Friday, March 31, 2006

Baby

Just So You KnowPerfidy

The noble house of Buckethead is now 33% larger, with the addition of new baby girl Jocelyn.  More details later, as I am really, really, really tired.  And that is fresh as a daisy compared to Mrs. Buckethead, who is very tired indeed.  I’m going to go cook some dinner and sleep.


Posted by Buckethead on 03/31/06 at 11:18 PM
Just So You Know • Perfidy • Permalink

Thursday, March 30, 2006

On a tear

Holy Shit!Perfidy

It is a sign of the apocalypse, or perhaps merely the distraction of our more prolix ministers, that Geeklethal has had two posts in a row.  In our secret conclave, hidden from the prying eyes of nosy readers, the Ministry has coined a new word for the state of being overwhelmed by work or other responsibilities to the point of complete inability to blog.  In honor of our least productive, but highest income blogger, we call this being “Rossed.”

Patton was due to write the follow up to Geeklethal’s story nugget.  But he’s rossed.  Johno would be delving into the deep arcana of music for us all, but is rossed by work and the mysterious and nefarious activities of a small New England museum.  Why, I myself would be talking about giant fighting robots and the AWST article about the secret military spaceplane but for being rossed by the endless waiting for the arrival of my second spawn.

Are you rossed?  Perhaps that is why you haven’t been commenting lately.  I know we haven’t made it easy, seeing as we’re not posting much new material.  But just because we’re slacking doesn’t make it right for you to slack.  So page back over to some old posts, and leave some new comments.  Make that month old, stale commentary new again!  Remember the Ministry isn’t just about us.  Mostly about us, to be sure.  But it is at least a little about you. 


Posted by Buckethead on 03/30/06 at 05:13 PM
Holy Shit! • Perfidy • Permalink

It’s not just us: kids from other places can be dumb, too

Crazy Foreigners

Ministry minions will no doubt recall that Lady Lethal, the lady who was kind enough both to marry me and be present at the creation of our offspring- the Li’lest Lethal- is from Poland.

One day over the course of casual discussion, I was talking about the lame places I went on school field trips as a kid.  The places that a third rate city whose glory days- if ever there were any- died before Truman did.  Places like the aquarium 100 miles away.  The lame local museums.  The big library.  The park.  And the “living history"-type faux town with the re-enactors who play colonial characters like tinsmiths and constables and milkmaids, the last of whom always seemed to be churning butter.  I remember being there at 8 years old, and instead of being curious about the extraordinary cleverness of a water-powered log skinner was more curious about who ate all the flippin’ butter they made. 

So after rambling for awhile, I asked her where they went as kids in Poland.  The lame museum?  The big park?  The aquarium 100 miles- whoops, kilomters- away? 

“Mmm, not really”, she answered, “We go to Auschwitz.”

Uh-HUH. 

Now it seems perhaps more yoots from outside Poland ought to make the trip or, failing that, pay more attention in school.  It seems the gubmint is getting a little irritated about furriners seeing the words “concentration camp” with the word “Polish”, and assuming ownership, not merely geography.

The Irish Examiner has a bit about efforts to change the formal name to The Former Nazi German Concentration Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.  If that’s what it takes to educate people about it, well then that’s what has to be done. 

But isn’t it sad that enough people were confused about the blackest patch on Earth that this move was even warranted?


Posted by GeekLethal on 03/30/06 at 03:55 PM
Crazy Foreigners • Permalink

Monday, March 27, 2006

Yale Learning That Unless You Scrape it, the Poop Never Comes Off Your Shoe

Unmitigated Gall

Ministry readers are no doubt familiar with Yale’s recent exercise in diversity admissions by enrolling former Taliban official Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi.  Yes, it is in a non-degree program for non-traditional students, which some folks might feel makes it not so bad.  But yes, he served the Taliban in an executive capacity and remains largely unrepentant of his earlier career in oppression, which rather trumps the details of whatever program he’s in. 

Yale continues to stonewall, issuing only a 100-odd-word statement to inquirers.  The fallout over that extraordinarily poor decision, and the lack of response to critics of it, is like stepping in a big pile of fuck.  Then pretending that you don’t smell it.  Then when someone asks why you smell like that, you ask, “like what?”

