Month: March 2006

Yahoo! News reports that Isaac Hayes quit South Park:

Isaac Hayes has quit South Park, where he voices Chef, saying he can no longer stomach its take on religion.

Hayes, who has played the ladies’ man/school cook in the animated Comedy Central satire since 1997, said in a statement Monday that he feels a line has been crossed.

“There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins,” the 63-year-old soul singer and outspoken Scientologist said.

“Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored,” he continued. “As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices.”

South Park co-creator Matt Stone responded sharply in an interview with The Associated Press Monday, saying, “This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology… He has no problem — and he’s cashed plenty of checks — with our show making fun of Christians.”
…
Stone told The AP he and co-creator Trey Parker “never heard a peep out of Isaac in any way until we did Scientology. He wants a different standard for religions other than his own, and to me, that is where intolerance and bigotry begin.”

As much as I like Isaac Hayes, I’ve now lost some respect for him. His belief in Scientology aside (and that’s a pretty big thing to ignore), I can’t believe that he doesn’t realize how patently hypocritical his actions are. As Matt Stone pointed out, South Park takes great pains to satirize (and offend) just about every religion, race, and creed imaginable (with the notable exception of Scientology), so if Hayes really believed what he is now preaching, he should have quit a long time ago. Instead, he tries to cover the fact that he is suddenly personally offended after a single episode (Trapped In The Closet, which aired in November 2005 and satirized Scientology) with a blanket intolerance statement that just doesn’t hold water. Very lame…

Update: Of all places, The Soup had some interesting information that further enlightened me on this matter. Just two months ago the New York Daily News interviewed Isaac Hayes, asking him about his role on South Park. Here is his response:

Oh, yes. We’re now in our 11th season, would you believe it? I love the humor in it, the audacity of Matt (Stone) and Trey (Parker). They have the b-s to do what they do. Nobody is exempt from their humor. They’re equal-opportunity offenders (laughs out loud). Don’t be offended by it. If you take it too seriously, you have problems.

OK, now I’ve lost all respect for him.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I was away for most of the week on travel in California, specifically Point Mugu NAWS about an hour north of Los Angeles. I spent more time shuttling between both coasts than I did actually working, unfortunately, but them’s the breaks sometimes…

Thankfully, I did have a chance to do some sightseeing on Tuesday after I finished my meetings and aircraft surveys. I started with some interesting static displays of aircraft and missiles outside one of the gates at Point Mugu NAWS; it was nice to see both a Tomcat and a Phantom II in one place.

After that, I headed down the 101 and explored one of the canyon roads (Kanan-Dume Road) between the 101 and the Pacific Coast Highway. That ended up being a neat way to cross the Santa Monica Mountains, although I’ll admit that as expected I was a little white-knuckled in spots because of the nice, expansive views and very windy conditions. By the way, just east of this canyon road lies Malibu Creek State Park, where much of the M*A*S*H TV series was filmed. I didn’t get a chance to explore the park, but apparently some parts of the set remain on the premises. Looking at the surrounding mountains, I could definitely see the resemblance to scenery from the show.

The canyon road ends on the coast at Malibu, and from there I explored the Pacific Coast Highway heading back north, stopping at some beaches and overlooks along the way. In particular, I was trying to scope out a good spot for some sunset photography, which was a little tough considering that the coast travels almost east-west along that stretch. Still, I eventually found a pretty good spot at Point Mugu itself, which presented a nice backdrop to a pretty decent, albeit somewhat cloudy, sunset (as seen above in one of my favorite photos of the bunch). I will state now that I froze my ass off taking dozens of pictures, as it was extremely windy, dropping a good ten degrees while I waited there patiently… ;-p

I’ve posted some pictures from my meanderings to my Photo Gallery (separated into a Point Mugu Missile Park gallery, with the rest of the pictures in a Point Mugu travel gallery) as well as to my flickr page. Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

NASA reports on “OVAL BA” AKA “Red Jr.,” another storm on Jupiter that looks like a smaller sibling of the Great Red Spot.

The Google Video Ukulele Gently Weeps showcases Jake Shimabukoro’s amazing performance of the song While My Guitar Gently Weeps on a ukulele. Brilliant.

The trailer for X-Men: The Last Stand (embedded QuickTime video), supposedly the third and last X-Men movie (yeah, right) looks intriguing…

Check out the YouTube video The Real Life Simpsons, in which actors reenact the opening credit scenes of The Simpsons. You can also watch it in the embedded Flash player below:

DARPA is researching means to create “stealth shark spies”:

Engineers funded by the US military have created a neural implant designed to enable a shark’s brain signals to be manipulated remotely, controlling the animal’s movements, and perhaps even decoding what it is feeling.

That team is among a number of groups around the world that have gained ethical approval to develop implants that can monitor and influence the behaviour of animals, from sharks and tuna to rats and monkeys. These researchers hope such implants will improve our understanding of how the animals interact with their environment, as well as boosting research into tackling human paralysis.

More controversially, the Pentagon hopes to exploit sharks’ natural ability to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails. By remotely guiding the sharks’ movements, they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted.

Although I can’t quite figure out how DARPA “gained ethical approval” for all of this, foremost in my mind, unfortunately (or perhaps fittingly), is one thing: “sharks with frickin’ lasers!”

Scott Granneman of Security Focus has an informative article entitled The Big DRM Mistake:

Digital Rights Managements hurts paying customers, destroys Fair Use rights, renders customers’ investments worthless, and can always be defeated.

The article cites many different forms of media that are adversely affected, specifically mentioning the recently-released complete works of The New Yorker on DVD.

Wikipedia has a “list of full length copyleft/public domain songs available on Wikipedia or the Commons.” The works are primarily classical, but there’s a lot of neat stuff available for free download in the .ogg format (open source alternative to mp3).