Way Out There

That’s where our future lies.

Way the hell out there… beyond the moon… and beyond even Mars.

If you haven’t been paying attention to all the noise being stirred up by the global scientific community – specifically cosmologists and those fields relating to astronomy – and watching all the pleading videos on YouTube from the likes of Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye, we Earthlings on this blue marble that circles the sun every 365 days are driving our species into the ground because we can’t be bothered to spend tax dollars on endeavors that will eventually lead us away from our home planet.

Every year, this situation gets more dire – especially in these lean years where governments have had to drastically slash their budgets.

You’ve heard of NASA, right?

Yeah, yeah… they were in that movie about the asteroid – they supposedly had a bunch of people just sitting around dreaming shit up!

Well… in reality, I’m sure there are a bunch of people at NASA whose job is to “dream shit up”, but the American agency’s main job has been – since the late 1950s – to further humanity’s understanding of the cosmos by sending humans and robotic probes out into the big black yonder.

In the beginning, there were the Mercury and Gemini rocket programs that put Americans into space after playing laggards to the Commie bastards in the USSR.

And then there was the Apollo program… the one NASA program that has accomplished a feat so complex and daring that nobody has been able to duplicate in 40+ years since: putting a living human being onto the surface of the moon.

Before any of you conspiracy wingnuts try and set the comment section ablaze down below with your lunacy (see what I did there?), be of the understanding that all comments have to approved by me – and not one word of how you think the lunar landings were faked will ever see the light of day on this blog.

Why am I so certain that NASA put Neil Armstrong and the astronauts that followed him onto the moon’s vast plains of regolith?

For one single reason: the Red Soviets never said that the Americans were fibbing.

Why would the Kremlin stand by and let the U.S. of A. boast about landing on the moon if it actually hadn’t happened? Especially when that kind of press made the Soviet space program – which was National Priority #1 during the 1960s – look like a total and utter failure?

It would have been in Moscow’s best interest to dispute the American’s claims if they had definitive proof that NASA was actually filming the moon footage on a soundstage somewhere – but the only thing that came down the wire from the Soviets was a begrudging congratulation.

What made them privy to the actuality of the Apollo capsules heading to the moon? (And no… they weren’t paid off as some nuts insist).

The Russians had deep space tracking facilities just as powerful as the Americans… radar facilities that could track anything in Earth orbit or beyond – all the way to the moon and past it

So, as the Apollo missions unfolded, the Soviets watched with detached fascination on their radar tracking scopes – probably cursing aloud and hoping that each trip to the moon would go horribly wrong so that they could (politely and in political terms) laugh at the American’s bungling of something that they could then claim was easy and that they were going to successfully carry out via their superior scientific apparatus.

But, like I wrote up above, that didn’t happen – and the Commies were forced to eat crow, quickly killing their own moon landing program before it had even gotten off the ground.

So, yeah… humans have walked on the moon… drove around on the moon… played golf on the moon… and looked at porn while on the moon.

If you need more proof, check out the Mythbusters episode regarding the so-called Moon Hoax: Adam and Jamie thoroughly debunked all the most popular “theories”.

Okay… I’m gonna get this blog entry back on track.

Like I was saying before I went off on the wingnuts, space exploration – and human space exploration specifically – has gone off the rails almost globally due to the lack of political will to spend big money on things Joe Public had begun to take for granted.

The average person out there – who hasn’t studied the various doings of NASA, the ESA, JAXA, and other space agencies around the world in any depth beyond the 20 second blurbs on the nightly news when a space shuttle launched – kinda assumes that human space flight is routine, fairly easy, and is already half-way to Mars.

Sorry, space cadets: humans have been stuck in low Earth orbit for the past fortyish years since the Apollo program concluded – the farthest we’ve gone off the face of the planet is to service the Hubble Space Telescope…  570 kilometers straight up, or 350 miles for our Imperial measurement friends.

The moon is  385,000 kilometers away.

In the waning years of his presidency, George W. Bush tried to build himself a legacy by commanding NASA to start planning for humankind’s return to the moon before foraging outwards to Mars – something that the American people could surely get behind in the way that they embraced John F. Kennedy’s vision of man going to the moon for the first time.

However, elections came to America.

At first glance, Barrack Obama was good for NASA since he was science-friendly… and maybe Bush’s Orion/Constellation program would have maintained forward momentum if a class of representatives hadn’t been elected to Congress that were more interested in nickel and diming important federal prorgams in order to service that 1% the Occupy movement loves to hate.

Unfortunately, NASA’s budget kept getting scaled back in the years that followed Dubya’s departure (and even while he was still Commander In Chief)… cut down so much that Obama was forced to take a scalpel to the American space program – paring away costly items that Congress just refused to pay for.

The costliest of these items being human space flight beyond Earth orbit – whether that be to the moon or to Mars.

On paper, not all is lost: Obama has endorsed sending humans to an asteroid or a Martian moon by the year 2030… by which time the Chinese Commies will have set up a permanent base on our own moon.

You see, only the Chinese are taking human space flight seriously in the here and now - aggressively pursuing space flight at a rate of speed that would almost put the 60s space race to shame.

Of course, the Chinese have more money than they know what to do with – we buy nearly all of our consumer goods from them, after all.

I suppose it also has to do with the fact that they don’t spend a dime on basic human needs – but I digress.

So, on top of building entire metropolitan cities from scratch for people who won’t move to them, Beijing has spent billions of yuan on building rockets, space capsules, and other space-related infrastructure that will put them on the moon within the next decade.

You might be saying “So what? What does that have to do with me?”

I’ll tell you what: humankind needs a new home… and that home will be out there – first amongst the planets in our own solar system, and then out among the stars you gaze at every night.

This isn’t some panicky prediction based on environmental concerns (though our rapid depletion of natural resources here on Earth is certainly making a good case for it) but simply based on the fact that Earth will eventually run out of space for our massive populations.

If we – as a species – want to continue growing our masses without check, then we are going to need new places to put our children/grandchildren/great grandchildren/etc. so that they can thrive in environments capable of supporting them.

…And we can’t allow the Communist Chinese to control that stellar high ground – not when the individual human lives under their control mean so little.

The last thing we need is abysmal-pay sweatshops on the moon.

No.

Just no.

We need to band together as a species on united human space exploration front so that all of the ground that humankind can travel to will be open and fair to all.

I know that may sound like a rehashed speech from a Star Trek episode, but it’s true: when humankind’s destiny is clearly out into the cosmos, we all need to get behind that destiny to make it happen.

We need to speak up and force the people we elect to office to spend tax dollars that will help us into the future… instead of spending money on the same old crap that we’ve done for a 100 years or more: big business and a military to pursue the interests of big business.

Big business is only interested in pacifying the masses with goods and services… and the military’s only interest is in how to kill the masses.

Those two things do nothing to preserve our species – a species that has barely existed for a million years… which is inconsequential when taken in context with the actual age of Planet Earth.

We will certainly be our own undoing if we don’t get ourselves off this planet – not all of us, of course… but a number that will ensure our survival in case something untoward should happen to our homeworld (cataclysm, environmental collapse, alien invasion, etc.).

The only way we will do this is by spending money on human space flight… no matter how small in scale it may seem at first.

The  313,286,000 people who live in the United States Of America (minus the native population) didn’t all arrive on the Nina, Pinta, and the Santa Maria with Christopher Columbus – they got here by being the children of those who immigrated to North America in the years after Columbus “discovered” the New World – an expedition of discovery that was paid for with money from Spain’s tax coffers.

Exploration on a grand scale is done by nations (and currently with the help of private companies).

Those nations now need to spend the money necessary to send our species way out there.

It’s our only real chance to make sure our species… well… lives long and prospers.

Farewell, SGU.

I’ll freely admit that I was near tears when the episode faded to black after watching Destiny’s hyperspace trail disappear into the stars.

“Poor Eli,” was all I could muster.

And for a moment, every episode of Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Stargate Universe that I could remember played in reverse order – right back to Jack O’Neil sitting on his boat before Daniel asks him to come back to the SGC.

As much as it hurts those non-haters in this crowd, the franchise did deserve a rest – 13 or so years of constant production is almost unparalleled in TV history outside of soap operas (which are also dropping like flies).

Outside of Star Trek, what genre series has come even close? And, no, Doctor Who doesn’t count because it went out of production for a spell – unlike ST:TNG, DS9, Voyager, and eventually Enterprise… which had been in production from 1987 thru to 2005.

But back to Stargate.

The end of SG on Syfy is all about dollars and cents, and not a lack of faith in the producers – a move to service the dumb-as-rocks viewers Syfy and their new Comcast overlords want to chase with advertisers in tow.

