tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78705302984500825822024-03-13T22:03:07.433-04:00WillCollier.comWill Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.comBlogger435125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-70151772936518893982023-06-06T09:51:00.003-04:002023-06-06T09:51:38.766-04:00The Question<p> If you’ve watched, read or heard national political reporters and pundits over the past couple of years, you’ve almost certainly seen them all-but rubbing their hands in anticipation of questioning Republican candidates for the 2024 nomination.</p><p>They aren’t excited about queries on inflation, or Ukraine, or the debt, or the border, or crime. They’re all a-twitter (pun certainly intended) over getting to ask this question, in front of as large an audience as possible:</p><p>"Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?"</p><p>The question is viewed as a can’t-miss by the press: humiliating Republican candidates who answer in the negative as too afraid to cross Trump, enraging the hard-core Trumper base against anyone who says “yes,” and opening the floodgates for untold hours of gleeful on-air mockery from media figures all too happy to continue poisoning the electoral well for the GOP.</p><p>Any candidate who is seriously in this race had better have an answer ready, and it had better be one that the electorate at large can nod along with in agreement. </p><p>To be more specific, they had better be ready, willing and able to say, "Yes."</p><p>Any candidate worried about offending Trump’s hard-core fan club with that answer is in the wrong race. </p><p>You can’t get those votes, or at least not enough of them to spend time and capital getting wobbly over. Your job isn’t to mollify a hostile minority of the party in the primaries, it’s to generate enough support outside of "Trump or nobody!" to overwhelm them. </p><p>You also shouldn’t be worried about Trumpian dead-enders staying home in the general. Yes, some of them will do just that, but not all of them. </p><p>More importantly, an awful lot of Republicans either didn’t vote for President at all or voted for an opponent or a write-in the last two elections, and a whole lot more formerly GOP-leaning suburban independents switched parties entirely thanks to Trump. Beat him and you get the vast majority of their number in your corner in November.</p><p>Joe Biden is the most unpopular president since, well, Donald Trump. Those independents do not like him, don’t think he should run for re-election, and barring the presence of an opposing nominee on the ballot whom they like even less—Trump—they do not want to vote for him. They will more than make up for the soreheads (and if you believe they won’t, again, why are you bothering to run at all?).</p><p>For any candidate who actually wants to win the nomination <i>and</i> the general election, this is the kind of answer they’ll need to give:</p><p>"Of course he lost."</p><p>"As a sitting president with a strong economy, he somehow found a way to lose to a senile, doddering old fool who spent the election hiding in his basement. Donald Trump certainly did lose to Joe Biden, and he lost because he can’t control his own mouth."</p><p>"I was as happy as anybody on election night in 2016. I thank God every day that Hillary Clinton never became president. But since that night Donald Trump has lost and lost and lost, and he will keep losing if given the chance."</p><p>"He lost the Congress in a massive midterm landslide, when he was too undisciplined to run on a strong economy."</p><p>"He lost re-election to Joe Biden, a guy who’s been the punchline of jokes since the 1970’s."</p><p>"He acted like a toddler having a tantrum over losing, gave the party a black eye that it will take decades to get over, and also lost two Senate seats in Georgia by telling Republicans not to vote in the run-off."</p><p>"And just two years ago, he cost us the Senate again by endorsing weak candidates for no better reason than they were on television and sucked up to him."</p><p>“That is more than enough losing. Donald Trump has had his chances, again and again and again. He doesn’t deserve another. He’s the only person on this stage who can’t beat Joe Biden.</p><p>"And we know that because he lost to the guy already."</p><p>"Yes, Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. America can’t afford for him to lose again."</p><p>That’s tough stuff. It’ll send Trump’s minions online and in the Trump-friendly conservative media into a tizzy. But unless you’re willing to lay that out there, you will not get a vote from the majority of the electorate that is not going to tolerate more hemming and hawing about 2020.</p><p>Trump lost. If you’re not willing to say that, to his face, why are you running?</p>Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-3927237537695921972018-10-14T17:26:00.001-04:002018-10-14T17:26:44.112-04:00"First Man"<span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">I caught a matinee this afternoon. I've been very excited about this one, because (a) duh, aerospace engineer and life-long space geek, a movie about Neil Armstrong is like catnip and (b) the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/First-Man-Life-Neil-Armstrong/dp/1501153064?keywords=first+man&qid=1539552282&sr=8-1&ref=sr_1_1">the original biography,</a> <a href="https://cla.auburn.edu/history/people/faculty/James-Hansen/">James Hansen</a>, was my history professor at Auburn, and he is an all-around great guy. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin-top: 0px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">The movie was not at all what I'd expected, which is not the same thing as saying I didn't like it. It's very claustrophobic up until the last act on the Moon (I trust there need be no spoiler warnings about the most famous event of the latter 20th Century), which seems like a strange artistic choice for a movie about space travel, but when you consider the tight confines of a cockpit or space capsule, which are vividly emphasized throughout the movie, it makes sense. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">The movie is obviously very heavily influenced by Kubrick, in visual style, tone and narrative. There's very little exposition, considering all the heavily-technical aspects of space travel, which was fine with me, but I always wonder if people who aren't immersed in the field will be able to follow it. I also don't think the script adequately captures Armstrong's quiet and extraordinary humility, but then again, that might have made for a dull movie, and this (unlike Hansen's book) is drama, not history. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Anyway. I was particularly glad to see the (very) dramatic focus on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_8">Gemini/Agena near-disaster</a>, Armstrong's crashing of the LEM simulator (he actually crashed two of them), and the very-near crash-landing on the Moon itself. Entirely too few people today know anything about what a near thing Apollo and the '60's space program in general actually were, and this is a fine, and unusually accurate by Hollywood standards (I think we can thank Jim Hansen for that; he's credited a co-producer) primer on what went on behind all the "Right Stuff" gauzy portrayals. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">So check it out. I liked it, and much more importantly, Jim Hansen likes it, and Neil Armstrong himself trusted Jim. That should be more than good enough for anybody.</span>Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-65693970858012529402018-10-08T20:36:00.003-04:002018-10-08T21:30:28.830-04:00Hurricane Memories: Opal, 1995<style type="text/css">
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I moved to Fort Walton Beach in the spring of '95, had an apartment on the Sound over in Mary Esther. Opal was hanging out off the Yucatan when it suddenly strengthened and picked up speed. It arrived two days earlier than the early forecast had predicted. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">The day it caught fire, I hadn't turned on the radio or TV, and back then nobody had the Internet at their desks all day. I had gone to bed, just switched off my lamp when the phone rang. It was my dad, asking when I was leaving town. "I dunno... maybe early Thursday?" (I think this was Monday night.)</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Long pause. Dad said, "Have you seen a forecast today?"</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"No."</span></span><br />
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Get up and turn on the TV!"</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I did, and the screen was full of a Cat 5 monster bearing down on, basically, me. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Uh, maybe I'll leave tonight."</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Good plan, Einstein."</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I evac'd to my folks' home Enterprise, AL (with a lot of help from Dad) ahead of the horrific panic traffic, and of course that beyotch Opal followed me. The storm died down to "only" a Category 3 by landfall (which still devastated the Gulf Coast from Pensacola to Appalachicola), but like Eloise a generation earlier, she was going north so fast that hurricane damage lasted well into three states. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">She kicked the crap out of everything from FWB to pretty much Atlanta. My folks' power was out for two weeks. Mine was back on by that Sunday, I think thanks to Hurricane Erin having gone through about 6 weeks earlier, clearing out all the dead limbs and giving the recovery crews a lot of practice.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">To be honest, I was shocked to find out I had power. The last update on Opal that I'd seen before the power in Enterprise went out declared that she'd made landfall at Hurlburt Field. As I could see Hurlburt from my balcony, I figured that was it, anything I'd left down there was wiped out, so I stayed around to help Mom and Dad clean up.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">My sister called Sunday. "Your answering machine is picking up." </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I didn't believe her. "Kitty, I don't have an answering machine. I don't even have an apartment any more."