evolution

Apparently, the Writer’s Guild members are starting to get antsy, and some are contemplating… writing for video games:

But while Hollywood screenwriters have become more involved in scripting games in the past few years, it’s not necessarily seen as a good move by people who would normally work on film and TV projects.

This is down to a generally lower fee level - the article cites USD 50,000 as a typical figure, although this can increase with additional involvement - and a long contract time, sometimes as much as 6 months.

I thought that when G4 sold out and starting airing fare geared toward those punks you see Tokyo Drifting their way to Sonic in Honda Civics with 5″ tailpipes and shirts with flaming dragons on them that maybe the end was nigh for video games. I thought they would become as stale and formulaic as TV and movies have. I never imagined that the actual writers of those TV shows and movies would be involved in games.

They aren’t now, and I hope that it remains that way.

A British teacher in Sudan faces 40 lashes for allowing children to name a teddy bear “Mohammed”, the name that won the popularity contest among the kids. Or she might be released - the enlightened administration in Sudan might be too busy driving Sudanese from their homes and murdering them to punish this woman.

But, it’s nice to know that naming a teddy bear after the Prophet is only one-fifth as bad for a woman as being seen with an unrelated man in public and then being gang-raped by seven men. For that, it’s 200 lashes. (It’s worth noting that the men were also sent to prison for sentences of varying terms).

The government statement said that according to the woman’s signed confession, she called a man on her cell phone and “asked to be with him alone, illegally.” The two met at a marketplace, then rode in the man’s car to “a dark area of the beach, and stayed there for some time,” the ministry said.

The group of attackers “saw her in a compromising situation, her clothes on the ground,” the statement said. “The men at this point assaulted her and the man with her.”

The woman knew that being alone with a man who wasn’t her husband was illegal, “and therefore she violated the covenant of marriage.” However, the woman was engaged — not married — at the time.

After the incident, the woman and the man did not come forward about the assaults or press charges until someone contacted the woman’s husband “telling him what happened, and about his wife’s affair and adultery,” the ministry said. “She then confessed … the husband therefore came forward to the police and formally complained nearly three months after the incident.”

The woman and her companion “exposed themselves to this heinous crime, causing the crime to take place because of their violations of the pure Sharia ruling” — the country’s strict Islamic law.

The case was handled through regular court procedures, and the woman, her male companion and the attackers all agreed in court to the initial sentences, the government said in a previous statement.

So, who wants a couple of million barrels of oil?

UPDATE: Prince Saud al-Faisal is promising that the Saudi justice ministry will “review” the case, and whines that the case is being “used against the Saudi government and people.” He can’t have it both ways — the modern way and the 11th century way — forever.

My renewed commitment to writing is off to an inauspicious start. I wanted to write about the comments of a certain sawed-off Archbishop of Canterbury, but Bill already did. I also wanted to write about the D.C. gun ban case before the Supreme Court (which I was wrong about — SCOTUS did grant cert, which scares me to death), but Bill already did. The Archbishop of Canterbury piece ends with a natural twenty and a critical hit that you really should read.

Maybe Bill should write this blog. I’m sure an increase in quality will result. There’s certainly nowhere to go but up.

Well, not that way.

I’m talking about a new project that will result from my involvement with the World Company’s Citizens’ Journalism Academy sometime back. I really can’t say more than that, other than that I intend to be involved.

But, they won’t (with good reason, of course) let me be involved in the project under any other moniker than my real name. Either way, I intend to keep the big e alive, because I pay my own way here. I don’t blog at or about work, so I think I can say what I want.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Oh yeah — I also need a name for this project. “evolution” is taken, and right out. I thought of using Operation: Mindcrime, which is a badass name, but I don’t want to get sued by Queensrÿche.

And believe you me — you don’t want to be sued by people with an umlaut in their name.

UPDATE 2: And, I think I need a new picture. The pretentious “artist’s rendering” picture of me on the “About” page was taken five years ago. The only condition is that it must feature a certain lecherous you-know-what. Any ideas?

[Note: I have repeated this post every year for the last three, because it's still the funniest Thanksgiving story I've ever heard. The events described herein took place on Thanksgiving Day, 2004.]

Thanksgiving was certainly exciting. Present for dinner were Mom, Pat, Grandma, Grandpa, and Michael (evolution’s counter-terrorism expert, whose family will meet on Sunday). Pat was at the kitchen counter carving the turkey, and Mom was setting all the side dishes on the table — mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, Waldorf salad, dressing, and green bean casserole (you know, with the french-fried onions on top). This was the first family dinner at this table — Mom and Pat had just bought it after having eyeballed similar oak tables for years.

The rest of us were seated at the table, waiting for Grandma to say the customary prayer of thanks. Pat had just poured the last glass of white Zinfandel, and Mom was about to set the last dish on the table.

