aubreyturner.org

There is a format war underway for the next generation, high-definition DVD standard.  Interestingly enough, one of the major players in determining which format ultimately wins in the marketplace may be the porn industry.

One of the next big issues in which pornographers could play a deciding role is the future of high-definition DVDs.

The multibillion-dollar industry releases about 11,000 titles on DVD each year, giving it tremendous power to sway the battle between two groups of studios and technology companies competing to set standards for the next generation.

“It’s sort of like the buzz around the campfire,” said Peter Warren, DVD editor at industry bible Adult Video News.

One side of the divide is a standard called Blu-ray backed by consumer electronics heavyweights like Sony, Philips Electronics and Thomson and movie studios Fox and Disney. Blu-ray offers storage up to 50 gigabytes, enough for nine hours of high-definition content.

On the other side of the fight is HD DVD, which has much the same structure as current DVDs and, backers say, is cheaper and easier to manufacture as a result. Supporters of the disc format and its 30GB capacity include companies like NEC, Toshiba and Warner Home Video.

While the porn industry may influence the format war, it got me to thinking about another issue.  I’ve heard that HD really brings out details and any flaws will be magnified tremendously.  I wonder if HD is really such a good thing for this industry….

Perhaps it’s just an accident of perception, but I’ve noticed that vehicles don’t act “quite right” after a panic stop.  Friday night on the way back from the range I was almost in an accident at 1709 (Keller Parkway) and Keller-Smithfield road.  It’s a dangerous intersection due to the fact that the left-turn lanes are slightly offset (similar to 1709 and Rufe Snow), which means that people turning from 1709 onto Keller-Smithfield don’t always see traffic in the oncoming inside lane (especially if there is a vehicle waiting in the oncoming left turn lane).

Someone in a Suburban who was turning North onto Keller-Smithfield pulled out in front of me just as I was approaching the intersection.  The speed limit there is 45-mph, so a full speed collision would have been pretty messy*.  Fortunately, I hit the brakes as hard as I could (I felt the antilock system pulsing) and the other driver floored it to get out of my way.  Between those two actions we missed having a collision by just a couple of feet.  But afterwards I noticed that the engine wasn’t running quite right until I was a block or so away.  I wonder if the sudden G-forces of the deceleration had an effect on the fuel system?

Anyhow, what irks me is that I had absolutely nowhere to go without hitting someone in this situation.  There was another car in the oncoming left turn lane, so even if I could have somehow gone over the curb (the lanes are divided at this point) without losing control I couldn’t have gone there.  And to top it off, some idiot in another Suburban decided this would be a good time to turn right onto 1709 from Keller-Smithfield (i.e. I was in the left lane and he turned into the right lane).  If I had hit the first Suburban, I guarantee I would have pushed it into the second one, compounding the carnage. 

The problem with these two intersections and people turning left seems to be pretty commonplace.  It seems that there is at least one serious accident at either intersection every month (that I have personally come across—I don’t know the actual stats).  Whoever designed these intersections made them look pretty (like everything else in the silly Keller “master plan”), but they’re very dangerous.  Until they’re redesigned, the simple solution would seem to be to allow left turns only on a green arrow.  But I doubt that that change would get made, since people would complain about having to wait two or three minutes for the turn signal.

I’ve always been wary of these intersections, to the point of slowing down slightly if someone was waiting to turn from the oncoming direction.  I’m not sure how much more wary I can be without stopping completely, but I suppose this is a good reminder to be especially cautious at these intersections.

*  My Avalanche has a curb weight of 5600-lbs and the Suburban is listed at 5200-lbs.  Advantage: Avalanche, by a nose.  However, I suspect a broadside hit to the Suburban would probably negate a lot of the advantages of its weight.  Regardless, I’d prefer to avoid such unplanned vehicular meetings if at all possible.

I think the advent of digital controls for audio devices has been something of a two-edged sword.  While they often offer easier and more precise control in some areas, the one where many of them fall flat is in volume control.

Of particular annoyance to me is the fact that most digital volume controls operate based on a digital step scale of volume versus a continuously variable scale like the older potentiometer-based controls.  This means that even if you have a volume control knob on a digital device, it likely just operates by steps.  If the designers of the device took this into account, then the steps are very small and the device simulates a potentiometer pretty well.  The problem comes in when the designers of the device use larger steps.  The one that’s been bugging me of late is the volume control on the radio in my Avalanche.  It’s a factory system and I just can’t seem to find the right volume level, especially when I have someone in the vehicle with me.  It’s either slightly too low or slightly too high.  Clicking the button on the steering wheel or moving the knob on the face both act the same way: they move the volume by one quantum at a time in either direction.  There is no in-between or fine control.

