The Naked Green

2008.4.1 Tuesday

Making your House a Holmes

Filed under: Obsessions — Mr. Green @ 2.55 pm

When I first saw the show House, I thought it was strange and abrasive , yet somehow enjoyable. Jamie and I eventually got into the show and watched it whenever we could. I remember telling Jamie one time, “You know who House reminds me of? Sherlock Holmes!”. The more I watched, the parallels became more evident.

My Dad got the first and second seasons of House on DVD on Black Friday (Actually, Ben Romeo and I did, but that’s another story) and I was excited to borrow the first season. I was sure that the special features would talk about how Holmes was an inspiration for this new show, but there was nothing! I figured I would never find out for sure.

The show did get me to break out my trusty book, The Complete Sherlock Holmes given to me by my Grandpa in 1996, and begin reading straight through it starting with the preface by: Christopher Morley and I was amazed when I saw this:

“The character of Holmes, Doyle has told us, was at any rate partly suggested by his student memories of Dr. Joseph Bell of the Edinburgh Infirmary, whose diagnostic intuitions used to startle his patients and pupils. But there was abundant evidence that the invention of the scientific detective conformed to a fundamental logic in Doyle’s own temper.”…”Of his humour, there is a pleasant income-tax story. In his first year of independent medical practice his earnings were 154 pounds, and the income-tax papers arrived he filled it up to show that he was not liable. The authorities returned the form with the words Most Unsatisfactory scrawled across it. He returned it again with the subscription I entirely agree. As many readers must have guessed, Round The Red Lamp and The Stark Munro Letters were very literally drawn from his own experiences in medicine.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The Complete Sherlock Holmes
      Barnes & Noble Inc. 1992

For a while, I was content reading about Sherlock Holmes and watching Dr Gregory House who both had to be related somehow.

The writer’s strike slowed new episodes down, but we were hooked and catching up on all the older episodes on DVD. I then saw the first new episode since the strike, It’s a Wonderful Lie on January 29th. I know now that I was not the only one to catch one of the gifts given to House in that Christmas episode: “A second edition Doyle”! That’s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle! Finally some proof!

I decided then I would have to let the world know on my blog (It’s taken me a while, I’ve been busy). I did have to do some preliminary searching to see if someone else had realized the connection and alas, as with most good ideas, I was too late. I found an interview of David Shore, the creator of House:

Anytime one says “puzzle” and “brilliant deduction” in the same sentence, one can’t help but think of the great fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick, Dr. Watson. And indeed, Holmes — and the real-life physician that inspired him, Dr. Joseph Bell — were very much inspirations for “House.”

Shore now has a whole new appreciation for Holmes’ creator. “My heart goes out to the late, great Arthur Conan Doyle. How’d he do that, and make him smart every time?”

Reminded that Doyle was himself a physician (which no doubt helped), Shore sighs. “He actually was.”

Shore also hopes to draw more parallels to Holmes by drawing House’s best, and likely only, friend, oncologist Dr. Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), into the Watson role.

“We’re looking for Wilson to step up in that regard, as House’s everyman, leaning over his shoulder and going, ‘How’d you do that?’ And more important, ‘Why’d you do that?’

I also found a page by an even more avid fan than I on Connections Between House and Holmes.

The mystery of the relationship of two brilliantly deductive minds is now over for me, but there are plenty of mysteries still left to read about and watch.

2007.1.31 Wednesday

PortableApps

Filed under: Obsessions — Mr. Green @ 8.30 pm

Many of you who know me know that I am obsessed with boot disks for many reasons which I will not go in to now. One reason is to have a customized environment wherever I go. The problem is it takes time to boot, runs slow and can’t be used on a computer on a network unless you have hacking skills, all that and the worst problem: boot disks are hard to customize and slow to test.

Thankfully, I found out about PortableApps.com and my customized and open source environment is well on its way to being perfect. Right now, I’m at the library, running an extremely customized Firefox 2 and I can chat on Gaim FTP using FileZilla and have the whole OpenOffice.org suite as well as other programs at my disposal. The best part is it’s open source (that means free to you and me)!

