Friday, December 28, 2007

Uruguay recognizes gay unions

In a first in Latin America, the tiny country lodged between Brazil and Argentina has passed legislation that will grant homosexual and heterosexual couples living together the same rights of married couples:
Uruguay on Thursday became the first Latin American country to recognize gay civil unions, after President Tabare Vazquez signed a law granting certain legal rights to cohabiting couples of any gender.

The new law guarantees heterosexual or homosexual couples who have lived together continuously for more than five years social benefits enjoyed by married couples such as joint property ownership and hereditary rights.

The text recognizes "two people -- of any sex, identity, orientation or sexual option -- who maintain an emotional relationship sexual in nature, that is exclusive, stable and permanent, without being united in matrimony."
The law takes effect next Monday, January 1st 2008.

Good luck to all you guys and girls down there. Unfortunately, here we're still dealing with the Inquisition.

More on it here.

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Christmas 2007

Yesterday was Christmas and the day went very well. The kids were so good in the morning, they waited until 8.30 or so without making a peep, so Ray and I got some rest (I sure needed it, since I've been up every night playing with my new Wii until the wee hours of the morning...). Then, we got them up and they were literally jumping out of their skins to go see if Santa had come to bring them presents. I honestly cannot believe how they can just believe in something like that so wholeheartedly. I frankly don't recall a time when I did believe in Santa, although I'm sure I did when I was a little kid. Anyway, the whole presents-opening operation went well and the kids enjoyed everything we got for them (especially a book called "Walter, the Farting Dog" and the foul-mouthed movie "The Cat in the Hat," since they're in the potty-words stage, thank you Santa for those...). The afternoon proceeded at Ray's parents' house with a second presents-opening session that looked like it would never, ever end. I kept seeing boxes and boxes, no matter how many the kids were opening. Dinner was very good, although at that point, and right after that, I was just about ready for bed, especially since I had to get up and come to work the day after. I didn't get to close my eyes until midnight though, and not because I was playing with the Wii :( Oh well, Christmas comes only once a year I guess ... Now, on to New Year's Eve and a new year that hopefully will be better than this one. I for one am quite eager to put 2007 behind me.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Going and going and going... forever

Voyager 2 just crossed the edges of the Solar System on its way to interstellar space. Its twin ship, Voyager 1, did that a while back:
The Voyager 2 spacecraft has crossed an important space frontier called the termination shock, and in a few years may become the first object made by humans to travel outside the solar system.

NASA's two Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977 to tour the outer solar system. They are now far beyond the orbits of the outermost planets and heading towards interstellar space.

In 2004, the faster of the two spacecraft, Voyager 1, became the first human-made object to reach a boundary called the termination shock. There, the solar wind – made of charged particles from the Sun – suddenly falters as it feels pressure from gas in the interstellar medium lying outside the solar system.

But scientists missed observing the crucial moment because the sensitive radio dishes on Earth needed to hear the spacecraft's transmissions did not happen to be listening at the time.

That's because the dishes are in high demand for other missions, such as Cassini, and therefore cannot listen to the Voyagers around the clock. The Voyagers cannot store their observations onboard, so they are lost forever if they are not relayed to Earth as they are made.

Now, Voyager 2 has crossed the same boundary, and this time scientists were lucky enough to be listening when it happened.
[...]
Voyager 1 and 2 are now both in a region of slower solar wind lying past the termination shock called the heliosheath. That region ends at the heliopause, which is where the solar wind ends and interstellar space begins.

One or the other of the spacecraft will become the first probe to reach interstellar space after a travel period Stone estimates to be about 7 to 10 years long. It is not clear which spacecraft will be first, even though Voyager 1 is about 20 AU farther from the Sun than its sister spacecraft.

Now, scientists know that the termination shock is 84 AU from the Sun in the direction Voyager 2 has traveled – 10 AU closer than in Voyager 1's direction. This confirms earlier measurements that suggested the solar system's boundaries are squashed in one direction because of the influence of the interstellar magnetic field. Depending on how squashed the heliopause is, Voyager 2 could leave the solar system first.
Fascinating. Too bad scientists missed Voyager 1's passage, but at least they didn't lose Voyager 2's transmission. It's such a pity that all that data got lost forever.

Since he's elected for life...

... I can't wait for this guy to die:
Nuclear arms proliferation, environmental pollution and economic inequality are threats to world peace -- but so are abortion, birth control and same-sex marriage, Pope Benedict XVI said in a statement released by the Vatican Tuesday (Dec. 11).
[...]
Presenting the nuclear family as the "first and indispensable teacher of peace" and the "primary agency of peace," the 15-page document links sexual and medical ethics to international relations.

"Everything that serves to weaken the family based on the marriage of a man and woman, everything that directly or indirectly stands in the way of its openness to the responsible acceptance of new life ... constitutes an objective obstacle on the road to peace," Benedict writes.
Just die already.

And it's not like I'm under any illusion that the next one will be any better, but still, I want this one to stop spewing his hate.

Back to Middle Earth

Great news came out yesterday for all the fans of JRR Tolkien's work. From TheOneRing.net:
ACADEMY AWARD-WINNER PETER JACKSON AND NEW LINE CINEMA JOIN WITH MGM TO PRODUCE “THE HOBBIT,” EAGERLY-ANTICIPATED FANTASY ADVENTURE EPIC

PETER JACKSON AND FRAN WALSH TO EXECUTIVE PRODUCE TWO FILMS BASED ON “THE HOBBIT”

Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh will serve as Executive Producers of two films based on “The Hobbit.” New Line will manage the production of the films, which will be shot simultaneously.

The two “Hobbit” films – “The Hobbit” and its sequel – are scheduled to be shot simultaneously, with pre-production beginning as soon as possible. Principal photography is tentatively set for a 2009 start, with the intention of “The Hobbit” release slated for 2010 and its sequel the following year, in 2011.
This is absolutely fantastic news. Peter Jackson did a wonderful job when he brought The Lord of the Rings trilogy to life, so it's a virtual guarantee that these two movies will be great as well.

Obviously it's a pity if he won't direct or write the two movies, since he did both previously and with great results, but at least having him involved gives me hope.

I can't wait...

Friday, December 07, 2007

9/11 a CIA/Mossad inside job?

That's the revelation made not by just anybody, but by a very respected and admired former Italian head of state, Francesco Cossiga. It's just too mind boggling not to report it:
Former Italian President and the man who revealed the existence of Operation Gladio Francesco Cossiga has gone public on 9/11, telling Italy's most respected newspaper that the attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad and that this was common knowledge amongst global intelligence agencies.
[...]
"[Bin Laden supposedly confessed] to the Qaeda September [attack] to the two towers in New York [claiming to be] the author of the attack of the 11, while all the [intelligence services] of America and Europe ... now know well that the disastrous attack has been planned and realized from the American CIA and the Mossad with the aid of the Zionist world in order to put under accusation the Arabic Countries and in order to induce the western powers to take part ... in Iraq [and] Afghanistan."

