Rodriguez should have gotten a fourth year, a chance to replace his defensive staff and to allow his younger players to mature. But the end of the season killed Michigan's forward propulsion.[full 'story' on ESPN.com]
Brandon fired Rodriguez, all nine assistant coaches and nearly all of their support staff. Had he done so after the regular season, when he should have, he might have saved Michigan's recruiting class and allowed the assistants to find other jobs. That would have been the smart and considerate decision to make.
07 January 2011
why I hate sports writing
RichRod should've been given a fourth season ... right after he had been fired at the end of the regular season (and what, re-hired after the bowl game?). lol (I know, technically it is saying he should've gotten a fourth year, but since it was obvious that he wouldn't be getting one, the decision should've been taken before the bowl game, but it amuses me more greatly to construe it otherwise!)
12 December 2010
Mind of Mencia
| Jokes.com | ||||
| Carlos Mencia - Hospital Show | ||||
| ||||
I love the bit just before this about how not making fun of handicapped people only draws *more* attention to the fact that they are handicapped and makes them feel less a part of society. :o)
09 September 2010
Inception: my take, part 5
(Where are 2-4? shutup, that's where! :P)
Slate has a superb piece, "Five Ways of Looking at Inception" that is simply brilliant.
True to my contrarian nature, I am most enamored with possibility 3,
Well, call me imaginative, but I can imagine Nolan doing that! I don't think each of the 5 different options presented in the article are mutually-exclusive (Cobb could be dreaming and it could also be a metaphor for film-making), but some are. Regardless, I support 3 fully, and for additional reasons as follow:
a) watch the physics of they characters in the chase in Mombasa - they 'crumple' to the ground just as unnaturally as the characters during the purported dream sequences. Also, why does the physics of the van tumbling (off the freeway) and in freefall (off the bridge) affect the 2nd-layer dream's physics (the hotel) but not the third layer's (the winter fortress)?
b) Saito and Mal use similar, sometimes even identical, phrases during the film. Saito tells Cobb he needs to take a leap of faith, a comment made by Mal before her suicide and again made by Saito in the final scene in limbo. Yet Mal and Saito never met in "real" life, so the fact that their phrasings are so similar suggests that they are not separate individuals in the true sense but rather projections of Cobb's own subconscious.
c) (this is a big one): the spinning top is a very clever RED HERRING. Whether it topples or not has no bearing to reality. Why? First, it was Mal's totem. Cobb mentions several times that it was the only thing he had left of hers. Seeing as how other people cannot even let others *touch* their totems, I propose that the fact Cobb uses someone else's totem renders that totem void and unreliable (and if it wasn't her totem, why would setting it spinning in the 'safe' of her house-mind signify Cobb's inception on Mal?)
Second sub-point to c), (and I haven't looked at the script, so I'm going off memory and a second viewing) Cobb specifically says that the totem is used to "make sure you're not stuck in someone else's dream." N.b. - it is never said that the totem will help you determine if you are stuck in your *own* dream, which I posit he is. Another supporting point to this idea that the totem is useless in your own dream is the fact that Cobb refuses to be allowed (for the most part) access to the schematics of the dream-mazes because once he knows them, his subconscious can manipulate the dream world. Now, if only YOU know the physics of your particular totem, then when you are deep in the dreamworld of your own subconscious, you would similarly still know the totem's physics and be able to manipulate it.
Finally, this also explains why Cobb is able to transition more easily between dream-states (and limbo) than any other character, why he's the only one who's been able to successfully pull off an inception, and why he is constantly 'breaking' the very rules he explains to his team.
There is also a "tell" - the old man in Mombasa looks Cobb full in the face when he says, "They don't come here to dream - they come to be woken up. The dream has become their reality, and who are you to say otherwise, sir?" One final discontinuity - in the dreams, Saito dies before Fischer even opens the final room/vault. How could he know that the inception has worked? Yet upon waking, he immediately makes the magical phone call that will give Cobb a free pass back to see his children (who also happen to be wearing the same clothes as in all his dreams / memories? come on!).
Those were the main points that I thought strongly supported the idea that the whole film is a dream sequence. For me, that does not cheapen the film at all. I rarely watch a film more than once, even DVDs, but I've seen Inceptiontwice four times in the theatre. Definitely getting the DVD, though it won't be quite the same. I just love the combination of the cinematography and the score, the 'feel' of the film is phenomenal. The acting I found very good, and the plot was a bit thin. But the film delivered on so many other levels that the plot didn't bring my enjoyment down. Far from it.
