If you clikc the “Continue Reading” link, you will be subjected to some seriously nerdy stuff.

This post is about World of Warcraft. This is your last chance to back out.

Ok, so you’ve accepted your inner Nerd and are willing to check this post out.

If you’ve ever played WoW, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed

The SST is now on Facebook and Myspace.

For Facebook, click here for the group, or here for the cause.

For MySpace, click here for the cause.

Thank you for your support!

As it stands, we have a ‘humanitarian’, socialist, warm-fuzzies system which treats criminals like Kings and victims like scum. Recent events have finally compelled me to get off my lazy backside and join the Sensible Sentencing Trust (SST). I’d heard of them before, of course, but until I visited their website I had no idea that their goals and mine had such a close correspondence.

I’d highly recommend that everyone take the time to visit the site and, hopefully, make a donation. Their cause is surely worthy, and the only way it to get through to politicians is, apparently, by lobbying en masse. The dedicated people of the SST do that work on our behalf, and all we need to do is show them some support. Every Kiwi has a vested interest in the achievement of the SST’s goals and, at a time when it isn’t safe to walk the streets of our cities in broad daylight, the least we can do is put our money where our mouths are.

Let’s hope that in the future we see a lot less crime as a result of better punishment.

For those not privileged enough to belong to this mighty institution, the Beasts are an Ice Hockey team based in Dunedin, and are widely regarded as the best in the world. Yours truly plays as a Defenceman, along with fellow blogger Michael Mitchell and others.

We played our first SIHL round recently, losing to the Dunedin Penguins (an absolutely STACKED local team), but winning against Maniototo (8-2). This is pretty good, considering that this is only our second SIHL season, and last year we were a B-Grade level DIHL team. We’ve come a pretty long way, as was also demonstrated tonight when we held off the Sharks, basically a Juniors team that is the favourite to win the A-Grade DIHL this year, to a 2-1 loss, with both Sharks goals scored in the first period.

Our Captain, Jason, has noted that we consistently play just below the level of our opposition. In the past, that has certainly been true, but I think our win against Maniototo showed that we do have what it takes to compete in the SIHL, and that we have improved immensely despite little (or in my case no) practice.

In other news, the Beasts are re-branding by taking the daring step of ordering in our own jerseys and socks. Although expensive, this will help to differentiate the team from the rest of the DIHA units, and furthermore will make us much prettier. The name and logo of the new team is yet to be decided, but we’re getting there slowly (management by consensus isn’t quick!).

With the second round of the SIHL a month away, we’ll have to rely on DIHL competition to help us keep our edge. By that time, at my current rate, I will also weigh approximately 563kg, and will exert my own gravitational pull, thereby slowing time around me and allowing us to skate faster than our opposition.

Today, you’re in for a treat. Two (not one, but two) movie reviews! Woohoo!

First up, we have Zwartboek, or Black Book in English.

Plot Summary: Set in 1944, the movie follows the exploits of Ellis de Vries.

A young jewish woman named Rachel Stein is hiding out during the Nazi occupation of Holland. When her family is betrayed and murdered, Rachel joins the Dutch Resistance. Taking the name Ellis de Vries, she is assigned the task of seducing SS-Hauptsturmführer Ludwig Müntze, a high-ranking German soldier.

Ellis becomes Müntze’s lover and all seems to be going well until yet more betrayals from within force the Resistance to its knees. In the final days of World War II, Ellis finally uncovers the traitor, but loses the thing that matters to her the most.

Pros: Fantastic acting, gripping plot, beautiful screenplay, gorgeous and realistic sets and historical accuracy.

Cons: What cons?

Overall: Brilliant. A must-see for everyone. The Illiterate Beware: contains subtitles.

Secondly, we have The Assassination of Jesse James.

If Zwartboek is the Good, then this film is both the Bad and the Amazingly Boring. Quite an achievement for one film.

Plot Summary: Jesse James is a famous outlaw, whose exploits are the stuff of legend. Robert Ford is a wanna-be outlaw who has idolised Jesse since he was a kid. Robert joins Jesse’s band of thugs. Jesse gets progressively crazier. Robert shoots Jesse. The End

Pros: It’s quite well-filmed. The sets are very believable.

Cons: Oh. My. God. So boring. So amazingly boring. So amazingly, bone-achingly, mind-numbingly boring. Terrible. Boring. Total waste of time. Boring.

Overall: Don’t waste your precious time on this piece of shit. Honestly, I don’t know why the producers sank money into this horrible deathtrap of boredom. This film has less entertainment value than clipping your toenails.

So, in an effort to make my humble webbie a bit more Web 2.0, the “continue reading” link below will now load the remainder of the post asynchronously (without the need to reload the whole page). In addition, there’s a nice little fade effect.

Go on, try it. You know you want to.

I’ve been using Ryan’s Suckerfish plugin for a while now, and he’s just brought out an animated version. Unfortunately, the Javascript required is conflicting with some of my other scripts, so I’m going to have to find a way to work them in together when I get some time.

Another nifty wee trick is Collapsible Elements (try clicking the link).

The next step is to try and integrate a “Live Search” function, similar to that used in Mac Os X’s “Spotlight”. So far I’ve had problems getting it to work in with my other Javascript plugins. It really is time for me to learn Javascript I think, but, as usual, time constraints don’t permit it.

If anyone has any comments to make about how to integrate these scripts, please let me know! (I know next to nothing about Javascript).

“New Zealand women are being encouraged to act like ladies and not “blokettes” on International Women’s Day today.