Cossiga first expressed his doubts about 9/11 in 2001, and is quoted in Webster Tarpley's book as stating that "The mastermind of the attack must have been a “sophisticated mind, provided with ample means not only to recruit fanatic kamikazes, but also highly specialized personnel. I add one thing: it could not be accomplished without infiltrations in the radar and flight security personnel.”
If this is true and it is ever proven, I can't even imagine the repercussions.

Here's the link to this article, and this is the link to the original article, in Italian.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

What a difference from Sacha Baron Cohen's Da Ali G, which I thoroughly eviscerated in a previous post for its inanity, stupidity, and uselessness.

Borat is funny and smart and virtually just one of Borat' sketches but longer and with a background story to tie it all together.

Granted, this is no masterpiece either, but it doesn't overreach and accomplishes what it set out to do: be funny, prove how dumb people can be, show how they are easily deceived, and just have a good old time.

The story starts with Borat in his native Kazakhstan showing us his daily life, family, and neighbors just before he flies to the "US of A" on a journalistic assignment.

He's accompanied by his feisty producer and the two end up meeting all sorts of regular people whose customs and beliefs clash with Borat's.

I won't say more because the list of gags is endless and I'd only detract from the experience. Suffice it to say that Mr. Baron Cohen proves once again that he's a brilliant comedic actor, able to disappear into a character in a way that few can emulate.

Borat is a funny and somewhat shocking movie, and it's definitely worth your time.

PS: don't miss the "easter egg" written in the end titles. It's priceless.

Grade: 7.5

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

The Tornado Episode

Last night we watched the latest episode of Desperate Housewives and it was one of the best ever. It was so good and had so many gut wrenching moments that it felt like a season finale episode (and maybe it was done to end it on a high note until the show comes back after the writers' strike in Hollywood is over).

Television can be so entertaining when good actors are given good scripts and the direction is of good quality.

As for what happened, I hope Tom isn't dead because he's adorable and the sexiest of the husbands. Naturally, I also hope Lynette's entire family is safe under the rubble.

Who knows. At the beginning of the episode, the voice-over talks about a husband dying and everyone losing a friend. When Victor was suddenly killed, I figured, that's the husband, but he was far from a friend for the people of Wisteria Lane. Tom, on the other hand, is loved by all.

Could the lost friend be Carlos? He's felled as well, and we don't know how badly. Maybe they're setting up Gabrielle so that she'll have a gloomy period ahead in which Eva Longoria can stretch her dramatic chops for a change of pace.

Funny how Gabrielle suddenly lost $10 million dollars in the wind and then was handed over who knows how many more millions by that very same wind with Victor's death.

Can't wait to see what comes out of the rubble...

Ali G Indahouse

Oh my god what a pathetic excuse for a movie this was.

I watched HBO's "Da Ali G Show" and it was hysterical. Then, last year, Sacha Baron Cohen came out with his Borat movie, and it was a pretty big success, so I figured, before I watch that one, let me check this one out, since it came out first.

Big mistake.

In the HBO show, Da Ali G is a journalist who conducts interviews with all sorts of people -- politicians, Nobel laureates, US Generals, entertainers, teachers, religious fanatics, and more.

The fact that these people actually fell for his gimmick and trickery is both unbelievable and outrageously funny, because he gets them to say things that no other journalist ever could.

It's also a testament to Baron Cohen's enormous comedic talents. He's pitch perfect in any one of the roles on his show, be it Ali G, Borat, or Bruno. He's a modern day Peter Sellers.

In this pile of crap, however, there's no reminder of the qualities that made the Ali G character so memorable, original, and funny.

The plot (a term employed here very loosely...): Ali G lives a delusional, empty, and lazy life, leading his three-people strong posse against a rival bunch of losers from his small English town.

Meanwhile, the Tories' approval rating is in a free fall and the Prime Minister is finally realizing that they'll lose the upcoming elections unless they can somehow fix their old-fashioned, conservative image, appearing hipper and more modern.

The PM's right hand solution is to have Ali G run for the Tory Party in his district, where he wins. What a shocker. Now a Member of Parliament, he proceeds to bring his flavor of foul language, childish jokes, and thorough dumbness to the institution, and obviously everyone falls for it, as if that's all they had been waiting for.

Then he finds out that he's been used all along and he has to find a way to get his white trash girlfriend back, save the PM, save his life, the country, etc...

Bored yet? At this point I have nothing left to add, confident that you can easily figure out the ending.

I'm sure nobody set out to remake "Citizen Kane," but still, they wasted a chance to do something funny and original with an established character and a talented actor.

Let this smelly turd alone and you'll do yourself a favor.

Grade: 2

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Sorry, Wrong Number

This movie has the dubious honor of being the first I ever watched in a hospital, but it was a nice one anyway. It was also the first one I ever saw with Barbara Stanwyck, a reputedly very good actress.

And good she was indeed, but mostly it was interesting to see how different an old-Hollywood movie looked from today's typical fare. The action was more slow-paced, the acting more dramatic and theatrical, and the script so simple and yet effective.

Ah... the Golden Age of American movies...

Anyway, the whole plot revolves around a rich woman, played by Stanwyck, who marries "beneath" her and eventually becomes the target of an assassination plot, engineered by her husband to inherit her fortune and free himself of her dominating father.

Naturally, things don't exactly go as programmed, and our heroine is somehow clued in to her upcoming demise by an unlikely telephone interception. Will she be able to stop the killer before it's too late?

As I said, Stanwyck is really good, which is crucial since virtually the entire movie revolves around her lying in her bed, talking on the phone, and looking distraught. The rest of the cast, including Burt Lancaster as her fictional husband, is fine and supports her admirably.

All in all, an enjoyable film from a time long gone.

Grade: 7

The latest bad news from IPCC

That is from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It's a long article, but worth your time. And very sad too. Some highlights:
Humanity is rapidly turning the seas acid through the same pollution that causes global warming, the world's governments and top scientists agreed yesterday. The process – thought to be the most profound change in the chemistry of the oceans for 20 million years – is expected both to disrupt the entire web of life of the oceans and to make climate change worse.
[...]
[T]he report also predicts that nearly a third of the world's species could be driven to extinction as the world warms up, and that harvests will be cut dramatically across the world.
[...]
Scientists have found that the seas have already absorbed about half of all the carbon dioxide emitted by humanity since the start of the industrial revolution, a staggering 500 billion tons of it. This has so far helped slow global warming – which would have accelerated even faster if all this pollution had stayed in the atmosphere, already causing catastrophe – but at an increasingly severe cost.
[...]
A report by the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific body, concludes that, as a result, of the pollution, the world's oceans are probably now more acidic that they have ever been in "hundreds of millennia", and that even if emissions stopped now, the waters would take "tens of thousands of years to return to normal".
[...]
It makes a host of specific predictions for every continent and warns that "impacts" could be "abrupt" or "irreversible". One example of an irreversible impact is an expected extinction of between 20 and 30 per cent of all the world's species of animals and plants even at relatively moderate levels of warming. If the climate heats further, it adds, extinctions could rise to 40 to 70 per cent of species.
And this is what saddened me the most, because I might never get to see it:
The Amazon rainforest will become dry savannah as rising temperatures and falling water levels kill the trees, stoke forest fires and kill off wildlife.
Will the world governments be able to agree on some kind of effective and decisive action?

