Mood:  caffeinated

All you UK-ers: your government is concerned about your wellbeing...

Seems that you're all positively drowning in alky-hawl...

It's a funny story, and my, oh, my is it rife with nanny-state musings. Nowhere do I see concerns about such topics as 'Drunk Driving' (public enemy no. 1 in the US), or even 'alcoholism' in general, but instead just an ominous warning rife with fear-mongering over the fact that blood-red wine has a few more proof-points (...link for the UK-ers...)  in it than some beers or other fare.

The tone of this article actually struck me as somewhat prohibitionist: I don't think it'll be long before the whole of the EU has the same ridiculous warning labels on alcohol that they currently have on ciggies.*

*(Smoking is, BTW, a filty and disgusting habit; I only depict it in TYPERS 'cause I assume that within a hundred years there'll be adequate genetic safeguards in place to prevent and/or destroy those resulting cancers, et al. But hey, in the meantime: unless you wanna outlaw smoking outright, just f**king let people puff away in peace, eh?)

I shouldn't judge, after all: why, even here in the US-o'-A we've got some states with certain restrictions on smoking a fag...

...sorry... 

Well, if the prevailing winds out of parliament (and not the smoke out of Parliaments!... sorry...) is towards a more prohibitionist state, here's hoping it works out better for you guys than it did for us...

Prohibition gave the United States some VERY disreputable legacies, indeed...

Sometimes I do wonder if Europeans understand that they're more capable of making life-decisions for themselves than their omnipresent governments are. Eh, the Brits I don't worry so much about: they're an alright bunch...

It's really the rest of that EU-setup that's come up pear-shaped ever since then end of the Colonial Era... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 1:38 PM MNT

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New data on our friendly neighborhood gas-giant Saturn:

those rings are bloody friggin' old...

Not surprising, really. Especially when one considers the scale of the planet and all. Most of those big ol' planets actually do have rings, even if the rings on some of them are fainter than a mosquito on a hog at sundown...

...sorry... 

Anyway, take the Earth: the prevailing science at the moment says that the Earth was friggin' smacked by extrastellar debris and that, as a consequence, the Earth itself was a ringed planetary body for awhile (...actually, an infenitesimally short period, geologically and/or astronomically speaking) however if you factor out all the variables in Saturn, and its propensity to create resonant-stablized rings (through a process I neither understand nor care to try to elaborate upon) it's small wonder that those ridiculously beautiful discs would be products of birth, and not of recent construction.

Sheesh, gas-giants; what a wierd lot, says I... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 2:54 AM MNT

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I finally found a better name for 'Legend of the Novanjo'. The subjectmatter of the chapter is the same, but I f**king hate that title...

Now I'm calling it "Terra Incognita"...

that's a little better, I think (a flashback in the chapter to Mister Grey-Hair/Ainsworth/whoever-the-f**k-he-is provided the dialogue that gave me inspiration: it's a much better way to tie-in everything as a tight, cohesive, knot of plotty-goodness...

...you know what I mean...

anyway: Terra Incognita, coming soon.

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 12:54 AM MNT

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Mood:  a-ok

Follow the dots:

Marine biologist is hired on to a respected institute...

Marine biologist is put on with a group examining the evolutionary aspects of zebra fish...

However, marine biologist dissents, based on his flat-out rejection of the process of evolution (not just Darwin's theory of natural selection, mind you, but the whole God-d@#ned process...)

and then? Well, marine biologist gets fired, naturally.

Yeesh. I love the tenants of religious freedom as much as the next guy, and as a matter of fact this guy is being fired for his religious beliefs...

but I absolutely, positively gotta side with the institute on this one, based on the facts as I know them (ie: based on the info I got from briefly scanning this article...)

Look: what are you gonna do, huh? This is like that fiaso a while back with those self-righteous Muslim checkers at Target who won't handle ANY pork products (in wrappers and packaging, mind you...) or the (again...) Muslim cabbies who refuse to transport people in their cabs if they're carrying ANY alcohol in their luggage...

There was even one infertile-crescent-lover who even kicked a blind fare to the curb because of the passenger's seeing-eye dog. 

Nice... 

Of course, I needn't point to just these examples: should a PETA activist be greenlit for a job in a slaughterhouse? (Wherein they might poison the meat with some noxious chemical... I'm serious...) Or should His Humble Lord of Lucidity Richard Dawkins be appoited to serve in the Vatican? For that matter: should a Catholic priest be appointed to host a Boy Scout retreat?

...hehehe: kidding, kidding...

...yeah... *sigh*

anywho: my point is that an acceptance of the process of descent with modification and the tenants of the Central Dogma of Biology seem to be a REQUIREMENT for this job. In every other example I've cited, the person in the job should be fired forthwith, as their attitudes or actions clearly are incompatible with carrying out the job that THEY WERE CONTRACTED TO PERFORM.

...my only caveat is that this IS a firing based on religion, and one I support. However, in many of the above examples (mostly the Muslim ones...) the perpetrators were not fired, but coddled:

If your religion goes so far as to make you incapable of performing a certain task that is REQUIRED of you then you must, I repeat MUST, seek employment elsewhere.

For the record: Shane wholeheartedly accepts the scientific research on evolution (and if YOU don't, then you deserve to have an old-line antibiotic the next time you go into the hospital... then we'll see where you stand...)

...I'm smart enough to know that the poetic Hebrew words used to designate a 'day' in Genesis mean anything from an hour to an aeon.

I suggest you go take a Bible study class, prof... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 12:02 AM MNT

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Mood:  cheeky

Just throwing this out here... but has anyone ever considered giving a retroactive Nobel Peace Prize to the Benedictine Monks?

