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May 29, 2005
Holiday...Celebrate...
I'm going on hiatus from the site for a few weeks. I need a vacation. If you want to keep up to date, use the RSS feed at the bottom of the sidebar. It'll keep you fullly aware of any updates and when I return. I leave on July eleventh for London, so keep that in mind as well. T.T.F.N.
Posted by Daniel at 10:37 PM | Comments (0)
May 27, 2005
A Brief Update
So there's been a serious lack of updates recently. I've been busy finishing the semester and moving home for the summer. Finals are over and I moved out of my room today. I also went to see Crash today. Excellent film--go see it. It's really great and basically just about how everyone's poor and racist. I now have zero desire to go to Los Angeles. I'm also gearing up for my thirteen hour twenty eight minute star wars marathon in a few weeks. Let me know if you want to come.
I'm also excited about classes for the beginning of summer. Definately in screenprinting and possibly in photo II. That should be all sorts of fun. Neat T shirts coming soon. July 11-Aug 3 I'll be in London and Monte Carlo. Come visit. Hope everything's goood with all of you. Don't forget to write. Hopefully I'll get back into an update mood soon.
Posted by Daniel at 10:47 PM | Comments (0)
May 19, 2005
Star Wars: Revenge of the Spectators
So yeah, I did the midnight Star Wars thing. Interesting night that left me very confused. First off, my dear friend Tommy got shot by one of the Fett's. I never can tell them apart. (He wasn't working as an extra, just at the movie theatre, and when he came in to give a warning about putting away all "Star Wars memorabilia and weapons, the Fett guy stood up and shot him to the thunderuos applause of the audience, or so I'm told.)
Here are my impressions of Episode Three, and I've lost track of all the titles. First of all, George Lucas is still off his rocker and barely literate. The scripts are gettign worse each time. In all the romance scenes and basically anything with Anakin, dialogue is painful. Unfortunately, for the first time, this carried over into the more dramatic and important scenes with Yoda and the Emporer, which really wasn't cool. He did his usual let's see if we can use a cliché even though it's a different galaxy...
The whole movie was really epic, but lacked any kind of climax. There were a bunch of lightsaber battle things, but none of them seemed all that major. CG was stunning, score was fantastic, space battles were really neat. I don't understand what General Grevious is supposed to be, and what the character's for. He just doesn't make sense, like much of the plot.
Lightsabers. They should be different colors. They were not. All blue with a few red. I'm hoping for a fix on this in the inevitable Special Edition Super Stellar Remix of all six which I'm sure the ILM and LucasFilm boys are already working on. Best thing about the movie: continuity. It all finally makes sense. And I'm considering watching all six in a row now. Maybe. We'll see. The biggest problem with the film? This hurts to say, and really bothers me, but Natalie Portman was awful. For the first time I have serious concerns about her ability as an actor. And she's not the only one. There must have been serious directoral problems, because all the people in this film (unlike previous installments with such screen gems as Jaky Lloyd and Ahmed Best [Jar Jar].) She was downright awful. Mind you, she doesn't deserve all the blame, but she seemed like the worst since she's normally so great. It's very disturbing and parents should use discretion. Oh, last thing. Hayden as Vader. Too slim. By a lot. He doesn't look right in the suit. There's all sorts of dimension issues. And there's a theory working its way around about mixing his voice in with James Earl Jones instead of going straight. Questionable. Check it out.
Posted by Daniel at 01:00 PM | Comments (1)
May 13, 2005
One Ticket 2008
WARNING: DISTURBING IMAGES NOT SUITED FOR CHILDREN. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
If anyone's as scared by this New York Times article as I am, I'm glad. Hopeully someone else noticed this most obvious sign of the apocalypse. I certainly did. This is the article. It's frightening. Hillary and Newt. Friends at last. Here's my prediction: Clinton/Gingrich 2008. One ticket, one party, one bargain made in HELL. But if it gets another Clinton in office, and takes us all back to the wonderfu world of 1997, I'm fine with it. We're just going to have to put a few billion into the Secret Service to ensure that our new president clinton doesn't die. Please don't die Hillary. Seriously though, 1997 again? A real economy? NYSE in good shape again? Making money on investments? Monica is our biggest concern? Hanson popular again? We'll be MMBoping our way away from invading random countries, and GET HEALTHCARE. I'm not uncrossing my fingers for the nex three years.....starting now.
Posted by Daniel at 02:49 PM | Comments (1)
May 10, 2005
Photomerges of Foolishness
In what is clearly a departure from facebook law, I have begun a collage of people's facebook photos. Generally the photos I think are silly. Or ones I would not advertise myself with. In some cases, these are photos I have advertised myself with. The link above and below will continue to lead to the most current collage. Keep up to date.
