No Touch Monkey!

We left the wine tasting at 9 and by 9:30 we were on our way to pick up the car at the dealer on the other side of town.

10 pm I'm speeding down the highway on the way home. Finally a nice warm night. Spring is here and the smell of a dank evening tickles my brain.

Remember when

10 pm was just starting the night. Anything can happen when you're 21. A college town that's been emptied out. The town is yours. Hop the fence at the university pool for a midnight swim. Go to a party, meet new people, laugh at stupid stuff, smoke some weed.

Now, 10:46 I have to hit the sack for a 6:20 wakeup call and a 30 mile one way trip to the office.

Sighhhhhhh!

"New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says the company that has made millions of dollars with U.S. exhibitions of plasticized human bodies used 'the remains of individuals that may have been tortured and executed in China.'

In announcing what he called the 'grim reality' of an official investigation triggered by an ABC News '20/20' report, Cuomo said the company, Premier Exhibitions, 'despite repeated denials...had no way of knowing the true source of their human exhibits and no meaningful documentation to support their claims that the bodies had been donated for such a use.'

Cuomo said his office had reached a settlement with Premier that he said will 'bring an end to Premier's practice of using bodies of undocumented origins in their exhibitions.'

'Respect for the dead and respect for the public requires that Premier do more than simply assure us that there is no reason for concern,' said Cuomo."

Link:

Army frowns on Dungeons and Dragons - Israel News, Ynetnews

IDF says players are detached from reality and automatically given a low security clearance

By Hanan Greenberg Published: 02.28.05, 14:17 / Israel News

Does the Israel Defense Forces believe incoming recruits and soldiers who play Dungeons and Dragons are unfit for elite units? Ynet has learned that 18-year-olds who tell recruiters they play the popular fantasy game are automatically given low security clearance.

“They're detached from reality and suscepitble to influence,” the army says.

Fans of the popular roleplaying game had spoken of rumors of this strange policy by the IDF, but now the army has confirmed that it has a negative image of teens who play the game and labels them as problematic in regard to their draft status.

So if you like fantasy games, go see the military psychologist.

Dungeons and Dragons (also known as D&D) has been a popular roleplaying game for decades and is based on a fantasy world.


One player assumes the role of “Dungeon Master,” which entails directing the game and controlling the labyrinth, while the others select from a large selection of characters that includes warriors, magicians, dwarfs and thieves.

The game focuses on the results of decisions made by the players as determined by the roll of the dice.

In a more "active" version of the game, players leave the table and go out, dressed as the characters they assume for the game, along with the requisite equipment of swords (not real) to play outside, usually in the forest or woods. Most D&D players do not don costumes, and participants in such costume games are called "LARPers" (for live-action role playing).

'Simply detached from reality'

Thousands of youth and teens in Israel play D&D, fighting dragons and demons using their rich imaginations. The game has also increased in popularity due to the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

However the IDF does not approve of this unusual hobby and prevents D&D players from being considered for sensitive army positions by labeling them with low security clearance.

"We have discovered that some of them are simply detached from reality," a security source told Ynet.

Game enthusiasts are aware of their problematic image in the army and prefer to maintain their anonymity. Many of them are from the former Soviet Union, where the game is very popular.

In Israel there are thousands of players, between the ages 16 to 35, and include lawyers, high-tech workers and businessmen. Matan, 22, and Igor, a 21-year-old IDF soldier, organize activities for groups of players. Soon hundreds of fans are expected to meet in a forest in the southern part of Israel for a two-day game of pure fantasy.

"It's not a game of winners and losers," Matan says, "but rather entry into another world with stories and plot changes."

He is aware of the game's problematic reputation, especially in the IDF. The army is not indifferent to the unique hobby and is trying to locate soldiers who in their free time dress up as witches and play in forests.

'The game indicates a weak personality'

A security official tells Ynet there are specific criteria for deciding the level of a soldier's security clearance.

"One of the tests we do, either by asking soldiers directly or through information provided us, is to ask whether they take part in the game," he says. "If a soldier answers in the affirmative, he is sent to a professional for an evaluation, usually a psychologist."

More than half of the soldiers sent for evaluation receive low security clearances, thus preventing them from serving in sensitive IDF positions, he says.

Igor says exposing soldiers who play the game could result in the soldiers being sent to a military psychologist or even being kicked out of the army.

"Exposing them could also harm their chances at being accepted to other military courses," he says.

