« December 2007 | Main | February 2008 »
Endorsing McCain
Primary campaigns are when you decide the idealogical makeup of the party. If you've got strong feelings on subjects one way or another, the time to get them out and discussed and hopefully make them part of the party platform is during the primaries. After the primary is over and the party has voted and cleared one candidate and their approach, your party platform has also been set for that election.
Remember, Democracy is not about getting your way, its about being asked. "Getting your way" out of Democracy is really just a side effect of the process itself.
Heres the situation:
There are now three viable candidates for President. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain.
On the Democrat side, we have two leftists. The race for that partys nomination is not yet decided, but soon will be.
On the Republican side, we have former Naval officer and POW. As of last night, this race is now decided.
Idealogically there are vast difference between all three candidates but no matter who we vote for, and it pains me to say this, we are getting a Senator.
Mitt Romney worked his tail off and spent alot of money, and got second place in most of his primaries. I'm sorry, but thats just not good enough, which is a shame. Huckabee exists to give people who more than a little anti-mormon hatred a place to go and there appear to be more of those people than I had hoped was the case but thankfully not enough to give us a candidate with that ethos as a base. Ron Paul? Well theres one in every crowd isnt there. The mirage candidacies of Fred Thompson or Rudy Guiliani show that pundits, pollsters and "gut instincts" really dont mean a damn thing. In both cases, when these two candidates were put to the test, they folded up like a wet paper sack. How these two actually worked out may not have surprised you, but it surprised the hell out of me.
So its either McCain or one of the two leftists. So as to paraphrase a wise man and statesman of the last administration: "You dont go into the election with the candidate you want, you go with the one you have"
We now have McCain and we had better make the most of it. At this time I'm now formally endorsing McCain and I wrote a check for his campaign this morning.
Posted @ January 30, 2008 07:07 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)
This is not an endorsement
I’ve been watching the election season like a passerby on the street trying not to be noticed as I peer through the dark glass on the front of an adult bookstore. Of course I want to look inside; it’s just that I don’t want anyone to see me while I do it. I haven’t commented on the election much because I don’t wish to become known as a political pundit, I like to believe that my mother and father raised me to be better than that, but I will take just a moment and say something about it that might just shock you.
I think its time I reveal that I have been following one particular candidate since his candidacy was announced. At first I thought it was a joke candidacy, meant only to boost his standings in the party and get his name out in the public mind for a future and far more likely shot at the “big prize”. Yet, with all the shock that comes from the idea of “A Capulet dating a Montague!” I find myself here now, during each of the primaries and caucases rooting and in some cases even cheering when the results for this particular candidate come in.
I’m not doing out of a strategy meant only to beat the far more formidible candidate by backing the beatable one instead, I’m doing it because despite my political leanings and patriotism for this country, I find this one candidate, whom I once dismissed as one who would end up one day only as “a new metaphor for lightweight” is instead the one I find the most interesting to watch, and I dare say the most courageous in his campaign.
I’m talking about Barack Obama.
You see, you just don’t take on the Clintonistas lightly. They are brass knuckle, suspicious flat tires, brick through your window in the middle of the night campaigners. They are dedicated to the cause, which is to say, themselves being in power. You stand in their way; you get the full force of influence applied against you. You become “One of them”, that infamous list of people who are part of a “right wing cabal” mean to hold back the waves of the progressive future that is promised by the American “Evita”.
And yet, Obama has taken on “the machine” and survived. Despite their self agrandized reputation, Obama has shown the Clintonistas are in fact, beatable and more to the point, beatable without someone from the left needing to become an “evil right wing hatemonger”. There is nothing more delicious to me than to watch the former President reach into his black bag of rhetoric and try to weave a spell that casts Obama as a member of the right wing, only to have Obama smile and watch all that pixie dust from the wand of “The Great Prevaricator” wilt away, which of course makes Bill Clinton even more angry and even more impotent in the next attack.
There simply aren’t that many men who have been able to withstand that assault. Obama has managed to do it with a smile. I like that.
I find it fascinating to watch the former President get red faced angry that the press is not doing what he wants them to do, as her perceives that they did for him in the past. Poor fellah doesn’t seem to understand that the fawning 60’s generation “dry-look” press of his day have been largely replaced by bare knuckle internet kids who were born in the era of Reagan and have as their homepage the nemesis of Clinton, The Drudge Report. Such is life at internet speed which is something he never could quite deal with during his administration. That former enemy has now grown a new layer of muscle and outer armor plate over the past decade when they last locked horns and he lost. The press of today finds Clinton “wagging finger” wand of 1998 to be just as impotent as it was then and now its twice as pathetic. Worse for Evita, everytime he opens his mouth, she becomes just a little bit smaller, reminding more than a few of us of the 1980’s Lily Tomlin movie that is serving as a metaphor for her candidacy. It’s gotten so bad that press coverage of the Clintonista campaign rarely mentions the junior Senator from New York, just the latest machinations of the once great and powerful man making the world safe from the right wing, who is now increasingly seen by many as just a white haired bumbler pulling levers of machinery behind the curtain making special effects on the wall.
Poor Bill, he doesn’t realize that this is the age of HDTV and in this age, its important that you hide the strings as best you can because now everyone can see everything all the time. All this happened because one man said;“ Heck if the Democrats want to run a junior Senator with little experience based only on the value of minority status then let them run me!” and he hasn’t backed down an inch since then to the wall of intimdation and damnation thrown up against him not by us evil right wingers but by his own party and polticial fellow travellers.
I respect the fact that he has withstood every attack launched against him. I respect that he hasn’t just stood there and been nice about it and not responded in kind. He’s handed back as much as they have handed out, and considering the forces allied against him, this is no mean feat. I respect a man who has courage, and that man has a certain kind of courage to do what he is doing.
It’s not Iwo Jima courage, but its courage all the same and it deserves our respect.
So what do I, a “no-necked”, rockribbed, knuckle dragging, rightwinger of the first order get out of an Obama candidacy? Well a black man is running for the Office of President of the United States, and that seems to be ok with most folks. It just totally ruins one of the columns of the temple of mythology that shelters the left. The country as a horror of racism has a real live black man running for President, even in the south and the man has the ability to campaign and win his party nomination.
