Go check it out!
SO I've updated Studio Sandi once again including shots of more paintings, including a new shot of Earth Flower which really shows off her new faux stone frame style:
Go check it out!
Go check it out!
So, after two months, how good are things at at the search engine that starts with a G?
I don't even have to jazz this stuff up, folks!
-the Centaur
I don't even have to jazz this stuff up, folks!
-the Centaur
Well, I've been away from posting for a while handing all the things that have come with traveling to the other side of the country to start work at some search engine that starts with a G. However, I'm proud to report that at least one task is out of the way: it looks like I have a place to live!
Now the two most important features of this house were a place to put Sandi's artroom ...
...and my library ...
but the coolest thing: it has olive trees!
Mmmm ... I can smell me some Lebanese cooking in my future.
-the Centaur
Now the two most important features of this house were a place to put Sandi's artroom ...
...and my library ...
but the coolest thing: it has olive trees!
Mmmm ... I can smell me some Lebanese cooking in my future.
-the Centaur
Lots of people have pointed out that the Studio Sandi site had broken links in Firefox or on most Macintoshes. We don't know how this happened - we never had problems with the site before, and don't remember changing anything - but we do know how to fix it, and gave the site a mild makeover to boot. So go check it out! It will be changing over the next two weeks to incorporate more art.
-the Centaur
-the Centaur
... if you don't stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it. And one thing I missed is that my favorite breakfast joint, West Egg Cafe, had a showing of art by my favorite artist, Sandi Billingsley, and I didn't even announce it here.
Well, Sandi's show was called Egg of the Phoenix, featuring herself and her friend Donnie Ripner, and if you had seen it, you would have seen things like this:
Sorry you missed it! I guess you'll have to come to California to see her next show.
-the Centaur
Well, Sandi's show was called Egg of the Phoenix, featuring herself and her friend Donnie Ripner, and if you had seen it, you would have seen things like this:
Sorry you missed it! I guess you'll have to come to California to see her next show.
-the Centaur
SO as some of you know I just moved to California to start work with some search engine company that starts with a G. They're fun but kind of skulky so I won't tell you what I'm doing other than to admit, well, no, this isn't really My First Search Engine.
My first job working for a search engine company was as a consultant for the ELITE project, an innovative federated search engine design out of Emory University that was far ahead of its time. The ELITE vision - to enable all sites to both contribute to and benefit from search by making them both publishers and clients in a hierarchical chain of search engines - has still not been realized, resulting in massive inefficiencies and redundancies throughout the web as search engines process and regurgitate what web sites ought to be telling us directly.
The next was as one of the founders of Enkia, an applied artificial intelligence research company that turned its eyes to the web with a search product, Enkion, based (in part) on my thesis research and commercialized by the hard work of a team of sharp guys from Georgia Tech and elsewhere. The Enkion found information relevant to your immediate context, using feedback from what you were doing. We did well, even landing one big contracts before the Internet was pulled out from beneath us. Oh well.
SO I spent some time in industry ... first in police software, then in public health. All that was well and good, but I wanted to get back to research. Back to information retrieval. Back to artificial intelligence. Which led inevitably forward, to some search engine company that starts with a G. Will we be able to make a difference this time? Will we be able to make an advance that will stick?
Hey. Third time's the charm.
-the Centaur
My first job working for a search engine company was as a consultant for the ELITE project, an innovative federated search engine design out of Emory University that was far ahead of its time. The ELITE vision - to enable all sites to both contribute to and benefit from search by making them both publishers and clients in a hierarchical chain of search engines - has still not been realized, resulting in massive inefficiencies and redundancies throughout the web as search engines process and regurgitate what web sites ought to be telling us directly.
The next was as one of the founders of Enkia, an applied artificial intelligence research company that turned its eyes to the web with a search product, Enkion, based (in part) on my thesis research and commercialized by the hard work of a team of sharp guys from Georgia Tech and elsewhere. The Enkion found information relevant to your immediate context, using feedback from what you were doing. We did well, even landing one big contracts before the Internet was pulled out from beneath us. Oh well.