There are some folks out there that have moved beyond shock and horror at this decision, and have gone straight into retribution.  I don’t know the stats, but certainly alumni giving will be down this year.  It will have no effect on Yale’s larger economic picture, given it’s wealthier by far than a significant portion of the nations of the world.  But at least by not giving to Yale this year you’re not supporting an institution that rewards terrorists. 

Others have been considering who better might be worthy of a free education at Yale, non-degree or otherwise.  If someone were to ask me, “GL, who better to go to Yale for free than a former Taliban quasi-ambassador?”, my first thought might be, “Um, everybody else other than that guy.” After some thought, I was leaning toward my cat, Marco, who as half-Siamese and half-Burmese gets the South Asian tip, is neutered so in a sense transgendered, and is, I must emphasize, a cat- a trifecta of diversity goodness.  He would be the only cat enrolled in the institution’s history, would surely represent the feline perspective in campus life, and could work toward exposing the intolerance and ending the hate.  Toward cats.  And I should add that the Taliban in question has only slightly more formal education than my cat, so there’s that too.

Upon more serious reflection though, I would answer General Khatol Mohammad Zai.  General Zai is the only female general in the country, the only airborne soldier in the country (she’s made 500-some jumps which is, in military jargon, nuts), and a single mom to boot.  She does not command any men, and probably never will.  But she has been a military officer for decades, and is certainly a symbol, perhaps an example for young women to emulate.  Not sure about her earlier days as an officer at least nominally supporting the Russians in their fight against the mujaheddin, but hey, what’s the worst that could happen- she’s an old communist?  Lord knows she wouldn’t be the first of those running around New Haven.

Yale, give her a call.  Invite her over.  Give her an honorary degree or something.  Just make some sort of effort to recognize that it’s not OK to give free educations to people complicit in mass murder.

[Wik]You know what, screw the honorary degree.  Upon further reflection it would be much more valuable, both to broader society and Yale specifically, for General Zai to come to campus not to receive her Doctorate of Humane Letters, but to parachute in and just kick the shit out of Yale’s precious Taliban man.  I mean, to have a female Afghani paratrooper tear the ass out of the guy...well, that just makes sense to me.


Posted by GeekLethal on 03/27/06 at 02:24 PM
Unmitigated Gall • Permalink

Cognitive dissonance, bad editing, or pissing on my shoes and telling me it’s raining?

Crazy Foreigners
While reading a story entitled "Groundswell of Protests Back Illegal Immigrants" in Monday's New York Times, I came across this nugget, spread across two pages. First, the last paragraph on page one:
The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that of more than 11 million illegal immigrants, 78 percent are from Mexico or other Latin American countries. Many have children and other relatives who are United States citizens. Under the House measure, family members of illegal immigrants — as well as clergy members, social workers and lawyers — would risk up to five years in prison if they helped an illegal immigrant remain in the United States.
OK, fine, sez me - that sounds harsh. I've read and heard news stories making it clear that the authors of the legislation have no intention of criminalizing the actions of anyone simply "helping" an illegal immigrant to stay in the US, but I can understand why the Catholic Church, the illegals' families, and other aid organizations would be jumpy about the matter. So I clicked on to see page two, and its first paragraph looked like this:
(Page 2 of 2)

"Imagine turning more than 11 million people into criminals, and anyone who helps them," said Angela Sanbrano, executive director of the Central American Resource Center of Los Angeles, one of the organizers of Saturday's rally there. "It's outrageous. We needed to send a strong and clear message to Congress and to President Bush that the immigrant community will not allow the criminalization of our people — and it needed to be very strong because of the anti-immigrant environment that we are experiencing in Congress."
With no disrespect to immigrants, and no actual malice toward illegal immigrants, I find myself wondering what part of illegal does Angela Sanbrano not understand?

