Randy Pausch
Posted on July 27, 2008 - Filed Under Career, College, Life-In-General | Leave a Comment
Apologies for posting yet another YouTube video, but I just finished watching this and it definitely deserves a mention. Sometime when you’re online and have an hour or so to spare, look up this video on YouTube (or watch it here). It’s a lecture about achieving childhood dreams delivered by a professor with terminal cancer. The premise sounds kind of sentimental, and it runs for well over an hour, but it’s quite possibly the most worthwhile thing I’ve seen on the site. The professor died two days ago.
American Psycho
Posted on July 26, 2008 - Filed Under Film | Leave a Comment
I saw this for the first time last night and I love it! It’s very funny, and Christian Bale is typically outstanding.
Obama’s Berlin Speech
Posted on July 25, 2008 - Filed Under American Politics, Obama | Leave a Comment
“Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii” Deemed Inappropriate Name For Child
Posted on July 24, 2008 - Filed Under News Item | 1 Comment
A judge in New Zealand made a young girl a ward of court so that she could change the name she hated - Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii.
Judge Rob Murfitt said that the name embarrassed the nine-year-old and could expose her to teasing.
He attacked a trend of giving children bizarre names, citing several examples.
Officials had blocked Sex Fruit, Keenan Got Lucy and Yeah Detroit, he said, but Number 16 Bus Shelter, Violence and Midnight Chardonnay had been allowed.
Makes “Athens Trent Boland” sound eminently reasonable…
John McCain Doesn’t Know What “The Surge” Is
Posted on July 24, 2008 - Filed Under American Politics, College | 3 Comments
This story has been running for a few days, but I didn’t blog about it because it’s kind of technical. It relates to events in Iraq over the past 2 years. Basically, McCain doesn’t know when ‘The Surge’ (an increase in troop levels, and the adoption of a new counter-insurgency strategy) began, even through he keeps trying to take most of the credit for it. In an interview with CBS he confused the ‘Anbar Awakening’, in which local leaders in Anbar province aligned with US forces against Al Qaeda, with the beginning of The Surge, even though this occurred months before The Surge was even announced, and almost a whole year before all the additional troops had been deployed. Furthermore, The Surge was largely concentrated in Baghdad and had little impact on troop levels in Anbar. Keith Olbermann explains the whole story here, with suitable indignation:
Given that McCain is generally said to have an advantage over Obama when it comes to foreign policy, this ignorance is pretty damning, especially when McCain keeps trying to pass off The Surge as somehow being his idea, even though he doesn’t know what it actually is.
Latest Phoenix Cover
Posted on July 24, 2008 - Filed Under Ireland, Politics | Leave a Comment
This is one of their better ones in recent times.
Doing Medicine
Posted on July 23, 2008 - Filed Under Career, College | 1 Comment
I wrote a post about my reasons for wanting to do medicine and upon finishing it I was too embarrassed to publish it. Suffice it to say, they were not particularly lofty, commendable or good. Methinks a reappraisal is in order…
X “Could Care Less”
Posted on July 22, 2008 - Filed Under Language, Media | 1 Comment
I’ve been meaning to blog this for months, but I kept forgetting about it, despite how much it pisses me off. The title refers to a common American phrase, for instance, “John could care less about his neighbour”, which is intended to mean “John doesn’t care about his neighbour”. All arguments about linguistic evolution aside, this is wrong!
What the speaker means to say is “John couldn’t care less about his neighbour”, which is how English speakers elsewhere say it. This accurately conveys the sense that John does not care about his neighbour, whereas the first phrasing expresses the notion that, well, John could care less about his neighbour, which logically implies that John currently cares somewhat for his neighbour, and so could care less for her, given that John already has some basic level of concern for her.
I don’t mean to sound like a grammar Nazi, but I keep hearing Americans misusing this phrase and it keeps annoying the hell out of me.
Colbert on Obama’s Foreign Trip
Posted on July 22, 2008 - Filed Under American Politics, Funny, Media, Obama | Leave a Comment
\o/ He’s funny again! \o/
Eye See You
Posted on July 21, 2008 - Filed Under Personal | Leave a Comment
Batman Begins
Posted on July 21, 2008 - Filed Under Film | 3 Comments
I saw this film earlier tonight on Sky One, and I swear it will be the last time I ever try to watch a movie on that channel. The ad-breaks are about 10 minutes long, and just when you think that you’ve seen the last idiotic commercial for their dreadful programming, along comes an advert for Weetabix, followed by more dreary ads.
