Movie Reviews: Donkey Thunder

I saw Tropic Thunder a few days ago, and I had the same reaction to it that I've had to every Ben Stiller movie -- not fantastic, but worth the price of the admission. As usual, Ben Stiller's part was the least funny...but since he wrote and directed it I have to assume he has a reason for doing what he does, I just hope it's not ego. Some other thoughts:
-- The Australian rant was the funniest part of the movie. "Crocodile Dundee's a national treasure, you're walking very close to the line there, mate."
-- Tom Cruise's BEST   ROLE     EVER.
-- I missed the fake trailers at the beginning, so I'll have to find another way to see those.

I also just saw Donkey Xote, based on the classic Cervantes novel -- albeit rather loosely. I can't comment on the dialogue but Karla wasn't overly impressed. From what I gather, and the title supports this, it makes the most sense for Spanish-speakers who know english, and how english-speakers speak spanish, if you get my drift. It appears to be set after the book, although there was at least one major theme taken from the novel. The talking donkey I could accept (Sancho's mount) but the chickens left me a bit non-plussed and the lion really threw me.

Haiti Set Back Years By Hurricane, City Waist Deep In Mud

Hurricane Ike has made some big news headlines with its devastation of coastal towns in the USA -- however the hurricane traversed several Caribbean nations first, nations which don't have the cushion of the world's most powerful economy. I'll focus on Haiti because it is the poorest nation in the Americas, and the result of being hit by tropical storms Fay and Hanna and hurricanes Gustav and Ike in just a few weeks has sent the development of the economy back several years. The UN World Food Program has asked for US$54 million to help in the recovery process, but has so far only received $1 million.

How to donate:

Australian charities are focusing on other parts of the world, but there are some international charities you can donate to.

World Food Program

Canadian UNICEF

Red Cross UK

World Vision Emergency Fund -- World Vision doesn't have a Haiti-specific appeal, but its emergency service is present and that can be donated to.



Some facts about the disaster:

-- More than 400 people have been killed in the storms.

-- The coastal city of Gonaives is waist deep in mud

-- Sixty percent of Haiti's food harvest was destroyed.

-- UN officials say about 800,000 people are in dire need of help.

-- Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 80 percent of the population living under the poverty line and 54 percent in abject poverty.


More Information:

Famine fears for Haitian city drowning in a sea of mud -- SMH

Haiti warns hurricanes set country back years -- Reuters UK

CIA World Factbook Haiti

Wikipedia Haiti


Revised Red Cross Emergency Appeal PDF
The Red Cross initially set a target of $4 million, and got that mostly covered, but after Ike raised the figure to about $7.6 million.

World Food Program Haiti Fact Sheet PDF


Posted by: James Quintana Pearce

Pictionary

The first person who guesses the word will win a free year's subscription to this blog.

I'll Tell You What's Wrong With The World Today...

People ask me what's wrong with the world, as if it was a large and complex calculator which cannot add two and two and arrive at the answer everyone else does. Obviously that's not the correct way to look at it, although to be fair there are some things that just don't fit in the world, people who insist on causing trouble by behaving differently to the expected norms. For example...

Back in the balmy summer of 2004 in Colorado, USA two bright teens decided to do "anonymous good deeds", and to that end they baked a batch of cookies to share amongst 9 of their neighbours. They put a message on each plate with "Have a great night. Love, The T and L Club." written on a big red heart, left the plate before the neighbour's front door, knocked and ran.

One of the neighbours, obviously unused to such spontaneous generosity, had an anxiety attack and went to hospital. Naturally, she sued the families of the precocious teens for "$3,000 to cover her medical expenses, a motion-sensor light for her porch, lost wages, and punitive damages". However, the judge saw fit to award only $900 to cover medical expenses and dismissed the rest.

In the same way that a mis-sized cog in a grandfather clock will see the time displayed becoming less and less accurate, this small out-of-place act affected larger cogs which pushed larger levers resulting in larger effects, such as television appearances, restraining orders and lost jobs.

This is the problem with mis-sized cogs, no matter how small -- the problem escalates until it effects everyone. The girls may have had good intentions, but they failed to consider how their actions could unravel the fabric of American society. The great nation of the United States of America didn't become the mindless economic and military juggernaut it is today by people being nice to each other, nor by people just giving stuff away for free.

And after all, it is natural for the neighbour in question to be scared of cookies: The TV-fed public have associated cookies with monsters for decades now, and cookies often have a high fat and carbohydrate content which may contribute to heart problems even if the mere sight of a plate of cookies being left on the front doorstep doesn't cause one to hyperventilate.

People ask me what's wrong with this world, and I tell them: Cookies.

Published by: The Peculiarist.

Stella Awards

Munching Space Cakes on a Space Elevator

I'm writing from Querétaro where Karla is presenting at an environmental education conference, and am intrigued by the latest news to come out of the scientific community: Japan's commitment to spend 5 billion pounds building a space elevator, according to Shuichi Ono, chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association as reported in London's Times newspaper. those who aren't fans of science fiction, a space elevator basically involves a long ribbon reaching from Earth to a station in geosynchronous orbit, which vehicles will then pass up and down.