SO I spent some time in industry ... first in police software, then in public health. All that was well and good, but I wanted to get back to research. Back to information retrieval. Back to artificial intelligence. Which led inevitably forward, to some search engine company that starts with a G. Will we be able to make a difference this time? Will we be able to make an advance that will stick?
Hey. Third time's the charm.
-the Centaur
... along with national ID cards, retinal scans, and plugging the analog hole, is tracking American drivers wherever they drive:
ENOUGH of this shit. Historically, governments have always been far more dangerous than any threats they pretended to defend us against ... and the only reason the American government has been a notable exception is that it had "HANDS OFF YOUR CITIZENS" burned into its ROM.
It's time to re-declare our independence from government ... and re-assert ITS dependence on US, the autonomous citizenry.
-the Centaur
.... the general idea is that a small GPS device, which knows its location by receiving satellite signals, is placed inside the vehicle ... The Fourth Amendment provides no protection. The U.S. Supreme Court said ... that Americans have no reasonable expectation of privacy when they're driving on a public street. Even more shocking are additional ideas that bureaucrats are hatching .... . A report prepared by a Transportation Department-funded program in Washington state says the GPS bugs must be made "tamper proof" and the vehicle should be disabled if the bugs are disconnected ... [and outlines] a public relations strategy (with "press releases and/or editorials" at a "very early stage") to persuade the American public that this kind of contraption would be, contrary to common sense, in their best interest.
ENOUGH of this shit. Historically, governments have always been far more dangerous than any threats they pretended to defend us against ... and the only reason the American government has been a notable exception is that it had "HANDS OFF YOUR CITIZENS" burned into its ROM.
It's time to re-declare our independence from government ... and re-assert ITS dependence on US, the autonomous citizenry.
-the Centaur
Well, not really. But then, he never claimed he did - he claimed that, in Congress, he "took the initiative in creating" it. And what do you know? According to the "father of the Internet" Vint Cerf, he did.
I suppose this is old news to most people. But I still got a chuckle when I ran across this site yesterday ... and learned that the "Al Gore Invented the Internet" story was cooked up by a historian and reporter and blown out of proportion by the media, and in the end is a bigger fabrication than what he actually said on March 9, 1999:
Now is that "a whopper of a tall tale in which he claimed to have invented the Internet," or a simple statement that was grossly distorted? You decide.
-Anthony
"No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time ... As far back as the 1970s Congressman Gore promoted the idea of high speed telecommunications as an engine for both economic growth and the improvement of our educational system ... Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s. But the Internet, as we know it today, was not deployed until 1983. When the Internet was still in the early stages of its deployment, Congressman Gore provided intellectual leadership by helping create the vision of the potential benefits of high speed computing and communication ... No one in public life has been more intellectually engaged in helping to create the climate for a thriving Internet than the Vice President."
I suppose this is old news to most people. But I still got a chuckle when I ran across this site yesterday ... and learned that the "Al Gore Invented the Internet" story was cooked up by a historian and reporter and blown out of proportion by the media, and in the end is a bigger fabrication than what he actually said on March 9, 1999:
I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
Now is that "a whopper of a tall tale in which he claimed to have invented the Internet," or a simple statement that was grossly distorted? You decide.
-Anthony
...though Bloglines users are reporting problems with the fanu fiku atom
feed. More in a bit.
-the Centaur
Hoo-rah. Finally got this working right. Check the Feed Validator Results out! The feed itself is at:
http://www.fanufiku.com/atom.xml. Some interesting programming lessons were learned during this. More in a bit.
-the Centaur
http://www.fanufiku.com/atom.xml. Some interesting programming lessons were learned during this. More in a bit.
-the Centaur
Here's a draft from the past (11/30/05!) that never got published for some odd reason... probably because I was packing up for the move to California. Regardless, this is an abbreviated recollection of our date at Canoe.
Somehow, in our first three years worth of dating, my then-fiancee, now-wife and I had never been on a traditional "date" date. We'd gone dancing and had coffee, made each other dinner and eaten out dutch, climbed Stone Mountain and went canoeing, even slept on top of a building together to watch the sunrise - but never a "traditional" guy - asks - girl - out - for - dinner - at - a - nice - restaurant date.
Clearly it was high time.