The only space opera left is the BSG: Blood & Chrome – which goes back to the tried and true “shoot ‘em up” that makes the CroMags (tee hee… name check) happy, and thusly lifts the spirits of each advertiser that will want to shill Budweiser, Cheetos, and Snuggie For Pets.

As many have pointed out in various forums, Syfy should change their slogan to “Check Your Brain At The Door’… so a series that requires a little thought would naturally get shit canned.

It was funny: a few nights ago, I was watching 28 WEEKS LATER after a number of years and was amused to see Robert Carlyle in it – and couldn’t keep from making Rush jokes to myself.

And that’s how it will be for the time being – us at home seeing SGU and other SG actors in shows made after and before the SGU cancellation and wondering…

Wondering whatever became of their SG alter egos  – of all the dramas, plots, and character developments.

We can only hope that the time between now and the time SG comes back to us will be filled with SGU comics, novels, and other licensed tie-ins.

At least then we’ll know what happens to Eli.

Me, personally? I think he’ll let Ginn out of her computer stasis so it can be just the two of them until the lights finally go out.

From The International Desk: Japan Not So Hot…

I feel I must say a few brief words today since a report has recently surfaced in regards to sexuality in The Land Of The Rising Sun.

According to many knowledged statisticians, 36% of male Japanese teens have little or no interest in sexual relations with women.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the coin, 59% of teen girls are feeling the same way about men.

This news is shocking when you realize that Japan has the most abysmal birth rate amongst the G-8 nations… which could be seen as a good thing when you consider the very small amount of land mass that Japan actually occupies, but it’s not so good when you’re trying to maintain a population to occupy those islands.

These stats are even more shocking when you factor in Japanese animated fare like manga and anime… which are positively loaded with sexual iconography and frequently pornographic themes.

However, things get strange when you actually look at government approved pornography produced in Japan: it’s very heavily censored when distributed to Japanese citizens i.e. anything that’s between the legs is mandated to be blurred out.

I’m sorry… but doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of pornography?

If there are whole generations of kids thinking the opposite sex (or even your own sex) has nothing going on between their legs but an amorphous blur, perhaps that’s why they’re not inspired to want to get in anybody’s pants.

I mean… it’s not like the Japanese girls are unattractive! (see below)

It’s difficult to comprehend, to say the least.

Some are pointing to the fact that Japanese culture is a hyperstylized version of Western society, and as such, Japanese teens see it as their responsibility in life to start a family much later on so they can live up to the maximum productivity ethic that is pervasive in Asian cultures – much like how North American couples defer kids until their late 30s so they can accumulate personal wealth and standing before starting a family.

This sort of behavior could be falsely reinforced with the knowledge that the average Japanese citizen will live a longer life than they would in many other nations around the globe.

Whatever the reasons, the Japanese government must act quickly to get their young people hot and horny for each other again… to actively steam up a culture who’s heat has dissipated into the cold air over Mount Fuji.

If the Japanese birth rates fall any lower, the world could be in trouble!

If there are no new citizens in 20 years, who’s going to be building those Toyotas (hopefully they will have nailed down the accelerator problems by then), Nintendos, and Sony Playstations?

Meet The PlayBook!

Specs:

• 7-inch LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
• BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
• 1 GHz dual-core processor
• 1 GB RAM
• Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
• Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
• Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
• HDMI video output
• Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
• Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5
• Adobe Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader
• POSIX, OpenGL, Java
• Ultra thin and portable:
• Measures 5.1″x7.6″x0.4″ (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
• Weighs less than a pound (approximately 0.9 lb or 400g)
• RIM intends to also offer 3G and 4G models in the future

So… essentially… everything the iPad lacks is in the PlayBook.

Bravo, BlackBerry.

DIAF, Apple.

Video Blog: The F-35 Goes To Canada

My video companion piece for the previous blog entry.

Take a look at what you’re buying, Canada!

Available in 720p HD if you click through.

The Joint Strike Fighter

Canada has said yes to the F-35 Lightning II.

What’s of particular note here is the F-35 is billed as the Joint Strike Fighter – and the ‘Joint’ is applied in many ways when you look at it on a global scale.

For purely U.S. purposes, the Joint Strike Fighter moniker is based on the fact that it’s a ‘joint service’ aircraft i.e. that 3 branches of the U.S. armed forces will be flying it – the Navy (carrier adapted), the Air Force (base variant), and the Marines (vertical take off and landing variant).

When you step back to a macro scale view and look at how the F-35 applies to the global fighter scene, Joint Strike Fighter takes on a new meaning.

Eleven countries from around the world have contributed money to the development of the F-35: the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, Turkey, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Israel, Singapore, and the United States (which contributed the lion’s share of spending).

The idea behind this venture was to supply all the countries involved with a common aircraft that would make joint operations between the stated nations more seamless – as well as allowing each state access to cutting edge technologies that they may not have been able to afford independently.

The end part of the previous paragraph is where countries like Canada specifically come in to play: Canada has nowhere near the tax base or military funding to develop a cutting edge fighter that could dominate other world player’s planes.

I don’t say that in an effort to kick my nation’s pride, but to only state an honest fact.

Also, there is some doubt as to whether our southern neighbors would take kindly to our designing and producing an air superiority fighter that could easily compete with their own: think back to Canada’s one proud moment in fighter design history (the vaunted Avro Arrow) and you’ll see how tragically influential the United States can be when it demands to be the kid on the block with the best toys.

Regardless, Canada’s aging fleet of CF-18s are quickly going to surpass their ‘best before’ date as they are all part of McDonnell Douglas’s first production run of the F/A 18 airframe – first flying for Canada in 1982.

In comparison, the United States has mostly moved to the newer F/A-18 Super Hornet – which has many performance upgrades over the Canadian legacy models, including better avionics and softer radar signature which are derived from being completely new planes as compared to modified airframes.

Yes, our CF-18s have been subject to regular maintenance and technical upgrades over the years – but for all intents and purposes, they are dinosaurs when compared to the rest of the G8 countries’ air force assets.

There are anecdotal stories that kick around the global fighter pilot communities of how Canadian Air Force staff had to make the rounds and beg for spare parts during our fighter jet commitments to U.N. and NATO missions in places like Kosovo and missions like Desert Storm – such as asking the Spaniards for spare batteries, etc.

How are we – as Canadians – to take pride in our military forces when they have to depend on the charity of other nations when we get into a pinch?

Does that make your heart swell with patriotism?

On second thought, forget I brought that up…

Canadian F-18s are aging and will soon have flown so many flight hours that their air frames will be considered unsafe to fly by technical standards.

We can not afford to send our top-notch pilots up into the air against threats to our global and national interests if there is a real chance that the jet will disintegrate under the stress loads that tactical maneuvers place upon a plane.

So here we are in 2010, nearly 30 years after we acquired our last fighter.

Why are tactical fighters important to Canadians?

What else will keep the newly ‘assertive’ Russian bombers out of our air space?

How else will we be able to fulfill our duties to NORAD, NATO, and the United Nations when it comes to rogue states?

Are we to just send along Good Luck cards from Hallmark?

No.

We need our boys to be in the thick of it, pulling Canada’s weight when it comes down to the nitty gritty – when some nation out there needs it’s ass kicked and priorities straightened out.

For Canada to have a voice in those kinds of matters, we need something to punctuate our sentences.

And nothing says that like a heat-seeking missile up the bad guy’s tail pipe.

We, as Canadians, are a peaceful lot and desire diplomacy over war – that’s a given… and a lot of us may not find spending $16,000,000,000 on 64 planes (including maintenance costs) to be a very good deal.

However, to paraphrase a very smart man, war is diplomacy when all other means have failed.

Sometimes, you have to stop using the carrot and start using the stick.

Wouldn’t you rather have a bigger stick than our potential adversaries?

The F-35 is that bigger stick.

It will be the first time Canada has owned a stealth fighter – one that is all but invisible to enemy radar… which is a very good thing when our young men are up in the skies against deadly forces – as any advantage in air-to-air and air-to-ground combat can be the difference between a pilot coming home in once piece and coming home in a body bag(s).

No, the F-35 isn’t the razor sharp portion of the cutting edge when it comes to fighter planes – that would be the F-22, and the United States isn’t sharing that aircraft with anybody.

Also, I must acknowledge the fact that the F-35 is years behind schedule and has saddled the U.S. Defense Department with numerous cost overruns – but in the end, the technology is still sound: whereas the F-22 returns a radar signature equal to that of a metal marble, the F-35 bounces back a profile of a metal golf ball  – which is still smaller than most birds.