Don't hold your breath for Bush jumping on the bandwagon...

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

A Quote By:

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on President Bush while voicing his concerns over nominee for Attorney General Michael Mukasey:
"For the last six years it is clear that we have had a president that does not understand what the Constitution of the United States is about. What this president believes, essentially, is that he can do anything he wants, at any time, against anybody, in the name of fighting terrorism. And he happens to believe that the 'war on terrorism' is unending; it's going to go on indefinitely. And I think it is very important that we have an Attorney General who can explain the Constitution to a President who clearly does not understand it."

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Does GOP = Gay Old Party?

I saw this after reading about the umpteenth Republican legislator (or was it a priest/religious leader) caught in a gay sex scandal (and it's again the typical sanctimonious we-are-morally-superior-then-you prick) and I just couldn't let it go by.

Enjoy:

Will someone buy Bush a set of tin soldiers to play with?

I have this weird feeling that he didn't get to play soldier when he was a little boy, and so now he's making up for lost time, but since he's all grown up he needs to play with soldiers his size.

The problem is that he doesn't seem to realize that he's literally playing with people's lives here.

From a Raw Story article, this scary tidbit:
Last month, a national security source told The London Times that the Pentagon has "drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days."

According to the paper, a Washington source said the "temperature was rising" to launch an Iranian attack inside the Bush administration. This information comes on the heels of reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency last week that cited "significant cooperation" with Iran over its nuclear program, including the slowing of uranium enrichment.

The most recent report by the nuclear watchdog agency, however, said that Iran was three to eight years away from building a bomb.
[...]
ABC notes that there appear to be few targets such a weapon would be useful for in Iraq. It could be used on Taliban or Qaeda targets in Pakistan caves, though there'd be scant need for a stealth bomber.

"You'd use it on Natanz," John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org told ABC, referring to a site inside Iran. "And you'd use it on a stealth bomber because you want it to be a surprise. And you put in an emergency funding request because you want to bomb quickly."

"It's kind of strange," Pike said. "It sends a signal that you are preparing to bomb Iran, and if you were actually going to bomb Iran I wouldn't think you would want to announce it like that."
Is he really going to do this? Are the Democrats in Congress really going to let him get away with this?

Bush's next lethal (and foolish) quest

This cartoon by Matson was too good (and, I fear, right on the money) not to post it:

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Still home recovering

I ended up having surgery on the night of October 19th, came home the following Monday, and I won't be back to work until November 12th.

The surgery was done as an emergency when the doctor finally saw on a new CAT scan that my colon was not where it was supposed to be, but was instead flipped up next to my stomach. He also saw an anomaly around the stomach, but felt like that was just a fluke.

It turned out that the fluke was the real deal: my omentum had inexplicably twisted on its axis and a part of it had died as a consequence of the blood flow getting cut. The omentum had then inflamed the entire area and pulled up the colon to its new location. Once the part of the omentum that had died was removed, the colon went back to its normal location and everything else looked fine.

It's nice to know the problem is fixed, even though the recovery is quite slow. I hope I'll feel up to go to work in a week, because I don't really have a way of delaying that any further.

My biggest regret is that the surgeon went in thinking he had to do one thing, and it turned out to be something quite different, but at that point the incision had been made, and it's much longer than it would have been necessary if he had known what the problem really was.

I can't really blame him though. He told me he has no idea how this happened and has never seen anything like it in over 20 years of surgeries, unless in people who had previously had abdominal surgeries and therefore had some scar tissue, which could cause this kind of twisting motion. A nurse told me the same thing.

And then I also read on an internet article that since omental torsion was first reported in 1899, there have been less than 250 such cases. Also, this condition is so rare that its rate of successful pre-operative diagnosis is between 0.6 and 4.8%. That's very low unfortunately.

I guess I'll just have to get used to seeing this huge scar in the middle of my abdomen from now on. It won't be easy, but it could be worse.

Friday, October 19, 2007

Michael Clayton

The latest George Clooney vehicle is a well written, well acted, greatly edited thriller that allows the Oscar winning actor to show off his craft once again after his well received turn in the convoluted but very good Syriana.

SPOILER TAG: In Michael Clayton, Clooney plays a special kind of lawyer, the kind that works behind the scenes and cleans up whatever mess comes up, instead of in the courtroom. This time, he's called upon restraining the top lawyer of the firm (an always excellent Tom Wilkinson), who seems to have gone crazy - and switched sides - while working on a major class action lawsuit against one of their biggest clients.

The chilling Tilda Swinton, head of the legal department for the sued company, faced with some very compromising evidence by the lawyer's betrayal, has to now make some tough decisions.

The thriller is built around an initial flashback that effectively drums up the suspense towards the end, when we catch up to it.

I think the best part of the movie is the writing, which is then very effectively transposed to the screen by a nice ensemble of actors. I'm not a big fan of Clooney, who oftentimes seems to re-use the same "charming" expression over and over, but sometimes he turns out a good overall performance, and this is one of those.

This is a good thriller, reminding me of the good old Hollywood thrillers that so rarely now get made, victims of the much more profitable (but less rewarding) summer blockbusters.

Grade: 7.5

Cinnamon Kiss, by Walter Mosley

This was a good read and an interesting mystery thriller. It was also the first audio book I read with strong sexual overtones and references.

SPOILER TAG: It's the story of Easy Rawlins, a black private detective in a 1960s Los Angeles, who has to track down a girl known by the titular nickname of Cinnamon in order to recover some documents that could compromisingly link a wealthy family to the horrors of WWII Nazis.

He doesn't have any choice in the matter since his adopted little girl is quite sick with a rare and poorly known blood disease which could claim her life if she doesn't get the expensive cure she needs quickly.

His years of detective work in the city allow Easy to pull in favors from the many friends and people he helped throughout his life, but it remains to be seen if he'll be able to recover the documents before a chilling assassin put on his trail gets to him.

The book is expertly narrated by Michael Boatman, whose silky and smooth voice kept reminding me of the very sensual Terrence Howard in the role of Easy, riding through the city, juggling his duties as father, lover, and professional investigator.

Throughout the reading I kept waiting for the mandatory final twist, which does come and doesn't disappoint.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a good and lite thriller.

Grade: 7.5

An unwanted American experience

I'm referring to the fact that I' m currently, for the first time, recovered in an American hospital, and I have no idea when I'll be able to go home. That's one experience I could have done without, but what can I do? I started having a stomachache on Monday, and when it hadn't gotten better by Tuesday around midday, Ray suggested I go get checked.

The doctor than told me to go to the ER right away, in case it was appendicitis or gallbladder, before it got any worse.

Problem is, it was none of those things, and they still haven't figured out what it is. Meanwhile, the pain is getting worse and there's no explanation.