Unfortunately, given the incestuous* way in which the factory radio is wired into my truck, it’d be a real pain (not to mention expensive) to replace it.

* I’ve got the 6-CD changer with XM radio and the Bose system in this truck.  It also has rear-seat audio controls and OnStar.  In addition, in 2003 Avalanches and newer, the radio is used for the door chime system.  If you remove the factory radio you remove the chimes that warn you about leaving the headlights on, that your key is in the ignition, and in my case, the chime that tells me the 5-second delay locks have been activated.  If replaced, the best that can be done is to put in a new head unit with its own XM receiver and an adapter that lets the OnStar use the front speakers.  The rear audio controls would be inoperative as would all the chimes.  But even this has to be done carefully, as the whole damn thing is on the vehicle’s data bus, which can interoperate with the Body Control Module and the Powertrain Control Module (!).  The fuse to the above adapter has to be pulled if they reflash either of these or the modules can be made inoperative.  In this case, losing the PCM would turn the Avalanche into a 5000-lb paperweight.  All in all it’s just too much damn trouble to replace it, so I’ll just keep being annoyed by the volume or maybe get used to it in a few years.  It’s just not the sort of thing you notice on a test drive, though, although I will pay more attention in the future.

The February issue of Reason magazine arrived today (the new issue is not online, unfortunately).  On the cover was a blurb titled “Humanizing gun nuts.”  It is for a review of the book Shooters (Myths And Realities of America’s Gun Cultures) by Abigail A. Kohn.  Of particular interest were some quotes from the book’s preface.  I’d had this book sitting on my bookshelf for a while, intending to “get around to it” one of these days.  This prompted me to get started.

But for your edification I thought I’d share with you this excerpt from the preface which highlights the extreme anti gun and anti gun owner bias in the academic world. 

When I began my research into gun enthusiasm and gun ownership in the mid-1990s, I learned that a number of my academic colleagues held very similar views.  One colleague said (trying to sound positive) that I was commiting a real social service by researching “such disgusting people.”  Another informed me that because neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the Ku Klux Klan all obviously loved their guns, until I recognized that the phenomenon of gun enthusiasm was intrinsically racist, I was an apologist for racist violence.  A third colleague told me frequently that she found gun owners utterly repellant, and she was surprised (and more than a little suspicious) that I didn’t find them repellant as well.  She insisted that until I recognized and acknowledged the ugliness and inherent pathology of gun enthusiasm, my research was disrepectful to victims of gun violence.

The bigotry of the above statements is breathtaking.  If anyone wonders why gun owners regard academics with barely concealed contempt, perhaps this will help their understanding.  It’s also a good reason not to trust anything they have to say.

I’m trying to withhold judgment on the book, but I’m only a few pages into it and I already find myself yelling at the author.  Despite her attempts to delve into the world of shooters, she doesn’t seem to get very far.  Or perhaps I’m just more sensitive to anti gun bias, since I’m somewhere to the right of the NRA when it comes to gun rights.  I often find it laughable when I see someone decry the “hard line” position of the NRA, since I tend to think of them as wimps most of the time.

And that may be the key to the problem I have with the author.  She speaks of the issues being “complex” and dismisses as “ideologues” those who see them as “black and white.”  From my perspective, there are simply certain areas of life that aren’t up for popular vote or subject to the will of the majority.  The right to keep and bear arms is one of those things.  As long as people talk about a national “dialogue” on guns, then that signals to me that they don’t get it.  I usually regard this as a backdoor path to more gun control, which we’ve had quite enough of in this country, thank you very much.

I hadn’t been paying close attention before, but I noticed this morning that the house number of the last house on my block is 357.  Given my interest in guns, I think this would have been a cool address.

It would probably be even cooler if it was on Magnum Street….

It appears that the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) is pushing a Petition for Rulemaking to the Department of Interior that would finally force them to at least consider the issue of allowing permit holders to carry firearms in national parks. 

From their home page:

VCDL has a Petition for Rule Making (PRM) ready to present to the Department of the Interior. The PRM will force the Department of The Interior (DOI) to consider allowing permit holders to carry in National Parks. They will have to hold a public comment period and we will advise when that happens so that you can let them know how law-abiding gun owners feel about this important issue.

For now we need as many national and state organizations to sign on to it as possible. We are NOT looking for individuals to be a petitioner, but individuals should contact their state and national organizations to encourage them to sign on to the PRM ASAP.