Try it out yourself! You can download the applications individually, or start with one of their PortableApps Suites that includes Firefox and more with a handy launch menu and backup utility. Try it, you’ll like it….

2005.3.17 Thursday

Green Holiday!

Filed under: Obsessions — Mr. Green @ 4.21 pm

I guess I should have waited to reveal the latest Green Cite winner until today. What kind of a boring day would that have made St. Patrick’s Day Eve? I mean, we get to open one gift on Christmas Eve, why shouldn’t we extend the Green Holiday?

I don’t know why I never really noticed St. Patrick’s Day before. I’m not one for holidays in general, but here we have the perfect one. It’s not all jumbled up with different meanings because it lost its meaning long ago (just kidding). It’s not very commercialized (that speaks for itself). Best of all, it’s full of green!

St. Patrick was a slave who escaped and converted to Christianity. He felt his calling was to evangelize which he did quite effectively all over Ireland. He made many enemies on his mission and was arrested several times, but is known for great things such as raising the dead and driving the snakes out of Ireland. Sounds a bit like the Apostle Paul, doesn’t he?

St. Patrick’s Day is a traditional day for spiritual renewal and offering prayers for missionaries worldwide.

- st-patricks-day.com

The green color comes from the shamrock…

Patrick traditionally used a shamrock to teach about the Father Son and Holy Spirit. Trinity symbols are used in many different cultures and symbolize unity in diversity.

Jamie and I are celebrating tonight by going to Bennigan’s for some great food. I think I’ll stay away from the green beer, though.

2005.2.15 Tuesday

The Naked Orchestra

Filed under: Obsessions — Mr. Green @ 3.49 pm

The Naked Orchestra:

Do you know what it’s like to be able to see through someone? To see them naked in a sense, not in the sense of having no clothes and of seeing their naked body, but in a much deeper sense as if you can see right inside their flesh, the movement of their soul, the ebb and flow, the light and shade of their inner self.
–more–

It’s a sad story, but any author that can use the word naked so many times and not once hint at sex has got something to say as far as I’m concerned. He would understand “The Naked Green” perhaps. He talks of it, actually, which is how I found his sad story:

Now, there’s talent, there’s originality! Not a fiddle player anywhere to be seen on the naked green

It reminds me of the movie, Kolya.

2005.2.1 Tuesday

Favorite Childhood Color

Filed under: Obsessions, Personal — Mr. Green @ 4.41 pm

A little known fact that I think even my wife is in the dark on: My favorite color as a child was yellow.

2005.1.26 Wednesday

More Google Dominance

Filed under: News, Obsessions — Mr. Green @ 8.22 am

Right on the heels of Ben Goodger’s announcement, comes another from the Mozilla community. Darin posts a very short and cryptic message which amounts to the same thing as Ben’s: ‘Oh yeah, I’m working for Google (and Mozilla) too!’

If that’s not enough, Google just announced their beta Google Video Search. Contrary to the name, it’s actually to search recent television programs. I haven’t tried it yet, nor am I really interested in searching T.V. content, but it seems to be a good idea. Google: Good ideas, scary implications!

This news first noticed at: Glazblog and The Fire Ant Gazette.

2005.1.24 Monday

Yushchenko REALLY Wins!

Filed under: News, Obsessions — Mr. Green @ 3.33 pm

It looks like it’s finally official…Victor Yushchenko was just inaugurated as president of Ukraine! All I have to say is, it’s about time! The Ukrainian people have spoken and they enforced their decision. One more point goes to democracy.

