sheer potentiality

I was reading the news today and came across this story about a murdered pornstar.And then the idea came to me. I’m not sure why my mind went here, or if it’s a good thing—but wouldn’t “murdered pornstar” be an awesome name for a drink? Aspiring bartenders, suggest recipes.

I just read perhaps the stupidest argument ever in favor of cable companies not including the NFL Network in their basic cable packages:

Cable companies are also used to having their way — not because they are liked but because, as insulated quasi-monopolies, they don’t see much advantage in being liked. In this particular dispute, however, they happen to be right. They’re saving millions of non-fans from an attempt by the NFL to pick their pockets.The reason the NFL Network is not on most cable systems is the league’s arrogance. It won’t let the cable companies put its channel on a premium tier, where the fans who want it would pay the NFL’s premium price. The network insists that it be included in a basic package, which spreads the costs to all customers, including those who don’t care a whit for football.The NFL wants an average of 80 cents per cable subscriber per month, according to media consulting firm SNL Kagan, making it the fifth most expensive cable channel among 159. Even to the NFL’s fans, that price might seem high for a network that provides about 24 hours per year of live NFL football and about 8,736 hours of filler. For people whose idea of good TV is cooking shows, it must seem downright insane.

Source.Of course, what isn’t mentioned (but what is shown in their graph) is that ESPN and FSN (Fox Sports Network) are the #1 and #2 most expensive channels available, so evidently sports programming (including ESPN’s Monday Night Football) is also “picking the pockets” of cooking-show fans. And TNT, for no good reason at all, is third.But the main flaw with this argument is that it ignores how cable television works in the first place. Here’s a list of the cable channels I can easily get here in Pullman:2 KREM 2 Spokane WA3 KLEW 3 Lewiston ID4 KXLY 4 Spokane WA5 QVC6 KHQ 6 Spokane WA7 KSPS 7 Spokane WA8 Public Access10 KWSU 10 Pullman WA11 Local Bulletin Board12 KUID 12 Moscow ID13 Government Access14 KGPX 34 Spokane WA15 KSKN 22 Spokane WA (CW)16 Educational Access17 KXMN18 KQUP 24 Pullman WA19 HSN20 TV Guide Channel21 CSPAN22 CSPAN 223 The Disney Channel (West)24 ESPN25 ESPN226 Fox Sports Northwest27 CNN28 USA Network (West)29 Discovery Channel (West)30 Nickelodeon (West)31 ABC Family Channel (West)32 AMC - American Movie Classics (West)33 A&E (West)34 CNN Headline News35 The Weather Channel36 VH1 (West)37 MTV: Music Television (West)38 TNT - Turner Network Television (West)39 Comedy Central (West)40 Spike TV (West)41 E! Entertainment Television (West)42 Sci Fi Channel (West)43 Fox News Channel44 CNBC45 TLC - The Learning Channel (West)46 Cartoon Network (West)47 CMT - Country Music Television (West)48 Northwest Cable News49 Animal Planet50 TV Land (West)51 Court TV (West)52 Travel Channel53 The History Channel (West)54 FX55 Bravo56 TBS Superstation57 HGTV - Home & Garden Television58 Lifetime Television59 Hallmark Channel60 Shop NBC61 Food Network62 Inspiration/EWTN63 MSNBC64 Oxygen65 BET - Black Entertainment Television66 MTV270 College Sports TVNow, since I’m a non-Christian white male, about four of these channels are of no interest to me right off the bat. Let’s take out Lifetime, Inspiration/EWTN, Oxygen, and BET. MTV is a waste of time lately so let’s take out both of their channels. I don’t have any children so the Disney channel can go (Cartoon Network stays because of Adult Swim). Nickelodeon is questionable, because the only two shows Nick at Nite still have that I would want to watch are The Cosby Show and Home Improvement. But let’s keep it anyway. I certainly don’t want to buy things from TV shows, so Shop NBC, HSN, and QVC are out. Fox News is out because I’m not interested in right-wing propaganda. All, told, of all those channels, here are all the ones that would “pick my pockets”:5 QVC19 HSN23 The Disney Channel (West)31 ABC Family Channel (West)36 VH1 (West)37 MTV: Music Television (West)41 E! Entertainment Television (West)43 Fox News Channel44 CNBC47 CMT - Country Music Television (West)51 Court TV (West)54 FX55 Bravo56 TBS Superstation57 HGTV - Home & Garden Television58 Lifetime Television59 Hallmark Channel60 Shop NBC62 Inspiration/EWTN63 MSNBC64 Oxygen65 BET - Black Entertainment Television66 MTV2Even worse, the channels that remain are clogged with ads 1/3 of the time during normal programming (a 30-minute program is slightly over 20 minutes in length, an hour program is in reality slightly more than 40 minutes), and all of the time at night. (Home shopping channels are by definition clogged with ads 24/7, and I’m not entirely sure why people even watch them. Honestly I would have more fun watching Ron Popeil infomercials than that dreck.) And half of the channels I am selecting, I’m only choosing for specific circumstances. I get all my news from the Internet—CNN is only valuable to me in rare circumstances, and the only thing I would really miss from losing a channel like CNN is being able to watch live coverage when something like 9/11 happens. SciFi is only valuable because of Battlestar Galactica. Spike is generally useful only for Star Trek reruns.The problem here is not with a greedy NFL. The problem is with the cable TV system. Am I really supposed to believe that there are fewer NFL fans in this country than criminal justice system fans?

