Thursday, September 7, 2017
Vet Messages
Some veterinarians have those marquees with changeable letters and messages, and Bored Panda gathers up a few of them. I think the first one is the funniest (and almost certainly true), while I'm sure there are many dogs who would dispute the last one.
Wednesday, September 6, 2017
All-American Semis
Tomorrow Venus Williams, Sloane Stephens, CoCo Vandeweghe and Madison Keys will play semifinal matches at the U.S. Open tennis tournament, making up the first all-American semi-final in the women's bracket since 1981.
That year, Martina Navratilova -- a native Czech but naturalized American -- beat Chris Evert and Tracy Austin beat Barbara Potter to reach the championship match, which Austin won. It's the first Grand Slam women's semi filled with stars and stripes since 1985.
Some fun -- and patriotic -- tennis on tap!
That year, Martina Navratilova -- a native Czech but naturalized American -- beat Chris Evert and Tracy Austin beat Barbara Potter to reach the championship match, which Austin won. It's the first Grand Slam women's semi filled with stars and stripes since 1985.
Some fun -- and patriotic -- tennis on tap!
Tuesday, September 5, 2017
Monday, September 4, 2017
Some Thinkings...Maybe
Edited 9/5/17 to add:
Several news stories point out that Mr. Obama enacted the DACA policy as a temporary measure after several legislative attempts to get a similar policy were defeated in Congress. That sort of mitigates the hits he takes on relying on executive instead of legislative action, but not by much. Before Sen. Edward Kennedy passed away, the president's party enjoyed a supermajority in both houses of Congress. And in any event, it leaves the same problem on the table of trying to do with executive action something that is properly done by legislation.
President Trump announced today that he would end an Obama administration policy called DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Then-President Obama created the policy in June 2012 to allow illegally immigrating people who were brought to the country as children to receive a deferment from prosecution or possible deportation, and to obtain work permits. The thought process was that even though these people entered the country illegally, they may have done so as infants or young children and had grown up in the United States.
Trump will delay suspending the policy for six months to give Congress time to figure out a way to replace it or to create a policy enacted through legislation. Many people are unhappy with the president's choice.
A popular argument against suspending DACA made among my circle of friends and acquaintances is a religious one. There are several passages in the Old Testament in which the Israelites, now established as a nation after their time in the wilderness, are enjoined to care for people traveling through their land. Much as Jacob's family were cared for in Egypt during a time of famine, so are the Israelites to care for other wanderers. Most of the quotations I've seen generally seem to use the passages correctly, although it's amusing to see the sudden popularity of Leviticus-based legislation among folks who usually don't have much use for its regulations regarding, say, same-sex relationships.
Even so, that argument doesn't convince me. I very much want to see my nation's culture and society reflect Biblical ideas about the worth of persons and how we treat each other, but I balk at the idea of wholesale conversion of such ideas into laws. The problem with a government that tries to draw its legal codes and structure from a religion is that before long it will want the influence to be a two-way street. I am not keen on the people who run the Department of Motor Vehicles also running my church.
One friend posted a Facebook status that said "Letting him (Trump) end DACA is evil and cruel." And here we come to the rocks on which DACA founders.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that people brought illegally over the border in their parents' arms are now, years later, more American than they are anything else. I'm also sympathetic to the idea that people shouldn't pay for other people's crimes. I haven't studied immigration policy nearly closely enough to know the best policy solution for this issue, or what laws should be enacted to carry it out.
But I am sure that whatever solution is created should come from enacted legislation rather than presidential fiat, and that's the problem with DACA as it exists now. A president created it, and a president who thinks differently can end it. Many people point out that ending the policy will expose almost 800,000 people to imprisonment or deportation, but the reason they are so exposed when they had thought themselves safe was that the person who "saved" them didn't, or at least he didn't finish the job.
In our government, the president is charged with executing the laws of our nation. Congress passes those laws. Mr. Obama used his authority to decide not to enforce certain immigration laws against a specific set of people -- children brought here illegally who are now grown. They were thus safe from prosecution while he was president, and would have remained so until a successor decided to enforce those laws. Which is what we have happening now.
My friend may or may not be right that ending DACA is evil and cruel, but because DACA came into being as a presidential whim it can depart in the same way. Mr. Obama probably was and is concerned with how the people affected by DACA are treated and about the problems their situations create for them. But he was not concerned enough to try to get a law enacted that would have made that concern outlast his term. You might say that the timing of the DACA policy, five months before a presidential election, means that it was at its core a cynical grab at Hispanic voters. This would make you more cynical than me, but not very much, because I'm pretty sure that possibility motivated some of the folks in the White House even if not Mr. Obama himself.
Whatever the cause, though, the reality is that from January 20, 2009 to January 5, 2011, Mr. Obama's party controlled the White House and both branches of Congress. Had something like DACA been a high priority, it could have been made into law at any time during those two years. Persons now upset by the end of DACA may blame Mr. Trump for ending it, but they should also blame Mr. Obama for half-assing it in the first place and giving the current president the opening.
