Saturday, November 29, 2008

Metroid Prime 3 Corruption

I just realized I never blogged about the Wii, my very first game console, which I favored for the promise of a full-body experience in game play instead of just your hands.

At first I purchased a ton of games (mostly from eBay, where I saved a bundle), until I realized that it can take quite a long time to play a game through completely, which is the ultimate goal.

At first I'd play a little bit of every game I had, but then I realized that, given the fact that I didn't have that much time to play to begin with, if I ever wanted to complete (beat, in the video game parlance) a game, I needed to concentrate on one at a time.

Metroid Prime 3 Corruption was the chosen one, for several reasons. The sci-fi environment is probably my favorite, the graphics are incredible, and I like first-person shooter and adventure games the most.

This game is simply fantastic. The action is great and grows in difficulty, allowing you to get good at it and beat the bosses (the bad guys) even though they get badder and harder to beat. The story is interesting and the different worlds engaging. Each world even has its own score and lighting/color theme.

The game, in which you control the bounty hunter Samus Aran as she battles the Space Pirates, alternates between looking for the stuff you have to gather and fighting off the enemies that keep trying to stop you from reaching your goal. In the end, it's a great adventure that I'd recommend to anyone who likes this type of game.

I actually liked it so much, I bought Metroid Prime, the previous incarnation, for the GameCube, for which I bought a few other games as well, most notably, those that belong to The Lord of the Rings canon, just to add them to my collection =0)

Looking forward to the next adventure with Samus Aran.

Grade: 10

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Night at the Museum

Although I like Ben Stiller, I can't say I'm a big fan of his movies. Some are ok, but I never saw any movie he starred in that made me go "Whoa!"

We watched this one on family night, and I would only recommend it as such.

The story is simple and predictable, without any major surprises, but the action kept the kids glued to the screen, so that's good.

The visual effects and makeup, thankfully, are good enough that they don't look tacky, and the star studded cast delivers decently without stupefying.

Grade: 6

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

A chance encounter

Apparently that's what made life on Earth a reality, at least according to newly released research:
A chance encounter about 1.9 billion years ago, led to life on Earth, say scientists.

New research finds that an amoeba-like organism engulfed a bacterium that had developed the power to use sunlight to break down water to make oxygen.

The bacterium could have been intended as prey, but instead became incorporated into its attacker's body, transforming it into the ancestor of every tree, flowering plant and seaweed on Earth today.

Paul Falkowski, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at Rutgers University in New Jersey says that this single event transformed evolution of life on Earth.

"The descendants of that tiny organism transformed our atmosphere, filling it with the oxygen needed for animals and, eventually humans to evolve."
And I'm sure the closing paragraph of the article will send all fanatic believers shrieking in a corner:
"Nothing else can provide the energy needed to fuel the demands of multicellular organism. True photosynthesis evolved only once, and the chance encounter that gave rise to plants also happened just once. These were two freak accidents in the 3.5 billion-year history of life on Earth."

A Quote By:

A November 24, 2008 editorial in The New York Time:

"Allowing Proposition 8 to stand would greatly limit the court’s ability to uphold the basic rights of all Californians and preclude the Legislature from performing its constitutional duty to weigh such monumental changes before they go to voters.

Treating Proposition 8 as a mere amendment would set a precedent that could allow the rights of any minority group to be diminished by a small majority. The measure passed 52 percent to 48 percent."

Religulous

I was looking forward to this documentary both for its theme -- an objective analysis of religion -- and its star, Bill Maher, whom I really like both for his humor and for his views on religion, which match mine to a T.

The final result doesn't disappoint, and although the editing might have been tweaked to drive home Maher's point that religion is full of idiotic make believe and is oftentimes used to justify one's evil deeds, I found it quite honest, objective, and straightforward.

In fact, although his detractors argued that Maher scavenged for weirdos and fanatics, the vast majority of the people he interviewed were regular folk, religious leaders, politicians, or people of faith. And if some of those depicted sounded like weirdos that only proves the documentary's success.

Whatever your views about religion, this is a good documentary that should make you think about the role of religion in society.

Grade: 7.5

Monday, November 24, 2008

Meteor!!

A meteor fell from the sky in Alberta, Canada last week, and it was big and it was caught on video by a police officer's patrol car's dashboard camera.

Check it out!

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Web Therapy

Entertainment Weekly pointed me to a series of shorts starring Lisa Kudrow, one of the funniest actresses I've ever seen.

I never watched Friends, but I loved her in HBO's The Comeback.

In Web Therapy, a series of shorts produced by LStudio.com (courtesy of Lexus) Lisa plays a therapist who decides to forgo the typical 50-minute therapy sessions for short 3-minute online ones, because the longer sessions used to bore her to death!!

So far there are 9 episodes with 3 different patients, and they're all hysterical.

This is the first one:

A Quote By:

Anonymous black woman from Oklahoma, the only state in which not a single county went for Obama on November 4, hence, the reddest state in the country:
"Rosa Parks sat down so that Martin Luther King Jr. could walk. Martin walked so that Obama could run. Obama ran so that our children could fly."

