Sunday, January 11, 2009
Friday, January 9, 2009
Long time no see
Apologies for the light posting this week. Just soaking up some quality time at home before I have to return to school next week. There's not much going on in the news and the movies we've been watching have been horrid. We made it through the first 10 minutes of Barefoot in the Park before ejecting it due to excessive Jane Fonda-ness and haven't yet finished Seems like Old Times with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn.
I did read "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman, however, and can highly recommend it. If you liked Harry Potter or the movie Stardust you would probably really enjoy this book. I love Gaiman because he always invents his own mythology and doesn't rely on the boring goblins/vampires/fairies/blah stuff everyone else uses.
This is Neil Gaiman:
I did read "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman, however, and can highly recommend it. If you liked Harry Potter or the movie Stardust you would probably really enjoy this book. I love Gaiman because he always invents his own mythology and doesn't rely on the boring goblins/vampires/fairies/blah stuff everyone else uses.
This is Neil Gaiman:
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Friday, January 2, 2009
Nice
From Haaretz:
If that's not living proof that sometimes morality is a clear choice between good and evil, I don't know what is. Keep it in mind the next time you hear about how 'disproportionate' Israel's response to Hamas is.
There's a lengthy post in my brain on the whole Israel/Palestine situation, but I'll save it for another day. For now it can pretty much be summed up that there would be lasting peace forever in the Middle East if Palestine decided to just stop attacking Israel. Surprising that some of the best Christians in the world aren't Christians (or at least don't realize it).
The IDF has made frequent use of what is known as "knocking on the roof": Militants are warned by phone when a residential building used to store arms will be bombed, and told to vacate the premised together with their neighbors. The weapons caches are hit only after the residents leave.
Hamas has tried placing civilians on the roofs of such buildings when the phone call warning comes in. In these cases, the IDF fired antitank missiles near the building, and in a few cases the residents left.
If that's not living proof that sometimes morality is a clear choice between good and evil, I don't know what is. Keep it in mind the next time you hear about how 'disproportionate' Israel's response to Hamas is.
There's a lengthy post in my brain on the whole Israel/Palestine situation, but I'll save it for another day. For now it can pretty much be summed up that there would be lasting peace forever in the Middle East if Palestine decided to just stop attacking Israel. Surprising that some of the best Christians in the world aren't Christians (or at least don't realize it).
Whew
From IMDB for the new Star Trek movie:
Boy, good thing they moved that out of the way or they'd have been clobbered by box office blockbusters like Marley and Me and Revolutionary Road.
The first teaser trailer and posters for this film showed its original release date, December 25, 2008. On February 13, 2008 Paramount Pictures pushed the film to May 8, 2009 so it would have less competition and be a summer blockbuster contender. The teaser trailer has now been amended to show Summer 2009.
Boy, good thing they moved that out of the way or they'd have been clobbered by box office blockbusters like Marley and Me and Revolutionary Road.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Environment
I was amused to no end by the 3rd paragraph from this article:
I lived in Seattle and back in 1995/96, they still weren't using salt on the roads. They just used minor amounts of dirt, which had the effect of making for slightly dirtier ice. I'm not sure what the intention of the dirt was beyond that goal.
Maybe this is just my ignorance talking, but isn't salt from the environment? And I might be totally wrong, but wouldn't it not be much of a stretch to think that nothing that comes from the environment could possibly be bad for the environment-at least not once you really think about it? For example, lava burns down forests and stuff and kills hillbillies who refuse to leave their trailers when forest rangers say 'You should probably leave your trailer because there is a a river of molten magma coming straight for you,' but lava deposits extremely rich minerals into the soil, and like 10 years later bunnies and flowers and trees and rainbows return to the area.
So if that's true, and man comes from the environment, along with cars, stereos, and lightsabers, couldn't you argue that in the long run that it would be impossible for man to be bad for the environment because man is part of the environment? I submit that you can. It's not as if man doesn't have dominion over the earth or anything.
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced this morning that the city will reverse its decade-old policy and use road salt to melt ice in future storms.
The mayor set certain conditions for using salt: on hills, arterials or snow bus routes, and on routes to hospitals and other emergency facilities when at least 4 inches of snow is predicted, if ice is predicted, or if extreme cold is expected to last more than three days.
The city earlier refused to use salt, saying it's bad for the environment, and instead spread sand over the roads.
I lived in Seattle and back in 1995/96, they still weren't using salt on the roads. They just used minor amounts of dirt, which had the effect of making for slightly dirtier ice. I'm not sure what the intention of the dirt was beyond that goal.
Maybe this is just my ignorance talking, but isn't salt from the environment? And I might be totally wrong, but wouldn't it not be much of a stretch to think that nothing that comes from the environment could possibly be bad for the environment-at least not once you really think about it? For example, lava burns down forests and stuff and kills hillbillies who refuse to leave their trailers when forest rangers say 'You should probably leave your trailer because there is a a river of molten magma coming straight for you,' but lava deposits extremely rich minerals into the soil, and like 10 years later bunnies and flowers and trees and rainbows return to the area.
So if that's true, and man comes from the environment, along with cars, stereos, and lightsabers, couldn't you argue that in the long run that it would be impossible for man to be bad for the environment because man is part of the environment? I submit that you can. It's not as if man doesn't have dominion over the earth or anything.
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