Mark, Author at Kaedrin Weblog

Bah Humbug

Culture / Mark / December 8, 2000

Lawyer Wants To Bar Christmas as Federal Holiday: This grinch has been trying to steal Christmas for almost 3 years now, with the argument that having Christmas as a federal holiday is a violation of Church and state. “the Christmas holiday amounts to a government approval for a day of Christian religious origins marking the birth of Jesus Christ” This guy obviously doesn’t know much about the History of Christmas, which has its origins in pagan rituals that were later adopted by Christianity to celebrate the birth of Christ. In my opinion, Christmas is such a wonderous holiday because of its secular aspects, including holly, ivy, Mistletoe, Christmas trees, Santa Claus, snowmen, jingling bells and presents on Christmas morning (which have been repeatedly recognized by US Courts). Furthermore, this is a season who’s very message transcends any specific religion, ideology, or tradition to become an occasion for collective reflection on the values of what brings us together. Lets just hope the Courts stand firm…

Firepower

Science & Technology / Mark / December 7, 2000

Taking Ballistics by Storm: An electronic gun with no mechanical parts that could theoretically fire a million rounds per minute. It was invented by former grocery wholesaler Mike O’Dwyer. I can’t believe this guy, who has no formal education in ballistics, didn’t kill himself while inventing this thing. [via usr/bin/girl]

Spoon!

Arts & Letters / Mark / December 7, 2000

Theres going to be a live action Tick TV series? Why wasn’t I informed? I’m a bit worried that its going to be live action (I absolutely love the old Comics and Animated Series), but from the people involved, it seems like they are taking the right approach. The Official Site is sparse, but it has a cool Haiku of Justice. Spoon!

Disaster

Movies / Mark / December 6, 2000

Dave Barry’s Commentary on Disaster Movies. “…realism is not the point of a disaster movie. The point of a disaster movie is to have exactly the same script as every other disaster movie.” He gives you the script and it is funny. Read it.

A Very Wookie Christmas

Movies / Mark / December 6, 2000

I was only 2 months old when I felt a disturbance in the force. That disturbance was the Star Wars Holiday Special. I’ve only seen parts of the horrid thing, but apparently the Star Wars site Blueharvest.net has the whole show in low quality real video (apparently maximizing the suffering). [via the bowels of Metafilter]

Big Brother is Watching, Listening, Reading…

Science & Technology / Mark / December 5, 2000

This one goes out to all the paranoid British visitors of my site: Apparently there is a Secret plan to spy on all British phone calls as well as emails and internet connections. Very scary.

Doomed Processes

Computers & Internet / Mark / December 5, 2000

Someone has figured out how to use the 3d shooter Doom as a tool for system administration. Doom creates a new metaphor for process management: Each process can be a monster, and the machines can be represented by a series of rooms. Killing a process corresponds to killing a monster. How very clever. [via usr/bin/girl]

Artificial Idiocy

Culture / Mark / December 5, 2000

This java applet attempts to implement the classic “Eliza” program. It pretends to be a Rogerian psychologist. It was groundbreaking in its time, but it is ultimately a lacking AI system (that or Rogerian psychologists are complete morons, which is probably not too far from the truth). Its pretty easy to take advantage of the system. As DyRE found out, Never Go to a Rogerian Psychologist When You’re On Fire.

Search Engines

Computers & Internet / Mark / December 4, 2000

This is an interesting tool that you can use to help you find keywords for your site. Type in a keyword and you can find related searches that include your term, as well as how many times that term was searched on last month. Wery useful.

Subtle

Movies / Mark / December 4, 2000

For those of you who have seen Unbreakable, check out this alternate ending. IMHO, it makes for a much better ending; very subtle and yet nothing is really lost from the version released. Those little text messages at the end were so… out of place. [from Widgett by way of Coming Attractions; Widgett’s site, NeedCoffee.com hath recieved a gigantic update as well.]