In other news, most entries are now viewable by topic/category. Check out the sidebar for more info. I'm working on refiling the archived entries.
Posted by Daniel at 12:15 AM | Comments (0)
May 09, 2005
Vatican Radio Cancer
I don't even know where to go with this one.
"Vatican Radio officials convicted
Vatican Radio's Cardinal Roberto Tucci avoids jail
A Roman Catholic cardinal and a priest in charge of Vatican Radio have been convicted of polluting the atmosphere with powerful electromagnetic waves.
Cardinal Roberto Tucci and Father Pasquale Borgomeo were given suspended 10-day jail sentences.
The Italian court also ordered them to pay damages and court costs.
Two scientific studies have suggested a field of Vatican Radio broadcasting antennas north of Rome may have caused high rates of cancer in the area.
The first, in 2001, found that magnetic fields around the transmitters were much higher than normal limits allow."
Posted by Daniel at 06:14 PM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2005
Female President?
For those of you who didn't hear about this poll, check it out below. It looks like America thinks it's ready for a woman as president soon. Clinton ticket 2008? Heaven help us if it's Rice. That would not bode well.
Quoted: ALBANY, N.Y. -- More than six in 10 voters believe the United States is ready for a woman president in 2008 and 53 percent of the voters think Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a New York Democrat, should try for the job, a nationwide poll has found.
The poll, conducted by the Siena College Research Institute and sponsored by the Hearst Newspapers, found that 81 percent of voters surveyed would vote for a woman for president; 62 percent said the country is ready for a woman president; and 67 percent said a female president would be better than a male chief executive in handling domestic issues.
Other national polls have identified the former first lady as the favorite among Democratic voters for the party's presidential nomination. In the Siena poll, 60 percent of voters said they expect a woman to be on the Democratic ticket for president in 2008. Only 18 percent of voters said they expected the 2008 Republican ticket to be headed by a woman.
The telephone poll of 1,125 registered voters was conducted Feb. 10-17 and has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The poll results were first reported in Monday's editions of Times Union of Albany, a Hearst newspaper.
"There was very little difference between men (64 percent) and woman (60 percent) on whether the country was ready for a woman president in 2008," said Douglas Lonnstrom, director of the Albany-area research institute. SURVEY Do you think the United States is ready for a female president?
Yes
No
While voters surveyed said a woman president would be better on domestic issues, there was no such advantage on who would do a better job as "commander in chief" - 18 percent said a woman would do better on that aspect of the job, 23 percent said a woman would do worse and 45 percent said gender wouldn't make a difference. On foreign policy issues, 24 percent said a woman president would do better; 11 percent said worse; and 52 percent said the president's gender didn't matter.
The Albany-area pollsters found that 37 percent of voters felt Clinton should not run for president.
On the Republican side, 42 percent of voters said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice should run for the White House while 41 percent said she should not and 33 percent said Sen. Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina should run for president while 48 percent said she should not do that.
In 2000, Clinton became the first woman ever elected, on her own, to statewide office in New York when she won the Senate seat vacated by fellow Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Three women have been elected lieutenant governor in New York, but only as part of a governor-lieutenant governor ticket.
Posted by Daniel at 02:08 PM | Comments (1)
May 02, 2005
The New Vehicle
Isn't she cute? This is my new Insight in pretty Honda Red. We bought her on Sunday, but now she's hiding at home fo a week or so until I figure out how to deal with parking on campus. I drove miles yesterday and averaged 52 mpg, only because of a nasty series of trips down kirkwood highway. Neever again. In my trip around Hockessin, which included quite a few starts and stops, I managed to get up to an average of 64 mpg. Amazing. Once I figure out how ot accellerate uphill using less gas (I can't decide wether to go slowly or quickly and wich gear ratio to use) I should regularly be exceeding EPA estimates. I've also submitted a request for a five digit plate (DE residents know what that's about), but I'm not holding my breath. Floor mats arrive soon, as well. I also intend to tint as much of the vhicle as possible to keep air conditioning costs down, and if i can keep power consumption and weight low, I'll add a new set of speakers and head unit. Eventual navigation system and either a Mac mini or powerbook mount as well. I'd use Sirius, but I'm afraid about the drag an antenna would create. current drag coefficent is 0.25, but I can get that down if I remove the antenna or mirrors. I could easily replace the side view mirrors with ccd's and a pair of lcd monitors in dash. all things told, I'm expecting to get up to 70 or so wh en things are said and done. Energy crisis? No more petroleum? Not for me.
Posted by Daniel at 08:11 AM | Comments (1)