How Thor should have ended

SPOILERS!

How Thor should have ended.

Instead of trying to destroy the planet of the frost giants, Loki should have declared a fait accompli after killing the king of the frost giants, and ascended to the throne of the ice giant planet and remained King of Asgard. They could explain this by saying that frost giants choose kings through battle anyway, plus he's son of the previous king. He would banish Thor back to Earth without his powers, and seek to increase his empire through conquering Earth.

This would set up a reason as to why a thunder god is fighting alongside a man in a tin can, and a soldier on steroids, as well as set up a villain that poses a threat to the whole world, and would require the Avengers to stop him.

Instead we get a shitty purple cube mcguffin, and a fucking Marx Brothers impersonation from Loki (the mirror business).

PS yeah I know it's the cosmic cube, but who gives a shit, the cosmic cube was one of the stupidest concepts in the marvel universe.

The new york review of books is prejudiced against muslims and china

first, here's a little quote in a burka article about naked slaves and the advent of the veil;

As the Islamic state expanded, a growing flood of slaves were captured as booty, and sold in the slave markets. Many of these were young women who were incorporated into Muslim households as concubines. Slave women were required to expose the head, arms, legs, and upper parts of the chest, and to enhance their value slave merchants ensured that they were well versed in singing, dancing, music and poetry—necessary skills for the arts of seduction and love. In the face of this challenge the supposedly respectable women retreated into the sanctity of the home. By the twelfth century Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (1149-1209), one of the most renowned and influential of Quranic commentators was arguing that the freeborn believing woman must be fully covered. “A free woman’s entire body is a shameful nakedness in itself,” he wrote. Razi’s reasoning was commercial: Quranic writings on modesty did not apply to slaves because they were items of property whose purchase or sale required “an investigative and careful inspection.”

Something felt a bit fishy about that. I haven't looked it up personally but a few people i asked my sister included said that the rise of the veil happened before the rise of the Islamic empire, so that whole auction block image with naked slaves was not the reason for the rise of the veil. I don't have a source on that so I wont quote it as gospel yet.

But what I do have a logical reason for is the following;

Its an article about the future of publishing, but what I want to bring your attention to is this quote;

Gutenberg's technology was the sine qua non for the rebirth of the West, as if literacy, scientific method, and constitutional government had been implicit all along, awaiting only Gutenberg to throw the switch. Within fifty years presses were operating from one end of Europe to the other, halting only at the borders of Islam, which shunned the press. Perhaps from the same fear of disruptive literacy that alarmed Islam, China ignored a phonetic transcription of its ideographs, attributed to a Korean emperor, that might have permitted the use of movable type.

The reason that the printing press was not taken up in the Islamic empire was not a reactionary fear of knowledge, but rather the fact that Arabic script (the official language of the empire, and its broken pieces even to this day) is not able to be made into movable type due to the inherent nature of its flowing lines. There are no specific letters that can be be made, each word has a different way of writing the letters in it. So obviously the movable type printing press wouldn't work.

Also, why would china which had been fighting with Korea for hundreds (if not thousands) of years up to this point agree to using a Korean script? it would be like America adopting Arabic as the national language.

But no NYbooks, you're right, Muslims are violent illiterate oppressors of freedoms, and china is a stubborn power unwilling to give cheap books to its Masses.

Peter is up to this

Hello!

I will hopefully write up some interesting things that have happened to me in the last 8 months or so. Currently I am taking a year off to do research, on cochlear biophysics. Brandi is doing one too.

I am sleepy because I stayed up until 2 last night watching the Truman show. I liked that movie when it came out and I still like it.

This came out of left field buried in a times article.

"Since a federal report four years ago found that textbook prices nearly tripled from 1986 to 2004 — rising an average of 6 percent a year, twice the inflation rate — Congress and state legislators have been working to contain textbook costs."

http://bit.ly/2XDSKo

WHAT? Where is this report? I need to read it.

Hey guys

Listen, I uhh monetized the blog. I'm sure we'll never get any money but if we do, it's all going to www.heifer.org, my favorite charity.