They already gave me all the tests they could think of (now they'll repeat one) and they are totally puzzled by my ailment. I've become what you'd call the Mystery Patient!

All my vitals are normal, so it's even more puzzling, because they have no pointers to any "known" illnesses. All there is, is the sharp pain in my abdomen.

I just hope they figure something out soon, but I don't want to go home in this condition, because at least here I'm receiving the care I might need at some point.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

A Quote By:

Jeanne Phillips, aka Abigail Van Buren, aka Dear Abby, on her support for same-sex marriage:
"I believe if two people want to commit to each other, God bless 'em. That is the highest form of commitment, for heaven's sake. Accepting the status quo is not always the best thing to do. Women were once considered chattel, and slavery was regarded as sanctioned in the Bible. However, western society grew to recognize that neither was just. Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain have recognized gay marriage, and one day, perhaps, our country will, too. If gay Americans are not allowed to get married and have all the benefits that American citizens are entitled to by the Bill of Rights, they should get one hell of a tax break. That is my opinion."

Monday, October 15, 2007

The plastic bag: the big polluter

I read this old article and was shocked to find out how damaging plastic bags can be to the environment, because of their composition and their ubiquitousness. I mean, I knew they weren't good for the environment, but they are far more harmful than I thought:
The plastic bag is an icon of convenience culture, by some estimates the single most ubiquitous consumer item on Earth, numbering in the trillions. They're made from petroleum or natural gas with all the attendant environmental impacts of harvesting fossil fuels. One recent study found that the inks and colorants used on some bags contain lead, a toxin. Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags after they've been used to transport a prescription home from the drugstore or a quart of milk from the grocery store. It's equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil.

Only 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled worldwide -- about 2 percent in the U.S. -- and the rest, when discarded, can persist for centuries. They can spend eternity in landfills, but that's not always the case. "They're so aerodynamic that even when they're properly disposed of in a trash can they can still blow away and become litter," says Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste.
[...]
Floating bags can look all too much like tasty jellyfish to hungry marine critters. According to the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation, more than a million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die every year from eating or getting entangled in plastic.The conservation group estimates that 50 percent of all marine litter is some form of plastic. There are 46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating in every square mile of ocean, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. In the Northern Pacific Gyre, a great vortex of ocean currents, there's now a swirling mass of plastic trash about 1,000 miles off the coast of California, which spans an area that's twice the size of Texas, including fragments of plastic bags. There's six times as much plastic as biomass, including plankton and jellyfish, in the gyre. "It's an endless stream of incessant plastic particles everywhere you look," says Dr. Marcus Eriksen, director of education and research for the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which studies plastics in the marine environment. "Fifty or 60 years ago, there was no plastic out there."
[...]
The problem with plastic bags isn't just where they end up, it's that they never seem to end. "All the plastic that has been made is still around in smaller and smaller pieces," says Stephanie Barger, executive director of the Earth Resource Foundation, which has undertaken a Campaign Against the Plastic Plague. Plastic doesn't biodegrade. That means unless they've been incinerated -- a noxious proposition -- every plastic bag you've ever used in your entire life, including all those bags that the newspaper arrives in on your doorstep, even on cloudless days when there isn't a sliver of a chance of rain, still exists in some form, even fragmented bits, and will exist long after you're dead.
Wow, that's pretty scary, especially the part about that vortex in the Pacific Ocean. Man, I can't even imagine something like that exists!!

Horrible as is must be, I think we should all be shown that sight. Maybe it would make us more aware of what we're doing to our planet.

As for a solution, seems like bringing your own bag would be the best one, or reuse whatever you end up using, be it plastic or paper:
The only salient answer to paper or plastic is neither. Bring a reusable canvas bag, says Darby Hoover, a senior resource specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council. However, if you have to make a choice between the two, she recommends taking whichever bag you're more likely to reuse the most times, since, like many products, the production of plastic or paper bags has the biggest environmental impact, not the disposal of them. "Reusing is a better option because it avoids the purchase of another product."

Friday, October 12, 2007

No End in Sight

This is a documentary about the failure on the part of the Bush administration to plan for the aftermath of the Iraq invasion of 2003.

The director, Charles Ferguson, doesn't openly attack the several players responsible for the Iraq debacle, thereby avoiding the risk of coming off sounding like a liberal peacenik à la Michael Moore.

All Ferguson does is present the evidence he gathered, evidence available to any investigator, and then sits back and lets us draw our conclusions.

Needless to say, the evidence strongly condemns the Bush administration for misstep after misstep, blunder after blunder, all brought on by either lack of experience on the part of the political appointees put in charge or lack of influence on the part of those few experts who cared for Iraq's future and genuinely wanted to help the country rebuild after Saddam was overturned.

Over and over, I found myself just shaking my head in disbelief for the way things turned out, even though there weren't very many surprises, considering most of what is described in the documentary has already been reported on by the media at some point during the war.

At the end, you walk out of the theater totally incredulous at the thought that someone so powerful as the President of the United States invaded a foreign country without a good reason and didn't plan for the aftermath.

Bush is really a failure of gargantuan proportions and his presidency will most certainly be remember as the most infamous ever.

Don't miss this film. It's a must-see.

Grade: 9

A Quote By:

Henry Rollins, book publisher, musician, TV show host, and actor, when asked why he speaks out on behalf of gay rights:
"But when you see the kind of hatred exacted at these people who can't help how they feel about men, it's sad. What if it was weird to be straight? What if someone said, "What's wrong with you?" for staring at a woman? I think if Bill and Tom want to get married, they should be able to in America. If someone has a problem with that, go on your way."

Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for their work to raise awareness about global warming:
During its announcement, the Nobel committee cited the winners "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
[...]
The Nobel committee praised Gore as being "one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians."

"He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted," said Ole Danbolt Mjos, chairman of the Nobel committee.
I'm very happy for him. He's been pushing the global warming issue for decades and is finally enjoying the results of such a huge effort.

The only regret I have is that, if he had been sworn in as President seven years ago, instead of Bush (as he should have), he wouldn't have won this now, but we wouldn't be in the mess we're in, and the world would be a better place.

And just to drive home the point I just made that Gore is a better man than Bush:
In a statement, Gore said he was "deeply honored," adding that "the climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

The former vice president said he would donate his half of the $1.5 million prize to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a U.S. organization he founded that aims to persuade people to cut emissions and reduce global warming.
Hats off, Mr. Gore.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

What will the world...

... look like:
Global temperatures will rise 2.5C within the next century even if the world hits its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, according to the scientist leading research into the issue.

Consequences could include widespread starvation, as farm yields fall 50% in parts of Africa, water shortages for 300m and the destruction of 20-30% of species. If targets are missed the rise could reach 4C.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued his warning in London last week.

“We have come to the conclusion that global warming is unequivocal,” he said. “What is particularly worrying is that it is accelerating.”

Monday, October 08, 2007

Live Free or Die Hard

This is another movie we went to see as a next-best choice when we couldn't see our first pick (Rescue Dawn).

