Blackmoor Vituperative

Fun fact: The “rapture” doctrine was invented in the early 1800s by John Nelson Darby, right around the same time Joseph Smith invented Mormonism and Hans Christian Andersen invented the Little Mermaid.

Read more:
http://thephoenix.com/boston/news/120934-god-hates-faqs/#ixzz1N69dtCdO
http://www.bible.ca/rapture-origin-john-nelson-darby-1830ad.htm

“Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time. Never make your most important decisions when you are in your worst moods. Wait. Be patient. The storm will pass. The spring will come.”
— Robert H. Schuller

Well, it turns out that Adrianne Palicki will not, in fact, play Wonder Woman in a new TV reboot of the classic Linda Carter series.

David E. Kelley’s “Wonder Woman” television series has failed to find a network pickup at NBC, says a story at The Hollywood Reporter.

The series was planned as a reinvention of the iconic DC Comics title in which Wonder Woman (Adrianne Palicki) is both a vigilante crime fighter in Los Angeles, a successful corporate executive (as her alter ego, Diana Prince) and a modern woman trying to balance all of the elements of her extraordinary life.

The pilot was written by Kelley and directed by Jeffrey Reiner (“The Event”) and also featured Elizabeth Hurley, Pedro Pascal, Tracie Thoms and Cary Elwes in the cast.

With NBC declining to give the go-ahead, it is unlikely that the comic book adaptation will see the light of day as a series.

(from SuperHeroHype, NBC Passes on Wonder Woman)

Not much I can add to that. Sorry, Adrianne. Better luck with your next project.

I received an interesting email today from the Czech Republic. They are using the graphics I put together for Sharing is not piracy and Copying is not piracy for a campaign against the new copyright law in the Czech Republic.

I love the Czech Republic. I wish them luck.

The Naturalization Act of 1790 establishes that anyone born of an American citizen is themselves a “natural born citizen” of the USA. The 1790 act originally traced that citizenship through the father, and only included “free white persons”; the 1952 naturalization act amends that by prohibiting racial and gender discrimination in naturalization. So if your mother was a citizen of the USA when you were born, and you were born on the Moon, you are eligible to run for President. Just FYI, in case you were born on the Moon.

(I think I need a new category, for “Blindingly obvious”.)

Note to self: other people are probably happier not knowing what I am thinking.

I ran across this at Gary Corby’s web site. Very cool. I found this very helpful. I never know what typeface to use. I stay awake long nights, fretting over it.

Happy Easter.

What does Easter mean to me? To me, it means that the azaleas are blooming, and that the weather is turning warm. Winter is over, and life has returned to the Earth once again. Some people want to celebrate this with chocolate bunnies and colored eggs. I think those are great symbols; in fact, the egg thing harkens back to the goddess Oestre, from which the holiday gets its name. Some people celebrate it by retelling old myths, where gods and goddesses return from the underworld, like Persephone and Jesus. Those are great stories. But I think the real story, the real reason to celebrate, is the world outside my window, green and blooming and alive.

In response to pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice and Germany’s Federal Cartel Office (Das Bundeskartellamt), Microsoft and its CPTN Holding Partners — Apple, EMC, and Oracle — have revised their agreements so that the Novell patents will be under both GPLv2 and Open Innovation Network protection.

So what does it all mean? Andrew “Andy” Updegrove, founding partner of Gesmer Updegrove, a top technology law firm, said, “This is a rather breath-taking announcement from a number of perspectives. Among others, the granularity of the restrictions imposed demonstrates a level of understanding of open source software in general, and Linux in particular, that has not been demonstrated by regulators in the past. It also demonstrates a very different attitude on the part of both the U.S. and German regulators, on the one hand, and Microsoft, on the other, from what we saw the last time that Microsoft was under the microscope. In the past, Microsoft was more disposed to fight than negotiate, and the U.S. and the European Commission were far apart in their attitudes. This announcement conclusively places open-source software on the U.S. regulatory map.”

(from Microsoft gets Novell’s Patents rights but must share them with Open-Source Software, ZDNet)

I think this is a really interesting development. Interesting in the sense that it’s not antagonistic to consumers and developers, and that it’s not what I predicted, or even guessed might happen.

Taking a brief break from Serious Business (database character sets, fun stuff!), to grab a snack and peruse some news, I ran across this story of a woman who was slapped on the ass by a total stranger, and how she responded.

I thought this kind of thing only happened in old movies. Slapping a woman you don’t even know (or even one you do know) on the ass? On a public street? Who does that? WTF?