Literally seeing with sound. Extraordinary.
6:31 PM | link
Article on the film Baise-Moi. I'm off to see this tomorrow, though I don't have much hope for it; I suspect it'll be like Romance, a mediocre film courting trouble to try and garner more attention than it really deserves... unlike everyone's favourite prude Brian Harradine, though, I'll actually reserve judgement until I do see it:
Senator Harradine said that, although he had not seen Baise-Moi, the film was inappropriate for an R-rating because of its strong sexual violence and actual sex.
If he hasn't seen it, how does he know it's inappropriate? There truly are varying degrees of not knowing what you're talking about, and uncle Brian does so here to a greater degree than most. That said, I'm more inclined to agree with Paul Coulter from Melbourne's Lumiere Cinema when he says we shouldn't assume that just because Baise-Moi sailed through here uncut, that doesn't mean censorship here is becoming more liberal. There's still the little matter of ET, after all...
6:21 PM | link
Interesting article on DVD. I'm a bit disturbed by the comment that Ridley Scott's preparing yet another director's cut of Blade Runner. I mean, the film actually wasn't that good the first time round, the 1992 director's cut didn't improve it any, so what's he going to do this time round?
5:23 PM | link
Which fuckwit in the US Patents Office let some other fuckwit patent playing on a children's swing?
4:07 PM | link
If you speak Welsh, then try this blog. I love how they spell "Australia" as "Awstralia". I only wish I understood a word of it other than that, though...
3:43 PM | link
Man with brain tumour shoots himself in the head, somehow misses all the vital parts and only blasts out the tumour. Given that the odds of this were estimated at some 250,000,000 to 1, doctors are not encouraging other terminally ill people to try the same thing themselves.
3:31 PM | link
Teens charged with lynching. And no, apparently lynching is not just taking someone and stringing them up by the neck from the tallest tree, it's technically any act of violence committed by a mob against another person's body. I learn something every day...
3:28 PM | link
The kids who literally can't stop reading. Wow. This is a real medical condition, it seems; oddly enough, though, it's accompanied by what the article calls "significant delays in language"; the kids can read the words, but don't know what they mean. Damn strange.
3:26 PM | link
NASA reprograms Voyager 1, 7.8 billion miles away. Not bad, given the probe was only supposed to operate for four years.
3:19 PM | link
"Yes, we can build a wall of Spam." Why in God's name would you want to, though? I know it's for charity but even so...
3:15 PM | link
John Chuckman contra Thomas Friedman. I've seen the latter take a few hits from the more conservatively-inclined inhabitants of the Blogosphere™, seems the more leftwards-inclined ones aren't hugely keen on him either.
8:47 PM | link
FuckFrance.com. Whatever the position folks like Mac Thomason or Glenn Reynolds may take towards French attitudes in the current world crisis™, and though I can't forgive the French for postmodernism, I don't agree with this at all. I seem to recall people in the Blogosphere™ getting shitty about Arab news reports on the deeds of the Jews a few weeks ago... is this really much better, even if it is meant humorously? And if it is meant humorously, then why is it not actually funny?
8:25 PM | link
People already queueing for the new Star Wars film.
Among six people lounging on the street Wednesday was Steve Elms, a computer network operator. Keeping contact with his boss through a cellular phone, he plans to camp out for the first week and the final week.
"I have no place else to go,'' said Elms, 39. "It's just fun sitting on Hollywood Boulevard watching the freaks and the tourists walk by.''
Er... you're queueing up for a film that doesn't come out for six weeks, and you're calling other people freaks?
8:17 PM | link
Stapling hemorrhoids less painful than having them cut out. As I've been fortunate enough to have avoided hemorrhoids in my life, I'm not in a position to judge.
8:13 PM | link
John Howard: don't assume I'm quitting. Rest of nation: don't assume we trust that you're going to stick around. If you don't definitively state that you'll stay in the position until the next election and will not devolve it onto Peter Costello's shoulders before your time's up, then you don't have any call telling people to stop speculating. Show you're not afraid to commit yourself to seeing the job through.
