Babeled

Although I have never been a giant fan of the Grand Theft Auto games, I have played a few and I say that this latest GTA is a gem. Usually when I have played GTA in the past I was left dissatisfied about what I had actually accomplished in the game and never really understood the point. Like, was the point to just kill people and destroy [excrement]? Either way I never really liked the traditional GTA, but Grand Theft Auto 4 is not traditional.

The storyline is based off of a Russian illegal immigrant, Niko Bellic, who comes to Liberty City to start a new life. However, he soon gets involved with the mafia and various gangs of the city, and finds himself as the playmaker within an escalating war. There are also side missions that Niko can do, usually to get extra cash, such as steal high priced cars for a collector. On his journey throughout Liberty City, a huge city that contains hundreds of people and cars, he interacts with various people, ranging from his cousin to his girlfriend to mob bosses, each with their own personal story.

As usual with any GTA, Niko steals cars, beats up innocent people, takes their money, kills cops, and steals their vehicles. Upon stealing a police car, he can search for current crimes taking place and aide the police in cleaning the streets (plus you get money for this). However beware of the police in this game for they are armed with all the resources to catch you and you definitely don’t want that. The majority of the time, Niko uses his PDA to connect with his friends and enemies, each sending him on some new mission. On top of this he can take his cousin, Roman, and his girlfriend to play pool or go bowling.

My favorite part of the game is without a doubt stealing some of the nicest cars on the streets. Niko not only drives sports cars, hummers, and motorcycles in the game at death defying speeds, but he also flies a helicopter and pilots a speedboat. Driving is difficult at first, but once you get the hang of it, it’s natural. While cruising, Niko has the ability change the radio station to listen to whatever you, the gamer, want to hear. In the game, if Niko goes to the bar, he is difficult to control afterwards due to his drunken state. Therefore, when he gets in his car following such a visit, the game simulates drunk driving where the car will be swerving all over the road no matter how good you think you are really driving (impressive simulation). Once again, beware of the police! All in all, I would definitely say this is a great game and a must have! Between it’s exceptional graphics, selection of music, online multiplayer capability, and indepth story line, this game rocks!

Image Used in this Post

GTA4 image courtesy of Flickr user LittleO2 published under the CC license.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Update: The alleged nature of this claim is now moot; Kidd Chris has been officially Imus’d by 94.1 WYSP. Reaction on Thomas’ MySpace page and the total removal of all things Kidd Chris from the WYSP web-page are clear indicators of the sudden departure.

Driving in to work this morning, on a dreary Friday, I did not have the usual comfort of Kidd Chris. Instead 94.1 WYSP was playing a garbled mess of best-of material and and 90s rock music. When the station went to commercial there was a WYSP announcement mentioning the postponement of the Kidd Chris Birthday Show, which was scheduled for tonight at the Whiskey Tango. Quickly the panic set in and I knew the something was wrong, very wrong - either someone died or someone got fired.

Well it turns out Kidd Chris has been displaced because of a racial song parody (performed by show regular, Lady Gash) that was played during his morning show back in late March. The song only played for a day before it was yanked off the air by CBS officials when an investigation was then immediately launched. I was in Germany at the time and was unable to hear the song so I cannot comment on its content, but I will admit Kidd Chris does push the racial envelope often. However, he destroys every envelope (in South Park fashion) so I think it is fair and balanced and falls under the protection of free speech - but that’s another story.

My bigger concern is what I am going to listen to for an hour and twenty minutes every morning? I’m sure as hell not going to listen to Preston & Steve. It looks like I am going to have to get Sirius and go back to my Howard roots. And as far as the Stern front goes, Howard and Kidd Chris are very close, Howard has repeatedly offered Chris air-play and his own show with Sirius. Look for that as a potential landing zone for the Kidd Chris show. It’s a real shame though, Kidd’s content was a perfect fit for Philadelphia miscreants.

Popularity: 3% [?]