Slate has a superb piece, "Five Ways of Looking at Inception" that is simply brilliant.
True to my contrarian nature, I am most enamored with possibility 3,
READING 3: Everything we see is a product of Cobb's subconscious.
Cobb is dreaming on his own—there is no team—and he's working through his feelings for Mal. Maybe there's no such thing as dream extraction in the first place. Maybe Mal didn't even die!
This one seems the least plausible to me, if only because it discounts so much of what we've seen. I can't imagine Nolan would spend that much time and energy laying out all those clues and rules if every single one of them was bunkum.
Well, call me imaginative, but I can imagine Nolan doing that! I don't think each of the 5 different options presented in the article are mutually-exclusive (Cobb could be dreaming and it could also be a metaphor for film-making), but some are. Regardless, I support 3 fully, and for additional reasons as follow:
a) watch the physics of they characters in the chase in Mombasa - they 'crumple' to the ground just as unnaturally as the characters during the purported dream sequences. Also, why does the physics of the van tumbling (off the freeway) and in freefall (off the bridge) affect the 2nd-layer dream's physics (the hotel) but not the third layer's (the winter fortress)?
b) Saito and Mal use similar, sometimes even identical, phrases during the film. Saito tells Cobb he needs to take a leap of faith, a comment made by Mal before her suicide and again made by Saito in the final scene in limbo. Yet Mal and Saito never met in "real" life, so the fact that their phrasings are so similar suggests that they are not separate individuals in the true sense but rather projections of Cobb's own subconscious.
c) (this is a big one): the spinning top is a very clever RED HERRING. Whether it topples or not has no bearing to reality. Why? First, it was Mal's totem. Cobb mentions several times that it was the only thing he had left of hers. Seeing as how other people cannot even let others *touch* their totems, I propose that the fact Cobb uses someone else's totem renders that totem void and unreliable (and if it wasn't her totem, why would setting it spinning in the 'safe' of her house-mind signify Cobb's inception on Mal?)
Second sub-point to c), (and I haven't looked at the script, so I'm going off memory and a second viewing) Cobb specifically says that the totem is used to "make sure you're not stuck in someone else's dream." N.b. - it is never said that the totem will help you determine if you are stuck in your *own* dream, which I posit he is. Another supporting point to this idea that the totem is useless in your own dream is the fact that Cobb refuses to be allowed (for the most part) access to the schematics of the dream-mazes because once he knows them, his subconscious can manipulate the dream world. Now, if only YOU know the physics of your particular totem, then when you are deep in the dreamworld of your own subconscious, you would similarly still know the totem's physics and be able to manipulate it.
Finally, this also explains why Cobb is able to transition more easily between dream-states (and limbo) than any other character, why he's the only one who's been able to successfully pull off an inception, and why he is constantly 'breaking' the very rules he explains to his team.
There is also a "tell" - the old man in Mombasa looks Cobb full in the face when he says, "They don't come here to dream - they come to be woken up. The dream has become their reality, and who are you to say otherwise, sir?" One final discontinuity - in the dreams, Saito dies before Fischer even opens the final room/vault. How could he know that the inception has worked? Yet upon waking, he immediately makes the magical phone call that will give Cobb a free pass back to see his children (who also happen to be wearing the same clothes as in all his dreams / memories? come on!).
Those were the main points that I thought strongly supported the idea that the whole film is a dream sequence. For me, that does not cheapen the film at all. I rarely watch a film more than once, even DVDs, but I've seen Inception
Inception: my take, part 1
I wasn't expecting too much, but I enjoyed the film immensely. It's like a re-vamped, super-stylish 'Dark City' in a way. I also really enjoyed the score - the mood of the film is just superb. It reminds me of 'Pirates of the Caribbean' just because it's so easy to watch multiple times, just for the sake of being immersed in that particular aura. I won't say that Inception's plot is particularly complex (in terms of the intellectual treatment of its themes), but it is extremely interesting. I have my own takes, below.
First, in response to a post on Slate, "The Marxist Matrix," wherein the commentator states,
I can't agree with the anti-capitalist message, as articulated in the excerpt above. It is heavily insinuated that Cobb is being taken 'for a ride' by Saito, who does not represent the antithesis of an 'evil' corporate magnate, but just another corporate magnate at war with a rival. How?
a) Saito keeps lucrative track of Cobb no matter where he is / what he's doing.
b) Instead of buying out the 1st-class cabin, Saito buys the airline.
c) One phone call from Saito can allegedly erase Cobb's criminal record (which caused him to flee his native USA) .
