] John Woo has optioned Nintendo's best-selling video game
] franchise Metroid for the big screen, says The Hollywood
] Reporter.

Holy $#|+! A series of Metroid movies! John Woo!

[ Kick ass! Maybe. I hope. -k]

John Woo Bringing Metroid to the Big Screen

[ Totally sick mod. Even if you're not into anime... that's some seriously hard work... impressive. -k]

Anime Maid -- CosPlay Case Mod

Decius wrote:
] I was actually fairly offended by this. Its hard to explain
] but I'll try. Its like taking their bodies and using them for
] a selfish political purpose. A marketing purpose... like spam.
] Its seems disrespectful.

[ It's not hard to explain... it *is* offensive. Politicizing the deaths of our soldiers sits ill precisely because it dishonors their memory by making them a statistic, a number, or an infographic.

On the other hand, every time the president (or his staff) stands in front of the country and paints a rosy picture of the job being done in Iraq, or touts his leadership, or invokes the sacrifices of those very same soldiers in his bid for re-election, he's politicizing the same dead bodies. If Bush is going to use the good job he's done in Iraq as a campaign strategy, then it's only fair to remind people that there are a lot of dead americans to account for, not to mention the dead Iraqis, who we speak little of. Sometimes that reminder needs to be harsh to get the attention it deserves... people tune out numbers, they tune out statistics, they acclimate and stop paying attention to the endless parade of dead and wounded. If this sort of thing can wake them up to the reality of the situation then the purpose it serves tends to validate it.

I'd think a bit differently if it was John Kerry's campaign that put this together. If it turns out that that's the case, I'll be extremely disappointed, to say the least.

I'm sensitive to this issue, certainly. I reacted very harshly to the media right around 9/11, because I found it horribly inappropriate that they sit there and replay the same horrifying footage over and over again. Planes crashing into buildings, the towers collapsing, and worst of all, highlighted shots of people falling who had thrown themselves from the building in a futile attempt to escape. Is that news? The 3'rd time, 10th, 300th? That's dishonor. That's making spectacle out of tragedy in order to glue eyeballs to the set. The same talking heads yammered incessantly about the horror, and the sacrifice and how the country would never be the same, while trickling out the tiniest little bit of new information or speculation every so often, just to keep you hooked. I don't see this quite the same way.

...]

] I don't care if you hate Bush. I don't care what your position
] on the war is. This isn't a kingdom and he is not soley
] responsible for the fact that these people are dead. Such a
] statement would only resonate with me if we lived in a
] dictatorship and these people were killed in domestic federal
] prisons.

[... You're correct that many people had to work together to make this war happen. Congress and the DOD and the cabinet and the advisors all played their part. But be that as it may, the decision to commit our forces to a course of action rests with only one man. That's why he's called the Com... [ Read More (0.4k in body) ]

RE: Bush photomosaic of American dead in Iraq

] NEC Corp has developed a battery that can be recharged
] only in 30 seconds, company sources said. Called an
] organic radical battery, it can be recharged to the same
] level of power as that stored in nickel-hydrogen cells,
] which are widely used in digital cameras, portable MD
] players and other electronic devices.
]
]
] It takes only about 30 seconds to recharge the battery
] enough to allow 80 hours of continuous operation of an MD
] player, compared with around an hour needed by
] conventional rechargeables, the company claims.

[ Cool. -k]

NEC Develops Fastest Rechargeable Battery

] "It is hard to explain," Mr. Durbin said, "how they could
] attack John Kerry for even considering a 50-cent gas tax
] a decade ago which he didn't introduce or vote
] for, and ignore Cheney's own legislation in 1986 also a
] decade ago which would have dramatically raised the
] cost of gasoline. If every vote and every statement made
] by John Kerry is fair game, the same thing is true of
] President Bush and the vice president."

[ Bolded parts are mine. If only there was a way to erase the damage those misleading ads have already done. Is anyone else seriously sick and tired of these pot-meet-kettle incidents? Is there any recourse at all? Seems to me like TV plays too much of a role in politics these days... it amplifies the negative tactics over the positive. No wonder people are disenchanted with the political system... they only ever see the bad shit. Of course, that's because deep down, humans love the spectacle of battle, even (especially?) if they're waged unfairly. So we get sound bites and blips explaining why the other guy sucks, because that resonates better with people.

I don't think it would be a bad thing to completely eliminate message oriented political advertisement. Let candidates get their platform out through speeches and interviews and actual interaction with the citizens they wish to serve. At least there's a chance an interviewer or speech commentator will have done the research to call out these bullshit moments... some of those mystical "journalists" of legend.

