Who's The Biggest Villain: Darth Vader, Joker, or Magneto?

I received an ad in my inbox asking that question but really it was just a lead in to a sale for comic books. But the question intrigued me. After all, Batman is my favourite comic book character so his nemesis the Joker is someone I am very familiar with. And I always loved Darth Vader growing up as a bad guy, and even went out as him at Halloween three or four years in a row. So I feel some authority in answering the question: Who's The Biggest Villain: Darth Vader, Joker, or Magneto?

First off, let's get the competition thinned out a little by throwing Magneto out altogether. Yes, he is a little warped in wanting to wipe out normal humans and populate the earth with mutants, but he was traumatized as a little boy and see the prejudice and discrimination of mutants and wants to correct that, albeit in an extreme manner. And Magneto has even allied with the "good guys" on many occasions throughout the years, making him less a villain and more of a competitor or adversary that is more anarchistic in his approach.

Darth Vader is pretty evil, especially once you see Revenge of the Sith and watch him cut down the Younglings at the Jedi temple and then butcher the Secessionists before fighting Obiwan. The dark side of the force indeed. Hunting down the rest of the Jedi between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope is not very nice either, and the death choke of those officers on his side that disappoint him in The Empire Strikes Back is quite disturbing. Darth Vader is a good villain.
But not the best. After all, in the end of The Return of the Jedi he does turn back to the good side and helps Luke destroy the Emperor by throwing him down the shaft. Redemption comes late in the story and at the end of his life, yet there it is.

Now, could you imagine the Joker working with the Batman for any reason? Heh, not bloody likely! They would probably fight while aliens wiped out the rest of the earth should it come to that rather than work hand in hand. The Joker is not only a crazy criminal, he is a mass murderer on an epic scale. Many people have suffered over the years including the shooting of the original Batgirl which ended up leaving her paralyzed from the waist down. This is one bad dude.

Some might point out that insanity provides some justification and excuse for his crimes. Bah I say, he knows right from wrong, that is why he revels in his exploits. He is not committing the crimes he does out confusion or psychosis, he is doing it for the pure pleasure of the deed. He is evil.

Thus, that is why I pick the Joker as the Biggest Villain. He may not have force mutant powers, but he is evil for the sake of evil.

Look Away

Whatever you do today, do NOT watch this 44 second video on YouTube. I watched a longer version of that song last week and the damn tune is still stuck in my head.

Blog Writer's Block

Whenever I have a bit of writer's block, I can always depend on Canoe to spice things up.

And an editorial from the Ottawa Sun fits the bill nicely:

But far too many of us are getting rounder than any generation before and this week came official acknowledgement of a particularly disturbing part of the trend: Our kids are gaining weight at such an alarming rate that childhood obesity is considered an epidemic

How bad is it? Unless we do something fast, many of our children won't live as long as their parents.

More than one in four (26%) Canadians aged two to 17 are now considered either overweight or obese, says a report from a House of Commons health committee that cites Statistics Canada figures.

Getting parents to do something about it, though, may prove a challenge. Apparently only 9% of parents believe their own children are overweight.

I am overweight. Despite losing a lot of weight a couple years back and getting regular exercise from Jui Jitsu twice a week, I am still overweight and struggle with balancing my poor eating habits with a desire to lose more weight and get healthy.

But I fail to understand how 26% of kids are overweight but only 9% of parents believe their kids to be overweight. Do people not understand the concept? Do they not know that "big boned" and "baby fat" are just excuses we use to justify obesity? How can we live in an age when encyclopedic information is available on TV, the internet, the newspapers and still have people that have a blind eye to the obvious facts?

Mister, your kid is fat. Lady, your kid doesn't need a chocolate bar, they need soccer game. Man, limit your kid to watching TV for an hour a day and include computer/playstation time in that hour.

Get informed, and get active. Children learn from there parents so provide direction and a good example and this "epidemic" can be routed.

Why?!? WHY???!!!

