The wonders of You Tube
One of SNL’s hilarious digital clips from Andy Samberg.
Also, I found this while looking for horror short films on You Tube last night and found one so head and shoulders above anything I had ever seen I have to post it here. The embedding option has been disabled so I’ll just post the link. The film is called The Insane, the effects, acting and cinematography are startingly well done. The only complaint I have is that the “twist” is blaringly obvious pretty much from go. Enjoy!
Earth-like planet discovered!
For better or worse, humans may not be alone in this vast universe. Scientists recently discovered a planet similar to Earth’s size, shape and temperature in a nearby galaxy. Planet 581 c – not a very sexy name is it? – orbits a red dwarf and is believed to have a slightly stronger gravitational pull than our lovely home planet.
I think astronomers should hold a contest to come up with a name for this bizarro Earth. Any suggestions? How about Kanabit (see picture) or Red Lodge (hollaback TP fans)
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/04/25/habitable.planet.ap/index.html
Wonderful political poetry
A Moment of Silence, Before I Start this Poem
by Emmanuel Ortiz 9.11.02
Before I start this poem, I’d like to ask you to join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September 11th.
I would also like to ask you to offer up a moment of silence for all of those who have been harassed, imprisoned, disappeared, tortured, raped, or killed in retaliation for those strikes, for the victims in both Afghanistan and the U.S.
And if I could just add one more thing…
A full day of silence for the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have died at the hands of U.S.-backed Israeli forces over decades of occupation. Six months of silence for the million and-a-half Iraqi people, mostly children, who have died of malnourishment or starvation as a result of an 11-year U.S. embargo against the country.
Before I begin this poem: two months of silence for the Blacks under Apartheid in South Africa, where homeland security made them aliens in their own country Nine months of silence for the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where death rained down and peeled back every layer of concrete, steel, earth and skin and the survivors went on as if alive. A year of silence for the millions of dead in Viet Nam – a people, not a war – for those who know a thing or two about the scent of burning fuel, their relatives’ bones buried in it, their babies born of it. A year of silence for the dead in Cambodia and Laos, victims of a secret war … ssssshhhhh …. Say nothing … we don’t want them to learn that they are dead. Two months of silence for the decades of dead in Colombia, whose names, like the corpses they once represented, have piled up and slipped off our tongues.
Before I begin this poem,
An hour of silence for El Salvador … An afternoon of silence for Nicaragua … Two days of silence for the Guetmaltecos … None of whom ever knew a moment of peace in their living years. 45 seconds of silence for the 45 dead at Acteal, Chiapas 25 years of silence for the hundred million Africans who found their graves far deeper in the ocean than any building could poke into the sky. There will be no DNA testing or dental records to identify their remains. And for those who were strung and swung from the heights of sycamore trees in the south, the north, the east, and the west… 100 years of silence…
For the hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples from this half of right here, Whose land and lives were stolen,
In postcard-perfect plots like Pine Ridge, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, Fallen Timbers, or the Trail of Tears. Names now reduced to innocuous magnetic poetry on the refrigerator of our consciousness …
So you want a moment of silence?
And we are all left speechless
Our tongues snatched from our mouths
Our eyes stapled shut
A moment of silence
And the poets have all been laid to rest
The drums disintegrating into dust
Before I begin this poem,
You want a moment of silence
You mourn now as if the world will never be the same
And the rest of us hope to hell it won’t be.
Not like it always has been
Because this is not a 9-1-1 poem
This is a 9/10 poem,
It is a 9/9 poem,
A 9/8 poem,
A 9/7 poem
This is a 1492 poem.
This is a poem about what causes poems like this to be written And if this is a 9/11 poem, then
This is a September 11th poem for Chile, 1971
This is a September 12th poem for Steven Biko in South Africa, 1977
This is a September 13th poem for the brothers at Attica Prison, New York, 1971.
This is a September 14th poem for Somalia, 1992.
This is a poem for every date that falls to the ground in ashes
This is a poem for the 110 stories that were never told
The 110 stories that history chose not to write in textbooks
The 110 stories that CNN, BBC, The New York Times, and Newsweek ignored
This is a poem for interrupting this program.
And still you want a moment of silence for your dead?
We could give you lifetimes of empty:
Rosie to leave “The View”
Damn already? That’s what I was asking myself when I heard that Rosie O’Donnell was calling it a day after only one year on the hot mess known as “The View”. The show has seen ratings increases of up to 30% since Rosie came on board with her fiery opinions and genuinely funny banter. The official reason given was that she, and the producers of the show, could not come to an agreement over her contract but I suspect something else was at play.
Either she got a better, more lucrative offer to do her own thing on TV or radio OR her controversial feuds and political views were really making advertisers nervous. It’s hard to believe that there could be such a thing as bad publicity in this day and age but maybe the ad execs at Ivory soap and Bounce weren’t used to dealing with such saucy POV’s in the normally tepid daytime talk show atmosphere. Here’s hoping that she puts her talents to better use than deciphering Barbara Walters wishy washy nonsense, innovating Joy Behar’s tired Jersey mother shtick, or pandering to thatconservative idiot Elizabeth Hasselbeck.
