Anti-Bush Media, Continued

So some guy in the Bush administration was indicted Friday.

Today's Monday, right?

Then why are there still 4,000 articles about it? Just look at some of these headlines:

"Democrat leader: Rove should resign, Bush and Cheney apologize"..."Democrats after Rove's job"..."President should apologize, change staff, some say"..."Rove should be fired, spy’s husband says"..."Reid Says Rove Should Resign"..."Cheney emerges as key figure in leak"... and that's just from the last hour.

Google News counts about 3,950 related articles. Currently, Rosa Park stuff and Supreme Court nominee stuff are each around 2,000, and nothing else is even close.

Basically, there's about twice as many news articles about the latest problems of the Bush administration than anything else in the news! And this is three days after it happened!

And who still says the media is not biased?

Edmond the Hun

News Flash: It's Racist to Compliment Black People!

This is stupid.

Air Force Acadmey Coach Fisher DeBerry, after losing a game, remarked that the other team had more black people, and that in general, blacks are faster runners than whites. He got attacked for these statements, which have been dubbed as "racist remarks," and he had to apologize!

The guy said the other team "had a lot more Afro-American players than we did and they ran a lot faster than we did. It just seems to me to be that way. Afro-American kids can run very well. That doesn't mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can't run, but it's very obvious to me that they run extremely well."

Hey, it's the truth! Obviously, you can't over-generalize, and statements won't be true in every situation, but, in general, these are true statements. Just look at the 100-meter dash in the Olympics. The top male times are always faster than the top female times, and the top finishers for either gender are almost always black.

That's just the way God made us. Males in top form are stronger and more athletic than females in top form, and it's the same for blacks to whites. There's nothing racist or sexist about it; that's just established fact.

By calling DeBerry a racist, the criticizers are actually admitting racism of their own. The only way someone could have a problem with that statement is if they inferred that there was some sort of shame in the fact that the fastest blacks are faster than the fastest whites. Now that's racist. But DeBerry's comments were not.

We have just discovered that it is now racist to compliment black people.

Edmond the Hun

(Source: allsports.com)

Let's Wipe Israel Off the Map, Act 2005

It's like a horrible play.

WORLD: Come on, Israel, give up some of your land to the Palestinians, and you'll have peace.
ISRAEL: I doubt it.
WORLD: Come on, just do it. Peace! Peace!
CONSERVATIVE MEDIA/BLOGGERS: This is the stupidest idea in the world. Radical Muslims will only be happy when Israel is wiped off the map. It won't work at all.
WORLD: Did you hear something? Come on, Israel, give up land! Give up land! Peace! Peace!
ISRAEL: Well, OK, we'll do it.

[Israel gives up some land.]

RADICAL MUSLIMS: Yay, we have land! Now let's go attack some Israelis!
IRAN PRESIDENT: Israel must be wiped off the map! (actual quote)
ISRAEL: Here we go again...
WORLD: Hmm... I wonder what happened to the peace!
CONSERVATIVE MEDIA/BLOGGERS: Hate to say I told you so, but the world's not listening anyway...

You know there's something wrong with the world when a coach can't compliment black people without getting attacked and mutilated (allsports.com) while an Islamist president can call for the extermination of Israel and stand by his comments without apology.

Green Bay Packers Off to Bad Start

Six games into the 2005 season, the Green Bay Packers, forever an excellent or at least decent team run by consecutive-game-record-holding Brett Favre, are off to a 1-5 start, their worst in years. On a positive note, maybe this will help lighten up their 68,000-person waiting list for season tickets...

Edmond the Hun

Open-Sourcing: Beats Microsoft to the Punch

Most of you probably don't know what open-sourcing is. It's where lots of programmers and computer geeks make programs, openly revealing the source code to promote collaboration and improvement, simply because they believe information and products should be free and open to everyone (and also because many of them hate Microsoft, which charges hundreds of dollars for its closed-source software).

OpenOffice.org has had a free downloadable software called OpenOffice.org 1.0 for some time now. It is basically a non-brandname copycat of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as a few other less-popular programs. But even though it's non-brandname and doesn't cost $100 or more, Writer is basically the same thing as Word, is completely compatible with Word documents, and even supposedly contains extra features (I cannot confirm this with specific details because some of the features that I thought "extra" are actually already on the latest version of Word, which I do not own).

So, what's the point?

OpenOffice.org has just released version 2.0. I'm not sure all what this means, but when software goes to a new number, it's basically a full and complete upgrade (as opposed to going from 1.0 to 1.1, which might just fix a few bugs or add a couple components).

What interests me is the timing. Microsoft has promised to fully upgrade its Office Suite along with its new operating system Vista, due next year. You might expect OpenOffice to wait for this to come out to see what the new software has to offer, so they can copy it and make it available for free.