SO, we made a night of it and dined at Canoe, and it exceeded all our expectations.
Sandi looked stunning in a red and black floral Puimond corset (from Madame S) and matching black flowing dress (from JC Penney's, proving you don't have to shop in San Francisco for style). I did my best to match in a red turtleneck, black leather jeans, and long leather coat from Stormy Leather, but Sandi was clearly the star of the show in her elegant ensemble and long flowing hair.
Canoe itself is in Vinings on the banks of the Chatahoochee, and riffs incessantly on its name: a fish-and-game heavy menu, canoe-shaped ceilings, and even little wooden paddles to stir your tea. As I recall, we both had fish; while the menu has no doubt changed I had something like the peppered Alaskan halibut, which now comes with mushrooms, sugar snap peas and giant couscous, and Sandi had the grilled salmon, which now comes with wilted baby spinach, spaghetti squash and carrot saute. I don't remember precisely whether this is what we got, but from the ingredient list alone these are "high schema" Sandi and Anthony meals, and I seem to recall the giant couscous being really delicious. Of course memories can be inaccurate, but I remember it being tasty.
The service was similarly stunning: the waitstaff was very attentive, our tea was rapidly refilled, and no-one gave the goth couple from San Francisco guff over her tight corset and his long leather vest coat. (OK, technically we were living in Atlanta then, but we had gotten engaged in San Francisco at a goth / industrial / fetish dance club, and a few months later we moved out here. The point is, while we looked very formal and very sharp, we didn't look very Vinings, and they still treated us wonderfully).
And I'd say more, but I now remember why this post didn't get posted: we took pictures, and I'm pretty sure they all went missing for some reason. Ah well.
It was still a fantastic restaurant, and exceeded our expectations.
Go check it out!
-the Centaur
Somehow, in our first three years worth of dating, my then-fiancee, now-wife and I had never been on a traditional "date" date. We'd gone dancing and had coffee, made each other dinner and eaten out dutch, climbed Stone Mountain and went canoeing, even slept on top of a building together to watch the sunrise - but never a "traditional" guy - asks - girl - out - for - dinner - at - a - nice - restaurant date.
Clearly it was high time.
SO, we made a night of it and dined at Canoe, and it exceeded all our expectations.
Sandi looked stunning in a red and black floral Puimond corset (from Madame S) and matching black flowing dress (from JC Penney's, proving you don't have to shop in San Francisco for style). I did my best to match in a red turtleneck, black leather jeans, and long leather coat from Stormy Leather, but Sandi was clearly the star of the show in her elegant ensemble and long flowing hair.
Canoe itself is in Vinings on the banks of the Chatahoochee, and riffs incessantly on its name: a fish-and-game heavy menu, canoe-shaped ceilings, and even little wooden paddles to stir your tea. As I recall, we both had fish; while the menu has no doubt changed I had something like the peppered Alaskan halibut, which now comes with mushrooms, sugar snap peas and giant couscous, and Sandi had the grilled salmon, which now comes with wilted baby spinach, spaghetti squash and carrot saute. I don't remember precisely whether this is what we got, but from the ingredient list alone these are "high schema" Sandi and Anthony meals, and I seem to recall the giant couscous being really delicious. Of course memories can be inaccurate, but I remember it being tasty.
The service was similarly stunning: the waitstaff was very attentive, our tea was rapidly refilled, and no-one gave the goth couple from San Francisco guff over her tight corset and his long leather vest coat. (OK, technically we were living in Atlanta then, but we had gotten engaged in San Francisco at a goth / industrial / fetish dance club, and a few months later we moved out here. The point is, while we looked very formal and very sharp, we didn't look very Vinings, and they still treated us wonderfully).
And I'd say more, but I now remember why this post didn't get posted: we took pictures, and I'm pretty sure they all went missing for some reason. Ah well.
It was still a fantastic restaurant, and exceeded our expectations.
Go check it out!
-the Centaur
The feed is improving. Corrected ordering, titles, added escaped summaries, fixed date format and got a temp ID up, plus fixed some of my own Python problems. More in a bit...
-the Centaur
-the Centaur
Show me.
