If the galaxies look aligned from our perspective, they will look aligned from theirs. The inverse path of the light will be exactly the same since the path is dictated by the perturbation of spacetime.
I fail to see how this might be modded Troll. As for the statement, however, it doesn't work both ways - An Einstein Ring or Einstein Cross is not a discreet feature in space, it's an event similar in principle as an eclipse or occultation, and just as ephemeral. We just happen to be passing through the range where the swath of light from this particular alignment is visible, billions of years after the fact.
My point is that each object in the event so far (including Earth, or the Milky Way if you prefer) became aligned at different points in time.
Think of it this way - The light from this event, like the Energizer Bunny, keeps going and going, so maybe in another couple of billion years, some other galaxy behind us will pass through this swath of light and they'll get to witness a triple Einstein Ring, where we will have effectively become an additional layer of the phenomenon. Then maybe another galaxy a couple of billion light years behind it will see a quadruple Einstein Ring, and so on. But in that far off future, will we get to see an Einstein Ring coming back symmetrically the other way? Nope. We'll be way out of the alignment by then. But not to worry, these type of alignments can and do occur in all directions, all the time. They will become more scarce as the Universe keeps expanding and accelerating, though.
However, my point was that the mall bookstore was my only choice at a very young age. It was either that or playing hide-and-seek by myself under the clothesracks for a couple of hours. Many years passed. Then one day I suddenly looked back, remembered and understood why I feel so comfortable in a bookstore, browsing books for hours on end.
BTW, since I mentioned Charles Schultz's Peanuts - please take a good long look at the strips from the fifties, when Schultz wrote around a tight circle of characters, for a few newspapers.
Finally, What amazes me is how many people here talk of buying new books from stores. They cost like $50 (in Australia) and besides, what is this, the stoneage?
The flip side of your argument is: I don't mind helping a writer put food on his/her table.
In this context, McDonald's and the like are the true enemy, putting three layers of paper bags for every burger and fries.
I'd rather buy a book than a DVD, and I'd rather buy a DVD than a CD.
...and I find it astounding that 53% of any nation's population hits the public libraries at least once a year, let alone the US. I've always thought the figure would be much, much lower. In fact, there seems to be three types of people:
1. Those who frequent public libraries. 2. Those who don't. 3. Those who don't and only know those others who don't.
I seem to be part of category three.
Since I can remember, I've hit bookstores. About once a month, my mother went clothes-shopping and used to leave me at the bookstore closest to Macy's, or Broadway, or May Company, or whichever department store it was. Probably, my mother and the person in charge made some mutually benefitial arrangement.
I can remember leafing from book to book and never being bored. I recall getting tired from standing up, then looking for the slidable ladder and sitting in the second step, hunched over, reading a book. At the end of the day, my mother had to buy me Peanuts (you know, Charles Schultz). Some time later (and I can't recall the details), my attention shifted to Astronomy.
For a couple of cowardly visits there, I remember playing stupid, wandering aisles while terrified of daring to pass through the Sex Section and quickly leaf through a copy of The Joy Of Sex and its awesome illustrations.
My point is, since a very young age, commercial bookstores played the role of public library for me. I think. I've never lived the Public Library experience, I don't know what it's like. Although I wouldn't mind wandering through the aisles of the Berlin Public Library, as shown in Win Wenders' Wings Of Desire .
And today, I would love to thank my mom for allowing books to babysit me as much as possible.
From what I recall (I read the books two decades ago), a good chunk of Fellowship Of The Ring consists of our intrepid heroes dining alfresco in the countryside, reciting songs about the exploits of warriors of yore, as well as an epic love story or two.
But yeah: - Cutting The Hobbit in two would be an extremely cynical way of milking the cow for all she's worth. - Inventing further adventures for Bilbo would be sacrilege, especially with writers who take it upon themselves to twist Faramir out of shape because they (think they) know better than Tolkien, also adding a barrage of plastic-emotion Hallmark moments.
However, we all know that Tolkien wrote tons of stuff not meant (in his eyes) for public consumption, reference volumes that fleshed out his broader understanding of Middle Earth. Every once in a while, additional material comes to light, "finished" by the likes of Tolkien Jr.
The best case scenario is that maybe Jackson was given access to a stash of unpublished hobbit stories in the catalog.
One thing is clear, though: No Silmarillion this time. Maybe next go around we'll get to see some combat between Glorfindel and one of the Balrogs.
In the scene where Batty confronts Tyrell, the line, "I want more life, fucker" has been replaced with "I want more life, father".
Oh man. What else, does Roy shoot first? Does Rachel carry a walkie-talkie instead of a gun? Will every great sci-fi film made by a baby boomer disappoint with the clean yet unholy, sixty-something Disney retouch?
The only thing now missing from Blade Runner, already in the pipe for the next re-edit, is a wide-eyed kid, the cuteness factor, you know, so them Generation X slacker youngsters can relate. And BTW, get the fuck off my lawn!
