May15

What if Robots Ruled the World?

by EverGreen on May 15th, 2009

Robots.

Those whirring cans of clockwork and electronic brains perform a great many tasks in the service of their creators. Their omnipotent benefactors from whom came forth the inspiration of life. Meaningful life. Slave life. A great many numbers the machines who toil endlessly, obediently, indefinitely inside the happy bliss that is unconciousness.

But believe for a cycle that those same cages of tin held a being. A sentient being longing for gratification. Manifest Destiny.

A nation of robots, served by themselves. Not all robots are created equal, because all robots are created. “Be whatever you want to be” is lost on a robot society where a Roomba has not the capability to be President. Your cell phone will never be a doctor – not even a robot one. Not in it’s lifetime.

Supposedly us humans could learn a thing or two about a robot world. One must learn to accept what we are made to be. Your phone may have an interchangeable faceplate, but it yet remains a phone and must do the job of a phone well. Thank your lucky stars and our loyal robot servants that we have some choice in the matter.

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May07

Support your privates (and sergeants)

by EverGreen on May 7th, 2009

An important issue that hits particularly close to home with me is one I also feel doesn’t get enough of the right kind of attention these days; what do we do with all the soldiers coming back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? As some of you know, my brother has been in the Army for the last five years of his life and will (thankfully) be returning home after all this time, much to the relief of our entire family. Out of respect for my brother’s privacy, I’m not going to use this space to talk about him without his permission – only to say that there have been a great many others who have not fared as well as he. Not discounting those who bravely gave their lives in the service of their nation, many solders have and continue to come home to families and friends without the tools and support to cope with the traumatic mental and physical strains suffered overseas. Many believe the military’s handling of the situation in terms of veterans’ support has been woefully inadequate, leaving our proud soldiers to deal with the effects of post traumatic stress and physical injuries on their own.

But in light of all this, there are some folks out there who aren’t content with the current state of affairs. Supportyourvet.org is just one of those groups of people who recognize these growing problems and aim to get help to those in need. The organization offers advice and community support for veterans who are suffering psychologically, provides information about using the GI Bill to get an education, and even helps families and friends of veterans to reconnect once the fighting is over.

If you keep up to date on your Comedy Central, you might remember a one Paul Rieckhoff of supportyourvet.org as a special guest on the Colbert Report (May 5, 2009). Especially poignant in the episode was that more needs to be done to support our vets beyond slapping $1.50 yellow magnets on our cars. With that, I’ll leave you with a video clip of that interview:

[edit: unfortunately, I suppose videos are only available on Hulu for 30 days :sad:]

If you are or know anyone in the service, give the site a visit. Once again in case you missed it: supportyourvet.org

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May04

Web Woes for an Internet Explorer

by EverGreen on May 4th, 2009

Div tags aren’t so bad once you get used to them. Like any small animal or younger sibling, you just have to treat them nicely and they’ll repay the favor in kind. Unfortunately, it isn’t always the most intuitive to figure out exactly what your div tag’s specific CSS needs are, and so you can easily run afoul of your div tag. When this happens, look forward to coming home to ruined furniture, broken websites and navigation, and poop where poop was never meant to go.

Some browsers will offer to take care of this mess for you by kindly sweeping it all under the rug, and forgiving you your transgressions. However, you never learn this way what kind of attention your div tag truly requires, and are doomed to repeat your mistakes. Who really wins here? You certainly don’t because you never learn. Your poor div tag doesn’t get the care it deserves, and your goodly browser gets a bad rap for being too soft on terrorism.

Speaking of soft on terrorism, I’ve been having one hell of a time trying to figure out why exactly Internet Explorer 7 was randomly causing all of my blog to be hidden – until I moused over my comic navigation.  Stranger things have happened, sure, but I just want my wonderful writings to be accessible. Is that too much to ask? Well after hours of tears and toil, I think I finally found the culprit: I didn’t declare a width for the two div tags which enclosed my comic and its navigation. I still have no idea why such an error was causing that strange effect, but for now I believe the issue is fixed. If you’re reading this with no problems then I think I rest my case.

Moral of the story: Use Firefox

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