"It was a design that Lara had heard about but never seen - an ME.Hess, Multi-Envelope, named after the architect who'd drafted the first, on Earth. The MEs were relatively inexpensive, durable, and because the contact with the ground was limited to a small number of relatively slender stabilizing posts and a single industrial lift, there was little danger of unexpected interaction with the planet's natural inhabitants - an important consideration in unexplored environments.
      'It looks like a bunch of balloons with a couple of ledges tacked on,' Jess said, and Lara smiled, nodding. In essence, that was exactly what they were looking at; the gigantic off-white spheres were filled with bouyant gasses, supporting a series of decks for landing and observation, laboratories, and a decently sized living area. The uninflated 'balloons' were much cheaper to transport than powdered plasticrete." - an interesting scifi concept from War, by S.D. Perry

I *heart* Huckabees, with a lot of good people. Along the lines of Waking Life, but less surreal and aching and more oddball and funny. Lots of points were nailbitingly uncomfortable, but at least they were funny and seemed enlightening somehow. The phrases "hyperactive," "fuckabees," and "how am I not myself?" seem a good summary to me.

The Life Aquatic (with Steve Zissou) - with Bill Murray and Owen Wilson. Wyatt described it as kind of a movie version of the 8-bit Nintendo Jaws game, which is kind of apt and funny. I thought this movie was especially interesting not because it was particulary hilarious in any way, but though it wasn't anywhere near as funny as we expected, we were never bored - it's just laid back and pleasant to watch.

The Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield. Mmm. New Age. I'd say not worth reading unless obligated to; there are some vaguely interesting ideas scattered within it, but they really just seem like very simplified psychology. And the plot and writing are atrocious.

midnite.rain - art

SETI@home - I used to have something like this, except for cancer and smallpox research, but I'll take this until I can find something like the former again

Clone Wars, with people doing remarkable impressions of several actors' voices. As far as I understand it, this cartoon was originally shown in five minute segments on the Cartoon Network to fill some of the gap between Episodes II and III, but it fits together in this movie in a little over an hour of awesome. It's pretty much all action, but there are all sorts of remarkably clever moments, and even hilarious moments. It's interesting to see some of the effects they chose to produce in animation that probably wouldn't ever happen in live-action, and to see several secondary characters in extended roles. Well worth the short time it takes to view.

Never Trust an Elf, by Robert Charrette. As per the dippy title, probably one of the dippier novels in the Shadowrun setting. My excuse being that I picked it up for the sake of completeness in collection, nonetheless the shifts in perspective between the two main characters were interesting, though by proportion the one I thought was more intriguing got far less time.

oil computers - not quite as cool as the computer-in-an-aquarium idea, but cool nonetheless

What color eyes would your children have? - if anyone makes one of these for hair, &c, that would be even more fun

      The interesting thing for me about going to bed with and waking up with the same headache for five consecutive days was how intensely aware it made me of my own body. When it got to the point of hypersensitivity and I was getting goosebumps from almost any sensation at all, I was so physically self-aware that I became almost unwillingly focused. It was like a very strange sort of meditation, where any daydream that began or song that started to get stuck in my head or even passing thought quickly disappeared. The trick was, instead of that engendering a feeling of release or anything of the kind, it was as if it was being forced upon me. And that was an unpleasant feeling on par with actual pain of the headache itself.

"ce qui fait / la nuit en nous / peut laisser / en nous les etoiles..."
--
"that which creates / night within us / might also / leave stars..."

Quantum Black Holes - something about this seems like it could lead to 'inherently dangerous' quite quickly (anybody read David Brin's Earth? some of it is exactly like the basis for that novel)

English Sentences without Overt Grammatical Subjects - I'm curious as to whether there was an actual need to use that particular word, or it was just for fun

Tech-Math HQ v5.0 - art

Oldboy, with Choi Min-Sik and Yu Ji-tae. Um. Octopus. No? Yes. No, I don't think it gets any more twisted. I'd say something involving Freud but I suppose that would give too much away. I liked the play on words with yudo later in it, that was cute.