When I went to the new dentist a month or so ago, I made an appointment for Kim that was supposed to be last night. They had to re-enter the data while I was there a couple times and there was some confusion and changing dates in the process, but it seemed to settle on 6PM, Tuesday March 27. Fine.

The a couple weeks ago we get a postcard from the dentist reminding Kim that her appointment was at 7pm. Well, some confusion arose as we looked at our calendar but decided that I must have been wrong or the times changed and this was showing the new time. After all, it was a card filled out with someone's hand writing from the office, they must know the right time. Right?

Well, we trundle out there last night showing up for seven and the receptionist looks at us as we arrive and says "Oh, Kim for 6pm, right?"

"Um no," we reply holding up the postcard with the date and time.

"OH," she says, "that was for the cleaning. The new patient appointment was at 6pm."

Stunned silence. Of course, we couldn't do the cleaning without the new patient exam and the dentist was busy with another patient so could not do the new patient exam last night. We had to book two new appointments for Kim. To make it even more fun, they said they tried to call her to remind her of the appointment but had the wrong number. They had my work number without the freaking extension. So I imagine they called my work place and asked for Kim. Right. That would work... or you know, NOT. They must have set Kim's account up based on mine after I had left and used my work number without the extension. Idiots.

Admittedly we should have called and checked when we got the postcard but a hand-written reminder from the office was pretty damn convincing to both of us. Fortunately for them they did not charge us the cancellation fee or there would have been serious hell to pay.


So we lost an hour of travel time last night, but Kim was mildly happy because she hates going to the dentist and putting it off for another month or so is fine by her.

Google Rocks

(Sorry for the lack of posts last week. Work was actually mildly interesting and busy and kept me on my toes.)

We got a new computer a couple weeks ago and instead of trying to scam another copy of MS Office from somewhere I decided to give Open Office a try. Its a open source free product that competes with Microsoft and tries to provide the same functionality while still being compatible with Word Docs and Excel spreadsheets. It comes highly recommended and so far so good.

A few months ago I complained that my current blogroll reader, Sauce Reader, was no longer any use to me and I switched to Google Reader? Well, I'm happy to say its been an absolute pleasure to use and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a way to keep track of their reading list. I can access it from home or work, it never screws up or crashes, and its been easy to maintain.

In addition, I set up my Google homepage and was allowed to put a gadget on there so that latest posts from my blogroll are present there and can be read as a in-screen popup. Wicked cool! I love these guys! Similar gadget can be added for my gmail inbox.

Finally, I've tried out Google Docs and Spreadsheets and give it a half-hearted endorsement. While its nice to have documents free of being on one machine and having to transfer them from home to work and visa versa, the feature suite is not quite a full as MS Office / Open Office. Judging by improvements in Google Reader from when I first tried it and now, I think its only a matter of time before the functionality catches up.

Google Rocks!

Amazing

If you have any interest in Stonehenge, check out the video on this site of a guy building a replica in his backyard using only wood, rope, and stones.

(Hat tip Pharyngula)

My Heart Skipped!

I saw this headline and my heart skipped a beat: Commodore launching new gaming PC

Man, did that bring back the memories!

My Thoughts On The Federal Budget

Paul Wells said it best:

This budget is good politics and it will be welcomed by people who dislike Liberals because it will make it less likely that the Liberals get back into office. And if conservatism is only a dislike of Liberals, then there's no problem.

Sad but true. Also, see Andrew's post as my opinions run along those lines and he is a much more eloquent political writer than I.

Movie Reviews

Stranger than Fiction: This drama/comedy was at once better and worse than I expected. The drama and emotion of the main and supporting characters was better and more fleshed out than a typical funny movie, but the comedy was less frequent and obvious than the previews suggested.

I enjoyed the movie but kept expecting it to get a lot funnier. The ending was decent, but it had the potential to be more moving. That the director made the same choice as the author character is a nod that was not lost on me.