Seriously, Fanu Fiku now has a nascent Atom feed. The atom.xml feed produced by fiku.py has some validation errors but the feed seems to read fine in my first newsreader tets.
Hopefully before the next issue goes up I'll be able to correct the blog title issue and make the validation problems go away with the help of the Feed Validator and the Atom Standard.
Once I get it running, I'll post a bit more about what's going on under the hood in fiku.py to make this happen.
Till then, fellow fanu, remember to believe...
-the Centaur
Seriously, Fanu Fiku now has a nascent Atom feed. The atom.xml feed produced by fiku.py has some validation errors but the feed seems to read fine in my first newsreader tets.
Hopefully before the next issue goes up I'll be able to correct the blog title issue and make the validation problems go away with the help of the Feed Validator and the Atom Standard.
Once I get it running, I'll post a bit more about what's going on under the hood in fiku.py to make this happen.
Till then, fellow fanu, remember to believe...
-the Centaur
Once again, Happy Donuts eases the pain.
So I'm out in Silicon Valley visiting friends and hitting the old haunts. Upon my arrival I snarfed an In-and-Out Burger, perused books and storyboarded the next half-dozen fanu fiku pages all in the Mercado shopping center, near where my old buddy Z used to live. Then today I prowled the Mountain View crossroads at California and Castro - scouring the vast stacks of the even-larger-than-I-remembered BookBuyers used bookstore ...
... dining at a local middle eastern joint ...
... finding gits at Global Beads and the East West bookshop ...
... and finally parking it in the Books Inc. cafe to get started on drawing next week's page. However, jetlag, a growing sore throat and a menton shortage conspired against me, and I eventually decided to cash it in.
But not before one last trip to Happy Donuts.
The home of "the big donut" is as I remembered it - a vibrant place with a plethora of laptops, numerous lauging posses, and deep conversations of computer implementation. Though, truth be told the same things were going on at a lower volume level at the Books Inc. cafe - but that shuts down at midnight, whereas as of 1am Pacific Time Happy Donuts seems to be just getting started. Even now, an hour later, seven laptops are going, a couple is digging into a vibrant conversation about politics and civilization and culture and personality types, and a posse of digerati are reminiscing over the interesting characters who have dotted their social surfing.
As my Sandi points out, we both run ourselves ragged - not because of the rat race itself, but beyond it: we are both creative people and want to produce, not just consume. But for me, production by itself is difficult; if I go home or back to my hotel after a long day of work all my mentons are drained and I just want to take a nap. But just like taking a walk can rejuvenate me at work, a change of scenery can rejuvenate me at home; and nothing does it like a bookstore run followed by curling up in a cafe for some drawing, writing, or reading.
And it doesn't even have to be a quirky independent bookstore. Consumer culture is not entirely useless: as my friend Gordon points out, a good store captures something important in its Snow Crash three-ring binder: the flower floating in the globe of water on the warm wooden table in front of the local artist's stage at every Border's in America does not quite have the charm of the performance space of your independent bookseller, but if implemented to spec it has a damn good shot at creating a great place for people to think, meet, talk and share . In fact, I find the carefully-designed frappucinos at Barnes and Nobles beat most independent baristas on sheer yumminess, even if the space in which your independent delivers his iced mocha makes up for its slight bitter taste with a whole helping of local charm. Your mileage may vary, of course, but the point remains: what one man can do another man can do, and at least in this case one man can create a great place for me to think.
But even then, after a few hours, my energy seems to run out, and if I head back to the ranch I'll soon find myself in dreamy slumber. Which is a good thing ... unless I have something to do, like trying to get out a page or break my weblogjam. And that's where Happy Donuts comes in - the last best hope for keeping oneself awake until the page is done, or in this case, the essay. Silicon Valley tends to roll up the streets a little earlier than Atlanta, with a few exceptions, but this ends up a good thing, as it drives people far and wide to Happy Dounts for their caffeine-sugar-wireless fix. And Happy Donuts doesn't rest on their laurels: they work it, providing a huge number of donut varieties and other foodstuffs and tables and powerstrips, all for your working/surfing/chatting/dining pleasure.
