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Archive for the ‘Opinions’ Category

I was just informed about my previous employer’s (Conexant) sudden stock price hike.
Checked the news and read about the sale of their broadband access division to Ikanos.
Interesting!

Ikanos is headed by CEO Michael Gulett.
Who once was the president and COO of Virata Corporation!

Sounds like he’s buying back his own stuff, from before his disastrous ‘merge’ with Globespan, the company that then went on to buy Intersil’s (also a previous employer of mine) Wireless Division (Harris’s spun-off semiconductor division), and then later ‘merged’ *cough* with Conexant.
So now Conexant is selling the stuff back to the ex-Virata president’s company! Ha!

Dang, there’s a lot of hot potato-ing going on in the semiconductor industry, these days (years!).

Maybe it’s facebook that should update their software!

“Polly wants a cracker”

Sorry Polly, can’t have one, cuz you voted for Obama, and by doing so, you have aligned yourself with ‘intrinsic evil’.

For details see: link

If you know me you will now expect a long and bitter rant about abuse of (in this case: perceived) authority …

But I will show strength and restrict myself to a simple remark, since my blood pressure is way too high already as it is.

Concerning the remark by the volunteer church lector:

“I don’t understand anyone who would call themselves a Christian, let alone a Catholic, and could vote for someone who’s a pro-abortion candidate,” said Ted Kelly, 64, who volunteers his time as lector for the church. “You’re talking about the murder of innocent beings.”

“anyone who would call themselves a Christian, let alone a Catholic …” let alone a Catholic? Can you say ‘arrogance’?

Oh RIGHT, I forgot, Catholics are those Über Christians. I know: I was raised as one.

“You’re talking about the murder of innocent beings.” .. True! But I’m just wondering: Are you a vegetarian, Mr. Ted Kelly?

 

 
Some critiques on the “Crystal Skull” Indiana Jones movie, from Russia.

Communist Party members in Russia want to ban Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull from local theaters, calling it anti-Soviet propaganda that distorts history.

(Anti-Soviet propaganda? Get with the program: the Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. As for distorting history: wait till you see the Matrix!)

“It’s rubbish,” said Sergei Malinkovich, a leader for the St. Peterburg Communist Party. “In 1957 the Communists did not run with crystal skulls throughout the U.S. Why should we agree to that sort of lie and let the West trick our youth?”

(Come on! It’s not nearly as bad as when we tricked them with the lies of Harry Potter)

“Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett [are] second-rate actors, serving as the running dogs of the CIA,” the Party member wrote in a blog entry. “We need to deprive these people of the right of entering the country.

(Why? Because Russia already HAS enough second rate actors?)

Source:

Communist Party members in St. Petersburg said on a web site this week that the Soviet Union in 1957 “did not send terrorists to the States,” but launched a satellite, “which evoked the admiration of the whole world.”

(Oh that Sputnik thing? Looks like a crystal skull to me!)

Moscow Communist lawmaker Andrei Andreyev said Saturday “it is very disturbing if talented directors want to provoke a new Cold War.”

(I bet he finds this disturbing! Considering who lost the previous one.)

Source:

“What galls is how together with America we defeated Hitler, and how we sympathized when Bin Laden hit them. But they go ahead and scare kids with Communists. These people have no shame,” said Viktor Perov, a Communist Party member in Russia’s second city of St. Petersburg.

(Scare kids with Communists? And WHO is accusing us of that? HAHAHAHAHA)

Other communists said the generation born after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union were being fed revisionist, Hollywood history. They advocated banning the Indiana Jones [movie] outright to prevent “ideological sabotage.”

(And which ideology exactly would be sabotaged by this work of pure fiction?)

“Our movie-goers are teenagers who are completely unaware of what happened in 1957,” St Peterburg Communist Party chief Sergei Malinkovich told Reuters.
“They will go to the cinema and will be sure that in 1957 we made trouble for the United States and almost started a nuclear war.”

(Your kids don’t know what happened in 1957? Blame on you, Russia! As for us making them think you guys almost started a nuclear war in 1957: True, that’s distorting history alright, we all know that didn’t really happen until 1962)

Vladimir Mukhin, another member of the local Communist Party, said in comments posted on the Internet site that he would ask Russia’s Culture Ministry to ban the film for its “anti-Soviet propaganda.”

(Soviet propaganda? See above. Having a Culture Ministry banning movies: way to go guys!)

Source:

Party leaders accused the actors Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett yesterday of promoting crude, anti-Soviet propaganda in their new film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. They have urged Russian moviegoers to boycott the film and told Ford, 65, not to visit the country.

(Well, if Ford doesn’t get to go to Russia, then you don’t get to play in his next movie! So! There!)