The movie theater in question wasn't near us and I had never seen one like it. It had only 2 screens and instead of the regular rows of chairs that you find in the average movie theater, these were cushier and laid out around small side tables. Each theater also had its own bar and you could order food and drinks from a menu to a waitress like in a regular restaurant. It was a nice experience, and I would definitely go to a place like this if there were one near us.

However, because of the setup, whenever there were individual people sitting at a table, the chair next to them was empty and no one wanted to sit in it, because obviously it looks like you're on a date with the person sitting next to you. As a result, many chairs were empty here and there, but since Ray and I were there to enjoy the movie together, not split and sit next to a stranger, we had to go to the other show, where many double chairs were still available.

Anyway, we enjoyed a drink and some appetizers (I had brie and foie gras, and I'm salivating just thinking of it...) while watching the movie, almost as if we were at home.

As for the movie itself, it wasn't horrible, but it was chock full of those unrealistic, implausible, and unbelievable scenes that usually keep me away from such fair as this.

Spoiler Tag: this time around John McClane's routine is disrupted by a disgruntled former government employee, who is taking advantage of a vulnerability in a computer network he had setup, to bring the country to its knees and make himself very wealthy in the process.

Bruce Willis is just average as are Timothy Olyphant, Justin Long, and the rest of the cast. No one really stands out. The writing is forgettable too ("I ran out of bullets" is Willis' justification for taking down a helicopter with a flying car) and even the visual effects are overblown to the point of risibility (the F18 vs. 18-wheeler at the end is just one such case in point).

To sum it up, this movie doesn't add anything new or exiting to the Die Hard lore that wasn't there already. It's a very commercial vehicle released to milk some last drops out of the die-hard (no pun intended) fans still out there, but you can safely skip this one and still feel confident that you didn't miss out on anything.

Grade: 4.5

Friday, September 21, 2007

The Simpsons

I'm not a fan of The Simpsons TV show. It's not that I don't like it really, it's just that I never got into it. Ray, however, totally loves the show and this movie was high on his list, that's why I saw it.

As for the movie itself, I have to say that it was quite funny and well made, especially since it could be enjoyed by anyone, even if you never followed the show on TV.

Spoiler Tag: Homer, as usual, gets himself into trouble, this time by cozying up to a pig (yes, you read correctly, it's The Simpsons, remember...?), but on this occasion, he also brings the town of Springfield down with him when the EPA gets involved.

He then flees with his family to Alaska, but Marge eventually leaves him to go back to Springfield with the kids to try and save it before the evil federal government, presided over by a very aloof Arnold Schwarzenegger, nukes it to get rid of the problem of its pollution.

Naturally, Homer ends up missing his family and goes back as well, to reunite with them and to do what he can for his hometown, including sacrificing himself for its survival.

The production values are really good, and technically the movie is very well made, even though the The Simpsons don't look like any character out of Pixar's studio, since the producers had to keep it in line with the TV series, which is still going strong after all these years.

The script is well written and funny and if you're a Simpsons fan you should not miss this movie for any reason, but I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir here...

Grade: 7

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Space's dangers

I was amazed to read how many threats are lurking in space:
There are between one and two million near-Earth objects (NEOs) -- chunks of space rock whose orbits may pass within 30 million miles of Earth -- that pose a significant impact threat to the planet.

Of the 4,535 NEOs detected and tracked (704 of which are real whoppers), none are on a definite collision course, but there could be millions more, many of them potentially lethal, lurking in the cosmos.
It also looks like the US and China are the two countries most likely to get hit by one of those rocks, and while some measures have been taken to find and track the largest of these threats, even a small one could cause a lot of damage and death.

The options, in case of a collision risk, are to nuke it or hit it with some kind of spacecraft (both these options however, are likely to generate multiple threats from a single one) or to gently push it out of our way:
A craft would push or pull the object. Not sideways -- too energy-intensive -- but backward or forward to slow it down or speed it up. A few pounds of force applied over several months would alter a medium-size body's rate of travel such that it would miss hitting Earth by four or five minutes and thousands of miles. An asteroid tugboat would attach to a NEO and deliver a speed-altering nudge.

A gravity tractor would hover close to a NEO and use mutual gravitational attraction to divert it ever so slightly. A solar sail would move a NEO with the subtle pressure of light from the sun.
A much better option, if you ask me.

The power of marketing

We all fall victim of advertising's spell, but, not surprisingly, children seem to be even more impressionable:
Anything made by McDonald's tastes better, preschoolers said in a study that powerfully demonstrates how advertising can trick the taste buds of young children.

Even carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the kids when they were wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches.

The study had youngsters sample identical McDonald's foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test.
[...]
Study author Dr. Tom Robinson said the kids' perception of taste was "physically altered by the branding." The Stanford University researcher said it was remarkable how children so young were already so influenced by advertising.
[...]
"Advertisers have tried to do exactly what this study is talking about -- to brand younger and younger children, to instill in them an almost obsessional desire for a particular brand-name product," he said.
I guess the message of this article is, Careful what your kids' see on TV, because it will influence them very powerfully for years and years to come.

Bye Bye North Pole

Looks like we might have to say that within two decades:

The Arctic ice cap has collapsed at an unprecedented rate this summer and levels of sea ice in the region now stand at a record low, scientists said last night. Experts said they were "stunned" by the loss of ice, with an area almost twice as big as Britain disappearing in the last week alone. So much ice has melted this summer that the north-west passage across the top of Canada is fully navigable, and observers say the north-east passage along Russia's Arctic coast could open later this month. If the increased rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030.

Friday, September 14, 2007

An empty room...

... that's all that's left after the departure, this past Monday of my friend Vittorio, after his briefest visit ever.

We did have a lot of fun together, as usual, and Ray was kind enough to let us go on our second Road Trip (the first one's destination was Caribou, Maine, but we never made it there because it was too far and we ran out of time).

This time we didn't really have one specific target. We first set sail for Intercourse, Pennsylvania, in the Amish Country (cute little town, and I cannot imagine what the Amish people's life must be like; I probably wouldn't survive a winter going around in a carriage that is all open to the elements). We also went to Bird In Hand (how could we pass the chance??), which is right next to it, and from there to Lancaster.

From there we went to Gettysburg, PA, where a big area that was the stage of one of the most important battles of the American Civil War has been turned into a national park/monument and it's really a must-see.

Next up was Pittsburgh, PA, cute town in a marvelous setting at the bottom of a valley and surrounded by two big rivers. They built monorails that lift you up to enjoy the view, which is quite spectacular.

Then we drove up to Erie, PA, right on the lake Erie, one of the smallest of the Great Lakes, and yet immense. We did cross the border into Ohio, Conneaut was the destination. A small town that has nothing to offer to the accidental tourist. We were lucky to find a place open to eat something and felt like the girls from The Adventures of Priscilla when they enter the straights only bar in the middle of nowhere.

