Author Archives: dr.hypercube

More Moore

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Win! Hooray for serendipity. I started at Bruce Sterling’s and followed his link to a post on Amazon’s new Kindle (wisdom of crowds says, “Fail!” – also, read this). Speedbird – the blog with the Kindling post – looked interesting; I read a bit. Down a ways mention is made of a new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen title – The Black Dossier. Great news – and news it is. Though I love me some graphic novels, I’m out of the loop – there is much in the comic book world that I’m not particularly interested in, and I haven’t figured out where to find my kind of stuff (I read FLOG, but that’s just one – great – publisher). The only decent comic book store in the area having gone out of business and Million Year Picnic being too far to drive for one book (although I do want to get down to Cambridge soon – visit friends and the HMNH), off I go – virtually – to Amazon.

For those of you who know the League only via the movie – as is often the case – the books are far superior. I need to rent V for Vendetta and make that comparo sometime soon…

Alan Moore

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and Art Spiegelman and Daniell Cllowes appeared on last nights episode of the Simpsons. As fun as that was – and as groovy as the Tintin embedded short was – what nearly made me fall out of my chair was the poster behind the animated Moore in the book-signing scene. It was for the Lost Girls – I guess that’s what critics call transgressive (or not – I’ve never been able to figure that out word litcrit-wise). I’m sure the poster reference is all over the interwebs by now – though a quick google didn’t turn anything up – just wanted to put down a marker. I noticed!

Update – It’ll probably be mere minutes before Youtube pulls the clip down, but in this brief window of opportunity, the scene in question:

Vote Robot Overlord!

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Vote Robot Overlord

They’ll Know If You Didn’t

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Once again Kung Fu Monkey nails it.

John: Robot overlords. You are “pro-robot overlords”.
Tyrone: They bring world peace, universal health care —
John: At the cost of our freedoms!
Tyrone: MY POINT EXACTLY. We’re already giving up our freedoms — our right to privacy, gone.

And follows up with an embedded video of filthy anti-robot-overlprotector agitprop. I found this great graphic via kfmonkey comments – thanks flynngrrl.

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Back in the irrational world, Dear Leader announced steps to reduce airline delays during the holiday travel season by opening some restricted military airspace. When I heard about it, something didn’t ring true – I thought the biggest problems occurred at the endpoints – airport congestion. In fact, I’ve heard a couple stories recently about how competition for good time slots (everyone wants to leave between 7 and 9 AM for example) is driving some of the mess. I waited for the media to shed a little light – nothing. I must have been wrong; certainly, if it were a BS political stunt, someone would say so (some sarcasm there).

Via James Fallows and Get the Flick – maybe it’s BS after all – who woulda thunk it?

If you can’t figure out how adding two “express lanes” into the mall parking lot on the day after Thanksgiving is going to help you find a (nonexistent) parking space…you aren’t the only one. I guess knowing you are in the express lane will somehow make the wait seem better than if you were waiting in the regular lane.

Oh well. I guess I should be used to all this by now. Just so my non-controller readers will know…

The military airspace referred to — according to the controllers that work it — has always been opened to civilian traffic during the holidays. If there is a thunderstorm (not likely in late November) over the land routes the airspace will come in handy. Otherwise, the only thing it will be good for is extra holding patterns. *

Air traffic via Making Light.