Plus, the jet comes with cutting edge sensor suites, futuristic situational awareness systems for the pilot, and more weapons carrying capability than any plane of similar size – which leaves the F-35 as a solid No. 2 contender.

And this is where I must part ways with my preferred Canadian political party and the official Canadian Opposition – the Liberals.

The current federal Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff, says that the Defense Department should have tendered the contract out to more manufacturers – instead of just handing it to Lockheed Martin on a silver platter… perhaps considering the No. 3 contender, the Eurofighter Typhoon.

From a strictly business standpoint, that would be a prudent idea – but when you take that business to the level of a nation state, there are many other things to consider: jobs for Canadians… wise investment of dollars Canada has already spent… how our armed forces will operate when hand in hand with other global players, etc.

Canada’s interest in the F-35 was initiated by the previous Liberal government when it was in charge of Canada’s future – to the tune of more that $100,000,000.

To simply walk away now would be a monumental waste of money, and a missed opportunity of epic proportions.

Iggy calls it a boondoggle, and is threatening to kill the contract the second the Liberal party takes power again.

I’m sorry, Iggy… but I’m going to have to step back and call you an idiot who would prefer to use a think-tank approach to solving skirmishes.

In this one instance, I have to painfully concede that the conservative mindset is correct: the candle with the biggest wick wins.

This blogger may not speak for all Canadians at all times, but I’m pretty sure I speak with one voice when I say this:

We want to win.

.

.

.

See video of the F-35 here

What Is The Cost?

Hey, you!

Yeah… you over there in the automobile.

How you doing?

You’re good?

That’s cool. Can I ask you a question?

Yes? You sure you don’t mind?

Okay, great.

Here it goes…

Just who the hell do you think you are?

What right do you have to cause this:

What’s that?

You didn’t cause the mess in that photo?

I, sir/madame, sincerely beg to differ.

That machine you’re sitting in now lives on the petroleum that’s covering them there waves.

In fact, so do the 1,074,355,233.333 other cars on the planet – which I’m sure are not all as gas-sipping as your SUV is.

I wonder how many times you’ve hopped into that beast – driven a distance that would have taken you all of 5 minutes to walk – only to grab something that you could have easily carried home… a carton of milk, maybe?

I’ll tell you: probably 500 times, and I’m being very lenient with that estimate.

Why do you do this?

Because you feel entitled.

You feel that it’s your God-given right to drive that motorized monstrosity wherever you damn well feel like.

Well, it may be your right by the laws of your city/province/state/country – but that right doesn’t supersede the entire freakin’ planet!

No… you didn’t have a direct hand in blowing up that oil rig.

No… you didn’t have a direct role in the shoddy design of the well head that’s leaking 5,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf Of Mexico every day since the accident happened – and will continue most likely for several more months until British Petroleum can get a new drilling rig on site and bore a relief well to suck up the oil that’s bursting forth from the ocean floor.

But yes, you are responsible!

How?

Because of that God damned entitlement you think you have to drive around a parking lot for 10 minutes looking for a parking space!

B.P., Exxon, Shell, Petro-Canada, and all of the other ‘big oil’ companies drill holes in the planet so they can harvest crude oil that they will process and sell to you and all the other miserable car driving assholes like you in the form of rediculously-marked up gasoline at your nearest gas station.

And because there are so many of you who abuse your right to drive so often that you burn twice or three times the amount of fuel than you really need, Big Oil has to make more and more of those holes in the earth’s crust to get at that precious Black Gold – and a lot of those wells are drilled in places that are ecologically sensitive.

This oil spill is already larger than the U.S. state of Rhode Island.

If emergency crews can not get the leaking under control inside the next month, the oil will span an amount of ocean equal to the state of California.

Think of all the wildlife that will die so you can pick up your kids from school when they could easily walk home in under 10 minutes.

God forbid little Suzie and her brother Jimmy burn off the calories from all the McDonald’s food you buy them.

Think of the sea turtles that are going to die in vast numbers just so you can use your bank’s drive through.

All of the ocean birds that are getting coated in the thick, viscous oil slurry created when the waves and crude oil mix together – making it impossible for them to fly.

Imagine all the coastal wetlands along the Gulf Coast that are now being inundated with oil, killing everything from frogs to alligators that live in those areas where fresh water meets salt water.

Think of all the fish that are breathing this crap into their bodies with every movement of their gills – and some of these fish are the ones you depend on being caught for food.

No.

You won’t think of any of those things because you honestly don’t give a shit.

Some talking head will list all the damages on the nightly news and you’ll shake your head at the images on your TV screen – but as soon as the news has moved on to the latest celebrity cheating scandal, you’ll have forgotten the environmental apocalypse that you’ve had a hand in.

You’ll probably get up and go out to your SUV so you can drive down to the corner store and buy a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.

You know what?

Fuck you.

History Blog: War & The Nuclear Option

Since we’re on the cusp of the anniversary of W.W.II’s end in Europe, I got on a bit of a history kick for a while there in my video studio – though very little of it had to do with the war in Europe.

Okay.

Moving on now.

Standby for a forthcoming rant.

History Blog: 1,517

That would the number of people who died in the Titanic disaster 98 years ago – at time far removed from today’s information-powered world.

Yet, even today, the disaster ripples through society.

It gives us all a moment a pause – whether outright or in our thoughts – on a scale that only few events in history can.

9/11.

J.F.K.

The World Wars.

The public at large remembers these, unlikely to ever forget entirely – forming an emotional resonance and attachment that is hard to equal in history.

People don’t really connect to the death of Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson the way they have to the epic tale of Titanic’s demise.

Why is that?

What is that secret ingredient that allows the world to mourn something forever?

It’s the common factor – how events effect the common person in society that matters in these instances.

The majority of the people who died aboard Titanic were of common stock – 3rd class citizens during the Edwardian era where the tragedy took place – who were the working poor, or those who could at least break even.

Sure, there were a small cadre of tycoons who met their doom – some by choice, other by the rules of a polite and enlightened society (women and children first).

But by and large, the dead were comprised of people who had nothing – who were traveling to the New World in hopes of a better life.

A better life that never came.

Dreams, wishes, and lives extinguished due to the hubris of a society who thought iron could do them no wrong.

So emboldened by technology that they flew in the face of fate – practically daring it to strike them down – and Fate was more than willing to engage them, sending the largest ship that had ever been built (at the time) to the bottom of the North Atlantic.

Of course, as with many human dramas, money was at the heart of this terrible misadventure.

Despite the sheer opulence of the floating palace that Titanic represented to it’s 1st and 2nd class passengers, Titanic was built for one purpose: transporting mass numbers of 3rd class passengers to North America.

Back then, the large ships were meant to make companies like White Star Lines and Cunard Lines money by fulfilling the dreams of the poor to start their lives over in the land of milk and honey – much in the same way cattle are moved around from place to place in today’s commodity markets.

In fact, the 3rd class passengers were referred to as ‘steerage’ in the common industry parlance of the day.

Moving these dreamers in bulk maximized profits for White Star, so the push was for bigger and bigger ships was good for business – without the foresight to see problems in the design work, or the will to spend extra money of safety measures beyond the headline-grabbing technologies.

Yes, Titanic had the revolutionary water-tight bulkheads that made the literature of the day declare her ‘practically unsinkable’ – which was a fantastic feature given the era – but it also had design failures that were either not foreseen by the same authors, or were purposely left out of the articles after insistence by White Star.

The biggest design failing that was incorporated into the Olympic-class ships was the pitifully small rudder when compared to the length of the ships – which meant the ships couldn’t corner worth a damn, and meant Titanic could not steer her way out of a collision with an iceberg on short notice.

Of course, this is knowledge determined over nearly a century of hindsight.

The painfully obvious – and hammered upon in James Cameron’s movie -  fact was White Star’s refusal to install the number of life rafts allotted for in Thomas Andrew’s designs due to the unseemly appearance of a crowded deck where the 1st and 2nd class passenger would stroll about.

I’m sure this wasn’t an explicit swipe at the 3rd class citizens – who were quite disposable in that era’s social hierarchy, despite them carrying the upper crust on their backs – but more in line with the hubris I mentioned earlier.

Like I said, Titanic and her sisters were built with catering to the 3rd class in mind – not to endanger or belittle them.

It’s a common fact that White Star’s accommodations for the 3rd class passengers were classier than the competition – almost worlds apart, in comparison.

The dining areas of Titanic’s steerage sections were staffed by friendly people and appointed quite well: tablecloths, porcelain dishes, good silverware, and a fairly robust menu given the social circumstances.

