At the end of a review panning (no, really?) the new slash-and-gore movie Saw VI:
"Saw VI" is rated R (Under 17 requires
accompanying parent or adult guardian) .
Tripe, most of it human.
"Well, this is not how I expected to wake up this morning," Obama said. He described his interaction with his two daughters.
"After I received the news, Malia walked in and said, 'Daddy, you won the Nobel Peace Prize, and it is Bo's birthday.' And then Sasha added, `Plus, we have a three-day weekend coming up.' So it's — it's good to have kids to keep things in perspective."
From reading Pollock's book on Spinoza:
Men are also gained over by liberality, chiefly those who have not wherewithal to buy the necessaries of life. But helping every one in need is far beyond the means and convenience of any private person. For a private man's wealth is no match for such a demand. Also a single man's opportunities are too narrow for him to contract friendship with all. Wherefore providing for the poor is a duty that falls on the whole community and has regard only to the common interest. ---Spinoza, Ethics
Funny, later I heard Michael Moore talking to Wolf Blitzer about his new movie about the problems inherent in capitalism:
How do you respond to the people who charge you with hypocrisy? You made a lot of money in this free-enterprise capitalist system and now you're railing against it.Isn't that amazing? That...I've done ok and I still wanna do these things to help people who have it worse off than I. That I'm actually following through on the religious principles I was raised with that I will be judged by how I treat the least among us.
The other bit I liked in the Ethics, sounds like Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics:
Now man's power is very much confined, and is inifitely surpassed by the power of external causes; and therefore we have not any absolute power of converting to our own use things outside us. Yet we shall bear with an even mind that which happens to us against the conditions of our own advantage if we are aware that we have done our part of the business, and that the power we possess could not have gone so far as to avoid those evils; and that we are part of the whole order of nature and bound thereby.
Thanks to Kateri.
One way to compensate would be a "controlled napping" policy, based on NASA research more than two decades ago. It found that pilots were more alert and performed better during landings when they were allowed to take turns napping during the cruise phase of flights. Other countries have adopted the policies, but the FAA has not.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090901/ap_on_bi_ge/us_tired_pilots
Pilots, whatever. Can we institute that generally. PLEEEEEEASE?
No taxes! Oh, wait... From the San Jose Mercury News:
Contending it was a tax, Republicans in the Legislature killed a plan supported by environmental groups and Democrats to impose a $15 surcharge on vehicle registrations that would have doubled the state park budget while giving every California resident free admission to all state parks.
But last week, state Sen. Dave Cogdill, R-Fresno, sent Coleman a letter saying he had "deep concerns" about the potential closures of parks in his district, such as Turlock Lake, and urging her to "weigh the devastating economic consequences."
"It's too bad that Senator Cogdill didn't take this into account before we got to this stage," said Elizabeth Goldstein, president of the California State Parks Foundation.
What can you say? I mean, really!
"We could have a plan in a few weeks if the goal is not a government takeover," said Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. "We've never seen the government operate a plan of any kind effectively and at the budgets we talked about." Yahoo News
Yeah, that's absolutely right. Because
- The interstate highway system has never worked right.
- The Apollo program never came close to getting to the Moon.
- The Tennessee Valley Authority, the Columbia River Power Project, and the Hoover Dam are all laughingstocks of the modern world.
- The Social Security System never came close to ending poverty among the elderly.
- Medicare, a single-payer healthcare system, has never provided any necessary care to retirees.
- The Manhattan Project and the H-Bomb project were totally outstripped by private enterprise endeavors.
- We lost WWII.
When I heard Jacqueline Schwab play the piano for the first time, a couple years back, it was a revelatory moment. It reminded me what music is supposed to sound like, what it's all about. I actually got to take a couple lessons from her, back when I thought I had time to pursue the piano myself.
I heard through the grapevine that she was going to be on Letterman, backing up Jean Redpath. Letterman is on at 11:30 in this time zone, which means it might as well be on being broadcase on Mars as far as I'm concerned. But we taped it, and watched it, and some enterprising soul has put it on youtube. Just awesome.
