My latest resolution is to have a link-post-to-content-post ratio of no more than 1:1. But screw that, this is far too interesting not to link.
Forty Second Boyd and the Big Picture.
(Caught a link to it from John C. Wright's Live Journal. What? You don't read it? Add it to your RSS feeds now! He is, I think, the Christian Geek that I've been scouring the interwebs for for years. He is a hard-core traditional Christian and also a Sci-Fi author. How do you get cooler than that? (Thank you to The Pickles for the link.))
Friday, February 29, 2008
garfield minus garfield.
What happens when you remove Garfield from "Garfield"?
It becomes an insightful comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life.
What happens when you remove Garfield from "Garfield"?
It becomes an insightful comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Sunday, February 24, 2008
The Magic Jacket.
Let me share a picture with you.
This is a picture of my jacket. It is, in most ways, an ordinary jacket. I got it at Celebration IV last summer (hence the Chewbacca picture on it). It was a tad expensive, but that is justified as it is a high-quality jacket. It is nice and warm. It has a fuzzy hood that keeps my ears warm and my head dry. It has lots of pockets. But there is one extraordinary thing about this jacket. Something very special about it.
It is a magic jacket.
Why do I say this? To what do I owe this claim? Let me tell you how this jacket is special: every day, when I come home, I take off my jacket and leave it on the back of the couch. And every morning next, when I am preparing to leave, the jacket has, magically, moved to the closet and hung itself up. I don't know if all CIV Chewbacca jackets are magic like this, or if mine is special. All I know is, sometime between when I get home one night and leave the next morning, the jacket hangs itself up.
Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Joe, how do you know that it's the jacket that's magic? How do you know that it's not just house elves that are hanging it up for you?" I've given this a great deal of thought. You're right, it might be house elves. In fact, it might be the same house elves that take my dirty socks from the floor and place them in the hamper every night. But if it is house elves, these are very lazy house elves. Why do they not do other things for me, like cook, clean, laundry, or the dishes? Why do these house elves only concern themselves with hanging up this one article of clothing, and what are they doing the rest of the time? No, I think it's far more likely that the jacket is enchanted.
I shared my theories with The Murloc. She laughed. I don't understand what she thinks is so funny about a magic jacket. I was amazed when I found out its special properties. She, for some reason, thinks it's humorous. Sometimes, she'll even tell me to hang up the jacket. "But I don't need to, dear. It's a magic jacket. It will hang itself." Women.
Let me share a picture with you.
This is a picture of my jacket. It is, in most ways, an ordinary jacket. I got it at Celebration IV last summer (hence the Chewbacca picture on it). It was a tad expensive, but that is justified as it is a high-quality jacket. It is nice and warm. It has a fuzzy hood that keeps my ears warm and my head dry. It has lots of pockets. But there is one extraordinary thing about this jacket. Something very special about it.
It is a magic jacket.
Why do I say this? To what do I owe this claim? Let me tell you how this jacket is special: every day, when I come home, I take off my jacket and leave it on the back of the couch. And every morning next, when I am preparing to leave, the jacket has, magically, moved to the closet and hung itself up. I don't know if all CIV Chewbacca jackets are magic like this, or if mine is special. All I know is, sometime between when I get home one night and leave the next morning, the jacket hangs itself up.
Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "Joe, how do you know that it's the jacket that's magic? How do you know that it's not just house elves that are hanging it up for you?" I've given this a great deal of thought. You're right, it might be house elves. In fact, it might be the same house elves that take my dirty socks from the floor and place them in the hamper every night. But if it is house elves, these are very lazy house elves. Why do they not do other things for me, like cook, clean, laundry, or the dishes? Why do these house elves only concern themselves with hanging up this one article of clothing, and what are they doing the rest of the time? No, I think it's far more likely that the jacket is enchanted.
I shared my theories with The Murloc. She laughed. I don't understand what she thinks is so funny about a magic jacket. I was amazed when I found out its special properties. She, for some reason, thinks it's humorous. Sometimes, she'll even tell me to hang up the jacket. "But I don't need to, dear. It's a magic jacket. It will hang itself." Women.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Eclipse Pictures
Fortunately, the weather here was perfectly clear. Unfortunately, it was 10 degrees, so I just ran out every 45 minutes or so, snapped a bunch of pictures, and ran back in. I don't remember the last time I got such a good view of a lunar eclipse. I took these from the street outside my fiancee's apartment. Sorry for the generally low quality - I was missing part of my tripod so these are all hand-held.
