Saturday, November 19, 2016

OT: Fan fiiction Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes

If you've seen Doctor Strange chances are you've become a fan of British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who stars as Doctor Stephen Strange.

Benedict Cumberbatch is 40 years old, but he's only been a "star" in the US for the last 7 years, I think, ever since he began appearing in Sherlock, in 2010 - Sherlock Holmes in a modern day setting.

Just a few years ago he guest-starred as Kahn in Star Trek Into Darkness, and I'm sure that got him a few fans as well.

There's plenty of Benedict Cumberbatch fanfiction out there (or fan fiction as I call!), and here's one that I think is particularly good:

It's called The TeleChronomicon Files: Where it is Always 1895. and is an ongoing feature in the AStudyinBenedictCumberbatch blog.

There's lots of info about Benedict Cumberbatch on the web - his roles in Star Trek, Doctor Strange, Sherlock Holmes, as Stephen Hawking, etc., but A Study in Benedict Cumberbatch consolidates it all in one place.



Arrogance on display

I'm watching Florida State vs Syracuse Football.

Florida State is winning 14 0 in the first quarter.

So number 44 for Florida States makes a tackle. He immediately stands up, runs a few feet away from the rest of the crowd, then folds his arms and stands there posing for several seconds, as if to say, "Look at me! Look at me!"

I'd just like to slap the guy and say, hey, there's three quarters left in this game. Why don't you just go high five your teammates and go back to the sideline instead of poncing around like you're the only football player who has ever made a tackle?

He's just emulating the pros, of course.

Why are people not tuning in to football like they used to?  Maybe because people are tired of seeing all this posing and poor sportsmanship.

(Actually, I doubt it. Considering how half the country behaves, they probably think these idiots strutting around, 'stylin', etc. are cool. Or, "the bomb," to use what I think is the current slang expression.  Or at least, I think 10 years ago that was the equivalent of being "cool." God knows what teens say today.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Counseling for college students?

According to Sean Hannity today, colleges across the country are offering students counseling because Trump was elected - which includes therapy dogs and aroma therapy.

My God.

Then there's school curriculums that are apparently going to start teaching that a racist homophobe was elected to the presidency...

The US is out of control.

And it's only people like Rush and Hannity who can say these things.

Anyone in a school system who complains about what's going on on their Facebook page will be fired....

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

So much for polling data

I was nervous about Donald Trump. Frankly, even though Hilary was much the worst option, I thought she would win in a landslide, voted in by people who wanted to see the first woman president.

But while she got most of the black vote and probably most of the Latino vote and apparently most of the young vote, she lost to Donald Trump.

Now it's up to Trump to make sure that he gets the country on the right track, and to do that he's got to better the lives of our minority communities.  According to Rush Limbaugh (but not independently checked by me), blacks under Obama have done no better, economically, than before he got into office.

But really, the whole United States needs a sea change. It will be interesting to see just how many people in our country actually voted.  Over half of them? Less than half?

And the burning question on my mind - will he repeal Obamacare? And if so where are people going to go for their insurance?

I of course would like Obamacare to be repealed, but it's already driven a few healthcare providers out of business....so what can be done?

Time will tell.

It will be an interesting four years.

Friday, October 14, 2016

Trump's "Sexual Misconduct" - Interesting Timing

All these women accusing Donald Trump of sexual misconduct...where were they when he was running for the Republican nomination?

Where were they when he received the Republican nomination?

Instead, they wait until now? Two months before the election?

Of course the leaked tape doesn't do Trump any good - but there are unfortunately a lot of guys - young guys - who talk just like Trump does.

Ya gotta wonder if this was all a plot from the get go - by Trump! If these women's accusations are true...he must have known they'd come out, surely..?

Unless he wants to lose to Hilary?

Meantime, all the headlines of the "mainstream media" are certainly blatantly anti-trump. There was one which shows him standing behind her, attempting to "dominate" her. Well...no - the photographer maneuvered into that position because that's the shot he wanted to take!

The Manipulation of the Public...by Google

There are trends in everything.

The current trend, in websites, is to make everything on one page. For that reason, people with PCs with 25-inch screens have to scroll, and scroll, and scroll to find what they want - unless they elect to leave all together which is what I usually do.

The website developers do this because Millennials and youngers aren't using computers any more - in their personal lives, mark you. They look up everything on their smart phones.

So everything developers are doing - everything Google is doing - is now geared toward people using smartphones rather than computers.

So everything has to be on one page, and as the smart phone user scrolls up they get to see these pages perfectly sized.

Google has changed its algorithm for people doing search for local businesses. Used to be there'd be a 7-line Google snack pack - the top-10 seven businesses in an area would show up with websites and phone numbers before the rest of the search results would.