For pictures, celebration and news, I’ll refer you again to the bloggers I’ve been following:

Google Eyes the Fox

Filed under: Obsessions — Mr. Green @ 2.29 pm

This is an interesting development, though I can’t say I’m surprised. Ben Goodger, the Lead Engineer of the Firefox project for the Mozilla Foundation now gets his paycheck from Google. According to his weblog, his role will remain “largely unchanged”. Here is what he says:

I will continue doing much the same work as I have described above - with the new goal of successful 1.1, 1.5 and 2.0 releases. I remain devoted full-time to the advancement of Firefox, the Mozilla platform and web browsing in general. I’m sure you have many questions. While I will be spending more time at Google, I will work out of the Mozilla Foundation offices regularly as the need arises. For all questions regarding Google, I ask that you contact Google directly, rather than myself.
–more–

This is an interesting and, admittedly, a smart move for Google. I, along with others, wonder what they have up their sleeve. It’s nice that Ben will get what’s probably a larger paycheck and have funds freed up for the Mozilla Foundation to continue on with their excellent open source software. I’m sure that Google has plans much bigger than helping out Mozilla, though. This brings back rumors of Gbrowser and as much as I like and use Google’s products, I must say I’m getting a little nervous. They apparently have plans to take over the world (or at least the internet) and their secrecy about everything always brings up those dark questions. It will certainly be interesting to see what happens in the future as Google sees it.

Of course, maybe this all has to do with Goodger’s name. I’m sure some good conspiracy theories could be formed, at any rate.

Noticed at MozillaZine: Ben Goodger Going to Google.

2005.1.21 Friday

Browser Wars Continue

Filed under: Obsessions — Mr. Green @ 2.33 pm

That’s right folks, more information on browsers…but wait! This is not merely a comparison table with data most of us can’t pronounce much less understand. This is not a rant on security or a breakdown of rendering speed. This is the big dog, IE and the new scrappy competitor, Firefox battling in the ring of reality.

BBspot has the browser fight coverage and announces the winner of this mighty Browser Showdown. The winner who received the famed Technical Award of Excellence!

Noticed at MozillaZine.

2005.1.13 Thursday

Sticker goes Extinct

Filed under: News, Obsessions — Mr. Green @ 4.48 pm

From the MSNBC article, Judge nixes evolution textbook stickers:

Granted, the sticker put into science text books in Cobb County Atlanta are probably not on the top of the evolutionary chain. In my opinion, the same sort of message should have been evolved much further down the same line, but it was a good start. The idea was killed off by a federal judge last November. So, was it just a case of “natural selection”? I think it was just another example of the stupidity of evolution.

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be judgmental, but this is absurd. Let’s put aside the long debate between the religion of evolution and others like Christianity. Let’s ignore for a minute what the intent of Jefferson’s “separation of church and state” was. This is what the sticker said:

…Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. The material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.

This is what U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper said:

…the sticker conveys an impermissible message of endorsement and tells some citizens that they are political outsiders while telling others they are political insiders

Excuse me? What is the sticker endorsing exactly? That evolution may not be true? That’s hardly an endorsement, in my opinion.

This, considering the fact that the sticker has nothing to do with religion, is just religious persecution:

“This is a great day for Cobb County students,” said attorney Michael Manely, who represented parents who brought the suit. “They’re going to be permitted to learn science unadulterated by religious dogma.”

Once again, I think that the sticker is not a big deal and really a poor attempt to set some things right, but the fact that people have gone out of their way to fight it tells you something. Merely calling into question the theory these people must hold on to so dearly to escape God, results in an outright attack on religion. This isn’t surprising to me, but it certainly is frustrating.

If you, my dear reader, believe in evolution, please tell me what you think. I really want to know how a majority of people out there can really think this is not absurd. I won’t flame you, I just really want to understand what’s going on.

Update (2005.01.14): Gervase Markham at Hacking for Christ has some more in-depth ideas and discussion on the evolving sticker. This is great stuff:

“Make no law respecting an establishment of religion” seems to have been replaced by the nebulous concept of “separation of Church and State”, which has then been broadened into “anything any government or state body does which is even concerned with religion is unconstitutional”, and then on to “anything any government, state or otherwise publicly-elected body does which might even be perceived as having something to do with religion is unconstitutional”.
–more–

Reading the many comments on the article has got me all riled up.

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