We then drove up to the Niagara Falls, which are absolutely breathtaking. At that point we started driving back and went through the Catskill Park, which is too very nice, and then back home.

Our road trips are now becoming a staple, and our favorite thing to do. It's just so different from the regular vacation trip and much more fun.

Unfortunately, Vittorio's vacation then ended, and he's back in Milan, Italy, working like crazy in his new position in the HR department of his company, and I'm back to my old routine, with the added strain of 3 new classes in an MBA program that I had to enroll into to keep my student status active.

We're missing him a lot and we're all looking forward to the next time he'll be able to visit. The morning after I took him to the airport, I was in Nicole's room and told her that Vittorio had left, and she looked at me and said, "I know, I came home last night and saw that his things weren't in his room anymore." I told her I was very sad, and then I almost started crying.

Then driving to work, I was listening to a CD by my beloved Mina that he had brought me, and I heard a verse that totally applies to him:

E io ringrazio il cielo, fortuna che tu esisti
sei come il sole che cancella i giorni più tristi.

(and I thank the heavens, thank them that you exist
you're like the sun that cancels the saddest days)

Fortuna che tu esisti, Vitto. A presto. Ciao.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Mira

Astronomers using the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), a NASA space telescope, have spotted an amazingly long comet-like tail behind a star streaking through space.

The large star is in its death throes and is leaving a huge, turbulent tail of oxygen, carbon and nitrogen in its wake that makes it look like an immense comet hurtling through space.

The tail, spanning a stunning distance of 13 light-years (about 20,000 times the average distance of Pluto from the sun) was detected behind the star Mira, located 350 light-years from Earth in the "whale" constellation Cetus.

Rocketing through our Milky Way galaxy at 80 miles per second -- literally faster than a speeding bullet -- the star is spewing material that scientists believe may be recycled into new stars, planets and maybe even life.

This material has been blown off Mira gradually over time -- the oldest was released roughly 30,000 years ago as part of a long stellar death process -- and is enough to form at least 3,000 future Earth-sized planets.

Astronomers say Mira's tail offers a unique opportunity to study how stars like our sun die and ultimately seed new solar systems. Mira is an older star called a red giant that is losing massive amounts of surface material.

Mira will eventually eject all of its remaining gas into space, forming a colorful shell called a planetary nebula. The nebula will fade with time, leaving only the burnt-out core of the original star, which will then be called a white dwarf.

Links here and here.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

On the Lot

The show ended this week and the winner was Will Bigham, one of my favorites from early on.

The other two finalists were Jason and Adam, both very talented and I'm sure their future includes directing many movies.

Will, like Garry Marshall pointed out, will be able to make them sooner, but it's pretty much guaranteed that all of the top 18 contestants whose movies we saw, we'll hear from again some day.

I always liked Will's work and nothing he made ever disappointed me. I cannot say the same for any of the other contestants, including Zach, the early favorite, so I'm actually very happy he won.

His movies were always very original and felt like little gems. I can't wait to see what he can create with a big studio behind and a real budget. Unfortunately, I doubt I'll ever see his first product; if the budget stays at $1 million, it will likely only be distributed in New York and Los Angeles.

The remaining question is, Will there be a second edition of On the Lot, given its abysmal ratings?

Steven Spielberg's enormous clout insured the show stayed on the air in spite of its few viewers, but will Fox agree to a second season?

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

The Dream Neighbor

Just read this and my eyes bulged:
Neighbors of Fantastic Four star Chris Evans are in for a visual treat - he often takes out his garbage naked.

Evans, who recently came third in a poll of most eligible Hollywood bachelors, admits he is fond of streaking in his yard.

He says, "I have a nice backyard. It's very secluded, so every now and then I might just run out quickly and take the trash out."
And this is why I'd like to move in his neighborhood this afternoon...

Karl is out

Too bad he leaves without a pair of handcuffs on his wrists and heading to jail. I'd love to lock him up in the general population of a maximum security prison for a couple months...

Anyway, whatever the real reasons behind his departure, Bush sure will miss him and his guidance. He was, after all his brains, and look where he is now. I can't even imagine what's gonna happen to our Dear Leader now that he's on his own.

Here's a couple comics that clearly show the Bush-Rove relationship dynamics.

Tom Toles:


and Ben Sargent:


Friday, August 10, 2007

Daddy Dearest

Ricky Martin wants to adopt children:
Ricky Martin wants kids — perhaps adopting "one from each continent" if possible.

"It's something we want to begin to create this year, a family of many colors," the Grammy-winning pop star told reporters Wednesday in Puerto Rico, where he is scheduled to perform this weekend.
Wait, Ricky isn't married, so... who's "we"?

Does the "we" include the stud on the right...

The Bourne Ultimatum

I finally went to the movies this year... and it's only August!! I must admit that I've missed a few titles I wanted to see, but I just can't drag my ass to a theater anymore, it seems. I like our new life in the country, but it sure puts a strain on any outing whatsoever (and any store is 5 to 25 minutes away; I don't know how they do it in places where you have to drive an hour to get anywhere).

Anyway, at least the first (last?) movie I saw this year was really, really good, two thumbs way up indeed. Seems like for the Jason Bourne franchise, the third time is indeed a charm.

The movie is alive and vibrant from beginning to end, never dull, never absurd, never patronizing, never preposterous. Just the way an action thriller should be.

Our hero (Matt Damon) is still suffering from amnesia, but his memories pop up in bursts and sprouts more and more, helping him in his quest to understand what happened to him and why.

He crosses paths again with Nicki (Julia Stiles), and it's actually refreshing to see a Hollywood production in which no romantic or sexual relationship is forced into the script in order to respect the established canons.

I hate it when you're watching a movie, especially a thriller or an action movie, and you know right from the get-go that at some point he'll bed her, just because you have to have the token sex scene that feels totally unreal.

The supporting cast is excellent, just as it was in the previous Bourne outings, particularly Joan Allen, David Strathairn, and Albert Finney. The camera work is great, the script good, and John Powell's score pumps you up so much, it will stay with you long after you left the theater.

This is most definitely the year of the sequel (SpiderMan, Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean...) but, judging from critics reviews, it seems like Bourne's third outing is the only one to actually improve on the franchise instead of sagging it down.

Go see it.

Grade: 8.5

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

The Cardinal of the Kremlin, by Tom Clancy

Another good thriller and my first book by Clancy. I really liked it, even though it was an abridged version of the original, which always leaves me wondering what I'm missing out.

I swear, I'll never purchase an abridgment ever again. I'll never understand why they even bother putting out shit like that. I've never seen and abridged song or an abridged movie. Why is it ok to chop up a book?!

Anyway, the Cold War between the East and West is over now, but it's not too hard to remember how tense it was for a few decades. This book's timeline falls toward the end of the Soviet Union's dominion over the East, when Mikhail Gorbachev was pushing to transform his country into a more modern and vibrant nation.

The story is a game of cat-and-mouse between the CIA and the KGB, and several other agencies and individuals, all trying to outwit and outlast their opponents. Treaties are being discussed while new weapons are being built. Which side will prevail?