The idea behind the charity is that you buy poor developing world communities livestock, which they then get trained to raise, and then use that livestock for their renewable resources (ie milk, fertilizer, wool, feathers) and then sell whatever excess they have locally to other underdeveloped communities. So rather than a handout which is basically palliative care, this charity tries to give poor people the ability to grow their own communities naturally.

Actually John, Robyn told me about way back in college (man those were the days) and I did a little research, it apparently gives around 70% of its donations to the cause, and only 30% go to overhead, which is a pretty good ratio.

So to try to drive up a little traffic to this site, I'll resume my insane rants about the news in september, tell your parents to read the blog and click the links.

How is everyone doing these days?

Sometimes

Sometimes I forget how smart my crappy little brother is. I'm driving him back from his summer class today, and I'm listening to a new yorker political podcast. On it, the guy makes an offhand comment about kruschev and some other guy, whose name escapes me. The reference flew right over my head, but Ziad picked up this guys name, and repeated it back to me saying, 'he's the guy from east berlin right?'

And I'm all, 'your stupid, this podcast is about Russia,'

And he's all, 'I know, but this is the guy who was the head of East Berlin; which was controlled by Russia , moron .' So he totally crushed me on that reference.

Then I put on a podcast about that douchebag Richard Dawkins. And my brother, before anything is said about him goes, 'I hate that guy!'

And I'm all, 'yeah like you know who he is.' And Ziad proceeds to tell me who he is, and 2 of his major books.

And just now I was thinking to myself, 'man, which 17 year old knows who the head of east berlin was in the 1990's, and knows who dawkins is?'

I mean is this what all the kids are talking about these days, fall of berlin wall era politics, and militant atheists?

Sperm bank sued under product liability law

Recently, a sperm bank has been sued by a teenager conceived with sperm from that bank. She has a genetic disorder that came from the donor, and is arguing that the DNA received from her father is faulty and the sperm bank is liable.

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202429596840

I can see her side of the case, but don't agree with it at all. Sure, she has a genetic disorder from her father's DNA, but she also exists because of her father's DNA. I interpret the lawsuit as the teen and her mother saying "I'd rather not have been born than have this disorder", since she couldn't have one without the other. Anyway, I'm interested to hear what all you doctors and lawyers think about it.

Make Firefox Work for you!

Hey,


Here are a whole bunch of addons for firefox that you can use to make browsing things a lot easier. I highly recommend them all and use them daily. And if you are not using firefox, SHAME ON YOU!

All of the below are FREE, and known by me to not damage your system in any way.

Click here to download and use the latest version of Firefox (AMMI DO NOT CLICK THIS!)

IF YOU ARE AMMI READ THIS: To add whatever you want, click on the link, then click add to firefox, after you've added all the ones you like, click the restart firefox button or quit firefox and restart it.

404: file not found: uses wayback.org to find archives of pages that no longer exist. Pretty sweet.

Adblock Plus/ Adblock Filterset.G Updater/ Adblock Plus Filter Uploader/ Adblock Plus Element Hiding Helper: NECESSARY ADDON, gets rid of most ads on most websites, never surf without it.

Autopager: NECESSARY ADDON, Loads the next page of multiple pages (think google searches), no longer need to hit next on most pages (IF YOU ARE AMMI READ THIS: everytime a popup says that it found an autopager thing, click yes.)

Bookmark Duplicate Detector: does what it says on the tin (IF YOU ARE AMMI READ THIS: allows you to delete duplicate bookmarks, click on bookmarks and then click "search for duplicates").

Downthemall! : quicker/simpler downloading of files

FoxyProxy: (Advanced Users Only) The premier proxy tool for firefox.

GoogleGears: NECESSARY ADDON, Gmail needs this to work. (Kinda...)

Gmail Manager: A cool little app that automatically checks your gmail and popsup when you have a new email.

Image Zoom: Does what it says on the tin (IF YOU ARE AMMI READ THIS: zooms pics, right click and go to zoom image).