A lot of people [thing to be improved]. In fact, this is fairly common. [cost number 1] is the common argument against [improvement], and most people value their [cost number 2] too much to consider anything but [thing to be improved].

However, there are a growing number of people interested in [improvement], so I have written a step-by-step guide, as I myself have been [verb form of improvement] for many years. I find it [positive experience 1], [positive experience 2], and it reduces my [noun].

[Quote by somebody you've never heard of in favor of the idea.]

[Optional: bulleted list]

~ [Some magazine you'd never read] 2005

It is true that a lot of people are worried about [cost number 1] when considering [improvement], but it turns out this is actually [marginalizing adjective] if you [ancillary skill to be developed]. Not only that, but with a little extra work, [cost number 2] can be [weasel words understating the difficulty of minimizing cost 2].

Everything You Need

First, it is useful to know that you have everything you need at hand.

Things you will need

1. [Obvious object]. This goes without saying.
2. [Non-obvious quantity] [Obvious object]. I experimented for a long time, and this is the [validation of non-obvious amount].
3. [Weird object]. A lot of people will [negative adjective] at the idea, but it turns out that [insightful but flawed reason for including weird object].
4. [Positive adjective] [Common object]. I can not understate ‘[Positive adjective] enough! Many people ignore this, but rest assured that this will affect the outcome. You may feel like you are avoiding [cost 2] if you do this step, but this will affect the quality of [improvement], rendering this whole guide worthless.
5. [Unrelated object. Example: A cup of coffee]

The Process

As with all things, [noun] is the most important part of this process. Failure to [utilize noun] correctly will obviously lead to [mildly disastrous consequence]. You will then need to [undesirable action], so let’s try to avoid that and [utilize noun] properly! Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

The Steps

1. [Easy-to-overlook preparation step]. DO NOT FORGET THIS! If you do not, [improvement with proper definite or indefinite article] will [undesirable outcome].
2. [Obvious step].
3. [Obvious step]. However, when I do it, [non-obvious, but unimportant, twist].
4. [Obvious step]. This is a step that most people breeze over, but you must [obsessive behavior], otherwise [mildly negative adjective] [noun] will happen.
5. [Non-obvious step]. This is where I generally deviate from the common practice. I find that [subjective observation].
6. [Finishing touches]
7. [Verb] [Unrelated object]. You’re done!

As you can see, this is not a very difficult process, and with a little practice, you can easily perfect it. Your first attempt may or may not [positive verb] on the first try, but with a little practice, [another positive verb].

Minimizing [cost 2]

Obviously, [cost 2] still could be a deterrant. However, developing [ancillary skill] requires only a little bit of [cost 3], but the results are well-worth it.

There you have it! I hope this guide was able to help somebody.

Note: Author is [impressive title] at [company you've never heard of]. [Pronoun] also enjoys [activity you don't care about] and [activity that almost killed you as a kid] with his [improbably glowing description of family].

Image used in this post: blah.jpg. Author: Jake Voytko. Released under CC Attribution license.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Every time I drive to school in the morning I am faced with a menacing situation that causes drivers to slam on their brakes, stop suddenly in the middle of a busy highway or crawl along at 30 mph below the posted speed limit. No, I am not talking about a massive fruit truck disaster. I am talking about school buses and school zones. I hate school buses and school zones. There is no reason whatsoever that there should ever be a school bus stop on a major four-lane highway. There is even less reason why that bus stop should be followed by another bus stop thirty feet down the road. These kids can’t walk fifteen feet each and meet in the middle? They have to be picked up at the terminus of their driveway. Ridiculous. You can’t even go around the stupid thing. I have to stop my vehicle, even in the other lane, for this bus stop. At a grown up bus stop, the bus itself doesn’t even come to a stop sometimes. Forget about the other cars stopping.

