Six months and man’s best friend

Six months. Six months and I still can’t see his picture without getting emotional. Cisco was a remarkable dog; he was a wonderful companion, but more than that, he was a friend, taken far too soon. Damn I miss him.

by Paul on April 9, 2013 at 4:03pm | Permalink
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Penn & Teller get star on Hollywood Walk of Fame

Penn Jillette on Twitter (@pennjillette):

Maybe the favorite picture I’ve ever seen. Wow. Makes me cry!

by Paul on April 6, 2013 at 8:44pm | Permalink
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Roger Ebert: Self-help books are bullshit.

Simple wisdom from Roger Ebert in April 2010:

Self-help books are bullshit. Read a good book. That’ll help you.

Indeed.

by Paul on April 5, 2013 at 7:17pm | Permalink
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R.I.P. Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert, writing in 2011:

I do not fear death: I will pass away sooner than most people who read this, but that doesn’t shake my sense of wonder and joy

by Paul on April 4, 2013 at 4:04pm | Permalink
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Adoble: Please keep using Flash Player…

I find it somewhat telling that Adobe actually “sells” Flash on its “Flash Update Available” notice. Flash is dead in the mobile space and something tells me that if Adobe feels the need to “sell” Flash to people who clearly already have it installed, it can’t be long for the desktop… Personally, I completely removed Flash from all my personal computers (Macs) over two years ago, and have rarely — RARELY — missed it…

by Paul on March 7, 2013 at 5:44pm | Permalink
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Reason: How Even a ‘Well-Trained Narcotics Detection Dog’ Can Be Wrong 84 Percent of the Time

So even a dog that is very good at finding drugs in a “controlled testing environment” will generate a lot of false positives when sniffing randomly selected cars.

Again, forensic “science” (with the exception of DNA) largely isn’t science. The U.S. Extreme Court is WRONG.

by Paul on February 27, 2013 at 5:59pm | Permalink
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How reliable is the science behind forensic science?

Fascinating PBS: FRONTLINE show from April, “The Real CSI: How reliable is the science behind forensics?”

So it turns out that the Forensic sciences (with the notable exception of DNA) are no more “hard science” than Creation “science”, social “science”, or Scientology… Most have no scientific basis at all, and those that do rarely reach the “reliability” of the polygraph, which is only slightly more reliable than the “hunch”.

The good news is that if you have $700 and can click a mouse, you too can become a certified forensic “expert” eligible to testify in state and federal courts!

by Paul on February 16, 2013 at 7:16pm | Permalink
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AP: Meteor Explodes Over Russia, Nearly 1,000 Hurt

“Ever wonder just how much damage a meteor exploding in the sky can do?”

“The Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement that the meteor over the Chelyabinsk region entered the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of at least 54,000 kph (33,000 mph) and shattered about 30-50 kilometers (18-32 miles) above ground.”

by Paul on February 15, 2013 at 4:45pm | Permalink
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Why is the media so in love with Tom Brady?

The question could be just as relevantly posed in terms of The Patriots, but that’s a discussion for another day.

First of all, let me be perfectly clear: Tom Brady is one of the greatest (and perhaps THE greatest) quarterbacks to every play the professional game. He has been an amazing “ambassador” of the game, and it has been a pleasure* watching him play for these last twelve years.

That having been said, let me be clear about another point that seems to elude the media: Tom Brady is fantastic, but he is not the “second coming.”

Regardless of network or game crew in the booth, what I’ve witnessed for at least the last decade has been very, very similar to what we witnessed earlier tonight from Jim Nantz and Phil Simms. When the Patriots are winning, we get two announcers**, technically a play-by-play announcer and a color commentator who are really little more than fans, pointing out how vastly superior Tom Brady and the Patriots are to whomever they are playing. The two announcers often cut each other off, as they duel to one-up each other in their pronouncements of love and devotion to the almighty. Often, as was the case last night, one can only hope that they are not masturbating in their Patriots underwear while in the booth calling the game. Of course, when the Patriots are not winning, the announcer/fans pronounce that the Patriots will soon be back on top, and their worldview will soon once again be correct. Only when it is clear that the Patriots will lose the game, do the announcer/fans temporarily shed their fan-dom and call the game as intended: as professional sports journalists providing objective play-by-play and color commentary.