The very start of the eclipse:
.JPG)
Halfway to totality, the curve of the Earth's shadow is easy to see, along with with the coloration of the light deflected through the atmosphere:
.JPG)
During totality. No tripod = ISO 800 = grainy. The Moon was very dark at this point.
.JPG)
Totality with Saturn to the lower left and Regulus above:
.JPG)
Post-totality.
.JPG)
The pictures don't really capture how beautiful it was to watch. Sorry you missed it Joe, there's always 2010. I'm sure you can find plenty of good pictures of it on the net.
Fortunately, the weather here was perfectly clear. Unfortunately, it was 10 degrees, so I just ran out every 45 minutes or so, snapped a bunch of pictures, and ran back in. I don't remember the last time I got such a good view of a lunar eclipse. I took these from the street outside my fiancee's apartment. Sorry for the generally low quality - I was missing part of my tripod so these are all hand-held.
The very start of the eclipse:
.JPG)
Halfway to totality, the curve of the Earth's shadow is easy to see, along with with the coloration of the light deflected through the atmosphere:
.JPG)
During totality. No tripod = ISO 800 = grainy. The Moon was very dark at this point.
.JPG)
Totality with Saturn to the lower left and Regulus above:
.JPG)
Post-totality.
.JPG)
The pictures don't really capture how beautiful it was to watch. Sorry you missed it Joe, there's always 2010. I'm sure you can find plenty of good pictures of it on the net.
Blah Blah Blah Windows Vista Blah Blah Blah.
So the Internets are abuzz with nerds denouncing Microsoft's latest OS. Apparently, Microsoft's recent purchase has been completely integrated into their latest OS and the Doom of Civilization draws nigh. Or so I gather.
My reaction? Big fat "meh". Vista has been my primary OS at work for a few months now and up until the day before yesterday my interactions with Vista had been almost entirely positive. I think the Aero interface is really slick. I'm in LOVE with the new Start menu, and the "search" box in every Windows Explorer window has come in quite handy. I haven't experienced many incompatibility problems, and none that weren't easily solved, but this is part of all Windows upgrades. (It seems each Windows release makes some things from a few generations previous stop working. Most DOS applications no longer ran in 2000; Windows 95 programs didn't play well with XP; and now certain 98/2000 applications have issues in Vista.) They've finally implemented a working file indexing system that doesn't kill performance. (My Very First Computer, purchased waaaaaay back in 1998—a Gateway 2000 Pentium II 266—had Windows 95 and was wonderful, except that every two hours, without fail, the system would become practically unresponsive for 5-15 minutes while the hard disk thrashed itself to death. It was years before I found out that this was "Find Fast", a "feature" of Windows 95 that would index all your documents for "fast searching". The problem was, it took up so much system resources that I couldn't do anything else while it was running. I have experienced no such thing with Vista's indexing service.) And Vista runs faster than any copy of XP I've ever used. (I recognize that my Vista machine is also much faster than any XP machine I've used, but that's not my metric. Four years ago when I built my first XP machine, it was top of the line and XP has always had slow spots on it. Now, my work computer is what I'd call at the high end of "mid-range" PCs, and Vista runs quite well. So, basically, my metric is Vista runs better on the hardware available at its release than did XP on the hardware at its release.) Certain slow spots in XP which were always infuriating to me just don't occur in Vista. For instance, opening Windows Explorer or switching to a new directory in XP would always produce one of three results: it would take 5-10 seconds to open the window, during which time it would give you no feedback, so you didn't know if it had taken the mouse clicks and was going to open; it would open quickly, show the icons in the current directory for less than half a second, then draw a blank window for 5-10 seconds, then refresh the window with the same information it had drawn initially (damn computer! I know which icon I want to click on and you JUST DISPLAYED it! Show it so I can click on it!); or it would show the contents, but then go down the list drawing in the icons about as fast as I could count them. Vista does NONE of this. When I press Windows+E, Explorer opens immediately. Also, Firefox opens about four times as fast on my Vista machine as on XP. (I've read that Vista does a lot of "pre-caching"; basically, it notes which programs you use the most and pre-loads part of them into memory so they open faster when you need them. This, of course, has a higher memory usage, which accounts for why Vista is such a memory hog, but come on, you can get 2GB for less than $50 nowadays, and since I wouldn't even consider building a machine with less than that, XP or Vista, I'm really not going to complain.)