Instead, they have come up with things by themselves, offering new and upgraded features without waiting to see what Microsoft will offer. This shows confidence and a desire to beat Microsoft to the punch. In fact, if 2.0 contains some truly new and useful features (I have yet to download it with my feeble dial-up connection), Microsoft may end up being the one incorporating some of OpenOffice's features! There's irony for you!

Microsoft still does not fear competition from OpenOffice, largely because most people have still never heard of it. But what appeals to me is the same quality without the hundred-dollar price tag. By deciding to release a new version before Microsoft releases theirs, OpenOffice is proving that they are not just providing a free copycat of expensive products. They are taking open-sourcing to a new paradigm by taking an initiatve of their own.

Edmond the Hun

Controversy: Prisoner Abortion?

Here's the latest conervative/liberal controversy: Anonymous Lady is in jail and wants to get an abortion. Does she have the right to get one, to have transportation provided to take her to an abortion clinic, payed by (who else) taxpayers?

Well, the Supreme Court ruled that she has that right. Liberals contend that of course it's her right, how dare the Republican government try to control her reproductive choices! Conservatives contend that besides the fact that abortion is murder, prisoners aren't allowed to vote or bear arms, so why should they be allowed to get an abortion?

I don't have much to offer besides the already-established conervative viewpoint. What are the liberals gonna try to argue next? "Hey, this guy in jail wants a gun, how dare you Republicans try to control his weapons choices!" But at the same time, you can't say prisoners are deprived of all rights (food and shelter, for instance).

So when a line has to be drawn, we have to let the Supreme Court draw it, instead of the people or the people-elected Congress. Once again, I support an amendment that would send these kinds of cases to Congress or to the people to draw up a law defining prisoner's rights. Until then, the Supreme Court will continue to make "laws" without checks and balances.

I did find it ironic, though, that the Supreme Court decided that a woman, who was put in prison to restrict her from committing further crimes, is now allowed to leave prison to commit another crime.

Edmond the Hun

Women & Election 2008

A book came out earlier this year called like "The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Goto Become President." And now there's a book out called "Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race."

Umm... isn't the election still over three years away? Doesn't anyone know that Condoleeza Rice doesn't even want to run for president? And who said Hillary could even get the nomination from her own party?

Wouldn't it be hilarious if there's enough people out there who don't even want to vote for a woman president, whether because they believe God doesn't want women in charge, or because women aren't suited to be in charge, or because other countries wouldn't appreciate or respect a woman in charge, or for whatever other reason... if there's enough of them, neither of them stands a chance to begin with!

So I've started a thread in three different forums from websites that target three different demographics (teenage and young adult Christians, scientists, and gasoline price watchers), asking the question and seeing what results I get:

Should a woman be president?

We'll see how the results look in a couple weeks...

Book Review: Freakonomics (4 of 5)

Freakonomics is an interesting book, especially for anyone who likes numbers. There is no specific purpose, as the book itself admits, except maybe to challenge you not to accept at face value statistics that politicians and the media throw out at you, and to maybe dig a little deeper for the truth. Problem is, I already know not to always accept these statistics, and unless you are an economist who has access to large pools of data from governments, schools, and sumo wrestlers, you really don't have a way to check the numbers you are given.

That said, it's still a very interesting book. Levitt asks random unasked questions and pores over lots of data to find unexpected correlations. While he admits that a correlation between two things cannot determine why, he still concludes or strongly encourages us about the why's. Abortion in the 1970's caused a crime drop in the 1990's. Incompetent school teachers change their students' test answers to correct ones so No Child will get Left Behind and they won't look bad. Real estate agents don't work their hardest at selling your home because the difference between a $300,000 and a $310,000 sale is only an extra $150 in commission for them.

It's all good and interesting, except that as the book progresses, the Stevens offer us less examples of the actual data and resort to simply telling us that when this happened, this tended to happen. They make very convincing arguments, except if we are to take their own advice, we cannot accept the correlations they give us. States with higher abortion rates in the 1970's tended to experience higher crime drops in the 1990's. OK. Was that true for every single high-abortion-rate state or just most of them? Obviously, they can't give us all the raw data for all of their examples, because then the book would be several hundred boring pages of numbers. Although it is unavoidable, this by nature lessens the credibility of his conclusions.

For the most part, however, Freakonomics is a smart book that finds interesting and enlightening patterns in unexpected places. And they even do a good job of attempting to explain and find causes for these patterns. I only wish I had that kind of access to that kind of data...

Edmond the Hun

Movie Review: Elizabethtown (3 of 5)

Elizabethtown is a chick flick. In one sense, they're all the same. In another sense, they're all slightly different, and some things work, and some things really do not.

