Archive for November, 2003

If you can read this.. Thank a Teacher..If you can read this in English ..Thank a US Soldier

At the end of an interview with Tony Snow, Joseph Lieberman said

I’d like to see something that we haven’t seen in this country among a lot of people, and that is Economic Patriotism. Let’s have some commitment to do what’s right for the American economy, for American workers, for American businesses. That’s something the law can’t require, but any American who cares about our country ought to be supporting.

Lieberman also noted that this is Tony’s last show. I don’t know what the plan is at FoxNews, but I feel that Mr. Snow will be sorely missed.

While googling, I came across the Random Name Generator.

The random name generator uses data from the US Census to randomly generate male and female names. Use it for screenplays, fake id’s, car rentals, pick-up lines, books, prank calls, movies. Give a random name to that special someone you meet at the bar.

You simply pick how obscure a name you want, choose how many returns you want, and click the button. Helpfully, if you click on the name it googles it for you. That way you don’t accidentally give someone the name of the Sausage King of Chicago, I guess. Great fun.

I just finished watching Battlestar Galactica: The Lowdown on the SciFi Channel. Not a bad behind-the-scenes show, and the upcoming mini-series doesn’t look any more than half bad.

Yes, Starbuck is a girl. And so is Boomer. And so is one of the main Cylon characters. And so is the President of humanity.

Actually, are there any guys in the show? Besides Edward James Olmos as Commander Adama, all of the male characters seem to be at least potentially homosexual. When my wife said they made Starbuck a girl so that she could sleep with Apollo, I said maybe they made Starbuck a girl so Apollo couldn’t sleep with her. Not fair to the actors or characters, I know. Sex looks to me a major story element here. We’ll see.

From what I saw, the story is fairly dark, the dialogue is mediocre at best, and the special effects might be pretty good. It looks to have been shot in a semi-focused shaky cam manner, which might get annoying pretty fast. The sets look decent, especially for a television show. There seems to be quite a bit of actual stuff for the actors to interact with, like control screens and instrument panels, so hopefully the series won’t suffer from blue-screen confusion. I feel that actors not being able to visualize their surroundings and really touch them is one of the biggest problems with CGI effects in movies today.

The Viper fighter, which I’ve always thought was totally bad-ass, appears mostly unchanged (although it looks a little plastic in this pic.) The way the space battles are fought, however, is quite a bit different. There is a lot more going on, and missiles seem to be a primary weapon, and anti-missile guns similar to the Navy’s Phalanx CIWS are there to try and stop them. The laser fire from the Vipers looks like tracered cannon fire from today’s aircraft. The Cylon ships all look quite a bit different, as do the Cylons themselves.

Richard Hatch, who played Apollo in the original series, was interviewed extensively during the show. He fought a long legal battle in an attempt to stop others from making a Battlestar Galactica while he tried to produce his own. He isn’t very happy with the direction that the new series takes, but he’s big enough to admit his personal bias and he claims that hopes to be able to get past his own disappointment and enjoy the new shows.

As a kid, I loved the original series. I was not really looking forward to this remake. But after watching this show on SciFi, I’m at least going to check out a few episodes of and give the mini-series a chance.

Bush mispronounces Nevada in first presidential visit

This is absolutely awful. First “nuke-you-lur” and now this.

Nevada memo to George Bush: When making a first presidential visit to a state, use the right pronunciation of its name.

and, of course,

State Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, said the mispronunciation shows Bush, who won the state in the 2000 election, doesn’t care much about the state.

I started this post with the intention of simply mocking the politicians who jump on this, mocking the people who think it really matter, and mocking the President for not watching his step since he knows folks are ready to point these missteps out and include them in next year’s calanders.

But I was nearly finished when, on a whim, I looked up “Nevada” at m-w.com. What do you know…

Main Entry: Ne·va·da
Pronunciation: n&-’va-d&, -’vä-
Usage: geographical name
state W U.S. capital Carson City area 110,561 square miles (286,353 square kilometers), population 1,201,833
- Ne·va·dan /-’va-d&n, -’vä-/ or Ne·va·di·an /-’va-dE-&n, -’vä-/ adjective or noun

Notice the bold ‘vä given as an alternate pronunciation. M-W notes

\ä\ as o in mop

For readers not sure how to pronounce “mop,” you can also listen to the secondary pronunciation here.

What does this prove? Not much, really. The pronunciation the President used isn’t “wrong,” but it certainly is not the most common. (In fact, “nuke-you-lur” is given as the third of three accepted pronunciations for nuclear at m-w.com.)

Although I guess this sort of thing does kind of prove that the Dems are running out of stones to throw at Bush. They’re probably keeping their fingers crossed on the economy, hoping it goes in the tank before next fall.