</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">"Okay, smart-ass, you call it." I did, and it picked up.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">I snuck back across the state line on a back road after hearing the State Troopers weren't letting anybody but emergency crews in, allegedly to prevent looting (to this day I don't know whether that was actually true or not, but I wasn't taking any chances). Driving through the wreckage of Fort Walton, I was convinced I'd find one wall with an answering machine hanging from it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><span class="s1"></span><br /></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">But I was lucky, a lot luckier than most in that area. The storm surge stopped six feet shy of the building, and I had the worst damage in the complex: a single broken window.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Everything else, though, was a hell of a mess. Every boat left in the Destin and Fort Walton harbors either sank or was washed up on the mainland. There was a huge sailboat stuck in the median of Highway 98, pointing west with its keel buried in the dirt for weeks. They had to pull it out with a crane. 98 itself was cut just east of Okaloosa Island, and the old Eglin Officer's Beach Club was destroyed, never to be rebuilt. That next year there was a rash of insurance-collecting arson fires in the old restaurants down on the water that had been trashed; FWB was always big for firebugs.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Two huge oaks fell on my old fraternity house in Auburn. The knucklehead brothers figured they were man enough to cut them down themselves... but forgot to move their cars first. When they got out the chainsaws, one of the trees rolled off the side of the roof and smashed three or four cars.</span></span></div>
<br />Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-79031798596950495172018-02-11T19:21:00.001-05:002018-03-04T18:39:40.183-05:00Elly Welt<span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Elly Welt was Auburn University's Writer-In-Residence from the late 80's through the 90's. She retired around 2000 and moved to Seattle to be with her children. She died this last weekend, after struggling with heart failure for many years.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">I had to talk my way into Elly's fiction writing class my junior year. She didn't want to accept anybody who wasn't an English major, and looked at me like I had two heads the first time I strolled into her corner office on the ninth floor of Haley asking for a seat. It took two quarters to convince her she ought to allow in this weird Engineering major who hung around the English department a lot.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Elly's classes were not for the faint of heart. We were required to write a short story a week, and pass out copies to the rest of the class (to say nothing of Elly herself) for criticism. If you were really unlucky she'd call on you to read it out loud, and then tell you in no uncertain terms what you'd done wrong--or right, on rare occasions. One poor girl started her first story with a long quote from a Tiffany song, and was never seen again.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">She was tough. She was smart. She was one of the best writers I've ever encountered. You should go buy a copy of Elly's novel "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Berlin-Wild-Elly-Welt/dp/067080925X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">Berlin Wild</a>" right now, and you'll see what I mean. And she was very quickly enchanted by this odd Land Grant college where she'd landed a highly-coveted position. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Elly had never spent any time in the Deep South before coming to Auburn. She was a Jewish mama from <s>New York</s> the Midwest, and a product of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the gold standard of academic fiction training. With that background you'd have expected her to look down her nose at the motley pack of public school kids from Alabama and Georgia and the Florida Panhandle who'd bluffed their way into her classes.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Instead, she and her husband Peter, a retired M.D., embraced the students, the town and the college. By the end of Fall Quarter in 1989, she was bugging me with questions about how Pat Dye was going to keep from having an aneurism over the looming <a href="http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2013/11/there_will_never_be_another_ir.html">First Time Ever</a> game against UAT. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">I wish Bruce Pearl could have met Elly. They'd have got on like a house on fire.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Elly set me on the path. I kept taking her classes anytime they were offered, including going to the dean of the graduate school to get permission to take her MA class as an undergrad (and an undergrad engineer at that). She recommended me for the first Auburn Birdsong Scholarship that sent me to Oxford in 1991, and after I graduated she helped Scott Brown and me bash the manuscript of "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Uncivil-War-Alabama-Auburn-1981-1994/dp/1558533540/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1518394844&sr=1-1&keywords=the+uncivil+war+auburn">The Uncivil War</a>" into something publishable. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">We always kept in touch, even after her retirement and Peter's death, along with a few other of her former students from Auburn. The last time I heard from her was an email last fall. She was tickled to tell me that the conversation at her (ritzy) retirement complex dining room in Seattle was buzzing about the Tigers' November surge, and as a former Auburn professor, she'd been quizzed by most of the male residents for "inside info."</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">Elly struggled with ill health for a long time, but she kept writing, even after tastes changed and the New York publishing houses lost their interest in literary fiction. She finished three or four more novels after leaving Auburn (I've read one of them; it is magnificent), and I believe her daughter will be publishing them with Amazon in the future. I hope so. She deserves to be read much more widely.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #2c2c2c; font-family: "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px;">I miss Elly terribly already, but I was very lucky to have known her. I hope you did, too.</span>Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-74842299208153275952017-06-21T13:35:00.000-04:002017-06-21T15:31:19.203-04:00GA06 2017: The Twitter RantThe following was originally written as a post-election day Tweetstorm at my account, @willcollier, after Karen Handel defeated Jon Ossoff in the June 2017 congressional run-off. It got a lot of attention, more than anything I've written about politics since 2004 when Steve Green and I, writing at VodkaPundit, had our dust-up with the late Steve Lovelady. As several people have asked for a version that isn't 40 separate Tweets long, here it is, edited a bit for clarity and to remove Twitter-isms.<br><br>
Thanks to everyone for reading.<br><br>
* * *<br><br>
So it’s time for some post-runoff Gaming Theory, from an actual resident of GA06. <br><br>
If you lived in the 6th, you were bombarded by fliers, signs, ads, door-knockers, and most of all, phone calls. At least once a day (and usually more than once), the phone would ring from an out-of-state area code.<br><br>
First it was robocalls, then the last couple of weeks, call centers. They weren’t targeted. They were calling everybody, every day. And they wouldn’t take “Go to Hell” for an answer—trust me on this one.<br><br>
Now, imagine for a moment that the roles in the ’16 election were reversed, and Hillary had nominated a Bay Area Democrat for her cabinet. California would have called a special election. <br><br>
Imagine millions of dollars and tons of vicious social media rhetoric flowing out of Georgia to the Republican candidate for that race. How do you think Californians would have reacted to that?<br><br>
Self-awareness not being a notable Leftie trait at the best of times, the Left coast is <a href="https://twitter.com/dsunsh/status/877335419674705922">already declaring</a> GA06 a mass Klan meeting.<br><br>
That’ll go over just as well here in 18 months, dudes. You should definitely keep that up.<br><br>
One big factor that was missed by the national press: the sheer annoyance of the race. Not only did this special and the runoff extend the godawful 2016 election for another 8 months in a district where neither major nominee was remotely popular, the ridiculous amount of money that poured into the Ossoff campaign from out of state resulted in wall-to-wall ads.<br><br>
You could not turn on the radio or TV without hearing/seeing a campaign commercial, and Ossoff’s fans seemed determined to cover every square inch of Georgia with “Jon Ossoff” signs. The state will probably have to dig a new landfill to get rid of them. <br><br>
That strategy made sense in the jungle primary: put this nice-looking kid out there, use the money to flood the zone and slip him through the crowded ballot on name recognition. <br><br>
That was a smart strategy. It very nearly worked—in April. <br><br>
Back then, Ossoff never uttered the word “Democrat,” nor did it appear in his ads. But yesterday, there were only two names and two parties on the ballot. <br><br>
Karen Handel might as well have her name next to “Generic Republican” in the dictionary. Ossoff, thanks to the media blitz on both sides, might as well have had “Nancy Pelosi” on his ballot.<br><br>
Trump is not popular here, and I doubt he ever will be. Dan MacLaughlin, aka <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/448807/democrats-havent-figured-out-how-win-yet">@baseballcrank does an admirable job</a> of tallying that reality<br><br>
But “unpopular” is not the same as “toxic.” Leftie media types started griping yesterday about the GOP putting Pelosi in anti-Ossoff ads. There’s good reason for that: she’s toxic everywhere except hard-Left enclaves. <br><br>
