Researchers in Mali have found 150,000 ancient texts buried in Timbuktu. This is remarkable on so many levels.
I, for one, am looking forward to the wealth of knowledge on Prester John that's sure to ooze out of this like the backstory to an Umberto Eco novel.
11.11.2006
11.08.2006
Finally
Democrats have won control of the House, and Nancy Pelosi is now the first woman Speaker of the House.
The Dems appear to have won control of the Senate, although given Webb's 8,000 seat (0.30% of the votes cast) lead in Virginia, a recount is inevitable (and healthy, and warranted).
Rumsfeld has resigned, and Bush intends to replace him with Robert Gates. Meanwhile, Daniel Ortega has been elected President of Nicaragua. Good grief, folks, did we really need another set of data points to convince us that we never really left the 80's?
And Minnesota has elected Keith Ellison to Congress, making him the first Muslim Representative. Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans, and atheists, take heart.
I am... relieved.
Remember, folks: This is when the work begins. While the House could vote to impeach the Chimp in Chief, there's no way the Senate would approve it (2/3 majority needed for that). The real power of the opposition party being in power here will lie not in its ability to punish, but its ability to resist AND its ability to reach across the aisle and pass reasonable measures.
The thing that appeals to me most, however, is that Bush is now, officially, a lame duck. Oh, that's so delicious.
The Dems appear to have won control of the Senate, although given Webb's 8,000 seat (0.30% of the votes cast) lead in Virginia, a recount is inevitable (and healthy, and warranted).
Rumsfeld has resigned, and Bush intends to replace him with Robert Gates. Meanwhile, Daniel Ortega has been elected President of Nicaragua. Good grief, folks, did we really need another set of data points to convince us that we never really left the 80's?
And Minnesota has elected Keith Ellison to Congress, making him the first Muslim Representative. Hindus, Buddhists, Pagans, and atheists, take heart.
I am... relieved.
Remember, folks: This is when the work begins. While the House could vote to impeach the Chimp in Chief, there's no way the Senate would approve it (2/3 majority needed for that). The real power of the opposition party being in power here will lie not in its ability to punish, but its ability to resist AND its ability to reach across the aisle and pass reasonable measures.
The thing that appeals to me most, however, is that Bush is now, officially, a lame duck. Oh, that's so delicious.
11.07.2006
5:45 p.m. Voting Reminder
East Coasters, you've either voted or you've lost your chance. Everyone else: get to the polls and
And just to get it out of the way, no matter who wins, I for one welcome our alien overlords.
VOTE!
And just to get it out of the way, no matter who wins, I for one welcome our alien overlords.
3:30 p.m. PST Voting Reminder
It's 3:30 p.m. PST, which means that if you live on the East Coast, you have 1.5 hours left to get your butt to your polling station to
VOTE!
11:30 a.m. PST Voting Reminder
If you're in California, it's getting awfully close to lunch time. What a great chance to get out and
VOTE!
8:30 a.m. Voting Reminder
It's 8:30 a.m., which means the polls are open everywhere but Hawaii. Take the time out today to go
VOTE!
11.06.2006
10pm Reminder
It's 10 p.m. PST on the night before an election (here in the US). IF you're a US citizen AND you're registered to vote AND you have not already done so by mailing in an absentee ballot, THEN
tomorrow. If not, write me a 500 word essay on why you're not or submit to the fact that I will shun (SHUN the unbeliever SHUN!) you from now on.
(There will be regular updates to this. If this bugs you, you'd do well to stop reading my blog until after 8 p.m. PST tomorrow night.)
VOTE!
tomorrow. If not, write me a 500 word essay on why you're not or submit to the fact that I will shun (SHUN the unbeliever SHUN!) you from now on.
(There will be regular updates to this. If this bugs you, you'd do well to stop reading my blog until after 8 p.m. PST tomorrow night.)
Dirty Tricks
Ganked from Slashdot:
Let us be clear: this is criminal behavior, even if it's not explicitly illegal. People should go to jail for this, regardless of their political affiliations.