Sure, there are a couple annoyances. For instance, the constant "security warnings" whenever you click on anything. Those took me all of five seconds to turn off. And I wasn't too crazy about the layout of the new control panel, but you can easily revert to the old one. (Oh, and I like how there's actually an option in the Desktop setup dialog to include a control panel icon on the desktop. Not like it was hard in XP, but now it's even easier to get to.)
Yet, note my key phrase "up until the day before yesterday." Because yesterday, I stumbled upon one hell of a frustration that left me just scratching my head wondering "what were they thinking"? (And reversing the polarity didn't even help.) Every version of Windows has at least one of these, so I guess I found Vista's. As long as that's the only one I think I'll be OK. (NB: this is still better than the Mac OS, where the entire user experience leaves me with that impression.)
So what happened? It started with the need to send an ActiveX control to a user, who for some reason didn't have the proper one after they installed our software. Now, in their efforts to make e-mail an impediment to communication, most companies' IT departments set up their e-mail firewalls to make sure it's impossible to get any important files to the users. With some, all you need to do is zip the file. With others, you need to rename the file to something like .txt. With others, you need to password protect the zip file. There's no set standard policy between companies, and no agreement on what constitutes a "dangerous" file (I've had xml files blocked by some, which is painful, because that's how we send out our licenses now).
The particular company I was working with said that password protecting the zip file should do the trick, so I opened it in Explorer, went to add a password and... hey! Where do I add the password to zipped files in Vista? I looked for a few more minutes, checking menu options, right-click context menus, and toolbar buttons, but nothing obvious presented itself. A quick Google search (I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords (Google applications I use regularly: Google search engine; Gmail; Google Toolbar for Firefox; iGoogle home page; Google Documents and Spreadsheets; Google Bookmarks; Google Reader for RSS feeds; Google Talk; Google Calendar desktop bar plug-in; Google Maps; Google Earth; Google brainwashing...)) revealed that Microsoft had actually taken out the built-in ability to add password to Zip files. Apparently, they thought it was making users feel more secure than they really were, so they took it out to force users to use more secure encryption options. Well, that doesn't help me, who never used passwords to encrypt zip files, but instead just used them to get zip files past silly firewalls. OK, it looks like it has to be a third party option. My free trial of Winzip had expired, and it looks like you can't just keep using it after the trial is up, as you could with previous versions. I installed an open-source program I had read about, called 7-zip, but after looking around in that, couldn't find any "add password to zip file" option (it looked like most of its special options were for its own .7z proprietary format). I downloaded PKWare's (yes, they're still around) product, SecureZip, but deleted it faster than you can say "BALEETED!", after it re-associated all my file extensions even after I told it not to... twice.
And that brings us to the second annoyance. File extensions. Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided to almost completely remove the File Types functionality of Windows XP. OK, you XP users, open Windows Explorer and select "Tools -> Folder Options" (or alternately, go to the Control Panel and select Folder Options). See that "File Types" tab? Give it a hug and a kiss for me, because it's gone from Vista. Oh, sure, Vista has a "Default Programs" option from the control panel that allows you to set the default program used to open a given file type, but this has nowhere near the functionality of the File Types dialog. Firstly, all you can do in Vista is change the default program. Nothing else. No advanced option. No settings to edit right-click context menu options. No ability to change the default icon. Oh sure, you can do all those things, from the Windows Registry, but you have to a) be an expert in Registry editing, and b) change options in at least two different places. A major hassle. So, here I was with my .zip files associated with a program I had just uninstalled from my computer. It was easy enough to restore the association with Explorer, but then it started using the Windows Explorer icon for zip files, instead of the file folder with a zipper icon. It took me about half an hour of searching and scouring my computer's options and the internet to find the registry key that needed to be set to change the icon. The problem? It was already set to the correct dll file that contained the icon I wanted, but it wasn't showing it in Explorer. (In retrospect, I think it just needed a "refresh" which I probably could have accomplished by restarting my computer, but I didn't know that and had no utility to see the available icons stored within the dll file, or any dialog to be able to choose the correct icon.) Another half-hour or so of searching, and I finally found a utility called Creative Element Power Tools that gives you that File Types dialog funcionality (and a whole lot more). Unfortunately, it's not free, but it does have a free trial. I was able to use it to restore the icon and all was well... except I still hadn't succeeded in password protecting the zip file. Eventually, I had to just copy it to my XP machine (which thankfully is still up and running) add a password there then send it back to myself and e-mail it to the client. Yeesh.