GA06 is a lot of things, but hard Left isn’t one. Pelosi, her caucus and its nutball fan club are about as disliked as Notre Dame football around here.<br><br>
When Ossoff couldn’t hide in the crowd of the primary, the crowd he really was hanging with—Hollywood and Pelosi—was instantly toxic in Cobb and north Fulton; somewhat less so in more Democratic Dekalb, but the damage was done. <br><br>
I’ll add another factor that the national media wants to ignore: the post- election temper tantrums on the Left. Once again, Trump isn’t popular in this district. But you know what’s a lot less popular? <br><br>
Riots. Morons in black masks with clubs. Kids who’ve never thought about paying a mortgage telling you you’re a terrible person because you wouldn’t vote for a corrupt old liar in a pantsuit. Those things are really, really unpopular. And the Left’s bratty insistence that it deserves a do-over after it lost an eminently winnable election Isn’t getting any traction in middle America.<br><br>
Today’s run of the usual suspects <a href="https://twitter.com/JillFilipovic/status/877438231037521921">saying Ossoff lost</a> because he <a href="https://twitter.com/sallykohn/status/877350122018840576">didn’t go full Bolshevik</a> are right up the same alley. And they’ll result in similar reactions in later elections, especially those that aren’t bolstered by $30 million in now-wasted activist money that simply filled coffers of Democratic consultants and advertisers and broadcasters. <br><br>
But all they really succeeded in doing was pissing off the people they needed to get votes from. Bad strategy, bad politics.<br><br>
And so, Jon Ossoff, we who actually live in GA06 say to you, your loopy fans, and most of all your phone centers:<br><br>
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Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-309843958470001052015-12-23T08:47:00.000-05:002015-12-23T08:47:07.047-05:00Star Wars: The Airing of GrievancesForget <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX0x-I06Fpc">Life Day</a>--in a galaxy far, far away, it's Festivus.<br><br>
WARNING: The following column contains not just SPOILERS, but also COMPLAINTS about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Proceed at your own risk.<br><br>
* * *<br><br><br><br>
The long, long awaited Star Wars: Episode VII finally arrived in theaters last week, well over a generation after Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia and friends took their last bows on the big screen. And it’s pretty good.<br><br>
The new movie unleashed a slew of new characters to take the baton—er, lightsaber—from the sixty- and seventy-something original cast, and almost all of them are well-written, and blessedly, well-acted. The movie has all the full-throttle momentum of the original films, and none of the deadly-dull-when-not-remarkably-silly aura of the failed prequels.<br><br>
Again: The Force Awakens is a pretty good movie, and a far better Star Wars movie than anything we’ve seen since 1983. But it’s not great.<br><br>
A great many Star Wars fans felt a disturbance in the Force when Hollywood journeyman J.J. Abrams was announced as the director of Episode VII. The most commonly-seen reaction online was, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.” Abrams’ history with the frustrating TV series “Lost” and disappointing movies like “Super 8” and “Star Trek Into Darkness” gave good reason for the fan cautiousness.<br><br>
But with The Force Awakens soaring to record-shattering box office in its first few days of release, we ought to give Abrams his due: his chops as a visual artist are first-rate, and while the same could be said about his predecessor George Lucas, Abrams by contrast knows a good line of dialogue from a bad one. Episode VII sparkles with (at least by Star Wars standards) clever repartee between heroes and villains old and new.<br><br>
All of which is a long way of saying that what Abrams does well is characterization and action. What he does <i>badly</i>, here and elsewhere, is coherent plotting. <br><br>
Like a lot of modern directors, Abrams is a sucker for, “Oh, that will look cool, let’s do it!” without regard for whether “that” makes any sense or not.<br><br>
The most glaring example in The Force Awakens is the Starkiller Base. You can almost hear the story meeting: “So we kind of need a Death Star. But bigger. Hmm… what’s bigger than a machine that can blow up a planet? Hey—how about a planet that can blow up stars! Star Wars! Cool!”<br><br>
The base is goofy on so many levels. Even stipulating that the laws of physics in the Star Wars galaxy are considerably more flexible than our own, the Sunsucker Base (c’mon, that’s what it is) makes no sense at all. <br><br>
Start here: unless it can move around the galaxy--something the movie doesn’t hint at one way or the other--you’re only going to get one shot out of it. After it sucks in the nearest star (which, by the way, is depicted as being so close to the base that at a minimum, all that snow on the planet’s surface would have been vaporized), it’s useless. Not only will the weapon not have any fuel for another shot and be a sitting duck for enemy ships, the planet’s atmosphere is going to freeze solid around all those First Order troops because, whoops—no sun.<br><br>
So the Sunsucker is epically dumb, even in a universe with near-instantaneous faster-than-light drives and solid laser swords and people with mumbo-jumbo mystical powers. It’s every bit as dumb as the doubletalk “red matter” and “nova that threatens the galaxy” in Abrams’ pretty but vapid first “Star Trek” movie.<br><br>
Also in the “looks cool, makes no sense” category: the Adamantium Falcon. Han Solo’s marvelous old spaceship is continually crashing into buildings, trees, and the surfaces of various planets in this movie, but bounces off all of them without so much as dented fender. Meanwhile the First Order’s TIE Fighters, like their Imperial predecessors (or any self-respecting flying craft), crumble into fiery junk on contact with any solid surface.<br><br>
While Solo himself is well-written with a nice final arc in The Force Awakens (anyone surprised at Solo’s death ought to have noticed Harrison Ford’s open, decades-long contempt for the movies that made him a superstar), the same can’t be said for the old smuggler’s estranged wife. <br><br>
The now-General Leia Organa gets the closest to any character of reciting Prequel-level wooden dialogue. What’s worse, Leia gives such short shrift to the bereft Chewbacca at the movie’s end, one suspects that she never let the big guy sit on the couch when he was visiting Han. <br><br>
I could go on, if I really wanted to: the Lost-worthy “I know but I’m not telling” bit regarding how Luke’s old lightsaber was retrieved from Cloud City (here’s a not-very wild guess: Abrams and Co. have no idea, and just threw it in there). <br><br>
Then there’s the way characters are continually running into each other by absurd coincidence, or how people in different star systems can all look up and see the Sunsucker Base’s attack with the naked eye--again, a reminder of the bad writing in Abrams’ Star Trek movies.<br><br>
This kind of script nonsense is <a href="http://wcollier.blogspot.com/2012/10/when-you-wish-upon-death-star.html">why I recommended</a> that Disney hand the keys for its new Empire to writer/director Brad Bird instead of Abrams (which they actually tried to do; Bird declined so he could finish “Tomorrowland”), and why I’m very happy to know that Episode VIII will be scripted and helmed by the much more grounded Rian Johnson.<br><br>
There’s no denying (and I’m happy to not have to try) that The Force Awakens is a terrific ride. Given the compressed production time and ridiculous expectations, both positive (“Look at that trailer—this’ll be awesome!”) and negative (“Ugh, haven’t we suffered enough?”), it’s probably about as good a movie as we have any business getting.<br><br>
But enough already with the flat-out nonsense, and with the retreading of old stories. That old galaxy has a whole lot of other interesting worlds and people and creatures to go play with for any more Episodes to be calling back to the original movies. <br><br>
Disney, Rian: next time, go exploring, and please, don’t leave elementary logic in the airlock. We’ll all thank you for it.Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-31280636771661734312015-05-01T09:03:00.000-04:002015-05-01T09:04:08.031-04:00Flaming Computer Follow-upSo, it's been a couple of months since <a href="http://wcollier.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-day-my-computer-caught-fire.html">the morning my computer caught fire.</a> After all that drama I owed you guys/gals an explanation of how things played out. It's overdue, my apologies for not posting this sooner. <br><br>
Short version: while the drive manufacturer did not admit fault on their part, they quite graciously replaced my hardware, and the store I bought the drive from covered my (minimal) other damage and cleanup costs. I was very happy with the way both companies handled the situation. <br><br>
Longer version: a couple of days after the fire, I got a call from a Global Support Manager at <a href="https://www.hgst.com/support">HGST</a>, who was at least as shocked by the incident as anybody else. We eventually agreed that I'd ship the remains of the computer out to California for analysis. <a href="http://www.microcenter.com/site/stores/marietta.aspx">The Microcenter store</a> where I'd bought the drive (every single person I dealt with at that store was wonderful, you should shop there if you're ever in Marietta, Georgia) facilitated the shipping for me. <br><br>
We had to ship the whole box because the drive was completely encased in melted plastic. HGST finally carved the mechanism out of the case and did their analysis. HGST did not admit any fault on the part of their drive, but they were also very careful to not point any fingers in any other directions. <br><br>