8:00 PM | link
Napster lays off 30 of its employees. Yes, Napster is still employing people, and has another 70 people still to be laid off.
7:52 PM | link
Man who went on killing spree thought he was killing Hitler and his generals. This is either the single most idiotic defence anyone has ever presented in a murder trial, or else the bloke responsible had something more going on within him that day than just a cocktail of booze and pills...
7:49 PM | link
More on that "funding to combat goth culture" thing.
These concerns center on the potential increase in youth crime, drug use, self-mutilation, depression, suicide, and various acts of violence sometimes found among extreme members of the gothic culture.
Is it just me, or does anyone think it's equally important to combat these things when you find them outside goth culture as well? Or are they tackling these things on a subculture by subculture basis?
7:32 PM | link
A new volcano forming off the coast of Australia. That's all we need...
7:24 PM | link
The difficulties of finding good political discourse (as opposed to ideological hatemongering) on the Internet. Next: the prevalence of porn on the Internet.
7:20 PM | link
Graham Hancock insists submerged Indian city proves those old flood myths had some truth to them. As he would do, of course. I'm still waiting for that lost civilisation in Antarctica he's spoken about in the past to show up; when it does, I'll take him seriously then...
7:13 PM | link
An op-ed thing on the SBHS story I linked to a few days ago, which primarily seems to lament how you can't talk about race-based issues these days without being called a racist. Anyway, one of the teachers at SBHS has rebuked the "90 percent Asian" claim, saying the real figure is more like 86 percent generally non-Anglo background. I don't know. I still don't like the nepotism aspect, and I don't like the racial aspect. After all, if there's not some racial aspect to it all, why do they feel the 90% Asian thing is so important to highlight? It leaves me feeling weird, anyway...
6:02 PM | link
A star made entirely of quarks. Not everyone's convinced this is the case, but it's cool even so...
5:09 PM | link
Police department lets website domain name ownership lapse, get bought out by Czech pornographers.
5:03 PM | link
There are some people you clearly cannot rehabilitate, and this old scumbag appears to be one of them.
5:01 PM | link
Gough Whitlam donates brain to science. Apparently Gough made this gesture because he wanted to be an inspiration to future generations. Personally—and I say this as a traditional Labor voter—the only inspiration Gough should be is as something to avoid emulating. Whatever other good he may have done, Gough remains the only Australian prime minister to have been sacked from the job, something the tedious old git seems to have never entirely accepted. After 23 years of Liberal rule, Gough only managed three years in the position before being ousted and leaving the way clear for eight more years of Liberals. That's inspiring, all right.
4:48 PM | link
Hundred year old mathematical mystery solved, perhaps. This is one of those times when I wish I understood the least thing about mathematics.
4:15 PM | link
US warns Russia to be better behaved and comply with treaties. Two words for you, George: Kyoto agreement. It was good enough for numerous other countries, yet the US didn't feel obliged to comply with that...
4:11 PM | link
Millionaire tax cheat wants house arrest in her million-dollar beachside mansion. Judge rightly gives her two years in the slammer instead.
4:07 PM | link
US military creates indestructible sandwich. Now there's an ideal weapon in the War on Terror™ if ever there was one...
4:00 PM | link
Couch potatoeness learned in the womb. Um... OK. Why do I get the feeling someone's trying to compensate for his own lardarsery here? "God I'm so fat and repulsive, all these chips I eat... and I only got myself to blame. Actually no I don't, I'll just blame Mum..."
3:43 PM | link
Band fiction: the latest variant of slash literature. Quite why you'd feel a need to come up with fan fiction depicting the members of the Backstreet Boys or Nsync having gay relationships is another matter, of course, though I'll admit to having always been bewildered by the whole slash thing...
