Author: Jeff

movies

A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope

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Keith Martin has brilliantly reconsidered the motivation behind everything that goes on in Star Wars, in light of the nonsense that happens in Episodes 1-3. It’s central thesis is built around how at the end of Revenge of the Sith (RotS), C3PO has his memory wiped but R2D2 keeps his intact. I’ve actually had a few bar room debates about this idea but never put my thoughts down on paper or came up with the level of detailed analysis that Mr. Martin has done. His review is completely serious, outrageously nerdy, and really, really well done. Please note that this is for hardcore Star Wars nerds.
Via Chris

music

"Shoes"

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After being fearful about America’s future in space, I thought “why not relax and watch a funny movie?” My sister crashed in my apartment the other night and brought knowledge of a great video with her. It’s pretty dumb and funny, sort of like a cross between Right Said Fred and RuPaul.
Enjoy!

Via Amy

space

China and Space

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Ever since I read the “2001” series by Arthur C. Clarke, I’ve been thinking about China and its relationship to space. For those unfamiliar with the first book and/or the movie, the Chinese launch a space shuttle at the beginning of the story which takes everyone by surprise. I’ve always been fascinated by other societies and people that can date their history back a couple thousand years (maybe because I’m Jewish). I’ve always thought that for China, being a civilization that has been around for 5,000 years (give or take a millennia) and one that has over a billion people, conquering space has been only a matter of time. If the US doesn’t work harder to keep our lead, we’ll lose it altogether. It’s bad enough that China is holding trillions of dollars in T-bills and holds our economic future in their banks. Soon, they might control our military future as well. My overall fear is that China is like the slow, plodding turtle in the “Tortoise and the Hare” fable. While it lumbers and takes forever, in the end it’ll win.
To that end, I read in today’s NY Times about a secret Chinese missile test from this past week – they blew up one of their own satellites and proved they can shoot anything out of the sky. Check it out:
China’s Muscle Flex in Space
China spread alarm and consternation among space powers when it destroyed one of its own satellites last week with a missile fired from the ground, thus becoming the first nation in more than two decades to successfully test an anti-satellite weapon. This aggressive show of force puts a wide range of United States military and intelligence satellites at risk and holds the danger of starting an arms race in space. Too bad the Bush administration’s own bellicose attitudes — and adamant refusal to consider an arms control treaty for space — give it scant standing to chastise the Chinese. The administration needs to reverse course promptly and join in talks aimed at banning further tests or use of anti-satellite weapons.
The Chinese test, which Beijing has not acknowledged but was tracked by intelligence agencies, destroyed an aging communications satellite some 500 miles above the Earth. The missile smashed the satellite into hundreds of pieces large enough to pose a danger for a decade or more to spacecraft or satellites that pass through the debris.
The Chinese have now demonstrated that — should they ever choose — they could destroy essential American satellites used to conduct military reconnaissance, spot nuclear tests and direct smart weapons. A top intelligence official told reporters last August that China had used a ground-based laser to illuminate an American satellite. That could signal a nascent effort to develop a way to blind satellites or to guide a missile to a target in space
The Bush administration has been flexing its own muscles in space. A national space policy issued in October declared that “freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power.” It asserted a need to deter others from interfering with America’s right to operate in space. The policy did not address whether Washington would place weapons in space — as some in the Pentagon have been urging — but the administration continues to oppose any restrictions.
Surely it would make military and diplomatic sense to pursue the opposite course and seek to ban all tests and any use of anti-satellite weapons.
The United States and the Soviet Union successfully tested such weapons decades ago and have no overriding need to develop better versions, although the United States is clearly trying. China’s success in matching the feat reportedly came after three earlier tests failed, so the Chinese could only benefit from additional testing. The United States, with many more satellites in orbit than any other power and a military that has become increasingly dependent on satellites, has the most to lose from an unbridled space arms race.
Some experts suggest that China’s latest test is intended to prod the United States to join serious negotiations. The way to counter China or any other potentially belligerent space power is through an arms control treaty, not a new arms race in space.

ramblings

The Roof, The Roof, The Roof Is On Fire!

