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"Elephant that scientist hear the always think the dimension to exist"
Yesterday's presentation on Dr. Jim Cairns at the Melbourne Unitarian Church went well. People were particularly pleased with the comparison with David Hookes. Speaking of which, I have to give my publishers another poke.
Finally managed to get around to seeing the Return of the King with caseopaya. It required some severe suspensions of disbelief and unjustified explosions and I'll be surprised if it isn't recognized of the worst of the trilogy. I also note that the Scourging of the Shire was taken out. My hypothesis is this was for the mirror reason that Tom Bombadil was also taken out. LoTR is more of a traditional mythic tale than a modern fairy tale. Bombadil was far too much of a fairy story, whereas Saruman taking over the Shire was far too modernist. Whilst I applaud the removal of Bombadil, I think that taking out Saruman was an error.
Had a amusing possum visit that evening. Mother and child on back decided to come into the flat in seach of food. However, physics being somewhat beyond their marsupial brain meant that the mother+child weight was far beyond mother's capacity to climb up on the window sill, so I provided some assistance in that regard.
Been seeing a few good films recently thanks to caseopaya purchasing a new DVD and video. In an attempt to celebrate this purchase (and me finishing the Data Security subchapter of my PhD) we picked up a number of DVD's including Takedown (the Kevin Mitnick story) and Sneakers. Despite some of the commenst on IMDB, I liked both of them. But that wasn't after a little adventure returning to the flat which included two people, two sets of keys behind a locked door and a brick. Not wanting to upset our erudite and insightful sociologist, Prime Minister John Howard, I had the window repaired as quickly as possible.
The DVD player also provided to the opportunity to watch my dodgy copy of the excellent Altered States that I picked up in East Timor. The English translation on the back is the height of amusement. Read it aloud.
"Elephant that scientist hear the always think the dimension to exist the consciousness, and this spacs have no with our true to distinct, besides science spread to feel the outside, the use the strong the medicine, and let go in experience by oneself that amazing and mysterious world, he and did not though of, once lose control, and the result be so terrible we do not think about it ...."
A moment of serendipity when seeing LoTR and the dilipadated art deco Sun cinema in Yarraville was the fact that Kerry Greenwood was having a function there. Caseopaya happened to be reading one of her books and I took the opportunity to snap one up as well.
Apart from that I've been amazing busy html-ising ancient history, not the least being a journal I should have published six years ago - yes it's the second issue of Mimesis on psychology and roleplaying. It ain't dead yet. My favourite here is Guy Debord's (the French situationist/media theorist) The Game of War - I've played this, it's like chess on speed. My own contributions include Rational Domains for Developmentental Psychology and Social Psychology and Alignment. Special thanks to severina_242 for extracting the huge Word file and billions of TIF images that had been shoved in the document on a zip disk all those years ago.
On a related note, I've finished that Red Alert map that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. I suspect that a Mimesis issue 3 could be out very soon...
Speaking of ancient history, I've finished transcribing by cyberpunk essay from some fourteen years ago and, with no degree of irony, my honours seminar on 'Writing the thesis'. I'm still pretty happy with these in hindsight.
Politics is a strange business. The elite establishment, having declared war on the basis that there were weapons of mass destruction are now claiming the high ground because there wasn't. Peter Feaver does himself no credit in his Washington Post on the matter and Jeff Jacoby proves himself a well-paid servant in the Boston Globe by still attempting to promote a correlation between Saddam and 9-11. The most bizarre act of the week however has to be the Hutton Report, just proving that these things are therapy for the ruling class. As Ron Liddle said in the Spectator, this is hardly surprising. The Times, combining aesthetic and political critique claims "The Hutton report reads like that of an elderly retainer summounded from his roses to perform a last deed for his master, the Establishment".
Naturally enough, the political elite have accused the intelligence services for the error, well aware that they make a useful scapegoat. The fact of the matter is that this is not an intelligence failure, it's a political failure. The Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq prior to any evaluation over WMD because there was economic reasons to do so and Saddam was (no longer) a client and compliant regime. Rumsfield now routinely ignores anything which the public service intelligence agents produces, relying instead on the "intelligence" of the thoroughly politicized Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. They're the one's running the show.
Speaking of things political, I'm beginning to have second thoughts about Mark Latham. More on this later when I've considered it more carefully.
