Rubenerd

A few days ago I wrote a simple blog post that illustrated why nuclear deterrence doesn't work and is ineffective at protecting security, surprisingly titled Why nuclear deterrence doesn't work. I thought it was fairly simple but I've received two tweets from friendly folks on Twitter backing up what I've said:

@rubenerd Nuclear weapons are scary, regardless of who possesses them. We agree and are equally concerned. Our appeal: http://ow.ly/iBWL -RL

IPPNW at IPPNW.org is the organisation of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War based in Union Square in Massachusetts who's Twitter account I've been following for a while now.

IPPNW is the only international medical organization dedicated to preventing nuclear war and abolishing nuclear weapons. We recognize that the catastrophic health and environmental consequences of a nuclear war are at the extreme end of a continuum of armed violence that undermines health and security. IPPNW is committed to ending war and advancing understanding of the causes of armed conflict from a public health perspective.

Their Statements and Press Releases pages are good places to start if your interested. They even won the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts.

Another person who was nice enough to comment was Rizwan Ladha, another Bay Stater who writes the painstakingly detailed and well thought out Reconsidering International Relations blog. In particular the last two paragraphs of his post from the 30th July made the same points I did, though somewhat more saliently!

Remember, the presence of nuclear weapons hasn’t deterred anything — wars have still happened. Just because no one’s pressed the big red panic button yet doesn’t mean it can’t happen tomorrow. At the end of the day, deterrence is a logically flawed policy that creates a zero-sum game situation. As one of the remnants of the Cold War that continue to influence our policymaking thought processes, deterrence, along with its close relative, Mutually Assured Destruction, need to go.

What we need to understand is that the real threat of even one nuclear explosion will not be completely eliminated until we stop deluding ourselves. As long as the existence and possession of nuclear weapons are justified under the concept of "deterrence," we cannot consider ourselves completely opposed to the spread of nuclear weapons. Non-proliferation is not an end in itself, but rather is a step towards the real end goal of disarmament.

I've been called a Nazi on Twitter and have been spammed for suggesting Israel needs to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for it's own sake; so far haven't had any negative reactions to my opposition to North Korea, the United States, France et al from having them but I've stopped Twittering about it because I'm tired of dealing with rude, profanity laced comments. That's my entire point though: if one party has them it justifies others. Desiring them is masochism, plain and simple.

As I said in the previous post about this: welcome to the real world I guess. I need some cheering up… perhaps I'll make a grilled cheese sandwich!

ASIDE: Thank you to TechCrunch’s article on AT&T for the headline! Sinking ship analogy doing anything for you?

I was trying my best not to talk about this issue because I know people like Kyle revel in any publicity and having people talking about him, but I need to satisfy my own selfish desire in this case.

Ever since I moved back to Adelaide part time I've been aware of Kyle Sandilands since I saw him as a judge on Australian Idol. To be honest when I first saw him and the way he talked I was unimpressed, some people hated him but I thought he was just a harmless guy who's only crime was thinking he was funny when he was just awkward. If anything I felt a bit embarrassed for him each time he said something.

This whole latest episode though on the radio in Sydney was deplorable. His show has always been dubious at best, but this is the lowest of low. If you're not aware what happened, I encourage you to watch the latest episode of MediaWatch (a show he wasn't particularly fond of due to previous exposed issues) or just do a Google search for his name. If you're in Australia you know what I'm talking about.

Coming from a place like Singapore where you can be fired for talking about underwear I can understand why some people may see me as being just another overly wholesome person attacking a show that's supposed to be edgy, but there's a difference between having shock value, and openly exploiting people. I've heard people say there's a fine line between the two; fair enough but that's what he was being paid for. And if you do something silly, you apologise and don't try to garner sympathy for yourself:

While taking part in a lie detector test on-air during a segment on 2DayFMs Kyle and Jackie O show, a girl reveals she was raped.

DOCS is investigating a sick radio stunt in which a young girl was strapped to a lie detector by Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O and forced to tell her mother she was raped.

IN the aftermath of the 2DAYFM radio stunt where a young girl admitted she was once raped, shock jock Kyle Sandilands has come out swinging, saying he’s the victim of a smear campaign from journalists.

Ouch. Damn straight.

The thing that blows me away is their radio station didn't say or do anything until their advertisers started pulling out in droves. Were other people there onto this?