Most chick flicks do not start out with the guy losing his company a billion dollars. This has potential. Most chick flicks also do not revolve around the death of the guy's dad, and the ensuing family relations and squabbles and funerals and memorial services. And now we know why. It's just kind of an awkward clash ~ not only the death with the romance but the comic relief with with death ~ you're not always sure whether you're supposed to be sad or laughing.

The romance is much more entertaining, and it's too bad it didn't get more focus. Kirsten Dunst is hilarious as a too-forward slightly-crazy flight attendant with a halfway-consistent Southern accent. Orlando Bloom is also fun to watch in a rare swordless role, espeically in some animated moments (There's nothing quite like watching this sword- and bow-wielding elf/pirate erupt in frustration and bang his horn after missing an exit and getting lost by a cornfield).

Elizabethtown is also smartly modern. Cell phones are a major part of their relationship. Crowe maximizes the potentials of cell phone multi-tasking to humourous effect, as they talk for hours. The relationship is also refreshingly non-physical, for a large part, at least. Yes, they make out eventually, but for a time just get to know each other and even refrain from a kiss at one point, as Dunst says, "Didn't it feel better when we didn't do something impulsive?"

Overall, the move is entertaining, but the death/family subplot is too much of a distraction, and when the travel-deprived Bloom leaves town and goes on a "road trip" specifically designed for him by Dunst, complete with a map/scrapbook/mix CDs package that is sweet (in both senses of the word), you find yourself wishing the movie had more of this sort of thing. The mini bits of language and sexual references are also a distraction, enhanced by the fact that the rest of the movie is laregly void of them (For example, I would not criticize I, Robot for the language so much because it's an action movie with language throughout. Here, it's a mostly innocent romance with a few random words thrown in.)

Elizabethtown, then, is an anomaly. It's a typical chick flick with several twists and differences, some funny and some distracting. It's up to you. Not that September/October 2005 have had much else to offer...

Edmond the Hun

Economy, continued

An anonymous "Fresh Eavesdropper" left an insightful and knowledgable comment on my previous economic-related post. The trickle-down related information was especially insightful. (Although it doesn't help me decide how likely the economy will crash this Christmas if people can't and don't spend enough on stuff).

While I recognize that movies are a far from ideal measure of the status of the economy and the people's amount of spending money, it is the only set for which I have readily available data (via www.boxofficemojo.com). Book publishers release rankings only, not numbers. And I simply don't know where to find other useful numbers.

Yet we have now had three weekends in a row without a $20-million grossing movie. Can this be attributed solely to a lack of good movies?

Edmond the Hun

Movies: Elizabethtown

Saw it today. Expect a full review later this week. Probably a 3 of 5.

Pros: Good overall production and presentation, especially regarding the romance element. Modern and smart (cell phones are a major part of the relationship, for example), yet unmodernly unphyscial (yes, they make out eventually, but for a large part simply get to know each other). Plenty of humourous hilarious moments and catch phrases/dialogue.

Cons: The other major element, regarding the death of Orlando's father, subsequent relations with southern country-type family, the memorial service, etc, clashes awkwardly with the romance element, which is much more entertaining. Kirsten's southern accent is wonderfully amusing, except she's not consistent with it. And the brief language and sexual references are random, standing out awkwardly and unnecessarily because the rest of the movie is so devoid of them.

Edmond the Hun

The Economy: Don't Panic (yet)

I love numbers, perhaps too much for my own good. I concluded that an analysis of the numbers alone does not justify accusing Reggie Sanders of taking steroids, even though from 2000 to 2001 he went from 11 home runs to 33 home runs, and even though he hit as many home runs in 2005 as 2004 in only half as many at-bats. If he started steroids in 2001 why didn't he hit as well in 2004 as 2005? Or, if he started steroids in 2005, why the jump between 2000 and 2001? Without outside evidence, it's far more logical to chalk it up to natural fluctuation and inconsistency.

But we're getting off topic. I was speculating last week about gas prices and what it would do to the economy. But I'm not too worried.

Take the movies, for example. It is true that two weekends ago, the top movie only grossed $15 million, the first under-$20 mil this year. And it's true that last weekend's top movie only grossed $16 million. Two in a row!

But you could also argue that none of the recent movies have had anything really exciting to offer and attract large movie crowds, certainly a viable theory. And last weekend had five opening movies in the top seven, which means there were a bunch of new movies competing for money, all of them making just enough to not allow one of them to make a whole bunch.

It's true that the last two weekends have made less money than the same weekends of 2003 and 2004. But it's also true that the last weekend made more money than the previous six weekends.

It's all about which numbers you look at, and the general result is: While money-making among movies does seem to be slightly down, it cannot single-handedly be attributed to gas prices, and even if it could, the numbers aren't different enough to cause alarm.

