11, because he was not part of it, and I am so glad the jury recognized that and realized that he just wanted to kill Americans, but he wasn't even skilled enough to be able to do that.

What I would like to know is why multiple Presidents were able to preserve the rights and freedoms of American citizens during the terrifying and genuine threat that was the Cold War but to defeat desperate, subjugated people without so much as a functioning standing army Americans need to shred the Constitution? Why is there the repeated pronouncement from the administration and their media clients that anyone who wants to preserve their rights or who wants to show some compassion and understanding to our enemies are somehow cowards. All the while they assure us that instinctively bombing defenseless civilians thousands of kilometers away is a brave and noble act.

That isn't how bravery works. Hitler was a coward. Gandhi was brave. The KKK were cowards. Rosa Parks was brave. The Mexican police were cowards. Digna Ochoa was brave.

Go ahead and give away the store to protect yourself from fundamentalists with no power, no running water who have been ground into the sand for the last hundred years by people just like you. I'm sure your sons and daughters will be happy to give up an arm, a leg, their sanity or their lives so you can feel a little safer in the suburbs.

You know what? You're right. You are a sissy.

"I can't buy into this logic of transcending hatred. This is the sissification of America." -- Michael Smerconish

Phyllis Rodriguez lost her son Gregory, 31 to the attacks on 9/11. Phyllis met with Aicha El Wafi in private after November 2002. That's right, Aicha El Wafi, mother of Moussaoui. These two women have all the reason in the world to hate each other, surprisingly even more than a Republican like Smerconish who presumably lost some sleep on 9/11. How do these women react, you ask? I'll let her tell you:

We were all nervous about meeting each other, but she broke the tension for everybody by opening up the conversation with an apology to us and an expression of sympathy. She said, `I don't know if my son is guilty or innocent, but I'm so sorry for your losses.' We responded to the warmth and generosity of Aicha.

Since then, I have maintained a friendship with her, and particularly in the last year since Zacarias Moussaoui pleaded guilty, we have become very close.

Want to know why you can't buy into this logic of transcending hatred, Michael? It's because Michael Smerconish is a coward. Phyllis Rodriguez is brave.

After the fact...

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Filed Under: Journal - General

"I wish I wasn't [the richest man in the world]" -- Bill "Downtrodden" Gates

I could make a comment, but the ultraviolet dimwittery speaks for itself.

No, I will make a comment: Africa wouldn't mind a 9 billion dollar infusion into aids research or for medication. Then lots of lucky poor people might live and you'd get the honour of being the second richest. Then if you REALLY wanted to slum it you could give 12 billion more to impoverished nations rapidly becoming subjugated to the WTO and IMF so they can keep getting luxuries like water and food. Then you get to be really lucky and be the third richest.

And here's a crazy fucking thought, you could give a paltry 28 billion to alternative fuel research, or improving educational infrastructure, or cancer research, or into researching a KIND OF VELCRO WHICH DOESN'T MAKE A TEARING SOUND WHEN IT SEPARATES, which would STILL be more useful then sitting in your f-ing bank account. Oh, and even if you DO give that 49 billion away I can suggest other things you might do with the over a billion you STILL have left.

Christ. What a JACKASS. Let me rephrase that quote for you guys:

"I wish I didn't have to sleep so I could keep kicking poor people in the sack over and over again without taking a break for 7 hours a night." -- Bill "Downtrodden" Gates

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Filed Under: Opinion

Bill O'Reilly has been doing as Bill O'Reillly does and this time seems to have veered further out of reality than normal. On March 2nd basically threatened a caller that the police would be paying him a visit for saying something on the air that O'Reilly didn't like. This is crazy. It's crazy and it's, quite honestly, as fascist as anything I've seen in quite some time. I mean, it's one thing to yell at someone and talk over their points on your own opinion show but it's a completely different thing to imply that that the police will come lock you up for having a different opinion.

However it is well known that O'Reilly is crazy, so for once I'm here to defend him, of sorts. Actually, it's less a matter of defending him and more a matter of chiding Olbermann and even Media Matters for intentionally misrepresenting the facts to make O'Reilly look worse than he should. This is known as fighting fire with fire, and it sucks. Olbermann's commentary is clearly intended more for the comedic value than actually to report anything of detailed substance, so I'm willing to give him a partial pass, but Media Matters should know better. Specifically, I'm talking about the name of, and this section of their article: O'Reilly threatened radio show caller with "a little visit" from "Fox security" for mentioning Olbermann's name on the air

The caller began by telling O'Reilly, "I like to listen to you during the day." Continuing, the caller stated, "I think Keith Olbermann's show," at which point O'Reilly disconnected the call, proclaiming: "Mike is -- he's a gone guy. You know, we have his -- we have your phone numbers, by the way. So, if you're listening, Mike, we have your phone number, and we're going to turn it over to Fox security, and you'll be getting a little visit."