So there you have it. It seems everyone has at least one bad experience with every Windows OS. But what did we do back in the days of Windows 3.11, before we had blogs? Oh, that's right. Bulletin Boards and Usenet groups.
(Addendum: I know that there are a lot of complaints about how Vista is anti-privacy and, apparently, Microsoft can track your every mouse click, but these complaint seem to be coming from the open-source net-neutrality George-Bush-is-using-the-Patriot-act-to-tap-my-phone tin-foil-heads crowd, so I don't take them too seriously.)
So the Internets are abuzz with nerds denouncing Microsoft's latest OS. Apparently, Microsoft's recent purchase has been completely integrated into their latest OS and the Doom of Civilization draws nigh. Or so I gather.
My reaction? Big fat "meh". Vista has been my primary OS at work for a few months now and up until the day before yesterday my interactions with Vista had been almost entirely positive. I think the Aero interface is really slick. I'm in LOVE with the new Start menu, and the "search" box in every Windows Explorer window has come in quite handy. I haven't experienced many incompatibility problems, and none that weren't easily solved, but this is part of all Windows upgrades. (It seems each Windows release makes some things from a few generations previous stop working. Most DOS applications no longer ran in 2000; Windows 95 programs didn't play well with XP; and now certain 98/2000 applications have issues in Vista.) They've finally implemented a working file indexing system that doesn't kill performance. (My Very First Computer, purchased waaaaaay back in 1998—a Gateway 2000 Pentium II 266—had Windows 95 and was wonderful, except that every two hours, without fail, the system would become practically unresponsive for 5-15 minutes while the hard disk thrashed itself to death. It was years before I found out that this was "Find Fast", a "feature" of Windows 95 that would index all your documents for "fast searching". The problem was, it took up so much system resources that I couldn't do anything else while it was running. I have experienced no such thing with Vista's indexing service.) And Vista runs faster than any copy of XP I've ever used. (I recognize that my Vista machine is also much faster than any XP machine I've used, but that's not my metric. Four years ago when I built my first XP machine, it was top of the line and XP has always had slow spots on it. Now, my work computer is what I'd call at the high end of "mid-range" PCs, and Vista runs quite well. So, basically, my metric is Vista runs better on the hardware available at its release than did XP on the hardware at its release.) Certain slow spots in XP which were always infuriating to me just don't occur in Vista. For instance, opening Windows Explorer or switching to a new directory in XP would always produce one of three results: it would take 5-10 seconds to open the window, during which time it would give you no feedback, so you didn't know if it had taken the mouse clicks and was going to open; it would open quickly, show the icons in the current directory for less than half a second, then draw a blank window for 5-10 seconds, then refresh the window with the same information it had drawn initially (damn computer! I know which icon I want to click on and you JUST DISPLAYED it! Show it so I can click on it!); or it would show the contents, but then go down the list drawing in the icons about as fast as I could count them. Vista does NONE of this. When I press Windows+E, Explorer opens immediately. Also, Firefox opens about four times as fast on my Vista machine as on XP. (I've read that Vista does a lot of "pre-caching"; basically, it notes which programs you use the most and pre-loads part of them into memory so they open faster when you need them. This, of course, has a higher memory usage, which accounts for why Vista is such a memory hog, but come on, you can get 2GB for less than $50 nowadays, and since I wouldn't even consider building a machine with less than that, XP or Vista, I'm really not going to complain.)
Sure, there are a couple annoyances. For instance, the constant "security warnings" whenever you click on anything. Those took me all of five seconds to turn off. And I wasn't too crazy about the layout of the new control panel, but you can easily revert to the old one. (Oh, and I like how there's actually an option in the Desktop setup dialog to include a control panel icon on the desktop. Not like it was hard in XP, but now it's even easier to get to.)
Yet, note my key phrase "up until the day before yesterday." Because yesterday, I stumbled upon one hell of a frustration that left me just scratching my head wondering "what were they thinking"? (And reversing the polarity didn't even help.) Every version of Windows has at least one of these, so I guess I found Vista's. As long as that's the only one I think I'll be OK. (NB: this is still better than the Mac OS, where the entire user experience leaves me with that impression.)