I think, and I would argue the movie supports, the fact that Cobb is being played for a relative fool for the sake of getting his family back. What Saito is doing is not altruistic in the sense of destroying his competitor for the greater good; it is him taking out an upstart rival who is threatening his own empire, at least as powerful as his rival's. In fact, I posit that Saito's company is actually more powerful than Cobel Corp. or Fisher's company - Saito's just trying to destroy the competition.
Now, the argument about corporations becoming so powerful/pre-eminent that even our dreams become sanitized to the point where free-wheeling creativity has been largely stamped out of society's unconscious - that is a 'thesis' I can put fully support!
First, in response to a post on Slate, "The Marxist Matrix," wherein the commentator states,
"To Nolan's credit, he doesn't hammer us over the head with this theme, but it hangs over the film: Even our dreams can be annexed, colonized, and drained. This relates to a vaguely anti-capitalist critique in Inception. For starters, Cobb's mission (on the way to reuniting with his children) is to dissolve a multinational energy company poised to become more powerful than a nation-state. And we can read the telescoping levels of dreams in Inception through the lens of derivatives, each more leveraged and unstable than the next. In this view, the spectacularly disintegrating illusions in Inception echo the spectacularly disintegrating illusions of the 2007 stock market."
I can't agree with the anti-capitalist message, as articulated in the excerpt above. It is heavily insinuated that Cobb is being taken 'for a ride' by Saito, who does not represent the antithesis of an 'evil' corporate magnate, but just another corporate magnate at war with a rival. How?
a) Saito keeps lucrative track of Cobb no matter where he is / what he's doing.
b) Instead of buying out the 1st-class cabin, Saito buys the airline.
c) One phone call from Saito can allegedly erase Cobb's criminal record (which caused him to flee his native USA) .
I think, and I would argue the movie supports, the fact that Cobb is being played for a relative fool for the sake of getting his family back. What Saito is doing is not altruistic in the sense of destroying his competitor for the greater good; it is him taking out an upstart rival who is threatening his own empire, at least as powerful as his rival's. In fact, I posit that Saito's company is actually more powerful than Cobel Corp. or Fisher's company - Saito's just trying to destroy the competition.
Now, the argument about corporations becoming so powerful/pre-eminent that even our dreams become sanitized to the point where free-wheeling creativity has been largely stamped out of society's unconscious - that is a 'thesis' I can put fully support!
01 May 2010
23 March 2010
debating healthcare: Brooklyn style
LOL, this is absolute brilliance. Political theatre it may be to some extent, but, even so, certainly of the highest rhetorical order!
"Would you like to revise your remarks?"
"Yes, I would. Earlier, when I said 'fuck you', what I really meant to say was, 'fuck each and every one of you, individually and collectively, and your mothers and spouses for good measure too. thank you.'"
"Would you like to revise your remarks?"
"Yes, I would. Earlier, when I said 'fuck you', what I really meant to say was, 'fuck each and every one of you, individually and collectively, and your mothers and spouses for good measure too. thank you.'"
23 January 2010
Jon Stewart: prophet
The man is just at the top of his game. Shame the Dems are not:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Mass Backwards | ||||
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09 January 2010
newsflash: Angelina Jolie isn't blonde!
I have to hand it to the advertising execs - they really work hard to set new standards for superficiality:
"St. John chief executive Glenn McMahon told Women's Wear Daily she "overshadowed the brand. We wanted to make a clean break from actresses and steer away from blondes and cleanse the palette."
Yes, when I think of "luxury knitwear", it's really only the blondes that wear them that interest me.
Not to mention, Angelina Jolie ISN'T BLONDE!!
"St. John chief executive Glenn McMahon told Women's Wear Daily she "overshadowed the brand. We wanted to make a clean break from actresses and steer away from blondes and cleanse the palette."
Yes, when I think of "luxury knitwear", it's really only the blondes that wear them that interest me.
Not to mention, Angelina Jolie ISN'T BLONDE!!
The Men Who Stare at Cellphones
I love copyediting typos! Who needs expensive research and drugs? To prevent Alzheimer's, apparently all one needs to do is stare at cellphones*! To wit:
""Quite to the contrary, those mice were protected if the cell phone exposure was stared in early adulthood..."
Also, while one's waking hours should be spent staring at cellphones, one should also try not to remain awake for too long, as sleep-deprivation could be another cause of Alzheimer's! However, you enter into another Catch-22, as studies have shown that people with strong social networks fare better in old age in avoiding diseases such as Alzheimer's ... then again, with approximately 35,000,000 sufferers worldwide, you're sure to make meet new friends (and since you can't remember meeting them, they'll be 'new' people to befriend every day!)
