"How anyone can argue in favor of being non-judgmental is beyond me. To say that being non-judgmental is better than being judgmental is itself a judgment, and therefore a violation of the principle"
-Thomas Sowell
You can always count on UnDoubtably Krap to come through with a late and strikingly ineffectual opinion on the hot topics of two weeks ago. Today they come though in fine style. As soon as I'm done with my massive pre-turkey day workload, I'm writing another letter to the editor, hopefully this time I'll get printed.
What makes a king out of a slave? Courage!
What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage!
What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk?
What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage!
What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder? Courage!
What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage!
What makes the Hottentot so hot?
What puts the "ape" in apricot?
What have they got that I ain't got?
-The Cowardly Lion The Wizard of Oz
End a rebounding economy? Dean knows
Negate more civil liberties than Bush? Clark knows
Ignore the basis of the Constitution? Gephardt knows
Eradicate your last hope for survival? Al knows
Finally make Atlas shrug? Dennis knows
Starting a new one, this one's centered around television show theme songs, not exclusively, but each song should defiately incur memories of the show. So without further ado, the initial list:
King of The Hill Theme Song -Westside Connection
You're not the boss of me now -They Might be Giants (Malcom in the Middle)
Where Everybody Knows You're Name -Gary Portnoy (Cheers)
The Click -Good Charlotte (Undergrads)
Linus & Lucy -George Winston (Peanuts)
Theme song to 'Doug' the cartoon -somebody I don't know
A swift and painful death will befall anyone suggesting the theme song to Friends. Other than that, bring it on! I'm all up for anything.
comments don't seem to be working on some posts, not to sure why. I shall investigate when I've got the time....which is not right now.
"a copious stream of pontifical, anonymous mugwumpery with which we have been dosed for so long."
- Winston Churchill, describing the BBC's coverage of him and the newly formed German Nazi party, February 22, 1933.
Hullman and I went to Pizzeria Uno last night, and down some yummy Chicago-style pizza-ness. Damn, it was yummy...the first time.
I couldn't sleep at all last night, and when I did my mind was racing with delusional dreams about the number 7, then I would wake up in a cold sweat, and still be extremely tired, I would then fall asleep and the cycle would repeat, every 45 minutes or so until I got up this morning. I felt like crap, so I went into the bathroom to do my normal pre-class grooming, and well, I had a second, rather unfriendly, encounter with my dinner. I propose to you kind read in haiku:
down goes the pizza
then tossed up again after
seven delusions
Needless to say, I missed my 550 class today, but I felt much better after I went back to bed, for a few hours. No more Uno's for me.
For all my blogging friends out there:
May the kiss of death never befall you.
Once again, it's Hate Out week here at the University of Kansas. Where we all rebel against hate, because...
well...
ummm...
what were you saying? I was too busy smoking the whacky tobaccy to form any semblence of a logical thought.
I wrote about this last year and the same still applies. I also wrote an essay about my right to hate, but I'll have to find it before I can post.
I watched the Matrix, it was good times. But, I seemed to be one of the few that really enjoyed it. The movie struck me as very similar to the first two, in that you would have to see in at least twice before you really understand it all. Which seems to be why the first one didn't do good in theaters, and nobody really liked the second one when they first saw it.
Here's a more in depth analysis from me, WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
Going in, I had a sick feeling in my stomach that the movie just might suck, everybody else had already told me they hated it. Alas, now I understand why. The movie was the perfect ending chapter to the story, it just fits neither the masses yearning for a wonderfully happy ending, nor the critics desire to see the futility of man. The Movie was dark, dreary, and straight up about dying.
The movie, as well as the whole trilogy, is so chock full of layers upon layers of religious symbolism that I don't even see the end of it. There were a few parts I expected.
I never bought into the "matrix within a matrix" argument. I figured Neo went through a similar experience that Agent Smith went through between the first and second movies. Something copied from Neo onto the Matrix code, or visa versa, which from my understanding is similar what happened. I also went in knowing either Morpheus or Trinity had to die, because Neo had to experience real pain before he could understand the essence of humanity and demonstrate it to the machines.
The Battle for Zion: It could have used a little more demonstration of human desperation, and they conveniently neglected the barrel melting effects of firing 9 thousand rounds per minute for 15 straight minutes. Other than that...Damn!!!!!! That was awesome, that you sir, may I have another?
Neo v Smith, Round 3: those water concussion ball were one of the greatest special effects...EVER, no doubt. I'm glad they didn't go Godzilla style and destroy the entire city during their fight. You know that feeling you get when you first see something that makes you excited, like your first view of the tree on Christmas? Or the tingly feeling you get the split second after your wickedly hot significant other kisses you for the first time? Where you instantly take a huge breath, your shoulders shrug up to your ears, and the muscles throughout your entire body tense like you've been doused with Ice cold water? Yea? You know what I'm talking about? Well, I had that feeling for the entire first 5-minutes of the Neo/Smith fight scene. No movie had given me those goose bumps since Shawshank.
The Ending: This is where everybody else seems to drop off the Bandwagon. Not I, I couldn't think of any better way to end it. It works well for the bible; it works well for me. I think I even understand the method Neo used to defeat Smith, and it's akin to enlightenment. He finally used his brain and defeated Smith by destroying the "meat" of his code, not fighting the personification. To those of you familiar with website design, it's akin to finding the backend of a website and deleting it from there, as opposed to just trying to overload it with D.O.S. attacks and the like.