A black man running for President, and no one seems to really care (except of course the Clintonistas), I think that says something about all of us, something rather positive. It was always ok with me but I’m just not like a lot of folks; I don’t tend to believe in this superstitious nonsense called racial classification. I tend to think that were all of the same race, the human race, and this stuff we call “race” is a rather new thing that only happened in the last 9,000 years or so. It’s something that came about only with the human diaspora that occurred at the end of the last ice age. Give it another 9,000 years and it all goes away and we all look like Kennewick Man once again.
Oh I know, crazy me. Obamas candidacy and potential Presidency says that race doesn’t matter, which is what Ive been saying for a long time. I think that’s a good thing. The Clintons want it to matter because its all they have to run on, which is pathetic. It doesn’t matter Obama and his ability to win beyond his "race" is proof of that and good for us all that it doesn’t matter anymore.
I like his campaign because he has the gall to be a Democrat and offer praise of Ronald Reagan. I like that he did it for two reasons; first because President Reagan is worthy of praise. Second, because of the genius that by doing so sent Bill Clinton into a lather, which predictably backfired on Bill Clinton, it’s a “win-win-win” strategy. Obama has Clinton playing Obamas game and not the other way around.
A smart man that Senator Obama, and I admire smart men.
I also like the fact that Obama is beatable in the general election by those of us on the other side of the political argument. Yet, if Evita overcomes this challenge from Obama, I like the fact that she has now had to fight and claw and work very hard for this election. Our big fear before Obamas challenge was that the wave of inevitability would sweep her into office with little or no effort and that the “mandate for change” would give her the cover to do what she wanted, which is nothing less than moving us rapidly towards European socialism. That being a system which has failed to produce the utopia it promises in every part of the world that its been tried no matter how often it is tried but that wont stop those who want to try it here.
This sort of thing is much like hoping that the flightless pengiun really will fly if you just move it to the right place and give it the right incentive to do so. No matter how much you think the pengiun should fly, the penguin will respectfully disagree. Humans have an inate desire to be free, and putting more controls on people and their behaviour, no matter how well intentioned, does not make you more free and in the end, people will reject it.
I admire Obama for not putting the ‘flag motif” on his campaign literature. Look closely, and you don’t see it. You expect to see it, because you always see it, but its not there.
I admire that he doesn’t wear a lapel pin with a flag. The flag repels Democrats and Leftists like vampires are repelled at the sign of the Cross. Of course Democrats are also attracted to votes like vampires are to blood, so they are usually in a quandry. Wave the flag and get elected or don’t wave the flag, stand true to their beliefs and lose. I respect the fact that he’s willing to say what so many other Democrats say yet dare not do for risk of “offending the voters”. His willingness to do what other Democrats only dream of doing despite the risk shows a certain level integrity to his thinking.
It also ensures that I don’t have to look any further at this candidate or ideology. If you cant see symbol of this country in the light of the glory for which it stands, you don’t get to play on my team. I thank him deeply for not wasting my time by pretending to be something he is not.
Because of Obama, Evita is no longer "Senator Inevitable" and for that fact alone, he should be thanked by one and all. No one in this country should ever be “inevitable” but she came very close to being just that. I don’t like the precedent that it would have set. But that is no longer, thanks Barak Obama and a few thousand Democrat voters who would not be intimidated by some pretty powerful forces on the side of the “Status Quo”.
Obama has had the audaciousness to say that CNN probably shouldn’t have Begala and Carville commenting about the election when they were and are members of campaign staff. And in the shock of the ages, CNN agreed and removed the two “Clintonista Political Officers” from the channel. It makes me say;“ Why didn’t anyone think of this sooner!” but there you go action gets reaction and the advantage goes to – Obama!
I also like the fact that so many of the Democrat Senators have aligned themselves with Obama. The fun part being that if Evita gets the nomination, she has to fight and fight hard whomever the Republicans nominate, and so long as it’s not Ron Paul that we nominate, I’m pretty sure we’ll do just fine against her with half the Democrat Senate feeding us damaging information from behind the scenes. If I’m wrong and She wins; about half the Democrat Senate will have her tied up in knots for her first term because about half of them are now not just endorsing her competition, they are working actively on Obamas side against her and that’s not something that will go unpunished.
The punishment She will mete out will be small, and it will be petty but most of all, it will be fun to watch. I will stock up on popcorn. Ah, The bitter, acrid smell that comes from the buzzsaw of Democracy as it hits the hardshell of your hopes and dreams. I don’t think Saul Alinsky covered that in his book, at least not the first edition.
In point of fact, Obama has liberated the Democrats from the one force that usurpsed their power in the 1990’s. Not the evil “right wing”, but the Clintons themselves. It was Clinton who lost the House and Senate; it was Clinton who reshaped the countries politics so as to lose the Presidency in 2000. That party has been in long retreat since the days of Clinton. Obama has shown them a brighter future comes only when the clouds of the Clinton finally leave their party for good. If they give the Republicans the lightning rod of Clintonism and not the photogenic type but the Evita type and the Republicans will be in unchecked power for a generation. This is why the Democrat power base in the Senate is in revolt over Evitas acendancy. All she can do is threaten their power, not enhance it and therefore it must not be allowed to succeed.
I respect Senator Obama, I would even go so far as to say I am growing more and more to like him. It might just be the fact that for the moment we have the same enemies, but I see something in his character I did not see before. I hereby I retract my previous statements about his being “diaphanous”.
Come what may in this election, Senator Obama is a force to be dealt with. I cheer his candidacy and his campaign. I think that if I were Democrat, I would not only vote for him but I would actively campaign for him, for he has clearly given even me reasons to hope for the future of this country and that’s not a bad thing to have as the base of your candidacy.
After all, it worked for Ronald Reagan.
Posted @ January 27, 2008 03:21 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
Voting with their feet
Snip...
RAFAH, Gaza Strip - Tens of thousands of Palestinians poured from the Gaza Strip into Egypt Wednesday after masked gunmen with explosives destroyed most of the seven-mile wall dividing the border town of Rafah.
The Gazans crossed on foot, in cars or riding donkey carts to buy supplies made scarce by an Israeli blockade of their impoverished territory. Police from the militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, directed the traffic. Egyptian border guards took no action.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said Israel has no forces on the Gaza-Egypt border and, "therefore it is the responsibility of Egypt to ensure that the border operates properly, according to the signed agreements."
end snip...
Now hold on there just a darn minute. You mean to tell me that there was a wall between Gaza and Egypt that was put there by the Egyptians to keep the Palestinians out?