It might be sacriligeous to mention canonization, too, but still: some inventions are, undoubtedly, worthy of sainthood.

(and yes: I'm aware that it wasn't the monks who decided to blend the stuff with strong brandy to kill its wicked sweetness, but still: I can't argue for a multinational corporation to recieve the Nobel, can I?)

I shouldn't be arguing any of this at all, really...

...hmm. Oh, well: back to the snifter... 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 12:32 AM MNT

Updated: Sunday, 9 December 2007 12:33 AM MNT

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Mood:  crushed out

THIS is too much!

Of all the shameless, blatant, condescending RIP-OFF con-games...

I don't know why Watterson hasn't friggin' sued, yet...

(...but IREM, please don't get any ideas...) 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 2:19 AM MNT

Updated: Friday, 7 December 2007 1:03 PM MNT

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Mood:  silly

…An eye all black and somber o'er a flightless, naked wing;

A caw for the unkindness, neither essence nor machine.

And He who made the tiger fierce, and He who bore the lamb:

Did God who cast the ocean blue so forge you in His hand?...

From the Collected Works of Leith Paltry (‘On a Hatchling’)

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 1:54 AM MNT

Updated: Friday, 7 December 2007 1:03 PM MNT

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Mood:  lyrical

Recently took the old desktop PC into a guru shop (it's been a decorative paperweight for some time...)

The thing's salvagable, I think, but until then they gave me a gift: they copied the contents of the hard drive for me and provided me with the discs, gratis.

Nice customer service...

Anyway: there's not much of interest on there in general, except for a dusty little file on the desktop called, simply, "music"...

the quote marks are QUITE necessary, in this case...

Inside the folder are some of my very old Cakewalk compositions. Now, I AM a musical hobbyist... barely... and to date my favorite personal composition is the base line for the Dies Irae, which I do think is kinda nifty, and might bear some refinin' in the future (all these SHOULD open with your preferred music player BTW... if you so dare...)

Some of these are truly awful. Others are merely distasteful.

This one is, I think, the first song I've written (or the oldest survivor, whatever) The repetitiveness, lack of any discipline and manic piling-on of noisy 'variations' on the annoying central theme are all icing on the rancid cake...

This one's called "Sunrise". It isn't too bad, compared to everything else, I suppose, though it has its very apparent problems. I think that I'll make this the 'Current Tune' on the TYPERS website when I finally get the new chapter up. (I know, I know: why punish people, huh? Well, fortunately I'm a sociopath.

Next to the Dies Irae, this is the one that I REALLY want to develop someday. It's like a smattering of miniature symphonic movements, and is literally unfinished (it drops out abruptly after a few minutes...) I don't know what I was thinking when I churned it out, but I wish I could have more inspirational moments like that...

This is probably the most annoying trumpet march ever written (and it only contains, literally, a pair of trumpets, nothing more...) Ugh...

This one's called Thunder From Wuthering Heights and, regrettably, it isn't the 'good' version: a remixed symphonic arrangement (as opposed to the dull pipe organs seen here). The 'trills' line is unfinished and drops out half-way through the major-key section. I like this melody, at least (it's set to a very bad poem I wrote many years ago...) and it could be at least decent if I could sit down and fix it up...

but, since I'm disinclined at the moment, I will not. ;)

The reader's eardrums have my sincere sympathy. 

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 2:34 AM MNT

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(NOTE: much of the sweetness of this day's comic relies on one's familiarity with Rat's character.  Just an FYI, since PBS doesn't seem to have a media-saturating level of circulation...)

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 3:13 PM MNT

Updated: Saturday, 1 December 2007 3:21 PM MNT

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Mood:  incredulous

What does one make of this? (scroll down to the 'Petition for Sainthood' section)

Interesting, if true...

Honestly: I'll never know how his holiness JPII managed to canonize more people during his tenure than EVERY OTHER POPE COMBINED, yet poor MQS still lacks any papal recognition of her sacrifice.

...Alright, yes: it'd be a political nightmare, especially now, to canonize a woman that (in the public's eye, at least) plotted to kill one of the most retroactively beloved of all English monarchs... 

The fact remains: Mary is a martyr, and whether she be a scapegoat for political schemers** or a genuine co-conspirator in said plot, the fact cannot be denied: she was executed in a time when religion and politics were one, and while her death was as much a political exercise as an act of religious persecution she was slaughtered on account of her faith, and on account of her persistence in practicing said faith.

People have been canonized for far, far, far, far, far less...

Interestingly, MQS was executed for treason despite the fact that she was not, in any way, shape, or form, a citizen and subject of the English crown. Her trial was admittedly a sham and a rush-job by certain political hacks in the Elizabethan court.

People have been canonzied for far, far, far, far, far less, indeed...

Well, without the corresponding 'Casket Letters' we'll never know how deeply she was involved in the Babington Plot (given the structure and secrecy of the overall scheme, though, I think it's ludicrous to believe that the conspirators would actually try to communicate with her at all, but the plot DID fail, so how smart were the guys, really?)

In any event, people would do well to "remember [that] the theatre of history is wider than the realm of England"

...and by a large margin, indeed. 

(** I'm reluctant to link to this article at all, given that at the moment it demonstrates a horrible Elizabethan bias (the writer seems to have taken their knowledge of history from that Cate Blanchett monstrosity rather than a textbook... oh, well, history is written by men that hang heroes, I suppose...) As my own views are biased I cannot in good conscience edit it to remedy this, but if the reader's view is neutral, and their knowledge of history astute, then by all means see to it...)

Posted by shanekentknolltrey at 1:28 PM MNT

Updated: Saturday, 1 December 2007 1:49 PM MNT

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