3:38 PM | link
37 Record-Store Clerks Feared Dead In Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster. Prime Onion goodness. This story from this week's front page is also great:
Lutheran Minister Arrested On Charges Of Boring Young Children
PERU, IL— St. Luke's Lutheran Church was rocked by scandal Tuesday, when Rev. Bob Tillich, the church's pastor of 12 years, was arrested on suspicion of boring as many as 23 children within the congregation. "Reverend Bob always seemed like the sweetest man," parishioner Vera Crandall said following the arrest. "When my son said he made him watch three 1975 filmstrips about the suffering of Job, I was shocked." In the wake of the arrest, seven former Sunday-school students, dating as far back as 1989, have stepped forward with charges that Tillich subjected them to inappropriately tedious parables.
11:15 PM | link
Cardinal likens abortion to terrorism. If this were Fark.com, there'd be a little "obvious" graphic next to that statement. Unless I'm mistaken, the cardinal in question is the man from Nigeria who Cardinal Ratzinger said could be pope one day; perhaps we could be in for more of this talk in the near future once John Paul II pops his clogs...
3:05 PM | link
NSW Police Commissioner Peter Ryan abruptly resigns. I'm not entirely surprised somehow, he hasn't been the most popular man of late, and I gather he hasn't had a particularly good relationship with the new Police Minister Michael Costa. Still, I don't feel sorry for him, however disappointed he might feel. He came here full of promise that he never quite delivered on, and he's just got $425,000 for leaving a year ahead of time, which is also what he's been drawing as a salary for the past six years he's been Commissioner. He was the second-highest paid public servant in the country. So I've no sympathy for him...
3:02 PM | link
Neo-Nazi cable TV program causing problems. Hell, if the guy complaining here had seen Pauline Hanson's maiden speech, he'd have had a fit at the thought of her being able to say that sort of thing in Parliament...
2:50 PM | link
American Airlines sued for $50m over Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Because obviously it was the airline's fault for not being vigorous enough in keeping terrorists off their planes. Oy.
2:47 PM | link
Is that woman really pregnant with a clone baby? A number of scientists seem to reckon the clone story is a lot of shite.
2:37 PM | link
More foul deeds from Yahoo.scum. The genuinely appalling thing is that Yahoo's heinous act was approved by a group which advocates Internet privacy:
"We would prefer in a perfect world that consumers give expressed consent," he said. "But the fact is that Yahoo is giving people choice sets the bar that most brick-and-mortar companies don't follow."
The actual fact is that Yahoo has been caught changing users' marketing preferences without their permission. That people can change them back is irrelevant. They shouldn't have to because Yahoo shouldn't have done it in the first place. How much money has this man been paid by Yahoo to say nice things about them?
2:27 PM | link
Who feels sorry for the rich having to pay more taxes than the poor? Not I. Fuck them.
2:20 PM | link
Yahoo wants to charge for over-the-phone help. That's bad enough, but the fee they're proposing is just obscene. According to them, it adds value to their Yahoo-using experience. Funny, I'd have thought the only value added to anything in this transaction would be to Yahoo's bank account...
2:18 PM | link
Calls for the legalisation of the sale of body parts. Um... no thanks. Not for me. Or from me.
2:16 PM | link
Forget the woman retrieving the money from her dog's crap. This is better. Or worse. Just think, if he'd tried to smuggle in marijuana instead of just tobacco, he could've literally said "this is some good shit"...
2:12 PM | link
It's bad enough when pop stars try and get political. Does it really have to happen in reverse too, even for charity?
2:03 PM | link
Congress gives $270,000 to fight goth culture. Um... so people who wear lots of black are really a bigger priority than, you know, terrorists? Read more about the "pork projects" thing here; this and literally thousands of similar examples, are blasted by a group called Citizens Against Government Waste, who claim pork-barrelling is diverting funds from the War on Terror™. As usual, decide for yourself; I think the specific example of the goth thing is ludicrous, but I'd like to know what all the other ones are to see how they measure up...
1:50 PM | link
Well, at least the old woman got a pretty decent send-off. Still, for all the sadness around the big event, there was still room for funny things like this story.
