The O.C. = Zzzzz...

Ok…I admit…I've been watching the show regularly since it started…it's a guilty pleasure. But man, there are times you just wanna jump in the screen and crack some heads. If you watched last night's episode…The writers are trying too hard to make Ryan his bad-boy self again, and it doesn't really come off as credible. I wish they'd make him stop getting pissed off at little things. The guy comes from a rough neighborhood so you'd think the little stupid nuances wouldn't bother him so much. But touch his girl or look at her funny, and he'll want to give you a shiner on the side of your head…The Ryan Atwood I liked was the guy whose previous life from Chino kept catching up to him. It was great to see how he dealt with it, especially where he is now. Marissa Cooper needs to suck it up and learn to take a few insults, and give some back. Seth isn't really Cohen-like…he's more or less dragging his feet…the only character that seems credible is Summer. Jimmy Cooper keeps sailing between the same story lines (he's gone again). Julie will always be Julie…show some heart woman! Sandy's cool but Kirsten needs to get off the naïvette road…it's just dumb.

Here's hoping things pick up on one of the few shows I watch these days…(Curse you Boston Legal for showing up on Tuesdays…)

Flush your damn toilets!!

I walk into the bathroom…and half the stalls have human waste in them. Why, oh why, can't people flush their crap down the toilets they use? Is it so hard? Hell, even if the automatic feature doesn't work, push the button or pull the lever!! What sort of mentality does a person need to not flush their toilet? "Oh…darn. The auto-flush isn't working…someone else can flush my #$%* down the toilet for me". Uh, no. You ate food…and the waste from that food makes the crap you dispense in the toilet, meaning it is your responsibility to deal with it. In short…YOU FLUSH YOUR OWN CRAP!!

Bengals vs. Texans

The boys should go 4-0 against the Texans this weekend. And if they don't…something is very, very wrong.

The team's been getting a lot of press lately and some are even calling them a playoff team 3 weeks into the season. Granted, they've been playing really well, but they haven't really had a true test of their full potential yet. Week 1 was the Browns, with a new head coach. Week 2 was the Vikings, with a Culpepper without a Moss, a new owner and a new offensive coordinator. Week 3 was the Bears, with a rookie quarterback in the starting position. They haven't played a solid, established team yet. Week 4 is the Texans, who (for all intensive purposes) are ranked last in the league. Week 5 will send the team to Jacksonville, beginning their real season, where they'll play some decent teams to test all the improvements. Pittsburgh will pit our ferocious secondary against Big Ben and his receiving core. Willie Parker will test the run defense. That'll be a game to watch.

I'm happy for the team and it's doing the city good, but all this hype, in my opinion, is a bit premature when you look at the rest of their schedule. But, in the end…Who dey!! In Marvin We Trust!!

Tom DeLay indicted

"A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, forcing the House majority leader to temporarily relinquish his post."

From The Associated Press. The full report is on MSNBC (linked in title) and other media outlets.

Jumbo Calimari Tonight!

Japanese scientists photographed a live giant squid near the Ogasawara Islands, 500 miles south of Tokyo, Japan. Scientists have always found remains of giant squid, washed ashore in high latitude regions such as Canada and Japan or near Tasmania and Australia. Researchers followed groups of sperm whales, in hopes of seeing a live giant squid. Sperm whales hunt the creatures for food.

And that's about it.

I don't know…I thought it was neat :-)

Pointing the fingers...

Mike Brown was called to testify before a congressional hearing on Tuesday over FEMA's response to Hurricane Katrina. Brown said that "My biggest mistake was not recognizing by Saturday (August 27th) that Louisiana is dysfunctional". The Former FEMA director blamed Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin for not calling the evacuation of New Orleans sooner. Brown went on to receive harsh criticism from the 6-person House investigative panel, largely Republican. Democrats largely boycotted the hearings as protest, pushing for a vote to create an independent panel, akin to the 9/11 hearings.They probably won't get it, but I salute the effort.

Anyway, the exchange got pretty heated between Brown and the panel. "So I guess you want me to be the superhero, to step in there and take everyone out of New Orleans," said a heated Brown. Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., seemed to be the most outspoken against the former director. "What I wanted you to do is do your job and coordinate," said Shays. Brown continues to serve FEMA as a consultant for Katrina review, until October 10th.