Those 11 million folks she's worried about are already criminals. Whether they should be or not is an issue best left to another forum, but could we drop the charade that they're not already criminals? And if the issue is immigrants' rights, the matter is pretty simple, according to present laws - as illegal immigrants they have a right to be treated fairly, humanely, and then to be transported back to wherever they came from at the earliest feasible date, absent some mitigating factor, of which there are none related to Mexican immigrants. Shitty government isn't one of the exceptions, you see.

Those that wish to have open borders, with free entry for all, can make excellent points in favor of their positions, as can those against. I find, however, that the arguments of those against purely open borders are more believable on at least one level - they don't generally seem to start their arguments with a bald-faced misstatement of fact.

Where the Times fits into all this is actually moot - the placement of the visual head-fake is probably just an accident. But anyone who read just the first page and moved on might not notice the duplicity of the arguments in favor of what is, today, still a clearly illegal activity. That would be unfortunate, and runs the risk of simply kicking the can down the road rather than addressing the issue once and for all.

For what it might be worth, if the government were to decide to lock the borders tight and properly and then to offer a one-time amnesty to all who've been so fortunate to evade the law to-date, I'd be fine with that, unlike some (many?) to the right of me on the political polarization scale.

Doing one without the other, however, would just be another act of stupidity, and doing neither would be just as bad.


Posted by Patton on 03/27/06 at 01:47 AM
Crazy Foreigners • Permalink

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Phil gets hickory smoked

Entertainment

Ministry Crony Phil has got himself a new band.  It seems the old band succumbed to a population exposion.  So the new band isn’t power pop with wicked female vocals.  Instead, Phil has maneuvered his way into a folky-rocky type band with wicked female vocals.  Which means that Phil is now halfway to being assimilated by the DC bluegrass borg collective that ate my wife.

The Fragments are no more, long live The Hickories.  It seems that Phil can’t lose for winning.  One band stuffed full of talented musicians sucks the gas pipe and decides to pay attention to real life, so he instantly finds another band stuffed full of talented musicians.  For old time’s sake, give a listen to a Fragments tune, then go listen to two of the new bits, over here.  I’m sure Phil will let me know when they’re playing out, because I asked him to.  And then I will let you know, and if you’re near the nation’s capitol, you can go see them in person, like me. 

[Wik] Looking at the new band’s website, I see that they link to Amy, who is one of the singers in my wife’s band, Dead Men’s Hollow.  It’s a small fricken world, I tell ya.


Posted by Buckethead on 03/23/06 at 08:54 PM
Entertainment • Permalink

Another F-35 Trainwreck?

War

Maybe not.  But the Christian Science Monitor is reporting that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme might be running into some more problems.  Recently, the Brits threatened to pull out of the quarter trillion dollar project over technology sharing issues.  Though that seems to be on track to resolution - both sides having reported “extremely productive” talks in negotiations - there is a something else on the radar screen. 

UAE owned holding firm Dubai International Capital bought Doncasters, a privately held British aerospace manufacturer, in a deal worth $1.2 billion.  That company is involved with the F-35, and another congressional investigation could cause yet another row.  I think that this is another case of a (relatively) innocent company being guilty of little more than “driving while arab.” There is reason to be cautious about our secrets and all, but if this busts out into a minor scale controversy, you can be sure that it is much more likely to be about some hack politician’s reelection chances than about a legitimate security concern.  And if it pisses off the Brits, that’s a damn shame, because we couldn’t ask for a better ally, and should be doing all that we can to include them in, not acting like they’re our wierd bug-eyed cousin wanting to borrow twenty-grand for a fur bearing trout farm.


Posted by Buckethead on 03/23/06 at 05:18 PM
War • Permalink

Actual Facts

Unmitigated Gall

A nautical light year is 1.15 times longer than a statute light year.


Posted by Buckethead on 03/23/06 at 05:17 PM
Unmitigated Gall • Permalink

Why We Write

Perfidy

The Ministry is all about sharing.

We share so much with each other- our knowledge; our wisdom; our decades of experience with fighting robots, prostitutes, fart jokes, industrial construction, rhetoric, and prostitutes- that as a unit we are better equipped to bring enlightenment to the world than any other random sampling of five men.