After they'd sent me the analysis slides and we went through a couple of rounds of questions, HGST offered to replace the computer via the Microcenter store, and I was fine with that. Like I told their representative, if I'd wanted to sue my way to a "lottery ticket judgement," I never would have called them in the first place. I was happy to be made whole here and leave it at that. The Microcenter manager followed up by offering to pay the cleanup costs (which amounted to fixing two vacuum cleaners that had been wrecked cleaning up the fire extinguisher dust) and their techs even built up the box for me (which I'd have been happy to do myself). <br><br>
Best of all, nobody involved ever asked me to sign an NDA, or so much as mentioned the subject. That would have been a deal-killer for me, and I was very pleased by the fact that it never even came up. <br><br>
The new box works fine, and while the experience was one of the bigger scares I've ever had (as incredibly unlikely as a recurrence would be, I still make sure to power down every morning before I go to work now), I'm impressed with how both HGST and Microcenter stepped up their customer service in a very unusual and not-a-little-stressful situation. Both companies deserve a "thank you, and well done." I'm intentionally not identifying by name the two main people who helped me, but Mr. HGST and Ms. Microcenter, if you'd like for me to do so, please let me know, I'll be happy to make an edit.<br><br>
Thanks to all of you as well, for all the kind words while I was freaking out in the immediate aftermath.Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-43169053770876353162015-02-11T08:55:00.000-05:002015-02-12T12:13:26.229-05:00The Day My Computer Caught FireI never intended for this blog to become "Will's Occasional Rants About Bad Customer Service." Honest. But in this case, I think the story is worth telling in detail. Tweeting it 140 characters at a time and/or a couple of technical message board posts aren't going to cover it.<br />
<br />
Yesterday, my house nearly burned down. The fact that it didn't was due to nothing more than time. If two or three more hours had passed, our home would be a smoking cinder burying the remains of Maggie the bullmastiff.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx_l-G3DQMUvZnN5_R2U9BHGkw58j0MP_Qr5ZCoZkQHybFTuHeVJ_Mf_PL7OvnpkMcBJ3CEHHS1XCxW1y8BbEUMgF-fI0iO1N7Dj1mGJWTTOjc-OOPckIcuyY0__7VquwaTaH_nClU1qAA/s1600/IMG_3127.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx_l-G3DQMUvZnN5_R2U9BHGkw58j0MP_Qr5ZCoZkQHybFTuHeVJ_Mf_PL7OvnpkMcBJ3CEHHS1XCxW1y8BbEUMgF-fI0iO1N7Dj1mGJWTTOjc-OOPckIcuyY0__7VquwaTaH_nClU1qAA/s320/IMG_3127.JPG" /></a></div>
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Here's what happened. Around 4:30 on Tuesday morning, my wife and I both woke up to an acrid odor. It initially smelled like somebody had just struck several matches.<br />
<br />
We got up and had a look around. There was no smoke in the air, and our first thought was that something was wrong with the furnace. We turned it off, and the odor seemed to fade (we realized later we'd just stopped it from being recirculated through the HVAC system after the fan was turned off).<br />
<br />
I checked my office, across the hall from our bedroom, and noticed my computer had rebooted, which was odd, but nowhere near an indication of anything dangerous. It was stuck on the BIOS boot screen, which didn't surprise me; I'd never bothered to fix the boot drive settings, and it always did that on startup unless I held down the F12 key and told it which hard drive to boot from. Not noticing anything else unusual, I turned it off from the main switch on the front of the box and left the room.<br><br>
By now it was too late to go back to sleep. My wife had started to get ready to go to work when, simultaneously, the smoke alarm and main house fire alarm both went off.<br><br>
We still couldn't see any smoke yet, but the alarms were enough. My wife grabbed Maggie by her collar and hustled her out to one of our cars. I picked up the phone and dialed 911.<br><br>
While I was waiting for the operator to pick up, I walked back into my office. Now the combustion smell was overwhelming, and I could see light coming from under my desk. When I walked around it, I saw flames shooting out of the case of my desktop computer, which was on the floor under the desk.<br><br>I dropped the phone and ran downstairs for a fire extinguisher. I'm pretty sure the only thing the operator ever heard me say was something unprintable. Fortunately our Ooma phone service had sent our address along with the call.<br><br>I grabbed the extinguisher from under the sink and pulled its safety tab out as I hurtled back up the stairs. Did you know the thing that looks like a trigger on some fire extinguishers is not actually a trigger? I didn't.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAnoM0bridTWMY_iIf0sJ7Ozi_xdesX7v6RzBLV38qdmTe80VFdvxqa0f4hbwnfyiA2oX1uvkHhCr_C77OAGTDJdTJZr0s6EosE7DHdv0OUcSRP5VXH3ONVWfwvsl10chYWYb5hOkLz55u/s1600/Extinguisher.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAnoM0bridTWMY_iIf0sJ7Ozi_xdesX7v6RzBLV38qdmTe80VFdvxqa0f4hbwnfyiA2oX1uvkHhCr_C77OAGTDJdTJZr0s6EosE7DHdv0OUcSRP5VXH3ONVWfwvsl10chYWYb5hOkLz55u/s320/Extinguisher.jpg" /></a></div><br><br>Turns out to make the thing work, you're supposed to mash on the lever on top top, not yank on what looks like a trigger. It felt like it took half an hour for me to figure that out, but it must have just been a few seconds. The extinguisher finally belched out its powder. A couple of blasts were enough to put out the fire. The room was now nearly filled with billowing smoke; maybe a minute or more of that and I wouldn't have been able to get back in to put out the fire. I opened a window and backed out the door.<br><br>The Cobb Fire Department arrived a few minutes later, checked out the scene, and confirmed the only damage was to the computer, the front of which was melted into plastic slag. They carried the computer out to the driveway, made another sweep of the house, declared all-clear and went back to the station.<br><br>Once the computer cooled off, I got my first good look at the damage.<br><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8TXYcdm4MDu83Fj7V3yq8Xr0W7z2N-2PcSfFuBAqICKMMnVFrHApgaN5n772GYEzhjA0nMXovG3AclYeMISIIlr25bCBuRQDuHDegNX2hYBEUze25s6wd_T8DJlTziYfmfd5TTIuKKglf/s1600/image1+(1).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8TXYcdm4MDu83Fj7V3yq8Xr0W7z2N-2PcSfFuBAqICKMMnVFrHApgaN5n772GYEzhjA0nMXovG3AclYeMISIIlr25bCBuRQDuHDegNX2hYBEUze25s6wd_T8DJlTziYfmfd5TTIuKKglf/s400/image1+(1).JPG" /></a></div><br><br>From top to bottom, what you see there are the bay where the computer's data drive used to live (I pulled it out before this picture was taken; the bay was destroyed but I have some hopes the drive itself survived), two optical drives (both ruined), and below them, right at the point of the most intense destruction, the bay that had held a pair of sleds for 2.5" boot drives.<br><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLXTlDki5qsbm5qMenb8LMbme9iMFdBVf2kSqQVhUy8C8W1mAV4dkCOz1akOIHmO7gc0I_vljsUzY1xtso6WG3liuyN2GLPBlqZDTqeoYfuDYenfjxR-FbiileLJpW3zICt_Nzq9fp_LVY/s1600/image3+(1).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLXTlDki5qsbm5qMenb8LMbme9iMFdBVf2kSqQVhUy8C8W1mAV4dkCOz1akOIHmO7gc0I_vljsUzY1xtso6WG3liuyN2GLPBlqZDTqeoYfuDYenfjxR-FbiileLJpW3zICt_Nzq9fp_LVY/s400/image3+(1).JPG" /></a></div><br><br>Now, here's what's unusual about that bottom bay: If you look closely, you can see the remains of a 2.5" hard drive, buried in the melted plastic just above the vestigial floppy drive. It's a Western Digital HGST Travelstar, model H2IK500852SP (HGST is the former Hitachi hard drive business that was bought out by Western Digital a few years ago). I bought that drive on Sunday, and installed it roughly twelve hours before the fire. On closer inspection of the sides and surrounding damage, it's clear that the fire started in that bottom bay, which at the time only held the new HGST drive. The motherboard and CPU (normally the hottest component in any computer) and power supply all appear to be undamaged.<br><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlG27wMlHF4QSEaZ1PWEeJMldDHU6P2ImUVcq5cmdydkBLDIWRkM6Obe30LQrQ2XTZ-odA1Bb36BmRzJoEh2Msbk_IUfOPxKubOc9OaLTRcOYkgfQPtKRcavOhUAc4GDrQ6NPdmpXyP7Se/s1600/image4+(1).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlG27wMlHF4QSEaZ1PWEeJMldDHU6P2ImUVcq5cmdydkBLDIWRkM6Obe30LQrQ2XTZ-odA1Bb36BmRzJoEh2Msbk_IUfOPxKubOc9OaLTRcOYkgfQPtKRcavOhUAc4GDrQ6NPdmpXyP7Se/s400/image4+(1).JPG" /></a></div><br><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigoE7ALJIH1W7bn9ydABhmRT_AsWmYSEzR26YZ5oTYNZH8NLFYWsIddmAb_cfJ8kFjAYiKmoSJilY-U87s62tFJhTOBHLPhh-bNF6Q9itM71O-_AkW4EYdrscH87RiSII_YVUupNtkJ5Xk/s1600/image5+(1).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigoE7ALJIH1W7bn9ydABhmRT_AsWmYSEzR26YZ5oTYNZH8NLFYWsIddmAb_cfJ8kFjAYiKmoSJilY-U87s62tFJhTOBHLPhh-bNF6Q9itM71O-_AkW4EYdrscH87RiSII_YVUupNtkJ5Xk/s400/image5+(1).JPG" /></a></div><br><br>How exactly the fire started, I couldn't tell you, not least because that hard drive is now solidly encased in post-fire slag. But based on the fact that the drive was installed on a removable sled similar to the one in the picture below, we know that the cable from the power supply was neither moved nor ever plugged directly into the hard drive itself.<br><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkCXnoFvTP8-3XnzFPQLj7Ai5vkEh4FRc_vcc3YQjFn5EyDLZE_JCl23xtginoxGVJBwDDcw9Qr_ZsQjRdnVMnaXvIUGjcpGvvHelEdl8yXybGE2Okqk0Mf4TC3FqO2MJH3swVFoP2EKBn/s1600/Drive+bay.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkCXnoFvTP8-3XnzFPQLj7Ai5vkEh4FRc_vcc3YQjFn5EyDLZE_JCl23xtginoxGVJBwDDcw9Qr_ZsQjRdnVMnaXvIUGjcpGvvHelEdl8yXybGE2Okqk0Mf4TC3FqO2MJH3swVFoP2EKBn/s400/Drive+bay.jpg" /></a></div><br><br>That boot drive was, by far, the newest component in the computer. I hadn't opened the box up in months, and I feel safe in saying the power and data connectors to that drive bay hadn't been touched in years.<br><br>While manufacturers will tell you that it's impossible for a hard drive to start a fire (and indeed, the young guy I spoke to at HGST yesterday said just this) a quick search indicates that such fires, while certainly rare, are far from unheard-of. In a few minutes on Google, I found multiple user reports of fires starting from Western Digital drives: <a href="http://t.co/a2o8LL0kOM">here</a>, <a href="http://t.co/Lph6f6bIzM">here</a>, <a href="http://t.co/Xle5DOAhXT">here</a> and <a href="http://t.co/fD7O1XwzyC">here</a>.