If those of us who chose to reproduce took any responsibility for themselves and their children, they would teach the little parasites to stay out of the road and look both ways before running out into a highway. Then everyone else wouldn’t need to adjust their lives to accommodate other peoples’ unwillingness to teach their children. Kids should learn to be responsible for themselves. There won’t be any school bus to protect them when they are older, and they will have no idea that the whole world doesn’t stop just so that they can cross the street.

We are turning our children into a bunch of wimpy, slack-jawed mouth breathers who can not even avoid being hit by a car while standing on the side of the road. A bunch of babies who can not even walk across the street without every single car in both directions coming to a complete halt. Why should I put myself at risk of being rear ended by some careless moron who doesn’t see all the unnecessarily stopped vehicles in front of him? I have no vile little progeny running around not knowing how to cross a damn street. Why should I have to alter my life to make space for other people’s untrained idiot children?

And school zones are even worse. By the time the brats are in the school zone there are government subsidized babysitters running around telling the little morons what to do. Yet, everyone still has to go real slow just in case one of the wee beasties breaks free and chases its imaginary friend on to the road. If that happens, it should be the baby sitters’ problem, not my problem. The road is for cars, not kids. If your babysitters are inadequate, then large fences should be erected to prevent such an occurrence, preferably electric.

It is things like school zones that stop the good work of evolution. Can’t cross a street correctly? You deserve what’s coming to you. Get out of my gene pool, you are peeing in it.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Yesterday I heard that a new word was recently invented.  The word is spitzering.  It’s a verb and it means to have a squeaky clean image while doing freaky questionable things on the side, like having an affair with a prostitute.  I see the humor in having such a word in the English dictionary, however I do notice a major shift in our language occurring.  Slang and acronyms are taking over our language as the more common way of talking.  You could argue that the English language is transitioning to a more vulgar form of communication, somewhat similar to Vulgar Latin.

Nevertheless, with people’s forced learning of acronyms in daily life, such as instant/text messaging and in the office place, they are losing their ability to retain the ability to spell properly.  With the aide of spell check on word processors, anybody (and I mean everybody, including myself) can sound smart and scholarly.  On top of that, people’s knowledge, or lack thereof the English language, is providing them with the ignorance and ability to create new words.  Some words have historical origins, such as spitzering; some words, such as bazillion were created by combing the words billion and gazillion (origins unknown).  Do you know what the definition of gazillion is?  The same exact thing that bazillion means; an indeterminate number.  Like a billion wasn’t enough!  I guess any number above a billion is considered indeterminable.  As I heard on the radio the other day, “anyone can invent a new word, all you have to do is say it in context and then all is right”.  The host then invented a new word.  Frumper:  A female dwarf.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Let’s get one thing straight: the U.S. Federal Government will not let any major banking and/or lending institution go bankrupt. There may be an intermediary deal where another bank purchases the failing bank for pennies on the dollar (see JP Morgan Chase’s bail-out of Bear Stearns), but there will not be a full bankruptcy. I say this with such confidence for one reason, and the reason is something you have all seen every time you walk into a bank. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The brain child of Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg and Democratic Representative Henry Steagall, FDIC helped to bring back the people’s confidence in the U.S. Banking industry after the Great Depression.

Why does the FDIC ensure that no major bank will ever go bankrupt? The government does not want to lay out the necessary cash to depositors should the bank not be able to give their members’ money back in the event of closure. It’s true, the government charges every bank an insurance premium based on their relative risk, but that money (similarly to Social Security) gets invested into various financial securities. This would mean the withdrawal and disbursement of those funds.

The money set aside has only one purpose: in the event of a bank closure to make sure that everyone gets their deposits back according to the guidelines set down by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and its subsequent reformations. Why should this be a deal-breaker for the government? Administratively, it is a nightmare from both a cost and organizational perspective. Also, the less money in the FDIC fund, the less return being made in financial markets, the less there is to go around “just in case”. Oh, and there is the whole “have you ever seen the government give back money?” (except for Dubbya, whose economic stimulus is an ill-conceived plan as government spending is not decreasing but the pool of taxes to fund that spending is…enough said).