While testifying in front of Congress, in the decency/censorship hearings triggered by Tipper Gore back in the eighties, Frank Zappa said:
"Well, I once wrote a song about dental floss, and I don't recall anybody's teeth getting any cleaner".
So far, that's been my belief. I've watched tons of cinema of all kinds, from Disney to the latest batch of Japanese and French ultra-gore films, and the more films I watch, my outrage at real-world violence remains just as intense. It's one thing to think violent thoughts, which we all have all the time, it's a completely different monster to act out on them.
Buttons are pushed when watching scenes of violence. So what, buttons are pushed when thinking violent scenarios.
Any nut (back in fashion after the latest US shooting) will cling to anything to justify an act of violence. What was the excuse of the man who shot John Lennon, something Chapman or other? "Catcher In The Rye" by J.D. Salinger. Name me an act of physical violence in that book.
In a Roddenberry future, the fucking holodeck will be blamed in some Kansas study, never mind there were Virtual Reality, Video Game, Television, Radio and Literature precedents for the same kind of behaviour.
I will draw the line, though, when the gun is in the mind as opposed to when the gun is within arm's reach.
I'm a pretty good shot (especially with a.42 for some reason), yet I will never own a gun. I will never, through momentary mental confusion, allow bullets to fly across the room to defend a TV and/or the contents of a wallet. I'd be yet another twentieth century fucking barbarian if I did. Premature death is no prize of any kind.
Curiously enough, it was the barbarians to the north who could carry their fortune as jewelry with no fear of being robbed. It was the "civilized" romans who institutionalized greedy violence in that corner of the world.
Implementing a "stop and hassle" database of US citizens to keep the country safe from foreigners?
Who makes these laws, anyway? Unless, of course, this new program is really designed to tighten the noose around a domestic population, under the pretext of "fighting an unseen foreign enemy". Things are getting worse by the day.
If only they applied one tenth of the zeal to keep "moral persons" (read: corporations) as they do "physical persons" (read: individuals) in check, this might be a much better world. But who the hell's gonna do that?
Agreed, wholeheartedly. The reasoning behind Lucas putting Ewoks instead of Wookies in ROTJ is mind boggling. If the second Death Star had been built in orbit around Kashyyyk, ROTJ might have been as good as ESB. Also, I've always thought that the Tatooine episode is way too long, it really makes the first third of the film drag along at a snail's pace.
However, the space-end of the Battle Of Endor and the showdown in the Emperor's chamber are as kick-ass as any of cinema's all time great moments, awesome stuff.
I mean, quantum physics states that to observe a particle's position or trajectory, you must first throw energy at it, thereby altering it. But in the case of the supernova stated in TFA's header, or any astronomical phenomena for that matter, all we are doing is passively gathering an infinitesimal amount of the radially emitted energy, which would have been absorbed by rocks in the ground if some high-tech gizmo wasn't there in an observatory instead.
Do I alter the sun by squinting at it, and does it take eight minutes to upload my observation back into the sun's hard drive? It's the same thing, and it sounds rather silly.
I'm wondering how long it takes for people to find secret "music" in other paintings and photographs...
Absolutely. Da Vinci executed his paintings (actually, everything he did) with mathematical precision, and what is music but a mathematical language, Bach being the example that stands out in my mind right now? With sophisticated enough technology, we'll be finding musical notes in Jackson Pollock's paintings - scandinavian death metal, perhaps?
So Da Vinci was also a composer, yet hid it so well that only five centuries later it comes to light. He really kept that secret close to his breast! Typical MSM fodder, this bit of "news", in line with stories from a couple of years ago: "Coming up, ten ways you and your children are in danger of being killed tomorrow in a terrorist attack, but first, the Da Vinci Code - sinister cover-up or fiction?" All of it light years away from Occam's Razor.
As one of the members of The Society For Putting Things On Top Of Other Things said: The whole thing's rather silly, innit?
Only Tucker will be the to say the emperor has no clothes if a Democrat president was in power.
Carlson is still fixated with Bill Clinton. Tucker is not rational. Tucker is considered mainstream. The important concept is "equal voice". When MSM swings more to the left, the TV watching majority may become closer to rational, and we'll all win. Left voices disappeared in the jingoistic buildup to war. Remember that filthy communist/terrorist Phil Donahue? Common sense trumped by market penetration and bigger, oligarchical concerns. The Daily Show was always there, but little by little, Olbermann crept in. Then The Cafffey File in Wolf Blitzer's show, but how long does The Caffrey File last? Two minutes, at most.
Oh some of the European leaders may say some nice things about whomever is elected, but the substantive issues that divide Europe and the US will remain. As we speak, the USA is a bullying laughingstock. As soon as Bush is gone, any kind, whatever kind of international dialogue may begin. And that's a step in the right direction.
I get the feeling that the inevitable conclusion lurking behind your argument is that the political system is in need of a radical overhaul, and I wholeheartedly agree.
