The Epi-Epilogue

For those of you who finished Deathly Hallows and felt the Epilogue created more questions than it answered, this webchat with J.K. Rowling does a great job answering many unanswered questions. But beware of spoilers!

Iron Man

Hube linked to the Iron Man movie footage released at a Comic Con panel.

I'm still not sold on Robert Downey, Jr as Tony Stark. While he is a good actor, I still think he's too old. But the movie itself looks amazing. Iron Man flying alongside F-22s? What isn't to like?

It Didn't Take Long

John Roberts had a seizure and already people are reveling in his misfortune. But remember, only the right wing is hate-filled.

Crime in Philly

Classical Values is looking at the skyrocketing Philly murder rate and is noticing something that will surprise very few pro-gunners: the killers are all ex-cons who procured their guns illegally. Unfortunately people like Police Commission Sylvester Johnson don't seem to make the connection:

"At this point, right now, we have over 32,000 people in Philly who have permits to carry (and) actually walk the streets of Philly with a gun. We only have 6,400 police officers. We're outnumbered nearly 5-to-1 with people who are on the streets with guns," Johnson said.

No, the police are outnumbered 5-to-1 by law abiding citizens with guns. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. The scary thing is that both groups are probably outnumbered by armed criminals. Unfortunately Johnson doesn't realize that law abiding citizens able to defend themselves and others are not liabilities, they are assets. That the media doesn't connect the dots is even more unfortunate. It's a shame really.

The scary thing is that no one seems to be looking at why the murder rate is skyrocketing. Everyone looks to blame guns, but shootings are largely a symptom. If guns disappeared today, we'd see them replaced by clubbings and stabbings within a month. The real issue is where is this violence coming from? And who is looking at that? Since the violence is tightly contained within a few Philadelphia neighborhoods, I'm betting it is the result of the city's perennial economic troubles and/or criminals fighting over local territory. My guess is that you could look at the victims and killers and find out a lot.

Brady Campaign Blog on Hiatus

It seems the massive numbers of pro-gunners posting on the Brady Campaign blog have shut it down. SaysUncle points out that as long as the BC have comments, they will almost certainly lose the debate on their own blog. Why? Because while the Brady Campaign has opinions, the pro-gunners have actual facts on their side.

I'm sure the Brady Blog will be back, most likely without comments. Hopefully they'll leave trackbacks or something people can respond to.

Let There Be Comics

Amy and I have been watching a lot of the G4 coverage of Comic-Con. Most of this is boring and repetitive, but you do occasionally pan a piece of gold out of that river of crap. One such nugget is the online comics section at the Image website.

The first issue of 38 different comics are available there. And they're not some annoying Flash document like the Heroes comics at NBC. Nope, these are just image files straight from Image. Some like Dynamo 5, The Walking Dead, and Invincible look pretty good. I was actually thinking about picking up Invincible's first trade paperback and now I don't really need much convincing. Other comics just aren't quite doing it for me for one reason or another. Some have art I can't stand (The Nightly News) or are too anti-heroic (Drain, Bomb Queen) for me to root for the main character.

But I'm still glad they're there. Go, kill time, enjoy. Don't blame me if you kill way too much.

New Computers

After reading the description of the computer Chris Byrne built for a friend, I'm realizing I've fallen out of touch with computer tech. SATA2 drives? What kind of RAM was that?

My last computer purchase was in Spring 2003 when my Dell laptop died. It was a $300 Circuit City Celeron special that I hooked up to a $150 15" LCD flat screen. Back when Amy and I tried out World of Warcraft, I added a gig of RAM. I also put in a DVD burner for viewing DVDs and backing up my hard drives. Oh and I put on an optical mouse to replace the old one which wore out. Even now this PC meets my needs nicely because I don't game on it, I only need it to websurf and play the occasional video.

What about work? Well I'm sure our IS/IT department has some sort of regulation that precludes me from even thinking about computer hardware for my work PC. Even though it does actually crunch the occasional number. Meanwhile my skills have atrophied to the point that I hadn't bothered to turn the PC off and back on again before calling their technical support line.

I think this is just one more area where I'm slowly turning into my father. I'm sure he was a young engineer on the cutting edge once. I mean he must have had an incredibly powerful slide rule or something. By the time I hit his age I'm sure I'll have to ask the grandkids to come over and help grandpa breathe his cyberspores properly so I can brainjack onto the Metaverse. And then they can escort me around there so I don't get lost.

What Kind of Conservative Are You?

