Rocket Man

Dear Sir,

Your JET PACK has arrived (click link for stunning video)

Welcome to the future

Operation Enduring Occupation

Kang and his sister Kodos give us an update on how "Operation Enduring Occupation" is coming along.

Voight-Kampff tests for everybody

I was clicking through some of the links on Andrew Sullivan's blog, and ended up in the comments section of 'Andrew Leigh' laughing at the following exchange that occurred over the line "Where's the evidence that the soul does not reside in the heart?" at the end of AL's post;


Jesse Says:
February 25th, 2007 at 1:32 am “Where’s the evidence that the soul does not reside in the heart?” That people with artificial hearts are not soulless zombies?

J Snyder Says:
February 25th, 2007 at 1:47 am “Where’s the evidence that the soul does not reside in the heart?” Heart transplant patients don’t resurrect the soul of the donor?

Mike Rock Says:
February 25th, 2007 at 1:56 am Where’s the evidence “That people with artificial hearts are not soulless zombies?” :-)

Jesse Says:
February 25th, 2007 at 2:02 am On the other hand, if you eat someone’s heart still beating right out the socket, you DO gain all their powers and memories. So the evidence is inconclusive.

Seriously, what’s odd about the quote is that the author seems to have confused a straightforwardly disprovable empirical statement with some sort of transcendent spiritual issue. This is goofy. If there is a soul that resides in a particular sector of the body — a question I express no opinion on here — that sector is obviously the brain, not the heart, as is shown by a moment’s contemplation of the key distinction between a heart transplant and a brain transplant, or between an artificial heart and an artificial brain.

Jesse Says:
February 25th, 2007 at 2:06 am “Where’s the evidence “That people with artificial hearts are not soulless zombies?”” Where the evidence that you’re not? All right, that settles it. Voight-Kampff tests for everybody.

***

There ought to be a word for the feeling that I get running across a well used Bladerunner reference (the rest of the post commentary is a back-and-forth between two linguists over an academic matter - which was interesting in its own right even though I was completely out of my depth).

A joke writer described how he occasionally would slip a referrence into his work that he knew only two percent of the audience would get. But how do we descrbibe the feeling of being one of those two percent?

Tim Hardaway - 0, George Takei - 1

Without a doubt the best response to Tim Hardaway's idiocy so far. Might also be the single best performance of Takei's career.

Seriously!

I laughed, I cried, I laughed while crying, I cried while laughing, I began to choke a little, recovered, laughed some more, then cried just once to finish off.

Simply AWESOME

Top 10 King Ralph moments

Calgary Grit has a walk through some of the legendary moments brought to us by King Ralph.

My favourite (not listed by CG) is this one;

"“Like the song says, you ain't seen nothing yet. It's one of the legacies I would like to leave.” - Ralph Klein

My favourite Olympic event!

Finally, an Olympic event I could medal in!

Even if I missed, I would be genuinely able to say, I was just happy to compete.

Our player to be named later

Quote of the Day

"I am, of course, unconvinced by your response. But this can hardly disappoint you, as it was not intended to convince me. You simply wrote to inform me that you have never doubted God’s existence, cannot account for how you came to believe in Him, and are well aware that these facts will not (and should not) persuade me of the legitimacy of your religious beliefs. I now feel like a tennis player, in mid-serve, who notices that his opponent is no longer holding a racket."

Sam Harris as part of his ongoing debate with Andrew Sullivan

Halo the way the Gods intended

Last weekend I had the opportunity to celebrate AJ's successful circumnavigation of the sun by attending a LAN (that's 'Local Area Network' for you non-geeks) party he was throwing.

Here are some of the things that made this event special;

- No fewer than 4 X-Box 360's !!!!
- A plethora of monitors
- One giant 72" projector screen!
- Nerds aplenty
- The online presence of Red Five and Red Six (and let's face it, she's too good to ride Dan's handle, Celina deserves her own - we need to work on this)
- 10+ straight hours of game play!
- My outrageous domination of everyone present (ok, maybe not outrageous domination)

All in all, a massive good time was had by all!
















(That's Keegen in the background horrifically botching his Vulcan salute. We still like him anyway)

Revenge is a dish best served cold

Raptors 120, NJ Nets 109

But it isn't just getting a win from one of the teams the Raptors have chasing them for the lead in the Atlantic division (four words nobody ever thought they would be saying about the Raptors this year; 'lead', 'Atlantic Division', and 'playoffs' - yet thats exactly what we can say about them), it's much more than that when the Raptors play NJ - much, much more.

The fans of course, know this well. It's about things like vengeance, things like hatred, things like betrayal.


For the Raptors fans playing NJ is still about Vince Carter.

