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Friends LiveJournal for I feel like a pig shat in my head.
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| Friday, July 25th, 2008 |
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More later! |
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| Leaders from both sides of the divided island of Cyprus agree to launch reunification talks in early September, the UN says. | ||||||
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| At least 42 people die after their boat sinks on a remote river in the Democratic Republic of Congo, officials say. | ||||||
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| England will warm up for their $20m (£10m) showdown with the Stanford Super Stars later this year by playing the winners of this weekend's Twenty20 Cup. | ||||||
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| Rania of Jordan goes on YouTube to tackle stereotypes | ||||||
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Civilian space firms need to get real about the risks they face taking paying customers into space, according to the US safety regulator |
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| Bosnian Serb ex-leader Radovan Karadzic has hours left to appeal against his extradition to The Netherlands on genocide charges. | ||||||
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| Hasbro, the company that owns the North American rights to Scrabble, sues the founders of Scrabulous. | ||||||
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The disease resurfaces in France, and sheep populations in Britain are now under threat |
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| US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tells Australian schoolgirls she is looking forward to having time to shop again. | ||||||
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| Troops kill 10 gunmen who attacked them in the Bakassi peninsula, Cameroon says. | ||||||
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| Commercial shipping is severely disrupted following an oil spill on the Mississippi River in the United States. | ||||||
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| Thursday, July 24th, 2008 |
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| Has Obama's trip been a hit with US voters? | ||||||
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| Friday, July 25th, 2008 |
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By Roger Ebert "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" arrives billed as a "stand-alone" film that requires no familiarity with the famous television series. So it is, leaving us to piece together the plot on our own. And when I say "piece together," trust me, that's exactly what I mean. In an early scene, a human arm turns up, missing its body, and other spare parts are later discovered. |
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| "Step Brothers" (R, 95 minutes). Will Ferrell and John C.Reilly play 40ish sons who still live at home, eating melted cheese nachos and watching TV. When their parents (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins) get married, they become step brothers and have to share the same room. This leads to violence and language so extreme, it seems out of proportion to any comic purpose. I felt a little unclean. Rating: One and a half stars. | ||||||
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| "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" (Unrated, 100 minutes). Marina Zenovich's surprising documentary, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired." builds, brick by brick with eyewitness testimony, a story of about against the justice system by the judge of Polanski's infamous child molestation case, Laurence J. Rittenband. So corrupt was this man that the documentary finds agreement among the defense attorney, the assistant D.A. who prosecuted the case, and the child involved, now a well-spoken adult. All agree Polanski may have done the right thing by fleeing the country before being sentenced, Rating: Three and a half stars | ||||||
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| "Brideshead Revisited" (PG-13, 135 minutes). Elegantly mounted and well acted version of the Evelyn Waugh novel, but not the equal of the (much longer) 1981 TV miniseries. Matthew Goode plays the middle-class youth who falls in love with both a son and a daughter of the wealthy Marchmain family--and also in love with their fabulous mansion, Brideshead. Ema Thompson is splendid as the devout Lady Marchmain. Rating: Three stars | ||||||
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By Roger Ebert The great subject of the cinema, Ingmar Bergman believed, is the human face. He'd been watching Antonioni on television, he told me during an interview, and realized it wasn't what Antonioni said that absorbed him, but the man's face. Bergman was not thinking about anything as simple as a closeup, I believe. He was thinking about the study of the face, the intense gaze, the face as window to the soul. Faces are central to all of his films, but they are absolutely essential to the power of what has come to be called his Silence of God Trilogy: "Through a Glass Darkly" (1961), "Winter Light" (1962) and "The Silence" (1963). |