-two movies that coincidentally seemed proponents of some of my core beliefs-
Kingdom of Heaven, with Orlando Bloom, Edward Norton, Eva Green, and a lot more. There could have been more character development of Bloom's character, and the blurring cinematic thingie that was used occasionally seemed kind of tasteless. But beyond that, I thought this was a wonderfully put together movie. While I can already hear people decrying the movie as it 'not being any Gladiator,' no, it's not; it is an epic nonetheless, and I would contend that it has more intelligently put together subtexts, such as one involving masks/veils and mirrors, for example.

What the #$*! Do We Know!? - with Marlee Matlin. It seemed like an extended version of the shows they have on PBS sometimes that make physics all 'hip' and whatnot, but it ws fun. I was leery at first of the story that was parallel to the interviews, but the end of it won me over for the rest. I'd call it a less artsy kind of Waking Life, which fits its concentration of quantum physics over philosophy, I suppose (though the connections made in this movie in that regard are certainly interesting).

      It's interesting how quick people are to pick up people they just knocked down in mosh pits. And the proper technique for crowd surfing is probably something involving rigidity, and not flailing, and/or wearing spikes. Unless one crowd surfer lands on another, which is just bad all around, though funny. And don't wear cleats to a concert, even if you just came from soccer practice, or so says the black and blue on my foot. And security guys are remarkably fast in making their way through a crowd when a fight breaks out. Billy Idol apparently puts on shirts repeatedly just so he can take them off. This seems profound. Jimmy Eat World is the best. Frybread is yummy; so are girls facing the other way and wiggling while said frybread is being eaten, or so says three votes in that favor.

      Xuemei and I seem to have a pattern, concerning the Grand Issue of the day. Whenever I'm upset and proposing absurdities, she tells me to ignore it and get over it. Whenever she's upset, however, I tell her to get over it. This doesn't really seem like a big deal, but it's only obvious after we both clicked upon it after a relatively quick succession of the cycle. So when we reach equilibrium, oh, there's going to be hell to pay. Whatever that phrase means.

"I was dreaming," Mr. Thoth told her, "about my grandfather. A very old man, at least as old as I am now, 91. I thought, when I was a boy, that he had been 91 all his life. Now I feel," laughing, "as if I have been 91 all my life."
-both, totally randomly, from The Crying of Lot 49
"But our beauty lies," explained Metzger, "in this extended capacity for convolution. A lawyer in a courtroom, in front of any jury, becomes an actor, right? Raymond Burr is an actor, impersonating a lawyer, who in front of a jury becomes an actor."

The Mirror & The Monkey - sample of an interesting graphic novel

The Mother Tongue Between Two Slices of Rye - something inexplicable put me off about this at first, but Shteyngart really does spin a good yarn

The Phone - simple puzzles, kind of absurdcreepy

Respect - short by BMW, nice music

Naked Melee Armageddon - I hope they make a sequel where some degree of strategeree can be added

      How I would have/might in the future revise my thesis, based on comments from my adviser. As the gist of the conclusion is that Dune as a postcolonial or third-world text is a national allegory for various countries such as Vietnam and the USA, and for various people such as Frantz Fanon, I would start with that earlier in the paper. Instead of introducing everything with a context and justification for writing about Dune, I would spread that throughout the paper in footnotes. The conclusion would probably then spread out from its previous incarnation, turning the national-allegory-for-USA bit on its head to say that any text written about or within the USA is really a national allegory for the USA in a way that a text from, say, France could never be, as the USA is still in a postcolonial state.

Welcome to the Machine God - wonderful setting by White Wolf Publishing

"purple is black blooming"

Candybar Dolls - guh...too many options, overwhelming

Wyatt's nice quote of the day -
"Al Qaeda's No. 3 man captured, causing No. 1 to take a No. 2"

Klein blue - a patented color?

not sure I like the admittedly oblique association with my name, but-
'The word "Ferengi" is derived from Arabic and Farsi word faranji which meant "Frank" as in French/European traders who made contact with Arabic traders, the word came to mean "Foreigner."'