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I normally do not do this but it’s short and sweet so I’m lifting a paragraph verbatim from amNY:
“A blaze caused an estimated $50,000 of damage at an unlikely location yesterday morning – the headquarters of the East Meadow Fire Department. The fire started around 4:30 a.m., Fire Chief Christopher Sala said. It took about 100 firefighters half an hour to get it under control.”
You can’t make this stuff up…
Via amNY

politics

More Hidden Military Costs

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On top of all the other nonsense that the failed Iraqi War has brought to our fair country and the world, we now have a less educated U.S. fighting force. While the Army met its recruiting goal of 80,000 soldiers last year, they needed to accept fewer high school graduates in order to do so. The Army prefers to have 90% of their recruits to have a high school diploma however last year only 73% met that requirement.
“When you have a lot of recruits who score lower on the exam or who don’t have a high school diploma, a much higher percentage with not complete ehtir first term of enlightment,” said Anita Dancs, research director for the National Prioriteis Project. “By not hitting those benchmarks, they’re increating recruiting and training costs.”
Sweet! Even more money wasted on the war!

ramblings

It Came Fron New Jersey

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A horrible smell best described as “gassy” invaded NYC yesterday. It concerned many, closed buildings and forced a PATH station to evacuate. It was actually so bad and people were so freaked out that Mayor Bloomberg held a press conference to say basically, “everything is fine – its not terrorism – go about your business.”
After much investigation, a marsh around Bayonne is being blamed and the news outlets are having a field day with their headlines. NY1’s “Who Dealt it?” is one of my favorites. In case you were wondering, Bayonne is in the “Garden State,” aka New Jersey. It seems that NJ smells so bad these days that it can’t even contain itself anymore, – sort of how I felt in while on vacation after eating Israeli salad, cabbage and choumous at every meal of the day…

tech

Wee!