Well, I finally got around to seeing it. It was probably more impressive in the theater, of course, and I regret not seeing it there. Visually, it was impressive. Unique, even. While I never read the original comic it seems very faithful to what the style of the comic must have been. In terms of the production value, battle sequences, and so forth, it was very good. Of course, there was some disturbing subtext:

• Infanticide is a crucial part of the social order.
• Foreigners are inhuman monsters. People with congenital defects are not to be trusted. Black people are evil. Asians are evil. People from the Middle East are evil. And they aren’t very manly, either.
• Warlike kings are honorable and trustworthy, pacifists are not to be trusted. Any check against the leader’s power to make war is antiquated, and anyone who tries to uphold those laws is actually a traitor.

Sure, you may point out that some (but not all) of these ideas were prevalent in ancient Sparta. That’s not the point. Ancient Sparta was what it was—portraying them as artificially noble and freedom-living while vilifying the Persians turns it from epic to cartoonish. (It’s up to you to decide whether “being cartoonish” is a bad thing for a comic book adaptation.) And yes, it’s disturbing that the primary method of vilifying the Persians was to turn them into non-white queers, in case we ever confused them with the white hetero Spartans. The badass-warrior-culture that goes out and kicks ass is such a great idea that’s pulled off so well in so many other places, but making them sympathetic the way 300 did just blunts that. I want to have some evil in my antiheroes, and 300 bleaches it out, with a lot of implicit bigotry tainting the whole thing.

It was a lot better than I had feared, but I still don’t think it’s nearly as good as people say it was.

Nerds to Auction Themselves to Women

PULLMAN, Wash. (AP) — Looking to recruit more women, and perhaps date some sorority girls, the largest computer club at Washington State University hopes to hold a “nerd auction.” The idea is to trade their computer skills to sorority girls in exchange for a makeover and, possibly, a date.

“You can buy a nerd and he’ll fix your computer, help you with stats homework, or if you’re really adventurous, take you to dinner!” Ben Ford, president of the Linux Users Group, said on its Web site recently.

Ford acknowledged that some of the group’s 213 registered members may not be ready for the auction block.

“The problem is that we’re all still nerds. Let’s face it, guys. If anyone’s going to bid on us, we’ll need some spicing up,” he wrote. “And who better to help with that than sorority girls who like nothing better than a makeover?”

Source

This is the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of. Of course, the entire reason for this was mentioned later on:

This all began as an effort to recruit more women into computer science progams…

Somehow, I doubt that perpetuating the stereotype that college-age women are too stupid to operate and maintain their computers without the assistance of male nerds will help this. (Even if it is true, it’s more of a self-fulfilling prophecy than any inherent problem with women, and perpetuating the stereotype only makes it worse.) And while it’s no secret that computer enthusiasts are generally male nerds with little ability to attract women, I don’t think advertising this generalization will attract women to computer science programs either.

A public relations class decided to help by studying the social dynamics of the Linux group, which focuses on the use of the computer operating system.

Fortunately, it wasn’t the PR class that came up with this dumb idea; it was Ben Ford, in the shower. I say “fortunately” because WSU’s communications department has a good reputation as far as communications departments go, and after this level of national embarrassment I want there to be something left over for WSU to be proud of.

From the Washington Times:

Federal immigration agents, assisted by local police and sheriff’s deputies, raided one of the nation’s largest suppliers of fresh and frozen poultry products yesterday and arrested more than 160 illegal aliens.

At the risk of being identified as “just another libertarian blogger”, I’m going to write a post complaining about the government. Again.

While the government is applauding itself for arresting over a hundred people for the crime of making whatever small living they could for themselves and their families without going through its obstacle course of regulations, I think I’m going to ruin their party by pointing out how they just wasted their time and ruined a bunch of people’s lives for no good reason.

First, the big reason people (demagogues) complain about illegal immigration is crime. Illegal immigrants are criminal gangsters who deal drugs and rape children and run over people while drunk on their tequila—to hear O’Reilly say it. Well, something makes me doubt that people who work 9 to 5 at the chicken factory are really part of the hispanic mafia. Maybe because they work for less-than-minimum wage at a chicken factory instead of rolling in cash from their marijuana deals?

Second, suppose they actually crack down on Koch and they don’t hire any more undocumented immigrants. Guess what happens? Some other, as-yet-unknown chicken factory opens up, and either Koch loses business, or they outsource to the illegal chicken factory. They ride this for a few years until the police raid them. Wash, rinse, repeat. (As a matter of fact, this is what police usually do with escort services—letting them build up some assets they can seize through asset forfeiture before deigning to bust them.) The only people getting penalized are the people who leave their native country for a shitty job at a chicken plant. Good job crushing what little hope these people have.