White Star depended on the 3rd class enjoying their experience on Titanic so much that the menu cards that those passengers ordered from were designed with postcards on the reverse side – so not only would the people write home to their relatives in the Old World about how happy they were with their treatment aboard ship, the postcard itself would be an advertisement of what a prospective 3rd class passenger could expect to dine on during their trip (a rather ingenious marketing ploy – even by today’s standards)

Even the 1st and 2nd class appointments of Titanic were secondary considerations to the development of better and faster ways to deliver 3rd class citizens to America’s shores – designed to give social sizzle to the endeavor so it would stir the public’s imagination.

A ploy to give even the poorest of people dreams of what it would be like to move to America and make their own fortunes – fortunes that would allow them to book a return trip one day in that very luxury that inspired them in the first place.

However, in the end, it was all for naught – at least for Titanic’s passengers.

The mountain of steel and iron was no match for an equally massive mountain of frozen water – especially at the speed that Titanic’s owner, whom was aboard the ship on it’s maiden voyage (Robert Ismay), had demanded she be going.

All 46,328 tons of the ship were heading to the bottom of the ocean as of 2:20 A.M. in the morning of April 15th, 1912.

Never to be seen again – at least, not until the wee hours of the morning on the 1st of September in 1985.

Since that date, Titanic’s wreck has become a popular destination for those who are curious and who have the technological know-how to dive the 2.33 miles to the bottom – risking their lives in the process.

For many of the people who have been to Titanic’s grave (or a seeking a way there), the rusting hulk represents the human failure to realize that we as a species do not rule the universe – but it also reminds us of the pettiness that our society is capable of… how easy it is for us to belittle those who don’t have the same advantages in life that we do.

Titanic’s wreck is also a time capsule – a time capsule that is slowly dissolving away in the frigid depths far from the eyes of the everyday people.

It’s a view backwards through time – even if it’s a rust-coloured view – towards a time where there were no computers, no internet, no cell phones, no video games… towards a time where mankind sought to fashion technological wonders out of the Earth’s raw materials with his bare hands and the strength of his biceps (there were no robots and complex hydraulic machines to assist in Titanic’s construction – each rivet in her hull was brutalized into shape my men swinging massive hammers).

It’s a time capsule that captures the immense hopefulness that existed in the world prior to World War One and the following Great Depression – what humankind hoped that the future would look like.

However, the wreck is also the tomb and grave marker for those 1,517 souls – and this lends the Titanic’s remains a complexity that interests people on a fundamental level… a paradox in attitudes.

The man who led the team who located Titanic’s wreck, Dr. Robert Ballard, is of the view that Titanic should be left alone as the grave that it is – instead of being poked and prodded (and plundered by some).

Others insist the wreckage be archaeologically cataloged before it completely collapses in on itself – which is entirely inevitable – and becomes nothing more than a rust stain on the bottom of the Atlantic.

It’s a moral battle suited to philosophers, but often boils down to money and the will to do something.

The money flows in two basic directions: RMS Titanic Inc. and the Russian Academy Of Sciences.

RMS Titanic Inc. is the legal owner of the wreck and has the right to salvage anything that it finds of interest from the wreck, sending the collection of over 5,000 artifacts (including a 17 ton section of the ship’s hull) around the world on tour – allowing people to visually connect with the history and tragedy of the Titanic for a modest fee.

The Russian Academy Of Sciences is the go-to agency for hiring submersibles able to dive to Titanic’s depths – of which there are few – and business is fairly brisk at the pace of up to five expeditions a year departing from St. John’s, Newfoundland in Canada (the closest major port to Titanic’s resting place).

There are other people and agencies that profit from Titanic – mainly media corporations that create documentaries for the masses, and of course, Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox who released the 2nd highest-grossing film in history based on the Titanic story.

So, again, Titanic boils down to money.

How tragic.

And yet… amusing when you consider the futility.

In the end, I’m asking that you ignore all my meandering in this blog, and for you to just set aside a moment and try to take your mind to a place that can truly appreciate the human tragedy of Titanic for a few moments since there’s not a single Titanic survivor left to do so.

As the old Native American saying goes, something exists only as long as the last person who remembers it.

Those 1,517 people existed because I remember them – and I hope you will remember them, too.

For more Titanic facts, please consult the following links:

http://www.titanic-online.com/

http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/

http://www.titanichistoricalsociety.org/

Tech Blog: The Only ‘Approved’ Use Of An iPad

….And by ‘approved‘, I mean ‘Stormcastle Approved‘.

Natch.

Bonus points for recycling!

Tech Blog: HP Struts It’s Stuff & Makes The iPad Obsolete

I’ve already written a fairly disparaging blog on how much Apple Computer sucks at just about everything, so I won’t go on and on about that again.

Hate repeating myself.

However, I will present to you a nice video of everything the iPad could have been.

Behold!

Things That I Don’t Understand… Vol. 2

So here again I go… down that smokey, crater-pocked, ranting road – bringing nonsense and jibber-jabber out into the bright sunlight where one would expect it to shrivel up and die like so many witches who have had houses dropped on them.

But no.

These items will go on, almost like a ballad by Celine Dion, and continue to curse society as a whole for God only knows how long.

Oh well…

On with the show!

ITEM NUMBER SEVEN

Violence perpetrated by young girls.

Where did this come from?

Back in the day, girls were supposed to be the fairer sex – not the one that will shank you with a pair of scissors for talking trash on Facebook.

What is the source of this simmering anger in today’s generations of teens? Who is causing this?

Is this a product of the generational battle for women’s equality?

Is it some bizarro manifestation of penis envy?

Have girls come to the realization that the only way that they can top their male classmates physically is to go bat-shit crazy at the drop of a hat in ways that most guys would never consider?

Young men are often perplexed because they don’t know how to react if a girl gets violent with them because – despite outward appearances – boys still adhere to the ages-old mantra that females are delicate and therefor not to be roughed up.

I say screw that!

Boys, if you’re reading this, fight back!

If a girl thinks her pants are big enough to take a swing at you, and it connects, feel free to slug her back.

Equality for women works both ways – not just the positive things like bigger paychecks.

It means equal treatment, and equal treatment means that they can get a whole hearted return on all their actions – they should be perfectly ready to take any bruises that they have coming to them as a result of things they’ve done.

Call me a brutish caveman if you like, but fair is fair.

ITEM NUMBER EIGHT

12 year old girls that have cleavage that would put Barbie to shame.

Twenty-two years ago, when I was 12 years old, my female peers were flat as a lumpy board for the most part.

What is the process behind this gender acceleration?

Is it the metric tonne of growth hormone that preteens have consumed by the time puberty rolls around through various foodstuffs?

Every piece of meat… every glass of  milk… every single item that we put in our mouths that came from an animal is loaded with growth hormones – drugs that are fed to cow, pigs, and chickens to speed up their maturation so that they can be slaughtered, be milked, or lay eggs faster and be more profitable.

Society in general sees sexual activity statistics of the very young and shake their heads without taking into account that little Krystina isn’t so little anymore and is giving J-Lo and Shakira a serious run for their money.

It’s a biological certainty – hardwired into human DNA – that once girls develop the equipment, they feel the need to employ it.

All they have to do is find a male who’s reached an equivalent state of sexual maturity – and I can only presume that the genders are on equal footing since they all eat the same food.

As Sherlock Holmes would say, it’s elementary.

If you parents want to put that sexual genie back in the bottle, demand that the food you buy is organic and not modified by big corporations for a faster buck.

Assuming that this trend hasn’t already bound itself it to our DNA, the 38DD 12 year olds should thin out over time.

ITEM NUMBER NINE

Virtual copies that you never actually own.

There’s a push amongst the tech savvy to get rid of hard copies of DVDs/Blu-Ray discs/CDs in favor of virtual copies that you purchase online from Amazon or iTunes that will ‘always be there’ for you to stream whenever you feel like it.

How does this even make sense?

Do you not understand how fragile corporations are?

What happens to that $20 investment if the company you ‘purchased’ it from goes tits up?

Your movie, TV shows, music, or book will go bye-bye and you’ll have zero to show for your money.

This may seem like an odd argument coming from me – someone who likes to stay somewhere near the cutting edge of technology – but it’s firmly rooted in reality.

Have you ever experienced a service outage from an online business that you rely on?

YouTube is down for maintenance?

Getting the Fail Whale page over at Twitter?

Your internet service provider is having a bad day?

Your copy of Assassin’s Creed 2 isn’t working because Ubisoft’s  DRM servers are offline – making it so you can’t play the game you just paid $60 dollars for?

How is it even sane to trust an online company to keep your precious purchase for posterity?

Are you frakkin’ kidding me?

