(1) Watching Jon Stewart on The Daily Show last night as he exposed Mike Huckabee for having the depth and opacity of plastic food wrap was positively sublime. While discussing gay marriage, Stewart managed to be both translucent and considerate, even respectful, and it made Huckabee only look more the simpleton and bigot. I don't just admire Stewart, I think I may be falling in love with him.
(2) I saw Mission Impossible III a couple nights ago and, uh, that movie kicks fucking ass. At the time of the film's release, Tom Cruise was ever present in the way only an A-list celebrity can be and, combined with its predecessor's overwhelmingly negative reviews, rushing out to the theater or queuing this sequel up on Netflix just didn't seem like an appropriate application of time. I was wrong. Now, I'm not suggesting this movie is meaningful or anything of the sort, I'm saying it's a couple hours of whiz-bang action which manages to actually be gritty and harrowing. How about this: sans all the Heath Ledger scenes, MI3 is more watchable than The Dark Knight. Really.
(3) Last Thursday, I mentioned I bought $100 with of tuna on the internet. Specifically, I bought 30 cans of tuna (24 Original, 6 Original in Olive Oil) from Wild Pacific Seafood. On Saturday--two days later for those keeping track at home--I received a FedEx package with all 30 cans and a handwritten note thanking me for the order and offering suggestions on how to consume this tuna.
I wish I could say I have a dozen different preparations for tuna fish but I don't. I mix with mayo, kosher salt, and pepper; spread on toasted bread often over a couple slices of salami; cover with cheddar; and melt in the oven. Tuna is comfort food for me. It's always in the cupboard; it's easy and quick to make; I can eat it when I'm in a hurry, not feeling good, or just in the mood for something familiar. I always eat it after yoga.
I tried a lot of the tuna at the store and, while the taste of this tuna is superior, I was actually most drawn at first to the container. First, it's 3.5 oz instead of the traditional 5. Five ounces is too much--I'm not feeding three kids here. Second, it has a pull off top so my fear of can openers needn't be confronted.
Normally I buy this stuff at PCC where I'd get a 10% discount for ordering a case. However, there would be four to six weeks between the time I ordered and the time it finally arrived and it was just a big hassle. Ordering off the site, I paid full price plus shipping but I didn't pay it to PCC who paid their distributor who paid the fisherman, I paid the people on the boat and they sent me a package from the boat.
So, it's not cheap, but if you like tuna and supporting local sustainable et cetera, I highly recommend.
Mark Muller--owner of Max Motors in Butler, Missouri where his "buy a car, get a free gun" promotion has quadrupled sales--credits Barack Obama as the inspiration:
"[Obama] said all those people in the Midwest, you've got to have compassion for them because they're clinging to their guns and their Bibles. I found that quite offensive. We all go to church on Sunday and we all carry guns."
The Saw films represent the flagship series in the "person tied to a chair and tortured" horror genre (see also: Hostel, Captivity, The Passion of the Christ). In each of the Saw movies, someone wakes up in a room with a clockwork deathtrap a) strapped to their face, b) strapped to their neck, c) stuck through their flesh with hooks.
[...]
The first Saw movie [is] a neat idea for a short film inexcusably stretched to feature length. Now with four installments under its belt (and parts five and six already in the pipeline), the Saw conceit has been stretched even thinner, padded with useless back story and so many recurring characters and dark secrets that the entire enterprise resembles a soap opera for young men.
[...]
The Saw movies are [...] full of deathtraps, nerve gas, slow-acting poisons, and a complete misunderstanding of how electricity works.
"Life Without Leanne" by Larry Doyle is Act Two of This American Life episode 314 originally aired 2006-06-23. This bit starts at 21:15 from the start of the show and runs about seven minutes. The podcast can be listened to or downloaded from thisamericanlife.com. If you're looking for a laugh, I highly recommend.
Hitchens, Christopher. "She's No Fundamentalist: What people get wrong about Ayaan Hirsi Ali." Slate.com 5 March 2007. 7 March 2007 <http://www.slate.com/id/2161171/>
Guest host Bill Moyers talks to philosopher Daniel C. Dennett. Dennett is the director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. His latest book is "Breaking The Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon."
There's a long intro and closing credits; the meat's from 2:20 to 54:17. The music over the closing credits is abhorrent.
Several polls indicate that the term "atheism" has acquired such an extraordinary stigma in the United States that being an atheist is now a perfect impediment to a career in politics (in a way that being black, Muslim or homosexual is not). According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 37% of Americans would vote for an otherwise qualified atheist for president.
I have become quite familiar with how people of faith rise to the defense of God. As it turns out, there aren’t a hundred ways of doing this. There appear to be just three: either a person argues that a specific religion is true, or he argues that religion is useful, or he simply attacks atheism as intolerant, elitist, irrational, or otherwise worthy of contempt.
A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found.
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