Frankly, the guy deserves all the criticism going his way. This was a hurricane, an event of nature that was relatively predictable in its movements and the damage it would cause. Brown says he didn't do enough to help coordinate Nagin and Blanco. Well, that's essentially his job. Coordinate state, local, and federal officials to generate some sort of effective response and recovery effort after the Hurricane passes. FEMA's role isn't to provide emergency personnel, medical supplies, food, etc. Its role is to train personnel at all levels for disaster management and prepare an effective response. It failed miserably on both counts in this case. A 2001 report by FEMA listed 3 of the most likely disasters to hit the United States: 1) Terrorist attack on New York City 2) A hurricane hitting the city of New Orleans 3) A massive earthquake in San Fransisco. 2 out of 3…great. Blanco and Nagin will have some partial blame to their own respective responses, but Brown screwed up and all eyes are on him with just reason.

The Houston Chronicle reported this back in 2001. The FEMA report, in all my searching, cannot be found, for whatever reason. So my question is this. If FEMA knew that a major hurricane was heading towards New Orleans and they declared over 3 years earlier that this was a catastrophic scenario…how could they have failed in coordinating and training for an effective response? Short answer? The director was a douche bag who had very limited disaster management experience and wasn't qualified to handle something of this scale. Tack that one up to the current administration. The focus has been on combating terrorism ever since 9/11. And that's understandable. But if a hurricane hitting New Orleans is on the top 3 list of most likely major disasters to happen in the US, where's the preparation? Where's the training that FEMA was to provide to emergency personnel and to state and local officials? If FEMA had done what it was suppose to do, even a shred of its duties, the response would not have been so piss poor because the right people would have had, at least, an idea on how to respond rather than panic on national media while the city basically killed itself.

An Idea...

So one of my last posts was about the Nintendo Revolution and its new control scheme. Nintendo always says it wants to branch out to new market areas. What if they introduced the Revolution to unconventional markets, such as the health care industry? Yeah yeah, the mantra has been that it's for gamers, but a motion-detection control setup like the Revolution could have a great impact on more than just the gaming industry.

I'll take the field of psychology for example. One of the most common psychological cases are anxiety disorders, of which a great deal are phobias. Virtual reality technology has been used in clinical settings to help treat people with disorders such as Aracnophobia (fear of spiders), Acrophobia (fear of heights), and even social phobias. It has shown to be successful in treatment, even with disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, not all anxiety clinicians can afford to shell out the high price of VR equipment, being around $6000.

With Nintendo's new gizmo, programmers can design clinician-specific treatment programs that utilize the motion detection and rumble sensation features of the Revolution 'remote'. And since the system is geared towards the broader household market, it won't cost clinicians thousands of dollars to use it in practice. Let's take a patient that has aracnophobia. A scene could be generated in which a spider is present. The remote controls a virtual 'hand' on the screen. The object is allow the spider to climb onto your hand for a certain length of time. The controller can be kept out of view from the client, so all they see is the image on the screen. The rumble sensation of the controller could be used to generate a touch sensation when the spider climbs onto the 'hand'. Granted, this is all theoretical and there is the disadvantage of not attaining the same level of immersion that a VR set gives. But if tested, and if it seems to work, the application of Nintendo's new tech could branch out into other medical professions and beyond, into other fields.

It's a possibility...

Senator Affleck...WTF?!

Now…this has to be a cry of desperation or some sort of joke beyond reason. Benator?! No…No…No… I don't even care if it is Virginia that is tossing out the idea…no. Governor Mark Warner backed out of the Senate race and so the Virginia Democrats are looking for a big name to go against GOP up-and-comer Sen. George Allen. Ben Affleck?! Hell, get Matt Damon instead! The man has a partial Harvard Education and he's in better movies!

Need I remind people that Affleck was in Gigli and Daredevil?! That alone should make Virginia Democrats think twice!

Nintendo vs. The Other Guys...

Here’s my take on the current situation of Nintendo. The House that Mario built has always been in the business of constant innovation, particularly in the control mechanics of its gaming systems. It was the first to introduce the directional pad on the original Nintendo Entertainment System. The Super Nintendo brought about the diamond-button layout, now prevalent on all controllers of the major systems. It also introduced the L and R shoulder buttons. The N64 brought about the analog control stick, ushering in the golden-standard of 3D control for consoles. It also gave us the trigger system.