Hollywood, I demand that you keep pumping out hard copies of your entertainment products so that I can always access the media at any second of my life that I wish to enjoy it.

I take pride in looking at my shelf of DVDs, visually confirming at a glance that I spent my money wisely on things that I enjoy.

I don’t think that I have to explain the tactile joy of holding something that you just spent money on – a self-justification that you’re living a life that you that you’ve worked hard at.

Online digital copies are abstract thoughts – ephemeral by their very digital nature, nothing but a series of ones and zeroes residing on a server thousands of kilometers from where you live.

You don’t own it.

All you’ve done is paid someone for the privilege of maybe looking at that media item if all the various techno gods are smiling on you today.

Fuck that.

ITEM NUMBER TEN

Spending ridiculous amounts of money on your child’s first birthday party.

You do realize that 1 year old Bobby Junior is going to have zero recollection of the event, right?

I mean, other than the cute/embarrassing photos that you will take of his face covered in chocolate ice cream cake.

Exactly what are you trying to prove?

Do you think that the number of balloons, quality of the hired entertainment, and size of the cake and goody bags is somehow relevant to the amount that you love your child?

Is how much you love your offspring measured in dollars and cents?

Of course not – unless it is… in which case you really need to get yourself some therapy and perhaps give your child up for adoption.

No… the only reason you make such a big deal of his or her turning the ripe old age of 1 is so that you can stake out your position in the social hierarchy of your circle of friends and acquaintances – and not for any valid emotional experience between your and your child.

Let’s be honest here: the party is going to emotionally overwhelm little Bobby/Sally as they simply don’t yet have the faculties to process the information overload that’s on offer.

The parents that do go to these insane lengths wonder to themselves why their child – in more cases than not – is in a rotten mood and making such a fuss amongst all the faux revelry.

Do yourself a huge favor if you have a child who is going to complete their first year on this planet of ours: buy or make a cupcake and stick a candle in it – maybe even a sparkler if you want to go for some wow-factor.

Chances are that it’s going to be 1000% more of an genuine emotional bonding experience with your baby than the three-ring circus happening at the birthday party down the block.

And really… isn’t that what you want?

Dear Bell Canada: We Hate You

All of us across Canada have been taking part in a mass experiment for the past 17 days or so.

This experiment was called The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Why is that an experiment and what does it have to do with Bell Canada?

Dear reader, I will tell you ‘cuz that’s just what kind of blogger I am – always looking out for those who don’t know.

For those of you out there who live in countries that are not named Canada, a little background is needed here.

The official Canadian network of the 2010 Olympic Games was CTV – one of only 3 national Canadian networks – and was the only Canadian source of Olympics broadcast over it’s hydra-esque collection of stations: CTV, TSN (The Sports Network), MuchMusic (the Canadian alternative to MTV), and MTV Canada (the Canadianized MTV).

CTV was formerly owned wholly by Bell Canada (now about 20%), and now you’re up to speed.

(UPDATE: Bell Canada has repurchased the entirety of CTV as of September 10th, 2010)

On the whole, the CTV broadcast of the Olympics was completely and totally shit – I’m not gonna mince words here.

The fact that the Canadian-origin Olympic broadcasts were shit is endemic of Bell Canada’s general attitude towards the Canadian public and none of us should have been really surprised at the epic failure of the endeavor.

The technologies employed for the Olympics broadcasts were seriously lacking when compared to the station most Canadians turned to when comparable programming was on offer: NBC.

Why is that?

The answer – to put it simply – is competition.

In the United States of America, NBC had the sole rights for broadcasting the Olympic games to the entire country – but they had to deal with new shows or counter programming from their two rivals, namely ABC and CBS.

NBC was in a position where they had to use absolute top notch video, audio, and graphical technology to make the Olympics palatable to the average American to ensure good Nielsen ratings performance against shows like CSI and LOST.

I give a tip of my metaphorical hat to Mr. Zucker, the president of NBC, for making these strong decisions and reaping the benefits.

However, the corporate masters at CTV didn’t really see the need to go all out on the technical standards because they had the Canadian viewers by the balls – so to speak.

Why?

Two things.

Patriotism and lack of choices.

If a Canadian wanted to watch the games, they (at least in the heads of CTV masters) would have no other option than to watch the CTV family coverage.

And what Canadian DIDN’T want to watch the Olympics hosted in Vancouver, British Columbia – which happens to be in CANADA?

What Canadian citizen didn’t want to watch our Canadian Olympians win more gold medals than any other country in the history of the Games?

There was simply no choice for a lot of Canadians out there across our great land (2nd largest country in the world, by the way) who only got two or three channels on their televisions due to lack of cable or satellite service.

You see, CTV’s corporate masters give it lots of money to spend on licensing of the lion’s share of top rated American shows – meaning that even if you wanted to watch American Idol or other supershows instead of the Olympics, and you didn’t have cable, you were stuck watching the Olympics because your feeble rabbit ear & coat hanger setup can’t pull in an American network.

These are the facts of the previously mentioned experiment.

I’m not really aware of the total ratings breakdown of the CTV broadcasts, but from what I gather, it was a resounding success for the big wigs at Bell Canada’s broadcast division.

Which only serves to reinforce the way that Bell Canada operates throughout our vast country.

You see, Bell Canada used to be a complete and total monopoly of the Canadian telephone system – that is up until the past fifteen years or so where the CRTC (the Canadian telecommunications authority) opened up the phone market to other companies.

Bell had to deal with outside companies all of a sudden competing with them for the Canadian telecom dollar.

American companies came in and tried to run services for a while – specifically Sprint and AT&T (both of which eventually folded their Canuck operations into the Canadian telecom company Rogers).

With the fear of losing massive monopoly sized profits, Bell Canada decided to buy CTV and it’s associated networks to shore up it’s bottom line through the often mystical art of television tradecraft.

For the average Canadian, nothing really changed on television – save for the inclusion of Bell’s corporate logo at the bottom of CTV’s original local programming credits.

And in the years since the CTV takeover, nothing has really changed either – aside from some graphical makeup applied to the CTV brand.

Why?

Bell Canada loathes Canadians – or, at the very least, holds Canadians in total and utter contempt.

For all the water that has passed under the bridge since the monopoly breakup, Bell Canada still operates as a monopoly.

An alarmingly large amount of Canada’s telecom assets are still owned and operated by Bell Canada – including (and the most troubling of all) the entire Canadian internet backbone system.

Bell Canada owns the Canadian internet – despite not having a monopoly on how people subscribe to internet services.

Independent internet service providers have to buy their backbone access through Bell’s infrastructure wholesale.

A Canadian citizen might get their internet through a local company, but that internet is ultimately controlled by Bell.

To borrow something from the Matrix movies, Bell Canada guards all the doors and they hold all the keys – at least as far as the internet is concerned.

That local ISP may not have restrictive content filters that would slow down internet applications like BitTorrent or other P2P programs – but your data traffic cultivated by those apps will still suffer speed delays because Bell Canada does filter.

So in the end, no matter who you’re signed up with, Bell Canada still controls what you do on the internet.

Also, your internet is going to suck when compared to other developed nations.

According to a recent study by eggheads at Harvard University, Canada is 18th on a list of internet service quality.

Why eighteenth?

Because Bell still operates as if it’s a monopoly – and it is the one true  internet God in the realm of Canada’s cyberspaces.

In countries like Great Britain, Germany, Japan, Sweden, or the United States (among many other countries ahead of Canada on the afore-mentioned list), internet services improve over time due to market forces in a wide open internet marketplace.

Let’s use the United States as a working example, shall we?

In the U.S. there is a plethora of companies offering internet access via their own, wholly owned data networks that are in direct competition which each other for American customer dollars.

In hopes of attracting new customers, American networks are constantly upgrading themselves to offer bigger and better products.

Case in point, Verizon has wired large portions of America with a fiber optic transmission network so they can offer blazing data speeds when compared to their competition (AT&T, Sprint, etc.) who are still relying on century-old metal wire network technology.

Competition is the heart of progress in all systems on the planet – both technological and biological.

For something to become better, it has to have incentive to do so – and as it is, Bell Canada has ZERO incentive to improve itself.

I’m sure that somewhere in Bell Canada’s executive building(s), there’s a large brass plaque that reads in bold letters WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?

Until the CRTC grows some balls and forces Bell to divest itself of the Canadian internet backbone, Bell Canada will not invest one measly dime in network upgrades than it has to – and believe me, it doesn’t spend one penny that it isn’t forced to.

Except…

Except for internet service via cellphone.

The cellphone service sector is wide open in Canada with many competitors vying for 34 million Canadian’s hard earned cash.