"In 53 Congressional campaigns across the country, including the Pennsylvania 6th, the Connecticut 4th, the North Carolina 11th, the New Hampshire 2nd, and the Illinois 6th and 8th (and possibly all races), the National Republican Congressional Committee is conducting a $2.1 million campaign to make it appear as if Democrats are spamming callers with telemarketing calls. The NRCC hired Conquest Communications Group to conduct a massive nationwide robocalling campaign with calls specifically scripted to appear as if they're coming from the Democratic candidate — in violation of FCC regulations on such 'robocalls,' which requires the identity of the caller to be stated at the beginning of the message [47 CFR 64.1200(b)(1)]. The call begins with 'Hello. I'm calling with information about,' and then says the name of the Democratic candidate. There is then a pause; if the recipient hangs up here, they will receive repeated calls back with the same message, potentially up to 18 times or more (according to one callee). If the callee doesn't hang up, they hear a smear message from the machine about the Democratic candidate. The NRCC thinks the legality of the calls is, conveniently, a 'complicated legal question that's not going to get adjudicated this weekend.'"
Update 20:47 GMT by SM: Thankfully we all learned how to deal with these folks last week.
Let us be clear: this is criminal behavior, even if it's not explicitly illegal. People should go to jail for this, regardless of their political affiliations.
This Year, a Novel Approach
Every year I encourage folks here in the US to show up at the polls and vote. This year I'm doing it ahead of time.
Tomorrow is Election Day here in the US. If you're a citizen (and if you've already registered), take the time to go to your local polling station and VOTE. If you're voting absentee and you haven't turned in your ballot yet, hand it in at your polling place tomorrow.
While I really do care how you vote, I'm not going to tell you how to vote. Just VOTE.
Tomorrow is Election Day here in the US. If you're a citizen (and if you've already registered), take the time to go to your local polling station and VOTE. If you're voting absentee and you haven't turned in your ballot yet, hand it in at your polling place tomorrow.
While I really do care how you vote, I'm not going to tell you how to vote. Just VOTE.
VOTE!
11.05.2006
Horror, and such
My darling Yoko is Japanese. She also has a different take on what's scary and what's not. In particular, things like the little girl in The Ring are scary to her, but not unbearably so; the little girl in Ringu (the Japanese original), however, is so freaky and scary that Yoko will not even watch that movie. There is a tradition in Japan of scary being not that which does terrible things, or the things done, so much as the psychotic woman with long, stringy black hair over her face laughing psychotically.
One could extrapolate a fear of disorder or a fear of the irrational, if one wished, but I'll leave that for someone else to do.
So, since American scary movies don't scare her, she does, occasionally, want to see them to see what all the buzz is about. Sadly, I'm a full-fledged wimp when it comes to scary things. Well, okay, that's not entirely true, although I'm not backing up here just to assuage my bruised male ego. I can (and will) watch scary things, and even gross things, and laugh. It's just, well, I'm pretty well aware, intellectually, of the evil that people do to each other, and most horror films don't grip me enough to make it worth my while to follow them all the way through.
Oh, and zombie movies seriously freak me out to the point where I have trouble sleeping*. There, I've said it, and I am unashamed to admit it**.
My friend Z-, on the other hand, likes scary movies. He saw the new Dawn of the Dead. He's looking forward to renting The Descent.
So when Yoko made it clear that she would, at some point, like to see Slither and Hostel, I knew whom to call, and it wasn't Ghost Busters.
We had a lovely meal at Z-'s place, and then we watched Slither and Hostel. Reviewishness, with possible spoilers, follows behind the cut.
Of the two, Slither was the lighter, funnier one. It's about aliens taking over people by way of oral invasion or through impregnation via tentacles to the abdomen (shades of Xtro and hentai anime). Really. Oh, yeah, and there's a certain zombie-ish manner to the people who get taken over. And the impregnees eat a helluvalot of meat and then get really big. And then explode. And then more slug-like things come out and try to get in people's mouths. So you can see how it's the lighter, funnier one.
Seriously, though, it has a few gross-out scenes and plenty of anticipatory suspense scenes (the one in the bathtub really had me wondering just how far the director was going to go with this, but he thankfully turned back just on the brink of, um, bad taste).
Hostel is the one that got lots of press as a scary film. Here are the spoilers: there are scenes where people are tortured with power drills, chain saws, scissors, scapels, a blowtorch, and a claw rake; there are also lots of scenes of bodies being chopped up. And it's disturbing and gross. And yet....