And now with the Nintendo DS, we’ve been given touch-screen functionality as well as voice input, tilt control, dual screen game mechanics, etc. So while Nintendo has been a constant innovator of game systems and even games, it’s never reached. Ever since the Nintendo 64, the company has shied away from the approach of flashy graphics and big explosions, settling for more unique styles of play and more child-friendly fare. Nintendo has lost a great deal of the market to Microsoft and mainly Sony in the past decade, because its library of recent games has few titles appealing to the 18-34 year old male demographic.

The next battle of the console wars saw Microsoft and Sony take the standard road of upping the machine power, adding a few features here and there, and improving the graphic quality of the games. Otherwise, both the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 are the same machine. Gamers will play with the standard dual stick control scheme of the last generation, just with shinier looking games. Nintendo took a rather different approach. Although the full specs of the ‘Revolution’ (tentative title) are not apparent, the most drastic change is the controller, which Nintendo President Saturo Iwata said would revolutionize the way we play games. And frankly, Nintendo may live up to that promise.

The control, unveiled at the 2005 Tokyo Gaming Show in September, is a departure from the boomerang, dual analog stick approach being used by Microsoft and Sony. It essentially looks like a simplified remote control. It has fewer buttons than the competitor controllers and an expansion port on the bottom, but what sets it apart is the ability to accurately detect hand movement, on all axes. Imagine a fishing game. To play, all you’d have to do is make the motion with the controller in hand. Playing a baseball game? Swing the controller and watch the bat move accordingly. Shooter? Point at your target and simply push the trigger to fire. Sword fighting? Swing, jab, parry, thrust, etc. The expansion port allows for various controller modules to be added on to adjust for a variety of game types. Sounds really cool.

But what Nintendo now needs to do with this potentially amazing technology is apply it for all gamers to use, including the hardcore crowd. The philosophy behind the new design was to expand the gaming community to those people that wouldn’t normally play…especially at the sight of controls with a gazillion buttons. With this new scheme, people should be able to just pick up the controller and play. Right now, the 18-34 demographic is the critical market. Nintendo would do well not to forget that. It has the potential to market this new technology to designers that makes games for this crowd. It certainly could revolutionize the first-person shooter genre of games (FPS…and for noobs…think Doom :-p) for consoles. And so while Nintendo wants people to branch out and come to it, the company, too, must also branch out and tap the markets that it generally avoids, for whatever reason.

Attract the current gamers. If they get the right games out and the technology works well, we could see a shift in market share back to Nintendo. The potential is there. At the same time, slowly bring in new gamers that want simple pick-up-and-play games. Do that, and the Revolution will be at hand.

A Decent Weekend

Missed out on the rally this weekend, but otherwise it was good. Went out for ice cream Friday night. Saturday just did stuff at home. My cousin from Jersey called Saturday, saying she was in town, I guess for work. I was planning on going to hang out with her and her colleagues, but she didn’t call back until pretty late and duty at the 7-11 called on Sunday morning. C’est la vie.

Sunday…FOOTBALL…was good. Ended up going to DC to hang with friend Dave (aka Mojo). We ended up watching the 40-Year Old Virgin…I shall post my review later...maybe. In short: ridiculously funny and it earned the R-rating thoroughly. Came back and everyone else was gone to some dinner. Played some Warcraft (got thrashed in Arathi Basin in the level 30 group…idiot Alliance…) and watched some Sunday Night Football. San Diego was playing the Giants. LT! LT! LT! LaDainian Tomlinson is the next Barry Sanders. The man just dances on the field at a frenetic pace. 21 carries for 192 yards and 3 TDs!! And he can throw ‘em too! It was the 3^rd quarter (I think) when he lobbed a 26 yard pass to Keenan McCardell for a TD. And let’s give credit where credit is due. LT has a beast of a blocker named Lorenzo Neal. I suppose originally a fullback, the man’s primary responsibility now is to create holes for LT…and he’s damn good at it. Hell, he even picks up the slack for LT at times, with a pounding 9-yrd run in the 4^th, setting up one of Tomlinson’s TDs for the night. San Diego’s offensive scheme is clear…give Ladainian Tomlinson the ball and make sure he runs behind Lorenzo Neal. End of story. Eli Manning is probably crying right now.