Morning Coffee: HIGHLY RECCOMMENDED Quite possibly the greatest firefox addon ever; once you set it up (and no Ammi, I'm not going to explain how to set it up on this email) click on the little coffee mug and it opens up sites that you visit daily saving you time and effort.

Multirow Bookmarks Toolbar: The little thing just below your address bar you add booksmarks to can now be up to three rows long without the dumb arrow deal on the far right side. (seriously that arrow thing completely defeats the purpose of the bookmarks toolbar; uhh hello one click access to frequented sites)

Nuke Anything Enchanced: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Delete any object (text, picture, ad that slips through adblock) through context menu. (IF YOU ARE AMMI READ THIS: Right click on the thing you want to delete and left click on "remove this object" if you want to delete some text highlight the text and follow the previous steps.)

Read it Later: NECESSARY ADDON, An easy way to bookmark stuff you want to read later (DURR HURR HURR) (IF YOU ARE AMMI READ THIS: Press the checkmark button on the address bar to save the site for later, and when you want to read an article you saved, press the brown and yellow button near the address bar)

Twitterbar: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Type anything into the address bar and it automatically posts it onto twitter. Add a space after pages you are on to add a comment on the link. Changes links to tinyurls to conserve characters.

As an aside, you all should download and install Digsby, it's a program that aggregates all your social sites (gmail, gtalk, yahoomessenger, AIM, yahoomail, facebook, twitter, linkedin, stumbleupoun, etc) and puts them all into one window. The best parts of Adium/Trillian rolled into one. (TECHNICAL NOTE: This program does run a distributed computing system to generate money, it is not spyware, but you should know that.)

Then follow me, EMAD06, on twitter: and I'll follow you!

All I ever tweet are interesting news stories with a pithy comment on each one. I'm like a better version of Fark

I LOVE YOU,

EMAD!

PS If anyone has some awesome firefox addons they want to share, please write me back, and I'll send it out to everyone.

Don't want to bogart the blog, but...

For anyone who wants a cool little twitter box on the side like me click;


1) Sign up for twitter (obviously)
2) this link, and click the big orange B button ont he right side,
3) Follow the instructions (you'll have to sign in to blogger to edit the blog page)
4) ???
5) Profit!

Hey dudes!

Man, it's been a long time since i posted here. That is because I've found the joy and ease of use of twitter! Come follow me for my thoughts on news highlights.

Link

Relaxing and Number Munchers

After that last video I feel the need to relax.  You should too.

Also, here is a link to play the original version of Number Munchers!

And Oregon Trail!

Don't gamble on your gg.

You Must Construct Additional Pylons!

SPCAI to humans; feral dogs are more important than you!

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SCPA) International  wants Iraqi's to vaccinate/neutrer/spay feral dogs that are literally hunting humans in packs. Look, guys, you know I have no love for dogs; but come on, if they are hunting and eating humans I'm pretty sure I'm in the right in saying strycnine and shotguns are the correct way to go. Also shouldn't any medicine going into the country be used more on humans rather than stray and feral dogs? 

Comment to tell me if I'm out of line. It won't change my mind, but it will make me hate you more.

60 cents.

Dumpster diving; not a viable alternative income!

From the Annals of "What Just Happened"

So today, I took out the trash.

This may not seem like a huge feat by any means, but bear with me a moment. The trash (and recyclables!) had been building for a good 3 weeks, so it was no easy feat bagging them all up and getting them ready for the giant landfill in the sky.

Anyway, I took down two bags full of trash to the basement, where the owners of the building have thoughtfully put dumpsters and recycle bins for just such a purpose.

On the third trip down, the recyclables trip, I chanced a glance into the bin (for what reason I can not fathom now, but it made sense at the time). Upoun looking in, I saw several movies and videogame cases in the dumpster. In the fashion of any true technophile/recyclist, I picked one off the top of the bin, opened it up, and glanced inside.

Nothing. (Obviously, right?)

Now, in an effort to be thorough, I took the next case out and looked inside; sure enough, there was a normal looking DVD in it (Pulp Fiction, I think). This set off my mind like fireworks; 'If I take all these DVD/games out, look through each, and take the cases that have something in them, I can rip whatever info I can off the media, save it to a hard-drive and then sell the discs back to GameStop or whatever!'