I could be wrong on any of this stuff...no wait, I'm not.
Tonight: I introduce Russell to the first two matrices, back to back.
Tomorrow: Hullman, The Mooch, Nick the Russian, Russell and I all go watch Matrix: Revolutions in all it's high-definition glory at the digital theater in Olathe.
In addendum: I've heard nothing about Revolutions, and I want it to stay that way, so don't even think on commenting about it until tomorrow evening.
The addendum's addendum: I actually found a non-math use of the word matrices. Huzaah, I'm a geek!
yeppers, I used the Lord's name in vain. But it's been one of those days and I'm in no mood to quibble over words with anyone, not even my maker.
Being as how it's now 6:15 in the a.m., and I'm just now getting back from the Design Lab where I just completed my weekly 550 assignment, FOR THE 3RD DAMN TIME!!!! And I have a 2-hour aerodynamics assignment due in 6 hours; it doesn't look like I'll be going to my 8:00 class today, let alone get any sleep.
So while you all are deciphering what I just wrote, I'll continue on, you can catch up later. These three things I know are true; MS Word is the bane of my existence, this will be a very long day, and under no circumstances should anyone, anywhere, EVER desire to have my life.
I went through a re-coded the individual entry archives, the date-based archives, and the comment section. So they are all nicely consistent with the main page.
Quote-o-the day:
"I teach a compressable aerodynamics course in the spring semester, and in there we have this type of flow for breakfast" -Dr. Farohki
Mega-Ulta-Super-Gianormous props go out to the official little bro of TOG for running a personal best 17:00 placing 18th at this weekends state cross-country meet. Earning himself all-state honors. I would also like to point out that I have personally never lost in a race to my brother, I stopped racing him when he was in 7th grade, but I'm undefeated never the less.
In other news, I most definately failed my circuits test this morning, but hopefully not enough to drag me out of passing territory for the whole class.
I now retizzle you to your regizzle schizzeduled readizzling:
editors note: this piece is the first installment of an ongoing project to critique the intricacies of political quizzes on the internet. The rules and grading scale are available in the introduction of the project.
The Political Quiz Show
http://madrabbit.net/webrabbit/quizshow.html
1. Depth of Coverage:
Well, the questions basically cover every possible political issue, as of like 1999. But, there really isn’t any substantial questioning. It’s all either 2 option multiple choice, or a list of things to check or uncheck. They also don’t even touch the reasons for political beliefs. All in all, the test covers a wide area, but since the criteria is depth…2
2. Practical Question Asking:
All practical all the time, there isn’t a single theoretical question to be found, which isn’t necessarily good. All the questions are modern political issues that every politician has had to answer at some time or another. So they get props for that, but, the questions aren’t specific enough as to warrant real solutions or suggest any course of action. 3+
3. Severity of Slanted Questioning:
Everybody has an opinion, and in this case so does every question. I award –2 points for the epidemically biased questions, and +4 points for having the slant ludicrously split both ways. 2
4. Data stacking:
Not too shabby, a good mix from everywhere, a little heavy in the “Government and Personal Morality” sphere, but I’ve seen much worse. 4
5. Reasonable Answer Interpretation:
Here is where it all catches up. The political quiz shows seems to believe that everyone’s personal beliefs fit on a nice straight line, and that Jesse Jackson is the most Liberal person ever, and that Ronald Reagan is the most conservative person ever. Representing anyone as a nice moderation of the two extremes is far fetched, let alone fitting all of humanity in there. They also insist on the weighting of each question the same, regardless of what it is or how it’s asked. And all answers are scored as conservative or liberal, there are no neutral answers. -0
6. Accurate Representation of Existing Political Groups/Leaders:
Well, if you’re going to make political leaders the yardstick of your system, this isn’t a bad ordering. But I would have like to see someone outside of the recent political landscape. 4
7. Bonus Points:
The whole “who do you trust more?” section is pretty absurd; any student of history regardless of politics would know answer the questions the same. The number of questions may be stacked toward governing morality, but the scoring system sure isn’t my consistent answering of keeping the government out of my life, and my pocketbook, netted me a score of 32/40, with 40 being conservative and 0 being liberal. So according to The Political Quiz Show, I am 82.5% Conservative which isn’t quite right. Bonus points? ehh…2, merely because operate on a 40 point scale like I do.
Total Points: 17/40, the bar has been set, extraordinarily low, but at least it's set.
Everybody's got their problems
Everybody says the same things to you
It's just a matter how you solve them
And knowing how to change the things you've been through
I feel I've come to realize
How fast life can be compromised
Step back to see what's going on
I can't beleive this happened to you
This happened to you
It's just a problem that I'm faced with am I
Not the only one who hates to stand by
Complications that are first in this line
With all these pictures running through my mind
Knowing endless consequences
I feel so useless in this
Can't back, stand back, can't ask
For me I can't believe
Part of me, won't agree
Cause I don't know if this for sure
Suddenly, suddenly
I don't feel so insecure
Anymore
Everybody's got their problems
Everybody says the same things to you
It's just a matter how you solve them
But what else are we supposed to do
Part of me, won't agree
Cause I don't know if this for sure
Suddenly, suddenly
I don't feel so insecure
Why do things that matter the most
Never end up being our choice
Now that I find no way so bad
I don't think I knew what I had.
-Sum 41 Hell Song