Monthly Archives: February 2007

60th Anniversary of 228 Incident

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Today is the 60th anniversary of The 228 Incident in which protests by native Taiwanese on this date in 1947 led to the wholesale execution of Taiwanese leaders by Chiang Kai-shek’s forces who occupied Taiwan after Japan’s defeat in World War II.

According to TaiwanDC.Org, in addition to those outright killed,

Thousands of others were arrested and imprisoned in the “White Terror” campaign which took place in the following decades. Many of these remained imprisoned until the early 1980s. Until the beginning of the 1990s, the events of 1947 were a taboo subject on the island. The Kuomintang did not want to be reminded of their dark past, and the Taiwanese did not dare to speak out for fear of retribution by the KMT’s secret police

Wikipedia also has a long entry about the incident and its aftermath.

DLO Shipping HomeDock Deluxe for the iPod

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DigitalTrends.Com reports that DLO is finally shipping its HomeDock Deluxe dock for the iPod. The HomeDock Deluxe features nice-looking menus and screens on your television that make it easy to navigate and play movies and music stored on your iPod.

I’ve got the first HomeDock that DLO came out with a couple years ago and absolutely love it, but it lacks the onscreen menu features. Take an 80gb video iPod and add the HomeDock Deluxe and you’ve got a very nice multimedia center.

Harlan Ellison Filing a Lawsuit — Must Be Wednesday

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Sci-fi genius and all-around asshole Harlan Ellison has filed a lawsuit against Fantagraphics for, among other things, daring to publish a book that on its cover correctly claims that the book itself contains an interview with Ellison.

Ellison also is absurdly suing Fantagraphics for libel based on a couple anecdotes mentioned in a Fantagraphics book about Ellison’s behavior during the Michael Fleisher trial. The absurdity is that the Fleisher trial itself was a frivolous libel lawsuit brought against Ellison!

Oy.

NYT Sunday Book Review of The Physics of the Buffyverse

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In this past weekend’s NYT Sunday Book Review, J.D. Biersdorfer reviewed Jennifer Ouellette’s The Physics of the Buffyverse.

Biersdorfer’s review is generally positive,

The book does not delve too deeply, but biology, electricity, cryogenics, string theory, temporal anomalies, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Schrödinger’s cat and thermodynamics are all touched on in the context of “Buffy” and “Angel” plot points. Examples are often reinforced with descriptions of recent scientific experiments and developments.

Hmm…I wonder if Ouellette covers the likelihood of everyone suddenly bursting out in song together.

Was “Empire Strikes Back” The Worst Star Wars Film?

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I have no idea if George Lucas really said that “The Empire Strikes Back” was the worst Star Wars film. If he really believes that, clearly he hasn’t seen the last three films (which wouldn’t be surprising since they border on unwatchable).

What continues to fascinate me is how many people believe that Darth Vader says “Luke, I’m your father” in “Empire.” Of course, Vader never utters that line anywhere in the movie. Google Luke, I’m your father, however, and the line appears to be approaching Humphrey Bogart’s non-existent “Play it again, Sam” line as the most misquoted movie line.

The thing is, that “Play it again, Sam” is a clever line but “Casablanca” is filled with wonderful dialogue. “Luke, I’m your father” is easily the most memorable line from any Star Wars film other than “Use the force”, and, of course, neither Lucas nor anyone else associated with the films could actually be bothered to write such a memorable line. Its sort of a foreshadowing of the suckiness that is Episodes 1-3.

Personally, I’ve always thought “Empire” was the best of the three Star Wars films.

Scientific Proof that Meetings Make People Dumb

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MSNBC reports on a fascinating study that, as the headline writer puts it, confirms that “meetings make us dumber.”

The study showed participants a soft drink brand and asked them to brainstorm for alternative brands. What they found was the that people asked to perform the task by themselves performed significantly better than people who were put into groups of three to tackle the task.

According to MSNBC,

“When a group gets together, they can miss out on good options,” study team member H. Shanker Krishnan told LiveScience. This could mean ordering from a pizza place advertised on television even if there’s a better option, or making a poor decision in the boardroom. “Whether it’s with family or a group of co-workers, we could very quickly fixate on things and all come up with the same options.”

. . .

The researchers speculate that when a group of people receives information, the inclination is to discuss it. The more times one option is said aloud, the harder it is for individuals to recall other options, explained Krishnan, associate professor of marketing at Indiana University.

Ah, yes . . . the joys of groupthink.

Source:

Meetings makes us dumber, study shows. Abigail Leonard, MSNBC.Com, February 22, 2007.

Sync Video to iPod Without iTunes

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After Apple upgraded the firmware of the video iPod to display video at up to 640×480, I’ve been using it to view all of my video files and DVDs. There’s just one problem — iTunes sucks, especially after you get to the point where you have tens of thousands of music and video files.

I use MediaMonkey to sync audio files, but that application doesn’t handle video files. Currently I’m using Floola to copy MP4 files from my computer to the iPod so I can watch them on my TV.

Floola doesn’t have much of a user interface — you simply grab the files you want from Explorer and then drag them onto the Floola app. But performs just fine in getting the files on the iPod and, best of all, it is freeware.

Not an ideal solution, but until Apple gets around to producing a non-crap version of iTunes, it does the job.

Western Digital’s 1TB NAS

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Western Digital’s My Book World Edition II is a 1 TB Network Attached Storage Drive that includes 10/100/1000 connectivity. These things are very common these days, but the $499 suggested retail price for this device is very nice. You’ll pay a lot more than that for a Buffalo’s 750gb Linkstation II Pro. Initial reviews seem to be fairly good. I could use 4 or 5 of these.