I still can't believe that in the Internet age, when all information anybody could possibly want to find out is at the reach of the fingertips, when perspectives from all over the world, of all events, can be accessed from the office or bedroom, we still suffer from massive ignorance and one-dimensional, pre-digested opinions on issues that directly impact everyones' lives.
To radically change the political system in any country, in a meaningful way, this willful ignorance must be eradicated, and the only way to achieve that is through education. Then look at the education system, cranking out generation after generation of perpetually bored masses, never having learned to think, only to memorize (and soon forget) sterile facts - the ideal mold for the creation of the malleable consumer citizen, good little citizen.
You overhaul the educational system - knowledge is power. You replace one figurehead with another - the cycle keeps on spinning.
Precisely why they won't impeach him, which is precisely why this is so enraging.
Too true.
Beltway mindsets regard the Clinton impeachment as revenge (petulant little fucking children) for Nixon, quid pro quo has been achieved, Democrats ponder that accounts are squared, don't open that door again.
Who wins? Regard this case as a tie achieved in 1998, as good today as a tremendous victory for Cheney/Bush, if not the GOP in general. Who loses? The rest of us (and I mean the whole world).
Still, I'd rather see a filibustered and flummoxed Democrat-controlled Congress than a full GOP monopoly in Washington. For the time being, we have to console ourselves with the fact that Senate and House investigation committees are in Democrat hands, without which, for example, Alberto Gonzalez would probably still be in office and Rove in the White House. If you can't or won't decapitate, at least chip away. Small potatoes, I know, but to use another metaphor, at least brakes are being applied to the runaway freight train.
You realize that the Democrats expect to win the next election and want the same powers that Bush et al. have had.
Seriously, the thought had not even occurred to me and is quite a revelation. If what you say is true, I can think of three scenarios:
1. The Pipe Dream: All that power may be used by the Democrat 2008 victor to undo a great deal of the damage done in the previous eight years. Think of an imperial presidency using this power to declare global warming a national emergency, restore civil rights, maybe even impose severe restrictions on Clear Channel and Fox propaganda, go after Haliburton, etc, then restore the Constitution to its' rightful state. 2. The Nightmare: You know the proverb, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely". After a year we could witness a Bush in all but name, with a donkey lapel pin. 3. Politics As Usual, Democrat Version: Most of the boat will not be rocked. While Iraq remains a black void of attention and resources with no end in sight, corporate-sponsored neoliberalism will continue to pillage with no checks and balances, this time with a Democrat rubber stamp of approval. However, issues like stem cell research and global warming will be officially recognized, some measures will be taken. Ops like extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo, etc, will most likely be dismantled. Talks with Iran, North Korea and Hammas will be established.
If past experience repeats itself, when the Democrat candidate takes over the Oval Office in 2009, Politics As Usual, Democrat Version will prevail.
A ray of hope: Considering the successes of Keith Olbermann, The Daily Show and the like, it seems that the MSM is realizing that far-right stances are not as viable anymore. Tucker Carlson may be canceled soon, a step in the right direction! Maybe we will live to see the day when the lunatic fringe, war-mongering chicken-hawk, jingoistic far right pundits will fade from most TV news shows, off to the wasteland wrought by Ruppert Murdoch. Maybe then the MSM can take a step or two to become, you know, mainstream (read: saner).
That said, anything's better than the last seven years, but I don't want the Democrats to even get close to the effing ring of Sauron that Cheney, Rove and Bush have forged. Temptation of this sort usually never leads to anything good.
Re:It took a long time for this to appear in /.
on
Chefs As Chemists
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· Score: 1
Nothing that fine sardines bread and butter can't do. But I guess we've all seen the news that indeed our brain do rationalize a posteriori every choices we make.
My bad, I didn't specify the following detail:
When the guy walked into The Fat Duck, he knew exactly what he was getting into - Number One restaurant in the world, according to the Michelin Guide. He knew the prices before he got there, so the decision to sacrifice the shopping was taken before the trip. Instead of a posteriori rationalizing, it's closer to delineating priorities and sticking to them.
As you can see, the guy is truly passionate about this sort of thing. One night in his restaurant, a couple showed up and whispered to me that they'd just been to McDonald's and split an order of nuggets, but "Shhh, don't tell Ol' Mustache, will you? He's gonna harangue us if he finds out". So yeah, he's a bit of a culinary tyrant, but he puts his money where his mouth and temper are, so you gotta respect the guy, can't accuse him of hypocrisy.
The guy paid his dues working as cook for two or three years in tuna fishing expeditions up and down the Pacific, so he's got a bit of a tough façade. Think of the crew of "The Perfect Storm" and you're near the idea, up before dawn, lighting dynamite sticks with cuban cigars to guide tuna to the nets, hauling in the catch for hours on end, that sort of thing.