* You also don't have to worry that the cellphone may give you cancer, because apparently having cancer can also prevent Alzheimer's (and vice-versa). It's a win-win!
""Quite to the contrary, those mice were protected if the cell phone exposure was stared in early adulthood..."
Also, while one's waking hours should be spent staring at cellphones, one should also try not to remain awake for too long, as sleep-deprivation could be another cause of Alzheimer's! However, you enter into another Catch-22, as studies have shown that people with strong social networks fare better in old age in avoiding diseases such as Alzheimer's ... then again, with approximately 35,000,000 sufferers worldwide, you're sure to make meet new friends (and since you can't remember meeting them, they'll be 'new' people to befriend every day!)
* You also don't have to worry that the cellphone may give you cancer, because apparently having cancer can also prevent Alzheimer's (and vice-versa). It's a win-win!
21 December 2009
pretension comes to those who wait
I read this with growing incredulity. Really, art criticism is just a made-up, hyperbolized world of idiocy. I mean, look at this shit:
No offense whatsoever to the artist, but shame on you art critic community! First for trying to make up for overlooking her art all this time, and second the vacuous manner in which you're going about it!
"Those who can't create, teach. Those who have not even the skill to teach, criticize."
“Those of us with a passion for either geometric art or Latin American Modernist painting now realize what a pivotal role” Ms. Herrera has played in “the development of geometric abstraction in the Americas,” Mr. Sullivan said.You fucking moron, a reclusive artist who doesn't display her work cannot, by definition, influence other artists. Without influence, you cannot "play a pivotal role" in the development of anything! What a crock of shit. And to call her paintings "iconic" - you have to display your work for it to become iconic! The Unabomber wasn't an icon of the loner, Luddite crowd until he started blowing things up (i.e., impacting on larger society).
No offense whatsoever to the artist, but shame on you art critic community! First for trying to make up for overlooking her art all this time, and second the vacuous manner in which you're going about it!
"Those who can't create, teach. Those who have not even the skill to teach, criticize."
06 December 2009
Danger! Danger! Sidekick 'dogfooding' at MS!
Nothing is ever 100% reliable. Nothing. That is why back-ups and redundancies are an integral part in good, robust design. And that is why Microsoft is becoming a victim of its own making:
"On the iPhone, you sync your data with your PC/Mac via iTunes, and MobileMe in parallel syncs both the iPhone and the PC/Mac with 'the cloud" [at MobileMe]. If the cloud were to go down and everything lost (like I said, an almost completely inconceivable occurrence except by deliberate sabotage), your data would still be preserved on both your iPhone and your PC/Mac," a source explained.
"Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way on the Sidekick. The Sidekick was designed under the assumption that the cloud would always be available, and that your data would be safe there, so the device doesn't try very hard to preserve your data if you were to yank the battery or in the rare event of a phone OS crash/reboot. Instead, under these circumstances the device starts from an empty database and then reloads all of your data from the service when it comes back up.
"That's why T-Mobile has been telling everyone not to pull the batteries on their Sidekicks or let them run down. It is safe to turn the device off and on with the power button, and it should also shut down cleanly if the battery runs down, but once again, if it fails to shut down cleanly, it starts over from an empty database on the next reboot.
24 October 2009
Shouting: the new spanking?
At what point does the inverse become true: instead of coddling these future adults who "suffered trauma" because "mommy yelled at me when I dropped a plate once. I was 8 and never got over it." and making them feel their neuroses are justified (by a BS psycho-therapy industry that cares more about self-propagation than mental health), we start telling these thin-skinned nit-wits that THEY, not their yelling parents, are the problem. In fact, why not yell? Those sound waves might even get through their thick skulls!
23 September 2009
say it ain't so, Bill!
Oh how I love the sound of that fat, wet, c0ck slap on Microsoft. Such a huge c0ck it was that it slapped right across Gates's and Balls-mer's faces in one fell swoop. And the peasants rejoiced!
22 September 2009
one of capitalism's hallmarks
Did Texas execute an innocent man? Not knowing for certain, I will say that there is no such thing as a human system which is without error, and that includes systems (mechanical, electrical) devised by humans. So they most likely did. I found the following statement interesting: "Each official had a separate role in the process, so that no one person felt responsible for taking a life."