Rogers, Telus, Koodo, Virgin, Wind Mobile – all nipping at Bell’s subscriber base, which forced the company to innovate and try to offer a technological edge to it’s customers that wouldn’t be available to other services.

If there weren’t other cellphone service providers in the Canadian market, Canadians would not have access to 3G or the oncoming 4G.

Bell users now have the opportunity to use the vaunted iPhone (gag me with a spoon) because Bell was forced to upgrade it’s network to compete with Rogers who was already offering iPhones.

That’s the process of competitive evolution in action.

The dinosaurs went through this hundreds of millions of years ago in our planet’s distant past, but the dinosaur that is Bell Canada simply refuses to evolve because there isn’t another corporate beastie big enough to take a bite out of it’s gnarled hide.

For this, we Canadians are in the technological third-world – which really, really sucks.

As much as we love to brag to our quarrelsome American neighbors about how we have superior, free healthcare and how we mopped the floor with them in the 2010 Olympic gold medal count, we must continuously hide our shame in regards to how friggin’ slow our internet speeds are.

I sit here in envy of whichever American cities get selected for Google’s internet service experiments that promises speeds of 1GB per second: yes, one gigabyte per second compared to my 300 kilobytes per second as I write this blog.

No, 300kbps isn’t a national average in Canada.

The average data speed in high-speed enabled communities throughout Canada is 10 megabytes per second via DSL service, 12Mbps via cable internet service – and I’ve enjoyed connection speeds of up to 5Mbps via DSL in the past, but those were anomalous and based on living in the right areas where Bell spent some extra money on their wiring .

Yes… I could subscribe to my cable company’s (Cogeco) internet service and get that 12Mbps, but there’s a gigantic catch to that blissful speed: a solid 60 gigabyte data cap – which is fairly standard amongst North American cable companies.

60GB isn’t enough by far for my demanding usage as I regularly move 200GB or so a month via gaming, uploading to social media sites like YouTube and Flickr, and downloading music/TV shows/movies.

So I’m stuck on this crappy Bell-supplied architecture.

And we, as Canadians, were stuck with the crappy, Bell-managed CTV Olympics coverage when we couldn’t turn to NBC for the same event – which was sporadic at best since NBC’s coverage was very focused on American Olympians and would skip events where the U.S. wasn’t competing, and completely blanked the Canadian cultural portion of the Closing Ceremonies.

AARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH! @$#%&!

Seriously, Bell Canada… what the hell?

The next time I stop to use a pay-phone, I hope you choke to death on the two quarters.

.

.

.

.

Oh… and that experiment and it’s purpose?

To figure out how much shit we as Canadians are willing to put up with.

And by the looks of it, Bell Canada will continue to use the Canadian market as it’s own personal outhouse.

Apple Sucks. I’m Sorry If You’re Offended.

Ask any Apple product user out there in the wilds of the internet or – gasp! – in the real world what made them buy their Mac/iPod/iPhone, and you’ll almost invariably get the same answer: they’re innovative.

I suppose this could be held out to be true if you were a technological neophyte who knew little about the technology that’s inside their purchase.

The problem with that is this: there is a very large number of people in this world who actually know what the parts and software that comprises an Apple product does – thusly knowing the inherent limitations of the device.

This creates a problem for Steve Jobs, and it’s the number one reason why he moves heaven and earth in attempts to make Apple products look cool – to make them fashionable status symbols.

If it’s white & shiny, or black & shiny, people are more likely to gloss over (hahahah… so punny!) the nagging problems that they encounter over the lifetime of the product – which isn’t going to be more than 2 years in reality due to Apple releasing a newer version of the flashy technojewelery that they paid a ridiculously large sum of money for.

What’s that? The product was worth all the extra cash?

Again: technojewelry.

You buy these things to look fashionable, and not based on technological superiority.

Want to know something interesting? The average uncut diamond is worth about $10 when you factor in rarity and the processing of rock to extract it.

$10.

Now, yes, that’s in its uncut state and cutting is where the art is – and where most jewelers will justify the 2000% markup.

Does this sound familiar?

Have you ever done comparative shopping between a Mac and a PC?

Technologically, the systems aren’t any different – yet the prices are excessively separate.

Side by side, the two machines might be different in appearances, but they’re essentially the same under the hood.

All the parts involved are mostly made in the same factories by the same manufacturers to roughly the same standards – though the Mac parts might be lower powered when compared to the same PC part.

The internal guts of these two computers might be arranged slightly different – but let’s be honest: a lot of PC makers arrange their parts in different configurations while trying to get a leg up, yet they all run Windows.

However, when we go to look at the price tags on each machine, you have to do a double/triple/quadruple/quintuple look!

The PC will be priced at $799.

The Mac will be priced at $2,799 (or more: see here)

I’m sorry.

Say what?

You want me to pay $2,000 dollars extra for what is essentially the same machine?

Are you out of your freakin’ mind?

What’s that, Mr. Jobs? You want to make the same kind of money that HP, Dell, and Acer do in their PC divisions?

But you only have 5% of the world’s personal computer market! That’s madness!

Oh… wait… I see what you’re doing!

Jack up the price on every computer so that it LOOKS like you’re selling 3.5 units every time a single computer is purchased!

Genius!

Your accountants must love you!

When Apple is making 3.5 times the money per computer, it really looks like they command 17.5% of the computer market when you boil it down to dollars and cents (cents, not sense)…

…when the truth is nowhere near that.

I have to give Mr. Jobs credit, though.

It takes huge, gigantic brass balls to make a money play like that.

The fact that he gets $5 for every $100 spent on personal computing is really an accomplishment – but it’s nowhere enough for a publicly traded company that has shareholders looking for money to put in their pockets.

What was Mr. Jobs to do? How could he make more money for the people who had invested their hard-earned dollars in Apple stock?

Why… take the technojewelry concept to the next level!

Jewelry isn’t very practical if you can’t wear it on your body, is it?

Thus came the Apple iPod.

Contrary to what Apple would want you to believe, the iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player on the market, despite it’s current cultural ubiquitousness.

All Mr. Jobs did was pair together function (which was being done already by other companies) with form – which was something relatively revolutionary at the time.

People could walk around enjoying their music while feeling good about how swell the iPod looked and accessorized their lifestyle.

Apple even cared enough about their customers to make a web store to sell music directly to iPod users – because, honestly, buying a CD in a physical/real world music store was just too hard with all the track ripping and what not.

They’re even generous enough to only keep 35 cents of every 99 cents (the rest goes to the music industry), only leaving them $475,000 a day in profits!

But… that wasn’t enough money.

Shareholders screamed MOAR!

They money hungry stock owners saw that the MP3 player market was saturated with products that did everything the iPod did and more!

The Microsoft Zune plays HD video and the current generation iPod doesn’t.

Sansa players have voice recorders.

So on and so on.

Apple needed to up their game to find new revenue streams.

Steve Jobs said add a phone to the iPod and give it a touchscreen.

And behold, it was good.

Let’s add downloadable applications, he said.

And the Apple devotees rejoiced – spending $2.4 billion dollars a year on apps.

And things were good for a month or so – before competitors released phones that did everything an iPhone did plus a lot more.

Hell… the only thing the iPhone really brought to the cellphone market was the touchscreen – and that was very easily duplicated.

The iPhone was seriously lacking in certain areas as well, missing functions that other cell owners took for granted.

But… it was black & shiny! OMFG! More technojewelry!

Shareholders screamed MOAR!

They money hungry stock owners saw that the smartphone market was saturated with products that did everything the iPhone did and more!

So here we are now in the era of the iPad – and I won’t make a stale joke about feminine hygiene products.

In it’s most basic sense, the iPad is just a jumbo iPhone/iPod Touch – which as usual isn’t upgradeable, and the early adopters will curse it’s lack of Flash and/or Silverlight, among it’s dozen or so shortcomings.

It doesn’t bring anything new to the market, and I’m sure the stock owners are a bit puzzled since it will be VERY easy for a competitor to top the iPad with very little to no research & development costs.

Sure, there’s the App Store and another potential for $2.4 billion dollars in revenue a year – and maybe that’s enough for stock owners.

However, they really have to be glancing over in Google’s direction with a little bit of nervousness – and not just because of the price difference in stocks (at the time of my writing this blog, Apple was at $200 USD a share vs. Google’s $543), but because Google seems to be hell-bent on taking on both Microsoft AND Apple.

Have you ever seen a Google phone? One that either runs on Google software or is marketed directly to the masses by Google themselves?

Prime example is the Nexus One cellphone.

It does everything the iPhone does and more – and usually for less!

Wow. Do you have any idea how tedious it’s getting to write statements like that? Do you?