Silly link of the week award comes from Erudito.. Exploding sperm whales, although for pure geek level, this 404 error questioning of the SCO/Linux debate is also worthwhile. The links are worth following.
Finally managed to get around to seeing the Return of the King with caseopaya. It required some severe suspensions of disbelief and unjustified explosions and I'll be surprised if it isn't recognized of the worst of the trilogy. I also note that the Scourging of the Shire was taken out. My hypothesis is this was for the mirror reason that Tom Bombadil was also taken out. LoTR is more of a traditional mythic tale than a modern fairy tale. Bombadil was far too much of a fairy story, whereas Saruman taking over the Shire was far too modernist. Whilst I applaud the removal of Bombadil, I think that taking out Saruman was an error.
Had a amusing possum visit that evening. Mother and child on back decided to come into the flat in seach of food. However, physics being somewhat beyond their marsupial brain meant that the mother+child weight was far beyond mother's capacity to climb up on the window sill, so I provided some assistance in that regard.
Been seeing a few good films recently thanks to caseopaya purchasing a new DVD and video. In an attempt to celebrate this purchase (and me finishing the Data Security subchapter of my PhD) we picked up a number of DVD's including Takedown (the Kevin Mitnick story) and Sneakers. Despite some of the commenst on IMDB, I liked both of them. But that wasn't after a little adventure returning to the flat which included two people, two sets of keys behind a locked door and a brick. Not wanting to upset our erudite and insightful sociologist, Prime Minister John Howard, I had the window repaired as quickly as possible.
The DVD player also provided to the opportunity to watch my dodgy copy of the excellent Altered States that I picked up in East Timor. The English translation on the back is the height of amusement. Read it aloud.
"Elephant that scientist hear the always think the dimension to exist the consciousness, and this spacs have no with our true to distinct, besides science spread to feel the outside, the use the strong the medicine, and let go in experience by oneself that amazing and mysterious world, he and did not though of, once lose control, and the result be so terrible we do not think about it ...."
A moment of serendipity when seeing LoTR and the dilipadated art deco Sun cinema in Yarraville was the fact that Kerry Greenwood was having a function there. Caseopaya happened to be reading one of her books and I took the opportunity to snap one up as well.
Apart from that I've been amazing busy html-ising ancient history, not the least being a journal I should have published six years ago - yes it's the second issue of Mimesis on psychology and roleplaying. It ain't dead yet. My favourite here is Guy Debord's (the French situationist/media theorist) The Game of War - I've played this, it's like chess on speed. My own contributions include Rational Domains for Developmentental Psychology and Social Psychology and Alignment. Special thanks to severina_242 for extracting the huge Word file and billions of TIF images that had been shoved in the document on a zip disk all those years ago.
On a related note, I've finished that Red Alert map that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. I suspect that a Mimesis issue 3 could be out very soon...
Speaking of ancient history, I've finished transcribing by cyberpunk essay from some fourteen years ago and, with no degree of irony, my honours seminar on 'Writing the thesis'. I'm still pretty happy with these in hindsight.
Politics is a strange business. The elite establishment, having declared war on the basis that there were weapons of mass destruction are now claiming the high ground because there wasn't. Peter Feaver does himself no credit in his Washington Post on the matter and Jeff Jacoby proves himself a well-paid servant in the Boston Globe by still attempting to promote a correlation between Saddam and 9-11. The most bizarre act of the week however has to be the Hutton Report, just proving that these things are therapy for the ruling class. As Ron Liddle said in the Spectator, this is hardly surprising. The Times, combining aesthetic and political critique claims "The Hutton report reads like that of an elderly retainer summounded from his roses to perform a last deed for his master, the Establishment".
Naturally enough, the political elite have accused the intelligence services for the error, well aware that they make a useful scapegoat. The fact of the matter is that this is not an intelligence failure, it's a political failure. The Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq prior to any evaluation over WMD because there was economic reasons to do so and Saddam was (no longer) a client and compliant regime. Rumsfield now routinely ignores anything which the public service intelligence agents produces, relying instead on the "intelligence" of the thoroughly politicized Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. They're the one's running the show.
Speaking of things political, I'm beginning to have second thoughts about Mark Latham. More on this later when I've considered it more carefully.
Silly link of the week award comes from Erudito.. Exploding sperm whales, although for pure geek level, this 404 error questioning of the SCO/Linux debate is also worthwhile. The links are worth following.
Ron Liddle is tainted goods
So is Hutton...