Before I start pondering...

I want to shout a message to the universe.  Specially the universe of Southern California.  Watch out for other drivers, morons.  Yesterday I was nearly hit by a car running a red light, one turning left in front of traffic to speed into a driveway where I was waiting to pull out into traffic, and then again by one making a very unsafe lane change by pulling into my lane without looking.  Oh and the two people who used the right turn only lane to go straight and bypass the long line of cars waiting to get on the 405 are major douchebags and will get theirs in the end.

Things I'm pondering begin with a decision that I've made.  After pondering the term "near-miss" for a while I've decided to discard it.  From now on, it will be a near-collision.  When you miss, you miss.  It might have been a close call, but near-miss is idiotic.  It was a near hit.  I will adjust my lexicon accordingly.

Why do people schedule mandatory times for doing on-line training?  I took a two-hour web based training that has to be done in the classroom under an instructor's supervision on Wednesday.  I finished it in 25 minutes.  But I couldn't just leave.  I had to sit there for the other 95 minutes at a minimum.  So I just did other required training that was supposed to have been done on my own time.

What is the point of having assigned seats in a movie theater if people are going to buy them and then just sit wherever they want?  It's fine to do this when the auditorium is half-empty.  Yesterday's showing of "Zero Dark Thirty" was sold out.  So when the fools who didn't sit in their assigned seats were greeted by people saying "I believe you're in my seat", they were forced to move.

I didn't mention this in my review of that movie, but I'm curious about whether or not they worked to accentuate the height differential between Jessica Chastain and her male co-stars.  She's only 5'4" and most of them are around 6' or more, but there were scenes where it seemed that they towered over her.   It was an interesting visual, the lone woman who is utterly competent and driving the mission, surrounded by a bunch of big guys who are following her lead.

I wonder at the attempt to create a causal connection between players of violent video games and those who engage in violent acts.  "Call of Duty" sold $1 billion worth of units in 16 days.  At $50 per unit, that's 20 million units sold.  If it could be linked to even 100 assaults, that means that 19,999,900 people who bought the game did not become violent as a result.  I think more needs to be demonstrated to prove there is a link.  Back in 1995, there was an arcade video game released called Area 51.  The player used a gun to kill aliens and zombies that were created by the aliens doing something to the personnel at the secret Area 51.  I played it a lot.  I mean A LOT.  Once I was about to play and a cop who'd just eaten and had the rest of his lunch break wanted to shoot against me.  He had all those cop expert marksmanship medals.  He suggested I go first and then he'd outshoot me.  He was still watching me killing aliens and zombies without having lost a single life when he said he was out of time.  I probably killed millions of the characters in this game.  Didn't do anything to me except get me to "borrow" a bunch of tokens from the bowling alley where I worked so I didn't go broke playing the game.

This Date in History:

On this date in 1803, the Louisiana Purchase was completed.
On this date in 1860, South Carolina became the first state to attempt to secede from the U.S.
On this date in 1917, Cheka, the first Soviet secret police was founded.  Even when they became the KGB, their agents were still referred to as "chekists".
On this date in 1941, the "Flying Tigers" fought their first aerial battle in China.
On this date in 1946, the film "A Wonderful Life" is released in New York City.
On this date in 1951, the first electricity generated from a nuclear power plant was created.
On this date in 1977, Dijbouti and Vietnam join the United Nations.
On this date in 1989, the U.S. invaded Panama to overthrow the government of Manuel Noriega.
On this date in 2004, Macao is turned over to the People's Republic of China by Portugal.
And on this date in 1888, Fred Merkle was born.  He was a professional baseball player who made a baserunning error known as "Merkle's Boner" that cost his team the pennant that year.