Category Archives: General

General

Is this a way to run an Olympic event?

Amusing -and equally sad- story from the AP regarding Rio De Janeiro’s…um… difficulties while preparing to host the 2016 Summer Olympics:

Rio Olympic Track Stadium Goes Dark Due To Unpaid Bills

The upshot of the article is that the Track Stadium owes some $250,000 for electrical and water bills and, having not paid them, now has neither.

And who can forget this article, also found on AP, regarding the rancid waters the athletes are supposed to use for the water related events?

Rio Olympic Water Badly Polluted, Even Far Offshore

Man, is this looking like a colossal mess in the making or what?

Though I don’t usually follow the Olympics all that closely, I may just have to watch this one.

 

 

General

…Ring in the New

So its 2016 and I feel super-refreshed.  Why?  Because for one week I got to get out the house for the first time in way too long and was extremely lucky, it turned out considering the too-warm weather, to have a day like this…

E

Just call me the master of the Bunny Hill in Horseshoe, just north of Barrie, Ontario.  For those curious, no, I didn’t have strange visions of deceased actors…

I went up those mighty fifty or so feet and their terrific 10 degree drop and came down several dozen times with but two near wipe-outs.  Great fun was had until the final run, when I did the Bunny Hill + (a slightly longer Bunny Hill with a somewhat sharper angle descent) and a father and his daughter were in my path, forcing me to swerve while going waaaay too fast onto a not-too smooth surface.

Yes, it was there I had a mighty wipe-out.  Messed up my left shoulder a little and it still hurts when I turn my head to the right…

Well, that’s what ibuprofen is for.

Hope everyone had a great Holiday and are as refreshed as I am for the new year!

General

Technology…

Love it…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk Drops His Prediction of Full Autonomous Driving From 3 Years to 2

…and loathe it…

Hackers Threaten to Bring Down XBox and Playstation Networks on Christmas

The first article, written by Fred Lambert and available on elektrek.com, offers even more optimistic thoughts regarding the future of self-driving/driverless vehicles.

Those who check out my blog know how fascinated I am about this technology and how equally fascinated I am by what will happen following the actual widespread use of this technology.  Bear in mind, just because Mr. Musk feels the technology will be good enough for general use in 2 years doesn’t mean the various government agencies in the United States and other countries will instantly allow for its deployment everywhere.

There are plenty of things that will need to be done, including perhaps creating highway lanes specifically designed for self-driving vehicles or highways that charge self-driving vehicles…

…but I suspect future generations, perhaps even those born this year, may well grow up in an environment where people actually driving their cars from location to location will be a thing of the past.

I’ve mentioned many of the things that such a technology will change, but one rather frivolous one occurred to me which I might have mentioned before (If I did, forgive the duplication):

Driverless car technology will surely force a change in one golden staples of Hollywood action movies: The car chase.

Think about it: When people get used to the idea that cars function automatically, the idea of a hero/villain car chase as currently envisioned will become a thing of the past.  Just as westerns have our heroes/villains on horses, any movie featuring your “standard” car chase will be a film from the past.  Especially given the safety features these new vehicles will surely have which will likely apply to you even if you switch to a driver mode (which I suspect we’ll see as an intermediate first step before the cars go “full” driverless).

So no more Bullitt-like car chases…

…Hollywood will have to consider something new.

Which brings us to the second article presented above.  It is written by Hope King and presented on CNNmoney and I suppose it is as much a testament to our times as anything else.

As with self-driving vehicles, we are a society that relies more and more and more on technology, specifically computer technology, for our everything.

You can’t get the cellphones out of my daughters’ hands but, even as much of an old fogey as I am, I’m on some kind of computer for a startling number of hours each day as well.

This means, of course, that there’s plenty of data flowing through these computer networks, data ripe for hackers to screw around with, just as the hackers in that above article threaten to shut down gaming services on Christmas day.

It suddenly occurs to me the Hollywood car chase will live on…

 

FADE IN ON:

A hacker types in a series of commands and, when finished, hits the enter key.  He cackles menacingly.  His plan is in motion.

CUT TO:

Keanu Reeves sits in his Tesla Mark LXI, reading his newspaper off a holographic screen while sipping insta-coffee.  All appears blissfully normal…

…and then the engine of his car suddenly revs and Keanu is thrust into his chair.  His instacoffee spills and is absorbed by the seats…

CUT TO:

Highway, day, a perfect geometry of cars in four separate lines moves quickly and efficiently along the highway.  All are in synch as they always are.

