"Of all the world's wonders, which is the most wonderful?"
"That no man, though he sees others dying all around him, believes that he himself will die."
-from the Mahabharata

"The yolk of a bird's egg is connected to the shell by albumen 'ropes.' During incubation, these ropes break and the mother bird must rotate her eggs to keep the yolks in the center while the chicks are forming." --- but how does the bird know to rotate the eggs? Yes, yes, biological imperative and what, but for me there's some interesting thoughts that could spiral off from that...

      In the Daily Wildcat's 'fast facts' section there was this bit about the esophagus of an octopus going straight through the middle of it's brain. I mean, that in and of itself is enough to boggle my mind, but as Xuemei pointed out, "Maybe the octopus's mind is boggled that your esophagus doesn't." But I'm more inclined to believe that the octopus' mind is boggled by the fact that food is passing through it. Spinning off from that, Wyatt and I watched a documentary a while back that claimed that if all the higher order animals were killed off the next kind of animal to gain higher intelligence/sentience would be squids/octopi..octopuses...octopoids. Anyway, not really much to say except that I think it's interesting to really consider an animal so entirely different - the esophagus thing, eyes that evolved totally separately from any other animal's eyes, the whole neural net thing, using ammonia for bouyancy, &c.

Rotor Script - I have no idea.

Matt Dixon - art

Worst Jobs in (British) History - You can hear the accent in the writing style, it's funny.

I met someone in the ER that this actually happened to, for similar reasons as that guy; he lost an arm when he did it, though... (via Wyatt)

Fish! - there are some truly funky ones in there, though I wish there was a bit more explanation for why some of the weirder ones have the features they do

'Action vs Reaction in Grappling' (or why Yogi Berra was right) - long title for a short, funny column

Xuemei's Nice Meal of the Day:
-red miso with nori
-eggplant and minced pork with green onions, in sauce spicy enough to "clear your sinuses even if they aren't clogged"
-rice

Maxx Soul - art

S1m0ne, with Al Pacino and Catherine Keener. This is another one of those stories that I might reference back to that William Gibson novel (I remembered - it's Idoru!) that explored the nature of celebrity, and interestingly the movie is almost a direct parallel of some of the novel's plot in some ways. It is, however, in being a movie much more simplified, and beyond that ventures into the more blatant rather than subtle satire. It was interesting, but there seemed to be something that made the movie unsettlingly disjointed; maybe how it was edited? I'm not sure.

The Devil's Advocate, with Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino. I'd seen this movie a long time ago, but wasn't disappointed by a second showing. In truth, although the path of the story's progression may become more and more transparent to those people out there who try to pick movies apart, the layered meaning of a huge portion of the script at least adds a counterweight to that. I remember the scares being effective enough the first time I saw it, and though this time they were more amusing than not I still looked forward to them as functions of the development of the two main characters. And I really, really want even a small copy of the statue behind Milton's desk.

Delivery - eerie short film, provokes a lot of questions about its internal logic

Massive Attack - the ambient, ethereal, and at times slightly creepy third of the bands-no-one-has-seemed-to-have-heard-of-triumvirate, along with the more playful and poetic Splashdown and the more hard and raw Kidneythieves. Splashdown we heard of thanks to Michelle's 'Bitter Hermit' compilation, Kidneythieves was featured in Invisible War, and Massive Attack had a snippet of an uncredited song in The Matrix when Neo's computer wakes him up near the beginning. (thanks to Carolyn for the m.a. songs)

Witness - photography by James Nachtwey

      I haven't thought of what I learned growing up Catholic in a long while now, but I think something just finally clicked. I never really understood what the teachers meant when they mentioned fearing God; I thought that that ran counter to the more benevolent qualities that were emphasized, so the best I could do to reconcile the contradiction was to read 'fear' as 'reverence' and change it to a sort of respect. But for whatever reason today I remembered being berated in literary theory for not remembering that according to some psychoanalysis for every emotion one has, the opposite also exists in the subconscious (ie, morbid fascination, love/hate relationships, &c). So now I'm pondering, was the suggestion to fear God a recognition of that in some way? But then, what does that mean?

Buddy Rich vs Animal - I like how the muppet blurs

Keep the Ball Alive - I once went to a rugby game and saw a man limp to the sideline with a bleeding bite mark on his calf

Everyone's probably seen it by now, yes, but Episode III is coming. I'm looking forward to it personally if only on the basis that it looks much darker than the previous episodes, as the fairy-tale/myth/black+white archetypes episodes I and IV were based on did nothing for me; at least V, VI, and II were moving towards more complex characters and issues. (via Wyatt)

Parelette exercises - I can do some of them on just my hands, but I'm not sure how effectively as my attempts were after working out already; as it was, I'll estimate a still 'just barely' for future attempts, and hopefully my abs will strain less. Which leads one to the conclusion, of course, that these are probably something I could stand to do a lot more.

Pimp vs dude. Knifehand to the neck is what it looks like to me, anybody else see anything different?