All in all, 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Flags of our Fathers: I was worried that this movie would be a chest-beating example of American nationalistic patriotism and quite pleased it was a more realistic look at the war and people of the country at the time. There was no time when I felt the movie itself was crass and it was a startling look into a battle of the Second World War that rarely gets much attention these days. What those marines went through to take that island is about as close as I have seen to hell on earth.

I enjoyed the movie and despite the jumping around in the timeline I liked the pacing and the structure of the story. I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Not As Nerdy As You I Bet

So What?

Time for a good flogging.

I was browsing Canoe's website and ran into this column by Krista Boryskavich:

No Sex, No Kids, No Problems?

Don't want the pitter patter of little feet disrupting your fulfilling adult lifestyle?

Just follow the lead of the Japanese and stop having sex.

According to a recent survey conducted by the Japan Family Planning Association, nearly 40% of Japanese aged 16 to 49 reported they hadn't had sex in over a month.

Ok, what's the big deal?

"This is very bad news for the country's birthrate," said Dr. Kunio Kitamura, the Family Planning Association's director, "and something the government needs to look into urgently."

Especially since, as Kitamura's research concluded, "if you don't have sex for a month, you probably won't for a year."

Still not feeling the concern. What's up?

While a minority of people choose to remain childless for grandiose ideals such as saving the planet from further destruction caused by overpopulation, the majority of the "me generation" shun children for more personal reasons.

Career, travel or romantic partners may take precedence. Or on a basic mundane level, dinner and a movie may sound much more exciting than bath and story time.

So what?

Call it selfishness if you want. But in a world where community interests take a backseat to individual freedom of choice, most people view the decision whether to procreate as a strictly individual one that is none of society at large's business.

Sometimes, though, society has to butt in where it isn't wanted. In addition to world population concerns, low birthrates may have other significant impacts of a global nature.

Whoa there dragon. "Community interests", "significant impacts"? Sounds serious! Care to explain?

For instance, according to a 2004 study conducted by Douglas Downey, a professor at Ohio State University, children without siblings run an increased risk of developing poor social and conflict resolution skills.

The study of 20,000 kindergarten children showed that only children were less able to "form and maintain friendships, get along with people who are different, comfort and help other children, express feelings in a positive way, and show sensitivity to the feelings of others."

That sounds more like a change is required in parenting styles in the new world where more people are having one child instead of more. After all, many of us who were young single children grew up into fine adults if I do say so myself. Hardly seems like a reason to continue to overpopulate the earth, right?

Couple poor social skills and a lack of built-in human contact with society's unprecedented reliance on electronic communication and companionship, and the global nation is hurtling down a path of disconnectedness never before experienced.

It's time to bring a sense of community back to the human race.

Huh? Seems like there is a built in assumption in that statement that electronic communication and companionship is somehow far inferior to face to face communications. Also, she is assuming that poor social skills demonstrated by kids just starting school translates into emotionally stunted teenagers and adults which I suspect is complete and utter fantasy on her part and unsupported by anything in this article or anything I've ever heard of.

Let me paraphrase: single children are not as well adjusted as children with siblings in one study of Kindergarten kids (no mention of how single children fare as adults), and the "evil internets" are allowing people to speak without actually having to sit in the same room. This means the world is falling apart and having more kids will start to fix the problem of bringing back a sense of community to the human race, ignoring the problems of overpopulation such as starvation, environmental issues, pollution, etc.

That is some screwed up thinking Krista Boryskavich and the most useless drivel I've read today.

Sometimes Protest Works

Remember those girls that got suspended for saying the word "vagina"? Rumour has it that the school board got a clue and rescinded it:

Louise Katzin, mother of 16-year-old Hannah Levinson, said the school superintendent called her Monday night to say the suspensions had been lifted.

Hooray for intelligence.

What Are You Looking At?

Eyetracking points the way to effective news article design, or as I like to call it, Men Like to Look At Genitals:

When photos do contain people related to the task at hand, or the content users are exploring, they do get fixations. However, gender makes a distinct difference on what parts of the photo are stared at the longest. Take a look at the hotspot below.