Bengals vs. Bears: 24 – 7!! The Bengals are now 3-0 and have been punishing the opposition. It was a good test for the offense this week due to the Bears’ stingy defense. Palmer and company did what it had to do, but it was the Bengals D that really came out to play. Their 2^nd straight game with 5 interceptions (I think 6 turnovers total) on rookie quarterback Kyle Orton…so much for the hot streak. I was complaining (yes…even in a win…I find something to complain about) how the offense didn’t put up a lot of yardage. However my brother was quick to point out that they didn’t really have a lot of field to cover. 5 interceptions, most putting you in Bears territory, don’t give you a lot of opportunity to rack up the yardage. But hey, a win is a win. No interceptions for Carson makes for a good day in the Jungle. Houston’s coming to town next week, which should put us at 4-0 and then it’s onto Jacksonville for the Sunday Night game. In Marvin We Trust!! Who-Dey!!

Oh…In other NFL news: Adam Vinatieri’s magic foot (and the Randle El lateral from hell) puts the Patriots over the Steelers, 23-20. David Akers does the same for the Eagles (that man is steel). Culpepper breaks 300 yards for a win…finally. Farve and Green Bay are 0-3 (wah?!). “Cadillac” Williams leads the Bucs to 3-0 (third game the rookie’s broken 100 yards rushing…NFL record I think). Peyton Manning still hasn’t broken 300 yards passing and has only 2 TDs so far (Hell, Eli’s doing better), but the Colts are 3-0. And if you had Shaun Alexander on your fantasy team…you lucky $%^@#&!*...

Monday Night: Broncos vs. Chiefs. Should be a good one!

Undergraduates and Psychology

There's this underlying problem in the field of psychology. There aren't enough psychologists to serve the areas that need mental health services the most, such as rural and small town areas. Everyone's in the cities where the money and neurotic folk live. Possible solution? Undergraduate psychology students.

Going through the undergraduate program at the University of Cincinnati (UC), I saw a huge amount of students enrolled in the psychology program. It was in the top 5 of the most populous programs at our school. Was it because students were interested in mental health and behavior? I don't think so. The program faced this stigma that made it one of the 'easy' degrees to get. It was a way out for a lot of students that didn't know what to do. Kids signed up to just get a degree, hopefully get a job, and then figure out the rest of their life later. Of course, when you actually enroll in the program and go through the courses…it is anything but 'easy'. These 'lassez faire' students faced professors and faculty highly dedicated to their field. But the merging of the two in classrooms doesn't really light the fire in the students…instead they deem their professors hard or zealous even (Dr. Warm :-p).

The interested in the field really isn't pushed or engrained. Yet there is so much application of psychology in multiple fields, that, if undergraduate programs showed their students this…maybe some would find an interest. I got lucky and took a course on the Psychology of Urban Life, which discussed how city and community layouts affected the social interactions of the people that lived in them. It was a fascinating subject and really got me interested in that topic area. So I stuck with psychology. My next stroke of luck was getting an internship at the American Psychological Association (APA), where the vast applications of psychology and current issues come to the forefront.

Of course, not everyone undergrad psychology student has this opportunity. Many leave the field after graduation, because they don't have an interest in it. They are floating in the wind with a degree they don't know how to use. And I've heard this isn't a problem only at UC. The profession does a great disservice to itself and its potential future when it leaves them on their own. In contrast, graduate students get all the love and attention in the world, from schools and APA (at least a great deal more than undergrads). Representation on professional boards and committees, awards programs and honors for top grad students, publications devoted providing resources and publishing works of grad students, etc.

Undergrads get squat. No professional assistance from APA. Their school programs don't require courses to instill some sort of attachment to the field or provide views on current issues and applications of psychology. Limited opportunites exist after undergraduate education to apply what you've learned in psychology.

If the field wants to get more psychologists out there, it would do well to serve their undergraduates in a more professional manor. Build that interest in them. Show them what psychology is capable of and how it can be applied. Provide them with opportunities after undergrad to actually use that degree. This can include such things as shadowing programs, research internships or assistance positions, or even advocacy work. APA needs to address the issue and work with universities to draft programs that can provide such activities and appropriate coursework. Students may not get into psychology for the right reasons, but they can certainly leave the program with them…and hopefully go on to serve where the service is truly needed.

Bengals vs. Bears

I'm callin' the Bengals 24-17. It'll be a good game, but Marvin shall lead us through!!

Who-dey!! In Marvin We Trust!!

Firefox less secure?