The National Council of Women said New Zealand women were blazing across political and economic barriers, but socially seemed to be confusing empowerment with what had been historically classed as the domain of stereotypical male behaviour.

Spokeswoman Christine Low said along with a rise in unsafe sexual behaviour, one in four women had revealed they could not remember what they did when drinking alcohol.

She said that kind of behaviour led to women potentially putting themselves into situations with life-changing consequences.

“There is a raft of socially damaging impacts, the risk of contracting sexually-transmitted diseases, unplanned pregnancies - going hand in hand with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.

“There is also the increased possibility of becoming the victims of physical and sexual violence.”

Women needed to realise that empowerment does not disenfranchise them from being a woman, she said.

Ms Low said women needed to know it was perfectly acceptable to act and behave like a woman and not a “blokette” with something to prove to their male counterparts.”

So, even die-hard feminists are getting tired of other women acting like total whores. Finally. Nevermind that feminism and the “you go girl” brigade created this problem in the first place by telling young women that they can do whatever the hell they want and no consequences will ensue.

Perhaps it’s time we stopped accepting feminism as a legitimate viewpoint, and started viewing it as exactly what it is: the enemy of orderly and prosperous society.

The aims of this series are manifold, among them:

1. To provide a repository of interesting and accurate information on Global Warming, primarily for my own benefit.
2. To add one more independent voice to the millions of educated and sensible people who decry the popular view of Global Warming as the nonsense it is.
3. To provide a convenient collection of links to a variety of Global Warming resources for people to peruse and use in the formation of their own opinions, should it be their desire to do so.

I acknowledge from the outset that these (short) segments are not unbiased. It is fairly clear that I have set out with a particular agenda, and am seeking to provide information which support my hypothesis. I do not intend to provide links to websites which advocate theories of anthropogenic climate change, except perhaps in order to point out their flaws. Pro-anthropogenic climate change websites are prolific and easily found - any Google search will provide a comprehensive set of links to such sites. Whilst those who advocate non-anthropogenic climate change theories are often of the highest intellectual calibre, the combination of extreme media bias and the threat of expulsion or unemployment conspires to keep them silent or, at the least, off the front page of conventional media.

So, without further ado, I introduce you to the first of the articles I intend to present for examination:

Global Warming: A Convenient Lie

by Andrew G Marshall of Global Research

Recently, a documentary aired on the UK’s Channel 4, entitled “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, which challenged the prevailing political understanding that global warming is caused by man-made activity. The movie argues that it is in fact the sun that is responsible for the current changes in the Earth’s temperature and the film is riddled with the testimony of many scientists and climate experts, furthering a growing dissent to the man-made theory. After all, that’s all it is, a theory. As soon as people start to state that “the debate is over”, beware, because the fundamental basis of all sciences is that debate is never over, that questions must be asked and answered and issues raised in order for the science to be accurate. So what exactly are the arguments behind the Sun being the main cause of global warming?

This is a movie that I have seen myself, and presents a very convincing picture of the current state of the Global Warming debate. In particular, I found the anecdotal evidence of the politicization of the issue among scientists, and especially the IPCC, to be a both alarming and reasonable explanation of the proliferation of the bad science surrounding this debate.

This is most clearly demonstrated by Al Gore himself, the creator of the Academy Award-Winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”.

For those who saw Al Gore’s “documentary”, it was very convincing of its hypothesis that global warming is a man-made phenomenon that has the potential to kill us all and end humanity. After all, the film was filled with graphs and charts, so it must be true. Let’s just get something straight here, Al Gore is not a climatologist, meteorologist, astronomer, or scientist of any kind; he is a politician.

And further, quoting Dr Timothy Ball:

Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.

To read the full article, click here.

This theme of political interference in what should be a wholly scientific debate is one to which I will return in later articles.

For now, let me leave you with one final quote:

It seems worrisome that politicians are all too eager to grab onto this man-made myth of global warming in order to make us afraid and guilty. Guilty enough to want to change it, and afraid enough to give up our freedoms and undergo massive financial expenses in order to do so. So this lie, being pushed by big money and big governments, is a convenient lie for those who want to exert control and collect money.

Entertainment weekly describes Juno as “…a blithe charmer balanced somewhere between a life-should-be-so-neat fairy tale and a life’s-a-real-bitch tragicomedy…”.

According to slashfilm.com, “Juno is not only the best film of the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, but it’s also the best movie of the year…”

Wrong.

Juno is unadulterated shite. It’s not just boring, pointless, poorly scripted and annoyingly ‘quirky’, it’s actually really, really fucking boring, pointless, poorly scripted and annoyingly ‘quirky’. I actually can’t believe I wasted 96 minutes of my life watching this stinking pile of animal refuse.

Given the choice, I would rather be violated by a group of sweaty Arab transvestite gorillas than sit through Juno again. Well, perhaps not, but it’d be a tough call.

This is what I hate about movie reviewers. Someone tells them that if they don’t like these off-beat works of crap they’re cultural philistines and slaves to the Hollywood propaganda machine. Consequently, these sheep then bleat the same message to us, the unsuspecting viewer.

What a load of shit. People like Hollywood blockbusters because a large number of them are well-acted, well-produced, well-filmed, well-written and actually enjoyable. Heaven forbid we go to the movies and actually enjoy ourselves.

Juno is a sad movie for me, because I really like Ellen Page. Hopefully we see more of her in movies like Hard Candy and XMen 3.

Actually, apparently she’s not having too flash a time at the moment, probably because of the shitty hostel she was in, the beggars, crazies and arguing Welsh couples.

So, no cucumber sandwiches so far, but I’m sure it’ll pick up.