Several news stories point out that Mr. Obama enacted the DACA policy as a temporary measure after several legislative attempts to get a similar policy were defeated in Congress. That sort of mitigates the hits he takes on relying on executive instead of legislative action, but not by much. Before Sen. Edward Kennedy passed away, the president's party enjoyed a supermajority in both houses of Congress. And in any event, it leaves the same problem on the table of trying to do with executive action something that is properly done by legislation.
President Trump announced today that he would end an Obama administration policy called DACA, which stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. Then-President Obama created the policy in June 2012 to allow illegally immigrating people who were brought to the country as children to receive a deferment from prosecution or possible deportation, and to obtain work permits. The thought process was that even though these people entered the country illegally, they may have done so as infants or young children and had grown up in the United States.
Trump will delay suspending the policy for six months to give Congress time to figure out a way to replace it or to create a policy enacted through legislation. Many people are unhappy with the president's choice.
A popular argument against suspending DACA made among my circle of friends and acquaintances is a religious one. There are several passages in the Old Testament in which the Israelites, now established as a nation after their time in the wilderness, are enjoined to care for people traveling through their land. Much as Jacob's family were cared for in Egypt during a time of famine, so are the Israelites to care for other wanderers. Most of the quotations I've seen generally seem to use the passages correctly, although it's amusing to see the sudden popularity of Leviticus-based legislation among folks who usually don't have much use for its regulations regarding, say, same-sex relationships.
Even so, that argument doesn't convince me. I very much want to see my nation's culture and society reflect Biblical ideas about the worth of persons and how we treat each other, but I balk at the idea of wholesale conversion of such ideas into laws. The problem with a government that tries to draw its legal codes and structure from a religion is that before long it will want the influence to be a two-way street. I am not keen on the people who run the Department of Motor Vehicles also running my church.
One friend posted a Facebook status that said "Letting him (Trump) end DACA is evil and cruel." And here we come to the rocks on which DACA founders.
I'm sympathetic to the idea that people brought illegally over the border in their parents' arms are now, years later, more American than they are anything else. I'm also sympathetic to the idea that people shouldn't pay for other people's crimes. I haven't studied immigration policy nearly closely enough to know the best policy solution for this issue, or what laws should be enacted to carry it out.
But I am sure that whatever solution is created should come from enacted legislation rather than presidential fiat, and that's the problem with DACA as it exists now. A president created it, and a president who thinks differently can end it. Many people point out that ending the policy will expose almost 800,000 people to imprisonment or deportation, but the reason they are so exposed when they had thought themselves safe was that the person who "saved" them didn't, or at least he didn't finish the job.
In our government, the president is charged with executing the laws of our nation. Congress passes those laws. Mr. Obama used his authority to decide not to enforce certain immigration laws against a specific set of people -- children brought here illegally who are now grown. They were thus safe from prosecution while he was president, and would have remained so until a successor decided to enforce those laws. Which is what we have happening now.
My friend may or may not be right that ending DACA is evil and cruel, but because DACA came into being as a presidential whim it can depart in the same way. Mr. Obama probably was and is concerned with how the people affected by DACA are treated and about the problems their situations create for them. But he was not concerned enough to try to get a law enacted that would have made that concern outlast his term. You might say that the timing of the DACA policy, five months before a presidential election, means that it was at its core a cynical grab at Hispanic voters. This would make you more cynical than me, but not very much, because I'm pretty sure that possibility motivated some of the folks in the White House even if not Mr. Obama himself.
Whatever the cause, though, the reality is that from January 20, 2009 to January 5, 2011, Mr. Obama's party controlled the White House and both branches of Congress. Had something like DACA been a high priority, it could have been made into law at any time during those two years. Persons now upset by the end of DACA may blame Mr. Trump for ending it, but they should also blame Mr. Obama for half-assing it in the first place and giving the current president the opening.
Sunday, September 3, 2017
Killjoys
It just finished its third season and SyFy ordered 20 more episodes, to air over two seasons and bring the story to a conclusion.
Killjoys keeps the same strengths it brought in the first season, building on them as showrunners, writers and actors become more and more familiar with their world and their characters. Our three leads are no longer bounty hunters but now work to build an army to thwart the invasion of an alien species called the Hullen. These parasitically bond with human hosts and take over their bodies. The aliens are led by a woman named Aneela who is a dead ringer for our heroine Dutch, and solving that mystery will occupy a large part of their work to find a way to defeat the Hullen.
As before, the show features some really good work by the cast, especially Luke Macfarlane as D'avin Jaqobis. Storylines for the other two leads -- his brother John and Dutch herself -- lean heavily on him and he anchors them well while building his own character too. Aaron Ashmore as John and Hannah John-Kamen as Dutch are good but a notch or two below Macfarlane, and the supporting cast ranges from solid to "able to keep up."