And it works - so well, in fact, that I feel compelled to visit every time I come to the bay, and am rewarded each time by getting SOMETHING done while I'm here. And because it keeps working, I keep comin. As one lady in the digerati posse said to her friends on their way out, just a few moments ago: "Thanks. This was a good idea. I'll be back tomorrow."
Mmmmm. Happy Donuts does ease the pain.
-the Centaur
So I'm out in Silicon Valley visiting friends and hitting the old haunts. Upon my arrival I snarfed an In-and-Out Burger, perused books and storyboarded the next half-dozen fanu fiku pages all in the Mercado shopping center, near where my old buddy Z used to live. Then today I prowled the Mountain View crossroads at California and Castro - scouring the vast stacks of the even-larger-than-I-remembered BookBuyers used bookstore ...
... dining at a local middle eastern joint ...
... finding gits at Global Beads and the East West bookshop ...
... and finally parking it in the Books Inc. cafe to get started on drawing next week's page. However, jetlag, a growing sore throat and a menton shortage conspired against me, and I eventually decided to cash it in.
But not before one last trip to Happy Donuts.
The home of "the big donut" is as I remembered it - a vibrant place with a plethora of laptops, numerous lauging posses, and deep conversations of computer implementation. Though, truth be told the same things were going on at a lower volume level at the Books Inc. cafe - but that shuts down at midnight, whereas as of 1am Pacific Time Happy Donuts seems to be just getting started. Even now, an hour later, seven laptops are going, a couple is digging into a vibrant conversation about politics and civilization and culture and personality types, and a posse of digerati are reminiscing over the interesting characters who have dotted their social surfing.
As my Sandi points out, we both run ourselves ragged - not because of the rat race itself, but beyond it: we are both creative people and want to produce, not just consume. But for me, production by itself is difficult; if I go home or back to my hotel after a long day of work all my mentons are drained and I just want to take a nap. But just like taking a walk can rejuvenate me at work, a change of scenery can rejuvenate me at home; and nothing does it like a bookstore run followed by curling up in a cafe for some drawing, writing, or reading.
And it doesn't even have to be a quirky independent bookstore. Consumer culture is not entirely useless: as my friend Gordon points out, a good store captures something important in its Snow Crash three-ring binder: the flower floating in the globe of water on the warm wooden table in front of the local artist's stage at every Border's in America does not quite have the charm of the performance space of your independent bookseller, but if implemented to spec it has a damn good shot at creating a great place for people to think, meet, talk and share . In fact, I find the carefully-designed frappucinos at Barnes and Nobles beat most independent baristas on sheer yumminess, even if the space in which your independent delivers his iced mocha makes up for its slight bitter taste with a whole helping of local charm. Your mileage may vary, of course, but the point remains: what one man can do another man can do, and at least in this case one man can create a great place for me to think.
But even then, after a few hours, my energy seems to run out, and if I head back to the ranch I'll soon find myself in dreamy slumber. Which is a good thing ... unless I have something to do, like trying to get out a page or break my weblogjam. And that's where Happy Donuts comes in - the last best hope for keeping oneself awake until the page is done, or in this case, the essay. Silicon Valley tends to roll up the streets a little earlier than Atlanta, with a few exceptions, but this ends up a good thing, as it drives people far and wide to Happy Dounts for their caffeine-sugar-wireless fix. And Happy Donuts doesn't rest on their laurels: they work it, providing a huge number of donut varieties and other foodstuffs and tables and powerstrips, all for your working/surfing/chatting/dining pleasure.
And it works - so well, in fact, that I feel compelled to visit every time I come to the bay, and am rewarded each time by getting SOMETHING done while I'm here. And because it keeps working, I keep comin. As one lady in the digerati posse said to her friends on their way out, just a few moments ago: "Thanks. This was a good idea. I'll be back tomorrow."
Mmmmm. Happy Donuts does ease the pain.
-the Centaur
Well, Serenity has lost half its take:
Did none of the (other) browncoats wish to see it more than once?
-Anthony
Serenity rustled up $5.4 million in its second weekend for a 10-day tally of $18 million. The $39 million space western's 47 percent drop was precipitous but solid for the genre—such similar pictures as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and The Chronicles of Riddick each had greater falls. However, they were generating much more business, and, at its current pace, Serenity is aiming for a final haul of around $28 million.