Junk Causes Noise at Space Station

Something apparently collided with the International Space Station yesterday. Space junk in orbit is a growing concern to manned and unmanned spacecraft. Let’s hope the station really is as okay as they think it is.

This is the first test post using MT after I re-installed it.

When the installation instructions said to upload some folders in binary mode, they apparently meant it.

Over the next several weeks I’ll be working on the site template. Stay tuned.

Sorry for the light posting this week. Here’s a pic of Marine AAVP7A1s (Assault Amphibian Vehicle Personnel) from March during the early days of the Iraq campaign.

From a Russian gallery that includes a number of pics of destroyed US vehicles.

Expat Yank

This blog, which has been kind enough to link to MO, uses this quote from a September 11, 1941 radio address by FDR on its site:

Do not let us be hair-splitters. Let us not ask ourselves whether the Americas should begin to defend themselves after the first attack, or the fifth attack, or the tenth attack, or the twentieth attack. The time for active defense is now.

The address continued

Do not let us split hairs. Let us not say: “We will only defend ourselves if the torpedo succeeds in getting home, or if the crew and the passengers are drowned.” This is the time for prevention of attack.

A google led me to this transcript of the address.

FDR, on a date which would live in infamy sixty years later, was discussing attacks on American ships by German U-boats. Since Pearl Harbor hadn’t been attacked yet, we were not officially at war with anyone. We supported Britain, which had by then weathered the worst of the storm, but many Americans didn’t want to get involved in what they perceived as a European war. I don’t know when people finally admitted that it was actually a World War, but, by the fall of 1941, it seemed inevitable that the US would become directly involved in the war which was engulfing the globe.

Orders had been given to engage German submarines that threatened American ships, state of war or not. The knowledgeable will know that, even at Pearl Harbor, Americans struck the first blow. When a Japanese sub tried to sneak into the Harbor hours before the air raid began, a US destroyer sank it with gunfire.

Another quote from that address that I find interesting in relation to our current war is:

Instead, we Americans are taking a long-range point of view in regard to certain fundamentals and to a series of events on land and on sea which must be considered as a whole — as a part of a world pattern.

It would be unworthy of a great Nation to exaggerate an isolated incident, or to become inflamed by some one act of violence. But it would be inexcusable folly to minimize such incidents in the face of evidence which makes it clear that the incident is not isolated, but is part of a general plan.

Those that claim our revenge for 9/11 should be satisfied choose to ignore attacks against us and our interests in the years and decades before that fateful day. There is a “general plan” at work against us and others who love freedom. How best to deal with it? Of course I’m more than willing to discuss political and cultural issues that may help defuse tensions. Pre-emptive war, with or without UN blessing, often won’t solve anything.

But when you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.

Were we wrong to sink that Japanese sub before they attacked Pearl Harbor? What if we had accidentally found the Pearl Harbor strike force on their way to Hawaii? Would we have been wrong to attack them? What if we had found them in Japan practicing in earnest for the raid? Should we have waited until the first bombs fell to shoot back?

In all honesty, as horrible as the events of 9/11 were, I don’t really liken them to Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor severely crippled our ability to defend ourselves from our enemies. A twenty-first century attack comparable to Pearl Harbor is almost beyond our comprehension. I don’t think we can afford to wait until the threat is imminent.

Carry on. Crush the rattlesnake.

Memo: The Cowboy Way/Or That’s the Way They Do It In Texas

From: Sgt. Mom
To: Assorted European Intellectuals and Those Americans Who Wish They Were Also
Re: On Being Snookered by an Archetype

1. Really, people, I am getting the feeling that you have never paid attention to all those stories and jokes about smart, cosmopolitan types who ventured out into the sticks to patronize the local yokels and wound up loosing their shirts, or their wallets, or at least a couple of illusions regarding making an assumption about a person based on that persons’ dress, accent, and apparent class (or lack thereof) when said yokels out-slicked the city slicker.

Sgt. Mom at Sgt. Stryker’s Daily Briefing makes some observations about perceptions of the US President and how they might not be true, no matter how much some wish they were. Check out the rest at the link above.

I’ve had a number of people express their desire for the administration to come right out and clearly define our position and plan for the War on Terror. Over the past couple of weeks a number of speeches by the President have done exactly what those folks asked, but the closest thing to an acknowledgement I’ve heard is that Bush has a good speech writer.

I’ll be the first to admit that the President of the United States isn’t a perfect leader of the free world. But this irrational hatred of Bush and his administration illustrates the Left’s lack of perspective.

Just my opinion.

The Left can ignore it all they want. But, at this point, a best case scenario for their nominee is an American economy in shambles and a sudden, massive failure in Iraq.