I must have missed that part in Jimmy Carters book complaining about how the Israelis put up a wall and how awful it is that they did that. I have to say Im shocked to find that other Arab states are interested in keeping out Palestinians to the point that they put up a wall to keep them out.
Posted @ January 23, 2008 07:18 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
What I'm reading; The Big Switch
I've lived long enough to watch Black and White TV be replaced with Color TV, watched VCRs replaced with DVD, watched streetcorner phones replaced with cellphones. I've also watched mainframes replaced with Client/Server systems and I watched client/server replaced with Web Apps.
Now, I'm watching Web Apps about to be eaten by "the cloud" and once again the big debate between what was happening and what is happening goes on again. This book describes a parallel between the effects of electrification at the beginning of the last century and the growth of "utility computing" at the beginning of this one.
I've read this book twice in three days and I am absolutely intoxicated by the implications of what the book has to say. After I read the book the first time, I spent some time using the internet to check on a couple of facts that the book made reference to. One item was the contruction of what was considered by the author to be a large data center in Oregon by Google. Dollars spent doesnt tell me anything, but you show me a cooling tower and a substation and I can guess whats going on in the building pretty quick.
It took me a few minutes of research but in quick order I had overhead pictures of the "secret site" along with a 15 minute video walkthrough of the site while it was under contruction. One overhead view gave me an excellent view of the data center cooling towers and the substation that had been created to power this monster. I had all I need to determine the nature of this site and I also knew right away why the chose this location over others. The city the chose had a municipal power district and they owned their own hydroelectric dam on the Columbia river.
Of course I could tell most of that information by using Google Earth. Interestingly enough, the view of the site itself does not appear on Google Earth or Maps, I found the best picure on of all places, The New York Times.
Now, they are not a public utility so I dont think that they are under any disclosure requirement, but it does make you wonder what would happen if the information had been in some way harmful to that company.
Secrecy can become addictive to the corporate mind.
In 15 minutes, I could tell everything I needed to know about these two rather large non-descript buildings. But more to the point, I had checked the facts of the book but I was also able to check the theory of the book itself. Information that was once in the hands of a very few people is now in the hands of everyone.
The world once again has changed under our very feet and I wonder just how many people are really aware of this tranformational fact. When I presented the output of my little weekend research project to some co-workers and made a case for what I felt the implications were to my little group to this new situation. However, only a few of the people I talked to understood what I was trying to say, and these are people who I work with every day in this same part of the information world, people who should know better that to think that the way things are now will never change. Most of the folks I talked to could only comment at how worried they were about "their jobs being moved overseas" and how this new information didnt help them with that worry.
I now keep a picture of the Oregon site as my Windows desktop backdrop as a lesson to myself in humility.
Posted @ January 21, 2008 02:15 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (10) | TrackBack (0)
Whats missing from this picture?
I'm looking at this and I'm thinking "so wheres the fire?" I would think if you jam two main landing gears of an aircraft through the wings, and the fuel tanks therein, there would have resulted one rather massive fire. Im extremely glad that it didnt happen, it just makes me wonder why it didnt happen.
Is the 777 simply designed to minimize fire? Or is it that there wasnt the fuel on board that they had thought there was, which would explain the surprising loss of power on approach?
Commercial Jets who run out of fuel in midflight by surprise? Well, its happened before.
Posted @ January 18, 2008 10:27 AM | Aviation | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
The Batman Utility Belt
Back when I was an “on the road travelling software consultant,” our little “band of techie brothers” used to joke about how the demand for “on the spot “ contact had spawned the growth of the “Batman Utility Belt”.
You could tell the average techie by what he wore on his belt. A cellphone, if not two (one would be your home phone, the other for the company, the company being loathe to use valuable company cellphone minutes for your personal business) A Palm Pilot , a beeper ( yes, beepers were still required, even though you had a cellphone.) and very probably a small flashlight and tookit as well.
It was rediculous. You had these things riding around on your belt that you just had to have with you at all times, lest someone not be able to get in touch with you at some precious moment. I hated it, I utterly, totally and completely hated it. They weighed a ton, if you had to suddenly sprint somewhere, you rattled like a broken 25 cent kiddie ride in front of the grocery store. Heaven help you if you had to catch a flight with all that stuff because sure enough, you get it all cleared by security and one of the two phones goes off, but you can’t get to it and the nightmare of "missing the call" begins anew. Don’t forget that on top of all the crap, you still had your rather large and heavy mid-1990's era laptop to lug around with you.
Over time, I learned to loathe cellphones, because they just lead to trouble. If you give people the idea that they can get ahold of you any time day or night and sure as anything, they would do just that. Beepers? I still can’t stand beepers. Luckily the usefulness of beepers has fallen out of favor and their curse is slowly being removed from the world, and not a moment too soon if you ask me.
I quit being a “road warrior” back in the fabled year of 2000. You remember the year 2000, the year that all our electronic devices failed due to the now famous man made disaster caused by the Y2k bug that laid waste to all civilization and left half the human race as zombies and the other half living in backyard bomb shelters, holding off their former neighbors at gunpoint.
Oh? That didn’t actually happen? But it was in all the papers, "world doomed due to inability to tell what day it was" or something like that. That didn’t happen? Does that mean I can come out of the bomb shelter now? Or is this some trick by the cannibalistic zombies to lure more food out where it can be had?
But I digress…
When I came off the road, I also gave up cellphones. Like I said, I really hated cellphones back then. In many ways, I still hate them, but since 2000, they have improved dramatically. In 2000, I had that assembled bit of kit attached to my belt everytime I left the house, but in todays world I can get most of that stuff down to a single device which is much more comfortable to use and carry. In addition to just being a work tool, the modern “smartphone” is also, dare I say it, a nice thing to have.
Wow. Theres a transition for you! You see! I can learn new skills.
What I once thought of as being the “devils own horseshoe” is now a pretty nice thing to have? Well yeah, because now that same space and weight that you used to use just for a cellphone can also have much more functional use for recreational purposes.
About two years ago, one of my co-workers turned me on to the Nokia 8125. Knowing that I was rather legendary in my hatred and dislike for cellphones, my friend ran through the options for this new system and was a good advocate for its use. He made a good case but in the end, I was convinced to use it because of the low, low price since we were gettting them for through a special company deal, but that the cellphone could also double as a PDA.
