The forms are gone and the foundation is complete. Next step, the framing and the sewer.
You can see where the back door will be.
Author Archives: Jean-Paul
Movie Review: World War Z
Ratings for reviews will appear above the fold, while the review itself will appear below the fold to avoid spoilers for anyone that wants to go into it with a blank slate.
Jean-Paul’s rating: 2/5 stars
Hey, I have a great idea! Let’s take a book known for its geopolitical depth and try to make an action movie out of it! That’ll totally work!
Movie Review: Man Of Steel
Ratings for reviews will appear above the fold, while the review itself will appear below the fold to avoid spoilers for anyone that wants to go into it with a blank slate.
Jean-Paul’s rating: 3/5 stars
If only they had fought their epic battle at Disney World instead of Metropolis. I would pay good money to see Disney World destroyed even if only on film.
Book Review: Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars
It has been a long time since I’ve found a science fiction book that was outside my normal list of authors that I read that I would highly recommend to others. Finally, there is “Old Man’s War”. It combines a fascinating storyline with a realistic vision of a futuristic Earth and is full of more sciencey goodness than you can shake a stick at.
I got the book because it was part of one of those Humble Bundle packages where you get a bunch of ebooks and pay what you want and some of it goes to charity and such. If they keep getting quality books like “Old Man’s War” in the bundles, this Humble Bundle project will be a roaring success.
The story starts on an Earth far into the future. Humans have advanced far beyond our little Sun, but people on Earth are mostly oblivious to that fact and to the technologies that make interstellar travel possible. People from the poorer countries get shipped off to colonize other planets, but the rest of the world carries on their lives much like we do ours. With one exception. When you turn 75, you get an opportunity to join the Colonial Defense Force (CDF) and protect Earth colonies from the dangers of the universe.
Why would anyone want a bunch of 75 year olds for war and why would a bunch of 75 year olds want to go to war? Good question. The CDF controls all higher technology. They don’t allow most of it to be used on Earth and Earth doesn’t even know what technologies exist. The assumption is that the CDF has technology to make you younger and they will use it on you if you join up. When you’re 75, the lure of being in a 20-something body is pretty strong.
One of the people that is drawn in by that lure is John Perry. He and his wife were going to join the CDF together but she had the misfortune of dying before her 75th birthday so John must go it alone. The rest of the book follows John as he explores this strange new universe. I won’t go into details, but the aliens are cool, the technology is cooler, and the political landscape of the CDF is coolest.
The only reason why I didn’t give the book five stars is because the ending was a little off in my mind. It just sort of ends abruptly. There is resolution to the immediate storyline, but a feeling of “That’s it?” that goes along with it. Luckily, there are sequels to the book and I will definitely be reading them. I hope there are questions answered like why is Earth kept so primitive? I am looking forward to further explorations of the “Old Man’s War” multiverse.
America! F@#! Yeah!
Happy 4th of July!
Back In Bidness
After a week of actual work and another week of no internet, I’m back!
Me. Myself. I. I put in an honest week’s work for the first time in a long time. It was actually kind of nice.
The “no internet” problem has been solved by the purchase of a sleek new Samsung Galaxy S4 which I will be using as a mobile hotspot. It is blazing fast. No more worrying about The Man nosing into what I’m doing! Take that, The Man! Now it’s just the NSA.
I’ve missed so much these past few weeks. All sorts of Supreme Court decisions, the whole NSA spying thing, and now a coup in Egypt (suck it, democracy!). And I’ve also got two movie review and a book review to catch up on.
Oh, look, and it’s the 4th of July. Oh well! Blogging will have to wait for another day.
Hush
Continuing on my quest to watch television shows that I somehow missed when I was younger, I’m watching “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. It’s got a bit of hokeyness to it, but all in all, it’s pretty good.
I just got finished watching Season 4, Episode 10, “Hush”. The basic premise is that there are these monsters known only as The Gentlemen and they steal people’s voices so they can’t scream and then they do what every good monster would and cut out your heart. As a result, a lot of the episode is done in complete silence. It’s really a testimony to how much can be expressed without words.
But that’s not what this post is about. I want to talk about The Gentlemen. I don’t think I’ve seen a creepier monster on television or even in movies. They are tall with mottled grey skin and emaciated, elongated faces. Their mouths are frozen in a wide clownish grin with lips so wide apart their gums show. They dress in black suits and ties with white button down shirts and pocket squares. They float five inches off the ground with arms extended out from the elbow menacingly towards you with hands shaped into claws. They are perfectly silent. They will haunt your nightmares.
Yeagh!
Form Of A Foundation!
The forms are in for the house and they’re ready to pour the concrete!
Immigration, The Answer To All Of Our Problems!
Hyperbole! But seriously, immigration reform is critically important to our continued status as a world power. It is just as important as it always has been.
Unfortunately, one of our two political parties (Hint: It rhymes with Schmupublicans.) is dead set against any type of immigration reform bill that doesn’t make immigrants suffer. Take Senator Jeff Session (R-AL) for example. He is dead set against the reform that has been proffered by the most recent Gang Of Whatever. So what does he do? He gets the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to score the bill and see what the economic impact would be. I’m sure Senator Sessions fully expected the CBO to come back and say that all of those Brown people would cost the Real Amurican Taxpayers billions. But what does the CBO actually say? Only that the immigration reform bill will save our country $197B over ten years.
Facts, the enemy of Republicans for well nigh eternity. Hyperbole! But seriously, elected Republicans do seem to have great aversion to facts these days.
The Golden Age Of Maps
Slate’s Future Tense writer Will Oremus argues that we are in the golden age of maps. Click through for some mapy goodness. Obviously, I agree since I was saying something similar just yesterday.
One thing he touches on that is worth pointing out is how much more easily accessible government data is with the mass acceptance of the Internet. Whereas before it would be a tough slough through reams of paper data, now you can download everything and create a program to tear through gigabytes of information for free and process it any way you’d like to present it. Given, this is still a lot of effort, but there are a lot of people willing to go through that effort. And all you have to do is spend a little time on the Internet to see that hard work put to good use.