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Hehe. Psych is funny. It's creeping into my everyday language - I commented that one of the ickle firsties on the medball committee is suffering from grandiose delusions in terms of decorations.... haha... Um. Haven't posted in a while. Have been busy, though. Lots of things to go to, people to meet, forms to get signed. Really think I'm sleep deprived atm - I finished reading The Kite Runner last night and OMG it's so sad! Yes, I cried. Wibble. What else? Oh, sponsorship. It seems like it wants to take over my life. Oh well. GP is amusing, but if I don't start doing stuff soon I suspect I may become bored. Drug reps are fun to poke at. Tomorrow is the Phil cocktail party - I've started putting together my dress for it. The theme is "Around the World in 80 Cocktails". Of course, my costume has to be outrageous so I bought three packets of flag bunting (12 flags in each packet, they're quite small...) and taped it into a dress. Yeah. It has bust shaping, and... well. It's cute, but will be cuter when stuck together properly. Might do that tomorrow, with staples and packing tape. Bwahahaha. Oooh. I'm also going to work tomorrow - first time in a LONG while. Persisting with calling in actually works! YAY MONEY... *cough* Hrmm. Busy weekend. But then, they all are... |
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| Manager Mixu Paatelainen insists Hibs' confidence has not been dented by the 6-0 thrashing from Barcelona. | ||||||
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| The US welcomes the nomination of South African judge Navanethem Pillay as the new UN high commissioner for human rights. | ||||||
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So, all y'all that haven't bred yet, what's your take on bebbies? All y'all who've bred, what was your take and then what happened? Have just had a couple of conversations about this sort of thing recently. (Nothing to do with Rob, I hasten to add!) Personally, I am not over fond of children and I don't really want them. That said, if the circumstances were ever right, I would consider it. Am sure that if I ever did spawn it would be the best thing I ever did. I'm just not desperate for the circumstances to be right. I ask myself "Would you be happy if you hit sixty and it never happened?" and I honestly can't answer because there's SO MUCH that could happen in that time. There are so many other things in the world that can make you happy. I also understand that at some point your hormones kick in and go "DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT", but if you don't actually have any desire to have a child, surely it's over-rideable. And whereas I do have a curiousity about the whole process of pregnancy and mother-child bonding thing, it's the same curiousity I have about coding and Eton and English degrees, and I'm probably never going to pursue any of those further either. Just finkings. I am also WAY too young, but one does have to have a stance on these things because it tends to come up, and when it comes up, it can be a deal breaker. ETA: As an apropos of nothing, this post makes me happy in my pants. :D Actually, that's a lie. It makes me kick my ickle heels in glee. |
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| sempiternal: everlasting; eternal. | ||||||
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| Player associations around the world warn members over travelling to the ICC Champions Trophy in Pakistan on security grounds. | ||||||
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| A Qantas plane makes an emergency landing in Manila as a hole causes it to lose cabin pressure, an airport official says. | ||||||
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| Thousands of people descend on ticket booths in Beijing, to get their hands on the last batch of Olympic tickets. | ||||||
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| Road building threatens Jurassic age fossils in India | ||||||
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Onion Radio News - with Doyle Redland |
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| Ecuador's constituent assembly overwhelmingly approves a draft constitution sought by President Rafael Correa. | ||||||
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| "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired" (Unrated, 100 minutes). Marina Zenovich's surprising documentary, "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired." builds, brick by brick with eyewitness testimony, a story of about against the justice system by the judge of Polanski's infamous child molestation case, Laurence J. Rittenband. So corrupt was this man that the documentary finds agreement among the defense attorney, the assistant D.A. who prosecuted the case, and the child involved, now a well-spoken adult. All agree Polanski may have done the right thing by fleeing the country before being sentenced, Rating: Three and a half stars | ||||||
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| "Brideshead Revisited" (PG-13, 135 minutes). Elegantly mounted and well acted version of the Evelyn Waugh novel, but not the equal of the (much longer) 1981 TV miniseries. Matthew Goode plays the middle-class youth who falls in love with both a son and a daughter of the wealthy Marchmain family--and also in love with their fabulous mansion, Brideshead. Ema Thompson is splendid as the devout Lady Marchmain. Rating: Three stars | ||||||
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By Roger Ebert The great subject of the cinema, Ingmar Bergman believed, is the human face. He'd been watching Antonioni on television, he told me during an interview, and realized it wasn't what Antonioni said that absorbed him, but the man's face. Bergman was not thinking about anything as simple as a closeup, I believe. He was thinking about the study of the face, the intense gaze, the face as window to the soul. Faces are central to all of his films, but they are absolutely essential to the power of what has come to be called his Silence of God Trilogy: "Through a Glass Darkly" (1961), "Winter Light" (1962) and "The Silence" (1963). |