So I gave in and I got the phone. It took quite a while for me to warm up to the phone but eventually I found that the key feature was how well the phone worked with my office PC. The fact that the phone was a Microsoft Windows system helped in my conversion from begrudging user to raving fan.
It’s not that Im a big fan of Microsoft Windows and I don’t hate it either. It’s a tool like any other, it just so happens that most of the software I use on the office deskop is Windows oriented. (This is not an invitiation to sell me on Apple or Linux. I actually have a 1984 128k Macintosh that I bought new in Febuary 1984, so I’ve been around Apple for as long as most of you have been eating breakfast. And I use Linux every single day, so save it folks; I’m already on your side. Its like telling someone your religious affiliation, suddenly half the room jumps up and tries to convert you to their side when in point of fact, the argument is already long over. )
There’s just a tremendous amount of software, really helpful software that can and does run really well on the Windows Mobile Platform. Heres a few examples of what is running on my Phone (which is now 2 years old):
1. Slingbox Mobile. Slingbox for those who don’t know is one of the best working, easiest to use pieces of technology ever invented. What does it do? Well, Tivo and the DVR revolution allowed you to break the bounds of “when” you watched your TV, Slingbox breaks the bounds of “where” you watch TV. If you are travelling and you want to watch what you recorded on your Tivo instead of the god-awful cable choices you sometimes get when you are on the road, all you need is an internet connection and there you go. You’re not watching someone else's TV, youre watching your TV from somewhere else. Slingbox Mobile allows you to use the Cellphone Wifi connection to watch your Tivo from anywhere you can get a Wifi connection. How does it work? It works great. Slingbox tied to a Tivo is the perfect combination.
2. Tivo-To-Go. Ok, so youre out somewhere where you can't get to Wifi and you want to be able to watch a movie or one of the shows you recorded to your Tivo. Tivo-to-go lets you download the recorded shows to your PC, or even your cellphone. My cellphone as a 2gb SD memory card, and on that card, I cant get 4 hours of recorded shows. Frankly that’s more than I can watch on the phones battery. I typically keep a couple of episodes of “No Resevervations” on it, just in case in stuck somehwere and I want some light entertainment.
3. Odyssey Mobile. This one is pretty cool. Having GPS in your car is becoming a “must have” but if you travel or move around, you don’t want to get back into the problem of having to take a GPS with you everytime you go, else the “Batman utility Belt” comes back into play. What would be better is if you could have a good GPS for driving that’s right in your phone. That’s what Odyssey Mobile gives you, a solid transportable GPS that you can use to help navigate in whatever town you land in.
4. Pathaway. Ahhhh. Pathaway. The “GPS tool of the gods”. Pathaway quite literally does everything that you would want a good GPS to do. Its ability to allow you to make your own maps from topology mapping software makes it particularly helpful when you are off in the woods. Its real selling point is the use of GPS Tracking, allowing you to track other pathaway users or allow other pathaway users to track your position from either their own pathaway systems on their phones or on a website. GPS tracking is the killer app for GPS systems but tie a GPS to a cellphone and its really fantastic.
5. Yahoo Go! Yahoo Go is a set of easy to use tools to make a cellphone easy to access the web. Frankly, this tool makes up for some of the shortsidedness of Windows Mobile, but it works and works well. Mapping, Information and websearch with an easy to use one-handed interface make it a must have for any Windows Mobile app.
6. ATT Remote. ATT Remote is probably one of the most underused thing that any homeowner can use to help monitor their home. Instead of signing up for a security company, you can use ATT tools to set up cameras and sensors all around your home. You can monitor your home or turn on lights all from your cellphone from anywhere in the world.
Yes, you can also use this litle device to make phone calls, but wheres the fun in that?
Posted @ January 17, 2008 04:50 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
The Bourdain Dilemma
We spent this weekend in Napa Valley celebrating our anniversary. We spent our time there enjoying 65 degree temperatures, clear skies, entirely too much great wine and seeing hardly any of the normal polyester clad herd of middle aged wine poseurs that transforms that lovely valley into an impassible traffic jam during the normal vacation season.
Its times like this when I'm reminded of my relatives who are getting freezer burn in Idaho or getting soaked to the bone in Seattle and they who are always hounding me about "leaving California" as they have wisely done. Oh yes, you were right all along, I should leave Sunny California for Idaho or Seattle,blah,blah,blah,blah,bllllaagghhh.
Then you have to see it from my eyes, looking out across the vineyards, the verdant hills with a light cover of yellow mustard plants coming into bloom providing all that lovely contrast with just a whisp of fog on the hilltops, sitting on the veranda of the lodge, that there I was holding a glass of wine with fresh bread and cheese all made locally as the warm yellow sun hits my face - all in mid January, I'm thinking to myself "Oh sure, I'll call U-haul leave all this behind and move to those places that are right now under 4 feet of snow or where the rain hasnt stopped in 12 straight weeks..."
Are they nice places and beautiful in their own scope? Sure they are and I really like them, but they are simply not for me. To paraphrase Emma Goldman, "If I cant wear shorts outside in January, I dont want to be part of your revolution"
I'm a Californian, worse still, a Native Californian. Even worse, a 2nd generation Native Californian, which is like saying you are sasquatch, a mythical beast that many have heard of, but few have actually seen and is thus discredited out of hand by closed minded academic types.
And just so I set the right tone, I now will go ahead and show all of my "leper-stripes", you see, I'm the worst kind of Californian.
I'm a Southern Californian...! ( Cue the ominous music!)
Worse even still, as hard as many of you find this to believe, I really do like it here and I plan on staying, so when I'm visiting your state please dont lecture me about "not moving up here" as they do so frequently in Oregon. I know lots of people from California have moved to all the other western states, but you guys have to understand, those folks werent Californians either, they were from Texas or Ohio or somehwere else. They came to California and after 5 whole years, moved on to somewhere else. You are just the "flavor of the month" as soon as those folks see another rainbow in the sky, they will leave your part of the world too. When you lecture me at the gas station in Roseburg Oregon about how they dont want Californians up there, its cool, I get it. We tried telling the Oakies that too back in the 30's, it didnt work but we tried. You just have to take my word when I tell you I really am just visiting. Love Oregon, Love Washington, Love Idaho and yes, Love Nevada, but I'm really not going to move from here to wherever-the-hell else you think I cant wait to move to. Because the evidence is, I can wait and in all likelyhood I will continue to wait. This isnt just a place to park my trailer for a week like it is for some folks, its my home, what else am I going to do?