In 1929, Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel made Un chien andalou in which they simulated cutting a woman's eyeball. It does not matter much that they subsituted a dead calf's eyeball for the woman's eyeball. The effect of just reading about that scene is so incredibly off the scale that I submit that it is the ne plus ultra of cinematic torture, barring the actual existence of a snuff film.
Hostel doesn't really get close to that. In addition, Hostel is a carefully crafted movie that adheres closely to the zero sum karma rules for horror films (and, might I add, tales of heroic journeys and transformations): the better things are, the worse they must become, and the worse things become, the bigger the payoff must be at the end of the film. In Hostel, you get the torture, but you also get the redeemptive, retributive emergence of the protagonist into the light, escaping from the Underworld damaged but mostly intact, and utterly transformed.
So, if you can get past the ick, it's actually not a bad film.
* Look, there's just something about the silent or quiet shambling (or running) dead creeping about in the dark looking for living things to eat/infect that makes every creak of the floorboards and every click or groan of the house settling make me lie in bed with my eyes wide open, listening intently.
** There are two exceptions to this: 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead. And even they made me twitchy.
One could extrapolate a fear of disorder or a fear of the irrational, if one wished, but I'll leave that for someone else to do.
So, since American scary movies don't scare her, she does, occasionally, want to see them to see what all the buzz is about. Sadly, I'm a full-fledged wimp when it comes to scary things. Well, okay, that's not entirely true, although I'm not backing up here just to assuage my bruised male ego. I can (and will) watch scary things, and even gross things, and laugh. It's just, well, I'm pretty well aware, intellectually, of the evil that people do to each other, and most horror films don't grip me enough to make it worth my while to follow them all the way through.
Oh, and zombie movies seriously freak me out to the point where I have trouble sleeping*. There, I've said it, and I am unashamed to admit it**.
My friend Z-, on the other hand, likes scary movies. He saw the new Dawn of the Dead. He's looking forward to renting The Descent.
So when Yoko made it clear that she would, at some point, like to see Slither and Hostel, I knew whom to call, and it wasn't Ghost Busters.
We had a lovely meal at Z-'s place, and then we watched Slither and Hostel. Reviewishness, with possible spoilers, follows behind the cut.
Of the two, Slither was the lighter, funnier one. It's about aliens taking over people by way of oral invasion or through impregnation via tentacles to the abdomen (shades of Xtro and hentai anime). Really. Oh, yeah, and there's a certain zombie-ish manner to the people who get taken over. And the impregnees eat a helluvalot of meat and then get really big. And then explode. And then more slug-like things come out and try to get in people's mouths. So you can see how it's the lighter, funnier one.
Seriously, though, it has a few gross-out scenes and plenty of anticipatory suspense scenes (the one in the bathtub really had me wondering just how far the director was going to go with this, but he thankfully turned back just on the brink of, um, bad taste).
Hostel is the one that got lots of press as a scary film. Here are the spoilers: there are scenes where people are tortured with power drills, chain saws, scissors, scapels, a blowtorch, and a claw rake; there are also lots of scenes of bodies being chopped up. And it's disturbing and gross. And yet....
In 1929, Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel made Un chien andalou in which they simulated cutting a woman's eyeball. It does not matter much that they subsituted a dead calf's eyeball for the woman's eyeball. The effect of just reading about that scene is so incredibly off the scale that I submit that it is the ne plus ultra of cinematic torture, barring the actual existence of a snuff film.
Hostel doesn't really get close to that. In addition, Hostel is a carefully crafted movie that adheres closely to the zero sum karma rules for horror films (and, might I add, tales of heroic journeys and transformations): the better things are, the worse they must become, and the worse things become, the bigger the payoff must be at the end of the film. In Hostel, you get the torture, but you also get the redeemptive, retributive emergence of the protagonist into the light, escaping from the Underworld damaged but mostly intact, and utterly transformed.
So, if you can get past the ick, it's actually not a bad film.
* Look, there's just something about the silent or quiet shambling (or running) dead creeping about in the dark looking for living things to eat/infect that makes every creak of the floorboards and every click or groan of the house settling make me lie in bed with my eyes wide open, listening intently.
** There are two exceptions to this: 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead. And even they made me twitchy.
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