The Communist Party’s ideology committee in Russia’s secondlargest city saw red over the plot. In an open letter, it declared: “Your work in this film is an insult to the Soviet and Russian people, who remember the difficult Fifties when our country was concluding its reconstruction after the Great War, but did not send merciless terrorists to the USA.” It said that Russians had loved Ford in previous serious roles ” which include a Soviet submarine commander in K-19: The Widowmaker – but went on: “You have no future in Russia any more. Speaking plainly, it is better for you not to come here. You will be beaten and despised.”

(Beaten and despised. Yes we have grown up a bit since the end of the cold war …)

The party’s central committee called Steven Spielberg’s film an attempt to “slander Soviet Communists” and poison the young against them. It called Ford and Blanchett “capitalist puppets”.

(Capitalist puppet: Psst, here in the west, that’s a compliment!)

Source:

“Our women don’t look like Nazis, but maybe Cate Blanchett was threatened by unemployment, so … she made this film,” Perov said.

(What DO Nazis look like?)

“The film is low-quality and would raise a smile if there wasn’t a danger of drawing into its orbit teenagers who know nothing about the 1950s,” Vladimir Mukhin, another member, said in comments on the Internet site.

(Low quality films raise smiles in Russia? As for your ignorant teenagers: why not TELL them about the fifties? Oh I know… I know.. it IS a bit embarrassing, but hey, they deserve to know!)

“Indians and aliens unite with Jones and his untrustworthy buddies to save the world from a Russian threat – what rubbish, simply a paranoid Churchillian fantasy,” Mukhin said.

(Right! Fantasy! Finaly one who ALMOST gets close!)

 

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.”
And God granted it.
Voltaire

*sigh*

I guess that’s what a life long exposure to state sponsored propaganda movies, presented as the truth and historically correct, does to the less enlightened minds: it apparently grows a blind spot for the genre of ‘FICTION‘.

 

To be sure:

Not all Russians are communists and apparently the above sentiments don’t quite represent the opinion of the average Russian:

The protests appeared to have little impact on the film’s commercial prospects. It was released on Thursday on 808 screens in Russia, a record for a Hollywood film.

Gingrich: $30 million will get me into presidential race (link).

Yeah, me too!

In fact, I’ll do it for half of that!

Which I think is a bargain, if you look at Gingrich’ ideas:

I think, as a general rule, that levees should not break, that bridges should not fall, that students should actually learn.

(Note the ‘general’ … I guess he thinks that there are cases where levees should break, bridges should fall, and students should be kept dumb. Is he a politician or what? NEVER say something absolute, that they can pin you down on later!)

So… 15 million!

15 million and I will run. (Not that fast, though, and ignore the irrelevant fact that I’m not an American citizen .. don’t be so xenophobic, willya)

In an earlier post (link) I wrote about the Irish company Steorn, who claim to have invented a working free energy device, I made several predictions, the first one being:

No demonstration of a working ‘free energy’ device will take place in July 2007 

Well, I got THAT one right (and fully expect the other ones to come true as well).

According to a statement on Steorn’s website (link):

… technical problems arose during the installation of the demonstration unit in the display case on Wednesday evening.

These problems were primarily due to excessive heat from the lighting in the main display area.

Attempts to replace those parts affected by the heat led to further failures and as a result we have to postpone the public demonstration until a future date 

As was to be expected, some really silly excuse was given for the failure. Sometimes it’s the weather, sometimes it’s too much metal in the room, sometimes it’s studio lights, sometimes it’s the presence of an unbeliever.

They went for the classical “it’s the lights” cop out.

*yawn*

Zero points for not even trying to come up with an original or somewhat ‘believable’ excuse, like “the government has stolen our device”.

This all is a text book example of the so common “we don’t understand it, so it must be super-natural” fallacy (since an over-unity device breaks all kinds of laws of nature, it is by definition super-natural).

Here’s a tip for you geniuses: turn off those lights!

And here’s another one: “when you find yourself  in a deep hole, stop digging”.

To top it off: “if something looks to be too good to be true … it probably is”

Ah, yes, I said I would continue the death threat post… Well, here goes.

First of all, I feel I should apologize, not only for waiting this long with the follow-up, but also for my overly dramatic intro to what I really wanted to post about: some of my readers interpreted my post as if I was fleeing from the mentioned threat. This was not the case.
Let me quickly go over my previous post, beginning with the end: my “if I survive this” was not a reference to forementioned threat, but was solely triggered by my fear of flying: every single time I board a plane, I’m CONVINCED it’s going to crash.