Then, a great crash!, and before any of us knew what the hell had happened, the table had collapsed into our laps! Thanks to the lightning-fast reflexes of Grandpa (who is 71, having survived a mild stroke two years ago) and Michael, no food hit the deck. The drinks, including a whole bottle of wine, were a total loss — but miraculously, no dishes were broken and no one — including my wheelchair-bound grandmother — was injured. Michael and I quickly dug the old table (which was to go in my kitchen) out, and set it up. We quickly set the table while Grandpa, a retired machine-shop employee, determined the cause of the collapse. We got the table reloaded, Mom said the prayer (which was accompanied by several snickers from the rest of us), and we enjoyed the dinner, which was excellent as always.

This morning, the person that sold us the table received a quite persnickety phone call from Mom.

I hope you and yours had a happy Thanksgiving, wherever you may be.

That would be this.

Listen to your favorite here.

I need to figure out how to make that my ringtone.

UPDATE: Mission accomplished. I pity tha foo who calls my phone. I also got the theme from Airwolf and the original Battlestar.

I daresay this is a “f*** yeah” moment.

A Saudi court increased punishment for a gang rape to being whipped 200 times.

For the victim.

(CNN) — A court in Saudi Arabia increased the punishment for a gang-rape victim after her lawyer won an appeal of the sentence for the rapists, the lawyer told CNN.

The 19-year-old victim was sentenced last year to 90 lashes for meeting with an unrelated male, a former friend from whom she was retrieving photographs. The seven rapists, who abducted the pair and raped both, received sentences ranging from 10 months to five years in prison.

The victim’s attorney, Abdulrahman al-Lahim, contested the rapists’ sentence, contending there is a fatwa, or edict under Islamic law, that considers such crimes Hiraba (sinful violent crime) and the punishment should be death.

“After a year, the preliminary court changed the punishment and made it two to nine years for the defendants,” al-Lahim said of the new decision handed down Wednesday. “However, we were shocked that they also changed the victim’s sentence to be six months in prison and 200 lashes.”

I guess it’s too bad that the rapists weren’t rich, white lacrosse players. Otherwise, she might get justice.

I watched the PBS special on the case earlier this evening, and I must say it added a new dimension to the effects of the original ruling — which you can and should read again here.

You’ll recall that the case, brought by parents and teachers of the Dover, PA school district against their own school board, challenged a policy implemented by the board under which teachers would read to biology students statements purporting to highlight “gaps” in evolution as a scientific theory.

The ruling, as you know if you read it, was sweeping in its destruction of the current state of the “intelligent design” movement. Let’s recap the situation so that you can appreciate just how sweeping it was. The judge was a Republican, a Bush appointee, and former head of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control board — one of the most onerous such institutions in the country. He had, according to the PBS program, expressed at one time prior to the issue sympathy to the cause of teaching “alternative theories” to evolution in public schools. The parents and teachers who were opposed to the “intelligent design” movement brought the case, so all of the burden of proof was on them. In other words, the “intelligent design” movement — represented with absolute incompetence¹ by members of the school board, Michael Behe, and the Discovery Institute — had a hearing as sympathetic as they will find.

Thanks to the facts of the case, and their own bumbling, it is not likely they will find even a tenth of the sympathy they had when the trial started. The judge found in favor of the plaintiffs, and additionally found (accurately, in my view) that the “intelligent design” movement’s position was utterly without scientific merit, and permanently enjoined the board (most of whom by then had been voted out of office) from implementing the policy. The judge also singled out two of the pro-ID board members who testified and essentially accused them of perjury — the PBS program mentioned that the judge had even gone so far as to recommend they be prosecuted for perjury.

The news stories told you that the “intelligent design” people got hammered, and the judge’s ruling shows why. The PBS program shows how, and is well worth your time to watch if you feel you need more context in which to put the ruling.

1. I really can’t see how the “intelligent design” movement could have possibly been represented with any reasonable competence whatsoever. Their position was and continues to be represented by (false) negative arguments and almost no concrete facts. [↩]

The stupidest newspaper employee in Kansas says so.

We’re not talking about something like, say, abortion, Randy. Abortion, or so sayeth the courts, derives from a “penumbra of rights”. Somehow I’ll bet you don’t find that “awkwardly structured”.

But gun ownership is printed in the Constitution. What part of the Second Amendment is “awkwardly structured”?

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

There are just too many commas in that sentence. Here it is the way I would write it (and how I believe the Framers intended it, which of course is what I ask myself any time I think about a Constitutional question):

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

I don’t see how it’s possible to see that simple statement - in either form - as granting a “collective right” (whatever the hell that means) rather than an individual right. It simply makes no sense. All of the rights granted in the Bill of Rights are individual rights. This is not different.

And this is not, as Scholfield blithely insinuates, something the wingnuts gin up every so often to torment the sophisticated literati like himself.

As for the case he refers to, I have no idea what will happen. Not granting cert will effectively overturn the D.C. gun ban — which is just wrong, in my opinion¹ without actually overturning it and setting the precedent, although you can’t underestimate certain justices’ love for making new law.

Perhaps Randy Scholfield should stick to things he knows, rather than continue to embarass himself thusly. Given his record of blog posts, I doubt it.

1. Sadly, I don’t see too many “critics”, to use the news story’s word, making that argument — rather, they legitimize the desire to ban individuals from legally owning guns as an “opposing view” by saying that gun control just doesn’t work. It doesn’t, but that’s not the point. [↩]