Matan says he has personally met soldiers whose military career was harmed due to their connection to the game. Most soldiers who play Dungeons and Dragons simply do not admit to it while they are in the army, he says.

Why does IDF believe game is dangerous?

"These people have a tendency to be influenced by external factors which could cloud their judgment, a military official says. "They may be detached from reality or have a weak personality - elements which lower a person's security clearance, allowing them to serve in the army, but not in sensitive positions."

Unsurprisingly, Igor, Matan and thier friends do not approve of this IDF policy. They say the game is only a colorful, non-violent hobby.

"Many people who play served in the most classified units," David says. "They are intelligent and any attempt to label them as 'weird' is incorrect and unfair."

But in the struggle between the gameplayers and the Defense Minister, the latter wins - or at least this is the case in the real world of the IDF.

A new book which suggests that the German occupation of France encouraged the sexual liberation of women has shocked a country still struggling to come to terms with its troubled history of collaboration with the Nazis.

Like a recent photographic exhibition showing Parisians enjoying themselves under the occupation, the book’s depiction of life in Paris as one big party is at odds with the collective memory of hunger, resistance and fear.

“It is a taboo subject, a story nobody wants to hear,” said Patrick Buisson, author of 1940-1945 Années Erotiques (“erotic years”). “It may hurt our national pride, but the reality is that people adapted to occupation.”

Many might prefer to forget but, with their husbands in prison camps, numerous women slept not only with German soldiers – the young “blond barbarians” were particularly attractive to French women, says Buisson – but also conducted affairs with anyone else who could help them through financially difficult times: “They gave way to the advances of the boss, to the tradesman they owed money to, their neighbour. In times of rationing, the body is the only renewable, inexhaustible currency.”

More

For National Geographic Channel.

Question: Can I beat BoingBoing to the post?

Labels: cool, video

Jesus Chair. Alessandra thinks it would look good in the back yard, so she's contacted the owner. No word back yet. I predict either A) It's more than she would want to pay or B)A bidding war breaks out and the owner asks more than she would want to pay.

It would be funny if C) we get it though.

Labels: Homosexual Priests

Virtually every picture showing the full Earth derives from one photograph taken in 1972. Yet hardly anybody notices this.

Apollo 17 was NASA's last and most successful manned Moon mission. Within just a few hours of launch the crew were 24,000 km away and could see an entire hemisphere of Earth. The photo they took was labelled AS17-148-22726 and was added to the hundreds of thousands of others in the NASA archives. And there it would have remained, were it not for environmental organisations and famine-relief organisations of the early 1980's. Its prominent depiction of Africa and Antarctica made it perfectly suited as symbols for both causes. Posters started appearing pairing the photo with captions such as "It's the only one we've got". [click title to see examples]

This initial boost was all that was needed to start a monopoly. From then on, whenever someone was seeking to use a photograph of Earth, naturally it was an example of AS17-148-22726 that one would find first. Television, newspapers, websites, mouse pads and marketing material are all oozing with copies of the photograph. Yet astonishingly few people notice that they are being presented with the same photo over and over.

via Neil Fraser: Writing: Earth Photograph via TotalFark

Men simultaneously Tase each other on Uni Hill

Boulder police officers were left scratching their heads Saturday night about how to deal with two men who shot each other with Taser devices during an argument on University Hill.

Sgt. Pat Wyton said Casey Dane, a private security guard working for Colorado Security, was in an ally behind the Mamacitas restaurant, 1149 13th St., and got into a heated argument with another man whose car had been booted for parking illegally.

The owner of the car, Harvey Epstein, a bartender at the Mexican restaurant, left to retrieve a set of bolt cutters, Wyton said, and then returned to the vehicle to try to pry off the boot. When he returned, about 7 p.m., Dane allegedly ordered him to drop the cutters or he would shoot him with a gas-propelled Taser device because he felt threatened.

The guard, Wyton said, "decided to shoot the guy."

But what the guard didn't know, Wyton said, was that Epstein also had the same type of Taser in his pocket -- which he then used on Dane.

"They shot each other," Wyton said. "It was just kind of a bone-head deal."

Both men pulled the electrified probes from their own bodies and did not need medical attention, he said.

Wyton said that, following the confusing encounter, Epstein was arrested and taken to the Boulder County Jail on suspicion of felony menacing and use of a stun gun.

Submitted by Dr. Feelgood.

