COTTON THISTLE CLEARANCE
Random musings from the noggin' of Knolltrey
(Best viewed on a monitor running Mozilla Firefox, with a brain running on a case of Grolsh...)
Wednesday, 1 August 2007
Rock Bottom?
Mood:  incredulous
Topic: Random Political Diatribe

Guess the Ruskies are a little put-off by that fact that America beat 'em to the moon with the ol' Stars 'n Bars. Now they're trying to up the ante by planting a flag in the 'opposite' direction...

Before commenting on this... uh, interesting venture, I'll share a fantasy related to this kind of mission: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Putin is a totalitarian wanker at heart, and the fall of Communism never really sat well with him (and he's not had much luck in getting some people to be willing 'pawns' in his authoritarian ambitions).

This whole move reeks of Soviet-era posturing: the puffery of a system past its prime. Sure, Russia wants to CLAIM the territory down there (although the legality of an unseeable, underwater flag is dubious... after all, even the US's quite visible extraterrestrial flag didn't amount to much).

What the CCCP- (sorry, the Putin Administration) won't say is that only foreign companies can actually get to the resources down there because Russia's technological investment front is as dynamic as a collapsed lung.

But make no mistake: Russia desperately needs this cache of resources because the supply of natural resources seems to be the only tool left in the country's 'diplomatic negotiations' with others...


Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 8:32 PM ADT
Updated: Thursday, 2 August 2007 3:08 AM ADT
Tuesday, 31 July 2007
Conductor's Circuit...
Mood:  d'oh
Topic: Pseudoscientific Musings

I was just thinkin', maybe there's a way to reeeeeeally discourage porn-surfin' at work...

Think about this guy...

and now imagine management bosses everywhere hooking their unproductive employees up to their own computers: sweaty bods become cattle prods!

Dumb idea? Maybe, but it'd REALLY motivate employees to think about the most unattractive things imaginable to avoid that increased galvanic skin conductance... 

 

 

 


Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 2:53 PM ADT
Saturday, 28 July 2007
My sunshiiiiiiiiiiiiine.... My sunshiiiiiiiiiiiiiine....
Mood:  happy
Topic: Entertaining Insights

My personal verdict's in: 3.5 out of 4-stars.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The science is close enough (minus the obvious error in stellar physics), and we'd be pretty close to 4-stars if not for the last third (a slasher fest). The scene where the crew boards the 'abandoned' sister-ship ranks as one of the creepier movie moments I've ever seen... 

They needed bigger Ray-bans, though...


Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 10:03 PM ADT
Updated: Wednesday, 1 August 2007 8:34 PM ADT
Friday, 27 July 2007
If you steal my sunshine...
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Entertaining Insights

This weekend I think I'll be investing my entertainment dollar in some Sunshine in lieu of Simpsons (or both, maybe...)

I just heard about this little sci-fi venture the other day, and it's to be release in America today! (figures: that's actually a little more press than your average firm-to-hard sci-fi movie ever garners...)

It's a gamble: most complaints about the flick criticize the science as getting progressively paltry, and then the film devolves into a slasher flick (not necessarily a bad thing, but...)

Part of the problem with the premise- as I see it- is the fact that somehow, in only FIFTY YEARS' time, humans will have the explosive power at hand to statistically affect a small portion of the sun itself...

riiiiight.... lemme throw some sunshine on the perspective (image courtesy of Apple's Science Website):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sun is NOT massive. The sun is not 'big': it is gigantic on a scale of near imcomprehensibility.

 Even with a weapon capable of vaporizing Earth ten-times over, the effect we'd have on Mr. Sun would be infenitesimal to the point of pointlessness. Apparently the gist of the film is that we've gotta 'explode' a 'Q-ball' pocket inside the corona...

...okay.

 To be most scientifically sound, the movie's premise should be about some kind of rogue asteroid with wierd-ass particles coming near the sun and threatening to cause some strange interactions. Unlike the Sun, humans of 50 years from now COULD concieveably affect an asteroid...

But the result of that scenario would probably be a both boring and very bad movie... 

Gonna get me a ticket, anyway: I can forgive a story's lack of scientific rigor (lord knows my own spiel has enough of that to go around). Good story trumps bad science... as long as the science isn't THAT BAD...


Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 11:54 AM ADT
Updated: Friday, 27 July 2007 11:58 AM ADT
Thursday, 26 July 2007
Hope for the Brainless...
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: General

Anyone who needs proof on the power of infant neural plasticity,  one should check this guy out.

To be clear: HIS BRAIN MASS IS STATISTICALLY NOTHING: the central ventrical has expanded to SUBSUME the guy's whole god-damned noggin, 'xept for the very edges...

More proof that nature provides: this man's neurons literally made something out of NOTHING: all basic functions, respiration, temp reg, heartbeat, in addition to a smattering of intellect (he's Forest Gump, by all reports, but LOOK AT THAT PICTURE AGAIN: he has almost NO brain).

This goes to proves what the most amazing piece of biological tecnology ever invented by natural selection really is...

We shouldn't discriminate; after all, some people here in America without a detectable brain in their head do very well for themselves... 

I need to stop now. 


Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 3:49 AM ADT
Updated: Friday, 27 July 2007 12:18 AM ADT
Tuesday, 24 July 2007
For a thousand summers...
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Pseudoscientific Musings
 I've tried to think of the most god-awfully sad TV moment ever. The death of Col. Blake from M*A*S*H comes close on the list, but I don't think anything rivlals the 'Fry's Dog' episode of Futurama.
 
 
 Talk about emotionally-manipulative TV. Being a Scot-o-phile, I got the Bobby of Greyfriar's connection immediately (visited his grave every time I've been to Edinburgh, coincidentally).
 
When they start churning out the new episodes  they'd better resolve this thing...
 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 11:55 AM ADT
Updated: Thursday, 2 August 2007 4:18 AM ADT
Monday, 23 July 2007
Stunning progress...
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: General

After nearly a month of toil, I've churned out another chapter in Typers...

If Emily Bronte worked as fast as I did, we'd never have the second-half of Wuthering Heights... 


Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 3:22 PM ADT
King me...
Mood:  quizzical
Topic: Scientific Progress...

We could be flying to Jupiter, curing cancer or unlocking the mysteries of life right now...

Eh, this'll do, I suppose... 

What they aren't telling you is that 'Chinook', like its faulty helicopter namesake, had a few bugs in its program, initially:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scientific progress goes 'hop, hop, hop'... 


Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 12:21 AM ADT
Saturday, 21 July 2007
A clone of his own...
Mood:  chatty
Topic: General

Introducing TYPER'S 'unholy trinity'...

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us
 
These guys come in quite late in the story, clones all, but not in the 'typical' sense... they're all the same character, and they're all NOT the same character...
 
Or at least they all report to the same boss (guy looming in background)...
 
or something... 
 
I don't know how to explain it, now. Anyway, right now I don't have to because, again: they're a ways away yet.

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 12:01 AM ADT
Updated: Thursday, 2 August 2007 3:29 AM ADT
Thursday, 19 July 2007
"A Wizard Did It"
Mood:  bright
Topic: Copyright-Infringementish

Tsk, tsk. Somebody at a Scholastic subsidiary has "some 'splaining to do"!

Now, this is a problem, ain't it? But the reaction from fans has been kinda strange. Several people have gone on record as saying that there would be "no point whatsoever" in reading this last Potter book if they knew the  identities of the two characters that get offed, and how the book ends.

...riiiiiight...

I'm all for this whole 'turning a generation of kids onto reading' business that Rowling's managed, and the lady has one hell of an imagination (her overreliance on getting out of jams by having a 'Wizard do it' does kinda speak to a weakness in creating coherent plots, though....) but the fact that a large number of Harry Potter fans share this 'no point in reading if I know' sentiment is troubling (you can be justifiably pissed, but don't tell me you won't read something you keep yammering non-stop about...)

Two years ago I read the Count of Monte Christo- which is a kinda large book- even though I had knowledge of the whole plot and knew how it was likely to end for most of the cast.

Good literature can be read no matter one's knowledge of the plot. A friend of mine watched the Sixth Sense knowing that Dr. Crowe was a ghost, but he still says that its one of the best films he's ever seen.

 Seems to me that most of the Potter fans would be appeased by the movies, alone. The books, I guess, are merely so many scripts churned out for their benefit.


Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 1:06 AM ADT
Updated: Thursday, 19 July 2007 1:14 AM ADT

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