Is He Really That Clueless?

I woke up early this morning to discover U.S. ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, is providing blog fodder in the form of “accidentally” being present with his family at a Jasmine Revolution protest in Beijing. The ambassador has recently posted discussion topics and links on Chinese microblogs related to Hilary Clinton’s speech on internet freedom which are now being blocked. His use of these microblogs makes it hard for me to believe he and his family found themselves at the protest site accidentally at just the right time to be caught on video. If he really was having a ‘Gomer Pyle’ moment, is that really the sort of intellectual genius we want on the Republican ticket for president in 2012? Here are links to some of the news stories, each with its own interesting details:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705367443/Video-of-Huntsman-at-China-protest-sparks-speculation.html?s_cid=rss-30

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110225/ts_nm/us_china_huntsman

http://www.chinanews.net/story/748616

How Dumb Are The NCIS T.V. Show Directors?

So Mr. Hot Stuff and I settled down to watch the most recent NCIS on Hulu last night and were really interested in the whole premise of encrypting hacking code into online gaming software. The whole computer forensics thing going on was great use of imagination on the writers’ parts, and then we get to the climactic moment and Gibbs starts unplugging cables to try and stop the malevolent mainframe computer and Mr. Hot Stuff the Computer Guru and Cable Guy says, “That won’t do anything. Those are just monitor cables.” The whole while I’m saying, “Just shoot the stupid computer, it’s the fastest way to shut it down from a distance.” Brilliantly, Gibbs shoots the computer in the last three seconds before Total Destruction of the Pentagon firewalls. Or it would be brilliant except that mostly he just shoots the monitors and not the actual computers and then at the last minute when it sparks to life one final time, the only thing he does shoot is the monitor and then he smiles with satisfaction that he stopped it. That would not have worked. It’s remarkable to me that a show known for cool forensics and technology would get this one so wrong. It was a real thrill-killer at the climax moment of the show. Oh well, it’s only T.V.

Beautiful Snow

We have beautiful snow falling right now. Five inches and still falling. I’ve decided to avoid driving today and will do my writing work from home. I don’t want to slide around the road if I don’t have to.

winner-winner, chicken dinner 🙂