One New Year's he prepared a nine course, five hour dinner for 25 acquaintances, the Number One culinary event in my life so far, check out some of the items: Raw sea urchin in a shot glass, with mezcal, lemon and tomato juice. Abalone and artichoke lightly fried in olive oil. Tuna tartare with pear and avocado. For the beef crowd, there was aged rib eye in a black olive cream with a slight hint of habanero. Dessert at five in the morning was "Chocolate Cascade", where you stick the fork into the crust and hot chocolate cream spews out like lava under pressure. A seemingly endless stream of wine kept flowing, we all ended up leaving his place at nine the following morning, happy campers and thoroughly fumigated.
As for twelve hundred spare dollars in my pocket in London, mine would have gone to a week long Guinness, Laphroaig and Fish & Chips pub binge! Many pubs in GB are now open twenty four hours, you know.
It took a long time for this to appear in /.
on
Chefs As Chemists
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· Score: 4, Interesting
A friend of mine is an excellent chef (mediterranean/mexican fusion with emphasis on seafood), regularly invited to prepare meals in places like Oslo, Paris, London, Evian (Switzerland), San Francisco, Acapulco, etc. No matter what city it is, he splurges on at least one meal at the most celebrated restaurant (according to the gastronomic insiders) in town, and money is no object on these special occasions.
A couple of years ago, while visiting London, my friend and his wife went to Blumenthal's place, The Fat Duck, specifically for the sampler meal at three hundred pounds per person, for two people. Sixteen tiny courses, fifteen of them with their own specific wine.
Just to give you an idea, the first course was a sphere chilled to the temperature of liquid nitrogen, handled with chemist's pliers. Within a second of being popped in the mouth, the sphere vaporized and expanded. Containing mostly gas, with some green tea, lemon and vodka, this did three things: cleansed the taste buds, stimulated the appetite and gave an immediate buzz. Supposedly, the fourth or fifth course was the proverbial sledgehammer to the head - a quail jelly on a bed of green pea puree and wheat. That's when the sky cracked open and the meaning of life was telepathically revealed from above. After that it was a two-hour haze of "artistic perfection".
How many of us can say that a certain meal, a sequence of flavor combinations, caused a full-blown epiphany, a mystical experience?
To this day, my friend's eyes glaze and focus off into infinity while remembering "the best meal I've ever had in my life, the best twelve hundred dollars (!!!) I've ever spent". The good wife agrees, even as the Harrod's shopping budget was obliterated by one dinner.
Which brings up the ultimate nightmare scenario, revenge for all the grief we've caused our poor, dear mothers. How about her picture blog with your baby Polaroids, including the full frontal nudity ones in the backyard Toys-R-Us inflatable swimming pool?
One of the first and most dangerous leaps in this direction was Apple's iWeb, which took the geek factor (read: intimidating) out of the picture.
So, lesson one for the time being: dissuade your mom from getting both a scanner and an iMac. If she's just a bit cleverer than you think she is (and she is), you may turn out to be one of the unlucky ones.
A day later it payed the compliment to the other end.
In Mexico, that's know as "paying taxes".
I'm very, very good at eating spicy, but once, in a seafood joint, I noticed a bottle of Insanity Sauce, which I'd never seen before, and with due warning from the guys there, I put like, six drops on my ceviche tostada, and for the first time in years, my eyes watered up, I couldn't believe it. The guys had a good chuckle, but went silent when I put six more drops in my next tostada, and the next one. When I returned a week later for more, I noticed something had changed: the guys treated me with respect, Goodfellas-style.
Sadly, after a few months, they ran out of that bottle and have been unable to find another one. I still go there, as the guys make great mesquite-smoked clams. And they're always drinking beer.
There's a lot of posters writing about their experiences after eating habaneros and the like, either out of curiosity or on a dare. Well, here's a great tip next time you're on a dare, or in a thai or mexican restaurant: Keep a piece of candy nearby. If the burning sensation becomes too much to bear, unwrap the candy and pop it in your mouth, the sudden sugar coating on the tongue will overwhelm the taste buds with a near-opposite sensation, canceling most of the pain.
More than a form of defense from the "attack" of being eaten, Capsaicin has turned out to be a very fast enabler of propagation, therefore reproduction, by being eaten. Case in point: bird eats jalapeño seeds, flies away, gets a case of the runs a few miles later. No seeds move further faster than spicy ones. But why would animals, after millions of years, keep eating these seeds? There's gotta be some incentive for us, too. Capsaicin seems to be a generous substance, serving animal individuals to benefit its' plant species. And make no mistake about it, if you eat it long enough, hot spice becomes an addictive substance, with raised tolerance levels and the whole deal. The terrestrial version of mélange?
The more I'm thinking about this, the more I'm craving a ceviche tostada with three or four thin slices of avocado and a tablespoon of habanero sauce (preferably of the yellow or orange variety).
Slashdot Mirror
Re:And to them, we are the ring (Score:0, Troll)
If the galaxies look aligned from our perspective, they will look aligned from theirs. The inverse path
of the light will be exactly the same since the path is dictated by the perturbation of spacetime.