Our long term goal is, at its core, quite simple: to bring our love of sharing to the scattered, feral remnants of humanity still stubbornly clinging to life after the Ragnarok, and generously share our whips and bullets with them. 

But aside from cruel leather, cold steel, and the hard heart to wield them both, we want to ensure that the arts survive as well.  Toward that end, we are going to write a story.  We wanted to store fine literature, paintings, and sculpture in the Ministry Culture Bunker and Catastratorium, but after making a go of it found that that stuff takes up too much space.  We are putting some Grecian and Chinese pottery to use, storing Kool Aid and pencils and whatnot, but anything without an apparent utilitarian application was left outside.

We felt it was up to us to do someting to ensure the written word would survive beyond the Apocalypse. 

We are now crafting the literature that the mutated inheritors of the cursed Earth might care to read sometime, maybe between avoiding deathbot patrols or after outrunning a zombie horde.  It’s the first fiction piece co-written and serialized by participating Ministers and, although the planned release date is sometime after Doomsday, we will share drafts with our loyal reader. 

Readers.  Loyal readers.

Forthwith, the first installment of our first stab at serial writing:


Posted by GeekLethal on 03/23/06 at 02:16 PM
Perfidy • Permalink

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

This buckethead is not the true buckethead

Perfidy

He is, however, the more famous buckethead.  For now. 

Thanks, GL, for this edifying and enlightening yet soul-sucking video clip.


Posted by Buckethead on 03/22/06 at 06:16 PM
Perfidy • Permalink

Wikimania

Just So You Know

Everyone knows wikipedia.  While at times its accuracy is less than gold standard, it is typically the most useful place to begin research on a topic.  The least you can expect from wikipedia is a cogent summary and a selection of good links.  At best, you have a detailed and thorough introduction.  Until recently, I was only vaguely aware that there was such a thing as other wikis.  Today, I spent my valuable lunch time spinning through some of it.

For some time now, wiki enthusiasts have been creating wikibooks, which takes the idea of the wikipedia to a new and greater level of depth.  I was cruising around the site, and found a wikibook Movie Making Manual.  While reasing this manual isn’t the same as going to film school or an apprenticeship with Steven Spielberg, it does provide a great deal of insight into the movie making process for someone like your ‘ol pal Buckethead who don’t know movie making from shinola.  Of especial interest to me, being the wordsmith that I is, was the section on screenwriting.  While the level of information there is, as yet, still rather sparse, I could imagine that something like this crossed with MIT’s OpenCourseWare could be a really cool thing indeed. 

Also of use are the vasty deeps of wikiquote, where I found this charming little bit I had been trying to remember for ages:

Listen up maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We are the all singing, all dancing crap of the world. We are all part of the same compost heap.

Also chock full of grist for your reading mill is wikisource, where you can find among other treasures, John Buchan’s Greenmantle. 


Posted by Buckethead on 03/22/06 at 05:15 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Angle Grinder Man

Entertainment

No shit, it’s Angle Grinder Man.  A real life super hero, defending an oppressed public from the evils of malicious traffic and parking enforcement officers.

[Wik] Btw, follow the external links at the bottom of the wikipedia article.  They are… interesting.


Posted by Buckethead on 03/21/06 at 07:35 PM
Entertainment • Permalink

Pandemic :: Profit

Just So You Know

I assume that you are prepared for the coming Avian Flu Pandemic.  If you’ve listened to the sage advice of the Ministry Bureau for Zombie Preparedness, you already have most of what you need in your Zombie Preparedness Kit.  You’ve got your water supply - one gallon per person per day, for a month.  You have non-perishable foods from munchies to MREs.  You’ve stocked up on toothpaste, soap, toilet paper, little sachets of smelly stuff, and other essentials.  You’ve got your generator, and an adequate fuel supply.  Flashlights, tools, candles, radios and other survival implements are close to hand.  You have plenty of whatever medications you need on a regular basis.  For me, that’s the twenty four year scotch and a couple cartons of cigarettes, but your mileage may vary.  You’ve packed kit bags for various emergencies, and they are easily accessible or already in the car.  You have weaponry: aluminum baseball bat, shotgun, .45, and ammo.  And a machete.  Can’t forget the machete.  To upgrade your ZPK to full Avian Flu Pandemic compliance, only a few additional items are needed.  Lots of hand sanitizer.  Medical filter masks.  Rabbit’s foot.  But you knew that.

