Anton Rubaclini wins the Tweet of the week award.
The title, “Horrifying video shows California cop shooting man SEVEN TIMES outside a 7-Eleven after suspect grabbed the officer’s magazine” leads one to believe the cop had just purchased a copy of “Field and Stream’ from the local Seven Eleven. In reality, if you read the article, you learn it was a gun magazine that was grabbed. Huge difference.
I would think the editors would want a more accurate title, but I guess making it sensational gets them more hits.
That was the comment I attempted to post on the UK Daily Mail website but of course it was never published. I guess they can’t have any decent from the riff-raff and anyway, everyone knows you mustn’t let reality get in the way of a good story.
A boy mowing the lawn is about American as apple pie. For a great many of us it was the first job we had when we were growning up.
Earlier this week, we were treated to the story of Frank Giaccio, an eleven year old from Falls Church Virginia, who wrote President Trump saying that it would be his “honor to mow the White House lawn.”
The president took him up on his offer and Gaiccio did the job telling Fox News, “So far it’s pretty much the best day of my life.”
Nice story. Hard working, self starter, showing ambition and drive. A story that should make everyone happy.
Not so, Steven Greenhouse, former labor reporter for the New York Times.
Here’s what Mr. Greenhouse had to say, “Not sending a great signal on child labor, mimimum wage & occupational safety >> Trump White House lets a 10-year-old volunteer mow its lawn.”
Sounds like the rantings of yet another loony lefty with a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
I found this pretty amazing. A beetle whose defense mechanism is the ability to shoot hot boiling liquid and gas at an attacker. The beetle produces the liquid using an exothermic reaction of hydrogen peroxide and peroxidase enzymes. The temperature of the expelled liquid is around 100C.
Photo by Patrick Coin License: CC BY-SA 2.5
I’m not a big Seth MacFarlene fan. I think the guy is hardworking and amazingly talented but for the most part I just don’t get his sense of humor.
“Family Guy”, “The Cleveland Show”; what do people see in these? Every joke is telegraphed and sophomoric. I can see liking them if you’re a fourteen year old, but by fifteen you probably should have outgrown them.
I’ve enjoyed MacFarlene’s movies much more. “Ted” and “Ted 2”, while not fantastic, were a lot of fun. “A Million Ways to Die in the West” is actually one of my favorites, although it appears I might be alone with that opinion.
About a month ago, I saw a promo for “The Orville” and was not impressed. It looked me to be just more of the same over the top immature humor so I pretty much had written it off.
Sunday night, my wife and I were out having dinner at a local pub when a commercial for “The Orville” came on. For some reason, perhaps excessive alcohol consumption, I thought it looked pretty good and decided I wanted to watch it that night. We finished off our food and headed home just in time to catch the beginning of the show.
You know what? It was good. Actually it was better than good, it was great.
MacFarlene plays Ed Mercer (sounds more like a name for a shoe salesman then a captain), who has just been given command of his first star ship, the Orville. He is surrounded by the typical characters you would expect in this type of show; some alien and some human. Among the more interesting characters are Lieutenant Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes) his out of control risk taking helmsman, Bortus (Peter Macon) a Klingon like character reminiscent of Worf from Star Trek TNG and Commander Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki) his first officer and ex-wife.
The plot of the first show was pretty basic, a device has been created that speeds up the aging of anything it its field and the crew of the Orville are called upon to safely transport the device. Although not a deep story, it served as a means to introduce the characters and give us an introduction to the show. As that, it worked well.
The biggest surprise of the night was that even though the show was humorous, it was not over the top. They did not allow the comedy to get in the way of the story telling or character development. A big relief from what I thought was coming given the commercial they had used for promoting the show.
“The Orville” also has a warmth to it much like the original “Star Trek”. The characters are likable and they make you believe they could actually be friends with each other. It’s refreshing to have a science fiction show on TV that doesn’t feel the need to be dark and depressing or feel the need to preach to us about social justice.
