 article about available software programs, how to properly manage pedigrees, how to plan litters using COI and AVK and much, much more that goes into a proper breeding management. This article will be published on my main website The Hedgehog Program, within the Hedgehog Wiki that i’m still building.
The current submissions will still be processed, but the submission forms will be closed for any future submission. You will receive papers as soon as possible while i arrange the financial and business side of stopping the registry.
The reason why i do not ask for someone to take over is simple: nobody in their right mind would be able to handle the negative verbal abuse i have experienced in the last two years roughly, and i do not want people to even try, because it’s just not worth it. Let this be a warning to the entire breeding community, especially those who have said negative things about the registry: As long as you refuse to learn from someone who has put in all of their time, you will never be able to improve the species. You’re likely breeding for the wrong reasons and the reason you can continue, is because the good ones are being pushed aside. rethink your breeding if this even slightly applies to you, please. The health of the breeding pool has been declining for years, with APH’s becoming up to 8 years with ease back in the 90’s and today you can be glad if they even reach the age of 4. If that doesn’t say plenty then i don’t know what does.
I know this statement will probably cause more drama, but someone needs to say it and if i’m already being verbally abused i have no reason to stay silent about the declining mentality of the majority of breeders nowadays. If you feel attacked by this, think about why. Because there’s a reason for that thought.
The Hedgehog Program will continue to exist, just not the registry. I am deeply sorry for the part of the community that puts in their love, time and effort into actively bettering the species and being an example for their fellow countrymen in places where breeding management isn’t as prominent and obviously accepted. For you i will always be available for guidance and advice, even if we don’t always see eye to eye.The main lesson you can take from Lockout – or, as we like to call it in the office, Space Jail! – is that in space, the jokes are funnier, the explosions bigger, the stakes higher. It’s simply situational: The moment that writer-directors Stephen St. Leger and James Mather decided to place a huge jail/space station crammed with psychopaths in orbit above Earth, you knew that every aspect of this action film was going to be over-the-top.
The official press notes refer to Lockout as “a futuristic thriller that refuses to take itself seriously.” Considering that producer Luc Besson was also responsible for the trippy The Fifth Element, you trust that these aren’t filmmakers operating under delusions of grandeur about making some uber-serious film. That lack of self-consciousness allows everyone to enjoy what’s going on here: The President’s daughter (Maggie Grace) goes up to space jail, a.k.a. MS One, to ensure that the prisoners are being treated humanely since they’re in hyper-sleep. But when a particularly crazy inmate (Joseph Gilgun) escapes and wakes up all his fellow prisoners, the White House has no choice but to send one man to save the First Daughter and leave the other hostages to die.
That one man is Snow, played almost to the point of parody by Guy Pearce. The usually slender actor bulked up and adopted a gravelly, smartass American accent to play a cross between Hugh Jackman and Liev Schreiber: He wears a T-shirt that reads “Warning: Offensive” and barks out sarcastic one-liners both to himself and to his employers.
So, yes, Snow is a big part of why Lockout is so funny. But we can’t forget the impact of the setting, and realize in turn that other movies set in space end up making us giggle almost as much. For all of our advances to the Moon, plots like Lockout‘s are still firmly set out of our reach. Especially with the NASA program currently shut down, there’s no way we’re going to have a floating space station/jail in the near future. So to have these characters, including the movie’s wise-looking President, take it for granted that that’s how you store convicts in the near future, is already funny.
Consider other movies set in space that have equally ludicrous plots: A bunch of grizzled astronauts have to repair an old Soviet satellite in Space Cowboys; a crack team prevents a Texas-sized meteor from extinguishing the human race in Armagaddeon; the alien makeup alone in Battlefield Earth. While we buy into these premises, we do so while snickering under our breaths. Space really is the final frontier for storytelling: We can stretch the limits of what’s plausible in that cold, star-studded vacuum.
I’m definitely not saying that every single sci-fi offering is comedy gold. But there’s a kind of nervous exhilaration to movies set up in spaceships and on alien planets, which translates to absurd premises in the movies I’ve listed above or even just isolated moments of humor in more serious sci-fi films like Aliens. (Come on, tell me you didn’t laugh during “Stay away from her, you bitch!”)
The best thing that the Lockout team did was play to the outlandishness of their plot, temper it somewhat with the sardonic Snow and his meta commentary on action movies, and just go balls-out on this adventure.
Lockout is out today. So why are you still reading this? Get to a theater and bask in the delicious badness of this movie!THE OTHERIZATION RULES: "A spectacular display of racist signaling!"
"Republicans pounce on wedge issue:" In our own failing tribe's Blue Towns, we have our mandated Storyline.
We have our mandated Storyline—and we're sticking to it! If some people get otherized in the process, that's always been part of the rules.
In recent years, mandated Storyline has involved the racism of The Others. In this morning's Washington Post, our former and future pal, Karen Tumulty, might imaginably be perceived to be teaching Storyline well.
In her new opinion column, Tumulty was discussing the Virginia gubernatorial campaign. She focused on the strikingly clumsy statement about parental involvement made by the Democratic candidate.
TUMULTY (11/4/21): Public school curriculum, not normally an issue in gubernatorial politics, was gaining currency for some reasons that are legitimate and others that are less so. Parents have been understandably frustrated and worried about what the shutdowns that accompanied the coronavirus pandemic were doing to their children’s education. But these concerns have been rolled into battles in the culture war that are taking place and disrupting school board meetings across the country.
McAuliffe’s gaffe ignited a spectacular display of the demagoguery—and racist signaling—that has accompanied the right’s campaign against the phantom menace of critical race theory, an academic construct that is not even part of Virginia’s K-12 curriculum and is separate from laudable, overdue efforts to assure that students receive an honest and full picture of how race has factored in the country’s history.
According to Tumulty, Candidate McAuliffe's clumsy remark had "ignited a spectacular display of...racist signaling" on somebody's part.
That would almost sound like a serious charge, if it weren't so familiar a part of Standard Blue Storyline.
McAuliffe made his clumsy remark at the second candidate debate. That said, who engaged in the "spectacular display of racist signaling" which followed his clumsy remark?
Who engaged in that "spectacular display"—and in what did that spectacular display of "racist signaling" actually consist? Tumulty never makes any attempt to say. Such claims are so thoroughly standard now that they practically type themselves, with no questions asked.
Presumably, it would have been Candidate Youngkin who engaged in this spectacular racist signaling. We almost feel that we can remember the days when editors would have required a spectacularly aggressive claim of that type to be fleshed out—to be supported—by spectacularly convincing examples.
No editor made Tumulty do that. She never attempted to give examples of the "spectacular display of racist signaling" which supposedly followed McAuliffe's remark.
TUMULTY (continuing directly): It also mattered that Youngkin, a wealthy former private equity executive, had the resources to amplify McAuliffe’s comments in his ads, forcing the former governor to respond with one of his own, in which McAuliffe claimed his comments had been taken “out of context,” and that he has “always valued the concerns of parents.” To which the Republican quickly hit back with a response spot in which he replayed other instances where McAuliffe had said something arguably similar.
So with just two days to go before Election Day, and early voting already underway, McAuliffe found himself off his own message and dancing to Youngkin’s choreography. 
Of course! When Youngkin presented the evidence of this, McAuliffe accused him of racist conduct!
Over here, within our flailing Blue Tribe, we simply love accusing The