Sunday, May 22, 2005

ö Marvin calculates of our chance of survival  Marvin: I've calculated your chance of survival, but I don't think you'll like it. Marvin: I think you ought to know I'm feeling very depressed. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams Ford Prefect: "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." That was the tagline for my first website in 1995, "Out to Lunch". A Few Other Adams things: The history of every major galactic civilization has passed through three distinct and recognisable phases: those of survival, inquiry, and sophistication. Otherwise known as the 'How','Why', and 'Where' phases. For instance, the first phase is characterised by the question: "How can we eat?" The second by the question: "Why do we eat?" And the third by the question: "Where should we have lunch?" "We apologise for the inconvenience" - God's final message to creation. The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. "First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII ­ and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure."   permanent link #     ^ TOP ^  what is this place?

ö The orangutan is in the bullpen  Help - ways to answer the phone? ...and 'The orangutan is in the bullpen... repeat... the orangutan is in the bullpen'. The last one tends to really confuse people and is really great to hang up immediately after if you don't want to talk to the person.  Finally something I can use this image for! Then again, I could use it for EVERYTHING! Wait, is this baseball? permanent link #     ^ TOP ^  what is this place?

ö Revenge of the Dub [NYT no registration]  Latest 'Star Wars' Movie Is Quickly Politicized ...the heroes and antiheroes of Mr. Lucas's final entry, "Episode III - Revenge of the Sith," were on their way to becoming the stock characters of partisan debate by mid-Wednesday, hours before the film's opening just after midnight... [...] All of which calls into question Mr. Lucas's decision to have the premiere of the "Star Wars" finale at the Cannes Film Festival. France is sometimes called the biggest blue state of all, after all. And just what was Mr. Lucas - who could not be reached for comment Wednesday - thinking when he told a Cannes audience that he had not realized in plotting the film years ago that fact might so closely track his fiction? Alluding to Michael Moore's remarks about "Fahrenheit 9/11" at Cannes a year earlier, Mr. Lucas joked, "Maybe the film will waken people to the situation." Apparently in all seriousness, though, he went on to say that he had first devised the "Star Wars" story during the Vietnam War. "The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable," he told an appreciative audience. more  Fascinating. But, I really got to this Times article because I was looking for a bloggable no-registration-required link into their SPECIAL SECTION, "Spotlight on Star Wars - Reviews of every "Star Wars" movie, trailers, an interactive graphic charting the history of the 'Star Wars' universe, a reader forum and more." The graphic chart of the Star Wars universe is terrific for someone like me, who lost track of the plot. I mean sheesh, 6 movies over 28 years, with the last 3 made/released being the first 3 in the chronology, what a way to serialize a story. This, from someone who used to wear a Yoda ball-cap with those ears through the early 80s after The Empire Strikes Back. I got the image from an August 2002 article at Democratic Underground. permanent link #     ^ TOP ^  what is this place?