This one made me chuckle far too much.


Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Today's writing assignment:

What’s your favorite picture? Is it a photo, piece of artwork in a gallery, or even something you or your child did at school. Choose your favourite image and describe what it is, and why it’s important to you.

That's a tricky one.  Not because I have so many things to choose from but just the opposite.  I don't have a lot of artwork that's mine, and I haven't spent a lot of time in museums or familiarized myself with art.  And while I've taken a lot of photos, none really jump out as being exceptional.  Maybe if I printed one now and then.

While I was in college, decorating the basement room in my parents' house, I discovered Barewalls.  They (and I'm sure dozens of other sites) sell cheap reproductions of artwork.  So what I would do is purchase some prints from them and then frame them myself and hang them on the wall.

Somehow getting a $10 print and putting it into a $15 frame from Target, without a mat, then randomly hanging them evenly spaced on every wall didn't have quite the classing-up effect I had expected.

Anyway, here are some of the prints I ordered:

First we start with my favorite M.C.: Escher.

The Waterfall - this one is a twist on his more familiar drawing of an unending staircase.  Here, at least, it doesn't look like there's anything particularly non-Euclidian about it.  Not to me, anyway.  It's just obviously not possible.

I had this one in the bathroom which was really funny for reasons that I've forgotten.



Spheres - M. C. Escher did a lot of drawings like this where he played with reflection and different refractions on various objects.  I think this is the only one, though, that includes a reflection of him drawing the picture.  Thought it was pretty neat.



Cycle - this one always creeped out my sister.  It basically shows some imp-like creatures running down stairs to become the structure of the building itself.  Just another in his tesselation drawings.


And, of course, what college-age right-wing nutjob's bedroom/office/living room would be complete without some patriotic art?


The Spirit of '76 - I'm not entirely sure why.  I assumed at the time that since it was popular that it would look good in my room.  Same with...

The Declaration of Independence.

I can at least console myself with the knowledge that I didn't have some huge eagle painting with red, white, and blue talons, crying a tear made of children's prayers, etc.

I wanted some Salvador Dali paintings but, frankly, a lot of his stuff is just too spooky to keep in the bedroom.  I'd be afraid the walls would start melting or something...

There is one painting I have kept and keep hanging in my office as we've moved around since then:



The Prayer at Valley Forge.  I splurged on this one and wasn't disappointed.  It's beautiful and looks great on the wall.  So this would probably have to be my favorite of them (gradually getting back to the original point of what was supposed to be a writing exercise).

Yes, I know.  He was a deist.  Or theist.  Or whatever.  And, yes, while it is documented that he regularly prayed throughout the war and especially at Valley Forge, he never mentions Jesus once but it's all about some unnamed God or Providence.

But still.  That the future first President and the man that shaped the destiny of the world, really, would kneel down to God and ask for help is still a powerful picture.  Nice details all through it too, especially on his uniform and on the horse.

The plate at the bottom contains a quote from his military retirement announcement in 1783:

"I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last solemn act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of the Almighty God and those who have the superintendence of them into His Holy keeping."

So there.

And I'm totally vindicated!  Thank you, thank you.  All who mocked my Zombie Harry Potter theory may apologize whenever they're ready.

With the final Harry Potter book due out in around 15 hours, I thought I should take a moment and get a few pet theories on the record before everyone knows what happens.  I have not read any spoilers nor any electronic copies of the book.  So if any of these happen to be true (which, deep down, I kind of doubt) then I'm sorry if this ruins it for you.  Maybe best you just stop reading now if speculations upset you.

My first one just struck me this morning.  I've always had a problem with the prophecy.  J. K. Rowling (JKR from here on to save from retyping a complexly punctuated name) has said that she worded that very carefully.  And yet to take it on its face value, it's a very stupid prophecy.  And, worse yet, absurdly false.  To recap:

Neither can live while the other survives.

Which Dumbledore claims to mean that, in the end, one of them must kill the other.  And this is the accepted explanation.

But, um, if I may meekly raise my hand on that.  They're both already alive and surviving.  So how can that be true?