-another nicely written bit, haven't really applied any but aesthetic thought to it yet:
      "What is man?
      A creature of dust; a thing of transience whose days fly by faster than a weaver's shuttle; a fragile being, crushed sooner than a moth; a body, sustaining and reproducing itself after the fashion of beasts; a vessel filled with shame and confusion, impelled by pride and self-love, driven by passions.
      All these, says the Tradition, is man.
      But he is also more and other.
      The handiwork, the child, the mirrored image of God, fashioned after and instinct with Him, he displays, though in infinitely lesser degree and with innumerable flaws, the powers ascribed to and associated with Divinity: the ability to think and create, the awareness of the good and beautiful, the capacity for love and compassion, and the freedom of the will." - Milton Steinberg

"But an abyss, no matter how broad and deep, is a cleft in the earth's surface. The walls to either side will be of similar composition; they will be joined by common ground below and may be even further united by a bridge from above." - on the word 'abyss' being used to describe differences between nations and ethnic groups

Laws of Attraction, with Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore. Much to my chagrin, this was the pick of the night over Garden State and Easy, basically on the premise of girls wanting to gaze in idolation at Brosnan. And, at least in my opinion, that was pretty much all the movie was good for; it did have its requisite romantic comedy cute moments, and scenes of will-they-won't-they tension, at least. It also had rampant product placement and the depth of a puddle, unfortunately.

An Act of Real Courage - short opinion piece

Ong Bak, with Tony Jaa and Pumwaree Yodkamol. Basically, a hell of a lot of violence and stunts mixed with a nominal amount of plot. Which worked, actually, because of the fairy-tale-esque cum riff-on-Bruce-Lee-movie thread of the story. The fight scenes were amazing - mostly modern Muay Thai, with a liberal mixing in of classical techniques (banned from the ring in real life) and acrobatics (also, an as far as I know unique Krabi Krabong scene). In my opinion, the wonderful skill displayed in this movie, along with the rare display of arts that aren't kung fu, TKD, or Western boxing, marks it as an instant classic of a martial arts movie. As a sidenote, this was one of those movies that turned the audience into a small, vocal community, with many gasps, sympathetic groans, and surprised curses abounding. (also, Tom-Yum-Goong) (double tangentially - sorry Kevin!)

Chocolate Deities - spiritual and tasty, and with some fun trivia

Science Fiction Citations - a project for the OED, anyone might be able to contribute

Earth Language - kind of a symbol-based indie Esperanto

The 40 Language Dash - quick opinion piece

another poem rough; supposed to be right justified, but hey-
Red Lament

He sits alone in the kitchen
twisting the knife in to the hilt
groping further with the tip,
desperate.
Everything is red, now-
the table, the tile, his hands around the
handle of the blade, slick with color
spilling from the other wounds
he has made, but he is
numb.
The white pills he painstakingly
placed on his tongue have
calmed his nerves, long enough,
he hopes, for him to find his
remaining
lung.

He wakes, staring into light,
feels bandages holding his life in,
and cries.
Again, the poison in his vein.
Again, the scalpels along his spine.

Power Yoga: Flexibility, with Rodney Yee. All in all, a nice sequence, but not really spectacular in any way. Generally I enjoy Yee's direction, and this was on par with my past experience, though at times (I suspect to fit into the compressed time frame) he moved a bit too quickly for my taste. I'm not sure exactly what makes this sequence more about flexibility than any other sequence, besides some variations in the downward-dog asanas in the Sun Salutations, but on the other side of things there was a bit of a nice workout in the small muscles of the shoulders.

4-D Polytope Viewer - honestly, I don't get it; but it seems interesting (via Kevin)

eyeball jewelry - eep, eep, eep; it also made Xuemei angry (via Kevin)

Shape Challenge! - well, it made me smile (via Phil)

Easy - with Marguerite Moreau and Naveen Andrews. Finally, another solidly all-around good movie. While the chronology and pacing might be a bit tricky to keep up with, that would only be if you weren't really paying attention, at least in my opinion. It was nice surprise to see my favorite actor from Lost (Andrews) playing a quite similar, but quite different role (soldier:poet, but with little personality difference). Moreau filled out a role that basically had most of the movie based around her charm quite nicely, as well. One of the most interesting aspects of the movie for me was how it created a community of characters, such that the layered variations in relationships could play out with little reliance on setting, or even backstory excepting plot-related detail. So, maybe like theatre, I guess? I'm hesitant to make a comparison with little knowledge in that regard. I will, however, make (yet another, out of the many) comparison to Evolution's Shore, in that the pattern the main character's development follows is almost identical between the stories.

Shaun of the Dead - with Simon Pegg and Kate Ashfield. Dumb, but not in a bad way. There were a good deal of genuinely funny parts, though the beginning was a tad slow. But hey, what would be looking for in a parody of Romero flicks (besides a lot of small references)? And there were cute English women.

