The Civilized vs The Uncivilized
Denmark and the Netherlands place the blame firmly on the automobile in accidents, unless it can be proven otherwise. The idea is simply that the person in the most dangerous vehicle has the most responsibility.
This a re-quote from The War on Cyclists and Pedestrians is Getting Ugly
That’s not how it works in North America. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because the two above countries are actually run by humans with empathy. Those two countries also happen to have universal health care and other generous, humanistic policies that top worldwide rankings. Ours calculates to maximize the cold hard bottom-line. Year by year, I see a distinct lack of of empathy increasing all around me in people here. Having recently been in a car accident because someone ‘wasn’t paying attention’ brings to mind what might have happened had I been on a bike and not in a car. If not dead, doubtful I would have been paid for.
October Updates
Poor neglected blog.
That’s ok, not much of relevance has happened since Hugh Jackman stood for all of us who hate people who don’t turn off their mobile phones in a theatre. Thanks once more Wolverine.
Now for the real, and random, updates…
- jordanmendenhall.com, a former home of this blog and my main site, has been updated. Now in a much bleaker grey tone. Hefty thanks to CSS-tricks for the inspiration and code.
- PHP – currently trying to tackle this programming language; reading through the excellent manual and trying to learn through experience with WordPress and SimplePie. I would have some SimplePie sites done by now but it is being frakin’ annoying and not working how I’d like. More to learn I guess.
- Restarted my search for work. If it doesn’t pan out by January, will more than likely be heading to Thailand to work for an NGO, finances be damned.
- The best days are those in which new books arrive in the mail. Today I received The Infrastructural City, Fell Vol 1: Feral City, and To The Holy Shrines. Will probably be the first and last purchases for the year as my stack(s) are already overwhelming.
- I don’t think the beef in my Mongolian beef from the local Chinese place actually comes from Mongolia.
- Still posting at WhyWeWorry. My posts are here.
- Thinking of doing my first NaNoWriMo. Ok, not as cool as running a marathon but I guess it’s a marathon of a different sort. Might be a bit of a spur to be disciplined for once.
- Was in a car accident my first day off from my laymen home nursing duties putting my squarely back at home and car-less for the past three weeks. Fingers crossed, it will be back tomorrow. Just another sign that my time back home in Redneckville should be coming to an end.
- Movies: Watched Fires On The Plain last night. A single Japanese soldier crawls across the shattered landscape of the Philippines in WWII witnessing gore, disease, and cannibalism. Excellent, to say the least. Carlito’s Way and Oldboy are the only other ones that stick out for me this month. Carlito’s Way of probably being the last great dePalma and Oldboy surprisingly fresh with a sick surprising ending. Also watched The Painted Veil, which was pretty decent, not great.
- Craig Ferguson remains the King of Late Night, despite all the attention lavished on the others. Conan is struggling a bit in his time slot and I enjoyed Jimmy Fallon even more than Conan until I was turned onto Craig Ferguson. Conan is starting to get into Letterman mode where he has one monologue joke for the week and rolls with it. Ferguson has no ’standard’ monologue, or format for that matter. He has, I guess, what you call a cold opening, a break, then goes to a monologue, then to a sit-down, then to the interviews. He doesn’t keep them on a strict PR play-by-play that you can tell is rote (Conan is getting especially bad at this) and will let the interview meander wherever it leads. He also has authors, which I’ve never seen on a real late night show before. Letterman and Leno I could really care less about, especially Leno. The commercials for his man on the street stuff before his show premiered seemed at best condescending and mostly insulting.
- The LA Cycling Map got a redesign.
The map is loading properly but Google has been acting weird the past two days so who knows. Will take a closer look after doing some more cover letters.A cover letter done and problem figured out. Should work fine now. - Update: Found some great techdork and theory pieces at this area of the Adobe site called the Think Tank. Check it out.
That’s about it. Hopefully good news to come, either about work or life or getting away, soon.
The Wolverine / Bond Smackdown
Typically, it’s times like these that I wish I had a bit more money. Two of my favorite actors are on-stage together in London New York in what I’ve heard is quite an intense play. What more could one ask for? Probably that people actually turn off their mobile phones during a live-acted production. I’ve already chosen to forgo seeing anymore movies in the theatre this year after having every screening ruined by people talking or being insane. Bravo to Mr Jackman and Mr Craig for not putting up with peoples’ rudeness (this time by an eternally ringing mobile) either:
via Movieline
Brief Note On This Blog
I’ve decided not to renew my domain subscription for this blog at my personal address, jordanmendenhall.com. I don’t think this should effect the feeds on the blog for all ten of you that subscribe. This blog will continue in its rather slapdash state and will also be updated from elsewhere. Given time and motivation, it might transferred over to the jm.com address at some point in the future in a more custom, usable setting. Until then…
New Posts At Why We Worry
I have my own feed over there now since the awesome redesign. Subscribe here.
Posts from this month:
Whatever Happened To Iraq – Sep. 18, 2009 – The strange disappearance of Iraq from the news
The Trouble With Twitter – Sep. 17, 2009 – On journalistic silliness and the death of confidentiality
R.I.P. Missile Defense System (Almost) – Sep 17, 2009 – One small step slightly forward and sideways
Wall Street To Start Trading In Death – Sep 7, 2009 – The same fools behind the recession are to start massively securitizing life insurance. Great…
The Military & Hollywood
From David Bordwell’s excellent film blog, Observations on film art and Film Art, came this semi-recent article discussing the close relationship of the US military and Hollywood. It basically sums up the win-win situation for both: Hollywood gets to use expensive equipment and well-trained crews (soldiers) for their productions and the military gets a say in how their image is spun (positively, of course). I’m sure that this has also helped in directors and studios helping the branches in creating their own very cinematic commercials. It also makes you wonder how this effects our current mentality to using the military and their actions as well as how the US and its militarized movies are perceived by the overseas audiences it is distributed to.
Where’s Our Talent?
One of the most moving things I’ve seen all year:
Her name is Kseniya Simonova and she is the 24 year old winner of Ukraine’s Got Talent. Let’s compare to our own “Got Talent” show, America’s Got Talent. All the past three winners have been singers. All the top finals contestants have been either singing or dance acts. The majority of our ‘competition shows’ involve singing and dancing for some reason (American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, the deplorable Dance Your Ass Off).
Sure, that takes ‘talent’ of a sort, but where is our celebration of true artistic ability? Singing can touch people emotionally, dancing can do it in a different way (that typically displayed on such television shows is more of a “Wow, what cool moves!” than the variety of states one can feel in, say, ballet). Yet, who knew you could move people to tears with a bit of music, light, sand and sheer ability?