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July 25: In science and technology, spheres of society where women are woefully underrepresented, this day in history offers a bountiful exception. Here are the milestones: In 1865, "James Barry," the first woman physician in modern times, compelled to disguise herself as a man in order to practice her profession, dies. In 1920, Rosalind Franklin, the unheralded co-discoverer of DNA, is born. In 1978, Louise Joy Brown, the world's first test-tube baby, is born. In 1984, cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to walk in space. James Barry Barry, whose actual identity remains unknown, was born somewhere around 1795. After finishing medical school (at the age of 13, and already in disguise), "James Barry" waited a few years before joining the British army in 1813, where "he" served with distinction in a number of colonial postings, including India, South Africa and Canada. While in South Africa, Barry became the first doctor-surgeon in the British Empire to perform a Caesarean section in which both the mother and child survived. Prior to that, C-sections were generally performed only when the mother was dead or dying. Barry rose to the rank of inspector general in the army, but also worked with the Royal Navy, while stationed in Malta and Corfu, to improve the harsh conditions for sailors at sea. It wasn't until Barry died in 1865 that it was discovered at the autopsy that "he" was really a "she." Somehow, Barry had managed to conceal her actual sex (and to give birth to a child herself) for more than 40 years. She was also the first woman to receive a medical degree, although the dons had no idea they were handing their sheepskin to a woman. The first woman to earn a medical degree when her sex was known was Elizabeth Blackwell, who received her diploma barely two months after Barry died. Rosalind Franklin In April 1962, three men -- James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins -- shared the Nobel Prize for their discovery a decade earlier of the structure of DNA. Rosalind Franklin, a chemist whose X-ray diffusion photographs of DNA molecules showed their essential structure and paved the way for the trio's work, received nothing. The extent to which Franklin was dismissed by her peers varies in the telling, although it was real enough: In his memoir, Watson wrote unflatteringly of her and downplayed her role in the discovery. Wilkins, a colleague of Franklin's who disliked her feminist attitudes, was equally critical. He'd also provided Watson, without Franklin's knowledge, with her key photograph, which showed -- for the first time -- the double-helix shape that underlies the structure of DNA. The photograph caused Watson to remark later: "The instant I saw the picture, my mouth fell open and my pulse began to race." Crick was far more gracious, crediting Franklin with having done "the key experimental work." He also said that Franklin's early critique of their theoretical work caused them to rethink things, helping to set them on the right path. The most recent scholarship, a 2002 biography (Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, by Brenda Maddox), paints Franklin neither as a feminist hero nor a spurned woman. Her role in helping to solve the mystery of DNA is unquestioned, and her place in science history is secure. Unhappily, Franklin died of cancer in 1958, only 37 years old. This has been cited as the reason she was not included with the others: The Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously. Louise Joy Brown Today is Brown's 30th birthday. Brown, a British postal worker, is married and the mother of a 19-month-old boy. She is also the first person ever to be conceived by in vitro fertilization: the world's first test-tube baby. Louise is the daughter of John and Lesley Brown, who had tried for nine years to conceive, before an infertility expert referred them to Patrick Steptoe, a gynecologist. Steptoe, working with physiologist Robert Edwards, had also been trying -- and failing -- to conceive a child since 1966. The difference, of course, is that Messrs. Steptoe and Edwards were hoping to conceive theirs in a laboratory petri dish. ("Test-tube baby" was a media invention, but as long as it's in glass, it's in vitro.) They did succeed, however, in developing the method for fertilizing an egg outside a woman's body, which gave them hope. Enter Lesley Brown, whose fallopian tubes were blocked, a condition that makes it impossible to become pregnant through sexual intercourse. Steptoe surgically removed an egg from one of her ovaries on Nov. 10, 1977, fertilized it in his laboratory and returned two nights later (after a dinner party for his wife's birthday) to find that the egg had evolved into an eight-cell embryo. Steptoe implanted the embryo into Lesley Brown's uterus and hoped for the best. For nearly four years, every attempt at in vitro fertilization had failed, a fact the physicians didn't bother mentioning to the Browns during their interview. But in December, they were able to confirm that their patient was pregnant. The most difficult part of Lesley Brown's pregnancy was dealing with the British tabloid press, which hounded the prospective mother and father