All but one.

That car veers wildly to the side, nearly hitting another.  It speeds up…

CUT TO:

Keanu realizes his car is hacked and is out of control.  He frowns.  As dangerous as the situation is, the hackers picked the wrong man to mess with.

Keanu reaches for the dashboard and with one swift fist smash dislodges the smooth dashboard plate before him.  He pulls it off, revealing wires and circuitry, and quickly gets to work on it.

Sparks fly and sweat fills Keanu’s forehead.  He grimaces while looking out the window and back at the circuitry.

His car is on a collision course with a speeding bus…

General

While this is undeniably cool to watch…

…its also an incredibly crazy stunt:

The whole purpose of this exercise was apparently to fly between those two buildings and, from the reaction of Roberta Mancino, the woman who did the fly/glide-by, it looks like either the winds suddenly picked up and pushed her closer toward the building than she wanted or perhaps she simply drifted there without realizing it.

Regardless, and again, as cool as this video is, I hate to sound like Mr. Sober Un-Fun Adult and ask: What if she had hit the building?  Perhaps even a glancing blow?

She’d likely be dead or, if not, unconscious and soon to be dead from the fall.

But she’s gliding over a city.  A city I’m assuming has people walking and driving around the streets.  If she were to hit the building and fall to the ground, I can’t help but think of the others she might have injured and/or killed had her stunt failed.

In spite of all that, it’s still a cool video.

General

Dragnet…

…or perhaps I should invoke one of Judas Priest’s best known songs?

Two tales of people running afoul of the law caught my eye these past couple of days.  First up is “Pharma bro” Martin Shkreli who has been arrested for securities fraud as reported in this article written by Scott Eric Kauffman and presented in Salon.com:

“Pharma bro” Martin Shkreli Arrested For Securities Fraud

Is Mr. Shkreli’s name not familiar to you?  This bit of information, pulled from the above article, tells you just about all you need to know about the right honorable Mr. Shkreli…

Shkreli vaulted into the public eye in September, when he boasted about raising the price on a life-saving toxoplasmosis treatment for unborn babies and people with HIV or cancer by 5,455 percent. Although he insisted the drug “was still under-priced,” he promised that he would return it to its original level — a promise he reneged on the last week of November. His despicable behavior has prompted everyone from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton to condemn him.

Quite a comeuppance, no?

The second story involves Ethan Couch, who was on probation and is now on the run from the law (both he and his mother cannot be found) and facing “real prison time” for violating the terms of his probation.

Mr. Couch achieved notoriety back in 2013 and following killing four people and seriously injuring two others while driving drunk at the ripe old age of 16.  As terrible a crime as that was, what happened during his trial was even worse: His lawyers stated the underage man was suffering from “affluenza”, that he was so spoiled by his wealthy parents that he didn’t have a clear concept of right and wrong.

Incredibly, the judge bought the argument and Mr. Couch was sentenced to ten years probation.  However, a video posted on twitter showed him participating in a party which clearly had liquor.  This violates the terms of his parole and could land him in jail.

Oops.

So he and his mother are on the lam and you can read all about it in this article by Mary Elizabeth Williams and also found on Salon.com:

Spare us the “affluenza” defense this time: Ethan Couch faces real prison time for violating parole

The commonality between the two stories appears to be two young, entitled men who can no longer game the system.

One hopes they eventually learn from these troubles and make more of their lives than they have so far.

General, Movies, Sports

Let’s see…what to talk about today…

Star Wars, again?  While Rotten Tomatoes has the film scoring an incredible 97% positive, I’m getting the feeling The positives reviews I’ve read (and I won’t even pretend to have read more than a handful) have been somewhat half-hearted.

Which in some ways is not all that different from your typical reaction to the works of J. J. Abrams.  I actually admire the man quite a bit: He knows how to create something that, while you’re watching it, is compelling and interesting.  But after the fact, when you stop to think about what you’ve just seen, doubts form and secondary opinions pop up.

Will this happen for Star Wars VII?  It happened, after all, with the “prequels”.  There was plenty of good cheer and great critical ratings until the warm glow of nostalgia lifted and people got a better look at the product.

By the way, I’m as prone to changing my mind as the next person.  I enjoyed Star Trek: Into Darkness when I caught it in the theaters but after thinking about it for a bit, realized the film was very flawed.

We’ll see what happens.

What else is there to talk about?

Politics?