National and state gun organizations: Print out the entire petition so you can read it and fill in the last page. You can then either fax the last page to me at (804) 739-8376 or you can mail the last page to me at:

Philip Van Cleave
VCDL
5509 West Bay Court
Midlothian, VA 23112-2506

I will be sending this in around February 1st, 2005, so please get the signed pages to me as soon as possible.

Thanks!

At present it is illegal by federal rule to carry a firearm in a national park, even if the park is in a state where you would otherwise be allowed to do so by state law.  As I wrote previously I’d like to see the federal government obey state laws in this regard, rather than ignore the rights of the citizens.

My friend Rodney sent me this link, concerning a new sheriff in Georgia who fired 27 sheriff’s office employees and had snipers on the roof while they were escorted out the door.

JONESBORO, Georgia (AP)—On his first day on the job, the new sheriff called 27 employees into his office, stripped them of their badges, fired them, and had rooftop snipers stand guard as they were escorted out the door.

The move Monday by Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill provoked an angry reaction and prompted a judge to order him to rehire the employees.

“It appears … that employees of the Sheriff were terminated without cause” and in violation of the county’s civil service rules, Judge Stephen Boswell wrote in granting a 30-day restraining order.

At first I thought that maybe he was just ruffling feathers a bit with some housecleaning, but reading further sent my blood pressure to dangerous levels when I read this bit:

The firings had a racial overtone. Hill was among a spate of black candidates elected last year in the county once dominated by rural whites. The county seat was the setting for the fictional plantation Tara in “Gone With The Wind.”

The fired employees included four of the highest-ranking officers, all of them white. Hill told the newspaper their replacements would be black.

If the new sheriff had some reason to believe that these 27 officers were bad officers, then he could have put forth those reasons when firing them.  But if he’s just trying to bring in black officers to replace white ones, then that’s racist and should be considered as discrimination.  I don’t give a rat’s ass what previous “disparities” may have existed in the past, it’s just plain wrong to do this.

It’s heartening to see that there’s at least one black official in the county who understands that this is wrong:

Another of the newly elected black officials, Eldrin Bell, called the move illegal and filed for the restraining order granted by the judge. Bell is the new county commission chairman and former Atlanta police chief.

If the new sherriff has cause for the firings, then he can enumerate them.  Otherwise, this is just more racial BS, similar to what Terrell Bolton tried when he came to power in the Dallas PD.  The new sheriff may wish to ask the City of Dallas just how many millions of dollars that little fiasco cost the taxpayers.

The latest news on reciprocity agreements is good for Texas residents who have CHLs and will be travelling to Colorado.  Governor Perry signed a proclamation recognizing Colorado permits as valid in Texas.  By Colorado law this automatically makes Texas CHLs valid in Colorado.

I guess I don’t need that non-resident New Hampshire permit anymore.  I obtained it specifically for the purpose of use in Colorado, since it seemed to be taking practically forever for Texas to get around to negotiating reciprocity with Colorado.

The NRA-ILA news item above also mentions that Texas will now honor New Mexico permits.  It needs to be stated that New Mexico does not recognize Texas CHLs and cannot do so without changes to New Mexico law.  However, New Mexico does have a provision for vehicle carry, which is better than nothing while traversing the northeastern corner of the state while getting from Texas to Colorado.

Laurence mentions Houston’s asinine new “Move It or Lose It” law, which requires motorists to move vehicles from the shoulder within six minutes (!) or the city will have them towed and impounded.  It’s simply silly to think that anyone can move a disabled vehicle from the shoulder in six minutes if there is any kind of problem at all.  While the professional NASCAR mechanic in the article can change a flat in three minutes, most people don’t have that level of skill. 

Further, Fix-a-Flat can’t be used in Z-rated tires or wheels which have tire pressure monitoring systems.  My Avalanche has a TPM system, and the manual is quite explicit about this point (page 5-74), as is the label for Fix-a-Flat.

I suppose I’d better not blow a tire on a Houston freeway, as I expect it would take me longer than six minutes to jack that beast up and change the tire.

As I was reading over that last entry, it occurred to me that I think of movie rentals as a weekend thing.  Mostly for Saturday nights, if I’m not going out, and sometimes for Friday or Sunday. 

Even if I have enough uninterrupted time on a week night, I will typically not watch a movie.  In fact, with Netflix, the movies arrive and sit on top of the component rack until the weekend. 

Does anyone else do this?  Or is this just another idiosyncrasy on my part?