10:03 PM | link
What if Germany had won World War I? Unfortunately I don't share the author's optimism about how lovely the world would be if they had. The world would've just found other things to fight over...
7:57 PM | link
Charles Sheffield, meanwhile, ponders the problem of science fiction. Too much science and it just becomes fiction about science. Too little, and it just becomes fantasy. Me, though, I think SF ultimately has to go beyond what is strictly known or even what is possible about science; it has to go for the impossible or else it can't get off the ground, narratively speaking...
7:54 PM | link
Roger Kimball ponders what went wrong with socialism. Personally I've attributed the problems of practical Communism, as evidenced in the late and (no doubt by some) lamented USSR, to the fact that I just don't think genuinely revolutionary governments are possible. A really progressive government should, at least in theory, welcome its own overthrow, at least as I see it. In practice, though, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, et al were all ferociously trying to keep hold of power once they got it, just as hard as any right-wing tinpot has tried. Basically, I think there can only be conservative governments, and what they're primarily interested in conserving is their position at the top of the pile. You can, of course, make the claim that practical Communism as we saw it during the 20th century was not real Communism but a perversion of it, therefore you can't call Communism a failure as it's never really been tested properly. Still, I fear human nature will out, as it usually does, and the next attempt to enthrone Marx will end up much like the first ones did...
7:52 PM | link
Afghan defence minister survives assassination attempt. I'm with Mac Thomason on this one: when you round up about seven hundred-odd people on suspicion of planning an event like this, and then it still goes ahead, someone's not trying hard enough.
7:27 PM | link
Is broadband really worth it? Hell, if ANS offered broadband, I'd jump at it. Indeed, if Bigpond offered broadband at a reasonable rate instead of the outrageous $75/month they want for it (at least I think that's what the fee is), I'd jump at that too. I think pretty much anything has got to be better than my fucking 56k dialup which is really only a 33.6k dialup cos I can hardly ever get through on the 56k line and when I do it rarely does any better than the 33.6k line does anyway.
7:11 PM | link
Billy Bob Thornton versus the komodo dragon. I have respect for his acting abilities, but his logic seems to leave something to be desired. Komodo dragons don't fly planes into buildings or send suicide bombers into crowded public areas or anything like that, after all...
7:06 PM | link
End of world nigh, again. Isn't it odd how almost every major culture we know of, at least since the Greeks, seems to have thought of the time they live in as the last age of humanity? Funny how we're all still here, isn't it? Of course, given the technological advances of the last century, we've probably come closer than ever to achieving the apocalypse, and given the idiots in world power these days it's not exactly safe to mock. Even so, I'm not going to panic about the end of everything just yet...
6:57 PM | link
Apparently the water in Kandahar in Afghanistan has "erotic" qualities. I'm sure they'll forgive me, though, if I don't rush there to try it out for myself...
6:51 PM | link
Cardinal Ratzinger: next Pope could be a black African. He may be Protestant, too...
6:49 PM | link
Forget being expelled for carrying a butter knife. Seems all you need is an oak leaf. With the zero-tolerance policies so many schools in the US seem to be operating on, I'm astonished that there's anyone still left in school. This is absolutely bewildering.
6:47 PM | link
Woman retrieves $100 notes from her Doberman, bit by bit, shit by shit. Funny how our dog Fluffy never did anything like this.
6:44 PM | link
You can get background checks on cars and houses, how about pets?
Find out How would you die in a horror movie?
4:47 PM | link
Light pollution. Fucking everything seems to be a pollutant of some sort or another these days...
11:03 PM | link
Rio de Janeiro tourism board has a cow over a Simpsons episode. Eh. I recall people being vaguely pissed off at the Australian episode of the show for similar reasons. Me, I just thought that episode was one of the weakest they ever did; I was more offended by the unfunniness of it than by anything else. Probably the same will be true of this one...