Yesterday we had the 1,993,320,123,432th GOP debate and, like all the others, I dutifully avoided it as best I could.  Of course afterwards all those news stations (why, WHY!?!) had their anchors/analysts go over who did what and to whom and, like some morbid all enveloping black hole I couldn’t help but be sucked in.

It appears, at least to my eyes and based on what little was highlighted, that I didn’t miss all that much.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I wouldn’t vote for this version of the Republican Party if my life depended on it (check this chilling article by William Saletan which posits this question: Who would you elect President if your only choices are Trump, Cruz, or Carson?).  The latest debate -what little I saw of it- didn’t change my mind in that respect.

So forget Star Wars and forget Politics.  How about…

Football?

Bob Costas Says Football’s Biggest Problem Can’t Be Fixed

I’ve gone down this road before a few times but, like the self-driving car articles I so dearly love, this is rapidly becoming an issue I’m also intrigued with.

I’ve written about this before so excuse me while I (briefly) repeat myself:  When I was young, I had no interest in sports at all.  Let me be clear: AT ALL.

I was forced to play games I didn’t care to play (usually soccer…why the hell couldn’t you use your hands?!?).  TV was very limited back then and where I was there wasn’t a whole lot of sports aired on it.

Things changed back in/around 1984.  I started watching -and admiring- football, specifically the incredible talents of one Dan Marino.  He almost single handedly got me interested in football in general and the Dolphins specifically.

But I didn’t stop there and eventually became a full fledged sports fanatic.  I not only watched football, but also basketball, baseball, and hockey.  This all ended the year after I watched almost every single game of the 2003 World Series winning season the Marlins played.  I realized I was extremely lucky to see a team go from game one to winning the series and the likelihood of repeating this was very slim.

I also realized I had wasted waaaay too much time before the TV seeing this.

So I cut back dramatically.  In more recent times the most sports I’ve followed were probably the LeBron James Heat, but I only watched some of those games and more closely followed the playoffs.

Though it all, my favorite sport to watch remained football, in spite of the fact that since Marino retired the Dolphins haven’t done much of anything.

Having said that, I agree with Mr. Costa: Football is at heart a game that destroys not only the athlete’s body, but also, and more frighteningly, his mind.  Yes, some people come out of the game better but at this point I feel that even those who most want football to prosper cannot with a straight face say that it is a “safe” sport to play.

True, basketball, baseball, and hockey wear down athletes’ bodies as well, but the fact is that these sports don’t feature what is the staple of football: Athletes running at full speed into each other.

It happens now and again in basketball.  It happens now and again in baseball.  It may happen a little more frequently in hockey.

But the reality is that every play in football involves athletes running into each other at top speeds.  While a well-toned body may be able to absorb the hits, there is no training or helmet padding great enough to protect a person’s brain.

I’m not going to lie: I still love watching football.  But as each new study on brain trauma resulting from playing in the sport is released and the reality of what playing the game does to the athletes’ bodies is understood, I don’t know how much longer it can exist.

General

Like something out of The Twilight Zone…

Found this on CNN.com:

It seems Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Malaysia has three abandoned cargo jets parked on their lot and have posted a notice that if someone doesn’t claim them (and pay the parking fee owed) they will be sold:

Malaysia Hunts Owners of Boeing 747’s Abandoned at Airport

How…weird.  Especially the fact that no one knows who owns these aircraft and, obviously, the fact that someone would simply leave them -all three!- abandoned like that.

I’ve seen/heard of businesses abandoning products or material because they simply could no longer pay for them, but three 747 jets?!

Weird.

General

My my…

I really, really don’t like to get into politics on this site.  I mean, most authors use their blog to talk about their latest works and promote them.  I do as well, though not as much as I could.  Frankly, I prefer to do so when I have concrete news to tell you regard a new work…more specifically when it nears completion/publication.

Getting back to politics, of late I find the whole thing so damn depressing.  A few years back when George W. Bush was president and pundits were ripping him and his policies, conservative mouthpiece Charles Krauthammer stated that Bush’s opponents were suffering from “Bush derangement syndrome”.  In other words, they could not see past their hatred of the man to more reasonably look at his policies.

However, there is little doubt that many of Bush’s policies, including the disastrous (and arguably justified by outright lies) decision to invade Iraq, the pathetic response to Hurricane Katrina, and the way the economy crashed during his watch, created a sense the critics were more right than “deranged”.

When Mr. Bush left office there were very few -and that goes for today as well- who spoke kindly about his term in office.  Rather than defend him, most in the Republican Party or those who espouse conservative values, chose to ignore his time in office and, instead, focus venom on the current officeholder, Barack Obama.