The book is rich with action and Mr. Stiers, the reader, does an excellent job of voicing all the different characters and their accents, including Russian and Afghan.

I would definitely recommend this book.

Grade: 8

Why marriage matters

This article is heart wrenching. It is incredible that in the 21st century two adults who love each other and don't harm anybody have to see their lives torn to shreds by idiotic parents who value their religious bigotry more than their son's happiness and well-being:
Brett Conrad spent more than half his life as Patrick Atkins' partner. For 25 years, the men shared bank accounts, apartments and eventually a home in Fishers.

But when Atkins, 47, fell seriously ill in 2005, Conrad faced what many gay Hoosiers consider a travesty: no law guaranteeing them the same rights as married couples to participate in care decisions for their ill partners.

Conrad, 47, spent much of the past two years trying to win guardianship of Atkins from Atkins' parents, Thomas and Jeanne of Carmel. Jeanne Atkins is quoted in court documents as saying she believes homosexuality is a sin and that she disapproves of the men's relationship. The parents have barred Conrad from visiting their now-disabled son in their home where he lives.

In June, Conrad won visitation rights from the Indiana Court of Appeals, but the court upheld an earlier Hamilton County ruling that left control of Atkins' care to his parents.
It seems incredible that after 25 years together two people who clearly loved and cared for each other can be torn apart by one's parents, just because they don't agree with the gender of their son's soul mate.

The courts, obviously, must follow the dictates of the law, which puts the parents in charge when no legal papers have been signed by couples giving each other power of attorney, but even so, this is what a judge in the case had to say:
"We are confronted here with the heartbreaking fracture of a family," the judges wrote in their ruling. "Brett and Patrick have spent 25 years together as life partners -- longer than Patrick lived at home with his parents -- and their future life together has been destroyed by Patrick's tragic medical condition and by the Atkinses' unwillingness to accept their son's lifestyle."
At least somebody gets it.

How awful. All my sympathies go to Brett in his efforts to be rejoined one day with his love Patrick, since, Patrick's parents don't seem to be looking after his best interests according to what his mother told Brett:
Regardless of how the courts rule in the Conrad-Atkins case, the Atkinses aren't likely to change their minds about their son's relationship.

Jeanne Atkins testified at trial that it was "probably true" she would not let the men see each other unless required by law.

The record also shows that she told Conrad that if her son was going to return to life with his partner after recovering from his stroke, she would prefer he not recover at all.
I almost wish that she's right about the existence of her God, since she would definitely not be welcomed in his kingdom after saying something like that.

Hell, even Satan would despise a person like that!!

The Tudors

I decided to check this show out because I like period shows and I'll watch anything with Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I'm also deeply fascinated by the English monarchy, don't ask me why, I just am.

Anyway, the show is quite good, with excellent casting and good acting (Meyers, Jeremy Northam and mostly Sam Neill are all above par). The writing is good as well, although the writers did take some liberties in their dramatizations, and sometimes for no apparent reason (spoiler tag: like when they kill off King Henry VIII's illegitimate son, Henry FitzRoy, as a child when in real life he died in his late teens, while his father was trying to make him his official male heir, thereby insuring the Tudor's dynasty would continue).

So far, my only real disappointment comes from the panoramic visual effects, which are not computer generated (and therefore, possibly, cheaper), but whose unnaturalness if shamefully apparent. And I do mean shamefully.

The vast majority of the scenes are shot either indoors or quite up close to the surrounding buildings, so as not to show too many details that could reveal any flaws.

However, every time there is a panoramic shot of Whitehall, the King's residence, or any other large scale reproduction, you can see little black toy people mechanically moving around and buildings whose walls don't have any depth, but are clearly painted or drawn. And if you pay any attention, these shots never last more than a couple seconds, so as not to allow the viewer enough time to notice the sceneries' flaws (or appreciate the magnificence of what they represent).

I can understand that a period show like this must require a huge technical budget, and the costumes, art direction and set decoration are all very good, but couldn't they have splurged a little on computer generated visual effects (or better painted backgrounds)?

I swear, every time there's a long shot, I now pause the show and try to find all the obvious fake stuff: lights flickering unnaturally, flags that look like they're an inch wide, stiff black birds zooming past, people's arms moving like they're wearing heavy armor while they are all clothed in black, long coats and they walk like the characters of a cuckoo clock.

I believe HBO's Rome cost something like $100 million dollars to make (and that's only for the first season), the most expensive TV series ever made (but, it shows). That price tag is what most certainly spelled its doom, given its relatively small audience, however, the shortcomings in Showtime's The Tudors' technical aspect proves HBO's claim that It's not TV, it's HBO.

Anyway, the show in itself, like I said, is quite good. There's a lot of intrigue, betrayals, political machinations and sexual innuendos and it's interesting to see how quickly a person's fortunes or a nation's alliances could change back then. Literally, in the blink of an eye.

Henry's legendary libertine ways and very active sexual life are always on display, and it's very interesting to see how the birth of the Protestant church as we know it today was brought about by nothing more than a man's boundless lust and his desire for a male successor.

I do have to point out, however, that, this being being Showtime, the network that brought us Queer as Folk, and The L Word, I would have expected a better treatment of the only gay story line so far. Let's forget for a second that Henry has three close friends his age (Charles Brandon, Anthony Knivert and William Compton) and the one who just so happens to be a closeted gay man conveniently succumbs to the mysterious epidemic of the 15th and 16th century called the Sweating Sickness.

What bothered me even more was that while we were constantly bombarded with heterosexual sexual acts in all their animalistic glory, all we got to see of Compton's and his lover's only physical contact were a couple of innocent kisses (while still fully clad) and an after-intercourse scene in which Compton is sleeping next to his partner who's intent on composing a new piece of music. End scene.

Excuse me, but who polices Showtime's fairness and balance? Bill O'Reilly?

So while I'm looking forward to next year's season two of this show, I'm hopeful that Showtime will treat its loyal gay audience a little more fairly. Thank you.

Grade: 8

Monday, August 06, 2007

The extinction of a species

I came across this picture on Yahoo! and it made me very sad, because of its accompanying description:
The giant Galapagos tortoise known as George lifts his head up during a walk in his protected home in the island chain in this February 5, 2001 file photo.

While scientists search for a mate for 'Lonesome George' -- the last known survivor of a species of Galapagos tortoise -- some say the effort to fend off extinction may be in vain. Even if a mate is found, George has not been interested in reproducing in the past and may not know how, former keepers and others who have worked with him said.
I can't imagine that we're looking at the last survivor of an entire species, and there's nothing much we can do to bring it back from the brink of extinction.

Friday, August 03, 2007

Don't pollute my airspace!!

This article is a little old, but its message is still, unfortunately, very current.

It's about how soon inhaling a cigarette smoker's emissions becomes dangerous for a non-smoker's health. Apparently very soon:
Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke in bars and restaurants can result in measurable levels of a toxin in workers’ bodies that is known to cause lung cancer, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

They found nonsmoking workers in Oregon who worked a single shift in a bar or restaurant that allowed smoking were more likely to have a detectable level of NNK — a carcinogen linked with lung cancer — in their bodies than those who worked in nonsmoking establishments.