Now, that may be understandable — hell, it may even be excusable — when the team in question is in the midst of, or only a year or two removed from, winning 3 Super Bowls in 4 years. However…

Let’s examine the history. The last Super Bowl that Tom Brady and the Patriots won was Super Bowl XXXIX played February 6, 2005 at the conclusion of the 2004 season. Since then Tom Brady and the Patriots have:

  • 2005: 4th seed in AFC; defeated in the Divisional Playoffs by the Broncos (led by quarterback Jake Plummer)
  • 2006: 4th seed in AFC; defeated in AFC Championship game by the Colts (Peyton Manning).
  • 2007: 1st seed in AFC; defeated in Super Bowl XLII by the Giants (Eli Manning).
  • 2008: At 11-5, they failed to make the NFL Playoffs, but this is irrelevant inasmuch as Brady suffered a season-ending injury in week 1.
  • 2009: 3rd seed in AFC; defeated in Wildcard Playoffs by the Ravens (Joe Flacco).
  • 2010: 1st seed in AFC; defeated in the Divisional Playoffs by the Jets (Mark Sanchez).
  • 2011: 1st seed in AFC; defeated in Super Bowl XLVI by the Giants (Eli Manning).
  • 2012: 2nd seed in AFC; defeated in AFC Championship game by the Ravens (Joe Flacco).

Now, to be certain, there’s scarcely a team in the NFL who wouldn’t love to have had the seasons the Patriots had from 2005-2012, or even the Post-seasons they’ve had, for that matter. But I suggest that were it any other quarterback — a Manning, Roethlisberger, Rodgers or Brees, for example — the media would have been crying “can’t win the big one(s) any more” for a few years now, and would have absolutely written the poor fellow off after losing last year’s Super Bowl and dropping this year’s Divisonal Playoff.

Yet, here we are, eight years removed from the last Super Bowl win by Tom Brady and the Patriots, and the media still gush and guffaw. Eight. Years. Eight years is a career for many players; there are Hall of Famers who only played eight years — eight years is a lifetime.

So, if the media won’t make the obvious observation, I will: Tom Brady is a great quarterback, but clearly, he’s not the quarterback he was 10 years ago, not when it comes to “winning the big one(s).”

yeah, in a minute…
* a pleasure, that is, except for: (1) when he and the Patriots were kicking the living shit out of my Titans, as they’ve done each and every one of the five meetings since our last win a decade ago on MNF, December 16, 2002 (the year during their extraordinary Super Bowl run when they didn’t even make the Playoffs), and (2) having to listen to the media ejaculate all over him even in those rare situations when he has an off day.
** to call them “sports journalists” would imply some degree of objectivity, and that is patently false…
by Paul on January 20, 2013 at 10:11pm | Permalink
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Using the Samsung ML-1740 Printer in Mac OS X 10.8.x “Mountain Lion”

Well, my Mac-friendly Epson color printer went down, and pressed to print some things for my son, I was forced to go to my backup printer, an old Samsung ML-1740 laser printer.

The ML-1740 truly was never intended to be a Mac printer. Even when I first bought the thing, it was apparent that Mac support was an afterthought by Samsung. I had to search to find drivers, and could only find them on an overseas Samsung support site.

When setting the printer back up this morning, I tried to run that installer that I’d downloaded several years ago, and was told that “Power-PC applications” can no longer be run, obviously. But, it gives you an idea of how old this printer is!

So, I started searching, and behold I found the solution at MacRumors forums, from July 21, 2011. The first thing I noticed was the date: July 21, 2011. That was the day after OS X 10.7 “Lion” was released, and the thread went back several months, so likely these users were dealing with OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard”. I decided to give it a try anyway; heck, there was a chance that the poster of the solution was using Lion, and if it worked on Lion, it would likely work on Mountain Lion.

Long story short, just follow the instructions, making sure to install the software in the proper order, reboot and bam: there’s the ML-1740 sitting in System Preferences -> Print & Scan, ready to go.

After that, everything printed as it had several years ago.

Hopefully, there’s no one else out there forced to use the ML-1740, but if so, I hope this helps.

Now, if I could only find a way to make this dinosaur support “AirPrint”!!!

by Paul on December 27, 2012 at 11:40am | Permalink
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