Although both men and women look at the image of George Brett when directed to find out information about his sport and position, men tend to focus on private anatomy as well as the face. For the women, the face is the only place they viewed.

Coyne adds that this difference doesn’t just occur with images of people. Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site.

We are all pervs I tell ya.

(Hat Tip: Pesky Apostrophe)

A Site Just For Kim

Or anyone else that fancies themselves a word-smith of sorts: Common Errors In English.

I was looking up to make sure I was using the word "advise" correctly (which I was) and I stumbled across it. Enjoy!

Trust is Hard to Come By

I've had my Hotmail account since before Microsoft scooped it up years back. I used it for my mail purposes for a long time until GMail came along and blew it out of the water, but I still have the old Hotmail account because some subscriptions and family members still point to it and getting them to update their address books is like pulling teeth.

Like GMail, Hotmail last year implemented an automatic spam blocker that was supposed to prevent my inbox from getting flooded by junk mail and it seemed to be working really well. Then it seemed that junk mail started piling up faster all of a sudden and I noticed it seemed to coincide with the release of the new Windows Live Mail. I suspect, but cannot prove, the Microsoft purposely lowered the capability of the spam blocker on Hotmail to 'encourage' users to migrate to the new system. Since I migrated yesterday, the amount of junk mail in that account has been far less.

There are other explanations but its hard to trust a corporation that has done so many slimy things over the years. One quick example: my system is configured with Firefox as the default browser for all applications but when I open a link from MS Messenger guess what browser pops up? That's right, Internet Exploder. Sigh.

If I had Andrew's technical savvy I would attempt to but a Linux OS on our new computer. If Windows Vista gives us any trouble, I might attempt it anyways.

The Most Horrible Time of the Year

I dread this time of year. The time when my finely tuned cycle of sleep and wakefulness is disrupted for months to come. It is... the dreaded Daylight Savings Time.

If it wasn't for Kim's job requiring her to get up at 6 am anyways, I would be tempted to simply keep my schedule and let time change. Alas, we are slaves to the world around us. And thus here I am at 10:30 feeling like I got up an hour earlier than usual and wishing for the sweet embrace of normal time.

Bad Words

Girls Suspended Over 'Vagina Monologues':

(03-06) 14:12 PST CROSS RIVER, New York (AP) --

A public high school has suspended three students who disobeyed officials by saying the word "vagina" during a reading from a well-known feminist play.

[...]

But Principal Richard Leprine said Tuesday that the girls were punished because they disobeyed orders, not because of what they said.

The event was open to the community, including children, and the word was not appropriate, Leprine said in a statement. He said the girls had been told when they auditioned that they could not use the word.

OK, I agree that if the students agreed not to do something and then they go and do it anyways the Principal has a reason to be upset.

But I think that telling the students they could not use the word 'vagina' in the first place is incredibly stupid. Time for people to get out of this "body parts are bad" mentality. I mean its not like they showed pictures of vaginae or flashed the audience their breasts. Its a word, the proper word, and we should not be ashamed to use it.

(Hat Tip: Pharyngula)

Green Belt

I did my green belt test last Friday and I nailed it. Only a few missteps but some things I've been having trouble with I really got spot on. I was very happy and my instructors gave me high praise.

My biggest worry going in was stamina but that wasn't an issue. However breathing during cardio techniques such as Jiu Jitsu circle or sparring is an issue. The Sensi thinks I'm breathing too shallowly and therefore not using enough of my lungs as a result. Definitely need to work on that.

Next goal, get my Blue belt by the fall!

Oh Cool!

Earth's Crust Missing In Mid-Atlantic

Scientists have discovered a large area thousands of square kilometres in extent in the middle of the Atlantic where the Earth’s crust appears to be missing. Instead, the mantle - the deep interior of the Earth, normally covered by crust many kilometres thick - is exposed on the seafloor, 3000m below the surface.