The “… it stays there” was, of course, a reference to a popular TV commercial for a city in Nevada “What happens in Vegas, STAYS in Vegas”, and yes that was the far away place in the desert where I went to attend the Freedom Fest conference. As for things staying in Vegas … it’s clear that they are referring to your money! It definitely stays there! It’s an amazing city .. but also a city built by losers.

So, what about the threat then? Was there a death threat? Well, to be honest, the man uttering the threat doesn’t know me personally and he threatened MANY people. But still, I do, kind of, take this personally, and yes, I think this is one scary dude … and so are his followers: VERY scary people.

Who am I talking about?

I’m talking about an extremist fundamentalist group of Christians calling themselves Reconstructionists and their leader, a certain Gary North.

In brief, they simply want to implement THEIR very extremist religious views and laws as this nation’s law and anyone opposing this idea should be put to death.

I can assure you, that I, personally, am NOT in favor of implementing biblical law in this country: hence the death threat!

To keep this post short (I could go on and on about this, but it would be detrimental to my blood pressure) I’ll just quote something from an article I just read (link here) [emphasis mine]:

North has called for the death penalty … for youngsters who curse their parents, gays and others who violate HIS interpretation of biblical law.

He has argued that stoning is the preferred means of capital punishment, noting that it is a communal activity and “the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost.”

So.

There you have it.

This poor excuse of a man, this incredibly stupid ignorant idiot, thinks stoning people to death for … whatever he is afraid of … should be made lawful. And oh, it’s also cheap and a stimulating social activity (unless, I have to assume, it’s YOUR child that’s being stoned to death).

Incredibly scary! Just suppose that this man gets his way. Then he will manage to do what the worst weapons of mass destruction would never be able to accomplish: He would wipe out the entire human species within one or two generations!

Given the fact that all teenagers have their genes hardwired to ‘disobey’ their parents, they will ALL be stoned to death. As said, that will take care of the human species REAL fast. Good riddens.

Anyway, if you think gays are human too, and if you want your kids to live past age 18, even though they just informed you that you know NOTHING and that you’re only here to make their lives miserable, or if you simply don’t like stoning people to death for not agreeing with something … then you just have been warned!

From another source: [link]

The members aren’t necessarily dangerous, but the movement is Very Disturbing in it’s [sic] ideology.
And if it ever came to political power, it would be disasterous [sic] for this civilization.
Freedom under a Christian Reconstructionist government would be similar to that of Stalan [sic] or Hitler.

(and that’s ‘not necessarily dangerous’ HOW?)

And here’s another, quite readable, article that mentions that even some fundamentalist associates of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell find these reconstructionists ‘scary’: link to article.

Now… if Falwell followers find people ‘scary’ for being too fundamentalistic, you KNOW you’re on to something REALLY creepy!

I’d like to propose we no longer call Thursday Thursday.

As of this week, let’s call the day preceding Friday “Spursday”!

Way to “GO SPURS”!

Amy Sorrell, a 30 year old High School teacher (English and Journalism), was placed on paid leave, will be transferred to another school and is still facing being fired.

Her ‘crime’?

Failing to report to the principal a controversial article in the students’ own newspaper for which Mrs. Sorrell served as an adviser.

What was so ‘controversial’?

Student Megan Chase wrote an editorial calling for tolerance of gays.

Yes, you read that right: not only did Woodlan High School censor the students’ own newspaper, it also deemed a plee for tolerance ‘controversial’!

Such an outrageous display of homophobia by an institution that we entrust our children to for education is as maddening as it is scary.

“The school administration has said in no uncertain terms that she’s not going to be given a journalism position”

Ah, right, yes, God forbid that she teaches the kids at the other school such dangerous notions as freedom of speech and press!

Mrs. Sorrell said that she is proud of the student who wrote the article, but that she has no money to fight the decision.

Sounds like a perfect case for the ACLU: not only are certain elements of the school’s administration clearly overstepping the boundaries of their power to promote and push their own narrow-minded views, they are also brutally abusing the rights to free expression of both the students and Mrs. Sorrell.

They should be stopped! This is outrageous.

(Even so outrageous that one has to wonder if there’s not more behind the story than meets the eye)

Link to article: link

(and yes, I know, that picture is sickening too. Comes from that deranged lunatic Fred Phelps, America’s Ueber-homophobe!)

I just watched this:

A kid announces his atheism. Dad seems to grab a beer and sits down at the dinner table to discuss this clearly unexpected revelation.
But mom explodes and starts the typical threatening, cursing (f-word!) and yelling (way to go mom!!).
(Dad wisely stays out of it from now on).
Curiously, mom appears to think that Christmas is all about getting presents.
But what really got me (laughing) is the way how, probably, a sister or brother, sneakily video-taped the outburst and sneaks away when things get TOO hot…

Still .. a very sad display of bad parenting…

Link to video