You might think this is impossible, and it is -- at the moment. Advances in nanotechnology may make it feasible pretty soon, however, and the fact that Japan has plonked 5 billion pounds on the table raises it from the desktop meanderings of university researchers to a serious endeavour.

There have been some concerns raised about the concept of the space elevator, such that if the ribbon was severed too high up it would fall down like a whip, lashing vast areas of the globe. This has been pooh-poohed by most scientists working on the project, who argue that if we're prepared to take the risk of creating a black hole just to bang a few particles together we should be willing to risk a carbon nanotube ribbon falling from the sky.

I say go for it: It's worth the risk. For starters, the space elevator will create some drag as it goes through the atmosphere, and will thus slightly slow the rotation of the Earth. One won't make much difference, but if you think all the super-powers are going to let Japan have a monopoly on the elevator to space you know less about human psychology than the average chimp. Several other projects are already underway (well, given a boost in legitimacy at least) with NASA inevitably getting involved. Several space elevators will slow the rotation of the Earth even more, which will lengthen the day which in turn brings us to the biggest issue this raises. Will this extra time be spent working or playing? I know which one I want, and I know which one your bosses want... now's the time to start unionising and lobbying politicians.

Another benefit is that none of the land suitable for basing a space elevator -- ie, along the equator -- lies in the developed world. Assuming that plans to have a floating base come to naught you're looking at South America, Africa or South East Asia. I'm not sure how much land would be required but I'd be setting the rent pretty damn high.

Published by JEQP.

SMH

Hari Puttar Beats Time Warner Trademark Suit

The Delhi High Court has made an appropriate decision in regards to a lawsuit bought by Time Warner against Mumbai-based production house Mirchi Movies over trademark violation. The background -- Mirchi Movies is about to release a movie by the name of Hari Puttar, the opening of which was delayed two weeks because of the court case, and also because the Turner channels did not carry advertising for the movie. Time Warner is of the opinion that the title Hari Puttar is too close to Harry Potter and started court action -- although apparently they've known of the title for three years, so why they waited so long to kick up a fuss is beyond me.

Anyway, Justice Reva Khetrapal ruled that "the possibility of an unlettered audience viewing a Harry Potter movie is remote, to say the least. An illiterate or semi-literate movie viewer, in case he ventures to see a film by the name of Hari Puttar, would never be able to relate the same with a Harry Potter film or book" reports Indian Express. I don't know how big Harry Potter is in India so I cannot say whether the naming of the Indian movie was purposefully intended to resemble Rowling's title, but I'm sure it was brought to their attention and I'm sure they didn't think it would hurt. Mind you, it's a bit silly to try to ban anything in any language that even vaguely resembles an English trademark.

This is clearly the right ruling because trademarks were never meant to give a person or company a monopoly on a word, phrase or image. They are intended to prevent the general public mistakenly confusing something as relating to the trademark holder. As long as there is no chance of confusion there is no trademark infringement. In this case anyone who sees any advertising at all for Hari Puttar will be quite clear that there is no connection with Harry Potter -- LA Times has the trailer. I reckon the only way the connection was likely to have been made with most people is by Time Warner bringing it up. To that end I was going to advise everyone to see the movie just to annoy Time Warner, but from the trailer is appears to be a Home Alone remake with an Indian protagonist and a techno-rap soundtrack, so... don't.

Published by James Quintana Pearce.

Scientific Evidence of Bovine Molestation

Scientists have discovered evidence of alien abduction and general interference in Earthly affairs, although naturally they skirted around this obvious conclusion in their published paper. Sabine Begall, Jaroslav Červený, Julia Neef, Oldřich Vojtěch and Hynek Burda published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America innocuously titled "Magnetic alignment in grazing and resting cattle and deer" (http://www.pnas.org/content/105/36/13451) which was picked up by a number of news sites around the world.

Basically, the researchers used Google Earth to look at herds of cattle and deer (8,510 cows in 308 pastures and 2,974 deer in 241 localities) and found that two-thirds of the ungulates were aligned in a north-south direction -- specifically magnetic north. To explain this trend the scientists refer to ancestral herds of migrating bovines to explain the trend -- as if cattle evolved to be giant magnets in leather.

The obvious and logical explanation (just as obviously and logically being covered up by Them) is that the cow's orientation is a direct result of implants by aliens during their numerous cow molesting escapades. It seems they're only about two-thirds through their nefarious plan, and I shudder to think what will happen when all of Earth's cattle fall under their sway. It's also important to find out how widespread this is, since both Roe deer and domestic cows are part of the order Artiodactyla, which contains about 220 species including pigs, sheep, camels and giraffes.

Astute individuals will also make a connection with alien abductees, and agree with me that the most pressing order of business is to find out whether they also have a specific orientation.

This could go further than previously thought, as the picture below demonstrates -- it was taken in the morning in Liechtenstein, and the shadow indicates that the cow is in fact pointing north.



Posted by: The Peculiarist
Don't believe me, check for yourself:
New Scientist
LA Times
Telegraph