One thing you might not have considered is the effect of a global flu pandemic on your stock portfolio.  Never fear, though.  The eggheads at Citigroup have thought it all through, and offer sound advice on where and when to jump, money-wise, when the grim reaper starts a-reapin.  Do I sell my airline stocks?  What sectors are sound investments in a mild pandemic that aren’t in a highly lethal virulent epidemic?  Are bonds a safe haven, or will the collapse of the global trade network place unsupportable strains on the US dollar?  Well, now you’ll know.  We’ll be lying in a chaise lounge in the Ministry Catastratorium and Epidemiological Center with the HiDef tuned to bloomberg watching our portfolios rocket into the stratosphere while you are dealing with half-starved and fully mad mobs are wrecking your town and your retirement.  Unless you plan ahead.  Then you, like us, can learn what a beautiful word schadenfreude is.

[Wik] I just trolled through the Ministry Archives looking for the post on the Zombie Preparedness Kit that I was sure I wrote, but I’ll damned if I can find the fricken thing.  I did find these two posts, but they only mention it, they don’t describe it.  I guess I have some homework for tomorrow.


Posted by Buckethead on 03/21/06 at 06:45 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

Sunday, March 19, 2006

More on Trivial Pursuits

Just So You Know
Woot!

Who knew Bradley would beat Pittsburgh? Other than me, that is. Well, "Who knew..." isn't the right word.

"Who pulled out of his ass the crazy idea that..." seems more a appropriate start to that sentence. I apologize for the imprecison.

The NCAA walls will surely come crashing down, real soon now, but until they do, I'm alone in 4th place, with a bullet.

I say again, "Woot!".

And yes, the title of this post works on multiple levels. Thanks for noticing.

[Wik] To nobody's surprise, including mine, Ohio State has taken the pipe. Bummer. I'm now #8, with a bullet, to the head. At least I didn't have the Buckeyes winning it. And it could be worse - the two guys who run the pool, no slouches they, has each had his pick to win it all get dusted. So at least I'll probably finish ahead of them.


Posted by Patton on 03/19/06 at 06:40 PM
Just So You Know • Permalink

We get mail

Holy Shit!
Help me out here - would this be an example of correlation, causation, or just a craptacular use of computing power?

From this morning's inbox:

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We've noticed that customers who have purchased The Complete Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson also purchased books by Edward Kennedy. For this reason, you might like to know that Edward Kennedy's My Senator And Me : A Dog's Eye View Of Washington, D.C. will be released soon. You can pre-order your copy at a savings of 35% by following the link below.

While I find that all fascinating, I think it points to the limitations inherent in today's electronic commerce marketing programs. The only suggestions I recall having taken seriously from Amazon (a company, by the way, whose loyal customer I am) are those from the same author as the book which triggered the recommendation.

I don't know why that is, it just is.

And I'm reminded of a previous Amazon oddity, found who knows where. The only reference I'm able to find to it is in this entry at a site I'm sure I've never visited until today. I know I originally saw it in a blog somewhere, this past December, and I've convinced myself that it wasn't in an entry from one of my compatriots here at the Ministry, so I'm not going to look back any farther.

Oh, the oddity? If you didn't see it at the time, you might get a chuckle out of it. It was an Amazon search for "laserdisc". At the time, I found it funny enough that I saved it, correctly assuming that Amazon would spackle over whatever glitch existed in their search engine. First page of results, scanned and cropped from an a PDF I retained of the search, below the fold.

[Wik] I ought to point out that I'm certain the Complete Calvin and Hobbes collection is worth every penny, even though I've not been able to get my 11 year old daughter to let loose of it long enough to actually read it front to back, four times, like she has.


Posted by Patton on 03/19/06 at 04:58 PM
Holy Shit! • Permalink
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