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Friday, May 23, 2003Dave Kopel and Richard Griffiths have an article on CBS' Hitler miniseries. Like most of Kopel's writing, it has a second amendment slant. He argues that the gun registration policies of the Weimar Republic made it easier for the Nazis to put down resistance during their rise to power, keeping guns from Jews and other potential rebels. They write: No one can foresee with certainty which countries will succumb to genocidal dictatorship. Germany under the Weimar Republic was a democracy in a nation with a very long history of much greater tolerance for Jews than existed in France, England, or Russia, or almost anywhere else... One never knows if one will need a fire extinguisher. Many people go their whole lives without needing to use a fire extinguisher, and most people never need firearms to resist genocide. But if you don't prepare to have a life-saving tool on hand during an unexpected emergency, then you and your family may not survive." posted by Nate on 6:25 PM link Thursday, May 22, 2003God bless Otis Thorpe. In 1997, the Detroit Pistons dealt the veteran to the Vancouver Grizzlies. After years of turning over the pick, the Griz finally had to give Detroit it's first rounder. Provided it wasn't #1 overall, that is. In tonight's draft lottery, the drama built as Memphis got into the final two, but, in a Patrick Ewing-esque dry ice on the lottery ping pong balls twist, Cleveland got the pick to use on hometown product LeBron James. So my Pistons are at #2. The word from ESPN's David Aldrich is that the Pistons want to use the pick on Darko Milicic rather than Carmelo Anthony, which would give them a real center. This lets them put Ben Wallace at power forward. I'd prefer they take Anthony, who is the at least the next James Worthy / Scotty Pippen, and could be the next great all-around player in the league. Detroit can deal for a passable center later on. Anybody tall and moderately skilled can play center in today's NBA: Shawn Bradley is getting minutes in this year's playoffs, for the love of Pete. Watching the ugly Detroit-New Jersey game makes me think I'm right; Detroit needs athleticism and scoring, not another large guy with feet like cement blocks. posted by Nate on 8:56 PM link I watched the Law & Order marathon with my mom, and used the cable modem while I was over there. I have a compulsion to install or reinstall Operating Systems; it's as if I realize that I finally have my machine working exactly as I want it, so I decide, "this will not due. Let's spend weeks tuning my GUI and trying to get my hardware working in a new Windows version / Linux distribution / Other OS." I downloaded the Windows Server 2003 180 day evaluation version from Microsoft, though I haven't installed it yet. I have to do some repartitioning first. A lot of work for something I probably won't use much, but I felt like playing with it. When you have a fast Internet connection, you can do that. Besides, I'm an IT Professional, or at least I play one on TV, so I should get some experience with it. I also got the Red Hat 9 disk images, though I didn't get around to burning them. I'm debating whether to stay with my RH 8 installation, install 9, or try the latest Free BSD instead. I like BSD, though in the past there weren't drivers for some of my hardware, which Linux had. Now that BSD's caught up, I might go back to it. I'll miss the Red Hat fonts, though; they look nicer than the True Type Fonts that come with Windows, let alone the fonts that come with other *NIXes. Anyway, my point (and I do have one), is that I 've been using bittorrent to download things. Essentially, you download a .torrent file. This gives you the size of the file(s) and the location of a "tracker." Rather than have a lot of people download from one location, which slows the download speed, everyone who is downloading shares with everyone else; whatever you've downloaded so far, others can download from you. This makes it very fast, and it seems to be a good alternative to getting large files over FTP. I got the RedHat ISOs in around an hour for each CD using bittorrent, while Windows Server (from Microsoft's ftp) took five hours. There are a few problems with Bittorrent. Unlike FTP, finding a torrent file doesn't guarantee that you'll get a complete download. For example, I tried to get a file that had only one completed copy available, and a bunch of people downloading bits and pieces from each other. Unfortunately, the person with the full copy went offline, so I was stuck with 85% of the file and no way to get the rest. Also, one site has to host the tracker, and if that site goes down, you're hosed. Bittorrent it isn't as anonymous as Kazaa and other peer-to-peer software in this regard, since one location has to host the tracker. If you're hosting the tracker for pirated software, the lawyers can find you easily. And once your tracker is shut down, people can't get the files. Someone who had gotten the whole files from you would have to make a new .torrent file with a new tracker, and the whole process starts again. Mostly, bittorrent is used to share large legal or semi-legal files, like Linux distributions and recorded TV episodes. And lots and lots of porno movies. Not that I'd know anything about that. I've never downloaded Internet porn. I've never looked at any sort of porn. I've never even "lusted in my heart," as Jimmy Carter would say. I don't even like women. Or men. I'm asexual. I'm a gelding, like Funny Cide. Yeah, that's it. However, I am attracted to UNIX-like Operating Systems. I want to fsck them so bad. posted by Nate on 3:42 PM link BUMBUM! I spent the evening watching the back to back to back Law & Order episodes. Two were mediocre, but I sorta liked the madcap episode with copious amounts of shit happening and Briscoe cracking wise about it all. I wasn't especially impressed with the other two. The storylines the last few seasons haven't been very good: there doesn't seem to be as much imagination and pinache in adapting the real crimes into intriguing plots. Instead they come off as a recital of what happened rather than anything dramatic. (Like the Bison Dele episode tonight.) The "This Isn't Michael Jackson, Really" episode had a well executed twist at the end, but seriously. C'mon-- Michael Jackson?