<br><br>Again, this kind of failure is <i>extremely</i> rare. Hundreds of millions of hard drives operate 24/7 for years on end without getting so much as overly hot to the touch, much less catching fire. Google's massive data centers, using thousands of drives at a time, operate day in and day out at well above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and Google wouldn't do that if they were worried about hard drive fires. I've owned dozens of drives personally and probably handled thousands of them during my career as an engineer, and this was (lucky me) the first time I'd ever heard of--much less nearly been scorched by--a flaming hard drive.<br><br>But in this case, that's what appears to have happened.<br><br>I'm sorry (but not terribly surprised) to say that neither Western Digital nor their HGST subsidiary were quick to express concern when I contacted them yesterday. As noted above, a young HGST support rep (not meaning to be ageist here, but I'm pretty sure I have t-shirts older than the kid who answered my call) read off what I assume is the lawyer-crafted script that's to be used in case of any call reporting physical damage ("our drives are built to a specification to meet a requirement. The problem had to be in the environment"). I was reminded briefly of this guy from "Titanic":<br><br><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOmBR1xtHSIXmuwXtL7tj-G7oHwqCPgSE_hDMpgfQ_mkutLxQwBHtLPL3NCJ7BgH2Sa4NqUPNjFqMgNxydEH6B61dVhVj1NnDm6wAuMG2kmmAq9l2rtGlOWYiCUJuZUCE5EbN7aKJCyc2Z/s1600/download+(2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOmBR1xtHSIXmuwXtL7tj-G7oHwqCPgSE_hDMpgfQ_mkutLxQwBHtLPL3NCJ7BgH2Sa4NqUPNjFqMgNxydEH6B61dVhVj1NnDm6wAuMG2kmmAq9l2rtGlOWYiCUJuZUCE5EbN7aKJCyc2Z/s400/download+(2).jpg" /></a></div><br><br>I get it: no company is going to admit any kind of liability based on a phone call and/or a few Tweets. But honestly, I'm not all that concerned about my loss here, and least of all any warranty issues with that HGST drive. A $50 hard drive is close to the smallest of my worries, and the few hundred bucks worth of trashed hardware won't break me.<br><br>What concerns me is the thought of what would have happened if my wife and I hadn't woken up thanks to a bad smell. What worries me is what would have happened if I hadn't ambled into my office just in time to see the fire before the smoke became unbearable.<br><br>What kept me up for most of the last night was thinking about how lucky we were that this happened at 4:30 instead of a couple of hours later, when we'd have been on the road to work, and Maggie would have been locked inside an inferno.<br><br>That, my friends at Western Digital and HGST, is why I am not letting this drop, and why you ought to be taking this situation a lot more seriously today.<br><br>UPDATE (21 Feb, Thursday): Just got off the phone with a Global Service Operations Manager from HGST, who I'm happy to say was far more concerned about the incident than anybody else from either HGST or Western Digital proper that I've talked to so far. He'd seen the blog post and pictures, and seems to be at least as gobsmacked as anyone else at the level of the damage. They want to get the remains of the drive for analysis, and as that's exactly what I want to happen as well, I take this as a good sign.<br><br>
He offered to replace the drive... I had to decline. "Don't take this personally, but at this point I really don't want another one of your hard drives in my house." Granted, not the most rational decision in the world given how unlikely it is this would happen once, much less twice, but at this point I think I'm going to stick with it.Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-30111133561136300332013-08-30T13:07:00.003-04:002013-08-30T20:38:09.300-04:00Monopolies Suck: ComcastThe wife and I recently moved one 'burb over to Marietta (northwest metro Atlanta). Along the way, I made what turned out to be the colossally-bad decision to sign up for Comcast cable TV. Here's a rundown on what's happened since:<br><br>
June 28: The initial install, including wiring an outlet for the basement (along the way, the installer refused to run a wire to the upstairs office where internet service was desired, as a result the cable modem is now in the wrong room). The installer’s drill battery ran out of juice halfway through the job. Instead of mounting cable for the basement outlet above ground, he dug out a shallow trench by the foundation and buried half of it, including a connector, with no insulation. He also tried to give me a DVR so old it didn’t even have an HDMI port. Made excuses about getting to work late that morning and being stuck with “whatever was left” on the shelf. I refused the ancient DVR, and rescheduled completion of the install for July 1. The installer left trash and parts all over the yard and basement, and incidentally showed up with one minute to spare in the "two-hour window."
