The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
I saw a couple of things in the last few days that caused me to whip out my cell phone and snap some shots. This first one made me laugh:
The second one made me do a double-take:
Don’t see it? (Always wanted to use this, since I first saw it used at Rachel Lucas‘ place):
Yes, those are eyelashes – not paint, fake eyelashes. Ooookay.
I went out and caught Battleship at the matinee yesterday. As a Science-Fiction film, it suffers from pretty much every problem that has plagued Sci-Fi films from the beginning, beginning with completely ignoring science. But OK, this isn’t really Sci-Fi, it’s a summer blowup movie.
As that, it’s pretty good. And if you remember that this is a film directed mostly at pubescent boys (and older ones that haven’t grown up), it has one major redeeming quality: it does not denigrate the military. In fact, it shows a lot of respect, especially towards retired and wounded service members. In fact one major character, medically-retired Army Lt. Col. Mark Canales, is played by active-duty full-bird Col. Gregory Gadson, a bilateral above-the-knee amputee. Col. Gadson is currently the director of the Wounded Warrior Project for the U.S. Army and not a bad actor.
Hell, I’ll admit it, I enjoyed the film, cringe-inducing errors and all.
If there’s an afterlife, it just got a whole lot faster, and a whole lot prettier. And this world just slowed down a bit.
Dork Tower. Two of the latest strips:
This series goes back to January, 1997. I’ve got a lot of reading to do.
Just got back from seeing The Avengers.
Yes, Joss Whedon is my master now. I think he just wrote and directed the biggest movie of 2012. What a blast! If you like superhero movies at all, you’ll love this one. I’ll pay to see it again.
(Updated post title to reflect the actual line rather than my memory of it.)
I am myopic and suffer from astigmatism. I am also presbyopic, which would normally mean my arms are too short, but in my case just means I can’t read in dim light anymore. I’m tired of it. I want to get my eyes fixed. Lasik can’t fix presbyopia, but it can fix myopia and astigmatism. I can always wear cheap reading glasses.
So, who has had Lasik surgery, and what was your outcome? I really want to know.
John Derbyshire has been fired from National Review for writing a completely politically incorrect piece entitled The Talk: Nonblack Version. Pretty strong stuff.
Short version:
There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved. — Jesse Jackson
Read this piece by Heather Mac Donald, too.
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. — George Orwell
UPDATE: EXCELLENT discussion of the topic over at RobertaX’s place.
UPDATE II: Eric S. Raymond (and his commenters) have some interesting things to say as well. Take Eric’s quiz. At least one commenter here has failed it.
I tell people I spent twenty-one years complaining about consulting/specifying engineers, and then I became one. And I was right. After doing the consultant thing for four and a half years, I left my cloth-covered cubicle and went back to the industrial-supplier side. No more eight-hour meetings, no more bid analysis reports, no more specification writing. Instead, I get to do application, design, programming, startup. Field work. Fun stuff.
Well, I just did an upgrade to a system I installed eleven years ago. Startup had to wait on the customer, since my upgrade occurred during a plant shutdown. Startup was to occur Monday morning at about 10:00AM, so I got up at 4AM and pulled out of the driveway at 4:45 to be on site at 7. They were waiting for me when I arrived.
We tested manual control before 9AM, and just had to wait for plant startup to put it in Auto. Remember 10:00AM? Uh, no. They had some problems. I went to lunch at 11:30. They called me a little after Noon and said it looked like it was going to about 7PM. I went back to the plant and they let me on a computer to do some work, but by 4PM it was obvious that 7PM was not going to happen. I got a hotel room and waited for a call. I tried to get some sleep, but failed at that. I went to dinner about 7. They called.
Midnight.
So I was on site at midnight. We finally fired it up about 4:30AM. I’d been up over 24 hours for the first time in a LONG time, but we weren’t done yet. Due to operations considerations, we still couldn’t put the system in Auto. That didn’t happen until 7AM. My hotel room sat empty all night. I finally hit the sack at 9AM. Two hours later, I got a call – the unit was working, but it was a little slow. They told me I could sleep a little more, though. I tried, but didn’t get much success, maybe another half-hour. After a shower and shave, I was back on site at 1:30PM.
And they were down again. We discussed the problem they’d experienced earlier, and I made some adjustments, but they had no idea when they’d be starting up again. I was pretty confident in my changes, so I went home. I pulled into my driveway 36 hours (and two and a half hours of sleep) after I’d left the day before.
Ten hours of sleep later, I was back in my office, preparing for a class I was supposed to teach the next day. I was also waiting to hear about my system upgrade. I sent an inquiring email, and got to work on my class prep. A response came soon: everyone was very happy with the upgrade. I didn’t need to go back for more adjustment. I could continue my class prep.
