Monday, December 24, 2007

Rootin' for a U.S.S. Robert Anson Heinlein

For those of you who don't know who Robert Heinlein is, go ahead and walk off and read Starship Troopers. No, don't watch the movie, damnit(although it did have it's pluses), the book. It's pretty short, you should get it done in no time. If you want to read something bigger I can also recommend Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

You back? Good. As far as Sci-fi authors go, Heinlein was one of the best. Certainly, he almost singlehandedly popularized the idea of "Power Armor" in the future military, and we're definately heading in that direction. He was also a Navy vet and, like myself, somewhere between a socialist and arch-conservative.

The Navy is in the process of ordering a new series of destroyers that are pushing the limits on current technology. Railguns and direct energy weapons are being seriously commented as future upgrades/included components for later ships of the class. Truly, it is the surface combatant of the future. And who better than Heinlein for a name of one of these fine vessels? The man who described HUDs, high speed computers, and a drift towards overwhelming quality of troops instead of quanity in the '50s deserves a badass ship named after him. So far the only ship named after him anywhere was in Star Trek and those communist pussies are undeserving of being even remotely associated with his name. Makes me want to throw chunks of the Moon down at Starfleet Headquarters in SF.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Some of that Old Time religion

A man strangled his daughter to death in Canada recently, because she was into dancing and not into wearing the Hijab. Sounds like the logical resolution to a family dispute.

I wonder what the thought process is for someone who travels from one craphole of a country to a civilized one, and then assumes he can rigorously apply his dark-ages beliefs in the country he as emigrated to. For that matter, it must have crossed his mind at some point that his kids were going to be infected by The Infidels(tm), so why the Hell didn't he pack up and go home? Not that killing your daughter would be just as acceptable to me if it happened in Derka Derkastan, just trying to follow the logic train. Hopefully they withhold bail on the turd(and his turdling of a son for obstruction of justice).

On a somewhat more petty note, I recently patched CoD4...and the patch nuked the program, and I appear to be far from the only one to have that problem, if the Infinity Ward forums are anything to go by. At least they didn't do what the EVE Online guys did, and overwrite Boot.ini.