The opinionated fool declareth:

Oooh, second of the morning. Watch out, Holterhoff's on a roll! I was thinking about something someone said at a Halloween party I was at last Friday. She was talking about having shark fin soup at a wedding she'd been to. You may know, you may not. Shark meat isn't very popular (ie - no demand and no market), however sharks fin is a delicacy in Chinese cuisines. So lost of sharking boats capture sharks, haul them up, perforate and tear off the cartilaginous and meaty fins, then toss the shark back into the water. Of course after this happens, the shark is hardly going to be as agile or mobile (not to mention probably in agony). These sharks usually quickly become victims of predation after leading a short and miserable existence. The dilemma was this: the girl was aware of the - how would I say this - immorality? - inhumanness? associated with this practice and the production of sharks fin meat. But of course the caterers had already bought, received and cooked up...

New thing!!! A music group from Norway: Röyksopp . I've got a couple of their albums through questionable (illegal) means, and if it holds up, I'll be buying these albums. Down-tempo beats, some good synth work, it's like... part Interpol mixed with part Basement Jaxx, with maybe some new-age synth swells in some tracks, department store/elevator music and trance bass underneath it all. It's just... man, it's good. :) Good, good stuff. Good late highway music, it seems. EDIT/UPDATE: Most of the videos they have on their website are in RealPlayer format (gag me). Youtube to the rescue! A good smattering of Röyksopp: Remind Me - Totally fascinating music video. At once, rather beautiful and depressing. Probably my favorite song and video from them I've seen. Poor Leno What Else Is There Only This Moment - the 2nd best video here... I dig the whole transcendental 60s-Europe thing.

I maybe just posted the same post 7 times. Apologies, Blogger is having problems.

Cold Front - by Pavel Chichikov Phosphorescent floating buffalo. Flanks of livid platinum, silver bellies Dazzling the eyes turned up to see them, Grazing eastward in migration Trees whip round their red and yellow thatch, Supple necks, their knuckled trunks Twist and bow, these falling forests Underneath the stamping northern winds Silent winds except for these Gold ecstatic roaring trees ------- I love that last stanza: Silent winds except for these Gold ecstatic roaring trees I could read that over and over: Silent winds except for these Gold ecstatic roaring trees Silent winds except for these Gold ecstatic roaring trees Silent winds except for these Gold ecstatic roaring trees Silent winds except for these Gold ecstatic roaring trees Silent winds except for these Gold ecstatic roaring trees Silent winds except for these Gold ecstatic roaring trees Iambic... heptameter? Iambic heptameter is cool. :)

Which is good. But also means its worky time. Party tonight @ The Howlette's.

Honey bee genome is "completed." NOW GET WORKING ON ZEBRAFISH !!!

...apparently didn't take his Parkinsin's medications before going to a Senate hearing on human embryonic stem cell research in order to exaggerate the symptoms of the disease. The idea being that human embryonic stem cells are a sure cache chocked full of cures for every disease... If you have to lie to support what you advocate... maybe you're advocating lies?

A zinger of a commentary that ultimately should make you uncomfortable. Gazing upon the ruins of Timgad in North Africa, a city founded as Thamugas by the emperor Trajan in 100 a.d., and destroyed by the Vandals after it had lost its cultural balance, Hilaire Belloc wrote: “We sit by and watch the Barbarian, we tolerate him; in the long stretches of peace we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence, his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creeds refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond: and on these faces there is no smile.” (The "Massachusetts Senator" in question is Gerry Eastman Studds , a gay, Democratic Senator for 24 years, reelected even after it was found he'd had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old Senate page in '73. He died recently, and I, too, noted the factual error that the articles written about him containing the words, "his husband.") Or maybe it shouldn'...

One of my favorite books is being released as a blockbuster movie - The Gates of Thermopylae . The movie will be called 300 - the supposed number of Spartans who held the narrow pass of Mt. Thermopylae for a number of days knowing they would eventually be smashed and killed to the last man, giving the Greek civilization a time to amass an organized defence from the well nigh million-strong marching force of Persians seething into the region. It's said that the events at Thermopolae were a hinge on which human history itself turned on for a day. Greek thought, very much a part of our foundation as Westerners - rationalism and belief that man is a logical being and can recognize the Truth through correct use of his noodle - survived the attempted murder by superstitious barbarism. You can read up on the Battle of Thermopylae here . It's probably one of the most inspiring stories I know. Told the Persian archers numbered so many that their arrows would blot out the sun, a so...

Headlines along the lines of "Plane hijacked to protest Pope's trip to Turky" were given top billing at all the major news outlets. As soon as new information came out suggesting that the hijackers were actually Christians seeking asylum from an oppressive Muslim government - news coverage quickly dried-up. So, let's review: bad things happening in the world that can be ostensibly traced back to the Pope? Headlines news. Christians trying to escape persecution from Muslims because of their beliefs? Practically ignored. Finally, who started the (false) rumor that the hijacker was protesting Pope Benedict's trip to Turkey? It seems to have originated from Turkish telivision stations, who were interviewing the head of Turkish airlines as well as several high-ranked Turkish officials (including the Istanbul vice governor Vedat Muftuoglu who told CNN-Turk "They [the hijackers] said their action was to protest the pope’s visit."). So where did ...

Now it's the time of year where I publicly announce how astounded I am that my finances are in such good order for being on a Federally-funded student stipend. I think I'll go out and make an impulsive purchase.

These guys obviously never finished grade-school: "Let's hijack a plane to show how peaceful we are and how wrong the Pope was to bring up Islam's connection with terrorism." link

The following are a couple things that I posted in an online forum that Matt and I have been following since way back when we were into Unreal Tournament gaming (1999!)... anyhow, the board eventually morphed into a bunch of people who knew each other from gaming together, into a group of people from America and Europe who talk, bicker, laugh, etc., about current events since UT is no longer played very much. Anyhow, there was recently a topic started ( here - warning, pg13 language, etc) that soon became a discussion about torture, and how Bush may sign into law a Bill to allow non-adherence to the Geneva Convention in some cases, presumably to allow for "torture." Anyway, here are a couple of my responses which sum up my feelings on the issue. I've tried to kind of edit out some things so you can just read them as stand alone statements of mine without having to read the discussion. Warning: this is just my opinion. You might think its naive, or trite, or stupid, or...

1.) Yes, I'm still alive. Been out of communication with a lot of people, so - sorry! It's kind of funny when you receive 4 or 5 things from people saying "are you still alive?" within the span of a couple days, you realize maybe you've gotten behind on social aspects... 2.) I was also told I haven't been blogging enough recently. So here (and then the next post to come (which will be above this post as you read this) are some solid updatzorz. 3.) I fed my snake. It will eat thawed, frozen, pre-killed mice, so... which is better (less gross): the fact that I won't have to go and buy mice at the store every other week to feed my snake, or that I now have a tub of dead mice (each in a baggy, the baggies in a sealable container) in my freezer? That was a hungry snake. I dangled the thawed mouse right outside the igloo-hole from the snake's hidebox... and WHAM! not a tenth of a second later, the mouse was gone. I lifted up the hide box (which momen...