During dinner tonight I noticed some kind of movement in our backyard.  At first I thought it was a rabbit or something similar.  We’re on the edge of town, near some woods, and we get an awful lot of wildlife in our backyard.  So a rabbit wouldn’t be at all unusual.

What is a little unusual is that wasn’t a rabbit, but a fox.  And not just one.  It looks like we’ve got a family of foxes in our backyard.

I saw one large fox and about four small ones – a parent and its young I’d assume.

Unfortunately, nobody managed to get a picture of them during dinner.

Slashdot | Prototype EU Airplane Spy Cams Watch For FACECRIME

“You can’t make stuff like this up. The EU is actually testing a prototype system of cameras in airplanes to monitor passengers’ facial expressions in order to detect both terrorism and ‘air rage.’ The Security of Aircraft in the Future European Environment (SAFEE) project used an Airbus A380 fuselage with six wide-angle cameras to watch for people running or loitering near the cockpit door, as well as a camera in the back of every seat to watch for facecrime like sweating too much, or acting nervous. But that’s okay, because the system won’t alert anyone until it sees a ‘combination of signs,’ instead of just one stray expression, or they might accidentally catch a lot of people who are afraid of flying or of being watched.”

I really don’t see how anyone can think this is actually a good idea…

I can see maybe putting a couple cameras around the plane to watch for people rushing the cockpit or something, but one in the back of each seat?  How is that supposed to be helpful?

Are we really supposed to believe that suicide bombers are all going to have some kind of obvious facial expression?  Do they all have some kind of maniacal scowl?  Is there a certain look you get in your eyes before you blow yourself up?

And how are we going to know the difference between a terrorist who’s ready to strike and a nervous passenger who’s ready to hurl?

Tons of time/money/effort is going to go into this system and ultimately I doubt if it will have any impact on passenger safety.  Just like the ban on liquids/gels here in the U.S.

Slashdot | Private Donor Saves Fermilab

“In what has to be an embarrasment for the U.S. Department of Energy, an anonymous donor has ponied up $5 million to keep the country’s only remaining particle physics laboratory operating efficiently.”

Fermilab is the last remaining particle physics laboratory here in the U.S.  It does all sorts of crazy-advanced science stuff with particle accelerators and neutrinos and whatnot.  And it is apparently not important enough to get the funding it needs to keep operating.

This is from the nation that managed to put a man on the moon and develop a nuclear weapon.  The nation that created the Internet.  Science and technology used to be hugely important here in America.  These days we can’t even scrape together enough funding to keep Fermilab open.

These days we’re debating the merits of Intelligent Design and pumping billions of dollars into Iraq – while the rest of the world marches along and leaves us to founder in our own dark age.

We went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull over the weekend…

I was surprised with how decent the movie turned out to be. After the disaster that Episode I turned out to be I really was not expecting much. I figured George Lucas would wind up slaughtering another one of his classics.

But, despite the fact that it was surprisingly decent, it wasn’t as good as I had hoped it would be. There’s a liveliness and freshness to all the old Indiana Jones movies, even Temple of Doom, which this movie simply didn’t have. It seemed wooden and forced most of the time. Like more effort was being put into making it look like the old movies than making a good movie.

(more…)

We watched the end of the new Andromeda Strain mini-series on A&E last night…

For the most part it was a decent series. Enjoyable, interesting, thrilling… Certainly kept me riveted to my television for about 4 hours, which is rather difficult to do.

I really enjoyed how they brought the story up to speed and incorporated modern events.

Cell phones were used extensively to bypass the government’s attempt at censorship. And there was a pervasive sense the government was being less-than-open about what was going on. There was more talk about international politics – the bombing of Utah had as much political fallout as nuclear.

I did not like how they changed the story itself though…

(more…)

We watched the first half of the new Andromeda Strain mini-series on A&E last night…

So far I’m pretty impressed with it.  There are obviously some departures from the original story.  In some regards this mini-series is closer to the book than the first movie, in other ways there’s more of a departure.  But there isn’t anything horribly, painfully, obviously wrong with the mini-series so far.

I’m not sure I like how they threw in the stuff about the singularity and whatnot…  Making it seem more like an alien attack than a government snafu…  But it’s early yet and maybe that’ll turn out to be another lie/cover-up.

I am greatly enjoying how it has been updated to fit our modern world.  The technology doesn’t look quite as dated as the old movie did.  It’s easy to update something like that in your mind as you read a book…but once it’s on film it is harder to visualize a modern setting when they’re showing you technology that’s just plain out of date.

The acting is, for the most part, pretty decent.  There are a couple people I’m not enjoying too much, but that’s true of just about any movie out there.

So far I’m very happy with the new mini-series and very eager to see the rest of it tonight.

Things Younger Than McCain

Not to say that his age is the only problem with him…  I’ve got a whole host of reasons I don’t want McCain as President.  But his age is one of them.  And I never really realized how much of an issue it might be until Terri send me the link above.

I mean, the guy is a bit old…  And I figured he might be a bit out of touch…  But he is actually older than penicillin!  When McCain was born we hadn’t even figured out penicillin, and today we’ve got genetic engineering and cloning…  And he’s supposed to be able to effectively govern the United States?