We got the opportunity to eat at Bouchon in Yountville, the pedestrian version of the famous French Laundry. Seeing as how the $240 per seat 'prix fixe' menu of the French Laundry was well beyond my means along with the almost two years it takes to get a reservation at that legendary establishment was also well beyond my patience level, Bouchon is the best choice for people like me who think that there is a limit to even the best of things.
Yes, of course I had the Boudin Noir, like you had to ask. How can you pass up blood sausage prepared in the French style? You can get steak and french fries anywhere, but blood sausage isnt exactly coming to a "drive up window near you" any time soon.
The restaurant and food were fantastic and I had a moment to contemplate what I call "the Bourdain Dilemma".
The dilemma is this. If all you eat is fast food or "banquet frozen fried chicken " or Hungryman dinners "fresh from your freezer", you think that is what food really tastes like. Your metric of food success is rather narrow, being that if it doesnt make you sick, then it must be "ok" and on occasion it might even be thought of as "good", depending on how hungry you are when you eat it. You eat at Chilis, Fridays or half a dozen other cant-tell-one-from-the-other places and no matter what you eat it tastes like day old deep fried chicken breading. Because you dont know any different, everything you are presented with in the modern world is "good", meaning only that didnt get sick, that it was served quickly and that it was probably covered in a thick yellow-ish cheese.
On the other hand, you take someone like Anthony Bourdain. He has a real dilemma, he actually knows what chicken tastes like and guess what, it doesnt taste like day old deep fried breading, which is less like chicken and more like that of a gymsock than you realise. He knows fresh food from microwaved crap but remember, he has to get through the day just like you do, only instead of seeing a place to eat every 10 feet in this country, what he sees is the equivalent of an open sewer with a big neon sign over it. He doesnt see food, he sees hell, dipped in batter and coming in packs of 6, 8 or 10 chunks at a time. Anthony Bourdain is the man who once said that the most disgusting thing he ever ate was the Mcnugget. You'll remember Bourdian is also the man who ate Warthog anus in Namibia. Mr. Bourdain has a dilemma because he knows good from bad and at times, this can be a burden. The Namibian Warthog anus? Well it made for good television anyway but if its all the same to you Mr. Bourdain, i'd slide the mcnugget down the list just a tad and slide up the fermented shark and warthog anus on this list instead.
I have a bit of this problem when it comes to seafood. I cannot eat seafood that is not fresh. Fresh seafood to me means I can see where the food was caught, and I can probably also see the fisherman who caught it and as little as an hour ago, the fish was on the fishermans hook. Thats the kind of seafood I can and do eat, but anything short of that I cant even stand the sight of it much less eat it. As a result, I dont eat alot of seafood. Unless I'm on Oregon or Washington of course...
Eating at Bouchon gives you just a small view of this burden. You are introduced to food you simply dont find on every corner. There are no 2-for-1 coupons at Bouchon. Its honest, good, solid, fresh food and its frightening because its simple and you can taste for the first time things that you thought you knew really well, but it turns out that you only have a very slight knowlege of. For example, I had French Onion Soup as a starter. This is not a difficult dish, but most people make it with pre-prepared beef stock that comes in cartons. Yes, its good when you make it that way over other options but when you eat it at Bouchon, its made with beef stock that is prepared on site - there are no cartons. It is fresh Onion Soup, its flavor is deep and dark and after eating their French Onion soup from that point on, all other French Onion soups are just some form of Campbells Condensed-Cream-of-what-was-probably-French-Onion-Soup-but-you-cant-tell-that-its-not-actually-wallpaper-paste Soup.
I now must decide to either learn to make it properly myself, or forgo my favorite soup.
Posted @ January 14, 2008 10:41 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)
The best cellphone application - Ever!
Pathaway GPS Professional for Windows Mobile
Im still fascinated by the coolness of the bluetooth GPS I got as a gift for Christmas. Since then I've tested a few different applications, but I have to say I have found one to be so staggeringly good and useful that its worth mentioning.
It's called "Pathaway", and its a very good phone based GPS system, as well as a GPS Tracking system.
By now I think we all know what a GPS system is so I can dispense with explaining that, but other than giving you nightmares of "Big Brother" what possible good use could there be for a "GPS tracking system" for a civilian not engaged in the Private Investigations trade?
Let's try to imagine that you have an extended family across a few counties. You have some teenagers and some older independent adults that you have to take care of, all with different schedules and agendas. Now, imagine that the older adults live out in the countryside and have had experiences where they have gotten lost or disoriented out there where there is no streetlights or signs or any of the things we have here in the city.
Yes, having a GPS is helpful in that case, and so is a cellphone, but what would also be helpful would be a GPS tracking application that is easy to use and take everywhere with you. For example,lets say the GPS was in the phone and the tracker was something that ran passively on the phone too, so that there would be little risk of being forgotten or misconfigured. A GPS that you can take with you, is a GPS that comes with you when you travel to a new town, or when you get out of the car and take a little hike. You know, the kind where people get lost in the fading light.
GPS tracking allows you to tie the facilities of a GPS to a cellphone so that the GPS location information is reported back to a central site via the phone. You can view the information on a website or if you are using Pathaway, you can also use your cellphone to view the location information for the other Pathaway users on your cellphone.
"Well,couldnt you just call them and ask where they are since they already have a cellphone in the first place?" Sure you could do that as long as everything is ok. But if your relative is lost, and disoriented, or worse not able to respond to the phone due to being upside down in a ditch on a dark country road, well the GPS tracking system comes in particularly handy when you start your search and rescue.
Last year, a family travelling from Washington to California got lost in a storm and in the process the father of the family died trying to get the familiy rescued. The biggest difficulty that their relatives faced is that they had no idea where to start the search once they realized that they had not arrived at their jobs on Monday morning. GPS tracking would have given that information to anyone who cared to look. If you are travelling long distance, a relative or a friend who is not part of the trip can track your progress on a website( or on their own "Pathaway" enabled phone). If for some reason you become overdue, the last reported location of the GPS makes a terrific place to start looking for you. It cuts down on the guesswork of where to start searching and that is often what ends up saving lives.
If you are driving with a group of people long distance, you can each track all of your party, noting anyone who drops out of the convoy and their progress, or if someone opts for a different route, and again this can be done in a passive mode. Theres no need to call every 10 seconds asking "where are you", you just look down on the display and see it in the context of a moving map.
