Every so often I need a utility to do search and replace in multiple files and I go looking for something. Some didn’t work, some were needless complicated, some choked on the 5,000 files I threw at them. InfoRapid was easy, fast, and free. Good stuff.
MELISSA: Do you mind if I watch my soap opera?
ME: Nope.
MELISSA: Go up a channel.
ME: Is it that one?
MELISSA: No. CBS.
ME: Is this your show?
MELISSA: That’s it.
ME: Hey, look. They’re having a baby on the soap opera.
MELISSA: Yeh, but she’ll deliver her baby in two minutes. Bitch.
What’s Wrong With The Hunger Games Is What No One Noticed:
The traditional progressive complaint about fairy tales like Cinderella is that they supposedly teach girls to want to be princesses and want to live happily ever after. But is that so bad? The real problem with fairy tales is that the protagonist never actually does anything to become a princess. Forget about gerrymandering or slaying a dragon or poisoning her rivals: does she even get a pretty dress, go to the ball and seduce the prince? Those may be anti-feminist actions, but at least they are actions. No. She is given two dresses, carried to the ball, and the Prince comes and finds her. Twice. Her only direct and volitional action is to leave the ball at midnight, and even that isn’t so much a choice as because of a threat. (1) The clear problem with this isn’t that girls will want to hold out for a Prince, but that it might foster the illusion their value is so innately high that even without pretty clothes or a sense of agency a Prince will come find them. Sleeping Beauty and Snow White are worse: they don’t even have to bother to stay alive to get their Prince.
The Hunger Games has this same feminist problem. Other than the initial volunteering to replace her younger sister, Katniss never makes any decisions of her own, never acts with consequence– but her life is constructed to appear that she makes important decisions. She has free will, of course, like any five year old with terrible parents, but at every turn is prevented from acting on the world. She is protected by men– enemies and allies alike; directed by others, blessed with lucky accidents and when things get impossible there are packages from the sky. In philosophical terms, she is continuously robbed of agency. She is deus ex machinaed all the way to the end.
The Hunger Games Is A Sexist Fairy Tale. Sorry.:
But what makes me reach for the now empty bottle is how women have convinced themselves and each other that this is a pro-feminist story. Do you not see what is happening? You are being lied to, by yourselves.
When I say Katniss was continuously robbed of agency, that’s a simple fact. Let’s examine the commonly cited counterexample that she killed two people by dropping a hornet’s nest on them. Didn’t that require her to plan and act, to know the consequences? Isn’t that agency?
Chekov famously said “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there” but the flip of that is that if you don’t put a pistol on the wall in the first act, you can’t suddenly have the main character find a pistol on the wall. Unless you’re writing a fairy tale.
So when Katniss is desperate, trapped in a tree, and has no recourse– and suddenly someone points out that there is this immensely lethal object right next to her, maybe it’s a hornet’s nest and maybe it’s a thermal detonator– so the story then has to take a three minute pause so an omniscient narrator can explain to the audience what it is because we had no knowledge of this before, “oh, it’s magic bees,” then there are only two possibilities: 1. Deus ex machina. 2. It’s a terribly written story. I favor 1, but I’m open to 2. Oh, and it kills everyone but Peeta, that’s lucky.
- In Windows 7 and Vista, programs under
All Programsare listed alphabetically by default. To change this setting, right-click theStartbutton, then clickProperties, and thenCustomize.... Check or uncheckSort All Programs menu by name.- In Windows XP, right-click any item on the menu, and then select
Sort by Name.
Shortly after baby Charlie was born he was transferred the the NICU at another hospital because his bloodwork showed signs of an infection. To help him bond with Melissa while she was recovering the hospital, they had her sleep with a small blanker under her robe. Then I took that blanket to the NICU so he could sleep with it and get used to her scent.
Likewise, one of the things they suggested was to bring some of the baby’s blankets and clothes home ahead of the baby to let the dogs get used to his scent.