So what happened? It started with the need to send an ActiveX control to a user, who for some reason didn't have the proper one after they installed our software. Now, in their efforts to make e-mail an impediment to communication, most companies' IT departments set up their e-mail firewalls to make sure it's impossible to get any important files to the users. With some, all you need to do is zip the file. With others, you need to rename the file to something like .txt. With others, you need to password protect the zip file. There's no set standard policy between companies, and no agreement on what constitutes a "dangerous" file (I've had xml files blocked by some, which is painful, because that's how we send out our licenses now).
The particular company I was working with said that password protecting the zip file should do the trick, so I opened it in Explorer, went to add a password and... hey! Where do I add the password to zipped files in Vista? I looked for a few more minutes, checking menu options, right-click context menus, and toolbar buttons, but nothing obvious presented itself. A quick Google search (I, for one, welcome our new Google overlords (Google applications I use regularly: Google search engine; Gmail; Google Toolbar for Firefox; iGoogle home page; Google Documents and Spreadsheets; Google Bookmarks; Google Reader for RSS feeds; Google Talk; Google Calendar desktop bar plug-in; Google Maps; Google Earth; Google brainwashing...)) revealed that Microsoft had actually taken out the built-in ability to add password to Zip files. Apparently, they thought it was making users feel more secure than they really were, so they took it out to force users to use more secure encryption options. Well, that doesn't help me, who never used passwords to encrypt zip files, but instead just used them to get zip files past silly firewalls. OK, it looks like it has to be a third party option. My free trial of Winzip had expired, and it looks like you can't just keep using it after the trial is up, as you could with previous versions. I installed an open-source program I had read about, called 7-zip, but after looking around in that, couldn't find any "add password to zip file" option (it looked like most of its special options were for its own .7z proprietary format). I downloaded PKWare's (yes, they're still around) product, SecureZip, but deleted it faster than you can say "BALEETED!", after it re-associated all my file extensions even after I told it not to... twice.
And that brings us to the second annoyance. File extensions. Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided to almost completely remove the File Types functionality of Windows XP. OK, you XP users, open Windows Explorer and select "Tools -> Folder Options" (or alternately, go to the Control Panel and select Folder Options). See that "File Types" tab? Give it a hug and a kiss for me, because it's gone from Vista. Oh, sure, Vista has a "Default Programs" option from the control panel that allows you to set the default program used to open a given file type, but this has nowhere near the functionality of the File Types dialog. Firstly, all you can do in Vista is change the default program. Nothing else. No advanced option. No settings to edit right-click context menu options. No ability to change the default icon. Oh sure, you can do all those things, from the Windows Registry, but you have to a) be an expert in Registry editing, and b) change options in at least two different places. A major hassle. So, here I was with my .zip files associated with a program I had just uninstalled from my computer. It was easy enough to restore the association with Explorer, but then it started using the Windows Explorer icon for zip files, instead of the file folder with a zipper icon. It took me about half an hour of searching and scouring my computer's options and the internet to find the registry key that needed to be set to change the icon. The problem? It was already set to the correct dll file that contained the icon I wanted, but it wasn't showing it in Explorer. (In retrospect, I think it just needed a "refresh" which I probably could have accomplished by restarting my computer, but I didn't know that and had no utility to see the available icons stored within the dll file, or any dialog to be able to choose the correct icon.) Another half-hour or so of searching, and I finally found a utility called Creative Element Power Tools that gives you that File Types dialog funcionality (and a whole lot more). Unfortunately, it's not free, but it does have a free trial. I was able to use it to restore the icon and all was well... except I still hadn't succeeded in password protecting the zip file. Eventually, I had to just copy it to my XP machine (which thankfully is still up and running) add a password there then send it back to myself and e-mail it to the client. Yeesh.
So there you have it. It seems everyone has at least one bad experience with every Windows OS. But what did we do back in the days of Windows 3.11, before we had blogs? Oh, that's right. Bulletin Boards and Usenet groups.
(Addendum: I know that there are a lot of complaints about how Vista is anti-privacy and, apparently, Microsoft can track your every mouse click, but these complaint seem to be coming from the open-source net-neutrality George-Bush-is-using-the-Patriot-act-to-tap-my-phone tin-foil-heads crowd, so I don't take them too seriously.)
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Oh no! The moon is being swallowed by a dragon! 'Tis the end of the— oh, never mind.
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL2028499420080221
Did anyone get any pictures of the eclipse last night? It was completely overcast here. Stoopid one-day-of-rain-a-year has to fall on eclipse night.