So here comes the $2 million dollar question everybody in Australia is asking. Should Kyle and Jackie O be banned from being on radio? I don't think so, I think people give Kyle's intelligence too much credit for the stunt. Pardon the French, but I don't think he was [entirely] malicious, he were just mind numbingly stupid. I mean cricket bat to the head stupid. I mean drinking a litre of turpentine then lighting a cigarette stupid. Good luck to him signing up with another station, if I were a station manager I wouldn't want my fingerprints on that train wreck.

Kyle differentiated himself by being Australia's loud, rude shock jock with answers to the questions nobody was asking. As his escapades escalated he wasn't smart enough to differentiate between what's moral and what isn't. In a twist of fate I could see coming for a while he became a victim of his own silly creation.

Kyle Sandilands isn't an evil genius, he's a numbskull, plain and simple. Don't give him too much credit.

This is the first anime review I've posted here on rubenerd.com/anime/ since losing my last anime site which was separate from this. Here we go!

It's often said first impressions are important. I like to think I'm the type of person who doesn't judge people or things instantly, but I guess I can't always tell my subconscious to follow these rules. I belabour this nonsense (a lot even for someone like myself) because when I started watching the first episode of Bakemonogatari and was treated to several long seconds of mindless skirt flailing pantsu complete with a timer to show us how much time of ours they'd wasted, I was ready to call it quits. If you've watched it, you know what I mean.

I'm glad I stuck around though, no descriptions people provided online prepared me for the awesome graphics and art of this show. My jaw hit the floor, the backdrops and the art are absolutely stunning, like nothing I've ever seen before! This may have the unintended consequence of putting me off watching any other anime series ever produced before because anything compared to this is just… crap! If they ever release this series on BluRay I'd be able to take enough stills from it to have a desktop backgrounds for years!

The camera angles, cuts and use of first person cameras especially when Koyomi was talking to the class president of all class presidents Tsubasa were brilliant. What can I say, I am a bit of a sucker for meganekko ^_^. The pacing and delivery of the dialog is also very well done.

In a previous post I said Senjougahara Hitagi was purple and she had a thing for stationary. In the screenshot above you could be forgiven for thinking she's sweet. You'd be misreading her entirely, she is absolutely bat crazy insane. I'm telling you right now even if I was a former vampire like Koyomi and someone put a stapler in my mouth I would run the heck away get me a taser!

Do tasers work on fully grown people who weigh virtually nothing? Anyway given how the story progressed it was a good think Koyomi was himself and not me, for Hitagi's sake. Well I guess that goes without saying.

I'm jealous of their campus as well. Mine has a few new buildings along with a cool new audotorium and library, but it has nothing on this place. It looks more like a gigantic ocean liner. And what's with that stairwell? I guess I can take some solace in the fact that I'm not living in a construction site!

In conclusion, yes I'll be watching the rest of these. Even if the plot fails catastrophically I'll be watching just for the graphics, and seeing whether the Crab God's curse will be lifted. The first episode is a two parter, very clever.

The end of an era. No I'm not talking about someone pulling a Vincent Van Gogh (oh come on, that was a quality joke), I mean that one of the groups on Last.fm which was started in direct response to the site forcing customers to pay for streaming if they lived outside the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany has shut its electronic doors.

[FREE IS FREE] We Have Learned FREE IS NOT FREE

We found this group to have free last.fm again. We reached thousand of last.fm users, we stroke last.fm with several methods.

But we forgot one thing, Free’dom Is Not Free, Free’dom is under control of some bosses.

We are so sorry, because we are not succeed.

Thank you, thanks for all supports and ideas…

We reached the end…

Note: Group will be closed in this week. Some materials are transferred to okck.net to be archived, you can reach these materials with last.fm label on www.okck.net.

Free Is Free Group Founder
Oguz Kaan Cagatay Kilinc
http://www.okck.net

I've long since moved to Libre.fm for my scrobbling needs but it's still sad to see this happen. I bought more than a few CDs in direct response to being recommended various tunes on the site, but this won't happen any more, at least with them. Oh well, their loss.

In the meantime I'm listening to a Rod Picott CD I bought after hearing it Whole Wheat Radio from a country outside the US, UK and Germany no less! Whole Wheat Radio (tune in directly here) is a website with independent music and therefore is unencumbered by the fleeting, nonsensical whims of the RIAA. I like a little nonsense now and then, but not in this context!

