Month: June 2006

So there’s a slightly-hidden funny in the latest Pixar movie, “Cars”. My co-worker, Ken, brought it to my attention, as I haven’t seen the movie yet.

On the body of the antagonist is the proud logo: “HTB”. If you look closer, you realize it spells out “Hostile Takeover Bank”. Hah!

This got me thinking: what other fictional names could we give corporations/organizations that more closely reflect their actual mission? Maybe even with a slogan or fake quotable quote to put it into relief? Here are some of the ones I cooked up.

• MCL: Mafia Connections Limited. “I started dis dry-cleaning bizness in fiddy-tree, and we been laundering ever since.”
• WAC: The Wholly Amoral Corporation. “From day one, we’ve been devoted to the principle of extracting every possible penny from your paycheck. And we’re proud to continue that tradition today.”
• QIC: Questionable Investments Corp. “We lose your money so you don’t have to!”
• SOH: Snake-Oil Health. “Pseudo-science and superstition aren’t just our business. They’re our passion.”
• MLRA: Multi-Level Relationship Abuse, Inc. “In as little as three months, you too can lose a few hundred dollars and drive away those pesky family and friends.”
• BMSC: Behemoth Mega-Software Corp. “Anti-trust legislation doesn’t apply to us, because, look, there’s so much competition in software markets we haven’t entered yet, like diesel mechanics and drywall hanging.”

What can you cook up?

okay, here’s the sitch.

JJ Abrhams, creator of Lost and Alias (And Felicity), and director of MI3, has been given the reins to the Star Trek Mythos. Rick Berman, overseer of all things TREK since its creator got sick in 1989, had been ousted (Not a bad thing, all the good Ds9 was overseen by Piller and Moore). We’ve covered this.

The plot, so far, seems to be a prequel.. set in the Kirk / Spock days, and possibly early in their careers. JJ has said it will be a reinvention of sorts, but will fit in the established continuity. It is scheduled for 2008.

My hope is that JJ used his ablility to craft twists and turns, and to create buzz, while enlisting young casts with emotional ties to the plots, well, I just hope its good. And I will shre my thoughts about what i’ve heard so far, but what are your thoughts?

The World Cup is underway. I am way excited. I took off the afternoon to watch one of the opening day games. I have been following the U.S. men’s national team for the past two years. I watched almost all of their World Cup qualifying matches. I have cable so that I can watch US players work for their English Premiership and Bundesliga club teams. I have been counting down the months until the tournament starts. I’ve been flocking to the US soccer website for daily updates on the team.

I love soccer. And the older I get, and the more I start adopting a heterodoxic approach to life, the more I take the heretical stance of dismissing American football, baseball and basketball as lame spectator sports. I grew up following the Washington Redskins and dedicating my brain to memorizing player stats. Today, I think American football is a bunch of overgrown apes crushing each other in 5 second spurts. Baseball and basketball are equally as boring to watch and follow. I recognize that the hardest thing to do in professional sports is consistently hit a round ball with a round bat, but the overall sport doesn’t captivate. Basketball doesn’t do much for me either as a spectator sport. With so much scoring, I just want to tune in the last two minutes of the game, and even then I could care less about the outcome.

I laugh every time I hear someone call a US sports team the “world champion.” What a joke! Nothing compares to the World Cup in terms of international sports craze. It’s amazing to see a tournament based on a sport in which every nation on the planet pursues vigilantly. It’s the best of the world competing at the highest level. There is only one sport. It is soccer.

LET’S GO USA!

I’m slow. I had to watch it twice to get it.

http://cornonthekabob.ytmnd.com/

I feel a terrible need to eat some corn and watch Star Wars now…

(Thanks to the Shadowguild Mailing List!)

The 2006 airshow at Hill Air Force Base is set to start at 8 AM at Hill this Saturday, June 10, 2006.

I’m kind of excited! I haven’t been to an airshow since Andrews Air Force Base as a kid. We’re packing up two families, taking a pair of vans, and planning on having a good time.

When was the last time you were at an airshow? Would you do it again?

Beyond the Marines rappelling from a helicopter, the main thing I remember from my last airshow was the fierce sunburn…

If you, like me, have ever bought something off of eBay, and then realized you could have gotten a better deal after you’d already committed to buy, then this cautionary tale may be for you if you hope to refuse delivery:

Vigilante eBayer obtains refund in person. (Warning: some strong language)

At the Dead hunt Premiere, the first gathering of Barnsonians without an actual Barnson. The world stands in awe of Rowan, Timpane, and Wandering Moose!! Rowan and Wandering moose traveled great distances to see Timpane’s little movie.. and Timpae is gushing with appreciation.

Again, HUGE T%HANKS to these guys.. it made me feel really good to have their support.. and a special thanks to Jon, who i haven’t seen in years, and who I know better because of this site than I ever did in HS.. it was a gesture that did not go unnoticed.

Also, thanks to Rowan for the chicken fingers.

EDIT by matthew: Linkage, image resized.

Saw Al Gore’s film last night. Well worth watching. In my opinion, a sobering, well-reasoned look into the global warming situation.

And before people start diving for their respective fox-holes for yet another round of a battle that’s already been fought on this board, I’ll let you know I’m posting this more as a critique of the quality of the documentary then anything else.

Even as a liberal who believes that Bush and nearly everything about his administration was a very, very bad idea, I was pretty disgusted with Fareneheit 9/11. It was pure conspiracy theory, and flimsy at best. The Da Vinci code was based on more solid evidence, for God’s sake, and told better too. Most documentaries have a point to prove. That’s to be expected; if someone didn’t care about an issue, or see a problem in a situation, why would they go to the trouble of filming something about it? I don’t ask that a documentary be completely objective (there’s no such thing, anyway), I just ask that there be some semblance of fact, and that thrust of the film’s argument be derived from a cohesive, logical relationship to said facts.

I found “An Inconvenient Truth” to be such a documentary. Yes, there’s a little bit of biography about Al Gore himself, a little bit of heartstring-tweaking. But the majority of the documentary is simply him laying out a logical argument for his position in which every single time he makes a statement, he backs it up with scientific research. I don’t think he offers a single opinion without providing hard, measured findings from the scientific community.

So essentially, he’s looking at empirical evidence (very little of which, I believe, is in dispute by anyone in the scientific community), and using it to structure an honest argument.

I don’t know, that struck me as the sort of thing that would appeal to the bloggers on this domain.

My favorite kind of argument, the one most likely to change my mind, is where someone comes to me with statistics and evidence, then, without voices being raised, an appeal to a higher power invoked, or any person being demonized, presents it in a way that says “This is the conclusion I drew. Do you draw the same?” Extra credit for going on to say “This is a proposed solution to the problem.”

Matthew changed my mind about the Second Amendment with this particular type of argument on an old, old post on this board. I believe “An Inconvenient Truth” to be a similar sort of argument, and it receives my recommendation.

I’d, of course, be interested in hearing what anyone else who saw it has to say about it. Who knows? Maybe it is a horrifically manipulative film that makes Michael Moore by comparison look like David Hume, and I’m a dumb sheep who doesn’t realize it. 😛 But I don’t think so.

I think nearly everyone on this board has stated at some point that they are men and women of science and of reason, which is why I thought of you all when I watched this film. My own personal style of argument relies on drama, emotional manipulation, weaving a good story to take bits of the truth for my own end, and liberal use of subtle self-deprecation in order to disarm someone’s reservations (I might even be doing that RIGHT NOW, mwa ha ha). This did not look like the kind of movie I would have made. But it did look like a movie many of you would have.