Incidentally, I'm not sure it's relevant that Cheney supported a gas tax in 1986... people change their minds all the time... that's a good thing, so if that's the case, fine. It's an issue because these fuckers have used a similarly irrelevant and aged comment to distort what their opponent currently believes. That they should quit that shit is clear, but since they aren't likely to, then they shouldn't get to bitch when the same tactics are turned on them (though they will, loudly protesting the "blatant mischaracterization" and beating their breasts about how they've been wronged by those unethical, elitist, lying (REMEMBER CLINTON! HE LIED ABOUT SEX!) Democrats. -k]

Cheney Tax Plan From 86 Would Have Raised Gas Prices

] Even children know from television that if you are sad
] and worried, there is a pill for you. If you have
] heartburn there is a pill for you. It is a lot harder to
] find out that there are other ways to feel better,
] physically and emotionally, than taking drugs.

[ Well stated. -k]

The Altered Human Is Already Here

] Royal Device has on its own developped and built the
] biggest subwoofer of the world for an AUDIO/VIDEO room
] that can be also considered as the biggest AUDIO ROOM for
] private music listening of the world. The audio
] reproduction is focused on the speakers output capability
] more than electric power output of the amplifiers with no
] need of KWatts power supply lines, releasing more than
] 110 dB/1W/1 meter sensitivity starting from below 10 Hz
] focused on the listening position.

[ Wow. Now, that's a serious listening space. -k]

Giant Subwoofer, not suitable for 'blingin''

] "PlayFair is an integrated utility that removes the DRM
] from AAC music files protected by Apple's FairPlay
] encryption. Information is limited, but the source code
] is on SourceForge.net and it appears to actually remove
] the encryption itself and not simply hijack the QuickTime
] audio stream as earlier methods did. The cracking
] operation can only be done on songs the user has already
] has valid licenses for and requires either an iPod or a
] windows computer for key recovery. If you choose to
] redistribute these songs you will be violating the
] contract you bought them under: better hope they aren't
] watermarked or you might end up paying for releasing one
] in the wild. To me the authors are vandals not
] revolutionaries, and may have ensured WMA becomes the
] standard."

[ Hear - hear. Was it that tough to burn the CD and re-rip it? -k]

Slashdot | New Tool Cracks Apple's FairPlay DRM

] So context-free is the media environment that this
] ultimate act of participatory democracy was twisted to
] seem a left-wing plot. In the article, all exculpatory
] evidence had to come in the form of quotes from the
] Herseth campaign: "But a Herseth campaign official
] scoffed at the charge, saying the Web page is not secret
] and can be found easily with a standard search of the
] Internet." The journalist couldn't say that the charge
] was bogus, even though it was obviously bogus. He had to
] say that the other side said the charge was bogus. He
] couldn't even report the results of his own Google
] search.

[ This is a good read, and not too long. We're experiencing the teething pains, if you will, of a new media environment. The traditional media formats suck... they claim objectivity when they're either clearly biased or else so scared of being accused of bias that they publish "stories" completely devoid of insight or depth.

People have begun to prefer to get their information from outlets whose biases are transparent and well known, because it's so much easier today to aggregate many, many points of view on any topic or meme, and get your "fair and balanced" by individually reading a whole bunch of sources.

On the specific topic at hand, I didn't even really think Kos' statement was that horrifying, just a little too angry in how he phrased it. But that's because I've been reading long enough to know his background and where he's coming from and, like any of my realworld friends, I can filter what he meant out of what he said, and I can forgive moments of indiscression. I certainly recognize that anyone publishing to a large audience should probably be politic in their phrasing, but then, that sort of unabashed punditry is why blogs are so much more interesting than mainstream media. When someone takes a strong stand, or makes a powerful statement, you, the reader, are forced to react to it, to actually think about the statement and reach a conclusion. When people rely on the mass media outlets of today, they're left absorbing talking points whose authenticity is taken as unassailable.

The long term result has to be that people will engage the media and learn to form their own opinions from many different data points, rather than blindly trusting CNN or FOX or Reuters to define the truth. Truly I hope to see a time when people move beyond their blipvert addiction and start paying attention. -k]

Webblogs and the political scandal industry

] Bored Boy Behind President Gets Nationwide Attention

[ Did anyone else follow the CNN shenanigans on this one?

Essentially it appears that CNN is covering for someone in the WH, or an overzealous Bushie inside the company, maybe, over a series of retractions and "misstatments" as pertains to this kid. Quite a clusterfuck considering this is the most harmless sort of public lampooing.

Krugman covers it here : http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/02/opinion/02KRUG.html

-k]

Bored Boy Behind President Gets Nationwide Attention