That seemed like a good idea. Our older dog Shorty has seen two babies come home, so no problem there. Our new dog (a bassador named Trixie) is only about a year old, has a lot of puppy in her, and doesn’t know about babies.
Also, Trixie went wild last night the first time Melissa pumped milk. Apparently she’s young enough to remember what breast milk smells like.
A few hours after Charlie was delivered, the doctors got his blood tests back and found high white cell counts and high bands. They decided to move him to East Tennessee Children’s Hospital to treat him for an infection. He’s OK. It was just a precaution.
Last night Children’s took a blood sample for culture. Just before lunch today we got good news about the infection. The culture came back negative for any infection. His white cell count and bands are also way down.
If his cultures come back negative for two more days they’ll stop antibiotics and monitor him for another day or two, then release him. He may be home by Sunday or Monday. I fed him today and he looked great.
Things didn’t go exactly according to the original plan, but sometimes babies have their own plans. Everything’s OK and everyone’s healthy, so all’s well.
I’m home to get a few things and pick up Katie and Natalie when they get home from school. I’m taking them to see Charlie at Children’s and then to see Melissa at Parkwest. She may be coming home tomorrow.
Apologies if I haven’t responded to your texts or voicemails. It’s been a busy couple of days.
Melissa’s water broke at 2:00 am. Natural delivery didn’t work, so she had a c-section around 3:30 pm. I can only access the hospital WiFi from the cafeteria, so I’m not blogging much. Pics later.
My friend Jason Graf posted this photo on Facebook, wondering what kind of animal made this nest. I didn’t know, so I shared it on my wall, hoping someone would know.
One of his relatives later identified it as a witch’s broom, which isn’t a nest per se, but a disease.
From Wikipedia:
A Witch’s broom is a disease or deformity in a woody plant, typically a tree, where the natural structure of the plant is changed. A dense mass of shoots grows from a single point, with the resulting structure resembling a broom or a bird’s nest.
One example of this would be cytokinin, a phytohormone, interfering with an auxin-regulated bud. Usually auxin would keep the secondary, tertiary, and so on apexes from growing too much, but cytokinin releases them from this control, causing these apexes to grow into witch’s brooms.
Witch’s broom growths last for many years and can be caused by many different types of organisms, such as fungi, oomycetes, insects, mistletoe, dwarf mistletoes, mites, nematodes, phytoplasmas and viruses.[1] Human activity is sometimes behind the introduction of these organisms; for example when a person prunes a tree improperly, leaving the tree susceptible to disease.
Witch’s brooms occasionally result in desirable changes. Some cultivars of trees, such as Picea orientalis ‘Tom Thumb Gold’, were discovered as witch’s brooms. If twigs of witches’ brooms are grafted onto normal rootstocks, freak trees result, showing that the attacking organism has changed the inherited growth pattern of the twigs.[1]
Witch’s brooms are used by various animals for nesting including the northern flying squirrel.[2]
Word of the Day – Jump Hour Watch
Obama Insists Inflating Tires Better Than Oil Drilling
How’s that tire inflation energy policy working out?
Looking for a Game of Thrones blog with good Monday morning analysis and insights. Something to help me see things I might have missed or clear up any mysteries.
Speaking of which, here’s what’s got the Jones house perplexed. In the season premiere old dude at Stannis’s meeting slips a Mickey in his own glass of wine. Then he awkwardly proposes a toast, sips some wine, starts sputtering blood, and dies. The sorceress takes the wine from him as he falls, drinks it, and is Jim dandy.
What was up with all that?
By my co-worker Stephen Haywood:
The primary benefit of a security assessment is the overall reduction of risk, which is accomplished by identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities, implementing or improving controls to match threat agents and attack vectors, and reducing the impact of an incident by improving incident response procedures. These benefits are difficult to measure at best, while the cost of a security assessment is glaringly obvious. Combine these two issues, and it is easy to see why companies have trouble justifying the cost of a security assessment.
Via Cracked.
The NY Tmes breaks its Trayvon Martin silence long enough to report at one of their blogs that an unnamed NBC producer has been fired as a result of the doctored Zimmerman “He looks black” report.