And that is when I decided to jump into the dumpster and do just that. After 15 minutes of pretty gross work (recyclable stuff still has sticky residue of some sort on it), I had a pile of a good 50 cases. Of those 25 bore to fruition, and I carried those back into my apartment where they sit in the entrance hall right now.

I guess I'll post back here the results of what happened to these 'dumpster DVDs' and what kind of profit dumpster diving makes.

And how was your day?

Edit: Forgot to follow Rule 10 of the Internet.

Guys I'm Married

Isn't that crazy? Anyway, the wedding was fantastic, the honeymoon was ridiculously fun (nudge nudge say no more), and now we are setting up a liveable home. Since Brandi is moving into my condo, and since apparently my standards for liveable are much below Brandi's, we've been cleaning a lot lately.

More info later, especially when I get some pics to post of Maui. We snorkeled, scuba dove, and surfed.

Begin first rotation (neuro) soon.

Peter out.

Our Great Tragedy

People say that September 11, 2001 was the great tragedy of our time, I respectfully disagree; our great tragedy was much longer in scope.

It was the years 2000-2004. Our tragedy was so bad, that it was taken from us prematurely.

In 2004 that tragedy was turned into a farce.

I give you, the Bush legacy.

Peter Married FTW!

Oh yeah!  Peter and Brandi's wedding announcement was in the New York Times!

Oh. My. God.

You guys. Peter is married. MARRIED. MARRIED!!

Feel free to comment.

Merry Christmas youse guys!

I can't believe that the only non-christian had to say it.

Here, just take it.

A quick word.

If this case goes the wrong way, it means that any American (me, a brown guy) can be picked up and held indefinitely as an enemy combatant.

As a side note; I hope everyone on the supreme court retires or dies in the next 4 years.

Hey Blackwater, hey. Fuck. You.

Thanksgiving

Who's going to be in St. Louis over Thanksgiving weekend? I'm probably coming in Tuesday evening and leaving Sunday.

He must really like lobbying

Wow. Just, wow. John [Mr. Wilderness], you ever wrestle a deer?
http://www.wtopnews.com/?sid=1518615&nid=25
Score: Democrats-0, Republican Deer-1

Luckily, Barack Obama will be president soon (ohshitohshitohshit!).

Also, if you haven't seen it yet, I made an uber-fanboy YouTube video of Knights of Cydonia.

Nothing happened today.

There is no news worth reporting.

That is all.

Christ on a Motherfucking CRACKER!

Old News?

Holy mother fucking shit.

Curse words haven't been made that can express the incredulity I am feeling.

Official Halloween Post

Happy Halloween!

Things are worse then they seem.

I don't know if you guys are aware, but there is a decline in the Samurai Bond Market. If people aren't buying stocks in samurai anymore, we are well and truly fucked.

Dear Friends,

I'm glad to see that someone is keeping the faith. As for Ol' Dr. Emad, I've been too busy skipping classes, getting drunk, doing drugs, and yelling at the news to write a post in... christ, has it been that long?

Ah well, ah well, this too shall pass.

How about dem' apples!

Wow!

NY Times Editorial: Barack Obama for President

In other news, I know that most of you grown men don't have as much time left in your schedules for videogames anymore, but here is something really cool:

A fan translation of Mother 3 ( the Japan-only GBA sequel to Earthbound on the SNES) has just been released!  Get it!

I hope you are all having a great Fall!

51st Post

Hey Guys... this is all I've got.  I hope it's enough.

more music charts

Nothing Serious

see Sarah Palin pictures

Meanwhile...

In the stick universe, they're having the exact same problem as the 616 universe, but they explain it much better.

The first debate

I tried watching the first debate just now and had to turn it off. Both candidates were too preoccupied with hating on the other's views to explain their own. It was like an hour of alternating campaign commercials. I had hoped that it would help me learn more about their policies but it just turned out to be a waste of my time.

If the world ran America, Obama would be president.