The details here are the problem, however. O'Reilly didn't disconnect the call where Media Matters, and Olbermann imply he did. Nor is he necessarily reacting to the callers statements which hit the air. As Olbermann admits in his own commentary what hit the air is whatever survived from an (up to, or possibly longer than) 7 second dump of call. Clearly O'Reilly is reacting to the contents of those 7 or more seconds, not to the utterance of Olbermann's name.

Shame Media Matters, shame. This is exactly the kind of misrepresentation that you're supposed to be illuminating, not creating. As unlikely as I find it, it is entirely possible that those 7 seconds contain threats of physical violence, or extremely obscene content which justify the response O'Reilly aired. Again, I'll say that I personally REALLY doubt that. Really, really doubt it. In any case, certainly the highroad would have been a better position for O'Reilly to take given the offending comments had been dumped, but this is O'Reillly, so what do you expect? That doesn't change the fact, however, that neither Olbermann or Media Matters (or the countless others reporting on this) have any proof as to what was actually said, and pretending that the second of audio before the dump is what O'Reilly was responding to is exactly the kind of biased reporting that O'Reilly is fantastic at.

As Colbert would say, you guys are "On Notice".

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Filed Under: Journal - General

To those who ask if Onyx is dead I ask you: Am I dead? No. Not yet. So no such luck. Onyx is still alive and twitching.

That's right. We're in the last 10% that takes 90% of the time. Boy, does it ever. The good news is that the game is actually playable, if impossible at the moment. The AI is actually working and puts up a "good" fight in that you won't live for more than a few seconds in some of the skirmish missions.

I just finished writing the spacial orientation systems so that the universe is consistent, and countless loose ends have been tied bringing the game to the brink of a first techdemo release. I've had to prune the storyline to nothing but some skirmish missions for the first release for the sake of getting something out before I die, but there will be a release to a few beta testers soon.

God help me, this game will be given away for free and cost me a mint in bandwidth, or so help me, I'll kill everyone on the planet ... a couple of times.

On that cheery note, here are three new screenshots showing off the racing minigames and a rather pointless view of orbit around one of the staging areas visited early in the game.

We're not done yet. Don't you worry; and to those poor souls that helped get it this far, I will be begging you for more game assets soon. Be afraid.

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Filed Under: Journal - General

Ezra Levant has hit the nail on the head as to why American and Canadian press in general has really dropped the ball on this whole cartoon/rioting escapade. Rather than paraphrase I'm just going to throw out some of his quotes from this CBC article.

I'm doing something completely normal. I'm publishing the centre of a controversy. That's what news magazines do.

Don't tell me the CBC respects religion. It's afraid of one religion.

We're not publishing them for their editorial merits. They're boring cartoons, they're bland. We're not running them because we share their views.

We're running them because they're the central fact that caused radical Muslims around the world to riot.

Absolutely right, sir. Just like he says in the article, if these were Jews burning down embassies over cartoons of the Holocaust then those cartoons should be published too. It's news. That is their job. The reason the press in North America have been censoring themselves has nothing to do with respect, it's either an attempt at PR juggling now that the spotlight has been shone on anyone republishing the cartoons, or more likely, it is a matter of fear. We're willing to bring the Middle East freedom at the points of our sons and daughters bayonets, but we're afraid of publishing cartoons that might make these faceless threats angry.

It's exactly this kind of chilling effect which makes it critical that free speech be unabridged. It's this kind of PR/fear that keeps the press from asking the President hard, hard questions about statements like "... we need common-sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God".

Critical examination of religion, religious beliefs and the events that come out of those beliefs is absolutely crucial for a modern society which claims to keep an open and free dialog. These issues affect all of our lives, religious or not, and often it affects our lives in terribly disruptive or violent ways. If the press becomes afraid of taking long hard looks at religion then we risk losing the right to exercise our own beliefs without fear of repercussion and even worse we legitimise the kind of barbaric nonsense going on in this current round of rioting.

I previously published two of the most mentioned cartoons if you're curious. Luckily it's easy for me to do because I'm nowhere near important enough to be endangered by doing so. I really hope that this shameful response by our mainstream press doesn't repeat in the future.

After the fact...

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Filed Under: Opinion

I'm not even saying it is accurate, just that it was fun to make.

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Filed Under: Opinion

Wadda' Ya Get When You Mix White Supremacy With Sanity? It Isn't A Schicht-Kuchen, That's For Sure

I'm always happy to have a news post go by where this guy hasn't done something dangerous, scary or crazy but unfortunately it wasn't in the cards in the past couple of weeks. In fact he's gone and done something dangerous, crazy and scary. We might want to slap irresponsible on there too.