All I can say is NASA better hurry up and get their Lunar base up and running, because I want to see picture of an eclipse as seen from the moon.
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL2028499420080221
Did anyone get any pictures of the eclipse last night? It was completely overcast here. Stoopid one-day-of-rain-a-year has to fall on eclipse night.
All I can say is NASA better hurry up and get their Lunar base up and running, because I want to see picture of an eclipse as seen from the moon.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Indiana Jones and the Historical Accuracy.
Yay! Now that the bulk of work is finished on my "other project" I can get back to my haphazardly-scheduled blog posting. I plan on writing a lot more, particularly reviews and "my take" bits, since my opinion is vastly more important than yours, because I have a blog. There are several posts which I have in mind that I want to get to over the next few weeks.
Today's topic, children, is The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones. I'll have a complete review of it once the third and final volume is out come April 29th. But I wanted to mention something of interest from volume two: The War Years.
Volume Two contains some of the best Young Indy episodes (including one co-starring both Catherine Zeta-Jones and Daniel Craig; quite the line-up). One of the better episodes, Adventures in the Secret Service has Indy in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution. But that's not the part I want to talk about. The first half of the episode has Indy taking on a secret mission to escort Prince Sixtus to a secret meeting with Emperor Charles I of Austria, to discuss a peace treaty with the allies, separately from Germany.
Ok, I sez to myself. I know World War I pretty well and I don't remember reading about anything like that. I assumed it was a dramatic fabrication in what is otherwise a "mostly" historically accurate show. But I decide to look it up on that oracle of accurate information (snicker snicker), Wikipedia.
Intersting, intersting, I say to myself, reading Charles' wikipedia entry (full name: Karl Franz Josef Ludwig Hubert Georg Maria von Habsburg-Lothringen). He was emperor for just under two years, and was, in fact, the last Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian empire. So they got that right. Child's play. Reading further, I see that Prince Sixtus was, in fact, his brother-in-law, as stated in the episode, as he was the brother of Emperor Charles' wife, Princess Zita of Parma. Ok, they get a point for that. Next up, is that fact that Prince Sixtus is actually an officer in the Belgian army, which explains why Indy (a Belgian officer working French intelligence), escorts him. This is getting eerily accurate. Finally I notice that... What? Charles I entered into secret negotiations with the French, represented by Prince Sixtus? Dude, they didn't make it up. And not only that, but Charles' advisor, Ottokar Czernin, even looks like Christopher Lee, who played him in the episode.
Ok, so cool, they're actually pretty good on the facts. The half-episode ends with Indy escorting Prince Sixtus back to Switzerland, with a letter, secretly written by Charles so Czernin—who was opposed to the separate peace—wouldn't know about it, conceding to the Allies' demands. In real life, the secret peace was broken when the French posted memos written by Charles, hurting Austria's relations with Germany, making them more dependent on their ally. Way to go France.
But there's one fact they left out of the episode.
That's Blessed Charles I to you.
That's right. On October 3, 2004, Pope John Paul the Great beatified Emperor Charles I of Austria, praising him for putting his Christian faith first while making political decisions, and also for his role as a peacemaker while trying to bring about an end to the Great War. His Holiness said of Blessed Charles:
"The decisive task of Christians consists in seeking, recognizing and following God's will in all things. The Christian statesman, Charles of Austria , confronted this challenge every day. To his eyes, war appeared as "something appalling". Amid the tumult of the First World War, he strove to promote the peace initiative of my Predecessor, Benedict XV.
"From the beginning, the Emperor Charles conceived of his office as a holy service to his people. His chief concern was to follow the Christian vocation to holiness also in his political actions. For this reason, his thoughts turned to social assistance. May he be an example for all of us, especially for those who have political responsibilities in Europe today!"
Too bad they left that tidbit out of the episode, but it probably didn't fit with George Lucas' view of religion (more on that when I get around to the full review of the series).
There's also one more interesting thing to note about Emperor Blessed Charles I: I've met his son.
Ok, I knew that I had met an Otto von Hapsburg, Crown Prince of Austria, during my (in?)famous adventures of early 2001. I just didn't realize until after watching this episode and reading about it on Wikipedia that it was that Otto von Hapsburg, Crown Prince of Austria (full name: Archduke Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xaver Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius of Austria). But it's ultimately cool. I know the son of a beatified emperor. Beat that!
I would also like to point out, for those of you keeping score, that this gives me an Indiana Jones index of 3.