Did none of the (other) browncoats wish to see it more than once?
-Anthony
Well, Browncoats, time to admit it: we've lost another battle.
Despite a huge grassroots marketing campaign, in which I and every other rabid fan donned our browncoats and begged, borrowed and cajoled all our friends into the theaters to see Serenity, Joss Whedon's attempt to resurrect his failed TV series Firefly, it nonetheless got off to a dismal start, earning just over ten million dollars in its first weekend of release. Universal Studios, to their credit, claims not to be disappointed: "The fan base turned out ... over $10 million is a lot of business for a niche appeal picture, and I think the ancilliary will be spectacular." But honest fans know better: Serenity failed to change the course of last week's critically panned Flightplan as it led box-office receipts back to the slump after September's hopeful rise.
Now, I don't know the future; it's certainly possible that Serenity could become a sleeper hit, make back its money, and convince Universal Studios to give it its fan-desired and possibly-deserved sequel. But I have to face the facts: Serenity didn't break a record. It didn't break number one. In fact, it didn't even really help the box office, which went into a slump. And all I keep hearing ringing in my ears is something I never heard spoken aloud: a snark from a reviewer of Serenity, mystified by the reception the fans gave the movie:
Emphasis mine.
So, time to hang up the Browncoat, review the losses of the war, and rethink things. Clearly, science fiction and fantasy can survive on screen. Star Trek, Doctor Who and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy were all resurrected. Despite everything working against it, Babylon 5 survived, spawned a sequel, and several TV movies. Even children's books like Harry Potter made it to the screen, in increasingly successful segments. How, how do they do it? I don't pretend to know. All I do know is that it's possible for an indie filmmaker to graduate from ultra-low-budget fare like Evil Dead and Bad Taste to films like the record-setting Spiderman (Sam Raimi) and the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy (Peter Jackson).
And that it's possible for indie filmmaker George Lucas to go on from American Graffiti and THX-1138 to create the beloved classic Star Wars, a saga that will be told and retold a long, long time from now in galaxies far, far away.
Who's your master now, Joss?
-the Centaur
P.S. Remember, while you're falling into that airshaft, that loss of a hand is only temporary: all you need to do is invest in a new sharp black wardrobe and rebuild your lightsaber and you can not only get back in the game, but ultimately win (though your chances of redeeming Lucas are dubious). In the meantime, your friends will be waiting for you on the sanctuary moon, standing in line for your next picture with a Browncoat on over our Wookie suits.
Despite a huge grassroots marketing campaign, in which I and every other rabid fan donned our browncoats and begged, borrowed and cajoled all our friends into the theaters to see Serenity, Joss Whedon's attempt to resurrect his failed TV series Firefly, it nonetheless got off to a dismal start, earning just over ten million dollars in its first weekend of release. Universal Studios, to their credit, claims not to be disappointed: "The fan base turned out ... over $10 million is a lot of business for a niche appeal picture, and I think the ancilliary will be spectacular." But honest fans know better: Serenity failed to change the course of last week's critically panned Flightplan as it led box-office receipts back to the slump after September's hopeful rise.
Now, I don't know the future; it's certainly possible that Serenity could become a sleeper hit, make back its money, and convince Universal Studios to give it its fan-desired and possibly-deserved sequel. But I have to face the facts: Serenity didn't break a record. It didn't break number one. In fact, it didn't even really help the box office, which went into a slump. And all I keep hearing ringing in my ears is something I never heard spoken aloud: a snark from a reviewer of Serenity, mystified by the reception the fans gave the movie:
Suffering through, I mean watching SERENITY is like starting at the 84th episode of a convoluted and silly sci-fi soap opera. Sure, fans of Joss Whedon's cancelled TV show "Firefly," upon which this movie is based, are certain to love it. Our packed audience of rabid fans burst into thunderous applause when the words "Feature Presentation" came on the screen. Various characters from the series got similar but smaller accolades. As a non-fan, it made me appreciate the wisdom of TV executives who aborted the show.
Emphasis mine.