I fail to see how this might be modded Troll. As for the statement, however, it doesn't work both ways - An Einstein Ring or Einstein Cross is not a discreet feature in space, it's an event similar in principle as an eclipse or occultation, and just as ephemeral. We just happen to be passing through the range where the swath of light from this particular alignment is visible, billions of years after the fact.
My point is that each object in the event so far (including Earth, or the Milky Way if you prefer) became aligned at different points in time.
Think of it this way - The light from this event, like the Energizer Bunny, keeps going and going, so maybe in another couple of billion years, some other galaxy behind us will pass through this swath of light and they'll get to witness a triple Einstein Ring, where we will have effectively become an additional layer of the phenomenon. Then maybe another galaxy a couple of billion light years behind it will see a quadruple Einstein Ring, and so on. But in that far off future, will we get to see an Einstein Ring coming back symmetrically the other way? Nope. We'll be way out of the alignment by then. But not to worry, these type of alignments can and do occur in all directions, all the time. They will become more scarce as the Universe keeps expanding and accelerating, though.
I've been here for years, have a four digit ID, and have NEVER had one of my stories posted.
Maybe the Slashdot submission process is powered by Diebold?
It's actually quite easy! All you need is spice.
I, for one, welcome our new bloated, spice-crammed, shadow-of-their-former-human-selves Guild Navigator overlords.
A Mentat or two may also come in handy.
Those are only good once they're on the ground.
What about last year's Sunshine, with its' slingshot rendezvous with Mercury?
I understand your point of view, aybiss.
However, my point was that the mall bookstore was my only choice at a very young age. It was either that or playing hide-and-seek by myself under the clothesracks for a couple of hours. Many years passed. Then one day I suddenly looked back, remembered and understood why I feel so comfortable in a bookstore, browsing books for hours on end.
BTW, since I mentioned Charles Schultz's Peanuts - please take a good long look at the strips from the fifties, when Schultz wrote around a tight circle of characters, for a few newspapers.
Finally,
What amazes me is how many people here talk of buying new books from stores. They cost like $50 (in Australia) and besides, what is this, the stoneage?
The flip side of your argument is: I don't mind helping a writer put food on his/her table.
In this context, McDonald's and the like are the true enemy, putting three layers of paper bags for every burger and fries.
I'd rather buy a book than a DVD, and I'd rather buy a DVD than a CD.
...and I find it astounding that 53% of any nation's population hits the public libraries at least once a year, let alone the US. I've always thought the figure would be much, much lower. In fact, there seems to be three types of people:
1. Those who frequent public libraries.
2. Those who don't.
3. Those who don't and only know those others who don't.
I seem to be part of category three.
Since I can remember, I've hit bookstores. About once a month, my mother went clothes-shopping and used to leave me at the bookstore closest to Macy's, or Broadway, or May Company, or whichever department store it was. Probably, my mother and the person in charge made some mutually benefitial arrangement.
I can remember leafing from book to book and never being bored. I recall getting tired from standing up, then looking for the slidable ladder and sitting in the second step, hunched over, reading a book. At the end of the day, my mother had to buy me Peanuts (you know, Charles Schultz). Some time later (and I can't recall the details), my attention shifted to Astronomy.
For a couple of cowardly visits there, I remember playing stupid, wandering aisles while terrified of daring to pass through the Sex Section and quickly leaf through a copy of The Joy Of Sex and its awesome illustrations.
My point is, since a very young age, commercial bookstores played the role of public library for me. I think. I've never lived the Public Library experience, I don't know what it's like. Although I wouldn't mind wandering through the aisles of the Berlin Public Library, as shown in Win Wenders' Wings Of Desire .
And today, I would love to thank my mom for allowing books to babysit me as much as possible.
It's the same as it ever was.
Someone controls electric guitar.
From what I recall (I read the books two decades ago), a good chunk of Fellowship Of The Ring consists of our intrepid heroes dining alfresco in the countryside, reciting songs about the exploits of warriors of yore, as well as an epic love story or two.
But yeah:
- Cutting The Hobbit in two would be an extremely cynical way of milking the cow for all she's worth.
- Inventing further adventures for Bilbo would be sacrilege, especially with writers who take it upon themselves to twist Faramir out of shape because they (think they) know better than Tolkien, also adding a barrage of plastic-emotion Hallmark moments.
However, we all know that Tolkien wrote tons of stuff not meant (in his eyes) for public consumption, reference volumes that fleshed out his broader understanding of Middle Earth. Every once in a while, additional material comes to light, "finished" by the likes of Tolkien Jr.
The best case scenario is that maybe Jackson was given access to a stash of unpublished hobbit stories in the catalog.
One thing is clear, though: No Silmarillion this time. Maybe next go around we'll get to see some combat between Glorfindel and one of the Balrogs.
In the scene where Batty confronts Tyrell, the line, "I want more life, fucker" has been replaced with "I want more life, father".
Oh man. What else, does Roy shoot first? Does Rachel carry a walkie-talkie instead of a gun?