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Six years ago, I became obsessed during the holiday season about getting a PS2. This obsession was due to a number of reasons. The first was a very practical one: I needed a DVD player and among other things, the PS2 was a DVD player. The second was that I had been laid off from my dot com job and not only had plenty of time to try and get one, but tons of time to actually play it once I got it. The third and most important reason was that other than my Atari 2600, I had never owned a video game system and I had become convinced that the time was finally right.
For years, I religiously went over my friend’s houses to play Baseball Stars, Super Tecmo Bowl or Bonk’s Adventure but never owned those games or the system they were played on (Full disclosure: my father during a misguided Atari loving phase bought a Jaguar but that sucked and I try to forget about it). I was at that time when I started to develop a love hate relationship with video games, something which would only get stronger over time, moving away from loving and towards hating as I started to see my friends getting totally sucked into games like “Bond” where they would sit inside all day, playing endless tournaments, never getting up off of their asses except to maybe get a drink of something. I took a perverse joy out of being the “other guy” – who hoped on his bike and went for a ride or who went for a walk instead of playing all day – and let everyone know it too.
This love/hate relationship came to a head when I lived my senior year of college with Bryan who not only had a Playstation but spent an enormous amount of time “lost” to it. I would berate him on a daily basis to put the controller down and get outside to the point where I felt like his mom. Then, towards the end of the year when senioritis was truly setting in, I picked up “Metal Gear Solid” and sure enough was absolutely hooked, to the point where I was soon coming home from my internship during lunch to squeeze in a few minutes of gameplay.
Hate had become love – the siren song of the pixels was too much! About a year and a half later post-graduation, I heard tons of hype about PS2 and decided that I must have one and sure enough, using much gile and cunning (and setting my web brower to automatically refresh every 5 seconds on a day that I had been told Amazon would be getting them in stock) I was able to procure one and have never looked back since.
That is, until a few weeks ago when I heard that the new PS3 would cost over $500. I started to look back on how much I’ve used the PS2 the past few years and sure enough, its pure gaming usage has fallen dramatically since I moved out of my 2 br converted to 3 bachelor pad and moved in with my then girlfriend/now wife. Gone are the Fins/Jets Madden battles that would rage into the early morning. Gone forever is the kind of life where for one magical day I could sit and play “Metal Gear Solid 2” for 15 hours straight. During that day, my roommate got up, found me sitting Indian style in front of the TV playing, went to the gym, came back, went out to get breakfast, came back, went out to get lunch and run errands, came back, went out on a date, came back and I NEVER MOVED! Over the past few years, aside from bursts of Grand Theft Auto action, the game system really didn’t get played. In fact, MGS 3 (Snake Eater) stayed in its box for a solid year because I knew it needed about 40 hours of my time to beat it and these days, I don’t even have 3.5 hours to get to the movie theatre, sit through the Bond flick and get home, let alone 40 hours for a silly video game.
With this mindset of “not having enough time” – a reason I never joined the WoW (Worlds of Warcraft) universe – I started to read about the Wii and its strategy of going after the “casual” gamer. After a lot of thought, I realized why I wasn’t playing anymore: I just didn’t have time and had become a “casual” gamer myself. My wife is getting ready to go out for the evening? 20 minutes of game play coming up! Everything that I read and/or saw about the Wii made me want to get one even more – hell, one of my favorite video game accessories of all time was the Nintendo light gun that was needed to play “Duck Hunt.”
Now, having stood outside the Times Square Toys R Us for over 3 hours on a Saturday morning in December, having had a Wii for about a month, having not only brought it to my sister-in-law and brother-in-laws house but brought it into work to demo it for co-workers but having so everyone I know can see it, I have to say that it was one of the best moves I’ve made in the past decade. That is maybe a bit of hyperbole but you get the idea.
The reason why I love it so much is because the Wii is a machine that is just plain fun – you really want to yell “wee!” when playing it. The games, while very simple, are lots of fun and you really work up a sweat while playing Tennis or Baseball, so much so that Nintendo has already issued a recall for the wrist straps to make them stronger as people have been losing control of their remotes and destroying their TVs and windows. There is a feature called “Wii Fitness” where each day, you are run through 3 out of 15 different training exercises and at the end, you get your “Wii Age” which is supposed to show you how in shape you are. I started at 60 (oy!) and now I’m down to my actual age (29). I’m hoping to get under 25 sooner or later – I got to 26 before going away and like real life, if you don’t train everyday, you lose a step and sure enough, my first day back pushed me into the 30’s.
There are also other fun features besides the games. One is the ability to show pics on your TV if you use an SD flash card as your camera memory (which I do). When my mom, sister and in-laws came over my apartment recently, I was able to show off my trip photos right on my TV instead of having everyone crowd around the computer screen. Another is the Wii Message board, where others who have Wii’s can write you notes (my friend Jay used it to talk trash when we faced each other in fantasy football playoffs – yeah, phone calls, SMS messages and emails were not enough…) and as the Wii has built in Wi-Fi, there are channels like the Forecast Channel where you can always get an up-to-date weather report.
As time goes on, I’ll post more about it. Right now, I’m ready to leave and head home to see if my age today is going to go up or go down. Maybe I’ll also play my wife in golf or hit a few balls either at the golf range or in the batting cage. Each should take only a few minutes – the kind of game play my life wants and needs right now!

ramblings

Quote Series: #1

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I have a black and white old skool marble notebook with a Led Zeppelin “Houses of the Holy” sticker on it that houses a lot of good quotes and poems I’ve amassed over the past fifteen odd years. I think I’m going to start posting them because a number of them are really great. To start this project off, as I’m embarking on a trip to the Holy Land very soon, one passage about the how ridiculous some people are in the way they worship their chosen deity gave me pause and made me smile. It might do the same to you:

If God existed (a question concerning which he maintained a meticulous intellectual neutrality) and if He desired to be worshiped ( a proposition which he found inherently improbable but conceivably possible in the dim light of his own ignorance), then (stipulating affirmatively both the above) it nevertheless seemed wildly unlikely to him to the point of redictio and absurdum that a God potent to shape galaxies would be titillated and swayed bye the whoop-te-do nonsense the Fosterites offered Him as “worship.”
– Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein

Tradition is one thing but some people truly go overboard in “worship.” Everyone should keep in mind the quote above and the simple adage that its not what you do inside a house of worship that matters, its how you conduct your life outside of it that matters.

ramblings

Year in Review

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I got a Wii about a week and a half ago and have been working on a grand post about it but as I’m not done writing it yet, I haven’t posted anything. In the mean time, enjoy this video from JibJab to tide yourselves over….