Or take fast food. I've seen several difference statistics that between 10-30% of people have altered their fast food habits, or semi-formal dining habits, or are clipping more coupons, etc, because of higher gas prices. In one sense, that's a decent percent. But in another sense, it's also very low. The majority of people aren't changing how they spend their money because of higher gas prices! At McDonald's, where I work, we're still plenty busy. Sure, the last two days were pretty slow, but that's just normal fluctuation. At a McTeacher night last week, the gas station across the street said $2.99, and we were packed nonstop for three hours.

The bottom line: Don't panic. The economy's not crumbling yet. (But don't hold your breath for holiday sales) I'll keep analyzing those numbers that none of you probably even care about...

Edmond the Hun

Ramblings: Bagels, Barnes, and Baseball

Got up at 7:30, since I had to work at nine. Read the paper. Surprised to see nothing about Bush's remarks that we've foiled twelve terrorist plots since 9/11, including five for our soil. But why would the media report something that's both positive AND pro-Bush?

Worked six hours, with a break. 'Twas very busy. Only second time doing a breakfast shift, since I'm not really "available" during those hours, and only work then when I'm needed. Managers were again impressed with my quick grasping of the concepts of toasting bagels and heating biscuits and hotcakes and whatnot. I guess they don't expect employees to do what they're told and remember it when they learn something new. But it means they like me more, and it's always good to have your managers like you. It's even better to have them like you because you're a good and hard worker. I think I'm due for a raise in the near future...

Called my girlfriend to see about checking out the new Barnes and Nobles with her tomorrow, or finish watching The Prince of Egypt, which has an amazing musical score. Speaking of which, I need to write more music for the school's play tomorrow, too. I've got a bunch of various ditties floating around that need to be strapped down and molded, but I'm still clueless about the big fight scene.

Played some football with some friends from my former youth group and their friends. Wide receiver, missed some embarrassingly easy grabs since I lack skills, but still caught an interception for a touchdown that finished the first game, and received two more in the second game. Haven't exercised much lately besides sporadic weightlifting, and I was mildly worn out.

Cardinals play tonight after 10. Commissioner Bud Selig apologized to fans for the late start, saying it was unavoidable due to other baseball and football games scheduled on the same day. Makes him look good that he even bothered to apologize, though, right? Until you read in the paper that Kit Bond noted that when a 10 o'clock playoff game occurred a few years ago, he promised "no more 10 o'clock games." And now he broke his promise. Sure, it was unavoidable, but now he gets scolded because of his previous comments.

A tip to my friend who wants to become president (and any other hopefuls out there): When you make promises, only promise to try. Never say that you will make something happen, or that you will not let something happen again. Because the Murphy demons will make sure the opposite comes true, and the media will never forget it. Poor Bud.

Edmond the Hun

Halo Update (A Major, Major Update)

Director: Peter Jackson
Design: WETA

This news is so big that it's making Halo fanatics crazy about how awesome the movie's going to be. I'm excited but still waiting to see how King Kong looks, to see if Jackson can carry his amazing talent with Lord of the Rings through another movie (since all his pre-LOTR movies were sick cheap horror flicks). But if he succeeds with King Kong, Halo will be incredible.

Edmond the Hun

Gas Prices: The Economy In the Long Run

It appears as if gas prices will stay in this $3 range throughout the next month or two, at least, until we can get these Gulf refineries up and running again. Of course, that's providing another hurricane doesn't hit it...

I'm wondering how all of this will affect the American economy. I saw something in today's paper that said there is an expected 5% increase in retail sales this holiday season compared to last year. And I thought, did they take into account this 75% increase in gas prices? If this really maintains, I think it would seriously cut down on the average American's spending money for Christmas presents.

I freely admit that I'm ignorant about demographics and economical factors, and I think it wouldn't affect the upper class, because $5 a gallon would mean nothing to them, except that they might have to wait til next week to buy the newest iPod. And it wouldn't affect the lower class, because they can't afford to own a car anyway. But it would affect the majority of Americans, the middle class, who own a house and a car or two (or three) and pay lots of bills every month but can still afford to pay them and have money left over to buy stuff with.

It's that disposable cash ~ what most commercial businesses rely on for their profits ~ that gas prices will eat into.

The top grossing movie last weekend only made $15 million, less than half of a normal weekend. Is this an early sign of people having less disposable cash? Or is that just because the last two weekends haven't offered anything too exciting and attractive?

I read somewhere that most companies get a quarter of their annual revenue from Christmas/holiday sales. Will they get that quarter this time? Will companies go out of business? Cut workers? Increase unemployment? Start a second Great Depression?

Or am I just a seventeen year old who doesn't understand the economy?

Edmond the Hun