--EDIT--
I guess I should point out that the episode was made before Charles I was beatified, but he was still venerable Charles I, the cause for his canonization was open, and it's not like his faith was unknown.
Yay! Now that the bulk of work is finished on my "other project" I can get back to my haphazardly-scheduled blog posting. I plan on writing a lot more, particularly reviews and "my take" bits, since my opinion is vastly more important than yours, because I have a blog. There are several posts which I have in mind that I want to get to over the next few weeks.
Today's topic, children, is The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones. I'll have a complete review of it once the third and final volume is out come April 29th. But I wanted to mention something of interest from volume two: The War Years.
Volume Two contains some of the best Young Indy episodes (including one co-starring both Catherine Zeta-Jones and Daniel Craig; quite the line-up). One of the better episodes, Adventures in the Secret Service has Indy in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution. But that's not the part I want to talk about. The first half of the episode has Indy taking on a secret mission to escort Prince Sixtus to a secret meeting with Emperor Charles I of Austria, to discuss a peace treaty with the allies, separately from Germany.
Ok, I sez to myself. I know World War I pretty well and I don't remember reading about anything like that. I assumed it was a dramatic fabrication in what is otherwise a "mostly" historically accurate show. But I decide to look it up on that oracle of accurate information (snicker snicker), Wikipedia.
Intersting, intersting, I say to myself, reading Charles' wikipedia entry (full name: Karl Franz Josef Ludwig Hubert Georg Maria von Habsburg-Lothringen). He was emperor for just under two years, and was, in fact, the last Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian empire. So they got that right. Child's play. Reading further, I see that Prince Sixtus was, in fact, his brother-in-law, as stated in the episode, as he was the brother of Emperor Charles' wife, Princess Zita of Parma. Ok, they get a point for that. Next up, is that fact that Prince Sixtus is actually an officer in the Belgian army, which explains why Indy (a Belgian officer working French intelligence), escorts him. This is getting eerily accurate. Finally I notice that... What? Charles I entered into secret negotiations with the French, represented by Prince Sixtus? Dude, they didn't make it up. And not only that, but Charles' advisor, Ottokar Czernin, even looks like Christopher Lee, who played him in the episode.
Ok, so cool, they're actually pretty good on the facts. The half-episode ends with Indy escorting Prince Sixtus back to Switzerland, with a letter, secretly written by Charles so Czernin—who was opposed to the separate peace—wouldn't know about it, conceding to the Allies' demands. In real life, the secret peace was broken when the French posted memos written by Charles, hurting Austria's relations with Germany, making them more dependent on their ally. Way to go France.
But there's one fact they left out of the episode.
That's Blessed Charles I to you.
That's right. On October 3, 2004, Pope John Paul the Great beatified Emperor Charles I of Austria, praising him for putting his Christian faith first while making political decisions, and also for his role as a peacemaker while trying to bring about an end to the Great War. His Holiness said of Blessed Charles:
"The decisive task of Christians consists in seeking, recognizing and following God's will in all things. The Christian statesman, Charles of Austria , confronted this challenge every day. To his eyes, war appeared as "something appalling". Amid the tumult of the First World War, he strove to promote the peace initiative of my Predecessor, Benedict XV.
"From the beginning, the Emperor Charles conceived of his office as a holy service to his people. His chief concern was to follow the Christian vocation to holiness also in his political actions. For this reason, his thoughts turned to social assistance. May he be an example for all of us, especially for those who have political responsibilities in Europe today!"
Too bad they left that tidbit out of the episode, but it probably didn't fit with George Lucas' view of religion (more on that when I get around to the full review of the series).
There's also one more interesting thing to note about Emperor Blessed Charles I: I've met his son.
Ok, I knew that I had met an Otto von Hapsburg, Crown Prince of Austria, during my (in?)famous adventures of early 2001. I just didn't realize until after watching this episode and reading about it on Wikipedia that it was that Otto von Hapsburg, Crown Prince of Austria (full name: Archduke Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xaver Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius of Austria). But it's ultimately cool. I know the son of a beatified emperor. Beat that!
I would also like to point out, for those of you keeping score, that this gives me an Indiana Jones index of 3.
--EDIT--
I guess I should point out that the episode was made before Charles I was beatified, but he was still venerable Charles I, the cause for his canonization was open, and it's not like his faith was unknown.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Sunday, February 3, 2008
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