Let’s assume that a bank does indeed go bankrupt and no deal can be brokered with a stronger bank to purchase the deposits and assets of the failed bank. The FDIC now steps in to provide relief for the failed bank’s customers. Depending on the size of the bank the amount of deposits can be enormous. According to JP Morgan Chase’s 2007 Annual Report the bank had $11.466 billion in deposits. Not all of these deposits are FDIC insured. For the sake of putting some numbers to theory, let’s assume 75% of those deposits are FDIC insured. This equals a total of $8.6 billion of FDIC insured deposits that would have to be funded from the pool of FDIC money.

Guess what happens when someone sells off $8.6 billion in financial markets? Markets crash. Should the FDIC have to withdrawal a sum of money even a fraction of JPMorgan Chase’s deposits the stock market, bond market, and just about every other kind of market would fall to its knees. Since the whole point of being insured is so that people are confident in financial institutions, it is counterproductive to bring about the collapse of financial markets just to save a bank’s depositors. The depositors got their money back and will be confident, but the millions of people who lost countless dollars in the markets that day will have another viewpoint.

Popularity: 4% [?]

This little clip certainly delves back many years into the BIll O’Reilly archive, but I found Bill’s episode to be extremely entertaining. It looks like he had some anger issues to contend with before he became The Factor we all love to hate. Enjoy…

The Factor certainly needs to author an audio book for America’s youth so that this little clip can find its way into the story.

Popularity: 5% [?]

So we are about a quarter of the way through baseball so far this year and what a season it has been thus far.

The American League

In the AL East the Red Sox are in 1st, with the Tampa Bay Rays a half a game behind. The powerful 1-2 punch of Beckett and Dice-K have overwhelmed opponents and the Rays are just playing as Ken Singleton would say “inspired baseball”. The Yankees are off to a bad start suffering serious injuries to major players (A-Rod, Posada, and Jeter) on their team, as well as their pitching rotation being anything but solid. In the Central the White Sox, Indians, and Twins are all pretty much at the top while the ‘always never good enough’ Royals and struggling Tigers are at the bottom. For the moment the Minnesota Twins own the #1 spot in the Central with outstanding pitching by Livan Hernandez (yes, thats right Livan Hernandez) and good ol’ hitting by Mauer and Morneau. In the AL West, the Oakland Athletics and the Los Angeles Angels are neck and neck for the top spot, both with 23 wins. Both teams have suffered major injuries this year with Rich Harden, SP of the Oakland Athletics, going down after the 1st week and John Lackey, SP of the L.A. Angels, being lost heading into the season for months. More recently the Angels suffered the loss of injury prone Chone Figgins, probably the scrappiest player in the Majors.

The National League

The Central in the NL pretty much is identical to the Central in the AL, with three teams vying for 1st place; the Chicago Cubs, St. Louis Cardinals, and the Houston Astros. The Cubs are looking very strong in the Central with the play of their powerful offense with Alfonzo Soriano, Derek Lee, Aramis Ramirez, and Japanese sensation Kosuke Fukudome. In the NL East, the Florida Marlins are at the top, with exceptional young players like Hanley Ramirez and Dan Uggla, beating out the under achieving NY Mets, with Santana and Reyes at their helm; the overachieving Phillies, with the batting power behind Chase Utley and Pat “the bat” Burrell; and the legendary Atlanta Braves, with Tim Hudson and Chipper Jones leading the way. The NL West is a different story with the highly anticipated Arizona Diamondbacks owning the top spot with a lead of four games over the L.A. Dodgers. The Diamondback off-season acquisition of Dan Haren really solidified their starting rotation, with other starting pitchers like Brandon Webb and Randy Johnson. There is still a lot to be seen from the L.A. Dodgers and Colorado Rockies who thus far have played below both of their potential. There is still much to be seen with 3/4 of the baseball season left, as to who will play better with the warmer weather, and edge out their competition for 1st place in their division.

