Regarding Sicko (again)

I'm dead serious. Go Watch This Film.

Emotional. It doesn't happen often

I just watched Michale Moore's film "sicko" and I actually want to cry. I'm feeling sick to my stomach. I really want to cry. I guess I was aware of most of the things discussed in the film, but moore is some kind of editing genius. I don't care if his facts may not be accurate. As I said with Fahrenheit 9/11, if even 10% of what he's saying is true then I don't understand why we aren't on the streets protesting right now...

Watch this film and then come revolt with me.

Funniest movie of 2007?

I was a biiiig fan of the indie masterpiece "Wet Hot American Summer" (Official Site, the six minutes opening sequence)

Here is the trailer to that.


It's not much of a trailer, but I really felt the film was fantastic, one of the best comedies to ever be put to film for almost anyone who was a fan of the state (official site?) or the Stella comedy troupe, the Stella shorts, or the quirky comedy central show: Stella (no link because the comedy central website has disowned the show), or the reno 911! folks.

So you can imagine how happy I was when I heard of THE TEN
It's going to be a great summer.

Global, human-induced climate change

Of course, the main problem with his argument is that we can choose column A, but we might already be too late, in which case we'll still get the horrible outcome of row2colB. But if we add column C, which is a contingency plan for when the earth turns to shit (such as building hydroponic food towers, elimination of all WMDs, cure for AIDS, increase to stem cell research funding) then we can get benefits either way while diminishing the negative outcomes of the worst case scenario.


Interesting Argument About Global Warming - Watch more free videos

Ashamed

This video would be funny... if it weren't so goddamned sad.



Am I expecting too much from the average American? I have to believe that they had to interview 200+ people just to find this minority represented by the 8 or 9 ignorant people in the video. I hope.

That's what Jazz is all about

Quite clever, but I'm not sure that he's the first to have had this idea..

File under "skills I'd like to have"

Very clever guitarisms

Small talk, the return of

Crappy music but incredibly topical video from the Utoobz.

Part 3 of the "cultural games I don't want to participate in" series

Intellectual Masturbation

I vaguely recall reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 when I was a high school lad. I vaguely remember one of the themes of the book was about government censorship. That's actually a lie. I remember government censorship being the CENTRAL THEME of the book. I don't know if I came up with that analysis or if it was implanted by whichever high school lit teacher was responsible with enlightening me.

The point is that the Author, one Mr. Bradbury, did not intend for that to be THE or even a theme of his book.

Should this matter? After all, the muse works in mysterious ways. Maybe his subconscious was speaking through his pen. Maybe critical analysts of literature are much more intelligent than the authors of the books they critique. Or, maybe, Cien años de soledad was really just about a family and their crazy adventures and not a socio-political allegory on the state of Latin America.

This sort of pseudo-intellectual bullshit is exactly what is supposed to shame me out of reading science fiction. I refuse to buy into it. If you're going to write a book that only a subset of the educated elite population is going to appreciate that's you're prerogative. But I loathe the industry that develops around this very notion that there are different kinds of Art, each belonging to a segregated social class.

We're living in a country where a trip to a MoMA (any of the dozens splayed across the country) is going to cost you $20+ and nobody, not the poor nor the rich, cares. How lucky we are that 3/4th of our population is functionally literate, it's just a shame that less than a fifth of us cares to use that skill.

I'm going to teach my children to read ASAP and then, when they're old enough, I'll give them a copy of Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" and then ask them to teach me what it's about. They'll tell me, and then we'll go to an art museum together.

If my dad owned a chain of hotels

This is what Paris Hilton said a couple of days ago, before she got put away:

"This is an important point in my life and I need to take responsibility for my actions. In the future, I plan on taking more of an active role in the decisions I make."

That is to say that, up to this point, Paris Hilton was not entirely active in making decisions. I suppose that if I were ridiculously rich I would have the luxury of letting my subconscious make all of my decisions too. Then again, if I were that rich, I would never leave the house, unless I went on vacation.

Well, the news today is that a medical condition has altered the terms of Ms Hilton's sentence. After spending less than 4 full days in her private cell (reserved for politicians, foreign dignitaries, and other high profile people) she was moved to her palatial estate where she will be spending the remaining 3 weeks of her sentence under 'house arrest'.

I believe I am not alone when I say that we all wish Paris Hilton a speedy recovery from the sting she is suffering on her petite wrist. May reality never splash her with cold water again.

Children I want to have

I want me this baby!

glumbert.com - Genius 3-year-old finger painter

I laughed till I cried

A very clever animation. I wonder where these ideas come from.

Graduate School is actually Work

It is the case that graduate school is actually a lot like an office job. It certainly has differences, but the similarities are really key.

Similarity: We have bosses, and we work for them in a somewhat organized way.
Difference: Our bosses often change periodically

Similarity: There is a hierarchical set of strata and at any one time we have bosses on each stratum.
Difference: We're not always fully aware on which stratum each boss currently lies

Similarity: deadlines, always with the deadlines
Difference: We are much more likely to take the work home and loose sleep working on it at all hours.

Similarity: Lots of office drama
Difference: none, it's the same kind of drama (although, generally, there's much less inter-office romance)

Similarity: We work 40+ hours per week (much closer to 50 or 60 I'd guess)
Difference: We can choose our own hours, but we get paid about 1/3 of what our time is worth (though our benefits are pretty darn good and we're kind of interns anyway)

Similarity: omipresent, endless meetings
Difference: most are not mandatory

Similarity: We needed to be hired for this position
Difference: We know we're gonna be fired/replaced in less than 7 years

Where's my paradigm shift!

I've recently become interested in the history involving the infamous kinsey reports. It's pretty interesting that a bug collector was able to spark a revolution.

Part 2 of the "cultural games I don't want to participate in" series

Small Talk

I can shoot the proverbial shit, I just don't like it. It's not the case that I don't want to talk to people, I actually enjoy it quite a lot. I just want conversations to be more meaningful.

I'm supposed to believe that when someone asks "How are you" the culturally appropriate response is "Fine, and you?". People don't want to know about my back problems or the stress resulting from my lack of sleep or missing my loved one. This is true in a lot of cultures. I guess in Korea the typical greeting is "where are you going?" and the socially appropriate response is "that way", where the demonstrative 'that' actually has no specified referent. After all, who wants to know that you're headed to the proctologist, except, maybe, the proctologist?

Certainly, I agree that there should be some kind of limit to the amount of information that is exchanged in short encounters. These limits should be set by the level of the relationship between the two participants. I just happen to be more permitting of this level with respect to complete strangers.

Let's just assume that these conversation are to remain as meaningless as possible. I'd like to propose, then, a completely new topic of small talk which should replace weather-talk, sports-talk, and traffic/public transport-talk.

Wikipedia articles.

Before starting out each day, hit the random article link on wikipedia's website. Read it in as much detail as time allows, and then begin all consequent small talk with the phrase "I read on wikipedia that X". Then the goal is to use up the small talk time by engaging the other person into the most bizarre yet topical conversation possible.