In case you can’t tell, that’s the complete collector’s edition of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (my most favoritest TV show), the first (and only) season of Firefly (my second most favoritest TV show), the first 3 seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and the first season of Pushing Daisies.
So happy.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Christmas, Firefly, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Pushing Daisies, TV
Posted in Entertainment | Tags: 40-Year-Old Virgin, comic, gay, Paul Rudd
Later…
—-
On Lost: The writers always say that the thing about Lost is that you can have a main character and a redshirt walk off into the jungle, and it turns out the main character is going to die and the redshirt survives! This has never happened.
On Buffy: The demon Anyanka performs a spell in episode 309-”The Wish”. At the end of the episode her powers are destroyed and she is left as a normal human, presumably doomed to disappear into the world. However, because her character was so interesting, she returned in episode 316-”Doppelgangland” in an attempt to regain her powers. She appeared multiple times in season 3, became a regular during season 4, and was on the full cast by season 5. She was a redshirt who ended up on the main cast.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tags: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, lost
Posted in Entertainment, geek | Tags: caching, comic, computer science, geek, xkcd
A while back I got into a conversation with a close friend about the ability to separate a man from his work. Specifically, we were dissecting a situation in which it was discovered that an artist we both loved had religious views that conflicted significantly with those of my friend. After hearing my friend’s views on the matter, it seemed pretty clear to me that a personal disagreement with the beliefs of anyone shouldn’t have any impact on your opinion of their work. A person may very well be defined by their beliefs, but it is arguably part of the very nature of art to surpass the environment in which it was created.
I assumed a state of equine elevation and provided the following passage from Scrubs as an illustration of my opinion.
Doctor Cox: Fair enough. Why don’t we go ahead and take a look at my personal life? I am in love with a woman that I hate, my two-year-old son calls me “Pewwy,” and – this is something that I’ve never actually shared with anybody before, but – on Saturday nights, I like to throw on a nice dress, go out to dive bars, and insist that everybody call me Mrs. Haberdasher!
Elliot: [laughs, then thinks] No, you don’t.
Doctor Cox: Well, even if I did, it wouldn’t really matter since that has nothing to do with how good of a teacher I am. Stick with me here, Barbie. The point is that if you finally found somebody who makes you believe in yourself as much as you did yesterday, well, I would think twice before I wrote that person off. [emphasis mine]
If you enjoy the work of a creator, then it is unwise to attempt to cut it out of your life. I considered the matter closed. I believed what I said. Art may come from people, but art is not people. (Did you know Hitler was a pretty talented artist?)
Made by Hitler
However, in spite of my supposed convictions, I recently found myself so outraged by comments made by a particular author that I considered renouncing my love for his work. Orson Scott Card is the author of the Ender’s Game series – a science fiction series so good I have yet to find its equal. I first read Ender’s Game when I was in high school, and the vivid imagery and rich characters depicted in the series has stayed with me since. Orson Scott Card is certainly an incredibly talented author.
In February of 2004, Mr. Card published an article in which he vehemently condemns same-sex marriage and its current position as a politically hot topic. This article has recently started circulating the Tubes again, in light of another article Mr. Card recently published in The Mormon Times (link no longer functional) in which Card states (in part),
“Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn. Only when the marriage of heterosexuals has the support of the whole society can we have our best hope of raising each new generation to aspire to continue our civilization.”
Without bringing my own beliefs too much into this, it will suffice to say that treason aside, I find Card’s attitude reprehensible. It is one thing to believe that marriage is a religious act and shouldn’t be in any way involved in government, but it is an entirely different thing to take a personal offense to gay marriage and propose the kind of wide-scale revolt and rebellion that Card is proposing.
So it has fallen on me to smoke what I’m dealing, as the saying goes. Projecting my disdain for Card’s beliefs onto his (brilliant) work of fiction would be akin to blaming a child for the sins of his father. I can’t support that.
So, Mr. Card, I think you’re wrong. But I LOVE Ender’s Game.
Posted in Entertainment, Friends, Philosophy, TV | Tags: art, ender's game, gay marriage, hypocrisy, orson scott card
I witnessed this brief exchange in a class earlier today:
Prof: “Does anyone have the answer?”
Student 1: “60 percent.”
Student 2: “2 percent.”
Student 3: “Wow. Those aren’t even close.”
Student 1: “They are on a scale of 5 million.”
Professor: “Well then it’s not a percent anymore.”
Student 4: “per-cent”.
—
This got me thinking. If % means per cent, as in parts out of 100, then where does “percentage” come from? Clearly the Italians were fans of Joss Whedon.
Posted in Misc | Tags: %, geek, joss whedon, math
So I recently turned 23. On my birthday, I went to dinner at my grandparents’ house. My grandmother had gotten me a birthday cake.
“I couldn’t fit 22 candles on it, so I just put 2 and 2, see?”
“Grandma, I’m 23.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I guess you’ll just have to imagine another candle.”
(I leaned over and moved a candle)
“Don’t worry, Grandma. I fixed it.”
Posted in Misc | Tags: binary, birthday, conversations I actually have, decimal, geek, There are only 10 kinds of people in the world
In my Computer Architecture class:
Prof: So can anyone else think of any other architectural ways to optimize the CPU?
Student 1: What if we just shortened all the wires?
Prof: Haha. Seriously though.
(pause)
Student 1: What if we turned it on its side so gravity pulls the electrons through faster?
Student 2: Gravitationally Assisted Computing.
Prof: You should bring that up in your Network Communications class.
Student 2: “If we build this network on a mountain with the source at the top and the destination at the bottom, we wouldn’t even need to plug it in. Gravity would do all the work.”
Student 3: And we should use really big data packets so they’ll fall faster.
Student 4: Actually, Gallileo proved that all packets fall at the same speed.
Prof: Well now you need to take wind resistance into account.
Student 1: Sure, but the fastest packet will still be moving in a vacuum and wind resistance won’t matter. So we just need to suck all the air out of the Series of Tubes.
In almost two decades of education, no class has ever made me laugh that hard.
Posted in Misc | Tags: computer architecture, conversations I actually have, geek, geeky, humor, School
It seems actor Jimmy Smits, best known as Senator Bail Organa, adoptive father of Princess Leia Organa, who is herself the daughter of Queen Padmé Amidala of Naboo and Anakin Skywalker, has come frighteningly close to shanking a bound and gagged man on the set of Dexter.
Which is preposterous. Everyone knows the Senator died when Darth Vader used the original Death Star to destroy Alderaan in an attempt to shock Princess Leia into revealing the location of the Rebel Alliance base of operations.
That’s no moon…
Posted in Entertainment, Movies, TV | Tags: bail organa, dexter, jimmy smits, star wars
Every time I write to my grandmother, she compliments me on my vocabulary. She then asks me if I read a lot, since the best way to enhance your vocabulary is to read. I always tell her that I don’t find much time to read what with school and work hoarding all my time, but it recently occurred to me that just because the words I read are projected on a computer screen instead of printed on a piece of paper doesn’t mean I’m not reading them. As it turns out, I read quite a bit.
I subscribe to numerous RSS feeds in a broad range of topics. I prefer to use Google Reader as my RSS reader of choice.
Here you will find The Things That I Read, with convenient groupings, links, RSS links, and descriptions, alphabetized by category and title for your enjoyment. Hooray!
Comedy
Entertainment
Personal Blogs
.Tech
Video Games
Webcomics
Posted in Entertainment, Friends, Misc, Movies, Random Pictures, TV, Video Games | Tags: reading, RSS, vocabulary