So, logically this must mean one of two things: either it's a poorly-crafted prophecy (which seems unlike JKR) or... wait for it... Harry's a zombie.

Yes, I think Harry Potter might be a zombie.  Or an Inferi, anyway (or whatever the singular of Inferi is - I'm reluctant to go look it up right now with spoilers flying about.  Inferus?  Something?)

Another clue that she's given is that it's very important to know how Dumbledore got the invisibility cloak from Harry's father.  An obvious answer would be that he went and got it from their house.  And it's likely that, after the attack, he and the rest of the Order went to their house.  If nothing else they would have wanted to take care of Harry.  The books say that Hagrid went to get him but I can't imagine no one else would have gone.

Anyway, so we know that Dumbledore knew the prophecy.  Voldemort knew it to and so he tried to kill Harry, etc.  Well what if he succeeded?  What if his attack killed them both?  Dumbledore would have known that Voldemort could come back to life so in order to prevent that, he turned Harry into a zombie.

It's interesting that she used "lives" and "survives".  They are not entirely the same meaning, after all.  Perhaps by becoming a zombie he "survived" enough to prevent Voldemort from leaving his undead state and fully "living" again.  That could be the source of all of Dumbledore's guilt that we see at the end of books 5 and 6 (when drinking the cup). 

So now they're both undead wizards - liches would be more accurate than zombies, I suppose - both being animated by dark magic.  Only once one of them is "dispelled" (Voldemort's process being much more complicated with Horcruxes and such) can the other one live.  Though it might end up with Harry dying rather than being a lich.

Of course this begs the question: why would Dumbledore use dark magic?  Maybe because...

Dumbledore is evil.

Voldemort talked often about having an infiltrator in Hogwarts.  What if it wasn't Snape after all but Dumbledore?  What if that is why Snape, acting in good conscience, killed him?  I suppose it could be more complicated like Dumbledore was possessed or something.  But it would explain a number of things if that turned out to be true.


No, I don't really believe either of these.  Unless they turn out to be true.  In which case it was I, yes I alone that had the courage to put forth these theories despite great mockery.

From the director/producer of such movies as The Island, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon.

From the director of Bad Boys and Bad Boys II.

From the writers of Mission Impossible III, The Island, Catwoman, The Core, and Jackie Chan Adventures.

From the stars of such movies as... well, actually, I didn't find a whole lot there.  Pretty sad, actually.

So... yeah.  Looks good.

Pope Says Catholicism Only True Church

Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document that says Orthodox churches are defective and that other Christian denominations are not true churches. The document, released Tuesday, restates key sections of a 2000 document that set off a firestorm of criticism among Protestant and other Christian denominations. It said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of salvation." In the new document and an accompanying commentary it says "Christ 'established here on earth' only one church." It says the other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they do not have the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles.

In other articles it's said that, basically, while the Protestant churches can contribute to a person's salvation inasmuch as God can use it (which you can actually say about anything), the only path to salvation lies through the Catholic church.

This is a shame and feels like a step backwards away from a church unity I was hoping to see some day.  C. S. Lewis has talked about this a lot and about the differences between "high church" and "low church" and how really both are necessary in some degrees.  I'm not sure, also, exactly where the apostolic succession rule is introduced.  Could be in the Apocrypha, I guess.

Assignment: Compare and contrast with "White and Nerdy".