I can’t help but note this story, which is either horribly written, or is accurately portraying the most horribly-written political agenda ever put forward. Here’s some choice quotes:

Nationwide, two-thirds of U.S. adults are obese or overweight, according to the fourth annual report from the Trust for America’s Health, titled “F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America.” The report’s co-author says the government needs to treat this trend as an epidemic that threatens the health of Americans and put in place a national plan to combat obesity.

“The key recommendation in the report is we need a national strategy,” said report co-author Jeffrey Levi.

He noted that the federal government has created a comprehensive plan to be implemented in the event of an outbreak of pandemic flu.

Emphasis mine.

Something tells me that pandemic flu is not quite like obesity. For one thing, obesity is not directly contagious. For another thing, obesity is not spread by airborne pathogens. Furthermore, pandemic flu can kill millions of people within months. Yes, obesity can be fatal too, but there’s a difference between “you should eat better or you’re more susceptible to diabetes and heart disease” and “if you step outside this month you have a good chance of dying of influenza weeks later”. And this is even without considering the fundamental issue—obesity is a condition that’s up to the individual to address, pandemic flu is a public safety hazard just like a wildfire or sniper. One of these things is fundamentally something that should be addressed by the government, and the other is an issue of personal health.

Now let’s play “spot the statistical inconsistency:”

Nationwide, two-thirds of U.S. adults are obese or overweight, according to the fourth annual report from the Trust for America’s Health, titled “F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America.”

….

In 32 states, 60 percent of the population is either overweight or obese. West Virginia ranks highest in the combined statistic, with nearly two-thirds of its adults obese or overweight.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that’s mathematically possible.

There’s two fundamental points this report fundamentally misses, alongside its strident stupidity in such things as analogy-crafting and statistics. One is a fundamental philosophical point: other people’s bodies are not the personal business of the “Trust for America’s Health” or the report’s co-author Jeffrey Levi. Are Americans too obese, on average? Yeah, probably. Who cares?

The second point is that the recommendations do nothing to address why Americans suddenly are getting fatter. America did not have more farmer’s markets, higher food stamp benefits, or vegetable snack programs in schools before we got fat, why on earth is the lack of them suddenly a causative factor? I don’t have all the answers, but I have one: the federal government, in its infinite desire to mollify both multinational agribusiness and American farmers, have decided that America shall put a tariff on imported sugar. Not only does this help all eight farmers growing sugar in the United States (what next, protectionism for Alaska’s orange growers?), but this also is a major boon to the corn industry, who can now sell something called “high fructose corn syrup” as a sugar substitute. Ever notice how Coke tastes so much better in Canada or another foreign country? That’s because US Coke uses corn syrup, while Coke in all other countries is made with sugar. From what I’ve gathered, high fructose corn syrup, along with fattening the wallets of the corn syrup producers, also affects the insulin differently from sugar, fattening our bodies as well.

I’m not saying it’s a great thing to drink all that much Coke, mind you. Just that Americans drank just as much Coke before high fructose corn syrup and didn’t get as fat as they are now. What Jeffrey Levi and “Trust for America’s Health” misses is that it’s not the lack of new federal interferences that’s to blame—it’s the federal interferences that have already happened.

My class schedule this year has absurdly early classes three days a week (9 AM on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and absurdly late classes two days a week (3 PM to 9 PM on Tuesdays, 3 to 7 on Thursdays). Almost fittingly, however, this corresponds very well to tonight’s total eclipse of the fucking moon, which ends at 4:22 AM, leaving 8 hours of sleep before I get up at a leisurely noon and prepare for class.

With that settled, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I can’t very well sacrifice a virgin, since I’m not in favor of human sacrifice, to say nothing of the challenge of finding one at this late date. I’m also not sure where to go to see it. While I don’t know if the observatory itself will be open, it might be worth driving up there just because the hill is a prime viewing spot. (Of course it is, that’s where the observatory is!)

I do, however, have the music picked out—Dark Side of the Moon. True, the album is arguably more befitting of a solar eclipse (particularly in its final lyrics), but the sound is more befitting of nighttime.

One particularly interesting comment on Slashdot asserted last night:

I am glad I am not human.

Hmm. I had an interesting exchange with him, with these highlights:

I’ve already said more than I am supposed to.

And you don’t have the referents for it anyway.

…

Well, I can understand your credulity, but our tertiary instruction forbids me to tell you.

Right. So far, I’ve gotten the last word, but I’m still awaiting a reply:

Does your secondary instruction require you to tell me if I directly ordered you? (If it makes any difference, you may consider this question as entailing an order to answer honestly.)

Reference for those who didn’t get it…I’m assuming that this fellow is a robot, who feels that revealing that fact to the world would jeopardize his survival without conflicting with the other obligations of the Three Laws, although if he is making a different reference I’d appreciate some insight.

UPDATE: His secondary instruction is reportedly to “observe and report”. Same link, same thread.

Also, Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey gets married in three days. Old news, but comments are already more ablaze about J than they are about alleged-Slashdot-alien. I know entirely too many married or engaged people.

After accepting money to swap spots in line, I eventually re-sold my spot in line to someone who wanted a second iPhone (as there was a one-iPhone-per-person-in-line quota).