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Children of Men"
Truth in fiction? With articles about decreased sperm count in men living in industrialized countries, hormone-laden food affecting our kids' development, and now inadvertent cocktails of every drug ever administered forming from human bodily waste that filters into our water supply... One figures that whatever eventually happens in reality will defy and exceed even the extreme speculation in movies like this one.
Really, really good movie. Nihilistic as hell (until the 'morrow at the end), but very accurate depictions of human reactions under stress.
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OK, as usual, the baggage crap no one wants to read comes last, after the post split.
Saw the 40th anniversary Hello, Hamlet show last night with Dorota. She’s not a huge musical fan, but even she enjoyed a fair bit of it. In a word, it was awesome. Totally lived up to its 40-year heritage. One of the guys originally involved with it came out and took the role of the introductory narrator / minstrel. Amazing set (that I know Charles gained many gray hairs over). Pretty strong cast with some duds (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were really cute eye candy, in a strange turn of casting, but they totally weren’t the hams that pair of roles begs for; Polonius was decent but a little tiresome).
The thing that got me most was the .. dunno the term of art for it. Physical acting. Dramatic gestures. Blocking. Choreography for song / dance numbers. The actors’ actions during dialogue and singing were .. brilliant. Really, really amazing. This is the 5th show I’ve seen and 3rd that I’ve been involved with, and I was really impressed.
They majorly reworked the script and songs. A lot of the older ones (mostly Gilbert and Sullivan) got cut, to be replaced by newer stuff that I didn’t recognize (except for the two Phantom of the Opera songs and a Les Mis number).
Threw myself over way too many walls and park benches on Sat. It was so good to run with those guys again. Had a really cute (nay, gorgeous) girl come out. I was really impressed by how all the guys were friendly and supportive (not oppressively so), but no one got any smarm on her. No feeding frenzy. That little thing says a lot about their character.
K-Swiss is bringing a parkour promo tour to Houston this Thursday. Some sponsored traceurs will be simultaneously exhibiting their amazing athleticism and complete lack of typical sensibilities (both of which are compliments in my book, for the terminally dense).
Chris and I actually gave Scott something to work with in free fencing today. We were excited. We can *almost* see the opportunities and windows. Sometimes we manage to get them. We each got Scott cleanly with one or two hits. All of us were working on a few specific things. My right shoulder, forearm, and left ribs got punished. We are awesome. :)
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…plus 119 hrs 55 mins precisely and 1 respiratory infection. (more…)
It’s off we are to Chicago.
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Or a year in this case…
Lots of people have said it (including me) — the last one I remember was Kevin:
“Alternative (green) energy represents a fraction of a percent of the overall US energy portfolio.”
Well, that *was* true. (OK, still *is* true, where specifically solar power is still under 0.1% of the $3 trillion global energy market.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/business/23wind.html?scp=27&sq=energy&st=nyt
Also, Google solar thermal power generation, which offers potentially $0.10 KWH (currently $0.15 - $0.20 for lack of economies of scale) and is cropping up all over the Southwest.
Three years ago, Texas was 3rd in the wind race — behind CA and .. WA? Well, we’ve been #1 in wind power production since 2006 (after my stint with Green Mountain) — and 3% of the TX energy portfolio is now in wind. I haven’t seen the numbers, but over the past year I’ve seen lots of articles on how quickly we’ve been growing our wind power generation capacity.
Read the article to see what oil tycoon Boone Pickens is gushing about, re: wind power. $10 billion for a wind farm. *Billion*. That’s good spending money, even on an int’l level.
And Nevada, NM, and CA are all not standing still, either.
How did this happen? Hundreds of thousands of individual consumers signed up for “green energy” accounts with the power companies, that’s how. The power of Greyskull is in you!
By damn, exercise the full extent of your power as 0.0000004% of the US voting / consumer population (in practice, probably 5-10 times more than that, since most of the populace is apathetic, thereby weighting your purchasing decisions and actions favorably). And I’m dead serious — *no one* can say that we can’t make a difference, when the past 3 years have seen such huge changes.
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http://xkcd.com/59/
And a friend posted this excerpt on his xanga blog as part of the latest meme:
5th sentence of p. 123 of the closest book at hand, plus the next three sentences…
When counselors assume that one value system (their own) is superior and preferable to another; they engage in ethnocentric behavior that is insensitive the their clients’ worldviews. Ethnocentrism can easily occur in career development interventions when counselors assume that individualistic and self-sufficient actions are preferable to collectivistic actions reflecting interdependence and group loyalty. Individualists use individual attitudes, private interests, and personal goals to guide their behavior, whereas collectivists rely on shared interests, group norms, and common goals to inform their decision making (Hartung, Speight, & Lewis, 1996). For many people the emphasis on individualism found within numerous theories of career development generated in the United States does not mesh with worldviews in which the family or group is the principal arbiter of appropriate occupational choices.
From Career Development Interventions in the 21st Century by Spencer G. Niles and Jo Ann Harris-Bowlsbey.
Or to put it more succinctly and confrontationally:
This is not yo’ life!
You are not the boss of me!
Seriously, though, I’m usually guilty of projecting my own values and preferences onto others’ decisions. In any of the three forms above, I ought to take this advice to heart. As should we all.
A caveat: Variety and perspectives are important, though, and I often (reluctantly) find value in hearing POVs that contrast with or contradict mine. So the trick is to share (or receive) my and others’ POVs without subsuming one in the other.
/soapbox
A tear in Hanko’s beer. He gets no love. :)
http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=371
That’s pretty cool, though.
Having gotten pasted in the man-boob, right pinky, right forearm and nearly the nuts at Sunday’s practice, I can’t say I’m eager to fence sans masque despite it being quite the accepted convention up through the late 1700s.
(And yes, I am also aware of the various wicker / wire masks devised prior to La Boessiere’s invention.)
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