Now “Oldboy” is to blame for Virginia Tech
Oldboy (2003) the fantastic thriller by South Korean director Park Chan Wook is now being scapegoated for the massacre at Virginia Tech. The revenge tale includes a scene of the hero attacking a group of people with a hammer, in a pose resembling the picture released of the killer. Of course, it’s probable that Cho Seung-Hui saw the crossover hit but whether he derived inspiration from the flick is debatable. In fact, if he had paid attention to the movie, and indeed the message of Park’s trilogy including Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, he would understand how absurd and unfulfilling revenge truly is.
While I believe that occasionally films can inspire one to political action and indignation I don’t think that anyone would have such a monkey see, monkey do response to extreme violence in a film, so much so that it would overrule their morals and understanding of the law.
In any case I urge everyone to see Oldboy, it’s a masterpiece of melodrama, action and a little bit of romance – with a twist.
Clive Owen – International Superstar
My husband, Clive Owen, is set to star in Tom Tykwer’s new action-thriller The International about an Interpol agent investigating banking corruption. Hopefully, Owen will tap into the suave, intellectual manliness of his that never got a chance to shine as James Bond. Me-ow.
Say What? Ed Norton signed on to play Hulk
According to AOL Movie News, cerebral actor Edward Norton has signed on to play the Incredible Hulk in an inexplicable sequel to Ang Lee’s turgid adaptation with Eric Bana. No word on why Bana dropped out of the sequel. What else is he doing?
Some people may be surprised at this casting choice but Norton has previously pulled off butch turns as a neo-nazi in American History X and a con artist murderer in Primal Fear.
He also had an unexpected role as Salma Hayak’s boyfriend. So I’m confident he will be able to fill the extra large pants of the Hulk. Hey, I think he’s a hottie.
Sanjaya Got The BOOT!
See ya!
Sanjaya finally got his sorry ass booted off of AI! Don’t you fret though, he’ll resurface as a veejay or Extra correspondent sooner or later.
The Virginia Tech blame game
Was the shooter possibly depressed? Is our video game culture to blame? Perhaps more severe gun restrictions would prevent another tragedy. Or maybe stricter immigration laws are in order, since the shooter, 23 year old senior Cho Seung-Hui of South Korea, was a legal resident. Or maybe he was depressed and his alleged anti-depression meds are to blame? So says the latest article from Yahoo!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070417/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting
It’s amazing how quickly mourning turns into the frantic search for a scapegoat in an event like this. It happened in Columbine and the Amish shooting and now once again. The thought that anything like this can be explained away by either an intense concentraton on the details of the killer’s personality or a sweeping generalization about “society’s” pathologies is ridiculously simplistic.
Consider each explanation:
1. The anti-depression meds did it. This is an excuse the scientologists would love. No matter what the pharmaceutical industry says, Western medicine is not an exact science. Finding the right medication for ANY condition is always a combination of three things a) Dr. expertise and knowledge b) patient consistency in taking the pill – something which young patients are notoriously bad about c) simple trial and error with dosage and brand. Even something as pedestrian as the birth control pill can have side effects of varying severity- blood clots to acne – in different people. Anti-depressants are no different. Very rarely certain psychotropicmeds (like Paxil) can increase suicidal thoughts, usually when the patient is a teenager or been misdiagnosed. It’s even more rare that they will become homicidal. Conveniently we can’t track the amount of people who have refrained from doing harm to themselves or others because of anti-depressants/anxiety/psychotics. We can only learn about the few, unrepresentative rogue individuals that do.
2. The school didn’t do enough. Hindsight is 20/20 and while it seems obvious now that the school should have done more, what would “more” have included? Police can only work with the best information they have which, after the first killing, seemed to suggest that the two murders at 7:15am in the dorm was personally motivated, and that the shooter had left the premises. What could have possibly suggested what was to come? There’s no precedent even in other school shootings for someone returning hours later. They sent out several e-mails giving the info they knew. Even then, it was very early in the morning and students were already en route to school. I know that I never checked my e-mail before classes that early and I lived ON campus, if you are a commuter I suspect this is even more rare. By the second round of shootings, cops were called and people were informed, perhaps to the best of the school’s ability for an event that took place over the course of a few hours. This school was a moderate size. How could they have evacuated everyone?
I suppose you can blame the school for not having a contingency plan already in place, but really, who prepares for such an event? And is it worth turning every university into a police state to prevent another accident, assuming you could in the first place? When people become desperate or fervent enough to be suicidal there is very little you can do to prevent them from carrying out their intent because they have nothing at stake; you can’t threaten them with prison or death, they have already decided what their life is worth.
3. Violent culture theory. It’s simple enough to blame Marilyn Manson, Grand Theft Auto or movies for violence but how true is it? This isn’t to say that the media shouldn’t be held accountable for what they put out, but there is rarely a 1:1 relationship of someone seeing violence then committing a crime. What remains unsaid is that Japanese culture, among others, is just as violence saturated if not MORE then American youth culture. Manga, yakuza movies and violent video games are consumed just as much among youngsters and they – to my knowledge – have never had a school massacre and their national homicide rate is a fraction of ours.
