mcgees.org

Or, to aficionados, CSI: New York.

I’ve discussed the show before, after the standalone (non-crossover) Pilot.  I remarked after that episode, “I’m not sure if they’re taking liberties with the medicine on the show or not, but they are taking extreme liberties with the trigonometry, so I wouldn’t necessarily expect rigorous stuff from the show.”

And how.

The best of the Pilot, the Gothic Horror feel, evaporated after the first episode.  I rapidly lost interest.  It’s essentially a science fiction show now.  Or comic book show.  The frequency of I’mSorryWhat?! moments in the show defy belief.

I tried watching last week’s episodes.  They have frakking tricorders: they pointed a laser scanner at a fragment of material, and the readout said “Silica”.  They concluded it must be ceramic.  Um…

Hold on, same episode.  Their mass spec isolated various points in a chemical mixture, one of which was biodiesel.  Um…

Hold on, though.  The episode has a sub-plot about the sport of street luge.  In Manhattan.  We’re back to trigonometry.  The way-too-fancy visuals on their software (into which, by the way, they entered speed in miles per hour, weight in pounds, and acceleration in meters per second to get their answer) determined that for the street luger to reach the speed at which he was estimated, he had to have descended a 35% grade (for an unspecified time or distance).  The investigators looked for one.  In Manhattan.  They found one a quarter mile away.

OK, forget the fact that a 35% grade, anywhere, followed by flat road for a quarter mile, would not yield a street luger going 80 miles per hour at the terminus.  Let’s talk about a 35% grade for a moment.  The infamous Lombard Street in San Francisco has a native 27% grade, which was considered completely impassible.  They put in extensive switchbacks, taking it down to a 16% grade.  You ever driven down that street?  You ever see anything more than a quarter again as steep as Lombard Street in Manhattan?  To be specific, on 45th between Fourth and Sixth?  Other than, say, the 10 cm drop-off from sidewalk to street?

These writers are insane.  It’s not even fun to watch the show.  It’s less plausible than The X-Files, where at least they’d give Mulder a few hand-wave lines.  There’s no way to figure out a mystery, because the answer might as easily be “mutated chipmunks did it”, in what is supposed to be a procedural melodrama.

There is exactly one compelling thing about this show.  That’s in the next post.  Look up, look down, or click right, depending on how you’re reading this post.

Niall:  What’s a skirt?

Joshua:  It’s like a kilt for girls.

I have a drinking problem.  A literal, mechanical drinking problem.  I choke on any beverage I try to imbibe.

It hasn’t always been this way.  I used to be able to drink a glass of water without drowning.  But now, probably about half the time, I’ll end up in a wheezy coughing and choking fit as the liquid tries to go down my trachea.

I don’t know what’s changed.  A year and a half ago, I thought this would be fixed by my Chiari decompression surgery.  It wasn’t.  I still cannot drink properly.  It might be weight-related — that’s my best guess at the moment.

There are all sorts of programs and support groups for people with alcohol dependency.  There are almost none for actual drinking problems.  So I guess I’m going to have to deal with this myself.  Ideas, other than “Drink more slowly”?

I’ve been reconsidering my positions on a few posts:

First, I made too big of a deal about a little girl wanting to go to heaven to be with her hamster.  While I’ve run this by atheists who agree with my premise, I should never have done so in a way that it would get back to Poppy or her mother.  I think belief in an afterlife is dangerous, but probably benign in a first-world well-off small child raised by a loving mother (and maybe a father) with plans to dispel the myth to her in a few years.

Second, I’ve reconsidered my claim that Kill Bill vols. 1 and 2 should have received NC-17s.  I think R is appropriate for the films.

Third, regarding the my quote of the article from The Guardian about George W. in early 2002 that said:

Sooner or later, Mr Bush, self-styled universal soldier for truth, will have to stop pretending that tragedy gave him a free hand to remake America and the world to fit his simplistic, narrow vision — or risk having voters and US allies end the pretence for him.

