Quotulatiousness

January 17, 2018

JourneyQuest S03E10 – “Gods & Heroes”

Filed under: Gaming, Humour — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Zombie Orpheus Entertainment
Published on 16 Jan 2018

A note from the creators:

First, by the gods, watch the scene after the credits! Second, Matt Vancil (as of 01/16/2018) is in the middle of writing Seasons 4 & 5. There’s much more story to tell with all of these characters. Except for the Woodcutter. He’s dead af. Sucks to be him.

The wisdom of Zim Tzu, NFC championship edition

Filed under: Football, Humour — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

After every regular season and post-season game, the NFL requires that the head coach of each team address the media. Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Zimmer is not a fan of this rule, but he follows the rules as needed. His lack of enthusiasm for dealing with media swine is noteworthy, and his carefully guarded words are crafted to avoid both giving away essential information to upcoming opponents and avoid facing NFL fines. Under the circumstances, a high quality fan publication like the Daily Norseman would be well advised to employ a highly trained Zimspeak consultant to tease out the real meanings of the zen-like koans that fill a typical Mike Zimmer press conference. Unfortunately, like most fan publications, DN doesn’t have the budget for fripperies like that so instead they get Ted Glover to provide his own unique view of what Zim Tzu really meant:

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Day 2 Cuban Missile Crisis – Preparing to Invade Cuba

TimeGhost
Published on 30 Oct 2017

On October 17th, 1962, preparations for an invasion of Cuba under the codename Ortsac were set in motion. The U2 Dragon Lady spy plane continued to yield more alarming pictures of Cuban missile sites and President Kennedy was urged to restrain his dogs of war.

Thirty-eight minutes in Hawaii

Filed under: Government, Media, Pacific, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Colby Cosh on the false alarm in Hawaii:

Of course, an incident like this really takes several idiots lined up in a long row. Missile tests by North Korea have been making Hawaiian officials nervous lately about the archipelago’s exposed position in the mid-Pacific. The rhetoric being traded between dictator Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump is certainly not so easy to brush off in Hawaii, where plenty of living people have personal memories of Pearl Harbor.

U.S.-North Korean tension has, in recent months, been leading to a de-mothballing of old civil-defence measures in Hawaii, such as sirens and bomb shelters. It has also led, as we now know, to the updating of the traditional emergency broadcasting system. It can now reach out to your phone and fling you right out of your four-poster bed at the Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach.

For something that was “not a drill”, the mistaken smartphone message will have had a lot of the same effects. The most important thing that HEMA learned was that if you have the ability to electronically auto-terrorize everyone within a certain radius, you had better have some fast, equally automatic way of correcting an error. It took HEMA 38 minutes to send a second notice to smartphone users reading “There is no missile threat or danger to the State of Hawaii. Repeat. False Alarm.” And, no, I’m not sure what the “Repeat” is doing there, either.

During those 38 minutes, thousands of Hawaiians and tourists had sent desperate farewells to loved ones — although some noticed that the outdoor sirens, which had just been tested last month, were not going off, and drew the correct conclusion. There is very little evidence of anything technically describable as “panic” happening in the state, despite the ubiquitous use of that word in Sunday headlines.

Jokes about poor interface design are being circulated in the aftermath of the Hawaiian incident, but the governor did specify that the person who made the “mistake” actually clicked through a second “are you sure you want to create traumatizing chaos for no reason?” confirmation message. HEMA also says it will require two separate people to confirm smartphone alerts in the future, which, if I can be forgiven a toe-dip into conspiratorial thinking, almost seems to hint at the possibility of some kind of awareness-raising prank.

Simon Phillips (L. Ritenour & M. Stern) – Smoke ‘n’ Mirrors, [drums only camera]

Filed under: Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

SimonBak90
Published on 28 Apr 2012

Another great DVD release featuring Simon Phillips on drums, called ‘Lee Ritenour & Mike Stern Live at the Blue Note Tokyo’. The DVD features two extra ‘drum cam chapters’ offering you a unique view of Simon playing the songs ‘Smoke ‘n’ Mirrors’ and ‘Big Neighborhood’.

Definitely a must have for the SP fans.

QotD: The true purpose of public education

Filed under: Education, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else

H.L Mencken, The American Mercury, 1924-02.

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