» Musings

It’s amazing just how low some TV “celebrities” will sink to exploit controversy in order to boost ratings. The question is, where do we draw the line between the “entertainment” of covering such controversies, and potentially creating those controversies by encouraging people?

Once upon a time, the Jerry Springer¹ TV show was the last word in “trailer trash”, with most viewers tuning in just to watch the fights, and bouncer Steve jumping in to separate the combatants (Steve himself managed to get his own show).

Then you have “Dr Phil”².

To the guy (or gal) from Stuttgart, Germany using an army.mil address, thank you for visiting - and thank you for your service!

Stay safe, and keep the faith.

It must be one of the few times something has made its way across the Atlantic with the UK coming first.

Over there, it’s called Happy Slapping - video taping assaults at random for distribution, usually using cell phones.

Most people by now are familiar with the latest US emulation of this particular brand of nastyness, especially with the widely publicized case of 8 teenagers in Florida. There are other cases, but they all have one thing in common - the results of these attacks are filmed, then posted to the ‘Net.

Blogs are hopping today it seems with stories about Judge Marvin Arrington Sr in Atlanta, Georgia.

The judge is reported to have ordered everyone in his courtroom who wasn’t black to leave, and then gave the blacks present a “lecture”¹.

For some reason, everyone has decided that the judge (who is black himself) was racist in doing so.

I disagree with them, though.

It’s common knowledge that a judge controls his courtroom, end of story. The judge was totally within his rights to exclude anyone for any reason. In the courtroom, the judge is law, after a fashion.

in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

Benjamin Franklin’s quote is ironic, especially given this is the time of the year when everyone in the United States is busy preparing their taxes. I’m not sure he realized that one would be no bar to the other in the 21st century though.

Unfortunately, it seems that for some, death is no bar to their quest to get every penny they think they can from people.

In the course of the past week, two stories of miserly attitudes have come to light, showing just how far down the moral well society is sinking.

Science fiction lost another giant today, with the passing of Arthur C Clarke.

Most everyone remembers his involvement with “2001, A Space Odyssey“, but he wrote a huge amount of other “hard” science fiction work, stuff that is very set in “reality” as opposed to work such as my own “soft” science fiction, that has “plausible” technology.

I grew up surrounded by the novels of Arthur C Clarke, and his peers such as Robert A Heinlein and Isaac Asimov … In many ways, they “taught” me how to write science fiction.  I guess it’s a sign I’m getting older when another one of the influences on my writing dies.

In online shooter games, I’m “The girl in the corner” … Unfortunately, most of my opponents are a little too young to get the reference. Thankfully, with the help of Google and YouTube, I found a video of the original song the title comes from, so here it is

Well, I went ahead and posted some notes about wheelies and martial arts to the Ilyokwan forums. So far the response has been really positive, so I’m hoping that the notes have started some people thinking how they can offer some sort of self-defence training to wheelies.

It was actually kind of hard to write it all down, most of it is concepts inside my head that are hard to put into words. RiK helped a lot, letting me try to explain stuff to him in IM first.

So, that’s a good thing for this week.

it must be something about being so cute makes people all want to push me to do things that I’m really unsure about doing. This week has just been wierd.

First of all, I ended up joining the Magestorm guild, Strike Force (SF). This is odd because I’m not currently playing Magestorm, and it gets stranger when you remember that I have to play one handed. It’s kind of nice that someone thinks I’m good enough to join even with that minor snag, especially as I’ve been turned down by another guild because that same snag meant I wasn’t good enough for them.

there’s something been bugging me … Have we, as a species, sunk so low into the depths of utter imbecility that we now take seriously the claims of a group calling themselves the “Lobster Liberation Front”?

No, I’m serious! there really is such a group, and they think they’re actually real terrorists! You can read about them on the BBC Online news web site.

What are these morons on? We’re living in a world where people are running around killing other people for incomprehensible reasons … But these total jerks are running around playing at being terrorists because of seafood?? Did common sense suddenly become an endangered species? Did intelligence suddenly come into short supply? Do these people actually have the first clue about priorities?