Japanese Game Show: Cat Weightlifting

Labels: video

I've been putting off the personal post for weeks because again, there's been no coherent events worth actually posting about that wouldn't fit in a Twitter post, so I saved em up for a mishmash of a Sunday Morning Post.

In no particular order:

1. I am officiating a wedding in Salt Lake City next weekend. We are flying in to Boulder and driving with our friends: Doctors J and Feelgood and their daughter Sophie (an under-under Grad). We are sharing a room and I assured them that even though Sophie is only 1 year old it will be no problem. Ale and I are excited because it's a gathering of friends who have moved away from STL who haven't gathered in years. I'm expecting lots of much needed laughter.



2. Health Issues
   After experiencing a lot of pelvic pain for months, Alessandra had laparoscopy where it was discovered she has a 2x2" fibroid behind her uterus as well as spots of endometriosis. The endo was removed, the fibroid is still there and it will be 6 months until we find out what is going to happen with that little fucker. She could take medicine to shrink it, but apparently there is a huge chance that the "cure" is worse than the problem and could have permanent side-effects. Key word: Lupron



3. Work
   This is a complex issue. I don't dislike my job, and I don't dislike my boss (he's quite a nice guy. Unskilled in social, extremely smart and observant, but nice.) but both kind of bug me.
   
   My job is to build a web site with lots of moving parts, unfortunately I have don't have access to 50% of my code because it's locked up either by our IT department or by our new Search Engine Provider. It's like being asked to build a car without either the manual, the necessary parts and being told that the headlights have to go in the front when you really need them to go on the side. So thats kind of frustrating. My boss while nice, likes to stand by me looking at the code I do have, and he invades the crap out my personal space. And when he's smacking away on gum while in my personal space, I want to scream and/or push him away. But I think the job itself is going well enough. Edwardsville though, still weirds me out. Also the daily 60 mile round trip is playing hell with our cars. I've always worked only 5 minutes from my house, the 1/2 each way across crappy always under construction Missouri highways and crappier cheesegrater through swamp and ghetto highways has already cost me 1 windshield and put a total of 6 6! chips and chunks taken out of the windshields of both cars.



4. Media Rodeo
   
   • Across the Universe: Fucking Awful. John, if you are reading this, you were right to refuse to watch this. While I am not against musicals nor covering another bands tunes in your own style, when it's done right (Hayseed Dixie, Dred Zeppelin) your ear and imagination are enlarged, but when it's done wrong it's a fucking train wreck.
   
   
   • Coupling: a show from the UK that ran from 2000-2004. Similar in character structure to Friends but about 5000x funnier, sexier and racier. Put it on your Netflix Queue today.
   
   
   • BSG & Lost
   Still the best shows on TV today, pretty much the only things I look forward to watching. I don't have a lot of time for TDS and Colbert.
   
   • Pandora Radio. I have no idea how I lived without this. Too bad my internet at work is so godawful slow, so I can only listen to this from time to time.
   
   
   
5. Leftovers
   I'm trying to hit the Boot Camp 2-3 times a week as time permits. It kicks my ass, but it seems to be working. I finally went for a bike ride yesterday and I noticed that while my cycling muscles weren't up to snuff, my cardio fucking rocked.
   
   The 100 eyes project As I continue to learn to draw, I found a few good books on-line to really instruct me on drawing. There are so many different ways to learn to draw (most of the books miss what I think is critical information), but I am still trying to draw every day. So one book really nails down the anatomy and how to draw it, so I'm working my way through that book. The first thing is eyes and I put it into my head to draw 100 eyes before I move on to the mouth. I think 100 is pretty excessive, so maybe when I get to mouths it will be 50-75, but still. even at 35, my eyes are only "OK" so perhaps its a good thing.

And so it goes:

Labels: personal, The Cap'n

Amputee runner wins right to try for Olympic spot

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — Double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius has won the right to compete for a place in the Beijing Olympics.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that the 21-year-old South African is eligible to race against able-bodied athletes.

Friday's verdict overturns a ban imposed by the IAAF, which said his carbon fiber prosthetic blades give him a mechanical advantage.

CAS said the unanimous ruling goes into effect immediately.

Pistorius still must reach a qualifying time to run in the individual 400 meters at the Beijing Games. However, he can be picked for the South African relay squad without qualifying.

That's cool. If swimmers can have an advantage with a super streamlined suit over those countries who can't afford such suits, then this guy should be allowed to run.

