Oh, Snap: Hodgman points us to Gawker’s Epic CNN takedown

Seriously, check this out. A money quote:

For readers interested in learning more about how not to be labeled as registered sex offenders, a good first step is not to rape unconscious women, no matter how good your grades are. Regardless of the strength of your GPA (weighted or unweighted), if you commit rape, there is a possibility you may someday be convicted of a sex crime. This is because of your decision to commit a sex crime instead of going for a walk, or reading a book by Cormac McCarthy. Your ability to perform calculus or play football is generally not taken into consideration in a court of law. Should you prefer to be known as “Good student and excellent football player Trent Mays” rather than “Convicted sex offender Trent Mays,” try stressing the studying and tackling and giving the sex crimes a miss altogether.

Hodgman stops there, but for my money the next graf is easily as strong:

It’s perfectly understandable, when reporting on a rape trial, to discuss the length and severity of the sentence; it is less understandable to discuss the end of two convicted rapists’ future athletic and academic careers as if it were somehow divorced from the laws of cause and effect. Their dreams and hopes were not crushed by an impersonal, inexorable legal system; Mays and Richmond raped a girl and have been sentenced accordingly. Had they not raped her, they would not be spending at least one year each in a juvenile detention facility. (Emph. added.)

Direct link to Gawker here.

Books of 2013, #10: THAT IS ALL, by John Hodgman

Good LORD I’m behind on these things — plus, as my general posting frequency has showed, I’m a little swamped at work. A few books will have to get the short shrift to allow me to catch up, as over the weekend I finished book #13.

THAT IS ALL is Hodgman’s final entry is his “Complete World Knowledge” trilogy, and what you get here is more of what you got in the other two. I’ll confess I actually skipped the second entry, but enjoyed the first when it came out back in 2005.

Because of this, I can’t really tell you much about how the style evolves, but I can tell you that Hodgman is playing at a more substantial game here than just a recitation of made-up facts. TIA concerns itself primarily with a countdown to the end of the world, events leading up to or contributing to it, ways in which one may prepare, and how he intends to survive as a deranged millionaire.

But there’s a metaphor at work here, too, that Hodgman winked at during his performance on the nerd cruise last month, when talking about his children. He noted that everything ever said, more or less, about one’s children boils down to “children are awesome, and I am dying.” He’s not wrong. Obviously, a meditation on the end of the world is a charmingly and grandiose way of confronting the sense of mortality one inevitably acquires in middle life.

Frankly, I was a little surprised how much I enjoyed TIA as an actual book (instead of a multi-hundred-page joke, which is what I expected). I’m actually considering revisiting the first book, and reading the second, as a consequence.

One note, btw: don’t skip the list of 700 ancient and unspeakable gods. There’s gold in there (just as I’m sure there’s gold in the list of hobos in the first book).

Books of 2013 #9: Terrible Nerd, by Kevin Savetz

Terrible Nerd is Savetz’s memoir of sorts of growing up nerdy in California around the same time I was growing up nerdy in Mississippi. Near as I can tell, it was much easier going in California. ;)

I met Savetz on the Giant Nerd Cruise last month, and he gave me a copy of his book as we were playing Cards Against Humanity. I read it on the boat, which tells you how far behind I am on these posts.

He’s a nice guy, and his book is a fun read, but probably only if you’re part of our tribe.

I LOVE THIS GUY

If you’re like me, then part of you wishes you could just pull a Kathy Bates whenever someone pulls out in front of you and makes you slam on your brakes. Why not just hit them, dammit?

Of course, we don’t do these things, because of the damage to our cars that would result, not to mention the possibility of injury and liabilty to the other driver.

Apparently, though, the rules are rather different for Russian bus drivers, as the linked video shows. The driver known as The Punisher refuses to slow down when drivers cut in front of him, with predictably delicious results.

He is, of course, our new Heathen Hero.