Anyhow, I found the movie itself quite disappointing. I tend to dislike superhero films in general, but I had moderately high hopes for this one, given all the hype surrounding its sequel, and because I think Christian Bale is a rather good actor. Nevertheless, it wasn’t altogether bad, and I think that it’s at least better than any other superhero film I’ve seen (unless you count Robocop as a superhero).
The main problem with the film (and this is pretty obvious when watching it for the first time and on the verge of its sequel’s release) is that it spends a very long time establishing the foundations of the Batman story. This is all necessary, of course, but by the time that the films has explained how an orphaned billionaire has become a man who fight crime by night in a Batsuit then there is not much time left to craft a very meaningful plot for the film itself. This results in a rather weak and hurried story in which Batman lacks a strong antagonist, since neither Liam Neeson nor Cillian Murphy’s characters are sufficiently developed (although Murphy does manage to turn in a delightfully deranged performance in the limited time afforded to him).
While Batman Begins is only a middling film, there is good reason to hope that the sequel, unencumbered by the necessity of constructing an entire back-story, will be better. However, on the basis of this film, with its clumsily shot fight scenes, trite dialogue and dull, instantly forgettable set-pieces, I’m not terribly optimistic. Heath Ledger’s Joker better be as good as people claim…
Help Me Video
Posted on July 20, 2008 - Filed Under Music | 1 Comment
I posted this a while ago, but the YouTube clip was subsequently taken down. It’s getting harder and harder to find embeddable music videos on the site, which makes it harder to promote bands that you like, and so I don’t see how this policy of disabling embeds benefits the music industry in anyway.
Guitar Buying
Posted on July 18, 2008 - Filed Under Music | 1 Comment
Is it foolish to buy a guitar online, especially if it’s an Epiphone, since their guitars can be a little hit and miss? I want to play heavy, detuned stuff more often, but my Strat can really handle lower tunings because of how it’s set up at present, and anyway Strats aren’t really metal guitars, so I’m thinking of getting a cheap enough Goth Les Paul and having it adjusted so it’s set up for playing about two steps down from standard tuning. They’re available online for less than $300.
More BFMV
Posted on July 18, 2008 - Filed Under Music | Leave a Comment
They don’t sound like an emo band to me…
(If there are ads attached to this video, then you are doing it wrong and must not have Adblock Plus for Firefox. Google it.)
Traitorous Hleb Jumps Ship
Posted on July 17, 2008 - Filed Under Football | Leave a Comment
Alexander Hleb has left Arsenal for Barcelona for £11.8 million. At 27, this makes him the best bargain for years in my estimation. Barcelona clearly think more of him than Arsenal did, since his buy-out clause has been set at over £70 million. While it’s true that he wanted to leave, surely Arsenal could have got more money for a player of his calibre.
Hleb’s departure leaves the Arsenal midfield in tatters, given that Flamini has already left for AC Milan on a bosman (a free transfer enabled by a player’s contract expiring with his club). There will still be hope for the team as long as Cesc Fabregas remains at the club, but him and Rosicky are pretty much the only decent midfielders now left in the side. Eboué is a constant disaster and liable to get sent off every second game, Diaby is promising but Wenger doesn’t seem prepared to play him in most games, Nasri is untested in a major league, and Denilson is still probably too young for a regular position in the first team.
Given the club’s notorious reluctance to spend money on highly-rated experienced players, I have no idea how Wenger plans to fix this problem before the season begins. Fabregas may be outstanding, but he can’t do everything by himself. Hopefully AC Milan will follow through on their bizarre interest in Emmanuel Adebayor and pay something like £20 million for him, even though that’s more than twice what I think he’s worth. Then the club can try and bring in somebody decent to bolster their midfield, which already looked shaky last season, before half of it left the club.
£11.8 million… Jesus Christ. That’s robbery. Whatever knave left him go for that price ought to be strung up…
keep looking »
