Hedwig and the Angry Inch

I finally saw the live show on Thursday at the ReBar.

It was absolutely fantastic. Darker, and a little more bitter and twisted than the movie... most likely the combined effect of being very close to the stage in a small performance space, and also that visceral connection that eye-contact with a performer will give you.

If you get the chance, go see it. It's great.

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Halo 2 - E3 2k4

Oh. My. God.

Halo 2 Movies @ TeamXBOX

I love this time of the year. Spring is in the air. Redmond is soggy. And E3 happens in LA.

Next year, I'm there. But in the mean time.

Oh. My. God. I. Want. Halo. 2. Now.

(But I'll have to wait until November 9th)

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Moral Equivalency

Remember folks; the term “Moral Equivalent” should only be used in a discussion of the relative ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ of something. It’s a judgement call. If thing A were put on one side of Anubis’s scales, and thing B were put on the other side, and they weighed equally, then you would have something that was morally equivalent to something else.

It is not meant for use in technical discussions.

Saying that this for loop:

for (int i = 0; i < 20; ++i)
{
}

…is the “moral equivalent” of this while loop:

int i = 0;

while (i < 20)
{
    ++i;
}

… is a pointless statement. What you really mean is that they’re equivalent to one another, not that they’re the moral equivalent of one another. The while loop is not evil. The for loop is not a noble act equivalent in nobility to the while loop. They’re just equivalent.

Next time on pedant’s corner: mute discussion points, things you do anyway irregardless, and if worse comes to worse I’ll look at similarly mangled other phrases. Capeesh? (sic)

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#rants, #meanings, #words
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Seattle Monorail Project - A Mismanaged Waste of Cash?

The Seattle Monorail Project aims to build a monorail system in Seattle to reduce traffic, get people from place to place... you know... the kind of thing that most infrastructure projects in a big city aim at doing.

How are they funding this? By putting more taxes on vehicle registration. Sounds fair enough, right?

Well, never mind that Seattle voters already decided that paying more than $30 for car tabs was not something they wanted to do. (But hey... since when did the Washington state government listen to their voters? The population of Seattle voted against the new stadium - but it was still built. Who paid for it? The voters. With more taxes). What I care about is this:

They're already throwing the money away.

Everyone in Seattle already knows that there's going to be a monorail built. If they don't, they've been living under a rock - or not reading The Stranger, who have been covering the Monorail for a very very long time now. If you ask a random guy on the street what he thinks about the Monorail, his first reaction is not going to be "What Monorail?". He might have other opinions, but a vacant stare is not going to be one of them.

So all that said and done, and given that this is being paid for by taxpayers' money, why the hell is Seattle paying to play adverts on the radio for the Monorail project ("Breaking Ground This Fall!!!"), or more egregiously, paying for television adverts during primetime? During Survivor no less. That advertising ain't cheap.

They're already over budget. Stop the insanity.

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