I don’t usually do anything remotely approaching scholarly discussion of the Bible, ever, but today’s Gospel reading is one that I find interesting and troubling. Here it is, starting from the part where the slave who was given one talent and hid it away, and now has to explain to the Master why he didn’t “double his investment,” so to speak: Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, `Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was…
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‘Quantum of Solace’ stars Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Mathieu Amalric, Olga Kurylenko — chicagotribune.com Compared with “Casino Royale,” ” Quantum of Solace” is a disappointment. Craig anchors it, and Judi Dench’s M enjoys some fine, stern scenes, but director Marc Forster “Finding Neverland,” “Monster’s Ball,” “The Kite Runner” isn’t much of an action man. There’s plenty, but half the time it’s visually incoherent. Yep, pretty much. The review goes on to compare the Bond action scenes with the “Jason Bourne” movies’ action scenes, from which they were clearly derived. Actually, a couple of the “gags” were just like ones in…
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A couple of Russian musicians made a rather sweet little music video as a tribute to “Misses Palin.” They’re good musicians – accomplished, even, but their subtitles are the best part. [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/XR9V_aOCga0" width="425" height="344" wmode="transparent" /] They’re cute – like LOLRussians – with a hopeless pash for Palin. You betcha. Doggone it.
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There’s been another upgrade to Second Life, and I haven’t been online consistently in a couple of months. So I went online today to check in, pay rent, sort inventory; boring stuff to some, but for some reason the purposelessness is relaxing to me. While doing this I like to hang out somewhere with a good music stream. I’m currently located at the Gardens of Apollo[SLUrl link], and found that the nicely detailed gardens are now a bit too detailed for my “big” computer if I set the graphics display to “high,” and woefully undetailed if I set it at…
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Last Saturday, I happened to catch the repeat of This American Life on WBEZ; the last 30 minutes or so is a Studs Terkel piece that seemed particularly appropriate. Terkel died a few weeks ago, we’re in the midst of an economic downturn that ought to be described as a “freefall,” and we’ve just elected a mixed race, self-identified black man as our President. The Terkel segment is a collection of pieces from his Hard Times radio series, with people talking about life in the Depression. There are some surprising revelations from a woman who realized that as a poor…
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Today being the third Saturday of the month, I managed to make it to Asbury Court in Des Plaines for Holy Moly’s monthly ecumenical service. It was pretty lightly attended, probably because of a competing holiday craft fair event, but it was a nice time and those that were there were our “frequent flyers.” Father Paul and Mary did a reprise of their duet from last Sunday’s service of “Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream” with Paul on banjo, but as the words were printed, I joined in anyhow. Some of the other old folkies that were there today…
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Pretty cool. I had this in my “shared Google News” backlog. Which is pretty much the only way I can “blog” during the workday, via my iPhone, that just takes a few clicks. I really like this image. Via Open Thread | Crooks and Liars
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And it’s an AA flight, according to the image on the TV in the lunchroom Ginny I can has iPhone? span style=font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;>Via: a href=http://www.flickr.com>Flickr /a>Title: a href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/ginnyred57/3020031666/>Obama’s Plane Lands in Washington>/a>By: a href=http://www.flickr.com/people/ginnyred57/>GinnyRED57 /a> Originally uploaded: 10 Nov ’08, 12.30pm CST PST/span>
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It’s unclear if this Dilbert comic is about the inevitable arc of optimism-to-disillusionment in project managment, or if it’s about the elections. Or more likely, both. Either way, we’re frelled unless we break the pattern. Original at Dilbert comic strip for 11/09/2008 from the official Dilbert comic strips archive. Via Joey the Accordion Guy.
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The New York Times has a slideshow of various maps showing how the electoral results break down. The first map is notated “Only 22 percent of American counties voted more Republican than they did in 2004.” This one shows that 78 percent of American counties voted more Democratic than they did in 2004. I thought it was hyperbole when I read some pundits saying that the Republican party was on its way to becoming a regional, not a national, force in politics. But in this cycle at least, it seems it’s advantage: Democrats. We’ll see how we’re doing in about…