kalen's New Writeups

District 9 (review)

2009-08-19T03:18:48Z

NO SPOILERS. Because it is actually possible to write reviews without them. A review is not a synopsis.

You know those films where the alien invasion/contact is, after initial setbacks, defeated/handled by some super-competent shadowy government agency that had been set up years ago to deal with just this kind of science fiction plot?

This isn't one of those films.

This isn't even one of those films where, after being beat to hell and back, the plucky humans defeat the alien menace with computer viruses, or real viruses, or just by opening an alien-sized can of whoop-ass.

In this film, the "this changes everything" alien contact happens, and the governments of the world haven't the first clue about how to deal with it, and spend 20 years bickering over what course of action to take. Remind you of anything?

In this film, when a private corporation gains a limited contract to "house" the aliens (the government can't do anything,…

anarchist army (essay)

2009-07-24T09:23:55Z

Words are tricky beasts, aren't they? I mean, even a simple word that we all understand, like push, can mean advance or squeeze or tense certain muscles or political group or, simply, push-as-in-door.

It gets even trickier (and much, much sillier) when we insist on single meanings for complex, multipurpose words like anarchy, and all of the words made from that root, like anarchist.

One of the meanings of anarchy is, indeed, chaos. As in the opposite of order. But it would be a willfully ignorant (or irreparably stupid) person who assumed that what anarchists want, or what anarchism is about, was chaos. Kind of like the helpful husband in the joke who says "Push, darling!" and whose wife screams "Do you see any doors around here?!" In other words, while it may be effective ad hominem, it's just a joke to equate anarchism with chaos or disorder. This neatly dispenses with nearly 80% of the anecdotes-posing-as-intellectual-discussion that comprises the bulk of…

masochist (person)

2008-12-08T10:03:13Z

masochist (plural masochists)

1. (n) someone who obtains pleasure from receiving punishment and/or pain

2. (n) someone who writes poetry on everything2

Nunc est bibendum (essay)

2008-11-28T07:43:47Z

A relatively famous phrase from the Odes (or Carmina) by Quintus Horatius Flaccus (better known to us English speakers as Horace), this useful Latin means, simply, "Now is the time for drinking."

Webbing about, one can find it translated as "Now it is the time for drinking" but I feel that's perhaps a poor translation, as the extra word strips some of the poetry -- not to mention insistent immediacy! -- from the original, and Horace has always inhabited the very first rank of Latin poets, one might even say the primus pilus.

To understand a little, perhaps, of the mind of the man who wrote in a hundred different ways "Carpe diem!" (also one of Horace's, also from the Odes), you need look no further than a single decision taken in the youth of his long, 57-year Roman life: he joined Brutus's army to fight against Julius Caesar's named heir, Augustus (or Octavian as he was known then).

Since the followers of Brutus professed to…

Netbook (thing)

2008-11-26T06:25:46Z

OK, so here we have assembled two end-user's perspectives on netbooks, and what could be described as an anti-consumerist perspective, all of which are totally valid. Allow me to offer a third way. Allow me, your humble narrator, to present the business case for large-scale business adoption of netbooks. First, I'll lay out the issues, then offer an executive summary, and conclude with a live business example.

Durability

Fragile moving parts (i.e. hard drives and DVD drives) and screen hardware (current-generation LCD) are utterly incompatible with the rigors of hand transport. Look at the box your portable computer came in. Examine the several inches of airspace and the thick, almost-excessive-looking white polystyrene packing system. Now examine the bag you propose to transport your laptop in every day. Case closed (pun intended). There are two classes of executive laptop: dropped, and not-yet-dropped.

Workload…

Please don't send your resume (essay)

2008-11-21T08:42:58Z

At some time in the future you will probably be looking for work.

That statement isn't intended as a political theory, an economic forecast, or even a threat. It's just a plain fact. It recognizes that the meanings of common words like "work" and "job" have changed, and some of those changes mean that it's very unlikely, whatever it is you do or plan to do, that you'll go your whole career from now on without at least one job-seeking experience.

And that's when someone just like me comes in. Unless you're a programmer it's unlikely to actually be me, but you never know. See above. "Someone like me" for the purposes of this essay, means "a human resources drone". Digression: if the singular for human resources person is "drone", then what is the collective noun? I like to think it's "borg". A borg of HR drones. But maybe that is just me...

The other side of the desk.

One of the (…