<br><br>
July 1: The most pleasant experience of the entire fiasco. Two techs arrived on time and installed DVRs with no hassles. Unfortunately one of them left with one of my remotes in his pouch, and neither of them bothered to check the existing splitter, lines, or grounds. This would be significant later.<br><br>
August 7: All service dropped out.<br><br>
August 8: Service call, tech showed up fifteen minutes after expiration of the "two-hour window." He replaced a splitter, replaced the ground block, and ran new ground wire to electrical box (previous ground was wired to a plastic water pipe--nice). You would have thought all that would have been done during at least one of the prior installation visits. Tech replaced an old DVR in living room with a newer model (Motorola DCX3400), which worked for 24 hours. Unfortunately…<br><br>
August 9: … all HDMI ports on my Pioneer VSX-921 receiver failed the next day. <a href="http://www.avsforum.com/t/1400457/need-help-asap-pioneer-receiver-not-feeding-through-to-tv">A little research</a> revealed that the Motorola DCX3400 DVR has <a href="http://forums.comcast.com/t5/XfinityTV-and-Equipment/DCX3400-Firmware-Upgrades-fro-HDMI-HDCP-Issues/td-p/729774">well-known deficiencies</a> with <a href="http://forums.comcast.com/t5/XfinityTV-and-Equipment/HDCP-HDMI-issues-with-DCX3400/td-p/846113">implementation of the HDCP handshake</a>, <a href="http://forums.comcast.com/t5/XfinityTV-and-Equipment/TV-quot-Bricked-quot-by-EF01-error-message-Comcast-DVR/td-p/1732673">and has been known to “brick”</a> customer hardware. After much thrashing with Comcast customer no-service (including a Comcast no-show for a service call that I left work to wait for--another fine example of the "two hour window"), the local service manager, offered a $400 service credit in lieu of filing an insurance claim to pay for the destroyed receiver. I reluctantly agreed. <br><br>
But for future reference, if you do make the error of signing up for Comcast, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU ALLOW A MOTOROLA DCX3400 DVR IN YOUR HOME. IT MAY WELL DESTROY YOUR PROPERTY. It is simply unconscionable for Comcast to be putting that kind of garbage gear out there, with not even a hint of a warning. <br><br>
August 18: After that fiasco, I removed the Comcast DVR from the living room and bought a Tivo Premeire (not only are Comcast’s DVRs destructive, they appear to have been programmed in the mid-1990’s; it's a terrible device with lousy software). I called the local Comcast store twice to check on their stock of Cable Cards, and was assured they had “plenty.” Went to the store, after a 30-minute wait was issued a Cable Card and told it would be “the one you need” for a Tivo. Upon getting home, I found out the card I’d been given was a single stream card that does NOT work with a Tivo. By now the Comcast store had closed for the day.<br><br>
August 19: Took the faulty card back to the Comcast store. Waited another half-hour, only to be told “we ain’t got that” in terms of an multiple-stream M-Card, which is required for a Tivo. Why I’d been given the wrong card in the first place, no one could answer. I was told an M-Card might be available by the end of the week.<br><br>
August 23: Picked up an M-Card after another long wait.<br><br>
August 29: This was when I discovered that multiple HD channels, including ESPN HD, are not available on the downstairs connection. This was not well-received on the first day of football season. Went through the usual “sending signals” script with customer no-service, to no avail. Research indicates the error message (S0a00) is due to inadequate wiring. That’s funny, I could have sworn my wiring had been (a) just installed for that outlet in June, and (b) just re-checked by another tech in July. Given that Comcast charges $60 for a service call (something I found out by checking my billing online--not one single Comcast employee has ever mentioned this charge at any point during my brief time as a customer), I refused the “offer” of yet another service call--which presumably I would have been charged another $60 for.<br><br>
Enough is enough. Expensive service is NOT worth this level of hassle and incompetence. I absolutely refuse to wait around hours for a “service call” that may never arrive. Today their "executive customer service" rep couldn't even commit to a time certain for a repair stop.<br><br>
That's it. "Service" that's expensive, unreliable, and even outright destructive is not worth this much hassle. Comcast, you're fired.<br><br>
UPDATE: After I finally got some time this evening, I located the problem. There were two sets of splitters coming off the main line. One was needed; it feeds the cable modem and both TVs. The other, upstream of that splitter, fed a coax in the kitchen that we don't use. I bypassed that splitter with an inline adapter, and bang, everything works now.<br><br>
Not one of the three sets of techs who've been to my house bothered to ask whether we were using the line coming out of the superfluous splitter. Not one of them bothered to check the signal level at the basement TV (the lack of signal, thanks to the double set of splitters, was the problem there). The last tech actually replaced the unneeded splitter, without ever asking whether we actually use the extra line it's in there for (we don't).<br><br>
Pathetic. But at least I have ESPN back for the weekend. I think I'll still fire Comcast; the aggravation of another couple of months like this will take years off my life...<br><br>Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-84363838412108231132013-02-24T16:43:00.002-05:002013-02-24T17:51:00.045-05:00John Pavlus Is Full Of ItCouldn't help shaking my head when I read <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/view/511666/f-22s-human-interface-kills-humans-then-lands-them-safely/">this ludicrous post from John Pavlus</a> (no, I've never heard of him, either) at MIT Technology Review after it was linked by <a href="http://instapundit.com">Instapundit</a>. As I told Glenn in an email, pretty much every single charge Pavlus makes here is factually incorrect:
<blockquote>Think Windows 8 is a usability nightmare? Two pilots of the infamously expensive F-22 fighter jet recently went on 60 Minutes to describe how this “phenomenal, phenomenal machine” poisons its pilots’ air supply in the course of normal flight. </blockquote>
Pavlus plays it sneaky here, hiding behind verbal statements on an old episode of "60 Minutes" (and we all know how <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/08/024384.php">dedicated to accuracy</a> <i>that</i> show is) instead of informing his readers that the hypoxia incidents on F-22 were later found to have nothing to do with the aircraft (so much for 'poisoning its pilots'), but rather to <a href="http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/07/31/pressure_vests_were_choking_f_22_pilots">a faulty valve on g-suit vests</a> that aren't even unique to the Raptor (they were designed for the generation-older F-15 and F-16s).<br><br>
But wait, there's more:
<blockquote>But the plane is also smart enough to land itself with no help from its passed-out pilot. This is UX design by way of Brazil: the human interface is so bad that it actively tries to kill you the entire time you’re using it, and so good that it can deliver your comatose body back to safety with no help from you at all. </blockquote>
I just spent twelve years working on F-22 (my last day on the job was last week; I've left the program to go to work on Army Aviation systems for a different company, and will be divesting the last remnants of my Lockheed Martin stock within the next few days), and I can state categorically that this is one hundred percent Bravo Sierra. There is no automatic landing system on the Raptor. Never has been. No F-22 can 'land itself.' That has never happened, and it's not even possible. That level of automatic pilot isn't in the system.<br><br>
Facts like these are, of course, irrelevant to Pavlus, who lards up the rest of his post with anti-military and pro-gun-control rantings that he tenuously relates to the state of commercial operating systems. Apparently there wasn't a way to note that Windows 8 sucks without indulging your ideological prejudices... and certainly not if you happen to be a "journalist" like John Pavlus.Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-54066462237761265222013-01-21T08:09:00.005-05:002013-01-21T08:09:55.131-05:00A Google Heiress In North Korea<a href="https://sites.google.com/site/sophieinnorthkorea/">This is excellent</a> (really, I'm not being sarcastic), it’s an account by Eric Schmidt’s daughter Sophie of her recent trip to North Korea with her Google-boss dad and a mixed bag of American tech people and politicians. It's marvelous; my only complaint is that she doesn’t make fun of Bill Richardson.
A sample:
<blockquote>Ordinary North Koreans live in a near-total information bubble, without any true frame of reference. I can't think of any reaction to that except absolute sympathy. My understanding is that North Koreans are taught to believe they are lucky to be in North Korea, so why would they ever want to leave? They're hostages in their own country, without any real consciousness of it. And the opacity of the country's inner workings--down to the basics of its economy--further serves to reinforce the state's control.
The best description we could come up with: <b>it's like The Truman Show, at country scale.</b></blockquote>
Seriously: <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/sophieinnorthkorea/">read the whole thing.</a>Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-52345159279725296002012-10-31T07:41:00.004-04:002012-10-31T10:28:32.760-04:00When You Wish Upon A Death Star<a href="http://starwars.com/future-of-star-wars-movies/index.html">Wow:</a><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
An exciting new future featuring the continuation of the <i>Star Wars</i> movie saga was announced on October 30<sup>th</sup>,
as the Walt Disney Company enters an agreement to acquire Lucasfilm Ltd
from George Lucas. Backed by the global reach and brand stewardship
strengths of Disney, the future of <i>Star Wars</i> is now under the
direction of acclaimed film producer and studio executive Kathleen
Kennedy, Co-Chairman of Lucasfilm. Kennedy and Disney plan a slate of
new <i>Star Wars</i> feature films, beginning with the long-awaited <i>Star Wars</i>:
Episode VII, targeted for release in 2015, followed by Episodes VIII
and IX. Additional feature films are expected to continue the saga and
grow the franchise well into the future.</blockquote>
<a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/49614987">Twitter just exploded</a> yesterday afternoon when that announcement was made. I thought it had to be a put-on when I saw the first blurb from Reuters, but it's the real thing.<br />
<br />
Jonah Goldberg had what I suspect is <a href="http://t.co/k6T2xLlf">a representative take at NRO</a>, starting with fear (which, as we know, is the path to the Dark Side) and eventually rolling into guarded optimism. I tend to agree, and although as Jim Geraghty noted, we're talking about the same studio that recently gave the world the lovely flop known as <i>John Carter</i>, Disney usually knows what they're doing.<br />
<br />
Better still, Disney employs <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0083348/">Brad Bird</a>, who would be hands-down the best choice to write and direct the now on-again <i>Star Wars</i> sequels, the long gestation of which George Lucas <a href="http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/index.php/2012/10/30/the-long-winding-and-shapeshifting-trail-to-episodes-vii-viii-ix/">has finally re-admitted,</a> after a couple of decades of denying that he'd ever had any such thing in mind. <br />
<br />
After seeing his prior work in <i>The Iron Giant, The Incredibles</i> and <i>Ratatouille</i>, I'd probably buy a ticket to watch Bird reading his grocery list. There's no serious question that Bird can write rings around Lucas, and his live-action debut in the last <i>Mission: Impossible</i> movie showed he's got the action movie chops as a director. Hopefully Lucasfilm's new Mouse overlords are smart enough to put him in charge of their new Empire. <br />
<br />Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-67410202060630586702012-09-18T09:23:00.004-04:002012-09-18T09:23:51.537-04:00So, Let Me Get This Straight<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
The overwhelming political objective of the Democratic Party
since the 1930’s has been to get as many people as possible enrolled in one
government program or another, at least in part to guarantee their votes in
subsequent elections: “Tax and tax, spend and spend, and elect and
elect.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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And now it’s somehow a scandal when a Republican notes that
they succeeded, to the tune of nearly half the country?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Am I missing something? </div>
Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-24339198768157818612012-08-02T08:52:00.000-04:002012-08-02T08:53:01.952-04:00Aunt DeeConnie Dee Brown, of Albertville, Alabama, died on Saturday, July 28, 2012, in Birmingham after a brief illness, two months shy of her 97th birthday.<br />
<br />
Connie was born on Sept. 19, 1915, in Hustleville, the daughter of Arnold Chambers and Ola Johnson Chambers. She was the eldest and longest-surviving of three sisters.