Killjoys is fast and funny, quippy and quick-witted, featuring likeable leads well-supported by the other characters. The acting, as mentioned, is good to very, very good.
And it makes not a lick of sense.
Entire episodes this season wind up as throw-aways, resolving or re-setting characters who haven't mattered yet and won't matter later to the main plot of fighting against the Hullen. Neither the first season's corporate oligarchy nor the second season's shadowy conspiracy nor this season's advancing armada fit together in any kind of solid backdrop against which to project real tension. The image of an onion is often used to evoke the idea that a subject or person is multi-layered, with each outer layer removed revealing a new inner layer. Killjoys is an onion made of smoke, with each removed layer showing nothing more than another impenetrable fog. Showrunners wisely limited each season to 10 episodes apiece, because even the funniest jokes wear thin when that's all that's there.
Sci-fi fandom being what it is and the internet and 2017 being what they are, devotees of the now-canceled Dark Matter have thrown shade on shows the network did renew. But Matter creator Joseph Mallozzi points out that as a SyFy-acquired rather than a SyFy-produced show, Matter's bubble was a little more fragile than the others and it was always going to be the first to go if the network wanted a change. Dark Matter's cancellation didn't make Killjoys a weaker show; it was that already in spite of hints about what it might be if showrunners spent some time connecting all of their pretty moving parts.
But whatever the opinion one has of it, Killjoys now has 20 episodes to see if it can hammer some sense out of its mare's nest of a universe and cure its narrative ADD to bring about the finish that its hardest workers have earned for it.
Saturday, September 2, 2017
Still Under Warranty?
Tuesday NASA will observe the official 40th anniversary of the launch of the two Voyager space probes. Voyager 1 launched Sept. 5, 1977, 16 days after Voyager 2. Even well after finishing their primary missions of data collection about the outer planets of our solar system, the two probes have continued to send information about its outer reaches, crossing into interstellar space in recent years and giving us our first glimpses of what it might be like when we step beyond our neighborhood.
And so it's fitting that the Astronomy Picture of the Day site at NASA gives the dynamic duo their own movie poster, seen below:
Someday we'll probably be able to go out and find those things and check out what they're doing now -- here's hoping it doesn't take another 40 years to figure out how to get there.
And so it's fitting that the Astronomy Picture of the Day site at NASA gives the dynamic duo their own movie poster, seen below:
Someday we'll probably be able to go out and find those things and check out what they're doing now -- here's hoping it doesn't take another 40 years to figure out how to get there.
Friday, September 1, 2017
Reborn
In SyFy's Dark Matter, that chance is given to six strangers who wake up on board a spaceship with no memory of who they are or how they got there, even though they seem to have retained several aspects of their personalities and skills -- many of which seem to connect to the astonishing variety of weaponry on board with them. Orginally a limited-issue comic book, Dark Matter was a part of SyFy's sudden recollection that science fiction involved more than flying sharks and bad CGI crocodile mutants. It just finished its third season, so this may have mild spoilers for viewers who haven't watched the whole show.
During the course of the first season, the crew of the Raza discovered they almost all had rather colorful pasts, and in bits and pieces began to re-learn their histories. But while they re-acquired factual knowledge about their pasts, they didn't actually regain the experiences, meaning that what had shaped them before didn't shape them now. They were able to respond to situations and circumstances very differently than they had before their memories were wiped because they were now truly new people. At first just a few begin to really explore this concept but eventually they all commit to new paths, even choosing to retain the numbers they gave each other when they awakened instead of using their old names.
At its best, Dark Matter keeps this question at the top of whatever adventure or caper the crew is handling -- who would you be if you didn't have to be you? Over three seasons that issue has fallen a bit lower down on the narrative ladder but the show's strongest episodes keep some focus on it. The exploration is helped by some really good actors in several of the roles, especially Melissa O'Neil as Two, Roger Cross as Six and Anthony Lemke as Three. Jodelle Ferland as Five and Zoie Palmer as the ship's android given a little less to work with but are still very good.
Season Three has some weaknesses, as the former Four, Alex Mallari, Jr., continues his struggle to rule the Zairon Empire as its rightful emperor, Ryo Ishida. He chose to have his memories, stored in the ship's computer, restored as a way of helping him regain his throne. But the turmoil of the court and the corporate war raging across the galaxy make that a harder task than he thought, and Ryo's ruthlessness threatens his former shipmates. Mallari is perfectly fine as a stoic warrior type, but the court intrigue storyline asks more of him than he currently has available in his actor quiver. The strands that weave through him are some of those season three weak moments.
Even so, Dark Matter was one of the network's stronger shows, with strong characters, some witty dialog and a general story arc that, while not perfectly defined, did seem to have some direction.
SyFy announced today (Sept. 1) that it cancelled the show; whether it plans for some kind of movie to resolve the Season 3 cliffhanger is as yet unknown. If we're lucky, this move will leave room for more episodes of Z Nation and Wynonna Earp, which means that much more time to read books.
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