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Time to buckle down for school...almost

I've been working on getting an M.A. from California State University at Dominguez Hills. Although to be honest they have a swacky looking logo. Anyway, I was able to take a full load and still keep going strong at work when I first started due to my excitement, but that ended quickly as the grind just wore me down. I've been going for a year and half with another year to go.

Since I had been working extended hours on a major release I was neglecting my school work. But now that it's done I've shifted focus back to school. I arranged to take five vacation days to catch up on my final assignments for this semester.

This particular class, 579 - The Arab World, has obvious relevance in our current state of affairs. The problem is that my objectivity and interest has waned lately.

The final two assignments should be fairly straightforward. They are typical research papers with 1500 word limits:

1. What pattern if any does Arab history (or some particular geographic area or cultural aspect) exhibit from the Hijra to the end of World War II? What forces might explain such a pattern - or the lack of one?

2. What went wrong? Why are some Arab Muslims so militant and angry?

In a disinterested state of mind a good historian can approach a subject from all angles and apply a disciplined methodology to the research. At least that is the goal. But I would be lying if I were to say I was in an objective mood. Usually when I'm in this state of mind I look forward to the opportunity to spend time on a topic, gain perspective and arrive at an informed frame of reference where historical events can be discussed.

But as I've seen today's pictures of dead civilians hanging from a bridge, bodies being dragged in the street and mutilation of their corpses all accompanied by happy, encouraging crowds, I'm failing at any level of emotional detachment. I really want to be the voice of reason that can parse the complexities of current affairs and understand the impact beyond the surface reports.

However, when the best-of-breed in human stupidity comes into play, my first reaction is more visceral than rational. I want to see these cheering chuckleheads lit up with the red laser dots of impending doom, watch snipers drop a couple dozen of the worst offenders and see the fucking smiles wiped from their faces. I think of a saying my buddy told me about a long time ago "All problems can be solved with violence, if it doesn't solve it, you aren't using enough violence" (not exact, but you get the idea).

Yes, yes, I know that these attitudes contribute nothing to the overall welfare for either the Iraqi's or the U.S. I also realize that violence brings more violence and this would bring us down to "their level" but like I said, there is nothing rational about it.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to try and read about how we did action X [insert fundamentalist based rationalization here - troops in Saudi Arabia, Fall of Ottoman Empire, redrawing of geographic boundries, etc] and are paying for it in terms of animosity and violence towards the Western world...bleh [end rant].

I may have a slight DVD addiction

I saw Guzzlefish listed on a blog and decided to try it out. It's an online collection service for games, movies and music. I listed all the DVD's I have (with the exception of a few more...exotic selections) and they can be found in my DVD listing.

The short version of all this - Now I know why I can't afford my crack habit.

Kahlua is your friend

Okay, I've had a very stressful week at work. I shipped a large project that has a significant amount of revenue attached to it and I made a stupid mistake. I admitted my mistake and my boss is just about the coolest man ever by being patient and understanding about the blunder. However, I still hate making mistakes. Yes, everyone makes them, but it doesn't mean I have to be happy about joining the crowd.

I'm also trying to finish the last work for my class this semester. It's a fairly depressing topic, but more importantly it is also a tough one. I have three weeks left and two research papers to finish. It serves my extra large procastinating ass right for this problem.

So back to Kahlua...it's good in mudslides, white russians, in fact it is just plain old delicious. A tasty treat for any time of the day really. How do I know, enquiring minds may ask? Well, because I've been downing it since about 6pm. No four hours of straight drinking, that would be silly. But enough that I'm really feeling quite fine, thank you very much. Fine enough to update this edited, censored, packaged, freeze dried and semi-sordid expose of my life.

Hey Wang Chung's "To Live and Die in L.A." is playing. This is a cool song to sing along with. I hope you are feeling as relaxed as I am right now. And if you are I hate you even more :-).

Damn, I need to anti-zombiefy my apartment

Okay, I just watched the uncut 10 minute television preview for the remake of "Dawn of the Dead". I have to say in the first 10 mintues they did some serious damage. I counted at least 4 kills and the implication of probably another 5, three car wrecks, a car/gas station explosion and lots o' burning stuff. Which reminds me I still need to buy a shotgun, MRE's and ammo. It was also great how there were numerous foreshadowing elements of the impending doom, which were of course ignored or missed. I really do hope it's better than "28 Days Later". Now, if I can just get someone to go see it with me...

On a more rational note, I meddle in online entertainment and I think it's a great marketing technique and a good way to reach more viewers. In the geek world getting info on movies is easy, just jump over to Apple's Movie Trailer site or any number of other avenues to view online movie trailers. But the for the rest of the unplugged world the TV is still the main way films market their product. I'm not sure how the makers of "Dawn of the Dead" can precisely measure the effects of their 10 minute TV preview (beyond some costly, painfully manual survey system), but I certainly hope more movies adopt the technique.

Did France dodge the exploding bullet?

This has been bothering me a bit lately. There was a short article in this week's edition of "Time" magazine detailing a mysterious group calling itself the AZF that has been trying to hold the French railway hostage. Here is another more detailed story courtesy of the International Herald Tribune.

Apparently, this group has been threatening to blow up trains since December unless the French fork over about $5 million (USD). Through communication via newspaper personals the group revealed the location of what was reported to be a "sophisticated" bomb as a show of force. Of course the French tried to pay off these extortionists , but after the money drop failed they went on an unsuccessful search for more bombs.