Turns out, there was an insufficient allotment of brains and balls worldwide, and Bush has been unnervingly and nauseating successful in remaking America.  So the paper and I were wrong.

Fourth, something really funny to lighten the mood.

Gently!

Check out the article on the elephants in the room regarding the current state of philately.  Nothing new, but a good summary.

I’ve been catching up on seasons of the two successful Law & Order spin-offs (Criminal Intent and Special Victims Unit) on USA.  Criminal Intent’s twist is that it follows the Major Case Squad (who pursue, theoretically, if not in practice, more serious offenders than they do on the other franchises) and shows scenes of perpetrators to the viewer that the cops are not privy to.  This leaves the viewer in the position of knowing more at times than the detectives.  Clever.  SVU, on the other hand, has one twist: it follows the sex crimes unit.  Ouch.

First off, whoever at USA Network thought viewers could stomach three hours of sex crimes per day is out of his (yeah, probably his) mind.  It’s horrible.  Every one makes you want to vomit.  At its best, it’s art.  At its worst, it’s exploitation.  Never is it entertainment.  But moving on:

Criminal Intent is my favored of the two, despite a revolving-door cast and the current status quo, where it’s essentially two shows, with different casts, interwoven into something they call the same show.  I’ve missed a lot of years of it.  And I’ve missed a lot.  At it’s best, it’s up there with the best on television.

I had to take a break from my DVRed episode of one episode of Criminal Intent, entitled To The Bone.  In the first half hour, you have:

* The bloodiest, Mansonesque crime scenes this side of the Saw franchise, more graphic than anything I have ever seen on TV, including gaping machete wounds and severed hands and fingers on whole butchered families including little children,

* Crime scenes with bloody spatter and bloody hand-prints covering the walls,

* A medical examiner at the crime scene with a smock drenched in blood, making her look like a butcher who has just pulled a double shift,

* A creepy-as-fuck Whoopi Goldberg playing a foster mom who I am certain we’re going to find out is masterminding the murder sprees,

* Mike Logan (Chris Noth) trying to break up a brutal gang attack, in the process shooting and critically injuring an undercover cop,

* Noth’s Emmy-worthy, heart-wrenching, stomach-turning reaction to realizing he’s just shot a badge,

* Assorted other goodies, like onscreen copious vomiting and graphic descriptions of minors sodomized with foreign objects,

* And all without a single “Viewer Discretion Advised” notice (which every episode of House, bizarrely, gets), even when this stuff is being aired as a repeat at 6 p.m., on basic cable, on a weeknight.

I watch horror movies, but this network show is enough for me that I’ve had to take a break.  But if they showed a single bare breast?  They couldn’t have aired it in the first place.  Per our previous discussion: I don’t give a fuck, Bob Mike, this is fucking fucked up.  Anyone who would censor above-the-waist female nudity and allow this adult material to be shown to their children are simply wrong.  This is not “parents’ discretion”.  They are fucking wrong.  Anyone who thinks otherwise, I’ll meet you at the virtual flagpole (the comments section).  Come with knuckles bared.

OK.  Deep breath.  Wonderful acting.  Wonderful screenwriting.  I’m just going to hope no children watched this, take a few laps around the house, and go back for the second half.

Maybe.

I had a fantastically real-seeming dream about publishing a book and having it printed on the most luxurious paper I’ve ever felt.  It was printed on the processed fibrous bark of some bush that doesn’t actually exist.  The paper was dense, smooth, almost velour-textured.  It gave crystal-clear impressions to the ink deposited on it, and was luxurious to fan through.  It was almost warm to the touch, naturally dyed (kind of taupe-colored), and exceedingly sexy.

This is one of the few multi-sensual dreams I’ve experienced, and the first exceedingly tactile, almost erotic, dream I can recall that did not involve strategic female fat deposits.  In other words: I had a booby dream about paper.

