Let’s get responsible!The sixth largest economy in the world and the twelfth largest producer of CO2 gases will be teaming up with the UK to try and cut greenhouse gas emmisions. Go California! Arnold’s state goal is to cut emmisions to 2000 levels by 2010. This is not nearly as ambitious as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative but I bet Cali produces a shit ton more CO2 than New England does.
I wonder where New Hampshire falls in both of these categories?
[Title]Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)? Reefer Madness (1936)? Trip to the Moon, A (1902)? Bride of the Gorilla (1951)? You can watch them all for free on google video or YouTube, but Free Movies organizes all the links for you. Kind of cool, but how is Santa Clause Conquers the Martians in the public domain? It’s only 50 years old! Anyway, this could be great for those slow days at work (or for your last two weeks).
Also, I looked to see if Gymkata was available online but no luck. All I found was a homemade trailer and a bunch of fight scenes. My god does it look bad!
Christ! [Profanity]I finished up reading Christ our Lord: Out of Egypt by Anne Rice, and I can’t say that I enjoyed the experience.
First off, the writing style was tedious to get through. I am pretty sure the author was trying to make it sound like writing style of the authors from that period. But all the text she read were translations and all you have to do it read a set of VCR instructions or dan resignation letter to know that translations often sound a little off. The only biblical translation that I’ve read that even makes an attempt at anything other that ‘accuracy’ is the King James Version. [Example]
The story was written from the viewpoint of young Jesus (vs. Young Frankenstein which is much more amusing). I guess the whole idea was to highlight the human part of Jesus but still make him appear divine. She did this by making a really winnie kid with superhuman powers and knowledge. To get material for this Rice referenced the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, one of the few surviving gospels (not destroyed by the Catholic church) that deal with Jesus as a child… and had Jesus kill some kid. But in her version Jesus ‘knew’ what he did was wrong and hide behind his mother (then raised him from the dead). In the Gospel of Thomas… well read the section:
IV. 1 After that again he went through the village, and a child ran and dashed against his shoulder. And Jesus was provoked and said unto him: Thou shalt not finish thy course (lit. go all thy way). And immediately he fell down and died. But certain when they saw what was done said: Whence was this young child born, for that every word of his is an accomplished work? And the parents of him that was dead came unto Joseph, and blamed him, saying: Thou that hast such a child canst not dwell with us in the village: or do thou teach him to bless and not to curse: for he slayeth our children.
V. 1 And Joseph called the young child apart and admonished him, saying: Wherefore doest thou such things, that these suffer and hate us and persecute us? But Jesus said: I know that these thy words are not thine: nevertheless for thy sake I will hold my peace: but they shall bear their punishment. And straightway they that accused him were smitten with blindness. 2 And they that saw it were sore afraid and perplexed, and said concerning him that every word which he spake whether it were good or bad, was a deed, and became a marvel. And when they (he ?) saw that Jesus had so done, Joseph arose and took hold upon his ear and wrung it sore. 3 And the young child was wroth and said unto him: It sufficeth thee (or them) to seek and not to find, and verily thou hast done unwisely: knowest thou not that I am thine? vex me not.
Why make Jesus so sensitive? I guess it has something to do with making more human. But aren’t kids cruel? Has Rice never seen Nanny 911? Could you really punish a kid who could kill you with a prayer? I bet he’d be unruly.
I could probably go on for a while, but that’s enough. It was a good thing that the book was really short, because I don’t think I could have gotten all the way through it otherwise. Maybe the book disappointed me because I don’t believe any part of Jesus was divine… or that there is a divine but who knows? I wouldn’t bother with reading it.
My comments on the authors notes: This part was probably the most interesting part of the book as it briefly goes over her leaving the church, coming back to the church, and her interest in making the settings for her books as historically accurate as possible (which was one part of her book that did shine). But she argues against the idea that the gospels were written about 50 years after death of Christ (around 30 CE) simply because there were no references to the destruction of the temple in any of the gospels. Well it took me about 3 seconds to find Mark chapter 13.
(1) As he was making his way out of the temple area one of his disciples said to him, “Look, teacher, what stones and what buildings!” (2) Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be one stone left upon another that will not be thrown down.”
I wonder what that’s an allusion to?