And yet, if there is any case of a “derangement syndrome”, it would have to be regarding Obama’s term in office.  Say what you will about his time in office but at least we have had a continuously improving economy, health care legislation (good or bad, the fact is that we are one of the last of the first world countries to move in this direction and we should applaud this legislation even as we work to make it better), and no new (idiotic) wars.

Before you start screaming, let me say this: Is all milk and honey?  Absolutely not.  There are many things I’ve felt Mr. Obama should have done but hasn’t.  At times I feel he is too meek and wish he had (yes) George W. Bush’s backbone.

But what bugs me the most about the people who so despise Barack Obama’s presidency is the fact that they don’t realize he, like Bill Clinton before him, are most akin in policy to yesteryear’s Republicans.

Indeed, the patron saint of today’s Republicans, Ronald Reagan, would probably be derided as too leftist to these new conservatives which goes to show just how far the right in this country have moved.

Most worrisome to me is the level of hate they project.  At a family dinner, I was amused to learn, and subsequently mentioned, the news that during a Republican Jewish Coalition speech Republican Presidential contender Ben Carson (no brain surgeon…oh, wait) talked about Hamas yet referred to them, over and over again, as…Hummus.

Yikes.

When I mentioned this, my relative almost jumped down my throat, first saying something to the effect of “well, I hope they (I’m assuming Hamas?) are insulted by being called that” before realizing what Mr. Carson said was yet another boneheaded line (of which there are more) and defending him by absolutely ignoring what he said and focusing instead on just how much Obama has ruined this country.

The wide-eyed hatred spewed was, frankly, startling, as was the lack of specifics as to just how Mr. Obama had ruined the country.

Naturally, I’m not the first person to go to a family function and get involved in a political spat nor will I be the last, but I was surprised at just how much this individual bought into the conservative Obama “derangement”.

As I already mentioned, there most certainly are things to criticize about Mr. Obama’s presidency (as there are for most presidencies), but I don’t and can’t see his failures as being anything on the level of “disastrous.”

There is no moral to this story and there is no clever conclusion to offer except this quote, which I’ll reproduce here from memory and therefore may not be verbatim, regarding the current state of Republican candidates for presidency:

“I hope one day the candidates turn to face the camera and say ‘April Fools!’.”

General

This is weird…and amusing

It also seems like a Monty Python sketch:

2014 Name of the Year Regionals

I suppose we’ll be getting the 2015 nominees soon but, come on, how can you not like people with names such as…

Dr. Loki Skylizard (this is an actual name, though according to the article the man came up with it when he was 9 years old and his parents were crazy free-wheeling enough to allow their children to choose their own names).

and

(name removed at the request of the name-inee)

And I thought my name was bad…

General

December 7

As strong a memory as 9/11 is for those who witnessed the event either live or via television back in 2001, there was another equally shocking event that galvanized the nation and which occurred on December 7th.

Today marks the 74th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day.  On this day in 1941 the Japanese attacked the U.S. military base on Hawaii in the hopes of critically injuring the U.S. fleet and therefore have free reign on the Atlantic Ocean.

The shocking attack, however, turned out to be Japan’s biggest miscalculation.

Not only did the attack formally bring the U.S. into the Second World War -there were many politicians and prominent personalities railing against joining the war up to that point- but the attack itself, as harrowing as it was, wasn’t as successful as the Japanese hoped it would be.  The U.S. fleet wasn’t crushed and, as history attests, our nation was more than able to contain and eventually defeat the Japanese advance.

Admiral Yamamoto, the architect of the attack, reportedly had second thoughts regarding the action and came to realize it was a big mistake.  One of the most famous quotes linked to him (though there is no hard evidence he said it) is that the attack on Pearl Harbor “Awoke a sleeping giant“.

Way, way back when I was in Hawaii, I made it a point to visit the Arizona Memorial.  As others have noted, there is still oil coming from the sunken ship.  But the experience, in the end, was both haunting and sad.  One immediately realized, upon arriving at the memorial, the number of people lost to this attack as well as those who were soon to be lost in the war that followed.

I haven’t been to New York since 9/11 but I suspect the same feelings must fill visitors to the site of the Twin Towers.

There are great wounds left upon the land and tributes to the same.  The wounds of December 7th and the war that followed, through the passage of time, have led to healing.  Perhaps one day the same can be said for 9/11.