Fantasy Baseball

In the beginning of the MLB season, I wrote “Fantasy Baseball is Real to Me” and 6 weeks into the season I am currently in 6th place. I think that the rankings are interesting, so I wanted to show you who the best MLB players are. In fantasy baseball, the #1 player is Lance Berkman, the 1st baseman for the Houston Astros. So far this year his stats are 42 runs, 13 homers, 38 rbi, 6 stolen bases, 22 walks, .393 AVG., 1.27 OPS. Berkman truly has exceptional numbers for playing on such an average team. The #2 player in fantasy baseball is the pitcher, Cliff Lee, the SP for the Cleveland Indians. His numbers: 6 wins, 0 losses, 44 K’s, .67 ERA, .67 WHIP, and 7 quality starts. Note: A quality start is considered 6 innings pitched and 3 earned runs. He beat out great starters such as Brandon Webb, Carlos Zambrano, and Tim Lincecum. The #3 best player in my fantasy league is Hanley Ramirez, the shortstop for the Florida Marlins. His stats are: 34 runs, 9 homers, 22 rbi, 13 stolen bases, 19 walks, .331 AVG, .987 OPS.

Here is a list of the Top 10 players in the Major Leagues, as per my fantasy Yahoo league:

1. Lance Berkman, 1B, Houston Astros
2. Cliff Lee, SP, Cleveland Indians
3. Hanley Ramirez, SS, Florida Marlins
4. Chase Utley, 2B, Philadelphia Phillies
5. Chipper Jones, 3B, Atlanta Braves
6. Derrek Lee, 1B, Chicago Cubs
7. Nate McLouth, CF, Pittsburgh Pirates
8. Rafael Furcal, SS, L.A. Dodgers
9. Dan Uggla, 2B, Florida Marlins
10. Josh Hamilton, OF, Texas Rangers

And they say that the AL has all the good hitters and the NL has all the good pitchers! Ha!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Most people know who George Washington was and what he accomplished, such as being the 1st President of the United States. Most people also know that he was the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. I’m sure you’ve even heard the tale of chopping down his fathers cherry tree. Although he is known for all of these things, he has never been someone I thought was that great of a President. Until recently . . .

The Legacy of Cinncinnatus

Lucius Quinctius Cinncinnatus lived in the early days of the Roman Republic before there was such a thing as a dictator or emperor singlehandedly ruling. He served as a consul to Rome when the Senate and People of Rome (SPQR) ruled the streets. Before the Caesars and Augustus’ took a hold of Rome, the patricians and plebeians (mobs) were the ruling force and Rome was truly a Republic for the people governed by the Senate. Moving on, Cinncinnatus served as a consul in 460 BC where he was heavily involved in the politics of the day and relentlessly resisted plebeian proposed laws. After serving one year as a consul, he retired from politics and went back to his farm life.

However, the early years of Rome were filled with much violence as wars were a commonplace in the outlying regions around the Tiber River. Rome was at war with the local tribe, the Aequians, and after a major defeat against them at the Alban Hills, the Senate made the decision to appoint a dictator to lead the fledgling Republic to a victory. They appointed Cinncinnatus as dictator of Rome in 459 BC, pulling him out of retired farm life and asked him to lead their armies to defeat the Aequi. Cinncinnatus engineered a double pronged attack, utilizing his infantry and cavalry. Taken aback, the Aequi were defeated and surrendered to Cinncinnatus. After the war was won, Cinncinnatus disbanded his army and resigned as dictator, when he easily could have stayed on as the sole ruling power. Cinncinnatus was appointed dictator once more in 439 BC to put down a plebeian revolt, and once again resigned as dictator. He provides a great legacy in that he realized that the Roman Republic was not meant to be built upon the shoulders of emperors, dictators, or tyrants. He very well could have stayed on as dictator and appointed himself the emperor with the strength of his army and popularity, but he did not.