She graduated from Albertville High School in 1935, and afterwards ran her own beauty shop in Albertville.<br />
<br />
Connie married Roy Rodger Brown in 1957, and together they operated Roy’s Restaurant in Albertville for many years.
Upon Roy’s retirement from the Bryant Line Furniture Company, Connie and Roy began many happy years as the most famed anglers in north Alabama, including spending every day one entire year fishing on their beloved Lake Guntersville.
Roy Brown passed away on Oct. 9, 1997, after 40 years of happy marriage.<br />
<br />
Connie was an active member of First United Methodist Church of Albertville and the Fairview United Methodist Church in Hustleville, leading Sunday School classes and church events too numerous to count.
She was an avid Rook player, never missing weekly games with her close friends to the end of her life.<br />
<br />
She was a steady and loving anchor of her family, providing care for her sisters and brothers-in-law in their own latter days.<br />
<br />
Connie was preceded in death by her husband, Roy; her sister, Ruby Jo Weir; brother-in-law, Joyce Weir; sister, Bernell Chambers Lowery and brother-in-law, Brelen A. Lowery; and her niece, Lynda Lowery Collier.
She is survived by her niece, Lauren Elizabeth Lowery; great-nephew, William B. Collier III; great-niece, Killy Collier Mingus; and great-great-nephews, Collier and Matthew Mingus.<br />
<br />
Aunt Dee’s family wishes to thank her many dear friends and neighbors for their aid and kindness during her long life, with particular thanks to Margie King for her devotion and care.<br />
<br />
A graveside service at Memory Hill Cemetery in Albertville was held on Tuesday, July 31, at 11 a.m.Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-65809179579520783432012-07-10T06:38:00.002-04:002012-07-10T11:00:48.989-04:00We Are All Afghans Now<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/power-players-abc-news/obama-squandered-surge-101326774.html">From Jake Tapper at ABC</a>, yesterday:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div id="yui_3_5_1_18_1341916614165_341">
"What we fail to understand was
that the Afghan people largely wanted to be left alone and they hate
their government, in many cases, as much as they hate the insurgents.
And when we went to them and said, 'Ah, we're coming here to help bring
your government to you.' They said, 'Whoa we don't want out [sic] government!'"</div>
<div id="yui_3_5_1_18_1341916614165_341">
<br /></div>
<div id="yui_3_5_1_18_1341916614165_344">
All the Afghans wanted, says Chandrasekaran, was to be left alone, "and we didn't get that."</div>
</blockquote>
<div id="yui_3_5_1_18_1341916614165_344">
</div>
<div id="yui_3_5_1_18_1341916614165_344">
Imagine that.</div>Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-10836504052757144752012-06-06T10:32:00.003-04:002012-06-06T10:35:23.653-04:00Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9noAFAwFKfZ1mZYRQDpku964Dwg5CNeVp0am4LTv0FUcUuXxPTsljO2x_7nuxQ6IXdxQHXrcAhMGD6ygdHVxikH7u5nyUItwhJJl2qnkgBxTEW7_84megPshJV4L4bdxlSLcU32dlEPz7/s1600/raybradbury.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="323" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9noAFAwFKfZ1mZYRQDpku964Dwg5CNeVp0am4LTv0FUcUuXxPTsljO2x_7nuxQ6IXdxQHXrcAhMGD6ygdHVxikH7u5nyUItwhJJl2qnkgBxTEW7_84megPshJV4L4bdxlSLcU32dlEPz7/s400/raybradbury.jpg" width="300" /></a>
<br />
<br />
Twenty years ago, I put this quote at the front of my master's thesis in aerospace engineering:
<br />
<blockquote>
"The stars are yours, if you have the head, the hands, and the heart for them."</blockquote>
It was taken from Bradbury's collection <i>R Is For Rocket</i>. Despite his many volumes of science fiction stories, Bradbury actually knew next to nothing about rockets or astronomy or science. That didn't matter. He knew everything about the human heart.<br />
<br />
True then. True today. Thank you, Ray. Clear skies.Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-16848824005032348592012-06-05T07:06:00.003-04:002012-06-05T09:36:06.920-04:00Fly-Over "Journalism" From The LA TimesI have a new column up at PJ Media about the LA Times' lame attempt to report on former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman's <a href="http://blog.al.com/sweethome/2012/06/us_supreme_courtsiegelman.html">recent failed appeal</a> of his corruption convictions. Here's a preview: <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Much of [reporter David G.] Savage's article is downright funny (although not always in a ha-ha way) if you were previously familiar with either Siegelman or Alabama. In attempting to explain the strange creatures from this mysterious hinterland to his La-La Land readership, Savage tosses up this doozy:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Siegelman was the rare Democrat who could win in Alabama. He had also won election as Alabama's secretary of state, attorney general and lieutenant governor. But his career ended when Republican-appointed U.S. attorneys charged him with corruption.
</blockquote>
Well, I suppose that's one way to put it. That is, if you either (a) don't actually know anything about the political history of Alabama, or (b) are anxious to put a pro-Siegleman spin on the whole affair.
</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="p2">
</div>
<div class="p1">
<div class="p1">
While all of Alabama's statewide offices did flip--and severely--to the GOP in the 2010 elections, prior to that watershed year "Dirty Don" was far from rare as a Democratic officeholder. The state legislature had been majority Democrat for an astonishing 136 consecutive years prior to 2010. The <a href="http://www.archives.alabama.gov/conoff/lieulist.html"><span class="s1">lieutenant governor's office</span></a>, which Siegelman held from 1995-1999, has had exactly two Republican occupants (the last Democrat was Jim Folsom, Jr., who served until 2011) in the state's post-Reconstruction history.</div>
</div>
...<br />
<br />
<div class="p1">
Savage also gets plain points of fact wrong regarding Siegelman's prosecution, claiming of the first of two corruption trials for Siegelman, "To the surprise of many, a jury in Birmingham acquitted him on all the counts in 2005."</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
But that's not what happened. Savage didn't even get the year of Siegelman's first trial right.</div>
<div class="p2">
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="p1">
<blockquote>
The 2004 (not 2005) case never went to a jury. The charges <a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=20041008&id=AX00AAAAIBAJ&sjid=McgEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1668,1006458"><span class="s1">were summarily thrown out</span></a> by now-retired Carter appointee U.W. Clemon, an old political associate of Siegelman's, and in his day one of the most nakedly-partisan Federal Judges in the country. </blockquote>
<br />
<a href="http://pjmedia.com/blog/l-a-times-entry-for-worst-reporting-of-the-year/">Here's the whole thing. </a></div>Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-44072099247814377402012-05-02T08:00:00.003-04:002012-05-02T10:32:05.857-04:00Before and AfterAs an antidote to the annual spate of Leftist nonsense on May Day, check out <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-59943.html">this telling photo essay</a> from Der Spiegel of sites in East Germany from before and after its liberation from Socialism. An example:<br />
<br />
1991:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.spiegel.de/images/image-134721-galleryV9-mmlt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="http://www.spiegel.de/images/image-134721-galleryV9-mmlt.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
2011:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.spiegel.de/images/image-135617-galleryV9-kinv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="http://www.spiegel.de/images/image-135617-galleryV9-kinv.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
All the photos are by Stefan Koppelkamm. Go check out the whole thing.<br />
<br />
I saw a good bit of the old DDR not long after the Wall fell, and the "before" photos <a href="http://wcollier.blogspot.com/2009/11/ten-twenty-years-after.html">confirm my memories</a> of the East side. As I've noted in the past, it was the most godawful place I'd ever seen. <br />
<br />
Remember those "before" shots the next time some Occupy yahoo starts going on about "equality."<br />
<br />
UPDATE: <a href="http://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2012/05/02/a-photo-essay-rebuttal-to-may-day/">Steve Green</a> has more than a few cogent thoughts on this topic.Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-85991748723670633172012-03-19T07:41:00.001-04:002012-03-19T07:52:32.115-04:00SolidCheck out this uber-awesome video of a Space Shuttle launch, from the perspective of cameras mounted on the solid rocket boosters. Stick with it after the boosters separate from the orbiter stack, because the re-entry is nearly as cool as the launch:<br />
<br />
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2aCOyOvOw5c" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
The audio is real, recorded during flight and then mastered by George Lucas' Skywalker Sound. Amazing stuff. H/T: <a href="http://io9.com/5893615/absolutely-mindblowing-video-shot-from-the-space-shuttle-during-launch">io9</a>.Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-90115396147869474252012-02-09T07:23:00.000-05:002012-02-09T07:23:05.014-05:00Emily Litella on Global Warmening<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/08/glaciers-mountains?intcmp=122">Emily in The Guardian</a>: "Never mind!"<br />
<br />
<blockquote>The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.<br />
<br />
The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.<br />
<br />
The study is the first to survey all the world's icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less than previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy.<br />
<br />
Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the research team, said: "The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero."</blockquote><br />
<a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,813814,00.html">Emily in Der Spiegel: </a>"Never mind!"<br />
<blockquote>Vahrenholt: In my experience as an energy expert, I learned that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is more of a political than a scientific body. As a rapporteur on renewable energy, I witnessed how thin the factual basis is for predictions that are made at the IPCC. In one case, a Greenpeace activist's absurd claim that 80 percent of the world's energy supply could soon be coming from renewable sources was assumed without scrutiny. This prompted me to examine the IPCC report more carefully.<br />
<br />
SPIEGEL: And what was your conclusion?<br />
<br />
Vahrenholt: The long version of the IPCC report does mention natural causes of climate change, like the sun and oscillating ocean currents. But they no longer appear in the summary for politicians. They were simply edited out. To this day, many decision-makers don't know that new studies have seriously questioned the dominance of CO2. CO2 alone will never cause a warming of more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. Only with the help of supposed amplification effects, especially water vapor, do the computers arrive at a drastic temperature increase. I say that global warming will remain below two degrees by the end of the century. This is an eminently political message, but it's also good news.</blockquote><br />
It's a shame that neither politicians nor "journalists" understand that "climate models" are just software, and by the very nature of trying to simulate a massive, chaotic system with vast numbers of unknown variables, software that has to include massive simplifying assumptions.Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-58346884056005625142012-02-01T12:36:00.000-05:002012-02-01T12:36:20.082-05:00Attention, All Planets Of The Solar Federation...Today is 2-1-12.<br />
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/WWLxT5OFcWg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-3333583537813682242012-02-01T07:54:00.003-05:002012-02-01T09:34:28.020-05:00Lamb For ModeratorNewt Gingrich's comments this week about refusing to participate in a presidential debate if it were moderated by a standard-issue MSM "journalist" got me to thinking. While I tend to agree with Mitt Romney's sharp comeback that Newt isn't likely to have to worry about the panel makeups this fall (disclaimer: I don't particularly like anybody who's still running for president this year, and that includes both candidates named above), Newt had a point. <br />
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It's a foregone conclusion that anybody pulled out of the old three networks plus PBS would be at the very least sympathetic towards Obama, so why <i>would </i>the GOP nominee agree to a one-sided questioner in such an important event? And let's be honest, the Chicago crowd would not be terribly happy if, say, Brit Hume were one of the panelists, either.<br />
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So who do you choose? Nary a name in the major media leaps to mind; virtually every television talking head or major newspaper figure with television experience (and that would be a requirement for this job) would be viewed as a potential partisan by one side or the other--and in most cases, for good reason. For a couple of elections there Jim Lehrer of PBS was the default moderator, but he's long-since worn out his welcome, particularly with Republicans and/or conservatives.<br />
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What you really want for a presidential debate moderator is somebody who is trusted (or at the very least, not <i>dis</i>trusted) by both sides , who has vast knowledge of American politics and policy, who will do their homework in extraordinary depth beforehand, and who's got solid experience as an on-camera interviewer.<br />
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In other words, you want Brian Lamb of C-SPAN. Lamb has a bipartisan past (he worked in both the Johnson and Nixon White Houses before going into broadcasting), and has assiduously pursued an utterly non-partisan stance for decades as the CEO and senior interviewer for C-SPAN. He's interviewed thousands of political figures over the years, including every president since LBJ, and I defy anybody to tell me what his personal politics are. <br />
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All you have to do it watch a couple of Lamb's in-depth interviews to know that he is meticulous in preparation and adept at getting illuminating answers out of his subjects. I would also add that unlike most of the network talking heads, Lamb is highly unlikely to pop off with "look at me" gotchas designed to show off how witty the moderator is, at the expense of an actually meaningful question and/or answer.<br />
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Lamb is currently 70 years old, and as a matter of course avoids the limelight, so he might well refuse this particular job, but I think it's well worth the effort to put his name out there now as the single most logical (and reasonable) choice to moderate the 2012 presidential debates.Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-89797272814505211402012-01-30T21:05:00.002-05:002012-01-31T17:35:33.885-05:00Name That Party!Freelancer Steven Adams, writing for Reuters, offers up <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-westvirgnia-voterfraudtre80t1mc-20120130,0,5990239.story">this article about electoral shenanigans</a> in West Virginia:<br />
<blockquote>A West Virginia sheriff pleaded guilty to voter fraud in the state's 2010 primary election including illegally filling in some absentee ballots out of fear he might lose a close election, authorities said on Monday.<br />
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Lincoln County, West Virginia Sheriff Jerry Bowman admitted falsifying absentee ballots in a case stemming from an investigation by federal authorities, the U.S. Attorney's office said.<br />
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Also pleading guilty to lying to investigators was Lincoln County Clerk Donald Whitten, the U.S. Attorney said.</blockquote>The article--with "Editing By Ellen Wulfhorst and Greg McCune"--goes on for another eight paragraphs before admitting, "Both men, who are Democrats, also agreed to resign from office."<br />
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But I'm sure that's just an innocent editorial decision. Just like vote fraud is a "right-wing myth."Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-79262253221427709302012-01-27T20:08:00.001-05:002012-01-30T17:33:35.402-05:00Previews Of Coming AttractionsFerris Bueller, 2012.<br />
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UPDATE: This is another one of those cases where <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqcrzE9pZOQ">the trailer</a> is better than the actual movie--or in this case, commercial. But if you want to see the whole thing (a Honda Super Bowl ad affectionately spoofing "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"), you can watch it <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhkDdayA4iA">here</a>.Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7870530298450082582.post-51789007701194402442012-01-25T08:56:00.000-05:002012-01-25T08:56:39.939-05:00MegaProtectionism For The Record Companies?Here's an interesting take on the recent <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/19/megaupload-taken-down-on-piracy-allegations/">government takedown of Megaupload</a>, which had been a large-scale digital "locker" site where people could upload large files for public access. Megaupload had been ostensibly targeted because of pirated movie and music files, but <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/24/was-megaupload-targeted-because-of-its-upcoming-megabox-digital-jukebox-service/">Matt Burns at TechCrunch</a> voices suspicious that the company may have been taken down because it was preparing to launch a service that would have competed directly and legally with the record companies:<br />
<blockquote>Megabox was just in beta at that time with listed partners of 7digital, Gracenote, Rovi, and Amazon. Megaupload was in a heated marketing battle with the RIAA and MPAA who featured Kim Dotcom in an anti-piracy movie (5:10 mark). The site had just sued Universal Music Group for wrongly blocking Megaupload’s recent star-studded YouTube campaign. Things were getting vicious in December but the quiet launch of Megabox might have been the straw that broke the millionaire’s back.<br />
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Dotcom described Megabox as Megaupload’s iTunes competitor, which would even eventually offer free premium movies via Megamovie, a site set to launch in 2012. This service would take Megaupload from being just a digital locker site to a full-fledged player in the digital content game.<br />
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The kicker was Megabox would cater to unsigned artists and allow anyone to sell their creations while allowing the artist to retain 90% of the earnings. Or, artists could even giveaway their songs and would be paid through a service called Megakey. “Yes that’s right, we will pay artists even for free downloads. The Megakey business model has been tested with over a million users and it works,” Kim Dotcom told TorrentFreak in December. Megabox was planning on bypassing the labels, RIAA, and the entire music establishment. </blockquote>Copyright protection is a legitimate problem in the digital age, but if the speculation here turns out to be accurate, the Justice Department has been used to facilitate the crib death of a legal competitor to the RIAA. If that pans out, we've got a much bigger problem than piracy to worry about.Will Collierhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15125312209711458722noreply@blogger.com13