Consequences of Gay Marriage

more music charts

From graphjam.com via Wil Wheaton.

Blood and Fire Trailer

The Star Trek: Phase 2 crew has finally set a release date for the first part of their next episode Blood and Fire. The script for Blood and Fire, of BaF as it is referred to, was originally written by David Gerrold* for Star Trek: The Next Generation however TPTB decided that certain facets of the story were too controversial for Star Trek and thus the script was never produced. The Blood and Fire script lensed by Phase 2 was significantly expanded and altered to set the story in Kirk's time and take advantage of the expanded cast present in the Phase 2 world. I had the privilege of watching rough cuts of both parts of BaF and you are in for a treat when part 1 hits on December 20th. Here is the trailer for part 1 of David Gerrold's Blood and Fire:

For more about this episode you can check out these links:

• Here is a selection of behind the scenes photos from the shoot.


• Here is a report on the showing of the rough cut at the Shore Leave convention in July.


• Here is a link where you can download the first four minutes of the episode.

* David Gerrold is best known in Trekkie circles as the author of the classic episode The Trouble with Tribbles however his award-winning novella The Martian Child hit the big screen as a feature starring John Cusack last year. I HIGHLY recommend The Martian Child. At least the movie, I have yet to read the book.

So there I was...

...walking back to my building from hitting the ATM and getting a salad at the Post Oak Grill when I noticed the big sign at the end of the hallway just before you enter my building had changed. At some point in the not to distant past it had been changed from something promoting the El Paso volunteerism program called "Sharing Team El Paso" to a promotional display for our corporate wellness program called "Choose Well." In fact it was changed to this graphic:


Being the self-centered twit I am, I could not help but notice that center picture inset at the bottom. Here it is, enhanced for your viewing pleasure:


Mother of god. There I am.

Back in January had you told me by the end of the year I would be on some promotional material promoting a wellness and fitness program in any other capacity than "Don't be this fat fuck," I would have told you that you were clearly insane and have suspected that Rob and Scott were plotting something. Here we are a year later and I have gone from tubby bitch to this:


Yeah, I still don't get it either.

On this subject it has been some time since I posted about my diet and this seems as good a as time as any to mention that I have met my goal of loosing 100 pounds, actually 102 as of last Friday. It feels awesome to have actually accomplished this and I will admit that when I stepped off the scale on Friday I had to sit down and have a little bit of a cry.

The Morning After

So one of my friends posted this as her status line on Facebook not too long after the election was called for Oabama:

...decides to brush up on her marxist theology in preparation for January, comrades.

Now I understand not liking Obama for his politics however no one has been able to successfully explain to me how anything Obama has said or done is any more socialist than what the Bush administration has actually done in the past month?

Please explain in the comments and use small words as I am apparently quite daft.

Before you go I would like to point out a couple of thoughts and data point which you may wish to consider:

1. From the OH SNAP! Department comes Alan Mendelowitz's bon mot which he dropped at the New America Foundation's forum Confronting Economic Meltdown. "The Bush administration, which took office as social conservatives, is now leaving as conservative socialists." Allan Mendelowitz is a member of the BoD and former chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board, a former executive director of the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission, and a former executive vice president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. I suspect he knows whereof he speaks.

2. Adam Smith, in his seminal work on economics Wealth of Nations said:

The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion. (Book 5, Chapter 2, page 14)

Was Adam Smith, cited by many as the father of modern economics, a socialist? Here he is clearly championing the same sort of "redistribution of the wealth" championed by President-elect Obama. Before you answer I would take the time to read the balance of Smith's magnum opus.

3. Inevitably someone is going to bring up the 2001 interview Barack Obama did with Chicago public radio in which he used the phrase "redistributive change" and makes clear that he endorses the redistribution of wealth by the government. Before you do I would go and read this piece by David Bernstein who concludes that, "Barack Obama is undoubtedly liberal, and his background is in political community organizing in poor communities. Is it supposed to be a great revelation that Obama would like to see wealth more "fairly" distributed than it is currently?" And the goes on to ask:

It's true that most Americans, when asked by pollsters, think that it's emphatically not the government's job to redistribute wealth. But are people so stupid as to not recognize that when politicians talk about a "right to health care," or "equalizing educational opportunities," or "making the rich pay a fair share of taxes," or "ensuring that all Americans have the means to go to college," and so forth and so on, that they are advocating the redistribution of wealth? Is it okay for a politician to talk about the redistribution of wealth only so long as you don't actually use phrases such as "redistribution" or "spreading the wealth," in which case he suddenly becomes "socialist"?

Now I can understand if you are of a Libertarian bent and feel that ANY tax is a plan by the dirty commies to crap up your free market paradise and you need not weigh in here, but for those of you that think SOME taxes are a good thing, and I will assume this is most of my audience as I think most of you like police protection, the military, roads, and, hey, even getting to vote. (If you don't like these things then I would hope you can at least see the need for them.)

So have you ever...

...gotten so drunk you woke up in an alternate universe?*

I thought everything was fine but apparently I was wrong. Surely this could not happen in the dimension I call home. Heads of the American Nazi Party and the White Aryan Resistance** want Obama to win? Good God, I expect to meet myself any minute. The worst part about this is I did not even get drunk this weekend as far as I can remember. I did run into Flash (Ahhhahhhh! He'll save every one of us!) Friday night as well as Spank Me Elmo. Perhaps this is where I went wrong.

Edit: Guess what I just found via, oddly enough, one of the Korean blogs I read? A CafePress store where one can purchase Rednecks for Obama swag. I knew this election could represent a paradigm shift but clearly I have once again under-estimated my fellow man.

* BONUS QUESTION: Is this a question only a depressingly nerdy person would ask?

** So I know the White Aryan Resistance was going for the acronym WAR however I find it a little silly to have White in the title. Is it modifying Aryan? In this case isn't it a given that Aryan is going to mean white? I doubt there is a Black Aryan Resistance (BAR), Chinese Arayn Resistance (CAR), or Yellow Aryan Resistance (YAR, aka Piradical).