Dear Microsoft Project

You know, it’s nice and all that multistep logic is possible in a custom field calculation, but don’t you think it might be NICER to make it possible to debug something like this

IIf([Imported Actual Finish]<>projdatevalue("NA"),100,(IIf([Imported Actual Start]=projdatevalue("NA"),0,(IIf([Imported Expected Finish]=projdatevalue("NA"),0,(IIf([Imported Actual Start]>=[Imported Expected Finish],0,(IIf([Imported Remaining Duration]<0,0,((ProjDateDiff([Imported Actual Start],[Imported Expected Finish])*2/3)-[Imported Remaining Duration]*60*8)/((ProjDateDiff([Imported Actual Start],[Imported Expected Finish])*2/3))*100)))))))))

without resorting to external editors? I mean, just some basic paren matching would save an awful goddamn lot of time…

SimCity: A study in EA hating you

Gamer-Heathen may have heard by now of the serious clusterfuck that is the new SimCity release. EA has decided that an always-on Internet connection is required to play this single player game that has no natural reason to connect to anything, and their servers got swamped on launch day. The predictable result was lots of folks with an $80 game who could not play.

At least one reviewer has pointed out the absurdity of this.

I, on the other hand, proceeded to Good Old Games and payed $5.99 for the last good version of SimCity, SimCity 2000. Go and do likewise.

Who Fans Only!

I’ve been sitting on this for a while, but it’s gold and deserves to be seen: SciFind’s list of 11 alternate universe female Doctors is simply brilliant, and rewards a careful read if you know your Who history.

For example: this alternate-universe Eighth Doctor is Helen Baxendale (as opposed to Paul McGann). There as here, the Eighth appears only in an orphaned TV movie years after the show was cancelled, and more than a decade before the revival. For reasons I’ve never understood, the producers cast Eric Roberts as longtime foe The Master. Go check to see who plays “The Mistress” in the alternate universe. ;)

Also, total wins: Honor Blackman in the 1960s, opposite Vanessa Redgrave as the Mistress; Joanna “AbFab” Lumley in the 1980s; and Suranne Jones as the Ninth (most famous to Whovians as the personification of the TARDIS in the Gaiman-penned “The Doctor’s Wife”).

Go. Read. Enjoy.

The TSA: Fucking things up even when they try to do right

So the big news today is that they’re going to allow pocketknives on planes again, which is nice since, you know, disallowing them had absolutely nothing to do with reality in the first place. Bully for them.

However, the new rules are, like everything that has anything to do with the TSA, arbitrary and capricious. As detailed here, the maximum permitted blade length is 2.36 inches, or 6 cm. The diagram in place clearly includes a Swiss-Army type knife, which was at first encouraging, since they come in essentially two sizes — and the one used as an example is obviously of the larger variety, and therefore should be the same size as the one I (and millions others) carry.

Except it’s been scaled down for the diagram. The normal-sized Victorinox (which is to say, most of them) are 3.5 inches long closed, and include a main blade that measures not quite 2.75 inches long (about 7 cm). Wenger’s knives are slightly smaller — 3.25″ closed, with a 2.5″ blade.

Nobody, to my knowledge, sells a Swiss knife of the size used in the diagram, but you can bet your ass that a shit-ton of TSA goons will have fancy new-to-them second-hand Swiss knives the week after this goes into effect (April 25). Travelers will see the Swiss knife in the diagram, think they’re cool, and have them snagged by the jackass patrol.

Nice.

Glass.

Over at the Verge, they’ve got the first real coverage of what it’s like to use Google Glass. I’d really love to try one — especially for navigation when driving or biking.

I just wonder how they’ll deal with the fact that much of their market already wears glasses.

It should surprise no one that Scalia is not exactly consistent

I’ve contended for years that the justice’s much-discussed “originalism” was little more than a thin veneer over a legal mind more than happy to rule based on outcome rather than principle; he’s done it over and over.

So this development won’t surprise you at all. More here.

Serious question, though: Does anybody know an Originalist who isn’t pro-life? There’s nothing about the positions that should join them at the hip, and yet pretty much everyone I’ve ever encountered who claimed the former was also actively using it the further the latter. It’s almost as if they picked a doctrine to support their point of view! Which is convenient, since, like Scalia, it’s likely they don’t really mean Originalism anyway.

Of little consequence to us. Of enormous consequence to New Yorkers. And, presumably, Mole Men.