Will every great sci-fi film made by a baby boomer disappoint with the clean yet unholy, sixty-something Disney retouch?
The only thing now missing from Blade Runner, already in the pipe for the next re-edit, is a wide-eyed kid, the cuteness factor, you know, so them Generation X slacker youngsters can relate. And BTW, get the fuck off my lawn!
While testifying in front of Congress, in the decency/censorship hearings triggered by Tipper Gore back in the eighties, Frank Zappa said:
.42 for some reason), yet I will never own a gun. I will never, through momentary mental confusion, allow bullets to fly across the room to defend a TV and/or the contents of a wallet. I'd be yet another twentieth century fucking barbarian if I did. Premature death is no prize of any kind.
"Well, I once wrote a song about dental floss, and I don't recall anybody's teeth getting any cleaner".
So far, that's been my belief. I've watched tons of cinema of all kinds, from Disney to the latest batch of Japanese and French ultra-gore films, and the more films I watch, my outrage at real-world violence remains just as intense. It's one thing to think violent thoughts, which we all have all the time, it's a completely different monster to act out on them.
Buttons are pushed when watching scenes of violence. So what, buttons are pushed when thinking violent scenarios.
Any nut (back in fashion after the latest US shooting) will cling to anything to justify an act of violence. What was the excuse of the man who shot John Lennon, something Chapman or other? "Catcher In The Rye" by J.D. Salinger. Name me an act of physical violence in that book.
In a Roddenberry future, the fucking holodeck will be blamed in some Kansas study, never mind there were Virtual Reality, Video Game, Television, Radio and Literature precedents for the same kind of behaviour.
I will draw the line, though, when the gun is in the mind as opposed to when the gun is within arm's reach.
I'm a pretty good shot (especially with a
Curiously enough, it was the barbarians to the north who could carry their fortune as jewelry with no fear of being robbed. It was the "civilized" romans who institutionalized greedy violence in that corner of the world.
Implementing a "stop and hassle" database of US citizens to keep the country safe from foreigners?
Who makes these laws, anyway? Unless, of course, this new program is really designed to tighten the noose around a domestic population, under the pretext of "fighting an unseen foreign enemy". Things are getting worse by the day.
If only they applied one tenth of the zeal to keep "moral persons" (read: corporations) as they do "physical persons" (read: individuals) in check, this might be a much better world. But who the hell's gonna do that?
Ewoks. 'nuff said.
Agreed, wholeheartedly. The reasoning behind Lucas putting Ewoks instead of Wookies in ROTJ is mind boggling. If the second Death Star had been built in orbit around Kashyyyk, ROTJ might have been as good as ESB. Also, I've always thought that the Tatooine episode is way too long, it really makes the first third of the film drag along at a snail's pace.
However, the space-end of the Battle Of Endor and the showdown in the Emperor's chamber are as kick-ass as any of cinema's all time great moments, awesome stuff.
I mean, quantum physics states that to observe a particle's position or trajectory, you must first throw energy at it, thereby altering it. But in the case of the supernova stated in TFA's header, or any astronomical phenomena for that matter, all we are doing is passively gathering an infinitesimal amount of the radially emitted energy, which would have been absorbed by rocks in the ground if some high-tech gizmo wasn't there in an observatory instead.
Do I alter the sun by squinting at it, and does it take eight minutes to upload my observation back into the sun's hard drive? It's the same thing, and it sounds rather silly.
Last Supper I Gave You My Achy Breaky Heart
:)
But the very next day, you cheated on me and had me crucified
There, fixed that for you
I'm wondering how long it takes for people to find secret "music" in other paintings and photographs...
Absolutely. Da Vinci executed his paintings (actually, everything he did) with mathematical precision, and what is music but a mathematical language, Bach being the example that stands out in my mind right now? With sophisticated enough technology, we'll be finding musical notes in Jackson Pollock's paintings - scandinavian death metal, perhaps?
So Da Vinci was also a composer, yet hid it so well that only five centuries later it comes to light. He really kept that secret close to his breast! Typical MSM fodder, this bit of "news", in line with stories from a couple of years ago: "Coming up, ten ways you and your children are in danger of being killed tomorrow in a terrorist attack, but first, the Da Vinci Code - sinister cover-up or fiction?" All of it light years away from Occam's Razor.
As one of the members of The Society For Putting Things On Top Of Other Things said: The whole thing's rather silly, innit?
Only Tucker will be the to say the emperor has no clothes if a Democrat president was in power.
Carlson is still fixated with Bill Clinton. Tucker is not rational. Tucker is considered mainstream. The important concept is "equal voice".
When MSM swings more to the left, the TV watching majority may become closer to rational, and we'll all win. Left voices disappeared in the jingoistic buildup to war. Remember that filthy communist/terrorist Phil Donahue? Common sense trumped by market penetration and bigger, oligarchical concerns. The Daily Show was always there, but little by little, Olbermann crept in. Then The Cafffey File in Wolf Blitzer's show, but how long does The Caffrey File last? Two minutes, at most.
