Fictional Iron Man/Monster Energy Drink Ad

A project that I figured I might as well add the great repository of information that we call the internet.

Note: I do not support Monster or their products: they're just pop (death in a can) with some extra caffeine and vitamins. Iron Man is pretty cool though. All images are owned by Marvel and Monster.

The Big Bang Theory & Ubuntu

At last, one of the two things that have never been on the Big Bang Theory has been acknowledged: Ubuntu.

Sheldon: "Ahh, Ubuntu, my favorite Linux-based operating system." (I believe that was the quote, if it isn't, I'd appreciate the correction.) 

Every computer nerd (and Sheldon certainly is one) uses, or has used at some point a Linux distribution. It's a small point, but it has endeared the show to me even further.

Now, the only thing that I'm waiting for a mention of is Dungeons & Dragons. (Yes, I've seen every single episode, and I'm quite sure that it has been included in none of them.) Really, a show about nerds, and not a single mention?

Ridiculous.

Fast Food

I made the mistake of venturing into a fast-food restaurant yesterday. I can't describe it as anything other than frightening. 

The usual scents of grease and salt were present, the whirring of the air-conditioning and the clanks and splashes of whatever is being turned into "food" in the back.

But the thing that always frightens me the most is the staff. As you get up to the front of the line, uncomfortably close to a morbidly obese and copiously sweating person, a woman apologizing for a spilled drink, a small child doomed to an early death due to poor diet and worse exercise and at the pushy customers and crying babies... you look into the eyes of the man at the register, and you watch a little more of him die inside. He's a man. Not a boy, it's not a phase, this is his life, what he is and what he does.

And it makes you want to leave. To tell him to quit. To take your money and leave, him standing there. So that everyone is silent, and just sits there, thinking about how short life it, how much of it they've wasted, and how little they have left.

But instead, you just hand him the change, take the greasy, salty, overly sweetened food, thank him, and walk out the door with your head down, out back into the sunshine, so that you can forget what it is that you just did.

Iron Man 2

Being a bit of a comic book nerd, I went to see Iron Man 2. 

I'm not much of one for movie reviews (it's based far too much on opinion, and I really don't have the interest in trying to communicate such a complex experience to somehow who most likely can't at all relate to what I did experience). So I'll keep it short. 


The movie was good although I preferred the first: the characters then seemed more compelling, and the plot more complex, realistic, and a fair bit funnier. But perhaps that was just my experiencing Robert Downey Jr., aka Tony Stark, aka Iron Man for the first time.


Really though, what struck me, is that the part of the movie that I found the coolest was the interfaces that Mr. Stark employed throughout. The projections(?), while entirely unrealistic, are probably some of the most interesting GUI's that I've ever seen. Yes, they were in the first movie as well, but it's just now that it really struck me how interesting they are. 


It would be a fairly intuitive way of manipulating information, although I fear that if our relationship to computers ever did progress to that point, then people would be largely shut out from the control that we now possess due to our (comparatively) intimate relationship with the coding and processes that they consist of...

But to be able to zoom in to view a series of pictures from different angles, work on them, quite literally, by hand, and then pick them up and hurl them into an interactive garbage can would be quite an experience. 

I have to wonder, is the current trend towards touch screens and intuitive interfaces more than just a fad?

Tax Dollars & Police Accountability

<- That is what your tax dollars are being used for. To buy the pepper spray and body armor that that officer required to spray these WTO protesters in Seattle.

Before bothering to read any farther, do you agree with this statement: police forces are established to protect and serve the citizens. If you don't agree with this statement, then it's probably not worth reading any farther, although I welcome you to do so. 

 Now, if we consider that statement correct, then we have to ask ourselves: do you want your tax dollars, and your complacency to enable such gross abuses of power? Were these protesters lighting fires, settings bombs? No. They were merely protesting somewhere that the government had decided they shouldn't be allowed to. I am reasonably sure that if you went around the country asking people, very few would say that these people were a danger to anyone. Stopping robberies and muggings, preventing shootings and perusing killers? Yes. They are a threat to everyone, including themselves. The same thing will occur over and over, unless we care to do something to break the cycle. 

Why are there such blatant abuses of power? 

Lack of accountability. No one knows who that officer was, where his orders came from, or why they were issues. The police system is about as transparent as a cinder block from the vantage point of the ordinary citizen. Deciding what to do about it is a lot more complex: after all, just adding more rules and regulations is likely just going to make it more complex and confusing. For a start, every officer should be clearly emblazoned with a number. I mean, huge, yellow lettering across their chest and back. And as short as can be managed, as well. No 17 digit I.D. tags that no one will remember. And anonymous access to a website where you can enter the number and be provided with a link to contact this person's commanding officer, along with links to resources about citizen rights. A pipe dream? Probably, but it's a least a start.


We can make a difference: I'm sure that most people have seen the video of police storming a suspected drug dealer's house, shooting his dogs and arresting him.... while young children were present. And then finding nothing but a small amount of marijuana. And there have been changes made, no matter how minor they are, including a statement that presence of children may be considered a factor in whether or not an armed assault will be conducted. (Source, anyone?). 

They're our police. When people are as afraid of them as they are of the criminals that they should be protecting us from, the system is broken.