-- there's a an inert burro lying on the side of a dusty road. The Law & Order writers are lining up single file with sticks, eagerly flogging the hell out of it. I like the newer cast members, though I don't think they're enough to bring the show back to where it once was. Fred Thompson-- you da man, as the cool kids say. Major shout outs for you. And Elisabeth Rohm isn't just attractive, she has the realistic thick, measured lawyer speech patterns down pat, following in that Jill Hennessey / Angie Harmon mold. But without better story lines, I think that Law & Order: TOS will fade away. At least SVU has gotten better lately (I love the ensemble cast), and tortured genius detective Vincent D'Onofrio makes Criminal Intent one of the best shows on TV. posted by Nate on 12:42 AM link Wednesday, May 21, 2003Okay, that last post was really lame. It's like those stupid Jackie Harvey columns in The Onion I always skim through. Sorry. I just wanted to include something not related to Detroit sports or The Matrix lest I lose my audience (all ten of you). I'll do better next time, I promise. posted by Nate on 5:12 PM link This post is dedicated to Larry King, who is reviving his inane newspaper column, this time for Sports Illustrated. I have four cats. Pound for pounds, cats are awesome... Is there anything more annoying than when you're doing the dishes and there's an unreachable bit of milk residue in the bottom of a narrow-mouth glass... If he doesn't watch out, that Glenn Reynolds chap might have a few people visit his Internet site... I enjoy cheese... Yesterday a post office vending machine refused to accept five different one dollar bills. I had already put in a fiver toward a seven dollar purchase, and the machine only gave change in coins. The upshot? I have a bunch of those Sacajawea dollars in my coat pocket... posted by Nate on 4:52 PM link Tuesday, May 20, 2003Detroit lost again, at home, by two, to New Jersey. After two straight home games of getting a lot of breaks but losing late double digit leads, I don't think there is any way the Pistons win this series. Then again, I thought Philadelphia would be in the NBA Finals, so maybe Rick Carlisle's crew will prove me wrong for a second time. At this time of the year a team's weaknesses get amplified. There are two problems especially they need to address this offseason before they get to the next level. The Pistons have no inside presence offensively, and need a rebounding big man to complement Ben Wallace. On nights when Corliss or Okur hold their own, they're the best team in the East; unfortunately, those two don't show up consistently. I've heard a few Kevin Garnett trade rumors, though I don't think the Pistons have the ammunition to get him (though they do have an oodle of cap room should they take on his gargantuan contract). A lot of the offseason depends on Thursday's draft position lottery. Detroit owns Memphis' first round draft pick, as long as it isn't #1 overall. Hopefully, the lotto yields an early pick to use on one of the seven foot Europeans (were D-Town to get Carmelo Anthony at #2, I'd probably pass out from all the blood rushing from my head to my, um, Syracuse Orangeman). They also need a better passer at point guard. While Billups has had a great year as a scorer, I wouldn't be suprised if the Pistons let him test free agency. They might try to swing a deal for Andre Miller or even go after the guy who will beat them in this year's playoffs, free agent to be Jason Kidd. Whether or not the Detroit Free Press trades Mitch Albom for Bob Ryan remains to be seen. posted by Nate on 11:20 PM link Here are my thoughts on the Matrix. This isn't a review, just some ideas that occurred to me on what might happen next. posted by Nate on 3:38 PM link Monday, May 19, 2003The Corporate MoFo has a good summary of the religion and philosophy behind The Matrix. UPDATE: Fark.com linked to the story, and I've been reading the comment thread for the last half hour. It is really funny. Some comments are trolls about how incomprehensibly bad the film was, and others are trolls about how The Matrix is a terrible movie that dumbs down sci-fi, and how we should all read Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick instead. (P.K.D. does have some pretty good Gnostic sci-fi books, but please...) Or cyberpunk, which is one of the dumbest science fiction sub-genres I've encountered (although good authors like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson have done it right). A small minority of commenters want to intelligently discuss the film, and the rest are the bored, horny fifteen year old stoners that gravitate to Fark.com like a crow to Shiny Things. Pretty much they make comments about how the movie sucked, not enough karate and bewbies, too much boring philosophy shiat. After a while, someone suggested that, in order to understand it, these people might want to see The Matrix Reloaded again, this time concentrating on the dialogue and the ideas the movie presents. The response (and I quote): I could do that, but it'd probably just put me to sleep again. It's just my two cents, but I didn't think it lived up to the first film. There was so much stuff going on, whereas the first movie was relatively easy to understand. Heh. posted by Nate on 6:47 AM link I saw The Matrix Reloaded Sunday. Twice. I went to an early afternoon show, figuring that it would be a decent movie but nothing special, and that I'd still have most of the day to get things done. I was wrong on both counts. It was a spectacular film, with an imaginative, insightful plot. While the first film tended toward Gnostic theology (God is really a deceiver demigod hiding the truth behind our real existence), the second movie focused on the question of free will. Essentially, our actions are determined by subconscious choices; our quest is to find out not why we act the way we do, but why we make the choices that lead to our actions. Oh, and there was some Kung Fu. I'll probably write some longer comments on Matrix Reloaded later, and stick them on another page so I don't spoil the plot twists (the ending is jaw-dropping). In a nutshell, I think that Reloaded and the upcoming sequel are moving toward Christian myth, with Agent Smith as a nihilistic Lucifer figure. We also are getting glimpses as to Neo's true nature, not as Jesus or Buddha, but as-- TO BE CONCLUDED... posted by Nate on 5:04 AM link
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your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson. Questions or comments? Email nate@swankypimp.com |
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