• I prefer to think of it more as "White and Geeky", actually.
• I don't mow the front lawn; we have a service for that. Guess that's even nerdier.
• Don't have any particular desire to roll with gangsters.
• Went to Georgia Tech, no MIT here.
• I have some skills at Dungeons & Dragons, no doubt there.
• M.C. Escher is also my favorite M.C.
• I would much prefer an Earl Grey tea to malt liquor, for sure.
• I've never purchased custom rims, so they are quite stationary.
• I have like two action figures, neither of which are cherry. Though they are of video game characters.
• I do have books by Stephen Hawking in my library. Great reads.
• My MySpace page is very not pimped out, nor is there much outcry for my top eight spaces (I have more than 8 top spaces, for one).
• I could calculate pi to 1000 places but only have about 10 or so memorized.
• No grills or braces here.
• I do enjoy some mayonnaise from time to time, but not on everything.
• Can't stand Minesweeper.
• I have used many killer apps, but by no means all of them.
• I can program in Pascal but it's been a long time and being "number one" at Pascal is like being "number one" at using a rotary phone.
• I do actually have a soldering iron (not a soldering gun). Somewhere. Don't have much call for soldering.
• Favorite theme song would probably be Firefly, not Happy Days.
• Don't play ping pong much; I doubt I'd be very good at it.
• I do usually win any trivia game played. So long as it's not sports.
• I am very fluent in JavaScript (unfortunately) but only know like 3 words in Klingon.
• No Segway, though I would love to have one.
• Can't stand comic books, not even X-Men.
• Usually carry pens in a notebook or a pants pocket, and they don't require much protection.
• I do have an ergonomic keyboard but I don't NEED it. I could be metal and use a non-ergonomic keyboard. I just don't want to.
• I do purchase writable media online. Usually the cheapest that's not Sony.
• I do have an account with Wikipedia and do edit from time to time.
• I have not memorized Holy Grail; don't get into Monty Python much. I could recite some lines but I doubt it would result in any ROTFLOLage.
• My business does primarily focus on working with websites and do provide assistance in HTML code to friends from time to time.
• I have not made a homepage for a dog, though I have made individual pages and uploaded pictures of dogs in the past.
• No fanny packs. And I couldn't care less about The Gap.
• Uninterested in bubble wrap. I don't get the fascination. Plus I have a wife for that sort of thing.
• Definitely whiter than sour cream; no argument there.
• Not in A/V club or glee club, or chess team. Though if our school had had those I probably would have been in A/V and chess.
• Picard is better. Problem solved.
• Only been to the Renaissance Fair three times. And YES I did dress up once, but it's not like EVERY weekend. Shut up! The turkey legs are good.
• My underwear is very easily distinguished from my wife's and does not require labeling.
• I do enjoy bowling in limited amounts, though I am very bad at it, but not with gangsters, particularly.
• And YES I did notice that the equation behind him in the video (Schrödinger's hydrogen wave function equation) was wrong since it had Planck's constant in it instead of Dirac's constant. WHAT OF IT?

Sprint hangs up on "excessive" complainers

Sprint Nextel Corp, which recently launched an advertising campaign to attract new customers, is disconnecting more than 1,000 subscribers for calling its customer service lines too often and making what the company called unreasonable requests.

The No. 3 U.S. wireless provider with 53 million customers said on Monday it started sending service termination letters on June 25. Sprint said the cancellations involved 1,000 to 1,200 customers who had called the company about 40,000 times a month in total.

"In some cases they were calling customer care hundreds of times a month for a period of six to 12 months on the same issues even after we felt those issues had been resolved," she said.

Singleton, noting that mass cancellation letters were not routine, said this call volume was 40 to 50 times more than average customer monthly calls. She would not say how often customers can call before being deemed too demanding.

The company also declined to say what percentage of monthly service calls the 40,000 figure represented.

Singleton said some of the cancellations involved customers who repeatedly asked for information about other people's accounts.

As someone who has worked in customer service, I can only say one thing.  Bravo.  Finally a company with the guts to stand up to people whose sole mission in life appears to be irritating customer support.  They didn't say what percentage the 40,000 calls represents, but they did say that it was 40 to 50 times the average user. That means that those 1,000 on average are calling about 40 times a month (that's more than once a day), which means the average user probably calls about once a month.  Which means those 40,000 (out of apparently an average of 53 million calls a month) would be 0.075%, as opposed 1000 normal users at 0.0019%.

I could easily see that small minority monopolizing so much of their time and considering they waived any remaining balances on those users' accounts and gave them 30 days to find another carrier, it's a more than generous situation.  I'm sure they'll get some PR backlash from the decision (and their stock has already taken a small hit from it) but I'm behind it.

For the next week or so I'll be doing most of my blogging here: http://blog.pbcy.org So if you just can't live without me for a week go there to see what's going on.