We were helping family move house this weekend, so I ended up missing Arena Bowl XXI! Wow, where was my head? I would have loved to see that one Iowa team play that team from Orlando. There’s still an Iowa team, right?

Oh, I guess the result was San Jose SaberCats 55, Columbus Destroyers 33. Ohio has a team? Maybe Brady Quinn will play for them one day.

My Liberal Identity:

You are a Social Justice Crusader, also known as a rights activist. You believe in equality, fairness, and preventing neo-Confederate conservative troglodytes from rolling back fifty years of civil rights gains.

Take the quiz at www.FightConservatives.com

Link courtesy of a Working Class Warrior.

And this is how you win a format war: Target Bets It All on Blu-ray.

It’s not about consumer choice or minor technology advantages. It is about marketing and business development with content providers, electronics suppliers, and retailers. Microsoft hasn’t gone all out in supporting HD-DVD — leaving it out of the XBox 360 except as an add-on — even though they were among those who backed the format. Sony, on the other hand, is making sure when we see a HD disc or player, it’s Blu-ray. Blockbuster has dropped HD-DVD from its stores for now, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see others follow suit.

In Europe, according to the article, HD-DVD players are outselling Blu-ray 3 to 1. Will Toshiba and Microsoft be able to take that advantage in hardware sales and convince stateside retailers there’s an advantage to working with their format? Will Europe end up getting stuck with a bunch of Betamax players, or will that market be strong enough to decide what happens in the U.S.? (Or, even more likely, will we just end up seeing a basic format difference between Europe and the U.S., much like with PAL and NTSC?)

Looks like Warner Bros. wants another $8.50 from me. Jonah Hex — hard to explain if you don’t already know — may get his own movie soon. I wonder if it will end with him running across his own stuffed body?

While growing up, I was always a big costumed hero fan, reading a lot of Superman, Batman, and the Legion of Super-Heroes. However, I also really liked the “real-world” comics DC was putting out at the time, usually dealing with various modern wars or the American West. Jonah Hex was one of my favorite characters, along with Hans von Hammer (Enemy Ace), largely due to the moral complexity of the stories.

Of course, then he got pushed into the post-apocalyptic future in Hex. Not quite as good, but he did get to see himself dead.

Link courtesy of Bureau 42. Image courtesy of the Grand Comic Books Database.

It was a very good ending to the series, and the next-to-last page sucker-punched me.

AND NOW, A SPOILER:

They’re all hobbits.

I just ran across an unsettling email preview, sent by a doctor I hadn’t heard of: I NEED YOUR ASS.

Luckily, the full subject line was I NEED YOUR ASSISTANCE. For some reason, however, Yahoo! Mail put what looks like a period on the end of their truncated version.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to give someone my bank information. Something about a war-torn country and the treasury.

Starting at Year 0, could you help advance civilization? I like to think my Civ IV skills would help, but somehow I have a feeling I would die pretty quickly as a result of a smelter accident…or maybe just looking at someone the wrong way. This quiz thinks I might be useful, though.

Quite good. Starting from the year 0, you might be able to advance civilization to the 17th or even 19th century. You are technologically useful.

Must have been all those “science” books I read as a kid. I wonder if they still have books just about Science?

Link courtesy of The Tom Kyte Blog.

Way back when, I voted for John McCain as a write-in in a state that didn’t support write-in votes for President (as near as I could tell), largely as a protest as to the Republican selection and primary political campaign. That was then. Now I’m just wondering when the McCain campaign is going to be closing up and heading home.

It’s actually kind of sad, like when Bob Dole ran in 1996. No matter what my disagreements with their platforms, both men deserved better than being thrown under the bus by their party. (Of course, with McCain, that was in the 2000 primaries. Now he’s just doing it to himself.)

Have fun, Republican Party, as you trample off to anoint the next chosen candidate: ____ ________. I don’t think it’s going to work that well; the Party-approved talent base seems kind of thin this year. But, hey, you chose President George W. Bush in 2000, and that worked out well, didn’t it?

Hmmmm…while I’m a firm believer that people can become addicted to pretty much anything, I’m having a hard time believing this story, where a couple in Reno, NV, are saying their Internet and online gaming addiction caused them to starve and otherwise horribly neglect — c’mon, let’s call it what it is: abuse — their very young children.

Viloria said the Reno couple were too distracted by online video games, mainly the fantasy role-playing “Dungeons & Dragons” series, to give their children proper care. “They had food; they just chose not to give it to their kids because they were too busy playing video games,” Viloria told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Are we really going to say that kind of neglect stems from their video game use? They couldn’t tear themselves away long enough to feed or wash two babies? Or is it more likely that they wouldn’t have been feeding or washing them anyway? Either way, perhaps they’ll be put somewhere where the food won’t be delivered because the kitchen staff is playing Tetris. Oh, and where there are a lot of cats on the floor above. (Trust me.)

As an aside, what the heck is the prosecutor talking about when she refers to the online “Dungeons & Dragons” series? Is talking about the D&D Stormreach MMO? If so, I’m amazed there are enough players for there to be addicts.

I ran across this article about inspirations for living in the moment. They’re pretty good suggestions, and the subject matter is definitely something I need to pay more attention to, but something struck me about the cat example:

I also like watching my cat, Riddle. He thinks he’s a lion. He’ll stealthily stalk an insect or lizard, as if he’s hidden in tall grass on the savanna, and then he pounces and attacks. You know he’s not thinking about what he had for breakfast or what furniture needs to be clawed to shreds later in the day. Cats (and other animals) are all about the Now. Be like a cat.

Actually, it’s not quite that. The cat doesn’t know about lions. He just is what he is. Also a good lesson in some ways, but an important part of being human is that we can choose to be what we are not.