Teenagers or soon-to-be teenagers beware; your life just became amazingly difficult. With Pathaway active on your GPS Smartphone, I can track my teenagers and their GPS enabled phones like Marlin Perkins on Mutual of Omaha stalking a wild mountain goat.
Your teenager tells you that he's on his way to his friends house to do "homework", but the GPS tracking software tells you that he went to the mall, and the 7-11 on the corner, then off to the park for a bit of skateboarding first. And just to make the pain of being a teenager that much worse, you can view all of this info on your cellphone and then use the system to guide you directly to the layabout while he's off doing what hes not supposed to be doing. Yes, "Surprise!" is a good word for the look on his face when you arrive at the park and pull him off by his ear.
Imagine being at Disneyland and you all want to disperse around the park for the day. The Pathaway system would give you the info you need to find everyone later in the day, even if they cant answer the phone because they are on a ride or even taking a nap at the moment. Your cellphone would give you the tracking infomation for each person in your group who you wish to track. (Look at that, aunt barb is in Tommorowland and mom is already back at the hotel. Ok, no sense going to frontierland, lets just try to intercept aunt barb after she gets off the monorail...)
I really love this app. And remember, I really hate cellphones so this is saying alot.
Pathaway is available for Windows Mobile and Palm Powered Handheld phones. I use an older Cingular 8125 phone with a bluetooth GPS. Also note - if you want the GPS tracking features(and you do), you need to purchase the Professional version, not the standard version. Also note - you can turn the tracking off, so if you dont want to be found, you dont have to be (just dont tell your kids about that feature)
Posted @ January 10, 2008 09:43 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
excuse me - I have to call my sponsor
That was frightening. I very nearly wrote a post about politics. I just spent the last half hour composing a few thoughts about that thing-that-shall-not-be-mentioned. Then when I realized what I had done, I scrapped it. Man that was close.
I need to find a PA (Politic-pundit Anonymous) meeting thats close by and call my sponsor.
Posted @ January 09, 2008 07:16 AM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Outstanding Technical Work and Great Content At The Same Time
Pajamas Media is Beta Testing new HD video over the web. Sure, Im biased towards Pajamas Media but this is an outstanding use of this technology.
Take a look, let them know what you think.
Posted @ January 07, 2008 06:22 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
"Dead Week" Is Now Over - Now Get Back To Work
Sure, Flying Subs are silly:
But some Soviet Engineers kept the wolf from the door working on just such a crazy idea. Not as cool as the Seaviews Flying Sub, but what is, right?
Oh, and just in case you need a blast of black-and-white Irwin Allen goofiness, watch for the "Written By" credit on this nugget:
Written By Cordwainer Bird? Who the hell names their kid "Cordwainer"? ( Besides the obvious answer of "Mr and Mrs Bird")
Oh, thats just Harlan Ellison being Harlan Ellison.
Who's Harlan Ellison?
One of my long list on unaccomplished goals is to start a fight with Harlan Ellison, just so I can watch him work.
Ok kids, clean up. take down the christmas lights from your cubicles, get your email cleared out, wipe the egg nog and powdered donuts off your desks. Now its "back to work" week, you slackers, "Dead week" is over, your boss is back and wants to know what the hell you've been doing for two weeks so you better have an answer.
Posted @ January 06, 2008 07:42 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)
Cheaper to buy all commuters Dodge Neons and a tank of gas a week for life
From the National Review comes this little nugget from the goldwater institute:
Myth #3 Light rail has been successful in other cities.
Reality: Light rail has had a miniscule impact on traffic congestion. In no city in the country does light rail ridership equal more than 1.2 percent of travel. In densely-populated Boston, which has the highest use of light rail in the country, the daily passenger miles per directional route is 9,942. But the U.S. Department of Transportation reports that for the top 50 urban areas in the country, the average passenger miles per lane mile of freeway is 26,370. So even the most optimistic forecast on light rail ridership comes nowhere close to the normal usage of a freeway mile.
My father used to say that public transportation systems were to urban planners and homeless advocates what the Reagan era rail deployed MX missile system was to defense planners. They both were completely ineffective and really only served as a way to keep their charges dry and out of the rain while also keeping them on the move and away from the prying eyes of the taxpayer. He also called city transit buses "rolling insane asylums", which based on my experience is just about right.
Back in the early 90's I rode light rail daily from the suburbs to downtown Sacramento. On any given day,the rail car was filled with myself and no more three other office workers. The rest of the car was filled with homeless folks who had gone "Aluminum mining" during the night out in the suburbs. They carried large black plastic trash sacks full of dripping and dirty aluminum soda cans with them. They would load up in the suburbs and then take light rail downtown to get to the recyclers where they would redeem the evenings takings and then go rest at the Salvation Army for the day and start over the next day.
I dont know what they called it, but it looked exactly like work to me.
For them, it was easier to take the light rail system than to take the bus. The Light Rail cars were largely empty which allowed them to take big plastic sacks filled with soda cans without the other passengers or the bus driver getting upset at the craven display of entreprenurial urban survival techniques. The plan worked pretty well except when there was a sucker such as myself who was actually using the system for personal transportation instead of for bulk aluminum hauling.
I think people who are being asked to fund light rail should understand that if we were honest we would say that we ourselves dont want to ride light rail, we want everyone else to ride light rail. We just want all those other people off the freeway.
Posted @ January 06, 2008 12:06 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
Size matters
I often tell people who believe in UFO's that if they truly had any inkling of the size of the solar system or the galaxy (or even the universe) that they would stop believing such silly things.
Then while scanning for information on the possible asteroid hit on Mars and I see this:
and I see in graphic detail that the fundamental problem with my species is that its allergy to intelligence and rational thinking is much worse than I had imagined.
Just to make it simple as I can for you folks, Mars is a really, really, really, really, really long way from earth, so lets just leave it at that.
The good news here is that if this is what passes for science in the land of Iran then we can expect that their "nuclear" program is really just a building sized Kenner EZ-bake oven with a huge 10000 watt light bulb inside. It should be too hard to find, but why bother. The cakes those things make taste like crap anyway.
The bad news is, its not just Iran who has a problem with scale:
Well, yes at some point in the future it could hit the earth - maybe. Of course at some point in the future the earth will burn into a cinder when the Sun goes nova, in 5 billion years! But hey, its not like any of us will be there when it happens.