I'm all for a Full on Cybernetic Olympics.

Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens

VATICAN CITY - The Vatican's chief astronomer says that believing in aliens does not contradict faith in God.

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, says that the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

In an interview published Tuesday by Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Funes says that such a notion "doesn't contradict our faith" because aliens would still be God's creatures.

The interview was headlined "The extraterrestrial is my brother." Funes said that ruling out the existence of aliens would be like "putting limits" on God's creative freedom.

This is the kind of thinking at puts Man existing with Dinosaurs.

Believe it or not, my eyes are actually open, but I'm surfing while sleepy. Wheeeeee! It's all of 11:30 on a Saturday Night.

Let the good times roll!

For the low price of $47 dollars I can learn how not to masturbate.

We got pressure to withdraw this course from sale earlier this year from the "adult" industry. As you probably know the adult industry is making billions of dollars every year and is considered the most powerful online business...We can't guarantee that this course will remain online forever, grab the opportunity

Yes, watch out Pornography Industry. That little anti-masturbation mosquito has Encephalitis. Soon you'll be out of business. Aahahahahahahah!

When they pry it out of my cold dead hands....

Labels: Ahahahahaha

Yes...101 versions. I think I'll have to listen to them all.

via WFMU's Beware of the Blog

In the year 2008, in what country can a teacher be fired for accusations of Wizardry?

If your answer was The United States of America...You are right!

Can you guess the state? Florida? Right Again!

Magic trick costs teacher job

Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.

But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land 'O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.

"I get a call the middle of the day from head of supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, 'Jim, we have a huge issue, you can't take any more assignments you need to come in right away,'" he said.

When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell and went much farther than he'd hoped.

"I said, 'Well Pat, can you explain this to me?' 'You've been accused of wizardry,' [he said]. Wizardry?" he asked.

Tampa Bay's 10 talked to the assistant superintendent with the Pasco County School District who said it wasn't just the wizardry and that Picular had other performance issues, including "not following lesson plans" and allowing students to play on unapproved computers."

Piculas said he knew nothing about the accusations.

"That... I think was embellished after the fact to try to cover what initially what they were saying to me," he said.

All men are not created equal. It is the purpose of the Government to make them so.

Several months ago I heard about this movie on some forum, and I was able to download it, sitting on it until I had a chance to watch it. The society portrayed here is similar to the one in Sirens of Titan in that all physical and mental inequalities are leveled through the use of handicapping (athletes are weighted down, intelligent people crippled with mind numbing headbands). Harrison is a young man too smart for his band who is taken into the secret government to help run things.

The movie, while neither political Left or Right is a great Dystopian satire about good intentions gone bad and the moral ambiguity of doing the right thing. This movie reminds me blend of both Network and Idiocracy. I really enjoyed it, and think that if you like reading NTM and agree with some of the things I write, then you should probably watch this movie.

Watch the entire movie starring Sean Astin:


You can read the short story here:"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut

Labels: Multiple Media, Worth your time

The Secret History of Star Wars is a new full-length e-book exploring the writing and creation of the Star Wars saga. Culled from over 400 sources and filled with quotes from people such as George Lucas, Gary Kurtz and Mark Hamill, The Secret History of Star Wars traces all the way back to 1973 to examine how the first 14-page treatment that began the series came to be and was slowly built, draft by draft, year by year and movie by movie. Covering a period of over four decades, you will discover how George Lucas got his ideas for the original film, how Darth Vader was made into Luke Skywalker's father in 1978 and forever altered the arc of the story, what happened to the infamous third trilogy in the series and how the prequel stories came to be. The book also reveals the style and method of Lucas himself and how his personal life affected and shaped the story, for better and worse. This is a book which challenges many legends surrounding the series and places the films in a new light. For the more casual fan this will be a mesmerizing read and for those who think they know everything about the series, prepare to be surprised!

500+ pages of intense scholarship. I was drawn in when I saw it and jumped around. It is very interesting, and if you are a fan of Star Wars or one who always wonders what it could have been, it's well worth looking into.

Labels: Gosh_Wow, Story Telling, The Geeks are my People

NWS if for some reason a video of digital avatars fuckin is considered Not Workplace Safe...oh wait, we're in America, Land of Free, of course it's frowned on.

Watch it anyway.


(yes I jumped the Gun, I wanted to be first ((this year)))

Labels: Fun Stuff