Demon · Cat

Come on, people! "Your" is second person possessive. "You're" is a contraction of "You are". How is that anyone can fail to make this distinction?! It is yet another sign of the failure of humanity that so many people cannot tell the difference between being something and owning something.

The fabled northwest passage is open now. AND the northeast one. Our polar ice cap is, for the first time in human history, an island.

www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/08/31/eaarctic131.xml

I thought I'd pass this along. It seems that Italy has decided to run around fingerprinting its entire Rom population:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/10/italy.eu

For five days now the landscape here has been blanketed with smoke. Nearby hills that normally stand out in crisp detail are little more than flat gray silhouettes against a whitish sky. The smell of burning vegetation is pervasive. What sunlight makes it to the ground has an unnatural pink-orange hue and barely manages to cast shadows. The round, glowing outline of the sun is clearly visible.

Of the 800 or so fires raging across California right now, the nearest one is at least 50 miles away.

And anyone else who likes a good refrain of Cartoon vs Animator:
http://fc01.deviantart.com/fs13/f/2007/077/2/e/Animator_vs__Animation_by_alanbecker.swf

Gold tiger striped Desert Eagle: For when you really need to made a statement.

http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.asp?Item=83314024#PIC

This may be OFN for some, but I just saw it and had to pass it along.

What if Microsoft designed the iPod packaging?

Apparently, there is a stink going on in Dallas about the police there being subject to red light camera fines even when they are in a marked car.  The only exception comes if they have lights on, or are responding directly to an emergency call. 

Most of the reactions I have seen from people on this topic are supportive of making the cops pay the fines, as they feel cops ought to be obeying traffic laws like the rest of us.  In principle I agree with this sentiment.

However, the particulars of this issue aren't that simple.  The question isn't mearly "Should cops obey red lights?" because the means of enforcement is just as relevant here as the law being enforced.  Are red cameras the right solution at all?  So far, in the context of regular citizen drivers, red light cameras encourage ticketing for profit over public safety and those caught by them are treated as guilty until proven innocent.  Camera makers are sometimes paid per number of convictions.  Cameras are placed at intersections that are more likely to have violators, but not necessarily at intersections more likely to have red-light-running related accidents.  Some cities have even reduced the yellow light cycle time in order to generate more violaters and thus more revenue.  By effectively encouraging red light running, they endanger the public rather than protecting it.

For police, some of the problems of these cameras are made worse by the fact that their jobs rely upon driving promptly to respond to a variety of issues.  They need to follow the same laws are everyone else, but they are also entitled to the same fair treatment as everyone else.  Penalize cops who break the law, even use the camera data as evidence, but don't automatically ticket anyone.  The machines lack judgment and are too easily exploited.

Saw Grindhouse today. Zombies, guns, and car stunts presented only as Tarantino and Rodriguez can. zombie_hime, you should see this one.

"The Democrats loaded up their bills with billions of dollars in domestic spending completely unrelated to the war"
- George W Bush

After seeing a preview for the new Ghost Rider movie, I said that they had better use the Rollins song of the same name in the soundtrack. It was just a casual remark. But, after seeing it, it is now my biggest complaint about the film.

They didn't do anything seriously wrong. The acting, the effects, the action choreography, they were all pretty good. Maybe they could have been better, but they certainly didn't hurt the film. Nothing really hurt it. Nothing. It was what could have been yet wasn't that was the problem.

The soundtrack was your basic, unobtrusive Hollywood symphonic score. It was the kind of music that doesn't really get noticed in its own right. It just sneaks into background to underscore the mood for the scene, and it was exactly what Ghost Rider shouldn't be. Ghost Rider exists in its own world, with a distinct feeling, but the story itself is fairly straightforward. Its the feeling of the world – the telling of that simple story – that makes it compelling. A strong, loud soundtrack of biker rock would have gone a long way in creating that feeling. Instead, we just got to watch a flaming motorcycle drive around The Conventional Action Movie World for two hours. It was entertaining, but it didn't come close to its potential.

Because there are clearly not enough enough things for alarmists to be alarmed about, someone decided to publish a study linking sexually explicit lyrics to early teen sex. The thing is, that's all it does: link them. There's no causation demonstrated. The startling revelation is that teens who report listening to sexually explicit lyrics are more likely to have sex in the next two years than those who don't.

Oh, and the teens surveyed ranged in age from 13 to 17. No, we are not told if the sexually active teens are also the older ones or not. Age aside, its still shaky ground to go pointing the finger at lyrics. What's next? Claims that tattoos cause gang membership?

Can all the people who find sex objectionable for cultural or religious reasons please just be honest about it instead of stirring up outrage over misleading survey data?

Its been a long, long time since I've made real chocolate chip cookies from scratch and now I need your reciepes. I want big, soft, chewey cookies!

After a random assault on the "cult" section of the video store, I picked up Innocent Blood, starring that chick from La Femme Nikita (AKA Anne Parillaud). The box said it included a mob-boss-turned-vampire in Pittsburgh! How could I resist? The movie also featured Don Rickles as a mafia lawyer who drives a 928. Best of all, its actually a good movie.
NOTE: viewers are strongly cautioned against graphic scenes of bad taste featuring the Worst Tie Ever.