Power?Here’s a pretty cool presentation on steam power… sort of. The idea is to use low temperatures (160o F) to generate steam that runs a turbine. This way you can use the hot temperatures outside to run AC inside, or use the slightly warm exhausts from factories or geothermal energy to generate power. An idea that could get traction as it could save factories money, and help limit rolling blackout caused by people and businesses who crank their AC to ridiculous levels during heat waves (why can’t people turn the AC to 75o instead of 70o? Do they know how much money they would save?!)
In the future we’ll have to make use of a lot of different energy sources. This could be a major one (at least for those not in the cold, cold north) and could go with the tidal power generators that the scientist pointed out, wind, water, solar, coal, oil and gas (until they run out).
War on Terrorble DiseasesI was sent this link to a daily show news article entitled: War on Terrorble Diseases. You should watch it, though it does sort of portray Bush as a hypocrite (the last 5 seconds are very poignant). It is refreshing to occasionally view the news in satire form. Laughter is healing or something.
Not inspiredLast night the scientist’s left for a conference and I didn’t really feel like sitting around on the computer (which I ended up doing) and the Anne Rice book I took out of the library is pretty boring. So ended I walked over to Jared’s last night to watch TV and play guitar hero. Nothing too exciting, but better than sitting by yourself. Here’s how I’m feeling right now:
I added in a neat-O archive page that allows you to quickly browse through old crappy posts that you’d find here (I did this last night so don’t yell at me for doing it at work). It works okay but I haven’t yet got the thing to display without messing up the sidebar.
I really wish I could get the poll thing to work, because I want to ask what percentage of everyone’s time is ‘directed work’? For example, at “Google engineers all have ‘20 percent time’ in which they’re free to pursue projects they’re passionate about.” This would mean that 80% of a google engineer’s time is spent on ‘directed work’. I feel that about 25% of my time is directed work, but I’m curious what it is like for other people.
RainingIt’s raining. Anyone want to go running?
I added a few ads on the side but they only show ads for blogs. Is there anyway to get Gogle Adsense to show ads that people might actually want to click on? Shakespeare got to get paid. Or not, as I’ll probably never generate enough traffic to actually make real money on ads. Especially if I only post about this here blog.
So, I should post about something else right? Well I’m about to start reading an Anne Rice book about Jesus. I’ve never read an Anne Rice book, let alone one about a possible historic figure, so I don’t know what to expect. But from what I know of her writing, I can only assume Jesus will drink the blood of his helpless victims, while they beg for mercy. Maybe he’ll end up fighting mummies (the subtitle says Egypt in it so my guess is yes, Jesus will battle the undead. He should cast ‘Fire’ or ‘Holy’ as the undead dislike those spells). I can’t wait.
The real ultimate shitter?
I’d recommend that everyone see Syriana. It is pretty relevant considering the current middle east ‘crisis’. Who here feels that our President is doing the right thing? (Ad hoc poll. Haven’t figured out how to setup one of those.)
Add the ability to link to photos in our ZenPhoto gallery. (I also added this to the Scientist’s blog, if she wants to use it just press the 
button in the menu bar)
Also, on a side note if you want to put an image in one of your posts, go to the ‘Upload’ section in the ‘Write Post’ section area, browse to the file name it and then Upload it. To include it in the post, click on the image, then on ‘Send to editor’.
Blog/job updateWhat I have I done tonight?
I still can’t get the goddamned spellchecker to work. Is anyone else using a spellchecker? If so, which one? Also, the sidebar looks like poop. I was going to fix it but I got distracted by plugins… did you know there is a plugin that lets you list all the plugins you use?! Anyone have any fun plugins? Argh, again. Anyway, I need to figure out the PHP functions that are being called and see if I can (1) use a different one, or (2) change them to do what I actually want. We’ll see.
I would like to say that I can supply as interesting updates as Dan, but all I can say is I had an interview at a Public Library today for a System Admin job. I think it went well, but I’m not entirely sure. I don’t think they asked me enough questions to deduce whether or not I would be a good candidate… maybe they already have someone in mind. Also, I think this is the first system admin job I’ve seen where Unix/Linux experience is not necessary. Silly billy.
Video Fun!Topic: Malmedy (perhaps familiar to some of you from the GWAR song Warghoul). Here is Keith Olbermann bashing Bill O’Reilly for not knowing much about history (and not admitting he got it wrong). Harsh and amusing. YouTube makes me want to get MSNBC.
If you are a supervisor you cannot unionize (fuck that by the way), so if you classify all employees as supervisors no one can unionize. Solidarity! Colbert having his say.