Before NBC’s alteration on TV, MSNBC did the exact same thing in print. When will MSNBC fire someone?
UPDATE: A reader named Jim notes this NBC Miami piece credited to Jeff Burnside that may have been the source of the MSNBC piece. It’s substantially the same, with minor editing differences. Though it has the same March 21st date as the MSNBC piece there are comments from March 20th.
In case it changes, here’s a Google cache of the NBC Miami piece, and here’s a screenshot:
Oddly, the hyperlink in that story goes to this April 2nd NBC Miami story about the Martin/Zimmerman shooting. That means the piece has been edited since March 21st.
And another update from Jim:
I just realized the following story was posted on 3/19/2012- which means it was the original story.
Burnside, Hernandez and Colby are the authors. Burnside and Hernandez apparently work for NBC Miami but Colby apparently does not. Since AP is listed on the article, Colby may have been acting as a stringer. Burnside alone wrote the second article using the altered quote.
I’m sorry I didn’t notice that at first. Nonetheless, it does seem to disprove NBC’s explanation the whole thing was a mistake. The important thing is we actually have names: Hernandez and Burnside. If NBC fired a producer for this, they’re gonna have to fire these two reporters, as well.
Screenshot here in case it gets edited. LATER: It’s a good thing I got the screenshot. They’ve completely removed the 911 conversation.
Sayuncle: Looks like the Chiappa Rhino is starring in Total Recall.
When this thing came out in 2010 the first thing I said was “Coming soon to an action movie near you, the Chiappa Rhino Revolver.” That sort of weapon is bound to set a propmaster’s heart to pitter-patter.
I had an electrician out to get an estimate on some work. Mentioned that some of the outlets on the kitchen counter had suddenly stopped working. He checks something, says to try them, and they work. What gives?
Turns out they were GFCI (ground fault circuit interrupt) outlets and I didn’t realize it. They didn’t have the little Test/Reset buttons like I would expect to see on a GFCI outlet. Instead, those buttons were on the AC outlets on the opposite side of the sink, and these outlets were on the same circuit.
I had no idea GFCIs were ever wired that way. Live and learn.
More here. Hat tip to Ace of Spades.
Previously
This is coming up in the vegetable garden from last year.
Visa removes them from registry of service providers.
The worst thing I’ve been able to determine from the details so far, is that it seems Global Payments was storing Track Data – information swiped from the magnetic stripe on the back of the card. The PCI DSS explicitly forbids storing track data (requirement 3.2.1), and PCI considers the storage of sensitive data to be one of the most serious PCI violations. CardSystems was effectively shut down for a lesser violation, though their breach was much larger.
A few weeks ago I was searching for ideas for a timelapse video project I could do with the kids. Browsing YouTube we found this video of a McDonalds hamburger that looks unchanged after six months of sitting on a kitchen counter.
Pretty gross. Must be all the chemicals they put in it, right? Turns out someone else has an unrefrigerated 14 year old McDonald’s hamburger that looks pretty much like a brand new McDonalds burger.
J. Kenji López-Alt decided to investigate Mythbusters-style to see what would happen when he did the same thing to regular hamburger meat: The Burger Lab: Revisiting the Myth of The 12-Year Old McDonald’s Burger That Just Won’t Rot (Testing Results!).
Kenji is the kitchen science guy who came up with beer cooler sous vide. His skillet pizza technique looks tempting.
Tom Maguire at JustOneMinute has been on top of the Martin/Zimmerman story.
Either the NY Times needs to tear out the front page or they have just delivered an epic fail. In either case, they have delivered a tilt to the scales of justice.
In a long attempt to detail the night of the Trayvon Martin killing they include this description of the fatal scuffle:
However it started, witnesses described to the 911 dispatcher what resulted: the neighborhood watch coordinator, 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds, and the visitor, 6-foot-1 and 150, wrestling on the ground.
per the City of Sanford website, Zimmerman nade those 46 calls from January 2004 to the present, not January 2011.
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