And now I’m on a search for ultrafine papers.  I use 28 lb. Crane’s Crest cotton paper in my regular correspondence.  This dream paper made that feel like 300-grit sandpaper.  Pointers?

Ten years ago, I had an inkjet printer (it was a Canon) with amazing mechanical registration: you could print a document, take out the paper, put it back in the tray, print the same document on top of it, and you couldn’t tell!  Everything was perfectly aligned, to the sub-millimeter.  This was a sub-$100 printer.  So I know this technology exists in consumer-ready form.

The other piece of my idea is OCR software.  Again, what I need from it is far less than what is available right now.

What do I want?  I want an all-in-one scanner/printer doohickey.  Take a form — any reasonable size — and feed it through the document feeder.  The hardware would scan it, the software would identify the fields where one needs to enter text (they will usually be underlined or have boxes for each letter) and then allow you to type, like those fill-in PDF files.  You would type the text you want on the form, feed it through the document feeder again, and, Bingo!  It would print out your answers, perfectly legibly, onto the empty form.  It would size its font and everything to be just right.

I thought of this in college, years ago.  I’m tired of waiting for venture cap to make a fortune building this myself.  I just want someone to build it now.  Take the idea.  Make your million bucks.  Just charge less than $200, and I’ll buy at least one.

Please.  Now.  My handwriting’s getting worse as we speak.  Build it now.

Look who the louses are who own envelopes.com.  Not only are they producing spam, they’re doing so with tons of (likely) toxic inks.

Note that none of their examples has the tell-tale giveaway: the indicium in the upper-right that says “Bulk Rate Postage Paid”.  When you get a letter, ignore the pretty birdies and look in the upper-right.  Almost nothing useful is sent less than First Class.  Unfortunately, yes, that’s “almost nothing”.  I’ve gotten $40 rebates sent third-class mail.

Want to trade stamps?  Check out my Stamp Trading Offers.

What???  There’s an “Ideological Exclusion” clause in the PATRIOT Act?  Seriously?  We can apparently revoke someone’s visa because of ideas and beliefs he holds.  Isn’t this the definition of McCarthyism?

… The government originally revoked Ramadan’s visa in 2004 based on the so-called “ideological exclusion” provision of the Patriot Act, a provision that applies to individuals who have “endorsed or espoused” terrorism, because he made small donations to a Swiss charity that provides aid to the Palestinians. … — http://action.aclu.org/exclusion

I received an email from my former Congressman (who still thinks I’m one of his constituents) today, with a tiny survey (push poll?) attached.  As a devotee of logic, I hate false dichotomies.  I hate them almost as much as I hate non-exhaustive multiple-choice surveys.

OK, the first one: Should Congress allow warrantless wiretaps of terrorism suspects, including American citizens?  Here are the options he gives:

* Yes, these actions are necessary to protect our security.
* No, these actions overstepped the law.
* Undecided.

Although a slightly leading question, there is ton left that wouldn’t be left if the answers were simply “Yes”, “No”, “It’s more complicated than that”, and “Undecided”.  It goes on to give reasons that are, I guess, supposed to be your reasons if you take that position.

What about?:

1.  These actions are necessary to protect our national security, but are illegal and should not be done
2.  These actions are necessary to protect our national security, are illegal, but should be done anyway
3.  Congress should outlaw it, but it should happen anyway and should not be a crime if the President authorizes it (I actually know a dipshit with this position.)
…and on, and on…

Next: Which of the following best describes your view on abortion?

* I strongly believe abortion should be legal for all women.
* There should be some limits on abortion; girls under 18 should need parental consent.
* Abortion should be illegal, except to save the life of the mother.
* Undecided.