So, time to hang up the Browncoat, review the losses of the war, and rethink things. Clearly, science fiction and fantasy can survive on screen. Star Trek, Doctor Who and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy were all resurrected. Despite everything working against it, Babylon 5 survived, spawned a sequel, and several TV movies. Even children's books like Harry Potter made it to the screen, in increasingly successful segments. How, how do they do it? I don't pretend to know. All I do know is that it's possible for an indie filmmaker to graduate from ultra-low-budget fare like Evil Dead and Bad Taste to films like the record-setting Spiderman (Sam Raimi) and the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy (Peter Jackson).
And that it's possible for indie filmmaker George Lucas to go on from American Graffiti and THX-1138 to create the beloved classic Star Wars, a saga that will be told and retold a long, long time from now in galaxies far, far away.
Who's your master now, Joss?
-the Centaur
P.S. Remember, while you're falling into that airshaft, that loss of a hand is only temporary: all you need to do is invest in a new sharp black wardrobe and rebuild your lightsaber and you can not only get back in the game, but ultimately win (though your chances of redeeming Lucas are dubious). In the meantime, your friends will be waiting for you on the sanctuary moon, standing in line for your next picture with a Browncoat on over our Wookie suits.
At last, the renovations are complete! 5 King's Tavern Place is now on the market!
It's a 2 bedroom, 2.5 bath two-story townhome in the Westover Plantation complex, with new fridge, stove, microwave range hood, dishwasher, carpet, walls, ceilings, faux finishes, light fixtures, doorknobs, and ceiling fan pulls.
You name it, we fixed it.
Kudos to Sandi for her wonderful job faux finishing it AND managing all the subcontractors. And kudos to Bolot Kerimbaev for his superb job taking all these wonderful pictures.
"Minutes from downtown! Recently updated! Formerly inhabited (that is, ready to move in, folks). Contact Kelly Carnahan for more information about viewing this property at 770-491-1494 or townhomes at yahoo.com!"
-Anthony
It's a 2 bedroom, 2.5 bath two-story townhome in the Westover Plantation complex, with new fridge, stove, microwave range hood, dishwasher, carpet, walls, ceilings, faux finishes, light fixtures, doorknobs, and ceiling fan pulls.
You name it, we fixed it.
Kudos to Sandi for her wonderful job faux finishing it AND managing all the subcontractors. And kudos to Bolot Kerimbaev for his superb job taking all these wonderful pictures.
"Minutes from downtown! Recently updated! Formerly inhabited (that is, ready to move in, folks). Contact Kelly Carnahan for more information about viewing this property at 770-491-1494 or townhomes at yahoo.com!"
-Anthony
It's time for a change. This kind of thing cannot go on:
We're not talking about refugees from a faraway land, desperately trying to reach the land of opportunity on leaky boats. Never mind why were we trying to stop them; these are our people. And our government has locked them in a box without food and water, refused to let them leave, and refused to let anyone deliver help.
It's time for a change. It's time to throw the bums out. And I don't mean the Republicans - I mean anyone in our current government who thinks that their high position means that they're "in charge" and they get to "make the decisions".
Well, you don't. We do not live in a dictatorship; we live in a democracy. You are not the owner of the organizations you control: you are their stewards. You are accountable to the people and the situations we live in as they're actuallly happening, NOT to some idealized image of what world you'd like us to live in. We have to break the hold that "one king rule" thinking has on our publically accountable institutions.
DO as you wish with your own stuff. If this was your house, or your personal business, or your wardrobe, you'd be well within your rights to make whatever stupid decision that you wanted, and to deal with the tragedy that resulted.
But government is not personal business; heck, even business isn't business: the leader of a corporation isn't an "owner in charge" but a hired hand beholden to the shareholder's fiduciary interests. Our businesses all too often forget this, imagining that managers need only pay lip service to their duty; the leaders of our governments cannot be allowed to forget this, as lip service is not clearly not cutting it.
Leaders! Only through some magical thinking could you imagine that it's acceptable for police could turn away refugees from a disaster, or that somehow providing relief services would make things worse. And we've had quite enough of magical thinking, thank you.
We've loaned you your power.