Oh, and if you really want to freak out a UFO fanatic, visit "Heavens-above", put in your location information and look for Iridium Flares. If you schedule your time just right, you can have your UFO "Pigeon" in the right place to experience one of these events. After they get good and worked up,convinced that theyve just seen the latest anal probe team sent from Zeta Reticuli, you can tell them all about gold old fashioned satellite telephones.
Dont tell me I don't know how to have fun on a Saturday night. A nice clear starry night out in the country, a few bottles of Guinness and a bunch of loopy UFO believers is like a trip to Disneyland for me.
Posted @ January 05, 2008 08:06 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
A sure sign of boredom
...is when people talk about the weather.
Todays weather talk comes from the storm we had today here in California. Now I feel guilty talking about the weather here in California because compared to most places in the world, we simply dont have weather. We Californians dont live in weather, we visit it on weekends like someone elses step children. Live in snow? I think not. Live two hours from fine skiing? Oh sure, thats how you do it.
Suffice to say that todays news was full of politics and news that California was being hit by a large storm. Weather makes news in California for only one reason - we have all the media people and their video cameras.
How did the weather effect me? I have a well known talent of being able to sleep through anything. Yes, I have even slept through the detonation of a one thousand pound US Air Force bomb( but thats another story for another time) but last night I didnt get any sleep at all. We had some heavy winds, about 40kts, which by itself was fun but what made it extra special was two things. First, it wasnt just a 40knot wind, it was also accompanied by 70 knot gusts and second, the wind was coming out of the east. Here in the central valley, the wind rarely comes off the mountains to the east as anything more than a breeze, but last night the wind was booming. It was like hitting the house with a sledge hammer at random moments for eight straight hours.
So, no sleep, which is bad. It makes for a real long day at work. Next up, the backyard fence decided to collapse down the side of the hill. I felt bad about this at first, thinking that my landscaping ( or horrible lack of it ) had somehow contributed to the failure but a quick trip around the neighborhood showed that everyone with a north-south running fence took some damage. I had company, I felt better and had much less shame, so it was a win-win for me that everyone else suffered too.
So why is it such a big deal when California gets any sort of weather? Like I said, its because we dont really get any for the most part. When any weather actually does happen people here always act like they've never seen rain before or that they are made of alka-seltzer and will "effervece" to death at the slightest touch of water falling from the sky.
Interestingly enough, rain always happens in this time of year in California. This time of year was known by the native Americans who once populated this fair state as a special magical period known as "Winter".
Think of it this way, unless you are in California, you rarely get to experience earthquakes. So you wake up one day and you experience a 4 point quake and you cant shut up about it for a week. Here in California a 4 point quake wouldnt rate mention in the newspaper and if you did mention it you would get the look we reserve just for tourists.
Its like talking about rain in Seattle. The locals in Seattle dont talk about rain no matter how much it rains or for how long or take even the slightest notice of it , they just carry on living life like we do, only much, much wetter. So if you do notice it, if you blurt out "Gee sure is raining alot lately" that will make you " one of those people..." and everyone will point at you like you are the last unabsorbed human in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".
You know, a "Californian". You know, its funny because when they say "Californian" up there, its like a dirty word or something. It always makes me laugh when they do that. Its like they are saying "Colon Polyp" or something.
Posted @ January 04, 2008 08:56 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (3)
Cringeing in the face of the one eyed god, while I face my personal demons.
must....work....to....fight....the....urge...to....talk...politics
....must....not.....give....in.....must.....not....turn...on...cable
....news.....
Oh look! Its Susan Estrich....
NO.... turn the channel back to "Voyage to the bottom of the Sea" on American Life Network. Quick before that voice gets in your head, yeah i know she looks like Janice, lead singer in "Dr Teeth and the Electic Mayhem" on The Muppet show, but NO, STOP... must stop...must stop now....do not talk about politics...must not pay...attention...
Whew, commercial break!
safe...for....now....cant...hold....out...much...longer....If "Senator Inevitable" isnt actually inveitable, then what is she? She's Roger Clinton with even less talent, a bad haircut and a lime green pant suit, thats what she is.
DAMN. concentrate, concentrate man Dont read the ticker, stay off Drudge!
Oh Look, its Richard Basehart.
Must fight it, must fight urge...President Huckabee today went to Salt Lake City on a fact finding. ohohoaaaheheheheehehe, oh stop come on, youre killing me......fight it man, fight it. Drink something, take a cold shower, go for a walk...
Oh look, "Time Tunnel" is on, look at that, spacemen in aluminum suits, sure thats scarry, yessss. I can break this, I can quit anytime, you wait and see. That's right. all the way through to November, not a peep outta me. You wont find me pining for Kerry, nosirree...
OH....MY....GOD...my first commercial advertisment right here in my state! Oh nooo, they pushed the primary up to Feburary. The bastards. Those cruel, inhuman bastards! 30 days in mid winter with nothing but wall to wall political ads. I have to look at these frikkin, side show freaks for 30 non-stop dark and wet outside so you cant even look the other way days.
Huckabee...hucKAabee...huckaBEE...HUckabEE...HUCKABEE!!!...Fred J Muggs, er, uh, Fred C. Dobbs, er, Fred "Russians dont take a dump without a plan" THOMPSON...oh my god someone named friggin FRED is running for President! How can that be? this is some sort of weird parallel universe, someone went back in time and stepped on a butterfly while hunting dinosaurs, this proves it!!! THIS CANT BE HAPPENING......
Whoa, gotta get hold of myself. I got to get this monkey off my back, gotta to get to,to,to Oh look "Lost in Space" is on, oh good. Wow who's idea was it to let Dr. Smith near Will? Doesnt anyone besides me think that is a really bad idea? Are the Robinsons the worst parents in history? Did they volunteer to get sent into space or were they "volunteered", you know Ive always wondered about that because I mean really, who takes your family into space in velvet, velour one piece suits?.....horsehead bookends,horsehead bookends,horsehead bookends,horsehead bookends,horsehead bookends,horsehead bookends,horsehead bookends,horsehead bookends...
Oh look, its Obama.
aiiiiiiiieeeee!!!!!! Spiders. Spiders everwhere! Madness...