The Legacy of George Washington

Fast forward to 1776, the Revolutionary War, when the Continental Congress, headed by John Hancock, appointed General George Washington as Commander-in-Chief over the Continental Army. Due to George Washington’s rising popularity with his victories over the Red Coats, he won the respect and admiration of the 13 colonies and was elected as the United States first President, a title he held with much hesitation.

After serving two 4 year terms as President of the United States, George Washington gave up his elected seat and retired to quiet life in Mount Vernon. He very easily could have stayed in the White House as the Commander-in-Chief of the fledgling nation, but he knew that doing so would be counterproductive to the free nation that they had just fought for and won. To me this is the greatest legacy that George Washington left behind, as he could have very easily been the first king or emperor of the U.S. However he opted out of the office, such as Cinncinnatus did, and retired to quiet life. After Washington set the precedent of a two term limit on the presidency, no president broke that precedent until Franklin D. Roosevelt. After Roosevelt’s death, the 22nd Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution that set the traditional 2 term limit to the President’s seat.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Singularly hurtling toward the red orb hanging in the distance, the outline of the ship’s hull emits a small flash as it approaches. Soon, the ship will bring itself into orbit around the target planet, not our closest interplanetary neighbor, but the most suitable for the task at hand. Mars has long captivated those who gazed at the heavens from our small blue sanctuary home planet. It is now that the long-held dream of colonizing another world is about to be brought to fruition through the labors of men and women who will be long remembered, regardless of their actual success at this mission.

The early part of the twenty-first century gave rise to a revitalization in interest and intrigue for space exploration. From this renaissance, an international port and scientific research center was constructed on the surface of the Moon. This port was to be the development and launching site for what was perceived to be the next great frontier to be explored by mankind. Several manned scouting missions were launched to Mars from the Moon, only one was successful. The others all failed from technical or psychological malfunctions prior to entering orbit around Mars.

One successful journey was enough to convince the collective conscience that a colony could be achieved, and the controversial, yet coveted, technology to terraform Mars was feasible. Mankind would soon colonize another world. The tenacity of the human mind and spirit was broken by one, simple realization brought about by the successful landing of this vessel with such auspicious goals as producing a breathable atmosphere for future generations of humans to walk freely on the surface of Mars.

The main difference between the colonizing ship and the scouting mission was scope of work. The colonizing crew was far more numerous with many more scientific and technological specialties. There was far more equipment with the colonizing mission. Then, there was the matter of the landing site. The one successful scouting mission landed in Utopia Planitia, a place that is in the northern hemisphere of the Mars, which happens to be mostly flat plains. When the colonizing ship landed, the coincidence that it should happen to be on the exact opposite side of the planet in the Argyre Planitia was not noticed at the time.

The theory was that the colonizing ship should land in the northern hemisphere where the atmospheric pressure that is being generated by the terraforming will occur the earliest. If the ship was to land in the southern hemisphere, the highlands of Mars, then the effects of the terraforming would be less measurable than at the lower altitudes, the principle being the same as on Earth that the higher the altitude the lower the atmospheric pressure. Once the colonizing crew realized that their landing site was far from where they had anticipated, the mission was now to scout the area and attempt the colonization process, if conditions seemed reasonable.

As it were, the Argyre Planitia is a far more interesting place to land than Utopia Planitia. The incomprehensibly enormous impact craters, delving several miles deep into the surrounding mountains and plains, resemble lake beds with flowing rivers spiraling outward from it’s rocky shores. They explored the region until a curious object was discovered: a human tooth. As there were supposed to have never been any humans located in this region of the planet, all were baffled by the discovery until the great leap was made. Mars is the desert we already left behind, and Earth was the colony of those who lived on Mars. It took this epiphany for human culture to understand that the expand and conquer technique is nothing new, and we’ve done it before only to forget our past indiscretions and make the same mistakes again.

Maunder crater Image used in this post courtesy of Flickr user regulus2007.

Popularity: 7% [?]