I actually thought that was paid advertisement, but it's actually Google ranking the sites and doing that themselves.

Well, they used to do 7 but now they only do 3, because that's all that fits nicely on someone's smart phone.

I really regret this trend of people moving away from computers - and computers themselves being dumbed down so much.

The next generation of people on this planet will have no idea of how powerful computers used to be and what could be done with them. Or how big the screens were!

I envision, maybe 20 years from now, some visionary peering at a tiny smart phone screen will have a light bulb pop up... "Hey, instead of ruining my eyes looking at this screen, I think I'l invent a big screen for my house...and maybe a tower or perhaps an all-in-one with a DVD player, and then I'll start inventing really cool stuff Ican do with it...and I'll call it a computer.."

Monday, October 10, 2016

White man tells white neighbor to learn manners...does this make the Washington Post?

Just saw on the front page of my news aggregate, from the Washington Post, this article:
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/%E2%80%98learn-your-manners%E2%80%99-a-white-man-wrote-to-his-black-neighbor-this-was-the-response/ar-BBxewRt?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

‘Learn your manners,’ a white man wrote to his black neighbor. This was the response.

was the headline.

My question is, why does this little dispute between neighbors deserve to be mentioned in a newspaper at all?

Happens every day between white neighbors, and black neighbors, and would never be mentioned.

Might even happen with black neighbors complaining about inconsiderate white neighbors.

But because it's a white guy complaining about the noise of a black man (who lives one floor above him) all of a sudden it was a racist attack? And deserves an article in a newspaper?

It's not like the downstairs neighbor came upstairs with a gun and threatened the black neighbor with a gun - that would obviously have been news.

(And you can find stories like that every day, sadly, where white one neighbor shoots another white neighbor for mowing the lawn in the middle of the day, and so on).

But the guy leaves a note, complaining about the noise, and threatens to call the cops if it happens again? This also happens all the time and is not news.

Presumably the black guy in question called a reporter of the Washington Post because he wanted this awful example of racism known...  my question when I read it initially was - the guy lives one floor below you - does he know your name or what color you are? Or just that you were "stomping around" at 1:30 in the morning?

Why assume he knew anything about you except that you lived directly above him?

Sunday, October 9, 2016

Examples of white privilege

I didn't really believe in "white privilege" until today.

Ben and Jerry's icecream is honoring the Black Lives Matter movement with Empower Mint icecream. (And no I don't agree with the Black Lives Matter movement. If you want to convince police you don't deserve to be shot on sight, don't chant "Kill all police" and "police are pigs" and act like the violent thugs they think you are!)

There's lots of comments on this thread, and one of them stated the blacks were raping white women all the time, and the media pays no attention to it.

Someone responded about all the white males who are arrested for rape and never serve a day in prison. Whereas if it was a black male - you know they would!

Here's the examples (and a few judges who need to be removed from office):

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/alabama-man-no-prison-time-raping-teenager

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/30/robert-richards-rape_n_5060386.html

http://www.inquisitr.com/946459/rape-away-the-gay-pastor-brent-girouex-gets-sentence-reduced/

http://www.inquisitr.com/925433/rape-suicide-of-student-14-lands-teacher-in-jail-for-just-30-days/

http://bossip.com/879626/white-rich-privilege-16-year-old-teen-gets-no-prison-time-after-killing-four-people-in-drunk-driving-crash/ (This is the Ethan Couch case - drunk driving rather than rape, but the principle is the same.)

The above are just a few examples. Are all these examples of "white privilege" or examples of judges not taking rape seriously?

To not sentence someone to jail because it will "ruin his life" or because he will not "fare well in prison."  Meantime the female victim's life is ruined.

Something very wrong here...

Saturday, October 8, 2016

He doesn't recognize the irony in what he's saying...

I was listening to Rush a couple of days ago, and he was commenting on how the media has set out to "destroy" Donald Trump like they set out to destroy every Republican candidate...

And that's probably true... but there's always another side to the story..

Hasn't Rush and Sean Hannity and other Republican media set out to destroy Hilary and Obama?

Don't complain about what the media does to one candidate when *you* do it to the other.

Having said that, it's true that the mainstream media doesn't seem to post negative-headlined articles about Hilary Clinton, but they certainly do it about Trump all the time.

Sunday, March 6, 2016

Bowl Sinister Blog

Bowling is perhaps the most popular sport in the United States (and probably the world) in the numbers of people who participate in it.  (Sadly, the number of people who watch it on TV isn't that high.)

I've started a new blog, Bowl Sinister: The Adventures of a Left-Handed Bowler, which documents an average woman's bowler journey through the sport.

http://bowlsinister.blogspot.com/