4. Guns kill people, stupid. I won’t rehash the gun debate here. We all know about the 2nd amendment and our right to bear arms, blah, blah, blah. We also know it was referring to the militia and not any civilian with a paranoid ax to grind. The fact is most people in this country live in cities, not some homestead out in the wilderness where we need to protect our land from coyotes or intruders because we are miles away from the nearest police station. In our cities or suburbs, handguns are only intended for one thing: killing PEOPLE. You aren’t going to go hunt deer with your pistol and shoot birds with your handgun. Let’s not pretend these types of weapons are for anything else.
Then again, waiting periods and restrictions on buying guns will only prevent crimes based on impulse. For those who are meticulously planning their assault on innocents for weeks and months, as Cho seemed to be, a couple of days will not be a deterrent. But such policies will probably prevent some suicides, domestic murders, etc. Only a wholesale ban and collection of existing weapons would prevent massacres as these. Sure, guns don’t kill people, people do. But it’s hard to kill 33 people with a bayonet or a crossbow or knife.
5. Some people are just evil. Or this is an example of the devil’s work in the world. Or, this act was inhuman. This is a cop-out. Humans have a long history of cruelty towards one another. Any act done by a human cannot be INhuman. It is necessarily and resolutely in the realm of human behavior. And, if you take the long historically view, not even abnormal human behavior. Attempts to bring in the supernatural lets us off the hook too easily for raising people capable of doing these shocking deeds.
I’m sure that all of these explanations play a small part in explaining why this happened but they will never be the whole truth because people are complex configurations of nature and nuture, memories and motivations competing with each other, encouraging some actions and canceling others out. It’s tempting to want an “AHA” answer that ties up this tragedy in a bow, because if we can find a singular cause then we can implement a solution.
No matter what Cho’s so-called suicide note says, that won’t even be the whole truth of his frame of mind. There is who you are and who you want people to think you are even in the darkest moments doing the most heinous things. If Charles Whitman, the UT sniper taught us anything, it was the inscrutability of the human mind. Was it a bad relationship with his mother? Anxiety over arguments with his wife? Or the brain tumor they found during the autopsy? Yes and no.
Luckily, we don’t need a “why” to mourn these unfortunate victims. And no matter how badly this incident reflects on humanity and our weaknesses it doesn’t erase the beauty in the stories emerging of people who risked their live to protect others, sometimes strangers. Like the professor who held the door while his students escaped or the RA who came to the first victims aid. Courage, like cruelty is thankfully also a very human trait.
Virginia Tech Tragedy
I’ll never understand why some suicidal people need to take innocent people down with them. At least my alma mater, UT, no longer has the dubious distinction of being the site of the deadliest school massacre.
Gunman kills 30 on Virginia Tech campus
By SUE LINDSEY, Associated Press Writer 39 minutes ago
BLACKSBURG, Va. – A gunman opened fire in a Virginia Tech dorm and then, two hours later, in a classroom across campus Monday, killing at least 30 people in the deadliest shooting rampage in U.S. history, government officials told The Associated Press. The gunman was killed, bringing the death toll to 31.
Students complained that the university did not warn them about the first deadly burst of gunfire until hours later.
“Today the university was struck with a tragedy that we consider of monumental proportions,” said Virginia Tech president Charles Steger. “The university is shocked and indeed horrified.”
It was not immediately clear whether the gunman was shot by police or took his own life. Investigators offered no motive for the attack. The gunman’s name was not immediately released, and it was not known if he was a student.
The shootings spread panic and confusion on campus. Witnesses reporting students jumping out the windows of a classroom building to escape the gunfire. SWAT team members with helmets, flak jackets and assault rifles swarmed over the campus. Students and faculty members carried out some of the wounded themselves, without waiting for ambulances to arrive.
The massacre took place at opposite sides of the 2,600-acre campus, beginning at about 7:15 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, a coed dormitory that houses 895 people, and continuing at least two hours later at Norris Hall, an engineering building about a half-mile away, authorities said.
Police said they were still investigating the shooting at the dorm when they got word of gunfire at the classroom building.
Some students bitterly questioned why the gunman was able to strike a second time, two hours after the bloodshed began.
“What happened today this was ridiculous,” student Jason Piatt told CNN. He said the first warning from the university of a shooting on campus came in an e-mail about two hours after the first deadly burst of gunfire. “While they’re sending out that e-mail, 22 more people got killed,” Piatt said.
FBI spokesman Richard Kolko in Washington said there was no evidence to suggest it was a terrorist attack, “but all avenues will be explored.”
Government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they did not want to pre-empt an announcement by higher-ranking authorities, put the death toll at 31.
At least 26 people were being treated at three area hospitals for gunshot wounds and other injuries, authorities said. Their exact conditions were not disclosed, but at least one was sent to a trauma center and six were in surgery, authorities said.
Up until Monday, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history was in Killeen, Texas, in 1991, when George Hennard plowed his pickup truck into a Luby’s Cafeteria and shot 23 people to death, then himself.
The massacre Monday took place almost eight years to the day after the Columbine High bloodbath near Littleton, Colo. On April 20, 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before taking their own lives.