Anyway…

In the end, as hopefully you can see by now, is that Apple doesn’t offer the world anything that’s better than the competitors.

So why oh why do the Apple fanboy/fangirls of the world continue to scream at the tops of the lungs that ‘Apple is the best EVAR!’?

What is it that inspires such blind and almost unequivocal (see Linux fanboys) devotion?

Have I mentioned the white/black & shiny?

The technojewelry?

Oh… I have?

That’s the sum of it.

If that’s so, why is Justin Long still on TV poking fun of John Hodgman’s PC after what seems like 20 years?

Apple still feels insecure, that’s why.

And it’s a justified insecurity because someone in the Apple hierarchy has a level head on their shoulders and sees the truth of the matter i.e. that ultimately, Apple products are inferior.

Why that person hasn’t been fired personally by Steve Jobs is an incredulous miracle, but I think it has a lot to do with those stock holders.

Apple Computer nearly died a long slow death not very long ago, and shareholders would really rather that not happen again – thus the reality checker at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.

As far as Apple’s computer line is considered, the fans will shout words like the afore-mentioned innovation, as well as words and concepts  like ‘easy to use’, and ‘virus free’.

Easy to use?

I suppose they are when you take into consideration that using OS X and its various iterations is sort of like taking the Windows experience, making it prettier (though Windows 7 is pretty gorgeous) and then dumbing it down so a kindergarten student can use it.

What’s that, Infuriated Mac Fanboy?

Windows Vista/7 ripped off OS X?

Truth of the matter is that Microsoft had been working on a visual update for Windows long before OS X hit the market, and there is reams of data to back that up readily available from the U.S. Justice Department if you know where to ask (data related to investigations into Microsoft’s anti-competitiveness).

However, I’ll let David Pogue deal with the Vista vs. OS X battle over here.

Finally, let’s address the ‘virus free’ banner that Mac fanboys/fangirls like to wrap themselves up in before facing the world.

Yes, there are very few viruses out on the interwebs that are specifically coded for Macintosh computers.

Is it because Apple computers are inherently bulletproof when it comes to malware written in someone’s basement by their no-good, Cheetos-eating, Red Bull-drinking miscreant of an offspring?

No.

Is it because it’s easier to write anti-virus code for a Mac?

Nope.

Is it because Steve Jobs flies around the internet and eats all the potential Mac virus bombs before they can be delivered!

Yes!

Oh wait… no… that’s not it at all.

The reason Mac users go their entire Apple product using lives without encountering a nasty virus that wants to corrupt their data or hijack their internet connections is this: 5%.

Five measly percentage points.

Why would virus writers – who depend on vast numbers of computers to distribute their ill-meaning wares to other vast numbers of computers – bother writing a virus that would only effect 5% of the computer ecosystem?

There’s no money or no glory in 5% of the world.

If you were walking down an alley and you saw a dollar with 5 pennies on top of it, which would you pick up? The dollar or the pennies?

I dunno about you, but I’m sure as hell taking the dollar – and that’s exactly the way virus writers see the internet…

…and that’s the exact reason why Macs are virus free.

They’re not popular enough.

If you’re a Mac user and reading this blog, take great comfort in your binary isolation.

But beware, Mac User: if Microsoft, Google, and Linux all suddenly disappear like you wish every night before falling asleep, guess who’s gonna be the most disease-ridden girl at the Internet Prom?

It sure as hell ain’t gonna be Sun Mircrosystems.

Life Blog: Getting Old Is For Chumps…

… And the chump is me.

We’re all doing that slow and eventual march to the grave – no matter what we prefer to think, or regardless of what ridiculous lengths we go to for the sake of being healthy

As time goes on, I’m ever more aware that this is true for me.

When I was 15, I used to unequivocally state – and was only half-kidding – that I was going to drop dead at 25 from eating the largest steak dinner ever and having the resulting heart attack while consorting with a beautiful woman.

I must report that at 25, only the beautiful woman showed up.

So now I’m circling 34 years of age… and honestly, I sometimes forget how old I am – mainly due to the fact that my age really doesn’t matter to anyone.

I’ve stopped relating age to the things that happen in my life, which is a development that was a long time overdue: I started getting gray hair when I was 13 years old – that one sure sign that The Reaper has started writing down your name.

My knees have been wearing down since I was 12 via both ‘natural’ and athletic processes – in that exact order.

Knees that grind are very unpleasant to hear internally, unpleasant to feel physically, and can really suck when it comes to endurance.

In fact, the only upside to knees that grind like a bad transmission is how easy it is to give a girl you’re dating the willies: ‘Hey… wanna feel something weird? Put your hand on my knee while I bend it.’

Works every time.

My back kills me some days after a lifetime of stress: a genetically exaggerated curvature of the spinal column, multiple athletics derived fractures (horse back riding, motorcycle riding, wrestling).

The most frequent symptom (other than overt stiffness when getting up from certain positions) is a burning pain through my left erector spinae (lumbar region back muscle) which can really suck sometimes: imagine someone trying to perform surgery on your back with a thin-edged wooden spoon and you might be able to visualize the pain.

I’ve fractured and right-out broken both legs… my left one in three places to the point where I now have a titanium rod holding it together for the rest of my life – which makes me happy that I don’t do a whole lot of flying.

My teeth are slowly chipping and crumbling away after a hard decade of drinking nothing but coffee, tea, and cola – which also gave my horrible kidney stones towards the end.

The 2nd most recent issue facing me is one that’s incredibly distracting at times: myodesopsia… or in plain terms, eye floaters.

Those of you out there who have this affliction know how insidious it is – especially if you work with computers or other high-contrast visual work. You constantly have things moving through your line of sight – you even think you see bugs on the walls if the floater is going through your peripheral vision.

For those who haven’t experienced floaters as a frequent plague, check this video and then try to imagine it happening to you.

Finally, the most recent issue for me requires an OTC treatment that is somewhat embarassing: Preparation H.

That’s kind of the sure sign that you’re aging.

I can no longer delude myself into thinking that I’m still amongst the young when there are days where I wish I had one of those funny rubber cushions you see at the drug store – you know… the O-shaped ones that look like they’re made at the same factory that issues whoopee cushions.

Add that to a litany of pre-existing gastro intestinal issues, and you don’t really have a fun time on certain days.

Not even 34 and I have a body that feels at least 43.

Yup…

The chump is definitely me.

Some Proof That Stormcastle Walks His Talk…

No muss, no fuss.

No walking backwards, no brain malfunctions.

Just a sore shoulder… much better than dying or spreading the virus to someone else.

H1N1: The Absolute Truth

I hate you.

No, not YOU.

You, over there… the idiot who’s choosing not to get the H1N1 flu shot.

The potential murderer.

Did I just call you a potential murderer?

Let me check… *scrolls up*… yes I did.

Just because you’re too stupid and selfish to take time out of your precious little life and get a needle (o noes! 0_o), you’re going to risk not only YOUR life, but possibly the life of someone else.

I mean… seriously: how freakin’ selfish is that?

You’re going to freely condemn someone else – whom chances are you don’t even know – to a possibly miserable death at the hands of a merciless virus that can’t tell good people from bad people, white people from Asian people, or intelligent people from dumbasses like yourself.

Here’s how it goes:

You get the H1N1 flu and you get sick, but not deathly ill, and you shrug it off and pat yourself on the back for knowing better than the supposed ‘scientists’.

Bravo, Oh Great And Knowledgeable One. Good for you!

You don’t feel like ass anymore, so you decide it’s okay to go out shopping for groceries and maybe hit up Blockbuster for a movie rental.

Being environmentally conscious, you don’t drive a vehicle – so you hop on the nearest city bus, passing through a small crowd of passengers until you find a seat next to some young skater kids who are making a lot of noise.

One of the kids stinks of marijuana smoke and you cough and breathe heavily trying to get the stench out of your sinuses and throat.

Once the bus rolls up to your shopping destination, you stand up and thread your way through the throng of passengers, holding on to the hand grips as you go.

You step off the bus, passing some elderly women who just finished the grocery trip.

Inside the store, you head for the produce section since you think it’s good to feed yourself lots of veggies and fruit to help your body kick the remaining effects of H1N1, picking up and examining the assorted farmed goods so you get the best specimens of Mother Earth’s bounty.

As you stroll along the aisles, you realize that you’re out of Reese Puffs!

Lucky for you, there’s a clearance sale due to a pallet of slightly squished cereal boxes. Score!

Triumphantly finding a box that’s in near perfect condition after sorting through the display pile, you head to the check out realizing your total will be less than $10 and that you have enough large coinage in your pocket to cover it.