My Conservative Identity:

You are a Flag-Waving Everyman, also known as a patriot. You believe in freedom, apple pie, rooting for America at all times, and that God gave us a two-day weekend so we could enjoy football and NASCAR.

Take the quiz at www.FightLiberals.com

I must say that I really don't understand the last question though. Tamara came out as an Anti-government Gunslinger which seems right up her alley.

The Deathly Hallows

So I finished Book 7 of Harry Potter last night and I quite enjoyed it. I had seen some of the plot twists coming (plot twists which I will not spoil), but overall it tied up the books very well indeed. As with the previous novels, events that seemed mundane books ago were to be more significant than they appeared.

There is one thing that was just kind of weird though. All of the other Potter books follow a similar formula: introductory action over summer break, fall at Hogwarts, events of Christmas break, spring at Hogwarts, climax at the end of the school year, falling action as everyone goes home for summer. Book 7 doesn't do this. As Harry hints at the end of book six, he doesn't go back to school this time around. It really seems to effect the books pacing and the way I perceived the passage of time in the story.

Rocket Engine Accident

Three employees are dead after an explosion during an hybrid rocket engine test at Scaled Composites. Rand Simberg has been following the story. Will this be private space travel's Apollo 1?

UPDATE: Instapundit reports that this LA Times story has more. The incident happened as technicians were testing nitrous oxide flow through a nozzle. This is a standard and generally safe test. Unless something catches fire, which is what appears to have happened.

The Christendom of Fantasy

I'm a big fantasy fan. It is my literary vice. But the fantasy genre as currently written has two major flaws: it is too damn long and it is not fantastic anymore.

In order to write fantasy today, authors seem to be required to write stories that stretch over at least three books and often four or more. David Eddings has written four of them and their total page count is still less than Jordan's Wheel of Time. And these are stories which could be better told in one or two books simply by focusing on the primary protagonist. If you want depth, flesh out the sideplots later in short story collections or short novels like L.E. Modesitt did with Recluce. Why are they like this? Because the market expects it and will buy these monsters.

The second problem is that modern fantasy is highly derivative. John C. Wright notes a side effect of this in a comment buried on his blog:

But let me make a comment about D&D. The generic fantasyland that Gary Gygax tried to erect, is, ironically enough, Christendom. Many of the features unique to the European Middle Ages -- features that do not make sense absent the context of local princes and a universal church -- are predominant. ... Now, of course, to make it palatable to the modern audience, Gygax stripped out the too-obvious Christian ideas, and substituted a pantheon for a monotheism -- but polytheists never had religious orders like the Roman Church in the middle ages. Rites were perform by the leading aristocrats, not by specially-devoted clerical brotherhoods.

In George RR Martin's GAME OF THRONES, the author there runs into the similar question. He wants to have the 'Dark Ages' flavor of ecclesiastic churchmen in the cities and paganism in the countryside, but he does not want to introduce a jarring note of monotheism, and so he has 'The Seven' gods of the official pantheon, and the groves and 'high places' of the older worship in the countryside.

When was the last time you didn't seen medieval fantasy? Even though you can't have medieval society without the Church. But if medieval society wasn't bad enough everybody is recreating Tolkien, largely because of Dungeons and Dragons. Tad William's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn Trilogy is just Middle Earth run through a blender. I pick up a fantasy book and wonder how this guy is doing elves, dwarves, and dragons. And if they're not redoing Tolkien they're cribbing notes from Jordan or someone else.

In short, keep it short and original.

Lancet Critique

Michelle Malkin has the text of a paper criticizing the 2004 Lancet study. In short, Lancet's statistical work was fudged (by omitting data collected in Fallujah) in order to present results which were statistically significant. Using the full data set, their analysis falls apart because of statistical noise. This is not an unusual problem for many types of social analysis. The statistical noise is high enough that you need a huge sample size to make valid decisions.

On a personal note, hypothesis testing is cool. I've had to do it a few times for work and it is amazingly powerful when you are trying to identify problems.

U.S. Top Gear

While the version aired on the Discovery Channel was pretty soulless thanks to the re-shot crowd sequences, it was still Top Gear on US TV. Unfortunately, Clarkson has nixed shooting a dedicated American version of Top Gear stateside. No word if he's worried about those Alabama rednecks tracking him down or not.

The Kilt Sweep

I wish I'd found this video by kilt collector Hamish Alexander before I wore my kilt to the highland games. Sitting down the first few times was really quite awkward, because you're so used to pants. Trying to get the kilt sorted out when I got into the car the first time was really a pain.

Hmm, perhaps that's why women tend get in a vehicle by the sit-and-turn method where men just climb in more directly. Unlike men who are almost always wearing pants, women often have skirts.