unmercifully until the Browns wised up and sold the exclusive rights to their story to one of the jackals. Louise Joy Brown was delivered by Caesarean section at 11:47 p.m. July 25. She weighed 5 pounds, 12 ounces: small, but not exceptionally so. As Steptoe described it: "I laid her down, all pink and furious, and saw at once that she was externally perfect and beautiful." Steptoe died when Louise was 10, but Edwards attended her wedding. She told the Daily Mail earlier this month, "It's nice to have a close relationship. He's like a granddad to me." Svetlana Savitskaya Cosmonaut Savitskaya carried on the socialist egalitarian tradition by becoming the first woman to walk in space. She accomplished this while serving as flight engineer aboard the Soyuz T-12 mission to the Salyut 7 space station. Her EVA, or extravehicular activity, came 19 years after cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person to leave an orbiting spacecraft, and she beat American astronaut Kathryn Sullivan out the door by three months. Comrade Savitskaya was, simply, born to be a cosmonaut. Her father was a fighter pilot during World War II, later becoming deputy commander of the Soviet Air Defense, and was twice named a Hero of the Soviet Union. Without her father's knowledge, Savitskaya, who took an avid interest in flying from childhood, learned to parachute. She made 450 jumps by her 17th birthday. She applied to pilot school at age 16, but was rejected because of her age. At 17, after jumping from 46,750 feet and free-falling more than eight miles before deploying her chute -- a record at the time -- Savitskaya began training as a pilot. By the time she was 24, Savitskaya was licensed to fly 20 different types of aircraft, including the MiG-21, which she piloted to a speed of 1,667 mph. Savitskaya became a cosmonaut in 1980 and was the second woman to go into space, preceded only by fellow cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. Savitskaya was accompanied in her 1984 EVA by cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanibekov. The pair performed external experiments on the Salyut station and remained outside their Soyuz capsule for more than three-and-a-half hours. Following her return, Savitskaya was selected to command an all-female Soyuz crew for a visit to Salyut 7, in observance of National Women's Day. The mission had to be scrubbed, however, because of problems aboard the space station. Source: Various 
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With most stars you want to befriend, all it takes is simply buying yourself a basketball franchise and offering the VIP courtside seats.
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The Daily Show's Samantha Bee explains that in order to look good on television, it's okay to come across as a douche -- if you're funny.
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 : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comGet ready for the wild incongruity of elaborate costumes and vacuous, sterile hallways that is Comic-Con. At this yearly sci-fi fanfest, convention-goers must use every ounce of their mental stamina as their imaginations are simultaneously piqued and suffocated by their surroundings. In addition to the mental trials, simply attending the convention is a geek triathlon of not sitting comfortably, Mountain Dew-chugging contests and enthusiastic reenactments of nerdy movie scenes. Luckily, Wired.com is bringing all the action to the safety of your computer screen Click through the gallery for the first scenes from this barbaric event. Left: Matthew Kuhlman waits for the elevator at the Los Angeles Convention Center with his parents, Tennille, left, and Thomas during the first day of Comic-Con. His parents are better known to the Comic-Con community as Xyon and Zarah Koreen.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comObi-Wan Kenobi, aka Mike Lewer, 20, of Encinitas, California, wheels through the hallways of the Los Angeles Convention Center on his way to the next panel.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comJacquelyn Crinnion, 19, of San Ramon, California, dressed as Sailor Mars from Sailor Moon and Samantha Scharlach, 19, also of San Ramon, dressed as Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas, take a lunch break.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comTaylor Long, 16, of San Diego, right, gets some help from his father/bodyguard Byron Long (not pictured) during a break in the action. "He's roasting," said Byron Long. Comic-Con volunteer Daniel Scott, left, 21, of Camp Pendleton in California checks out who is behind the mask.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comRJ Moskop has devised a clever strategy for taking in all the Comic-Con sights as he attends the Stan Lee panel.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comJeri Ann Boyd, of Beverly Hills, California, leaps into action to capture the lazy loitering of a few Star Wars characters.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comCecelia Bryant, 19, of Chula Vista, California, dressed as Holly Quinn, rides the escalator with Tommy Metropoulos, of Jamul, California, who wonders whether everyone else can see her, too.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comJibran Iqbal, 9, of San Diego, and his brother Ameer, 6, attend their first Comic-Con and slowly realize that they are the coolest people there.  : Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comWith Wookies in short supply at this year's convention, this stormtrooper apprehended the next best thing.