Twice this week I’ve encountered some amazing photography of the tunnel-building process underneath Manhattan. I urge you to check these out:

  • First, over at JWZ’s blog. Really fantastic, plus technically excellent — the depth of field and sharpness is sorta shocking, given that light is probably hard to come by down there.
  • Then the Atlantic’s In Focus feature got in on the act.

Let’s hope they avoid awaking any ancient & unspeakable horrors.

Now’s when I hassle you for donations: the MS150

As it turns out, I really AM riding the MS150 this year. Here’s my personal page, wherein you may support my efforts. Expect periodic hassles, and some of you will be getting email.

A special to loyal Heathen, and in the style of Kickstarter, I am offering the following entirely ephemeral and intangible benefits:

$10

Grudging acknowledgement.

$25

For each donor at this level, I will post to the Internet one picture of me after a training ride, sun- and wind-burned, covered in road grime and sweat, and wearing cycling clothing.

$50

Lovelorn admiration (silent).

$100

For each donor at this level, I will remove from the Internet one picture of me after a training ride, sun- and wind-burned, covered in road grime and sweat, and wearing cycling clothing.

$150

Lovelorn admiration (effusive, on this blog).

$250

I will kiss you SQUARE ON THE MOUTH (no tongue)

Books of 2013 #8: Bad Luck & Trouble, by Lee Child (Reacher #11)

What the hell, Farmer, a series book?

What of it, Judgey McJudgerson?

But don’t you usually read SRS LITRATURE?

Mostly, yeah. But I also travel a bunch. There’s a place for junk food in one’s diet.

Aren’t these books mostly all the same, though?

No idea what you mean. See, this is the one where Reacher ends up investigating an improbable conspiracy, and then has to take it down more or less single-handledly.

And this is different from the other ten you ready because?

Um. Right. Still, good fun. This one was mildly different because it was the first written post-9/11, which forces some changes on Reacher’s behavior. Also, I was on vacation. There was drinking. And a beach.

Books of 2013 #7: Horns, by Joe Hill

I’m so behind on this; I actually finished Horns before the cruise.

I’d read one of Joe Hill‘s books before — Heart Shaped Box, his debut novel — but somehow missed out on Horns when it was released, and then it went into the perennially sifted “I’m gonna read that…” pile. I shouldn’t have delayed.

Horns is great fun from the start. Instead of slowly building to a monstrous development after hundreds of pages of hinting, Hill drops us right into the mess from page one. Ig Perrish wakes up with devil’s horns. They have odd effects on people. Given the immediate past circumstances of his life — everyone thinks he murdered his girlfriend Merrin a year before — there’s plenty of opportunity for these effects to create amusing developments.

It’s only after you’re hooked on the story that Hill paints the rest of the picture — Ig’s childhood, his family, his friends, his relationship with the dear, departed girlfriend, etc. — and if I have a complaint here it’s that these sections kind of drag a bit, and I felt at times like I really wanted to get back to the first story thread, which I was sure would be full of righteous retribution. And then, in those moments, you realize that you are reading a book that has you rooting for the devil.

Nice work.

Here’s a little bonus, btw: Horns is already being made into a film, starring Daniel Radcliffe as Ig and Juno Temple as Merrin. Principal photgraphy started last September.

More Shit That’s Got To Stop

This is ridiculous, and MUST be protested and stopped:

The Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights watchdog has concluded that travelers along the nation’s borders may have their electronics seized and the contents of those devices examined for any reason whatsoever — all in the name of national security.

The DHS, which secures the nation’s border, in 2009 announced that it would conduct a “Civil Liberties Impact Assessment” of its suspicionless search-and-seizure policy pertaining to electronic devices “within 120 days.” More than three years later, the DHS office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties published a two-page executive summary of its findings.

“We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits,” the executive summary said.

Seriously? Without SUSPICION? Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot.

Because they hate you, that’s why

In years past, when you bought a piece of software, you owned a perpetual license. If your computer died, you could install it on your new computer without a hitch, because of of this license.

Microsoft has decided not to do it that way anymore; new versions of Office will now be bound to the machine they’re installed on, so that when you move to a new computer you are expected to buy another copy.

Fuck. That.