It’s still early and things could still go horribly wrong with it, but if the first show is any indication “The Orville” looks really promising.
I was saddened last night to learn of the death of Jerry Pournelle.
I never met Jerry, but I was certainly influenced by him. In the early days of computers, he wrote a column for Byte magazine and it was the first thing I would turn to when I received my issue. He was also a science fiction writer that wrote a number excellent novels. His collaborations with Larry Niven are some of the best sci-fi books in the business. He also was one of the first people to have a blog on the web. Chaos Manor (http://www.jerrypournelle.com) has been one of my go-to sites for years. Jerry always posted thought provoking articles and user comments.
Sadly, in recent years, his output dropped off due to health reasons. A few years back he had a stroke and a bit later his wife experienced the same thing. Life can be cruel at times.
He had been sick for a while; always seeming to be fighting off some health issue. Last week I was pleased to hear that he had attended DragonCon in Atlanta, Georgia. I thought it might be that things were getting a bit better for him.
His last post to his blog was on Sept 7th. He ended it with this:
More later I’m experiencing a wave of nausea.
Bye for now.
Unfortunately, there was never a ‘later.’
People impact us in different ways, and although I didn’t know him personally, reading his blog was always part of my day. But, no more.
Jerry will be missed.
Here’s a comment I made yesterday on an article about racism:
I went to high school with a guy from the Philippines. He was one of the most popular guys in the school. He was involved in all sorts of school activities and everyone loved him. I only wished I could have been half as popular as he was. To hear him now, you would think that his life back then was a living hell. I’m sure there was the occasional jerk that made rude comments or did something discriminatory against him but I never witnessed it. Most people treated him just the same as they did anyone else, both good and bad.
There was a recent discussion on one of the local bulletin boards about changing the names of some streets in the area that were named after Confederate generals. At one point two different black women chimed in. One said she had lived in the area for thirty years and said in all that time she never felt discriminated against. A second black woman had just the opposite story; claiming that she and her family were constantly harassed.
Up until a year ago I did a lot of running. Occasionally, while I was running, some jerk would drive by and make a rude comment or give me the finger. The thought came to me at one point that if I were a woman, I’d probably feel like I was just sexually harassed. If I were black, I would feel it was a racist attack. As a middle aged white guy, I just took it as some low-life loser making a rude comment.
I’m sure some people are truly discriminated against, but I suspect that a lot what is assumed to be discrimination is just people viewing reality though their own filters.
I try not to eat doughnuts on weekdays, but since it’s Labor Day, and I have the day off, I decided to treat it like a weekend day and made a trip to my local Dunkin’ Donuts.
Today, I drove into the drive-thru and pulled up behind a woman, probably in her mid to late forties, placing her order. As is often the case, it was a large order and every item was customized. I’ve never understood why people with complex, special orders can’t just go into the store to place their orders instead of slowing down the line for the rest of us while their orders prepared. It’s just rude.
But the rudeness didn’t stop there.
After placing her order, she pulled up to the drive-thru window and while waiting for the order to be prepared, took a half full McDonald’s shake and proceeded to pour the gooey, disgusting, congealed mess out of the drivers side window and onto the pavement below.
What the hell is wrong with people. Granted, it will eventually wash away, but in the meantime every car going through the drive-thru will be splashing it on to their cars and tracking the sticky mess all over the pavement. On top of that, the workers at the drive-thru window will have to put up with the smell of souring dairy product as the day goes on.
Two questions:
How does a middle aged women go through life thinking the world is her personal garbage can?
Even if she doesn’t give a damn about dumping her crap outside for environmental reasons, is she not the least bit ashamed that people who view her actions will think of her as nothing but a slovenly, disgusting pig?
My guess is she doesn’t even have a clue she did something wrong. Her parents were probably pigs and I’m sure shes raising her children as pigs.