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

A Quote By:

Wanda Sykes, actress, comedian:
"When California passed Prop 8 ... I felt like I was being attacked, personally attacked, our community was attacked. I got married Oct. 25. You know, I don't really talk about my sexual orientation, I didn't feel like I had to, I was just living my life and, not necessarily in the closet, but I was just living my life. Everybody that knows me personally, they know I'm gay. And that's the way people should be able to live their lives. We shouldn't have to be standing out here demanding something that we automatically should have as citizens of this country. And I got pissed off. They pissed me off. I said, You know what, now I gotta get in your face. And that's what we all have to do now. They pissed off the wrong group of people. They have galvanized a community. We are so together now and we all want the same thing and we are not going to settle for less."

A Quote By:

Wayne Besen, author and activist, on the aftermath of the passage of Proposition 8 in California:
"Far from a victory, anti-gay forces unleashed a ferocious storm with powerful winds of change that will only end with the sound of wedding bells."

The 2008 US electoral map

I know the election is over and it sort of feels like it was a long time ago, but these images were too cool not to post.

This is what the US map looks like based on which state went to Obama (blue) and McCain (red):


Looks like the majority of the country voted Republican while it was the Democratic candidate who won the election, but that's only because of the unevenness between population distribution and size of each individual state.

If we were to resize each state based on their population, this is what the US would look like:


Blue is by far the dominant color here, which is a reflection of what really went on in the election.

However, the US presidential election is not won by whoever gathers the majority of popular votes, but by whoever gathers 270 votes in the electoral college, which are distributed based on a state's population and are therefore fluid.

Taking that into account, the following map shows what the US would look like if we resized each state based on its electoral votes:


Very small variations that do not change the overall look of a vastly blue map.

Finally, electoral votes are assigned as a whole to the winner of the popular vote in (almost) each state, but the distribution of the votes in the state varies greatly between areas.

The next map shows how each county voted, and it would appear that the Republicans were the dominant party and the Democrats a constant minority:


A sea of read with a few splashes of blue here and there. How sad.

However, if we again resized each county based on its population, this is what the US would look like:


As you can see, the tables are turned and the US is now a sea of blue with a few splashes of red here and there.

A much more pleasing image to look, if you ask me.

You can find more here.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Separate is NEVER equal



FIGHT H8!

Same-sex marriage officially legal in CT

The marriages started officially today after a judge entered the final judgment in the case following the historic Supreme Court decision to allow same-sex marriages in the state on the basis of the state constitution's equality clause.



Now, on to the next state.

One by one, we'll win in all.

Fight the H8!!

The passage of Proposition 8 in California, which resulted, for the first time in the history of the United States, in taking rights away from a minority by the majority, has inspired a lot of anger, outrage, and many protests, all over the state and the nation.

Ray and I are going to participate in a protest this coming Saturday, here in New Haven, Connecticut.

Please, to anyone out there, gay or straight ally, add your voice to the chorus of outrage at a group of individuals who used their money to spread a bunch of lies to trick good people into voting to add their religious views, their bigotry, and their discrimination to the California state constitution.

It is against equality, it is against the separation of church and state and it is against the American ideal of freedom and fundamental rights for all.

Bottom line, it is wrong.

These are some of the images that accompany the current fight for gay civil rights. I find them very effective and smart:

A Quote By:

This is from an editorial in The New York Times:
"Far from showing that California’s Supreme Court was wrong to extend the right of marriage to gay people, the passage of Proposition 8 is a reminder of the crucial role that the courts play in protecting vulnerable groups from unfair treatment."

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

The new face of America

The clock turns back in California

I'm not proud to say that I'm often a pessimist and a cynic, but I think I use those traits to shield myself from disappointment, especially when my civil rights are at stake in an election where people I don't know and who don't know me, will have a say in what I can or cannot do.

For this reason, the 2008 election draws to a close with a few disappointing results in anti-gay ballot initiatives around the country. We lost in Arizona, where I had little hope, and in Florida, where all the polls were saying passage of the gay-marriage ban was all but guaranteed to fail.

But above all, we lost in California, where, for the first time, voters decided to take away gay-marriage after it had already been granted to same-sex couples. Apparently, over 18,000 couples' marriages are now in limbo.

We did gain some ground in California, though, since a similar ballot initiative was supported, a few years back, by 61% of the population, while now only 52% decided to punish us. The problem is that, the last time is was just a law. This time, it's going to end up in the state Constitution, which makes it all but irremovable.

I guess hate won again last night.

But in the darkest of darkness, a glimmer of hope comes from our home state of Connecticut, where the ballot initiative to have a Constitutional Convention to revise the state Constitution (to ban the recently legalized gay-marriage) was widely rejected by a 60-40 margin.

That question can only be posed once every 20 years, which means that the haters can pretty much forget about banning gay-marriage via a Constitutional amendment by following that path. And given that the Congress is solidly Democratic now, any other path looks dire at best.

This leaves us with Massachusetts and Connecticut as the only 2 states with full marriage equality.