I know I'm back in Adelaide again now, but I was going through some of the photos I took with my iTelephone and remembered I just had to tell you all about the scones at the Riders Cafe.

Being an Aussie with British isle heritage (or whatever its called) on my mum's side, scones are a critical part of my diet, but finding good ones in Singapore is tough. The ones at the Riders Cafe are stunningly amazingly tasty. As in you take one bite and you feel like you're at an English teahouse somewhere. A good one presumably!

I tell you what, eating scones with cream and jam is just about the best thing in the universe. I remember a girl in my high school economics class used to make savoury scones and bring them in too; when I first heard of them I was wary but they turned out to be the best thing since… well, sweet scones.

If I had more time I'd buy some flower, butter and milk and make me some scones. My mum used to make epic scones. This post also uses the word scones nine times. Sage, rosemary and times?

After a gruelling 15 minutes of waiting, my one year old iTelephone 3G's firmware has been updated to 3.0.1. Firmware sounds like a brand of steel toed work boots.

Neal reports over at iPhoneUserNews.com though that 3.0.1 might not in fact make our iTelephones super duper kryptonite bullet proof at all. Oh bummer.

I absolutely adore my iTelephone for personal and university use, it is such a pleasure to use in it's own right and compared to every other handset I've ever had. I get the feeling though if I were to join the workforce full time tomorrow, I'd probably have to get a Crackberry or something similar for business use because I'd respect my clients enough not to put their contact information and other notes on such a provably insecure device. Here's hoping Apple gets their act together.

While I'm hopelessly sucking up to sites and people by giving favourable reviews (they're so much nicer to write than negative reviews!), Dana Gardner (yes, the same Dana I talked about recently) unveiled his new BriefingsDirect podcast website design this evening Adelaide and Singapore time. I like it, it's classy and fresh. Freshly classy if you will.

The new design features a darker background with a solid header colour and a white centre. Where have I seen a recent site redesign like that before? I guess its what they always say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Yes, I'm implying a big shot like Dana is a not only a regular reader of my site here but that he was so impressed by my stunning design skills that he copied it. Yeah, that'll work!

BriefingsDirect is described as an "Analyst moderated enterprise IT podcast". I admit I'm a bit behind in the more recent episodes, but they're fascinating and well worth a listen. I especially enjoyed the episode in late May about WebKit and how web developers are adapting to mobile platforms. A lot of the topics Dana and his guests talk about I'm studying as we speak, so aside from being interesting they're also immediately useful :).

I first heard Dana talk back when I subscribed to the IT Conversations iteration of The Gillmor Gang in 2004.

Links shared from del.icio.us today:

[indiana-discuss] opensolaris 2008/11 rc2 on macbook pro (fdisk fails during installation)

(categories: software apple unix mac solaris macbookpro sun opensolaris)

Bug ID: 6413235 fdisk won't commit (-F) tables to bootcamp prepared disks

(categories: software apple unix mac solaris macbookpro sun opensolaris)

Brian Leonard's Blog: OpenSolaris 2008.05 Meet the MacBook Pro

(categories: software apple unix mac solaris macbookpro sun opensolaris)

OpenSolaris 2009.06 on a MacBook Pro – Switzerland OpenSolaris User Group – wikis.sun.com

(categories: software apple unix mac solaris macbookpro sun opensolaris)

Having only just posted about Bakemonogatari I found an infinitely cooler image of Hitagi, this time drawn by Yusao who's more well known for robotic whatnot.

Ever since I was a little kid I've loved these colours which has given more than a few people the wrong idea, if you fathom. It's part of the reason I loved Sola in 2007 so much. I really hope I like this series, the graphics are awesome.

Given I have so much to do I typically don't watch more than one new series a month, which means I often wait until a show is in syndication and just buy the DVDs. I do the same with super fabulous television shows such as this.

I've been told by enough people that Bakemonogatari is an awesome enough series (and a few reviews telling me it's just terrible) for it to warrant my attention. Apparently it's a romantic supernatural comedic zettai ryouiki vampire story… and from the looks of the stunningly awesome press graphics the protagonist has some sort of obsession with stationary. It's a Shaft production (you can tell just by looking at the design) which means the chances of me liking it are automagically higher than average. I like the sound of it so far!

Anyone see any of the aired episodes yet? I would ask if any of you had seen the un-aired episodes yet, but that'd be counter-intuitive and ultimately a fruitless waste of time. Unless you're some sort of vampire.

Take that Twilight!