I know, I’m probably being a little harsh, but this sort of thing just drives me crazy.
Here’s a quick synopsis of the modes available on the Panasonic GH5. There’s a lot more information available in the manuals, but this might help you when you’re just starting out.
Program Mode (P)
Set the Mode dial to ‘P’, the camera has full automatic control of shutter and aperture settings.
Aperture Priority (A)
The user selects the desired aperture while the camera selects the appropriate shutter speed.
Set the Mode dial to ‘A’, Both the Front Dial and the Back Dial can be used to set the aperture.
Shutter Priority (S)
The user selects the desired shutter speed while the camera selects the appropriate aperture.
Set the Mode dial to ‘S’, Both the Front Dial and the Back Dial can be used to set the shutter.
Manual Mode (M)
The user selects both the aperture and the shutter speed.
Set the Mode dial to ‘M’, the Front Dial sets the aperture and the Back Dial sets the shutter.
Creative Video Mode (Camera – M)
This mode is used to record video.
Set the Mode dial to ‘Camera – M’, the Front Dial sets the aperture and the Back Dial sets the shutter.
Custom Modes (C1, C2, C3)
These modes are used to configure the camera to preset settings that you have chosen in the past.
To save camera settings for the preset modes, first configure your camera with the settings you want to save and then select the Wrench / Cust. Set Mem menu item followed by C1, C2, C3-1, C3-2, C3-3.
C3 can actually hold three different configurations. To select the one you wish to use, first select C3 using the Mode Dial and then press the icon on the top left of the rear screen. This will display a menu allowing to select the configuration you want to use.
Creative Control Mode (Pallete Icon)
Allows you to choose from a number of filters that can be applied to the image. This mode is probably not worth using since all of this can be achieved during post-processing.
Intelligent Auto Mode (iA)
Camera evaluates the scene and chooses the best settings. There are actually two sub-modes available in this mode. Intelligent Auto and Intelligent Auto +. In Intelligent Auto mode, the camera controls everything whereas in Intelligent Auto + mode you have the ability to override some of the choices made by the camera.
When the camera mode is set to Intelligent Auto, a new menu becomes available on the rear screen which lets you choose between Intelligent Auto and Intelligent Auto +.
Additional menus are also available in this mode:
- iHandheld Night Shot – when enabled, takes a number of images and combines them. This is probably done to mitigate low light noise.
- iHDR – when enabled, takes a number of images at different exposures to increase the dynamic range of the image.
If you find that iHandheld Night Shot and iHDR are grayed out, it’s because both options are only available when the Drive Mode dial is set to single shot.
Page Six on the New York Post website did and article called “Here’s how much stars have donated toward Harvey relief efforts.’
Their list includes:
- J.J. Watt of the Houston Texans who raised $15.4 million through an online fund-raiser.
- Ellen Degeneres – $1 million (to Watt’s charity).
- Drake – $200,000 (to Watt’s charity).
- N.Y. Giants – $1 million.
- Sandra Bullock – $1 million.
- Leonardo DiCaprio – $1 million.
- Miley Cyrus – $500,000.
- Tyler Perry – $1 million.
- The Kardashians $500,000.
- Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez – $50,000.
- Miranda Lambert – saved 100 plus dogs.
- They also go on to say that sixty-three companies have pledged $1 million or more.
Every generous, although, one person was curiously missing from the list; President Trump.
Donald Trump and his wife donated $1 million to the cause but the New York Post seems to have overlooked him. Strange, since Donald Trump is not only a celebrity, but the President of the United States. You would think his donation would have been covered.
At least the Associated Press made mention of it during their reporting on Hurricane Harvey. Of course at the end of the article they had to include:
“Trump has been criticized in the past for giving far less of his income to charitable causes than many other multi-billionaires.”
I’d like to see an article showing how much the press and the various media organization have donated. I’m guessing I’ll be waiting a long time for that.