11:01 PM | link
Arafat aide claims Jews nailed Jesus to the cross, accuses Israeli soldier of shooting Virgin Mary statue. We may laugh at the historical accuracy of the first part, but this person's comment about the second bit being "a failed attempt to murder peace, love and tolerance" interests me. I presume those Palestinian suicide bombers are a successful attempt at doing the same thing?
10:57 PM | link
Just found this little outburst at Gareth Parker's blog:
IN A MOVE that has shocked the nation, immigration and indigenous affairs minister Phillip Ruddock has failed to promote a divisive stereotype of a racial or ethnic minority.
In a ceremony 150km west of Alice Springs to hand back disused Commonwealth land to the indigenous population, Mr Ruddock reportedly described Australia's Aboriginal culture as our greatest treasure.
Gareth, mate, April Fool's Day was last Monday...
10:51 PM | link
Winter Olympics a success for the Mormon church. Apparently by not proselytising to the thousands of visitors to Salt Lake City, they reckon people thought better of them than they might otherwise have done. Similarly, I'd probably think better of them if they got their missionaries the hell off the streets here and stop trying to palm off their God onto passersby...
10:47 PM | link
Art vandal given day release to work at art gallery. Next: lunatic takes over asylum.
10:39 PM | link
Dealing with the Rwandan genocide. And he's right. The figure of ten thousand people being killed every day for a hundred days really is incomprehensible.
10:36 PM | link
Los Angeles school district pays nearly $20 million for airconditioners it never got. This is head-spinning stuff. Should lead to a few heads rolling, too...
10:23 AM | link
More on the CD anti-copying thing. German Mac users are now claiming that not only will copy-protected CDs not play in the CD-ROM drive, they may do active damage to the machine. Sony, who seem to be the main pushers behind the technology, naturally deny any such thing but freely admit the discs will crash computers. I don't often agree with Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, but his words on the matter strike me as being just right:
Oh, THAT's a relief. It crashes your computer. And when you reboot the computer it'll crash it again. And you won't be able to get it out of the CD drive—without prying it out with a paperclip—because, of course, it's crashed the computer!
They've shipped an intentionally defective product and it's causing lots of people problems with their computers. Not only will they be sued all over the place for this, and probably lose, but it occurs to me that there may be criminal liability under some of the antihacking and "computer sabotage" statutes.
This is going to lead to some very interesting court situations indeed. And, perhaps even more so than Napster, it'll be interesting to see where the musicians will stand on it. Being against fileswapping and wanting people to buy your CDs is fair enough, but will people want to buy your CDs if you consent to them being potentially unplayable? I think somehow this could potentially do more damage to CD sales than fileswapping ever could...
10:17 AM | link
Interesting-looking website about film sound. This is an area of film technology I freely admit to knowing little or nothing about (the mystery for me has always been how they even get the sound onto the soundtrack bit of the print), so this is a site I'm going to have to explore at some length.
7:33 PM | link
Dubya backtracks over comments about Bill Clinton. Accused of blaming the Clinton administration's failed peace summit two years ago of spawning the current shit in the Middle East, George denied this:
"I appreciate what President Clinton tried to do. He tried to bring peace to the Middle East. I'm going to try to bring peace to the Middle East."
And he'll do it if he has to bomb the shit out of it himself... anyway, he said his comments in an earlier interview had been intended to blame not Clinton but Yasser Arafat for screwing things up. In which case it might've been nice if he'd actually mentioned Arafat in said interview...
7:07 PM | link
Ivory Coast government finally pays off witch doctors who helped the Ivory Coast team to victory in the 1992 African Nations Cup.
6:37 PM | link
"Whether there was drinking going on or not, you simply can't light people on fire and simply can't call that a joke."
6:34 PM | link
86 year old man has Congressional medal taken from him at airport because it looked "ominous". As he said, he was less bothered at being stopped and searched than he was at them not recognising the medal... nor indeed apparently knowing what a medal looks like at all. I daresay these folks won't be in the running for any medals themselves in the near future...
6:32 PM | link
Venezuelan family sue fortune teller after falsely claiming their missing father was still alive.
6:26 PM | link
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