I'm regularly stricken with the sheer velocity with which Turner changes his stance on race given his penchant for oscillating between conservative isolationist and outright hating crazy-person, but little compares with the tower of waffles served up by the man in the last few weeks. Among the perpetual masturbatory and high school-ish inner politicking of the various White Supremacist groups Hal Turner has alone stepped forward to raise the torch of intolerance and lead the way to Kingston, New York. He's leaving the pitch-fork wielding to the vivacious "angrywhitewoman", Turner supporter and clearly the holder of several doctorates.

There's too much to get into here for the moment, but the Kingston Times has this background. Oh, and I'm putting in my early prediction that the Rally slated for Nov 19th at 12 noon will break down into a fully fledged riot some time around 12:15. I mean, if there are Nazi's there (only possibly in uniform) what could possibly go wrong?

Hello Religion, My Old Friend, I've Come to Blame Ignorance On You Again

Because Intelligent Design is softly creeping, Left it's seeds while Dover was sleeping, That's right, the man who brought you "...but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it." and that accepting gays might bring God's wrath in various forms of biblical unpleasantness, is now after the Godless heathens in Dover.

Pat Robertson has not too subtly alluded to the fact that should Dover's citizens be struck with, oh I don't know, "possibly a meteor", not to go praying to God for help. Wait, that's not an allusion! "I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God..." seems to be pretty darn literal. All of this forces me to wonder what Robertson's stake in this really is. After all, one of the biggest distinguishing features of Intelligent Design from Creationism is that ID doesn't require any specific deity. Hence not quite as obviously supernatural and therefore quite slightly more likely to slip under the pesky logic radar that science professors so childishly cling to. Wait, you don't mean to tell me that Intelligent Design is exactly the same thing as Creationism only in Cool Blue, do you?

Regardless, there seems to be a lot of invoking of wraith, pestilence and general nastiness going around in the press these days. It's good to see, too, I must say. Nothing like a Fair and Balanced judgement from O'Reilly to the tune of:

We're going to say, "look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.

Seriously, people, I wish I was making this stuff up. Just to restore the religious balance though, I should mention that hardcore and immoral Muslims are fucktards too, because I don't want to be unduly harsh to only the Christian idiots.

Trivia: Who is 6'9, Weighs 256 Pounds, is My Brand New Hero and Has a Name With Too Many Syllables For a Good Haiku?

If you guessed the man who sidestepped a government stonewall against doing high cost charity work and genuinely helped in the rebuilding of New Orleans then you guessed right! That's right, NBA player Karl Malone used some of his money and properties to do the right thing much to the chagrin of the gouging contractors, and boy-howdy does it ever make me smile every time I think about it.

Want to know something else crazy? It would seem that Costco is a pretty decent company run by a pretty decent guy. When the hell did that happen? We're talking about a retailer paying $17 an hour, good health plans and a CEO who says insanely sane things like "Having an individual who is making 100 or 200 or 300 times more than the average person working on the floor is wrong." about his own salary! In response boorish, elitist assho... sorry, analysts like Emme Kozloff were heard spouting such gems as "He has been too benevolent" about his policies towards his employees; and Douche Bag representative .. oh sorry, Deutsche Bank representative Bill Dreher could be heard vomiting "it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder".

What I have to ask here is how our culture has become so nakedly elitist that commentary like the above can come out without so much as a raised eyebrow? Is this actually normal? I know we have mass layoffs by successful companies, record oil profits along side record oil prices and oh yeah, Halliburton is still making a metric googol of money, but do we never hit a point where the pure abrasion of it is just too much to bear? I guess if Wal-Mart (the movie), Wal-Mart (the dehumanizing discrimination) and Wal-Mart (epically corrupt) isn't enough we must have a ways to go.

How About Something Not a Company Behaving Badly? No? Ok!

Sony and DRM. They're like abusive, capricious peas in a pod. Dirty, slimy, insecure peas it would seem since their possibly illegal rootkit has recently made the press when their unwelcome DRM scheme started facilitating the spread of a trojan. Way to make a security enhancing product you misfitted retards. The good news, though, is that their retardation is at least cross platform and will hopefully be causing security holes on the soon Mac too. (Thanks for the lead on this one, pierre)

And Finally, What's Worse Than an Anti-Torture Amendment That Doesn't Pass?

That's simple! One that passes, and then is struck down by what I believe would be Bush's first use of his Veto. For the love of... WHO STRIKES DOWN AN ANTI-TORTURE LAW? I mean, it's torture! Isn't that the presidential equivalent of the drivers test question: "You see a little old lady in the street, do you? a) Stop. b) Speed up, but honk."? Obviously the US President did well on the other questions I don't remember because I clearly remember that you have to at least swerve around the old lady, or flash your lights or something.

Finally, I hate Onyx.