Panchok Workshop - art

      That other idea I never got around to: probably horribly pretentious or something. But I thought it was interesting, I hope, so here goes. It seems like most of the time we intuitively consider history synchronically, that is, as one whole wherein everything has pretty much equal value and we can pick and choose what to look at. The advantage of this is kind of like when one is writing a paper or creating a painting or sculpture &c, as one can think about it synchronically and put it synthesize it into a coherent piece more effectively. But I think it would do well to put some effort into considering history diachronically as much as possible - like a dialogue or narrative, where the value of each part depends on its context within the other parts. For example, a recent incident inspired the news to remark upon the massacre of Christians by Muslims in Turkey in the not-so-recent past; but not-so-much-further-back than that, the massacre in that area was going the exact opposite way, a context the talking head left out.

'Extinct' Woodpecker Flies Back from the Beyond - you know those have got to be undead woodpeckers

Too Cold for Comfort - my random incredibly-nonsensical idea: running off of "In and near the Milky Way, attraction wins, but beyond a certain distance, repulsion does," if one could get to the area where repulsion wins it would be awesome if it somehow helped travel between galaxies by pushing objects away from the departed region (I also want that little map they have near the top)

Tech-telepathy? - creepy...though it would be interesting to try to tie it into the pseudo-telepathy in Peter Watts' novels

Waking Life, with...I'm not exactly sure, to be honest. Something of a headtrip along the lines of Eternal Sunshine, but in a much more pleasant manner. I would guess that this is one of those movies that one either loves or hates, so if you enjoy creative animation and lots and lots of dialogue jump on this one. I especially enjoyed how the story, such as it was, slowly revealed itself, though what seemed like one or two semesters of philosophy (everything from existential to analytic to dreams and evolution and bohemian rhapsodizing) crammed into a filmspace of time was a bit much to handle in one viewing. So: two+ viewings necessitated!

Kung Fu Hustle, with Stephen Chow. Not quite the pure comedy the trailer makes it out to be, but a lot of fun nonetheless. The martial arts were impeccable, but the violence in a couple small parts might toe the line of putting some people off. Generally a good way to spend matinee money, I would say.

F-22 history - interesting article on the evolution of the design (via Wyatt)

The Truth For Youth - this honestly made me kind of want to cry, it's so disturbing (via Phil)

another edition of Who is qualified to carry the Bad Mothafucka wallet?

      Two thoughts, someone let me know if I'm ass-backwards wrong on them. One: the Prime Directive thingie in Star Trek. I'm kind of thinking this is actually a nice idea on their part, rather than the might-be-dippy plot device I used to think it; rather, it might be a clever play on avoiding this: "Knowledge of the Orient, because generated out of strength, in a sense creates the Orient…the Oriental is containedand represented by dominating frameworks" (Said, Orientalism). Orientalizing being something like marginalizing, creating an image of others that keeps them inferior, or basically dominating another population culturally. Was that a sentence fragment? Screw it. So the Prime Directive seems kind of iffy; in one sense, the Federation is generating its knowledge out of strength, so they wouldn't be able to help but Orientalize a given culture. In another sense, however, it seems that the Prime Directive acts as a nice check, at least, on the Federation exploiting their position of power, as they can't intefere until the pre-warp culture is at least on a more equal standing. On the other hand, as Stephen pointed out, the Federation constantly breaks the Prime Directive, so monkeys.
      Aaand, I'll get to the other thought later, movie time.

Guess-the-google - "surprisingly addictive" is right (via Wyatt)

Lexicon - basically, a game where you make your own encylopedia on a fictional subject, using a kind of Wiki format, which I think could be horribly fun if, say, a bunch of people enjoy the same game or book series...and an example (via Printculture)