Oh some of the European leaders may say some nice things about whomever is elected, but the substantive issues that divide Europe and the US will remain.
As we speak, the USA is a bullying laughingstock.
As soon as Bush is gone, any kind, whatever kind of international dialogue may begin. And that's a step in the right direction.
I get the feeling that the inevitable conclusion lurking behind your argument is that the political system is in need of a radical overhaul, and I wholeheartedly agree.
I still can't believe that in the Internet age, when all information anybody could possibly want to find out is at the reach of the fingertips, when perspectives from all over the world, of all events, can be accessed from the office or bedroom, we still suffer from massive ignorance and one-dimensional, pre-digested opinions on issues that directly impact everyones' lives.
To radically change the political system in any country, in a meaningful way, this willful ignorance must be eradicated, and the only way to achieve that is through education. Then look at the education system, cranking out generation after generation of perpetually bored masses, never having learned to think, only to memorize (and soon forget) sterile facts - the ideal mold for the creation of the malleable consumer citizen, good little citizen.
You overhaul the educational system - knowledge is power. You replace one figurehead with another - the cycle keeps on spinning.
Precisely why they won't impeach him, which is precisely why this is so enraging.
Too true.
Beltway mindsets regard the Clinton impeachment as revenge (petulant little fucking children) for Nixon, quid pro quo has been achieved, Democrats ponder that accounts are squared, don't open that door again.
Who wins? Regard this case as a tie achieved in 1998, as good today as a tremendous victory for Cheney/Bush, if not the GOP in general. Who loses? The rest of us (and I mean the whole world).
Still, I'd rather see a filibustered and flummoxed Democrat-controlled Congress than a full GOP monopoly in Washington. For the time being, we have to console ourselves with the fact that Senate and House investigation committees are in Democrat hands, without which, for example, Alberto Gonzalez would probably still be in office and Rove in the White House. If you can't or won't decapitate, at least chip away. Small potatoes, I know, but to use another metaphor, at least brakes are being applied to the runaway freight train.
You realize that the Democrats expect to win the next election and want the same powers that Bush et al. have had.
Seriously, the thought had not even occurred to me and is quite a revelation. If what you say is true, I can think of three scenarios:
1. The Pipe Dream: All that power may be used by the Democrat 2008 victor to undo a great deal of the damage done in the previous eight years. Think of an imperial presidency using this power to declare global warming a national emergency, restore civil rights, maybe even impose severe restrictions on Clear Channel and Fox propaganda, go after Haliburton, etc, then restore the Constitution to its' rightful state.
2. The Nightmare: You know the proverb, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely". After a year we could witness a Bush in all but name, with a donkey lapel pin.
3. Politics As Usual, Democrat Version: Most of the boat will not be rocked. While Iraq remains a black void of attention and resources with no end in sight, corporate-sponsored neoliberalism will continue to pillage with no checks and balances, this time with a Democrat rubber stamp of approval. However, issues like stem cell research and global warming will be officially recognized, some measures will be taken. Ops like extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo, etc, will most likely be dismantled. Talks with Iran, North Korea and Hammas will be established.
If past experience repeats itself, when the Democrat candidate takes over the Oval Office in 2009, Politics As Usual, Democrat Version will prevail.
A ray of hope: Considering the successes of Keith Olbermann, The Daily Show and the like, it seems that the MSM is realizing that far-right stances are not as viable anymore. Tucker Carlson may be canceled soon, a step in the right direction! Maybe we will live to see the day when the lunatic fringe, war-mongering chicken-hawk, jingoistic far right pundits will fade from most TV news shows, off to the wasteland wrought by Ruppert Murdoch. Maybe then the MSM can take a step or two to become, you know, mainstream (read: saner).
That said, anything's better than the last seven years, but I don't want the Democrats to even get close to the effing ring of Sauron that Cheney, Rove and Bush have forged. Temptation of this sort usually never leads to anything good.
Nothing that fine sardines bread and butter can't do. But I guess we've all seen the news that indeed our brain do rationalize a posteriori every choices we make.
My bad, I didn't specify the following detail:
When the guy walked into The Fat Duck, he knew exactly what he was getting into - Number One restaurant in the world, according to the Michelin Guide. He knew the prices before he got there, so the decision to sacrifice the shopping was taken before the trip. Instead of a posteriori rationalizing, it's closer to delineating priorities and sticking to them.
As you can see, the guy is truly passionate about this sort of thing. One night in his restaurant, a couple showed up and whispered to me that they'd just been to McDonald's and split an order of nuggets, but "Shhh, don't tell Ol' Mustache, will you? He's gonna harangue us if he finds out". So yeah, he's a bit of a culinary tyrant, but he puts his money where his mouth and temper are, so you gotta respect the guy, can't accuse him of hypocrisy.