Now here is where it gets weird for me... "Time" magazine was published last week (before the Spanish bombing), the IHT article and numerous others reported about the AZF a week before the bombs on the Spanish railway. While the immediate blame fell, with no surprise, on the ETA, in the days following the blast al Qaeda has been in the spotlight. But I haven't seen any significant mention of the mysterious AZF since the bombs in Spain, which seems odd since it's there may be an obvious connection between the two.

So here are my questions - Could the al Qaeda cell have been smart enough to practice on the French railway? Is it possible that they used it as a sort of dry run to determine weaknesses, security measures and possible responses?

If there is no connection then this AZF group has the unlikely record of either the worst (horrible association to Spain's attack) or the best (larger coverage and more fear) timing in the history of terrorism. But if there is a connection, then how come it has been so quiet in the media or the reports from the investigation? Then again, I could just be smoking crack....

Gotta love EBay

I use Ebay, even though through my own personal stupidity it bit me on the ass (but that is another story). As always there is consistently something creepy or something cool going on with the site. If only I had the money...you figure out which one I'm interested in.

E-Paper coming soon to a book near you

In 1996 Nicholas Negroponte wrote a book entitled "Being Digital". I thought the book was a great read and utterly fascinating, but specifically the section on electronic ink was insanely cool. Basically he described an MIT Media Lab experiment to create an ebook on a flexible paper display. It would work by having thousands of tiny spheres built into the paper and each one had a black half and a white half. Electronic stimuli would charge the spheres and shift them to display either their black or white side thereby producing text and/or an image.

Since I read that book, I've been waiting for it to come along. I was excited about ebooks a couple of years ago and even purchased one of the now defunct Rocket eBook Pro units. I loved the idea more than the unit and ended up selling it to a co-worker. Now I regret selling it, not because it was such a great ebook, but because it was a good starting point. As it turns out the ebook market tanked rather quickly due to competing standards, sheer idiocy of copyright management over free books and moronic strangleholds on content management.

I think most people who read a significant amount would love to have a library at their fingertips. What is left of the remaining ebook community have migrated to Palm Pilots and PocketPCs for their hardware needs, but it is still a fairly incidental use for the PDA platform. Yes it works, but it could work be so much better.

The majority of uses are mostly for the areas of entertainment and limited productivity/workplace functionality. However, I have consistently believed that a solid implementation would be fantastic for college students. Lugging around a backpack full of heavy ass books that get used briefly during the course of a day was fairly lame. But the idea of having a single unit capable of easy reading, highlighting and margin notes would have been a dream come true. Not to mention it would probably be far less expensive to buy a reader and ebook texts than one frickin' biology textbook. Feeding the insanity that is called the college textbook industry has to stop at some point.

About eight years later it's finally coming to fruition. A Cambridge company called E-Ink is working with companies such as Philips to create an extremely flexible polymer with an active-matrix display - bascially a kick-ass ebook/epaper solution that I've been imagining for years. Philips has even provided a nifty video (long or short) of the rollable display.

Not only has ebook/ePaper been in the news again, but it apparently is becoming rather trendy. Scientific American devoted their February cover to rollable display technology. There are of course serious military applications for the technology - instantly updated intelligence displays and GPS tracking integrated into maps all rolled into a rugged, weatherproof, compact, lightweight unit.

But what has me interested once again, is a recent article from MIT's Technology Review commenting that a prototype has already been completed and new readers may be available later this year. At half the weight, higher contrast and better resolution than other readers, all I can say is it's about damn time...

Dawn of the Dead Preview

Turns out I don't have to wait until the 19th to let the freakshow start. The USA Network will air the first 10 minutes of the Dawn of the Dead movie, uncut and unedited. On Monday 3/15 between 10:00pm and 10:30pm Eastern/Pacific near the end of the movie "Final Destination" they will show the footage. I'm guessing there will not be a zombie in sight, but it will probably still be creepy as hell.

Something Good, Something Okay

I've never been a fan of true crime books. Frankly, they bore me to death or are filled with too much of the author's opinion/speculation as to border on fiction. Alternatively, a solid book on criminology or forensic psychology is completely fascinating. I think the difference is that I want to know information from the inside from both the hunter and the hunted. For instance, tidbit like "The Varieties of Homicide and its Research" from the FBI site are compelling to me.

In "The Unknown Darkness" Gregg McCrary writes as a former member of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit, also known as a "Profiler". I've watched the movies, as I'm sure most people have, that depict the criminal profilers as the infallible, precise and omnipotent. The reality as told by McCrary is less than perfect, but still compelling. This particular book focuses on cases that were noteworthy for McCrary, such as the Waco, incident with the Branch Davidians (utter lack of planning and communication) and the historical Sam Shepard case (he did it). This was an interesting book and had some great insight from a successful forensic psychologist.

On the other hand, I'm also a fan of well-written food books but this one just didn't quite do it for me. Robb Walsh is a two-time James Beard winner for writing so I thought his newest book "Are You Really Going to Eat That?" would be an easy win. The first half of the book was fun, very readable and I would recommend it. Walsh's description of Country-Fried Steak bordered on food pornography, in a good way. He obviously loves food and is a defender of food diversity.

But at some point during the second half I started to skip around and look for the pieces of flair. Unfortunately, I either couldn't find the good stuff or my attention span had shorted out so I just didn't care. Regardless, I had to push through the last chapters. However, to be fair, it may have just been me so don't take my word for it, read it for yourself if you are food book freak.

You can't buy humor like this

While browsing around I came across a funny story on another blog (Chaos Theory). Apparently during a severe storm a North Carolina local news channel was posting business updates as a service to the community and things went downhill rather quickly. The article talks about the impact and gives examples but some lovely soul captured screenshots of the fun.