There was a security report indicating that Firefox allowed twice as many security breeches than Internet Explorer. So now people are taking arms against Firefox, saying that it is less secure than IE. Now…if the numbers in the link are accurate, that's a hell of a lot of security issues for Firefox. Bad thing. But let's take a step back. Internet Explorer has been in existence for more or less a decade now. Firefox was officially launched by the Mozilla foundation in late 2004, with two years of beta and alpha work on the browser. Less time released generally means more bugs to work out, as with any new software release. I'm not surprised if Firefox had more security flaws. But, how many of those are exploited? IE has been a breeding ground for hackers and virus gurus, just loving the fact that the browser is tied into the Windows operating systems (hence, why you can't uninstall the damn thing). When you view the drives of your computer, you're viewing it through IE. It's kind of like the glass of the window. You look out and the world can look in. Read about the most recent worms or viruses that made national headlines and they all come from IE security flaws, which have been exploited. Firefox hasn't really had such media attention, probably because it tends to takes care of problems before they occur.

In the little-under one year Firefox has been released, it has released more patches and security updates than Microsoft has in the near 4 years IE 6 has been available. 4 years?! And we're still on IE6?! Microsoft churns out their Office suite faster than that! Bottom line is that Firefox is still the way to go if you want clean and considerate browsing. The pop-up blocker is first-rate and easy to configure. The security features make sense. It's not like Microsoft's security center, which blocks its own browser (shoulda taken a screenshot of that…). The bugs in Firefox will dwindle at a faster rate simply because the software is open-source and more than a handful of people work on it. You can bet on a number of new security updates and patches from Mozilla for their flagship browser…keep 'em comin'! In Firefox I trust!

Anti-War Rally in DC this weekend.

There’s an anti-war rally this weekend, being organized by United for Peace. The dates are September 24^th – 26^th. The rally is being held in Washington, DC. It’s gotten a lot of press so there are sure to be a lot of people. Cindy Sheenan, now seemingly the face of the anti-war movement, will be there to speak. Activities begin 10:00am on Saturday and will continue through out the weekend and all day Monday. Click the title for the link to the United for Peace website for more information. Hope to see ya there!

-Mad Monkey

'A Bridge to Nowhere'

You gotta love this. Alaska is spending over $200 million dollars on a bridge to connect the tiny island of Gravina (population 50) to the mainland, near the town of Ketchikan, Alaska (population 8,000). Watching a bit of Anderson Cooper last night, this 'pet project' of Congressman Donald Young was seen as questionable to quite a few people. In light of the devastation from Hurricane Katrina and the looming impact of Hurricane Rita, Congress has been busy devising measures to come up with money to pay for the damages and rebuild New Orleans and other devistated areas. Young seems intent on keeping his project alive, saying critics are ignorant of the issue.

...I don't know how ignorant you have to see what's going on. It's a bridge...costing over $200 million dollars to connect an island with a population of 50...I repeat, 50...to a mainland town with a population of 8,000. This isn't exactly something that's going to galvanize the local economy or have a shread of impact on a national sense. It's not a bridge connecting two major metropolitan areas, perhaps in hopes of easing the commute of workers between cities, etc. I'm all for having a means off the island...but $200 million? Come on. But in a state of about than 650,000 people, I guess 8,000 seems to be a chunk of voters that need some satisfaction...(ehem...less than 2%).

Some further perspective: The neighboring state of Washington received $230 million for major renovations on an earthquake-ravaged viaduct in Seattle that carries over 100,000 vehicles on a daily basis. Young gets $223 million for the Gravina bridge AND gets another $229 million for a bridge in Anchorage.

Now word is that Ketchikan is a hot spot for cruise ships to come and port. So...let's say people get off the ship...are they going to stay in Ketchikan or use the pretty, new bridge to hoof it over to a town of 50?

Need I go on? I think I will. Katrina is racking up a repair bill of around $200 billion. The Feds are scrounging around for money. I think 'pet projects' such as this warrant a hold and a swift kick in the rear to anyone that says..."Hell no...our $200 million bridge is more important". It's not like there is no way off the island as it is. There is a ferry that operates between Gravina and the mainland. It's not exactly swift, but there's something there. Maybe after we've settled a bit on more high priority issues, we can build a bridge for the 50 peeps in little Gravina...costing (hopefully) a little less than $200 million...

Hi all,

So this is the first of hopefully many posts about a great many things. Mainly just rants and raves about what I think about and whatever else comes to mind. Feel free to comment, etc. Still formatting a bit, so I'll have some credible posts up here soon enough. Peace!

Mad Monkey
-Omar