Yup, that's a hallmark of the capitalist system, especially with respect to industrialization. Sounds like something out of 1984, and it illustrates how dehumanizing the parceling out of personal responsibility can be. It can make people so desensitized as to partake in murder. Remember that in Ye Olden Dayz, the accomplices also used to hang (now they just get life). And yet we ascribe to such a system that can so dehumanize us most of the plaudits for creating enormous wealth and well-being for so many. Interesting, is it not, to consider that such divisions of labor also lead corporations unable to name individuals responsible for things like "rogue" trading (no mention of the system that exists behind the trader, or the conspiracy required to hide the misdeeds) and the recent (fawesome) legal debacle over the Merrill Lynch / Citigroup merger and bonus scheme.
My favorite quotations have to be:
People already have enough of a hard time taking proper responsibility for their actions without Adam Smith getting in the way! lol
Yup, that's a hallmark of the capitalist system, especially with respect to industrialization. Sounds like something out of 1984, and it illustrates how dehumanizing the parceling out of personal responsibility can be. It can make people so desensitized as to partake in murder. Remember that in Ye Olden Dayz, the accomplices also used to hang (now they just get life). And yet we ascribe to such a system that can so dehumanize us most of the plaudits for creating enormous wealth and well-being for so many. Interesting, is it not, to consider that such divisions of labor also lead corporations unable to name individuals responsible for things like "rogue" trading (no mention of the system that exists behind the trader, or the conspiracy required to hide the misdeeds) and the recent (fawesome) legal debacle over the Merrill Lynch / Citigroup merger and bonus scheme.
My favorite quotations have to be:
• “The S.E.C. gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger,” he wrote, and “the Bank’s management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators.”
• “It is quite something else for the very management that is accused of having lied to its shareholders to determine how much of those victims’ money should be used to make the case against the management go away,” Judge Rakoff wrote.
• “You filed a rather uninformative, bare-bones complaint,” Mr. Rakoff told SEC lead lawyer David Rosenfeld, who reportedly replied meekly that the commission hadn't made any allegations against specific individuals.
The response didn't satisfy Mr. Rakoff.
“I would be less than candid if I didn't express my continued misgivings about this settlement at this stage,” he told the lawyers for both sides. “When this settlement first came to me, it seemed to be lacking, for lack of a better word, transparency.”
People already have enough of a hard time taking proper responsibility for their actions without Adam Smith getting in the way! lol
02 September 2009
ADHD queue-jumpers create debate
But only amongst those already mentally retarded.
This article includes a fucking moronic argument in favor of special treatment for ADHD brats:
They're emotionally younger than their peers? As if children all develop at the same rate. Show me the statistical deviation that illustrates how you came to determine they were more than 1 std dev less mature than their peers. If ADHD is just about maturity, then let's teach them maturity. You think children develop in a vacuum? These kids are not *that* disabled that they can't learn! We shouldn't be striving to make them more impatient. Do we try and make someone with a limp cripple or someone with partial hearing loss fully deaf?
This article includes a fucking moronic argument in favor of special treatment for ADHD brats:
"'These are children with a disability who cannot wait. You cannot teach someone who is crippled to walk, someone who is deaf to hear,'" says Andrea Bilbow. 'They have a 30% maturity lag, and are emotionally younger than their peers.'"Bilbow, your analogy is bullshit. They have a 'maturity lag' of 30%? That's not being crippled, it's a mild limp or partial deafness in one ear. You can teach someone with a limp to walk better or a person with less-than-perfect hearing how to compensate. Exacerbating the initial conditions with further learned behavior (no waiting) only makes such children even more susceptible to any waiting in the future. It's a fucking retarded approach.
They're emotionally younger than their peers? As if children all develop at the same rate. Show me the statistical deviation that illustrates how you came to determine they were more than 1 std dev less mature than their peers. If ADHD is just about maturity, then let's teach them maturity. You think children develop in a vacuum? These kids are not *that* disabled that they can't learn! We shouldn't be striving to make them more impatient. Do we try and make someone with a limp cripple or someone with partial hearing loss fully deaf?
01 September 2009
on this day
which already lives in infamy, I decree that the BBC shall be Blitzed by the grammar Nazi for this gaffe regarding changes to the Oscar voting system for Best Picture:
"However, this is the first time it has been introduced for best picture voting since 1945." ....
USED, you twats! The word is "used" or "re-introduced." You can only "introduce" something once. After a thing's introduction, further instances of its use are no longer introductions!
"However, this is the first time it has been introduced for best picture voting since 1945." ....
USED, you twats! The word is "used" or "re-introduced." You can only "introduce" something once. After a thing's introduction, further instances of its use are no longer introductions!
murderous english rednecks
O rly? I never relaized rednecks like this existed outside the American South!
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