You wait in line behind an immigrant family who is taking FOREVER to get through, and in your impatient mood, bounce the coins around in your hand while cursing Canada’s immigration policies and sighing heavily in their direction in hopes they’ll get the idea that you’re not someone who enjoys delays.

Finally, you get to the cashier and hand her your hot and sweaty toonies, loonies, and quarters and breath out deeply at the thought of freedom from this retched store!

You go outside into a gaggle of people waiting for the bus and realize it won’t be there for another half-hour at the least, which bums you out large since you just want to get your movie, go home, and veg out on the sofa while your body recuperates.

Whipping out your cell phone, you call for a taxi while an extraordinarily thin guy watches you with some disdain.

‘Hippie‘ you think to yourself as your bark at the hard of hearing cab dispatcher.

“Say it, don’t spray it” mutters the thin guy.

The nerve of some people!

Your cab arrives and you slide in the back seat after the driver takes your grocery bag and stows it in the trunk while making small talk, remarking you look like you were hit by a rhinoceros – to which you make a weak smile and say it’s allergies (no need to alarm people).

As the city streets roll by, you relax and rest your hand on the door’s armrest.

Yay! You’ve reached Blockbuster!

You pay the cabbie with a $20 bill that you’ve been holding on to since he drove into the plaza, and hop out as the driver pops the trunk.

With your grocery bag in hand, you head into the video store – but realize you have no idea what kind of movie you’re in the mood for – and spend the next twenty minutes strolling through the aisles as you pick up random movie cases and read the back of them in hopes of finding an inspiration.

Finally, you leave the store with Paul Blart: Mall Cop and walk to the nearest bus stop, happy that the bus will be there within minutes.

As you wait, a couple of youngish girls walk up to the stop, wearing Girl Guide uniforms and carrying a satchel of cookie boxes.

“Mint chocolate cookies? Wow… those do look good,” you hear yourself saying as you scrounge inside your wallet for a $5 bill.

The blond girl cheerily hands you the cookies as you spot the city bus droning along the street towards you.

As you get on the bus, you thank your lucky stars that it’s now time to head home and relax with the movie and cookies after a good meal.

-

Good story, huh? Sounds like an average day in the average life of an average person.

How many people came into contact with the H1N1 virus that you were carrying around the town while you blissfully got your errands done?

The 13-year-old skater punks? The African immigrants who aren’t normally exposed to the flu in the middle of the desert?

How about that thin guy at the bus stop who had just gone through some intense chemotherapy for his lymphoma?

Or maybe the pregnant woman who you thought was sort of stalking you at Blockbuster as she picked up movies you already looked at.

That asthmatic cabbie handled your groceries and your money before resuming his diet of coffee and donuts?

Just after you left the produce section, and HIV-positive ex-hooker handled the cantaloupes you were squeezing.

So tell me, Oh Great And Knowledgeable One: which of those people is going to pick up the bits of H1N1 you left out there in the city?

Which one of those people who are very prone to getting sick from other people’s cast-offs will have  nearly-even odds of dying?

Let’s say it’s the thin cancer patient.

He ends up in the emergency room three days later, his lungs full of fluid and his heart struggling hard to keep up – which kills him within the following 16 hours.

In the meantime, you’ve gotten right as rain and have returned to work and are still congratulating yourself on how you beat the H1N1 virus without any vaccination harshing your buzz.

See… you know better than all of the world’s scientists, immunologists, doctors, nurses, and public officials who have spent decades practicing in their respective fields.

You have the inside track on what’s REALLY going on in the medical world.

It’s all about money, right?

The GlaxoSmithKlines of the world are always on the lookout for new ways to make money – and will slyly create a massive panic around the world so they can come to the rescue with a shoddy, untested treatment based on strange technologies that probably will cause autism in children or brain damage in 20% of the adult population.

Yeah, thank god you have the internet and are subscribed to World Of Warcraft forums.

How else would you have gotten the actual facts of the H1N1 scare? I mean… all those social shut-ins living in their mother’s basements are the absolute best knowledge keepers humanity has to offer!

Oh, that’s right. You also watch Fox News on cable… and everything they report is 100% solid factual reporting.

You, your internet friends, and the talking heads on Fox News don’t need university or medical school degrees to know about the biosystems of the human organism and all  threats that the natural world presents to it.

All of you are 100% smarter!

You, sir/madame, are an idiot.

Not just any old idiot either.

You are a fucking idiot.

A total, self-righteous whack job  – who truly doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone other than themselves – that is erroneously convinced by illiterate and unknowledged sources that the H1N1 vaccine is nothing more than ill-advised voodoo.

You have been indoctrinated by one of the largest cadre of fools on the face of this planet – people akin to those who believe the world is flat and that the Apollo moon landings were a hoax.

The absolute facts about the H1N1 vaccine are these:

- the vaccine will help your body’s immune system recognize and attack the H1N1 virus

- the vaccine will help control the spread of the virus by removing your body as a potential vector (pathway) to another human

- the technology behind the vaccine is exactly the same as the yearly flu vaccine that many of you hold-outs normally get each year

- there is ABSOLUTELY NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that vaccines are responsible for autism in children i.e. all supposed ‘evidence’ is   anecdotal…  the scientific equivalent of hearsay

- vaccines work! many of the world’s pathogens have been eradicated through the use of vaccines. How many people do you know that have polio or small pox?

- adjuvants added to the vaccine are nothing to be alarmed about: these additives increase your body’s awareness of the virus and boost it’s ability to create the proper antibodies

Facts about the H1N1 virus:

- people who have not received the vaccination are dying

- like many viruses, you may have the H1N1 virus in your system and not show any symptoms beyond a runny nose

- you can not contract H1N1 from eating pork products

- the virus is highly durable and can live in a dormant state on hard surfaces before accessing the human body via an orifice such as the mouth or nose

- the H1N1 virus is NOT similar to the seasonal flu viruses that people in developed countries are exposed to on a yearly basis, and therefore you are NOT vaccinated against H1N1 variants

- people born between 1917 and 1950 are more resilient against the virus (having been previously exposed) as its make-up is very similar to the 1918 Influenza that killed up to 100,000,000 people  worldwide – but are not 100% H1N1 proof.

- H1N1 is not SARS (bird flu) and you are not immune to it if you were exposed to SARS

- no geographical area is safe from H1N1 as it can survive in any climate that a human can, and it can access any environment that a human can travel to

- washing your hands is NOT a fool-proof way of protecting yourself from H1N1 – only full biohazard gear can guarantee safety from the virus

- eating healthy foods is good for the immune system and may help fight the virus, but it will NOT prevent virus infection

.

All of the above facts are completely backed by empirical scientific data and can NOT be argued by anyone who does not have a degree in medicine or the applied science of immunology.

The average person with average learning is unsuited to advising you on this very important matter.

Would you consult an architect about whether you should have a heart transplant?

Is the opinion from a stockboy who works at the Mac’s Milk on the corner relevant when you’re considering radiation therapy?

Why the hell would you listen to some jackass on the internet who doesn’t have any formal medical or scientific training?

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

Why are you jeopardizing other people with your own absolute stupidity?

What on Earth gives you the right to do that?

I don’t care about the rights you so callously speak about when you discuss your body.

What about the rights of the people you could infect?

Don’t they have a right to be protected from your lunacy?

People get thrown in jail for idiocy like drinking and driving because the odds state there is a good chance that they will hurt someone while operating their car under the influence of alcohol.

Why can’t we jail asinine persons such as yourself who are playing with the exact type of odds?

Some of you are so completely messed up in your head that I wish I could shake you by the shoulders, push you to the ground, and kick you until you see the error of your ways – until you admit that you’re not 25% as smart as you claim to  be.

But, man… if I had to do that to everyone of the idiots like you out there, my arms and legs would probably fall off from the strain.

.

No.

All I can do is stand here on my soapbox and scream at you to absolutely no effect.

You’re perfectly happy in your ignorant bliss.

People drop dead in your community from H1N1 and you don’t get it.

So all I have to say is this:

If by some act of fate you contract H1N1 and it kills you, I will not waste ONE SINGLE SOLITARY SECOND of my life mourning for you.

I will thank whatever powers run this universe that your stupid ass will be removed from society, and that you will have been stopped from endangering the rest of the human species.

.

As with those who got the vaccine, one less vector is great news.

———————————————————————————-

This rant has been aimed purely at those who have refused the H1N1 vaccine and not those who haven’t had the choice made available to them due to restriction of supply. If you or someone you know has been sick with H1N1 before the vaccine was available to you, and you would have chosen to receive the vaccine, I feel great sympathy for you.

Big Dipper In The City