What the hell?!?  The first and the second are not incompatible!  You can easily believe that all women should have access to abortion on demand, but that no girl should.  But what if you think there should some limits, but not this limit, or not only this limit?  Then the second and third become indistinguishable, because three suffers from the same problems: if some abortions are legal and some illegal, it’s a meaningless difference whether we consider the baseline to be legal with “some limits” or illegal with “some exceptions”.  What are we supposed to do, count up the cases and see which side wins?  This is ludicrous.  Note that many Christians would fall into the third camp, but might add “or in cases of rape and incest”.  What’s the Christian supposed to answer?  Undecided?  Hardly.

I know I’m preaching mostly to the choir here (my readers, or at least commentators, are, in general, much more astute than the average person), but there’s just one more question, and it’s so ludicrous that I cannot skip it, much as I want to: Which of the following best describes your views on the Middle East conflict?

* We should strongly support Israel.
* We should support Palestinians at least as much as we support Israel.
* We should just stay out of the conflict.
* Undecided.

Again, one and two are not incompatible, unless you’re supposed to read the subtext in the first as “We should strongly support Israel and strongly oppose the Palestinians.”  But if this was implied, where’s the “We should strongly support the Palestinians and strongly oppose Israel”?  Where’s “We should work through an international body, such as the UN, to decide the world’s collective position democratically”?  Where’s “Give everyone a year’s notice to move out, then nuke the fucking area back to a cindery Stone-Age nuclear hot zone so that these fucking morons stop squabbling over a few thousand hectares of barren rock”?  (I know, there are tons more options again, but you can write about them if you wish.  I’m done.)

And — AND — WORST OF ALL — there is no “Other” on any of these questions!  Fucking slimebag.  Is he saying that we have to bin our answers into one of his statements, otherwise it’s not a position worth having?

I’m sending this link to him.  If only he’d have the balls to post on this blog and back up his intentions, or at least instruct a staffer to do so.  Otherwise, he’s just a manipulative, logicless sonofabitch.

Ooh ooh ooh — sneaky!

There is a TV spot running now to “help” consumers.  It’s paid for by the Cable Television industry.  It tells consumers that beginning 17 February 2009, all broadcast stations will stop broadcasting in analog, and only broadcast in digital.  It tells the viewer that all televisions hooked up to cable service will continue to work.  In a slightly-overplayed “reasonable” tone, it tells the viewer that “If you receive your television through an antenna, your television can still work with a converter box.”  It directs you to dtv2009.gov, and tells you you can “apply for a coupon” there.  Then the guy folds his arms, looks smug, and the cable logo comes out.

A bit more background: the man is walking across salt flats as he speaks.  He passes a 1960s furniture-size television with a flickering picture that finally resolves.

Implied:  Broadcast TV is a barren landscape
Implied:  Broadcast TV is antiquated
Implied:  Broadcast TV flickers
Implied:  Satellite won’t work either
Implied:  Applying for the coupons is a government program, and as much of a hassle as going to the DMV
Implied:  You will still have to buy something, it will just be a little cheaper with the coupon

OK, the facts.  Yes, on 17 February 2009, analog TVs will not be able to receive broadcasts without the intercession of a converter box.  But:

Satellite works just as well as Cable during the transition
The coupon application process is simple, and can be accessed online, by phone, or by mail
The coupons are for $40 apiece, and every household is entitled to two for free
Converter boxes are expected to cost no more than $50, and I’d bet anyone that ten dollar difference that Walmart will have one for $39.99 before the switchover date

This is, essentially, a push-poll in television advertising format.  It pretends to be benign or even helpful, while in fact it is intensely devious.  Shame on the cable industry, preying upon one of the least-empowered sections of society: those who generally cannot reasonably afford cable or satellite television.

Weird experience for a day off when my wife and son were at work and school, respectively: I hugged Niall as he left, went back to sleep, and then woke up again.  I could see the LED clock readout, slightly obscured by the casing.  I couldn’t tell if it said 7:54 or 1:54, and had absolutely no idea.  I am extremely happy it was 7:54 and that I have six “extra” hours to do stuff today.

Please, think about the llamas when creating SkyNet (self-link).