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Archive for the ‘In the news’ Category

A while back I wrote about Penguin Milk.

Amazing stuff!

A warning though: don’t go overboard with it.

You can die from it.

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!).

“Clients know that Bernard Madoff has a personal interest in maintaining the unblemished record of value, fair-dealing, and high ethical standards that has always been the firm’s hallmark.”

— Text on the now modified website of investment firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. owned by former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Exchange Bernard Madoff.

If his business dealings indeed were of High Ethical Standards, I’d HATE to see business being done based on LOW Ethical Standards!

(Bernard Madoff was arrested last Thursday and charged with a single count of securities fraud. The Securities and Exchange Commission immediately filed separate civil charges against Madoff. The fraud is possibly one of the biggest in history. The alleged loss of investors’ money is estimated at 50 billion dollar! Yes, boys and girls, that’s FIFTY THOUSAND MILLION DOLLARS! All removed from their owners by ‘fair-dealing’ while observing the Highest Ethical Standards!)

“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?

 

Warning: The following post is “indecent but not obscene” [US Supreme Court case 438 U.S. 726 (1978)]

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits.

Rest in peace, man.

And thanks!

 

Shamelessly stolen from, well, … actually, I forgot, but it’s all over the Internet.

Vicious Dog Pack Kills Gator in Florida

At times nature can be cruel, but there is also a raw beauty and even a certain justice manifested within that cruelty.

The alligator, one of the oldest and ultimate predators, normally considered the ‘apex predator’ in its natural eco-system, can still fall victim to an implemented ‘team work’ strategy made possible due to the tight knit social structure and ‘survival of the fittest pack mentality’ bred into the canines over the last several hundreds of years by natural selection.

Note that the Alpha dog has a muzzle hold on the gator preventing it from breathing, while the remainder of the pack prevents the beast from rolling and attacks the alligator’s soft underbelly.

See the attached remarkable photograph courtesy of Nature Magazine.

We strongly recommend that you preview this privately before determining if a younger audience should view the photo below.

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Imagine this: you and eight buddies go on a trip.

You’re all in a plane when suddenly, while in flight, a wing falls off.

Can you imagine, what it would be like, to have a reunion with your friends in, say, a week from the unhappy event.

Reminiscing about the lucky coincidence that you all happened to be wearing … parachutes when the incident happened?

Link

 
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.

Last year, on August 4th, I wrote, although not immediately apparent, about the launch of a Delta rocket that would put the Phoenix space craft on its way to Mars.

After having traveled some nine months at around 74,000 miles an hour, Phoenix is almost at the end of its 423 million mile journey:
Tomorrow afternoon it will make its landing attempt: when is starts its harrowing descent to the Martian surface it will be flying over 12,000 miles per hour (relative to Mars).
Seven minutes later it should be touching down on the cold rocky planet.

Unlike the previous rovers, this is not a big airbag that is dropped and bounces around for a while: this is a real lander that is supposed to make a controlled soft landing using a parachute, retro-rockets, radar, lots of computer power and … quite a bit of luck: so far, only 55% of all Mars landings have been successful.

Is the Phoenix team confident they will pull this off?
Not quite:

I do not feel confident. But in my heart I’m an optimist, and I think this is going to be a very successful mission,” said principal investigator Peter Smith, an optical scientist with the University of Arizona. “The thrill of victory is so much more exciting than the agony of defeat.

The number of things that can go wrong in the seven minutes it takes the lander from going from almost 13,000 mph to gently stepping on Mars’ surface is mind boggling. One single small failure will make the difference between success and Mars having yet another impact crater. This is why the Phoenix team refers to this landing event as “The Seven Minutes of Terror”.

I will be watching the landing coverage tomorrow on TV and it will be a nail biting experience.

And if we’re lucky and Phoenix survives this mission critical maneuver, we’re in for yet another nail biting experience.

After all, Phoenix’ mission is to hopefully find a conclusive answer to that centuries old question:

Is there life “out there”?