For sure beating the Nets is good, great, even awesome.

But pistol whipping the 'I'm not gonna dunk anymore' prima-donna who mailed in his performances as part of his effort to be traded to a 'winning team'?

That, will always be sweet.

Anticipating the Raptor fans reaction, Lawrence Frank the coach of the Nets had the following to say before the game;

"You get tired of the criticism of Vince here. You have to move forward,'' said Frank. ''Vince is a Net, the Raptors are a very good team. This no longer should be about Vince Carter any more.

''Vince is part of our family now so every time he gets criticized or booed we take that personally.''

Which is hilarious really. Frank takes the booing of Vince Carter by Raptor fans 'personally'. That's good Larry. Will you still feel that way in two months when he's playing for Orlando?

If there are two things that Toronto fans agree on, it's that the Leafs will win the Cup and Vince Carter is a gutless puke who deserves to be booed every time he breathes. Criticizing Raptor fans for hating Vince means you completely fail to understand how much Vince meant to Toronto when he was there. He was loved, adored, cheered for and placed on a pedestal. We breathlessly spoke of his magnificent dunks, his outrageous leaping ability and how he could seemingly score at will. Back then, Vince was basketball Jesus. He simply owned the town, and his decision to go public with his trade demands, and then to publicly and purposefully SUCK whenever he played was a body shot to the entire city and to Raptor fans everywhere.

And so we HATE him. And because we hate him, we boo him.

Hating athletes is as much a part of the game as loving them, and when it comes to Vince Carter, it is not only natural to hate him, it would be unnatural not to.

Perhaps best of all? It was only two and a half years ago that Carter left town to go play for a 'winning team'. It was only three years or so ago that Carter criticized Raptor mgt for drafting of Bosh (we don't need another rookie, we need veterans!). Now, the Bosh lead Raptors are leading the Atlantic division (can't get tired of saying that), the Nets are imploding under the weight of expectations and inflated egos, and Carter has become one of the top 10 players expected to be moved by the deadline.

120-107; irony, she can be one cold motherf*cker eh Vince? Just like revenge.

Quote of the Day

"Knowledge in most scientific disciplines doubles every five years. How fast is it growing in religion?" - Sam Harris in his debate with Andrew Sullivan

The full text of their exchange can be found here. It's a marvelous debate, in part because both participants (especially Harris) demonstrate a respect for the position of the other, while nevertheless fighting with the gloves off.

Schadenfreude

Sports Illustrated put together this photo gallery of NFL players/coaches who have been arrested.

Incredibly, there were 50 of them just this year! (and I thought the NBA was bad!)

The vast majority fall into two categories;

- Players who beat up their wives or girlfriends.
- Players who drive drunk

I almost felt sorry for some of these guys, especially some of those charged with things like 'damaging property' (guy gets into a fight with his wife and he busts up her cell-phone - so, of course, she calls the cops and has him arrested - which given they are collectively worth millions is simply insane).

But by far the funniest was this from Joe Cullen the asst. coach in Detroit;

"Arrested on Aug. 24 for "driving on a public street without any clothes on," and a week later on suspicion of drunken driving, both misdemeanors. He was sentenced to two years probation, ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings twice a week and must pay more than $1,600 in fines and court costs."

Not just drunk. Not just driving drunk.

Driving drunk NAKED. Which is just awesome. Take a bow.

Sixty Seven reasons to avoid Jack Bauer and '24'

"In five seasons of "24", there have been sixty-seven torture scenes, and all of them are portrayed as effective, productive, and justified. "

Hmm, assuming that each of the five seasons has 24 episodes, thats a successful use of torture roughly every two episodes.

I see from the ads (I stopped watching 24 mid-way through the box set of season 2), that we now have Jack Bauer's dad AND brother showing up as super-spy relatives - and of course, there are suggestions that Bauer will be interrogating his loved ones as only he can.

Sounds to me like the show isn't just guilty of being a Republican's wet dream of irresponsible violence and gas guzzling SUV's, but as with Scooby Doo before him, the addition of family members to the cast (i.e. the repugnant Scrappy Doo) can only mean the show has 'jumped the shark'.

Initial quote lifted from Andrew Sullivan's post 'Torture Nation'

The SuperVillain Quiz

Dr. Doom and Mystique

C'mon Ed, tell us how you REALLY feel about the Blasphemy Challenge

How the Raptor's offense works

One of my favourite articles this year, a European eye breaks down the Raptors using videotape and makes some surprising discoveries.

The Onion referrences Mark Messier!

If I'm not mistaken, the Messier referrence is eerily like a dream once related to me by Jen.

Video of the deep sea dwelling Frill Shark