Futurese - looking at the projected trends might be fun to play around with, that is, in trying to say it out loud (might be a vaguely fun way to learn phonetics symbols, too)
---also, Xenolinguistics for anyone who couldn't get over the Star Trek everybody-magically-speaks-English schtick (which, I feel compelled to note, Farscape at least made a decent effort towards)

Snow Sculptures

phrase of the day: "causally inert"

Be Cool - with John Travolta, Uma Thurman, and the Rock. Which seem to be the three main reasons to go see this movie. The metafiction was interesting, as it was in Get Shorty, but was just on the wrong side of tasteful at points, probably half because they already did that in Get Shorty. Travolta's Chili Palmer is my new hero, Thurman is great as usual, but most of the other characters were clever only in their characterization or stereotypes, and Vince Vaughn's character was annoying before his first scene was over. So, some good things, some bad things, but not quite balanced.
      Tangentially, I think this movie might be a good deal more interesting if one were to read it as a riff on one of William Gibson's novels (not sure which, it might be Neuromancer), at any rate the one that is centered around the idea of considering celebrity status as having reached a certain critical mass of attention and information output, after which one is a celebrity regardless of what happens next.

Hockey badass-ery

more random quotes (almost all from different sources) -
"Is the drama of time meaningless as a tale told by an idiot? Or is it not meaningless? And if it is not meaningless is it a comedy or a tragedy, a triumph or a disaster, or is it a mixture in which sweet and bitter are for ever mixed?"

"...he must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself."

"In War and Peace Pierre's 'mental change' is a coming to have (a learning how to have) peace of mind, not a matter of acquiring new information, new dogma."

"Seeing the chattering faces, [he] was suddenly repelled by them. They were cheap masks locked on festering thoughts - voices gabbling to drown out the loud silence in every breast."
------
Comics by Jess Fink (I liked 'The Beachcomber')

Voices - Ow be knackin' vore?

      After reading Young's Postcolonialism, I've been doing a lot of random thinking. Which, all things considered, is the usual way of things for me, but anyway here's a (small for the moment) list of texts off the top of my head that I think have postcolonial aspects that mix with science fiction. Dune, of course, I am doing my thesis on; there is a somewhat obvious analog of empire and indiginous response, though I am focusing more closely on the language and translation issues involved in that. Evolution's Shore is based entirely around a setting wherein the Chaga (for those who've read it) becomes the ultimate postcolonial tool and expression, which is especially interesting when considered in light of the role of the UN/politics and AIDS in the plot and story. Star Trek: Voyager could have been an interesting play of stranger-in-a-strange land or a reverse-orientalism, but the Feds were still pretty much superior everywhere they went. Deep Space Nine is interesting in its frontier-ish setting, not to mention the Dominion-Federation conflict and the newly ex-colonial Bajorans. Farscape did what Voyager couldn't, as it was initially based almost entirely around an inverted orientalism of the main human character; also, the backstory of the Peacekeepers holds some resonance.

Postcolonialism, by Robert Young. This is a great book which does exactly what it says it's going to - it introduces the reader to the complex idea of postcolonialism in an interesting and refreshing manner. I say refreshing because rather than devote the book to abstract theory, Young uses almost exclusively examples from history to illustrate aspects of postcolonialism. That being said, I would have actually liked some theory along with stories about Phoolan Devi, Frantz Fanon, and Che Guevara, so I could get a better handle on how those real stories and events relate to texts.
      Also, in my opinion Young seems a bit too idealistically devoted to some of the political views espoused in what he describes, though as Said pointed out in Orientalism, "...the general liberal consensus that 'true' knowledge is fundamentally non-political (and conversely, that overtly political knowledge is not 'true' knowledge) obscures the highly if obscurely organized political circumstances obtaining when knowledge is produced." Everything's political, right? In any case, if you want to learn more about a burdgeoning genre that is a wonderful aid for learning about the world and practicing thinking in shades of grey, Postcolonialism is great; since my first pass through, the nightly news and articles on World News have taken on whole new meaning, and I even realized my favorite novel Evolution's Shore might have been perfect for a thesis after all.
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"Literally, according to its Latin etymology, 'translation' means to carry or to bear across. Its literal meaning is thus identical with that of 'metaphor,' which, according to its Greek etymology, means to carry or to bear across." - just another interesting quote

Natural Selection As We Speak - on the evolution of languages (thoughts on clicks near the end)

Mightier than the Sword - articles on and examples of Arabic script and calligraphy, which in my opinion is an augmenting of how suited Arabic is to poetry; its meaning-by-connotation basis extends into the natual aesthetic development of the alphabet (tangent: fonts)

Listen to your elder-folk

Once more, another ready-made science fiction topic/setting

"The value of having two egg rolls on one's plate is less than the sum of the values of having one or the other of them; and the value of having one egg roll and a dollop of plum sauce is more than the sum of the values of having either an egg roll or plum sauce alone." - that argument is actually just a flippant part of a much larger logic-argument, and that is part of a very...dense existential article, but hey I thought it was funny out of context

"In the 19th century, the west considered the wearing of clothes as the mark of civilization; it was the 'savages' who went naked. In the 20th and 21st centuries, however, semi-nudity became the signifier of western superiority." - just thought this was an interesting quote, haven't put that much thought into it

The Four Essential Travel Phrases - question, though: how do you understand what the response is?

Copper - another oldie, but a favorite