“NNK is only found in the body as a result of either smoking or breathing other people’s smoke,” said Michael Stark of the Multnomah County Health Department in Portland, Ore., whose study appears in the American Journal of Public Health.
[...]
“As a group, four out of five of the nonsmokers who worked in a smoking environment had some detectable level of this deadly chemical in their body, and as a group, for every hour that they worked, that level increased by 6 percent,” Stark said in a telephone interview.

Other studies have shown that nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke have about a 20 percent higher risk of lung cancer. They are also at a higher risk of asthma and perinatal complications such as sudden infant death syndrome.

“This adds to the very strong and growing body of evidence that second-hand smoke exposure is dangerous and people need to be protected,” Stark said.
A smoker friend of mine from Italy used to argue with me about this topic a lot.

As a non-smoker, I was obviously for making smoking in public places illegal (I was also a waiter at the time, which forced me to breathe other people's smoke for long hours daily). He, on the other hand, would argue that he had the right to smoke and that he didn't like other people trying to take away that right from him. It was, after all, his health, and if he chose to endanger it by smoking, it was his decision, as a free person, to do so.

Naturally, I disagreed with him strongly, and always felt like if he had the right to smoke, I had the right to breathe clear air, free of carcinogens (and that disgusting smell).

We never seemed to agree or change our minds or each other's, but these new scientific discoveries seem to give my argument the upper hand...

Thursday, August 02, 2007

This is one of the most incredible videos I've ever seen:


Mostly, I wonder how the bridge's road was able to last that long. Was it made of asphalt like regular roads and bridges or a rubber like material, because that is certainly how it looked.

Incredible. Even seeing it with my own eyes, it's just too hard to believe.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

A Quote By:

Rev. Reggie Longcrier, pastor of Exodus Missionary Outreach Church in Hickory, North Carolina, in response to presidential candidate John Edwards' claim that his opposition to gay marriage is influenced by his Southern Baptist background:
"We know religion was once used to justify slavery, segregation and women not being allowed to vote, all of which today are recognized as unconstitutional and socially and morally wrong. So why is it still acceptable to use religion to justify denying gay and lesbian American their full and equal rights."

Monday, July 16, 2007

Bleachers, by John Grisham

My advice would be to read this book only if you're into football. If not, a good half is going to be quite boring. For me, not knowing football at all, it was boring and foreign. Good chunks of the narrative are radio broadcasts' of games during which I had no idea what they were talking about.

The book is short, only 4 CDs, and the second one is all about such radio broadcast, so it went pretty quickly. It wasn't until the middle of CD 3 that I started to like the book, so if you're not a football fan, it might take a while before you start feeling any interest.

Anyway, in the end, it's not horrible, but certainly not a great read. It's the story of a guy whose glory days playing football in college (where he was quite promising) are over, and he's back in his hometown for the imminent funeral of his onetime coach.

Here he finds his old friends, and together they relive the times when they were all part of an unbeatable football team whose glorious facade hid many slowly surfacing cracks.

All in all, enjoyable, but, like I said, only after a good half.

Grade: 6

Green tea, the good stuff

I drink it daily because I like it but also because I read over and over about its health benefits.

A sample:
What can green tea do for you? It might be easier to list what it can't do. A fascinating analysis published in the November/December 2006 issue of Explore found numerous ways that studies have demonstrated that green tea (or compounds in it) promote human health, including:

* Fighting viruses, including influenza.
* Lowering levels of LDL, the "bad" cholesterol.
* Battling cancer. Tea compounds have been shown to help prevent or alleviate cancers of the lymph nodes, bladder, breast, cervix, colon, esophagus, lung, bones, pancreas, prostate, skin and stomach.
* Aiding endurance.
* Promoting weight loss in animal and human studies.

In short, drinking green tea is one of the best health moves you can make. And if you want to avoid caffeine, drink decaffeinated versions, or remove the caffeine yourself this way:

1. Steep tea for 45 seconds in hot water, then pour off the liquid.
2. Add more hot water and steep as you normally would to brew a cup of tea.

Up to 80 percent of the caffeine is released in the first infusion of water, so only minimal amounts will remain when you add water the second time. This method has little effect on the tea's flavor or aroma.
And with so many varieties to pick from, both plain and flavored, you'll certainly find the one you like.

Friday, July 13, 2007

A Quote By:

South Africa's Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, in an interview during which he discusses gay rights:
"For me, I couldn't ever keep quiet. I came from a situation where for a very long time people were discriminated against, made to suffer for something about which they could do nothing--their ethnicity. We were made to suffer because we were not white. Then, for a very long time in our church, we didn't ordain women, and we were penalizing a huge section of humanity for something about which they could do nothing--their gender. And I'm glad that now the church has changed all that. I'm glad that apartheid has ended. I could not for any part of me be able to keep quiet, because people were being penalized, ostracized, treated as if they were less than human, because of something they could do nothing to change--their sexual orientation. For me, I can't imagine the Lord that I worship, this Jesus Christ, actually concurring with the persecution of a minority that is already being persecuted. The Jesus who I worship is a Jesus who was forever on the side of those who were being clobbered, and he got into trouble precisely because of that. Our church, the Anglican Church, is experiencing a very, very serious crisis. It is all to do with human sexuality. I think God is weeping. He is weeping that we should be spending so much energy, time, resources on this subject at a time when the world is aching."

The New 7 Wonders of the World!!

They were announced last Saturday, so I'm really late with this post!!

The winners are:
So 3 of my picks got elected: the Colosseum, Machu Picchu, and the Taj Mahal. Four if you count the Pyramids of Giza, but:
After careful consideration, the New7Wonders Foundation designates the Pyramids of Giza—the only remaining of the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World—as an Honorary New7Wonders Candidate.

This decision has also taken into account the views of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt and the Egyptian Ministry of Culture. The Pyramids are a shared world culture and heritage site and deserve their special status as the only Honorary Candidate of the New7Wonders of the World campaign.
So, technically, we really have 8 now.

I must say I'm pleased with all but one of the picks, and I think you can guess which one: Brazil's Christ Redeemer. I mean, forget the religious connotations and how much that might bother me, that statue was not the most deserving among the candidate statues and, above all, there were many other candidates that deserved it more than that.

For example, Cambodia's Angkor, Turkey's Hagia Sophia, or Germany's Neuschwanstein Castle. And certainly, mysterious statues like those of Easter Island or even something like the mystifying Stonehenge were more deserving of such a status than the "simple" Christ Redeemer, about which every thing's known.

Anyway, these 8 wonders are now on my list of things to see and places to visit in my lifetime, although I'll most certainly go to Rio de Janeiro for more than just the Christ Redeemer, like its Carnival celebrations, the samba, its beaches, and the Sugarloaf mountain (Pão de Açúcar).

I think it's time to plan a trip!!