The guy paid his dues working as cook for two or three years in tuna fishing expeditions up and down the Pacific, so he's got a bit of a tough façade. Think of the crew of "The Perfect Storm" and you're near the idea, up before dawn, lighting dynamite sticks with cuban cigars to guide tuna to the nets, hauling in the catch for hours on end, that sort of thing.
One New Year's he prepared a nine course, five hour dinner for 25 acquaintances, the Number One culinary event in my life so far, check out some of the items: Raw sea urchin in a shot glass, with mezcal, lemon and tomato juice. Abalone and artichoke lightly fried in olive oil. Tuna tartare with pear and avocado. For the beef crowd, there was aged rib eye in a black olive cream with a slight hint of habanero. Dessert at five in the morning was "Chocolate Cascade", where you stick the fork into the crust and hot chocolate cream spews out like lava under pressure. A seemingly endless stream of wine kept flowing, we all ended up leaving his place at nine the following morning, happy campers and thoroughly fumigated.
As for twelve hundred spare dollars in my pocket in London, mine would have gone to a week long Guinness, Laphroaig and Fish & Chips pub binge! Many pubs in GB are now open twenty four hours, you know.
A friend of mine is an excellent chef (mediterranean/mexican fusion with emphasis on seafood), regularly invited to prepare meals in places like Oslo, Paris, London, Evian (Switzerland), San Francisco, Acapulco, etc. No matter what city it is, he splurges on at least one meal at the most celebrated restaurant (according to the gastronomic insiders) in town, and money is no object on these special occasions.
A couple of years ago, while visiting London, my friend and his wife went to Blumenthal's place, The Fat Duck, specifically for the sampler meal at three hundred pounds per person, for two people. Sixteen tiny courses, fifteen of them with their own specific wine.
Just to give you an idea, the first course was a sphere chilled to the temperature of liquid nitrogen, handled with chemist's pliers. Within a second of being popped in the mouth, the sphere vaporized and expanded. Containing mostly gas, with some green tea, lemon and vodka, this did three things: cleansed the taste buds, stimulated the appetite and gave an immediate buzz.
Supposedly, the fourth or fifth course was the proverbial sledgehammer to the head - a quail jelly on a bed of green pea puree and wheat. That's when the sky cracked open and the meaning of life was telepathically revealed from above. After that it was a two-hour haze of "artistic perfection".
How many of us can say that a certain meal, a sequence of flavor combinations, caused a full-blown epiphany, a mystical experience?
To this day, my friend's eyes glaze and focus off into infinity while remembering "the best meal I've ever had in my life, the best twelve hundred dollars (!!!) I've ever spent". The good wife agrees, even as the Harrod's shopping budget was obliterated by one dinner.
Which brings up the ultimate nightmare scenario, revenge for all the grief we've caused our poor, dear mothers. How about her picture blog with your baby Polaroids, including the full frontal nudity ones in the backyard Toys-R-Us inflatable swimming pool?
One of the first and most dangerous leaps in this direction was Apple's iWeb, which took the geek factor (read: intimidating) out of the picture.
So, lesson one for the time being: dissuade your mom from getting both a scanner and an iMac. If she's just a bit cleverer than you think she is (and she is), you may turn out to be one of the unlucky ones.
A day later it payed the compliment to the other end.
In Mexico, that's know as "paying taxes".
I'm very, very good at eating spicy, but once, in a seafood joint, I noticed a bottle of Insanity Sauce, which I'd never seen before, and with due warning from the guys there, I put like, six drops on my ceviche tostada, and for the first time in years, my eyes watered up, I couldn't believe it. The guys had a good chuckle, but went silent when I put six more drops in my next tostada, and the next one. When I returned a week later for more, I noticed something had changed: the guys treated me with respect, Goodfellas-style.
Sadly, after a few months, they ran out of that bottle and have been unable to find another one. I still go there, as the guys make great mesquite-smoked clams. And they're always drinking beer.
There's a lot of posters writing about their experiences after eating habaneros and the like, either out of curiosity or on a dare.
Well, here's a great tip next time you're on a dare, or in a thai or mexican restaurant: Keep a piece of candy nearby. If the burning sensation becomes too much to bear, unwrap the candy and pop it in your mouth, the sudden sugar coating on the tongue will overwhelm the taste buds with a near-opposite sensation, canceling most of the pain.
More than a form of defense from the "attack" of being eaten, Capsaicin has turned out to be a very fast enabler of propagation, therefore reproduction, by being eaten.
Case in point: bird eats jalapeño seeds, flies away, gets a case of the runs a few miles later. No seeds move further faster than spicy ones.
But why would animals, after millions of years, keep eating these seeds? There's gotta be some incentive for us, too. Capsaicin seems to be a generous substance, serving animal individuals to benefit its' plant species. And make no mistake about it, if you eat it long enough, hot spice becomes an addictive substance, with raised tolerance levels and the whole deal. The terrestrial version of mélange?
The more I'm thinking about this, the more I'm craving a ceviche tostada with three or four thin slices of avocado and a tablespoon of habanero sauce (preferably of the yellow or orange variety).
Printing press?