Geology was always a side interest for me including taking an elective Geology course in second year university. Stuff like this is fascinating to me, and for scientists to have a chance to explore and investigate a part of the earth usually inaccessible is great news (not that the bottom of the ocean floor is very accessible itself, its just easier than beneath a few kilometers of bedrock).

(Hat Tip Unscrewing the Inscrutable)

Cowboy, Knight, Pirate, or Ninja?

, you're now logged in!

Below you'll find your test result. After, continue on to your
homescreen to discover what we're about.

continue to OkCupid homescreen >

As usual, I'm middle of the freaking road. Sigh.

an Enigma You scored 6 Honor, 6 Justice, 6 Adventure, and 5 Individuality!

You don't quite fit into any of the four archetypes. This doesn't mean you don't have honor, individuality, a sense of adventure and a belief in justice, it just means you don't feel the need to identify with such extreme personalities. This may mean that you are the unlikely hero. This may mean you are the victim. Most likely you just don't see yourself as any one of these four. Nothing wrong with that.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on Ninjinuity You scored higher than 99% on Knightlyness You scored higher than 99% on Cowboiosity You scored higher than 99% on Piratical Bent

Link: The Cowboy-Ninja-Pirate-Knight Test written by fluffy71 on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Better than Expected

You know how sometimes you have fond memories of a movie from your youth and you get it on DVD and watch it and realize just how hokey and silly it really is?

A couple months back I bought the Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer movies in a double pack DVD set and yesterday sat down in the afternoon to watch the first one. I expected it to be a hokey trip down memory lane. I was pleased to find I was wrong.

The movie turned out to be more intelligent and fun to watch than I remembered and I found myself engrossed and happy with the general plot and acting. Overall I'd give it 4 out of 5 stars.

The most interesting thing that struck me while watching this movie was the fact that all the women in it had reasonable breast sizes. In 1982 plastic surgery was far less common and nowadays almost all movie actresses in an action/adventure movie have mammary glands that strain more than just credulity. Makes me wistful for the good ole days of my youth.

Health Care 101: Wash Your Hands

I was browsing Canoe news today and came across this article about the problems hospitals are having with the bacteria Clostridium difficile. Keep a disturbing read but the part that really got me was this:

And while she has nothing but praise for the nurses and doctors, whom she believes did their best in less-than-optimal conditions, Miriam said cleaning services for hospital rooms and bathrooms was hit and miss. (C. difficile produces spores which can spread infection from surfaces.)

"It makes me feel that I would want to stay out of hospitals, and I find myself saying that to people."

The Hamilton hospitals aren't the only ones trying to control the spread of C. diff within their walls. The bacterium is common in health-care settings across the country.

"But the statistics don't matter to the person who gets it," acknowledged Dr. Mark Loeb, an infectious disease specialist at Hamilton's McMaster University.

The key to halting its transmission is good infection control, including regular handwashing by health providers between patients. Yet a recent study Loeb helped conduct at 15 hospitals across Ontario showed that less than one-third of doctors and nurses regularly wash their hands.

"The bottom line is no one's been able to develop a foolproof system to get health-care workers to wash their hands. That's really the holy grail of infection control."

[Emphasis mine]

Wow, its hard to get health care pros to wash their hands between patients? That's crazy! Did the trouble with SARS not teach them anything?

What the Hell???

No wonder the NDP are big proponents of nanny state politics... they think we're all children.
Hat Tip: Andrew

Snow Storm On the Way

Kim is scheduled for one of her rare "Girls' Weekend" with her mother and sister in Brockville this weekend. With the snow storm the meteorologists are calling for tonight and tomorrow its going to be a slow drive getting her there. I'm not too worried though; by the time we hit the road in the evening the plows will have been out and the roads salted. Funny though, I was just thinking that this winter had not seen a lot of snow and was wondering if we had seen the last of it as it melted the past couple days.

While Kim is off doing wild and crazy things with her family, I'll be visiting friends on Saturday including a visit with Andrew where I shall once again attempt to defeat him in some board game or another. Much bloodshed will occur I'm sure.