Proof.

And that ain't no myspace poll. That's the motherfucking Economist.

It's cool, we're living through history.

Living through history.

Mega Man 9!!!

FYI: Mega Man 9 comes out tomorrow on Wiiware for $10.

Get excited!



If you want to play as Proto Man, it's going to cost you.

Have a great week guys!

Again, this just happened.

My mom literally just made a direct comparison between Anton Chekov and the weather channel.

Edit: Two reasons why Chekov is the best.

"There ought to be behind the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a hammer continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later, trouble will come for him—disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others."

"The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burdens in silence, and without that silence happiness would be impossible."

More on Tzipi Livni

She's the last best hope for Peace in the middle east.

She is a former mossad spy.

The New Status Quo.

Approximately the saddest commercial I've seen in a while.

Do I be a condescending dick and explain why I think it's sad, or do I be a pretentious dick and say figure it out yourselves, plebeians?

Hmm... the latter?

Finally

A videogame reviewer who hates everything as much as I hate everything. John, look out, he'll make you cry and angry at him (and by extension, me).

Check out his review to your favorite games. (ie halo3, oblivion, mass effect, etc etc.)

Also great accent. (Glacier is pronounced Gla-shear, who knew?)

Did I just write a review of a review site?

So upset.

Finished watching "No End in Sight" again. Now I'm seriously angry. Anyways, the news;

Sarah Palin gets her yahoo account hacked, has sensitive alaskan information on it. The amount of rage I feel towards this woman may yet turn me into a misogynist (err, more so).

Kadima claims leadership of Israeli parliment, does not have majority of seats. The other party's leader, " also described the negotiations with the Palestinians as a waste of time although he says he is committed to making peace with them." whatever that means. So slightly better news in the middle east, in the same way that dying in a plane crash is better news than surviving the crash and slowly starving to death while on the ocean.

US economy still in tatters. Also in tatters, British economy. (Fucking brits, think they're soo awesome.)

Chinese businesses are trying to kill the world's babies, and are succeeding.

This article about receding polar ice might have the scariest graphic ever. Also the world is doomed anyway, so why continue to write about the news?

Let's all get some heroin.

I'm in St. Louis

So I found myself in St. Louis with Brandi.  Who is in town/wants to hang out?

Hey let's apply this snake oil to our problems, I hear it works wonders!

God. Damn. It.

House approves bill to increase offshore drilling, because if the dems don't, the republicans will approve a bill to increase offshore drilling!

Whew, bullet dodged.

Though to be fair, I am a fan of forcing oil companies out of tax incentives. So, silver lining.

SNL - Hillary vs. Palin

Fantastic.

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/palin-hillary-open/656281/

I love Matt Damon

And you should too.

Edit:

Weekends are for editorial readings;

"I feel for Ms. Palin’s son who has been shipped off to the war in Iraq. But at his deployment ceremony, which was on the same day as the Charlie Gibson interview, Sept. 11, she told the audience of soldiers that they would be fighting 'the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.'"


A handy diagram

Sorry I'm so on the Palin topic, it's just infuriating to see this happening and have people saying, "Finally, a woman in the white house," or whatever shitty platitude is in vogue.

Also, I'm really really sexist.

So, I'm about to get rocked by Hurricane Ike.  This should be awesome.

Also, the future of our nation is being threatened by a vast right wing conspiracy to mispronounce nuclear.  Maybe it's not right wing, maybe it's just politicians, but my it is pronounced just exactly the way it looks!  nü-klē-ər never kept anyone from winning a spelling bee!  

ARGH!

How to get a Job.

You too can net your dream job! (Giant Robot Monster Tester, is my dream job. I would ride it around all day laughing and making it blow things up. Or maybe that was just a dream I had.)

An Auspicious Day

Happy birthday JohnAllen!

This is pretty obscure.

US Highway fund is about to run out of money. This means delay of road/bridge construction projects like this one, and more of this shit happening. Why can't we learn what everyone who played videogames in the 90's learned?

I think I'm going to give 5 bonus points to everyone who can name me the reference.