Then the main office called. There was a problem on another project. Could I help? What about my class prep? This project was more important, the class could be rescheduled. I pulled out about 10:30AM and headed for the new site. Yes,there were problems. Things did not go well. I got home at 11PM with plans to head back to site at 5:30AM. (It’s a 90 minute drive.)
Back on site at 7AM, we flogged on the problem until late afternoon, but finally figured it out. I pulled into my driveway this evening at 7:15PM.
I’ve put in 66 hours in four days this week. I’m taking Friday off.
I left the cushy comfort of consulting engineering to do this for a living again. I think I made the right choice. Making stuff work is rewarding in ways that specification writing is not.
Or there’s something wrong with your soul:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJkZXh9v_i4?rel=0&w=640&h=360]
Found at var/log/otto.
Oh, and fuck PETA.
Today Instapundit linked to a WSJ piece, Escape From a North Korean Prison, the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, a North Korean man born in a concentration camp, who escaped to South Korea in 2005. It was an interesting coincidence, because my wife and I had just watched the 2009 documentary Kimjongilia, which included Mr. Shin’s story among several others.
The WSJ piece was written by Blaine Hardin, author of the forthcoming book Excape from Camp 14, a longer exploration of Mr. Shin’s life.
Britain’s Guardian newspaper also has the story, How one man escaped from a North Korean prison camp with a bit more detail. Excerpt:
His first memory is an execution. He walked with his mother to a wheat field, where guards had rounded up several thousand prisoners. The boy crawled between legs to the front row, where he saw guards tying a man to a wooden pole
Shin In Geun was four years old, too young to understand the speech that came before that killing. At dozens of executions in years to come, he would listen to a guard telling the crowd that the prisoner about to die had been offered “redemption” through hard labour, but had rejected the generosity of the North Korean government.
Guards stuffed pebbles into the prisoner’s mouth, covered his head with a hood and shot him.
I strongly recommend you read the rest.
I also watched another, similarly-themed film recently, 2010’s The Way Back, the story of a Polish Army lieutenant, Janusz, imprisoned by the Russians early in WWII, who escaped with several other prisoners and walked over 4,000 miles from Siberia to India. The book this story is based on, The Long Walk, is almost definitely fiction passed off as fact, but according to Wikipedia:
Soviet records confirm that Rawicz was a Polish soldier imprisoned in the USSR, but differ from The Long Walk in detail on the reasons for his arrest and the exact places of imprisonment. Polish Army records show that Rawicz left the USSR directly for Iran in 1942, which contradicts the book’s storyline. Aside from matters concerning his health, his arrival in Palestine is verified by the records. The story of the escape to India comes from Rawicz himself. The BBC report does mention the account of Captain Rupert Mayne, an intelligence officer in Calcutta, who – years after the war – said that in 1942 he had debriefed three emaciated men claiming to have escaped from a Siberian Gulag camp.
In the context of this post, one of the most interesting things in The Way Back is when the escapees reach China in early 1941, the portion they reach is already Maoist. Communism has reached China before them, thus they decide they must forge on to Tibet and freedom. I recommend both films. The Way Back, fictional or not, is well made and powerful. Kimjongilia is brutal and depressing, but something everyone should see. A commenter, to the WSJ piece, “george kamburoff” writes:
We have more people in cages than the North Koreans, and a larger percentage of our population is in cages, and now the conservatives have put the Directorate of Fatherland Security, Suppression, and Punishment on us, to make SURE we do not step out of line.
Remember how free we were “BB” – Before Bush? No machi8ne(sic) guns in airports, no inspection lines, no armed guards making all of us suspects? Our own conservatives are turning US into North Korea.
Yeah. Way to get a grip on reality. From the Korea Herald, Feb. 15, 2012:
Kim Jong-un regime in Pyongyang warns of ‘three-generation wipeout’ for defection
—
In a letter sent to the White House on Monday, the North Korea Freedom Coalition said China’s repatriation policy not only directly violates the international agreements it has signed but has also created an environment of violent activity in China.
The group said North Korean agents “roam freely” killing humanitarian workers trying to help the refugees, while the majority of North Korean female refugees fall victim to human trafficking.
—
The human rights groups said that they were reportedly told that China will repatriate the North Korean defectors by Feb. 20 who, if returned, are likely to face harsh punishment such as detention, torture or even execution.
Especially as North Korea is under the new leadership of Kim Jong-un, Pyongyang is strongly warning of a “three-generation wipe-out” of any family with a North Korean caught defecting.
“george kamburoff” is politely invited to defect from the USA. I’ll help him pack, and chip in $100 for plane fare. His immediate and extended family need not worry.
BTW, those “humanitarian workers” trying to aid North Korean defectors in China? They’re mostly Chinese Christians.