Posted @ January 03, 2008 07:17 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Lantos Retires
79 year old holocaust survivor and Congressman from San Mateo has decided to retire after the discovery of esophageal cancer. His statement was particularly moving to me:
"It is only in the United States that a penniless survivor of the Holocaust and a fighter in the anti-Nazi underground could have received an education, raised a family and had the privilege of serving the last three decades of his life as a member of Congress," he said. "I will never be able to express fully my profoundly felt gratitude to this great country."
Well look at that, a Democrat who knows the true value of freedom, democracy and the great debt we all owe to this country for providing both. The man is dying of cancer, and all he can say is that he is grateful to be here. Well congressman all I can say is "thank you, sir". I'm grateful to have lived in your time.
I didnt always agree with Congressman Lantos, frankly I dont always agree with anyone, including myself, but I've always found him to an intriguing person to listen to and after all, isnt that the whole idea of this "democracy" thing? opposing ideas clashing and competing for votes, but all of us getting together for a beer afterwards?
I dont like speaking about people in the past tense while they are still alive and I wish him the best with his treatment, but I will miss him nonetheless.
Posted @ January 02, 2008 03:30 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Writers Strike? Like I'd notice.
Burgess Meredith - "Time Enough to Last"
In 1966, on any given weeknight you would have found me sitting in my room making a model airplane, watching "Twilight Zone" or "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" or "12 O'clock High".
Its now 2008, and I find myself pretty much doing the same thing, then on a little rabbit eared metallic black and white TV in the back of a small house on Manhattan street in Sparks Nevada, now I watch TV on a Slingbox and I live just across from Sparks the other side of the Sierra Nevadas in California.
The Sci-Fi Channel marathon of Twilight Zone has made me witness again the greatness of Burgess Meredith as an actor and Rod Serling as a writer. Notice I didnt say anything about special effects? Thats because there werent any. Did it distract from the show? In my opinion, not a bit, in fact I think it actually helped!
I had a discussion this weekend where I argued that the easy availability of special effects via CGI has temporarily clouded the artistic vision of directors and producers of film and television, they have succummed to the quiet narcotic of computers and software. In 1977, Jaws showed us that not seeing the shark was actually better than seeing it. The Shark, once fully seen ends the movie. By drawing the focus of the tension around the largely unseen shark our imaginations filled in the blanks, and our imaginations of what the shark might be were far worse than what the shark actually ended up being ( which was if I remember correctly was a big pile of "Roy Schieder Fishing Chum" through which Richard Dreyfuss was forced to swim for the happy ending to be complete )
That director at that time didn't have a choice in how to present to movie, he had to take the risky art route of trying to get the audience to be frightened at the right time and laugh at the right time and not confuse the two. There simply wasnt the CGI that there is today. That director was forced to use the creative art of film making to provide the image of the shark in the shape of your own shadow of fear, there just below the water slightly out of reach, just waiting to eat your girlfriend (at just the right moment in the date, so you wouldnt have to call the next day).
Today the same director would have the shark doing a tap dance on center stage with a straw hat and cane just because he could. Its CGI, its practically free so why not make the shark into a three headed "dog shark" with "frickin lazer beams" and make it three, no four times bigger than the boat! Yeah, sure thats the ticket.
In 1977, it was the art department and the bank that determined your level of special effects, you as a director and an actor had to paper around the lack of special effects with words, with acting, with a bit of creative lighting and the occasional big rubber shark shaped thing that would end up an ornament outside a crab shack in Pensacola. In 2008, its the mopey, hoodie wearing kid with the Ipod stuck in his ears who thinks that "The Matrix is the greatest movie of all time" that determines how many dog-heads to put on your shark. And its meaninginless to have one or two or three dog-heads because everyone knows that with a few choices on the digitalization software, you can change the "directors cut" to have more dog-heads than the version the studio wanted to send out.
Its not that you cant do it, its just that it really doesnt mean anything. Its just not "special" anymore, is it?
You understand that as a technologist, a computer technologist no less what I have just said is heresy, but it really needs to be said. For an effect to be "special" it has to have the sense of "WOW" in it. You have to know that what is going on in front of you is a result of effort and not some new wizbang software that your kid can download and get working in the same afternoon. For instance, you compare Ray Harryhausen and his "sword fighting skeletons" to anything in "The Matrix" and judge for yourself if that is "special". personally, I'm taking Ray's sword fighting skeltons over anything in the Matrix. For Ray Harryhausen, some guy has to move clay models of skeletons step by step every day for a month for each skeleton, for each swing of the sword - now thats a "special" effect. Compared to a bunch of Apples tied together spinning out bits and bytes day after day, Im sorry but its not that special to me. A truly special effect is invisible. It acts a tool for the actor and director. A true special effect is not noticed. Todays special effects allow actors and directors, and frankly producers to be lazy, to not be artists because they think they can overcome any error and make any landscape with a bit of finely placed CGI. Dont take 100 takes of a scene to get it right, just get it in the can and we'll CGI in another actor later if we have to...
It's not that there are any "special effects" in Twilight Zone, there arent. Its all stagecraft and dammit, its good stagecraft. It was good then and its still good now. I dont care that the effects are of the tin foil and styrofoam rocks variety, I want 22 minutes of good story, excellent directing and fantastic acting. A modern set of special effects adds nothing to the story being told. Replace Burgess Meredith with some goo-goo bright light CGI special effects? Sorry, its not going to make a better story. Frankly, the lack of special effects make me concentrate on the story being told and not the bright shiny object.
Its not that I think I'm in a rut or that I'm a luddite, its that I think I know what I like. "To Serve Man" doesnt get better if the Kanamids have better looking spaceships. "Time enough to Last" doesnt improve if I get to see the atomic explosion. It's not important. What is important is the look on the face of Burgess Meredith when his glasses break. The other 19 minutes are in that episode are there to drive you to that point. Any bank vault would do as a set, you dont need Lucasfilm to make a CGI vault.
I like 12 O'Clock High because I like to see how directors make a single B-17 sitting in 1960's Chino California look like the entire 8th Air Force in 1944 England( Awfully desert like there in England,eh? gee wasnt aware that there were any groves of eucalyptus in England..hmmm). I like "Voyage to the Bottom of Sea" because as much as I think the Flying Sub is an horrid engineering improbabilty, it sure does look cool. I also like seeing how many of the seaweed monsters that the "good sub Seaview" finds week after week are really just leftover props from "Lost in Space".
Posted @ January 01, 2008 11:27 PM | Current Affairs | Comments (3)
![[Valid RSS]](http://varifrank.com/images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