But more hope lies ahead, given that the Democrats were able to wrestle control from the Republicans of the New York Senate, which was the only block on the way to gay-marriage there, since the state House already passed it and the governor already stated he wants it.

And New Jersey will likely follow suit, since they realized that civil unions aren't equal to marriage and the population is in favor of full equality. Here, too, the legislature and governor are on our side, so it's the closest thing to a sure bet.

Again, a bittersweet night, particularly for the loss in California, but also a night when we won the biggest prize, the White House.

Obama is, by far, the most pro-gay President we could hope for. He stated over and over that he is for full equality for everyone under the law, and for the repeal of the draconian Defense of Marriage Act (and Don't Ask Don't Tell).

He also supports the United American Families Act, which would allow Ray to sponsor me for a green card.

So, in conclusion, let's try to look at the glass as half full, because it sure looks that way from afar.

President Elect Barack Obama


Barack Hussein Obama has been elected the 44th President of the United States of America.

What a thrill last night has been. State after state, Obama took many, while McCain took a few. But Obama was winning the important ones, the battleground ones, while McCain was only taking those that were expected to go to him.

After Obama won Ohio, McCain's last glimmer of hope was snuffed. And he conceded soon after.

In the end, when the polls closed on the west coast, the election was called, and Obama was the new President Elect, who will be sworn in this coming January 20.

And the celebrations began.

History was made last night, and the last racial barrier was broken when the first African-American was elected President of the US.

Needless to say, I'm thrilled that our children will have such a role model to look up to while growing up.

Needless to say, Obama gives hope to all who are willing to listen.

Needless to say, the world, today, is better off for having Barack Obama as the winner of the 2008 White House race.

YES WE CAN!

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Mulan

Needless to say, we watched this movie on Family Night. Nicole picked it, and I'm glad she did because the title heroine is a very good role model for young girls: she's strong, wise, and unwilling to let a patriarchal society set the rules by which to live her life.

The movie showcases quite a few battles and fights, and they're pretty raw, so much so that the first time Nicole saw it she was pretty scared, and did not like it. But this time she loved it.

The movie, now ten years old, stands the test of time both in terms of the story it tells and the way it tells it, the classic 2D-Disney style that never disappoints when paired with a good story.

A nice movie for the whole family.

Grade: 7.5

Monday, November 03, 2008

Schadenfreude

Just read this line on a CNN article:
"The more many Americans have found out about Palin, the less they like her."
That pretty much single-handedly made my day that much better.

GO OBAMA!!

Sunday, November 02, 2008

The Descent

This movie is undeniably scary and if you like the genre, you shouldn't miss it. The premise is simple and the setting claustrophobic enough to guarantee a lot of tension and jumpy moments.

My only gripe is with the very last scene, which comes across like a slap in the face that jolts the viewer right out of "the zone" the movie works so hard to create. And my question is, Why? Was it really necessary to make the movie work? No. So, does that scene detract from the whole experience? Yes, and the fact that I'm here writing about it is the evidence that proves it.

That last "scare" is so superfluous and irrelevant, it should have ended up on the editing room floor. Instead, in order to get one more cheap scare out of the audience, the director decided to tag it along, thereby cheapening the whole production.

The movie would have ended on a much higher note if, for instance, the camera had simply panned up and away, slowly, with the score hovering and the credits beginning to roll. That's more or less the way 1972's Deliverance ends, a much more effective finale, and one that leaves you wondering what will happen next, instead of feeling like someone screamed "The movie's over, please leave the auditorium!!"

Not only that. I also have to admit that, conditioned by that kind of final whammy in movie after movie, part of me was wondering when it would happen and what it would be. By including that scene, The Descent failed to distinguish itself from so many other crappier products and only re-established a cliché.

That being said, however, The Descent is still a good entry in the horror genre, and by far one of the best I've seen in a while.

Grade: 7.5

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Obama's promise of hope

I had never looked too closely at Obama's presidential platform, but I just stumbled upon this excerpt of it and it made my hope he gets elected this coming Tuesday grow even more, if that's at all possible:
Senator Obama's presidential platform includes the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act and the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy prohibiting openly gay people from serving. While the Obama/Biden campaign opposes extending civil marriage to same-sex couples, it does advocate for equal access to federal benefits for legally united partners, adoption rights, a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and the Uniting American Families Act, which would allow an American citizen to sponsor one's same-sex partner for immigration.
GO OBAMA!!

Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan

Widely considered by Star Trek fans as the single best movie in the Trek series, this was the only one I had never seen.

While I agree that it is engaging and well made, it does not top my personal list. That honor goes to Star Trek: First Contact.

I also enjoyed Star Trek: Generations and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which, although slow and at times boring, was based on a story concept that I find, to this day, absolutely brilliant.

In Khan, the story is interesting and the action scenes superb, but I couldn't get past the campiness of the acting on the part of virtually the entire cast (exception made, possibly, for Leonard Nimoy's Spock, whose alien nature might exonerate him from looking affected).

Granted, it's still a great sci-fi movie and one of the top 3 in the series, possibly the second best, but I'll stick by the superiorly made First Contact.

Grade: 8.5