Learning Woodcraft

Lawdog is giving instruction on how to light a fire using common tools, some steel wool, and a battery. I quit scouts after WEBELOS, largely because the full boy scout troops in my area were a bit shady. As a result, I really don't have much firelighting ability. The apartment has a fireplace and even with modern tools including a blow torch, I can't keep the damn thing lit for any length of time. One of these days I'll have to get a weber kettle grill for the house and teach myself some essentials with it.

Lighting a fire with simple tools is just about the most important survival tool you can have, by the way. Human beings are ruled by the law of threes: 3 minutes without air, 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, 3 weeks without food. Making fire is an important component of getting the heat and shelter you will require should you experience anything from ill-timed car trouble or the end of the world as we know it.

Oh and Mr. Dawg also has useful instruction in basic self defense. His advice? Get your hands in front of your chest. If you're under threat the only time your hands shouldn't be in front of your chest is if you're using them defensively or offensively elsewhere. Don't keep them at your sides where they are useless.

Otakon 2007

Amy and I went down to Baltimore for the festivities on Saturday. We spent at least an hour in the dealers room, talked to the artist on a webcomic Amy likes, and spent some time just gawking at the freaks. We also attended a Kendo panel which was surprisingly unexciting and spent some time in the manga library which was actually pretty fun.

After discussing the visit with a coworker, gawking at the freakscosplayers turns out to be a pretty popular thing to do. Plus the cosplayers generally find it flattering if you take pictures.

Just Like in Samurai Cat

So Miaowara Tomokato, a katana-wielding feline samurai, is fighting a horde of beweaponed mafiosi with his demented and heavily armed nephew Shiro at his side. Suddenly a gun control bill passes into law and the mafiosi are instantaneously disarmed through the power of our legal system. Of course Samurai Cat keeps his weapon because it isn't a gun and Shiro is a licensed collector so the M1917 heavy machine-gun he's dealing hot leaden death with is perfectly legal. Shiro turns to his uncle and says "Thank Buddha gun control works, Unc!"

This vignette comes out of Samurai Cat at the Movies and is about the only funny thing in the book. The 1/2 Hour News Hour derives similar humor from demonstrating the amazing power of Gun Free Zones. Because when that's what the effectiveness of these policies are: a joke. We would be much better off if we understood that the real role of police in modern society. Given response time, Cops are not heroes responding in the nick of time to save you from some crazy maniac. Instead they are the people who try to find your killer before he kills someone else too.

Harry Potter

Chris Byrne has a review of the latest one. He read an internet copy while his hardback was in transit. The review is safe from a spoiler standpoint, since Rowling herself already let us know people will die. The verdict? A great story poorly written. Or in other words, it's a Harry Potter book.

UPDATE: Amy and I picked up our copy on Sunday. I'm about 200 pages in. Pretty good but also really long winded in parts.

1 to 1 Gundam

It seems that a theme park in Japan has built a full scale Gundam replica. The Gundam lantern was pretty cool and that was only half scale... The only bad thing is that the Gundam is lying on its back, definitely not as cool or towering as an upright model. I wonder if the beam swords work?

Thomas A Swift's Electric Rifle

The TASER C2 is an interesting piece of equipment. It is a small light unit, meant for personal defense and at $350 it is quite a bit cheaper than the $1000 police model. But it is not without issues. Many groups like the NYPD and Amnesty International have issues with the TASER and don't like civilians (or even police officers in AI's case) using it. Which makes no sense to me as the alternative is pepper spray which has more severe long term effects, or beating/shooting the guy.

But the lack of long term effects isn't necessarily a good thing. Popular Mechanics has a video of Assistant Editor Erik Sofge getting shot with a TASER. Obviously it hurts. Sofge is highly incapacitating while the current is running. The problem? That's only 30 seconds and as soon as the current shuts off, Sofge is back to normal in short order. This is the main problem with TASERs. It hurts like hell, then it stops and within a few seconds the attacker can start beating you up where he left off.

Incidentally, this is why TASER recommends dropping the C2 and using those 30 seconds of shock time to open up distance between yourself and your assailant. Which means the TASER C2 is essentially a $350 expendable. That's kind of rich isn't it? Especially compared to $10-15 cans of pepper spray.

Really, pepper spray (also called OC spray) seems like a better deal to me. Not only is it cheaper, but people hit with OC spray do feel it for a long time. They often can't see well afterwards either. Sounds good to me. And of course for $350 you're in the price range for actual firearms too, but then you might kill the guy.