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 : Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comSAN DIEGO -- Maybe they should call it Comic-Con Intergalactic. An astonishing number of people dress up like space aliens, superheroes and videogame characters when they attend Comic-Con International, the annual pop-culture convention that draws comics and sci-fi fans from around the globe. The elaborate costumes, many of them handmade, transform the fanboys and fangirls into their favorite pop-culture icons, at least for the day. This year's Comic-Con sold out in advance, with organizers expecting 125,000 people to cram into the San Diego Convention Center through Sunday. Here are some of the more eye-catching costumes spotted at Comic-Con on Thursday.
Name: Demir Oral Age: 23 Hometown: San Diego Times at Comic-Con: Nine Geekiest hobby: Making costumes
What are you most excited about seeing at Comic-Con? Day job: Web designer Dream job: Inventor
Describe your costume and how you made it:  : Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comName: Cathy Clark Age: 28 Hometown: Anaheim, California Times at Comic-Con: Seven Geekiest hobby: Attending Comic-Con!
What are you most excited about seeing at Comic-Con? Day job: Designer Dream job: Artist
Describe your costume and how you made it:  : Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comName: Amanda Raymond Age: 29 Hometown: Santa Clarita, California Times at Comic-Con: Four Geekiest hobby: Costuming and watching Darkwing Duck.
What are you most excited about seeing at Comic-Con? Day job: Production secretary Dream job: Producer
Describe your costume and how you made it:  : Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comName: Zachary Lytle Age: 21 Hometown: Chico, California Times at Comic-Con: One Geekiest hobby: I build combat robots. I'm actually the three-time world champion of RoboGames.
What are you most excited about seeing at Comic-Con? Day job: Machinist Dream job: Robotics engineer
Describe your costume and how you made it:  : Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comName: Diana Tarlson Age: 23 Hometown: Chico, California Times at Comic-Con: One Geekiest hobby: Collecting Disney movies. My favorite is Sleeping Beauty.
What are you most excited about seeing at Comic-Con? Day job: I work at Jo-Ann Fabrics. Dream job: To work in a machine shop.
Describe your costume and how you made it:  : Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comNames: Nick Evans, Jason Sunday and Kyle Sunday (clockwise from top left) Ages: 20, 21 and 19, respectively. Hometowns: Orange, California; Portland, Oregon; and Ashland, Oregon Times at Comic-Con: One Geekiest hobby: We love Star Wars. It's at the top, but nothing is off-limits -- Jason
What are you most excited about seeing at Comic-Con? Day job: Students Dream jobs: Lawyer (Nick), computer technology (Jason) and chef (Kyle)
Describe your costumes and how you made them:  : Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comName: Tom Paige Age: 38 Hometown: Los Angeles Times at Comic-Con: Two Geekiest hobby: Music, especially hard-core heavy-metal comedy.
What are you most excited about seeing at Comic-Con? Day job: I'm a facilities manager in the motion-picture industry. Dream job: Musician
Describe your costume and how you made it:  : Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comName: Christian Benavides Age: 14 Hometown: Houston Times at Comic-Con: One Geekiest hobby: Dressing up as the Joker and making costumes.
What are you most excited about seeing at Comic-Con? Day job: Student Dream job: Movie director
Describe your costume and how you made it:  : Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comName: Raymundo Benavides Age: 25 Hometown: Houston Times at Comic-Con: One Geekiest hobby: Watching movie trailers.
What are you most excited about seeing at Comic-Con? Day job: Cable guy Dream job: Movie director Describe your costume and how you made it: I'm Tommy, the Green Ranger from the original Power Rangers. I bought the majority of it, and my girlfriend made the rest.  : Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.comName: Jonathan Corpuz Age: 26 Hometown: San Diego Times at Comic-Con: 15 Geekiest hobby: I'm a videogame nut. Action, RPGs, everything. I was raised on videogames.
What are you most excited about seeing at Comic-Con? Day job: Photographer Dream job: Videogame designer
Describe your costume and how you made it:
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Friends LiveJournal for I feel like a pig shat in my head.
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whee!.![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
thoughtful.