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Filed Under: Opinion

For those not following the rhubarb sprout up around Jack Thompson's challenge to the game development community and the ensuing hilarity when someone took him up on his offer, here's how it goes.

In the Beginning, There Was "Hot Coffee", And it Was Good

Some time in early June, the 9th from what I can see here at gtaSanAndreas.net PatrickW, following up on a discovery made by Barton Waterduck (yeah, I'm assuming these are aliases) unlocked disabled content in the game GTA San Andreas by Rockstar Games. This content allows the player to bang away at their virtual girlfriends, rather than just having it implied at the end of a date. Presumably it was disabled by Rockstar in the back and forth with the ESRB while finagling an M (Mature) Rating, which is required to get onto the shelves of chains like Wal-Mart, rather than the stricter AO (Adults Only) rating that the sexual content would garner the game.

Now here's the rub: The sexual content that the "Hot Coffee" patch unlocks is completely unavailable without a third party modification to the game. This had Rockstar saying the content was the responsibility of the mod-er, in this case, presumably, Barton Waterduck (god, you have a great name, Waterduck). On the other hand, solid state distributions such as the PS2 could be patched (via 3rd party mechanism) to enable the content proving that it was originally in the Rockstar release. Course, the content was still not available except through external patching, but the finger of responsibility is not-so-clearly avoided at this point.

Course, this was all too juicy a target for the media, crazies and politicians to avoid. Explosions abound as people tried to manipulate the facts to suit their respective causes. Christian and Family Groups opened fire on the ESRB for not properly rating the game, who deflected the attack at Rockstar for 'hiding' the content. Rockstar said that the content was disabled but the modding community point right back at Rockstar with the PS2 patch, and gaming companies almost certainly started tearing through the inert and disabled content on their releases wondering if they were liable for unavailable bits and bytes that they'd shipped inadvertently. Unable to resist the juicy target Jack Thompson (expect a fun tug-of-war to ensue on that wikipedia page) of the StopKill fame, amongst other, redoubled his efforts to down the Take-Two Interactive beast knowing full well that while the American people can handle a prostitute getting decapitated, they sure can't handle her getting banged. Enter Presidential Election 2008 hopeful Hillary Clinton who isn't exactly sure what's going on, isn't exactly sure what this new-fangled Playstation is, and sure doesn't know what Hot Coffee has to do with it, but knows for sure that Soccer Moms ain't to happy with any of it. Briefed by Thompson (if Thompson is to be believed) Hillary got off to some pro-active not too much of anything.

The Salvos of open-letters from x to y via z to hopefully be read by m lit up the sky and it was, well and truly, Go Time.

Through all this gamers were wondering what the big f-ing deal is, underage children were rushing to download this awesome patch that they've been hearing so much about, the ESRB was just praying no one decides to legislate their existence away and most of all, Rockstar Games couldn't care less about Thompson and Clinton and was smok'en a big'ol fat cigar all the way to the bank.

Of course, none of this stopped anyone from playing GTA:San Andreas and Rockstar happily re-released the game without the content without much fanfare. But it doesn't end there.

So I Told You All That So I Could Tell You This

Jack Thompson, having accomplished nothing but enhancing the sales of San Andreas, almost certainly Bully probably even The Warriors couldn't stop there. He had comics who run charities for the Children's Hospital to attack.

As is so historically dictated, Jack Thompson issued an irate (and while tasteless to the charities he obviously wouldn't donate to, clearly satirical) challenge to the gaming community to develop a game which would "simulate" the murder of Take Two, er sorry, Take This associates. In return for the game development Thompson would donate $10 000 to charity. Obviously (to everyone except Thompson, I guess) the game was made in short order and Thompson immediately regretted his decision to offer $10 000 of his own money.

Not content to leave Thompson simply looking like an ass, Penny Arcade felt the need to broadcast the fact through a $10 000 donation sized bull-horn and make the donation for him, in his name. Much peeing-in-the-face by Gabe predictably follows.

As a result of being made to look like an ass, in true kindergarten style Thompson has collected his toys and run to the teacher, er police and attempted to have the penny arcade crew thrown in jail. It would seem that Thompson has a form letter printed up for this given the epic volume of times he threatens web comics.

Meanwhile, even the Soccer moms are feeling a little queasy about Thompson and have decided that they'd best let him go it alone in this whole threaten everyone in the world campaign and so Thompson looks more and more like an angry mouse trapped in the corner of a cage of cats hissing and spitting well past the time that it is wise to do so.

There is an untold entertainment value to reading about this guy, and one has to wonder where his head is at, exactly. I suppose only time will tell how far this drama will play out, and I will post updates should anything else amusing take place. For now, though, I believe that is the extremely brief and partially inaccurate skinny of ThompsonGate. Watch for the sequel as he has his go at Sims 2 -- A Pedophile's Paradise which I believe was the original development code-name for it, by the way.

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