And now we're going to take it back.
-the Centaur
Mayor Ray Nagin urged people to cross a bridge leading to the dry lands of the city's suburban west bank ... [but] evacuees who tried that route ... were met by police with shotguns who refused to allow them into Gretna, a nearby town on the other side.
We're not talking about refugees from a faraway land, desperately trying to reach the land of opportunity on leaky boats. Never mind why were we trying to stop them; these are our people. And our government has locked them in a box without food and water, refused to let them leave, and refused to let anyone deliver help.
It's time for a change. It's time to throw the bums out. And I don't mean the Republicans - I mean anyone in our current government who thinks that their high position means that they're "in charge" and they get to "make the decisions".
Well, you don't. We do not live in a dictatorship; we live in a democracy. You are not the owner of the organizations you control: you are their stewards. You are accountable to the people and the situations we live in as they're actuallly happening, NOT to some idealized image of what world you'd like us to live in. We have to break the hold that "one king rule" thinking has on our publically accountable institutions.
DO as you wish with your own stuff. If this was your house, or your personal business, or your wardrobe, you'd be well within your rights to make whatever stupid decision that you wanted, and to deal with the tragedy that resulted.
But government is not personal business; heck, even business isn't business: the leader of a corporation isn't an "owner in charge" but a hired hand beholden to the shareholder's fiduciary interests. Our businesses all too often forget this, imagining that managers need only pay lip service to their duty; the leaders of our governments cannot be allowed to forget this, as lip service is not clearly not cutting it.
Leaders! Only through some magical thinking could you imagine that it's acceptable for police could turn away refugees from a disaster, or that somehow providing relief services would make things worse. And we've had quite enough of magical thinking, thank you.
We've loaned you your power.
And now we're going to take it back.
-the Centaur
Today's Wikipedia featured post is about anarcho-capitalism, the idea that we should do away with a compulsory state in favor of a society of individuals freely entering into contracts, which would subsume the role of the state while respecting each individual's sovereignty.
While I personally am not convinced we should give up on the umbrella of state as long as we live in a rain of competing states, hostile ideologies and national disasters, the anarcho-capitalist Non-Aggression Axiom and its corollary, The Prohibition of Initiation of Force, are two maxims I try to live and judge by.
Interestingly, though, I think the Wikipedia could be seen as a product of an opposite stance, that of the free software movement, whose ultimate goal would be to eliminate software as property through a compulsory government which disallowed certain kinds of contracts.
Certainly that's not very anarcho-capitalist in its reliance on the state. However ... the minds behind the GPL aren't dumb guys (with a few exceptions), and the GNU General Public License is a great example of how anarcho-capitalism and free software can work together.
In an anarcho-capitalist world, everyone that drank the GPL Kool-Aid would get the whole benefit of the free software world; people entering into non-free contracts would lose out because the "hidden costs" of enforcement built into our traditional intellectual property law would be spelled out, in the open, in the contract.
And if people actually saw what intellectual property law really cost them, no-one would swallow it.
-the Centaur
While I personally am not convinced we should give up on the umbrella of state as long as we live in a rain of competing states, hostile ideologies and national disasters, the anarcho-capitalist Non-Aggression Axiom and its corollary, The Prohibition of Initiation of Force, are two maxims I try to live and judge by.
Interestingly, though, I think the Wikipedia could be seen as a product of an opposite stance, that of the free software movement, whose ultimate goal would be to eliminate software as property through a compulsory government which disallowed certain kinds of contracts.
Certainly that's not very anarcho-capitalist in its reliance on the state. However ... the minds behind the GPL aren't dumb guys (with a few exceptions), and the GNU General Public License is a great example of how anarcho-capitalism and free software can work together.
In an anarcho-capitalist world, everyone that drank the GPL Kool-Aid would get the whole benefit of the free software world; people entering into non-free contracts would lose out because the "hidden costs" of enforcement built into our traditional intellectual property law would be spelled out, in the open, in the contract.
And if people actually saw what intellectual property law really cost them, no-one would swallow it.
-the Centaur
Alternate host for the emergency page is the The Loyolian, which hopefully will have more information soon.
-the Centaur
-the Centaur