10 - Leon in The Professional (1994)
9 - Optimus Prime in Transformers: The Movie (1986)
8 - Tony Montana in Scarface (1983)
7 - The Terminator in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
6 - Bill in Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004)
5 - Goose in Top Gun (1986)
4 - Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars (1977)
3 - Nick in The Deer Hunter (1978)
2 - William Wallace in Braveheart (1995)
1 - Apollo Creed in Rocky IV (1985)
So I'm glad that the NY Times and journalists could sit on an exciting story to help save one of their own. In the future, will they do this to save some random civilian, or some US soldier?NYT, today, July 2:
KABUL (AP) -- An American soldier, who disappeared after walking off his base in eastern Afghanistan with three Afghan counterparts, is believed captured, officials said Thursday.Now it's not clear that the military even asked the press for silence. But the contrast is worth noting, dontcha think?
Spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias said the soldier disappeared Tuesday.
Grant Martin of the Kansas City Star sums up the situation in a quick paragraph:
"Just in case you've turned your TV News off because you were tired of MJ stories- Honduras' president supposedly wanted to change the Constitution and serve for more years than allowed, the Supreme Court and Congress ruled that as illegal, he tried to hold a referendum, the Army refused, he fired the Army chief, the Supreme Court told him to reinstate the chief, he refused and had some group raid the warehouse that stored the referendum ballots, and so the Supreme Court ordered the military to arrest him and send him packing."
Zelaya did more than have "some group" raid the warehouse. On June 26, he issued a decree ordering all government employees to take part in the referendum. Except the referendum can't change the constitution. Octavio Sanchez explains why this stripped him of his office:
Quantum Physics offers some weird results, to say the least. Paul Quincey, a physicist at Britain's National Physical Laboratory, points out just how weird the concept of gravity is, when you think about it. And offers an explanation that offers a much clearer philosophical view of some key quantum physics results. From the Nov/Dec 2008 Skeptical Inquirer, "Quantum Weirdness: An Analogy from the Time of Newton"
"...the borderlands of scientific knowledge have always contained some ideas considered virtually supernatural at the time, and it is instructive to see with hindsight how such ideas are ultimately accepted or rejected by mainstream science. Second, there are illuminating parallels between gravity and quantum theory that may help us come to terms with the current philosophical difficulties surrounding quantum theory."
I like this quote best:
Every once in a while, a product lives up to its billing. As an example, the Smart Spin Storage system (vid. patent) for leftover containers and lids may be the best $20 I ever spent on kitchen related equipment. Haven't seen the quality issues some others have experienced (though I could wish for a more robust high-end version), and have used it every day for a couple years now.
As many of you might have guessed from a previous post, I'm on a liquid diet/ very soft foods diet at the moment. We knew in advance that soups and smoothies would be it for a bit, so we went to a local store (cheaper) and bought one of those small Magic Bullet mini-blender things. So far, it has been as advertised. Throw the fresh/frozen smoothie ingredients in mug, screw blade onto mug top, drop in and blend, rinse blade and set to dry, drink from same cup, put cup in dishwasher. Since the blade is always either fully enclosed or without power, it's inherently very safe, and the whole process is definitely a big improvement over cuisinart/blender alternatives.
Recently tried the thing with eggs, turkey, cheese, and salsa to make fully blended scrambled eggs. That worked really well, too: flavorful and fluffy. I could wish for the mugs to be microwaveable, like the bullet cups, so they could be used as is for drinking heated soups. And I can't speak to the thing's long-term durability. Overall, however, I've been pleasantly surprised with this one.
U.S. combat troops, under agreement with the Iraqi government, abandoned the country's cities today amid public celebrations and private concerns over Iraq's future security.I'm worried but hopeful; worried because the impetus for this was political - both in the US and Iraq - more than based on military conditions. I'm hopeful because conflicts end when the political becomes more important than the military.
The government declared today a national holiday and official cars were decorated with streamers and flowers. Revellers took to the streets to toot on trumpets and beat drums while martial music and history documentaries filled television screens. U.S. military officers visited Iraqi bases in several regions to wish their counterparts well.
"We are behind you," Col. Ryan Gonsalves, commander of U.S. troops near the northern city of Kirkuk, assured officers of the Iraqi 12th Army Division. A luncheon and dancing marked the occasion. "It's their day, their sovereignty," he said later in an interview.
In a televised ceremony in Baghdad, Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki guaranteed the government could keep its citizens safe. "Those who think that Iraqis are not able to protect their country and that the withdrawal of foreign forces will create a security vacuum are making a big mistake." The country has been hit by a series of car and suicide bombs that killed about 250 people in the past two weeks.
Every once in a while, Foreign Policy magazine says something sensible.
"[Almost 3 million] internally displaced people (IDPs) fled on just a few hours notice -- before a military offensive meant to "flush out" the terrorists in the North-west Frontier Province's Malakand district.... [But the recent] attack on the Pearl Continental [hotel] forced international agencies to withdraw their international staff from Peshawar, disrupting assistance to the hundreds of thousands now living in government-run camps.
The IDP situation matters for more than its very real status as a humanitarian crisis. Between 80 and 90 percent of the IDPs are not in the camps; they are bunking with overstretched relatives and friends who receive no outside aid whatsoever. If the international community responds to their needs, these IDPs could present a potentially powerful constituency of civil opposition to extremism. They fled their homes because they reject the militants' worldview. If and when peace returns, they, as a resident living in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas told Crisis Group, will be the robust civil society that is so badly needed in the conflict zones."
I'm less blithe about the necessary connection between leaving and rejection of extremism. Many Arabs left the immediate conflict zone in 1948 per instructions, expecting to return over the Jews' dead bodies. The act of leaving, in and of itself, spoke to little more than a wish to be out of the line of fire. On the other hand...
Off for some painful minor surgery, which falls into the category of "things you know won't make you happy (but might later on, mayhap after you can, like, eat again)." At the other end of this particular scale, I offer Cracked.com's combination of links to real science and viciously acerbic wit.
Presenting, "5 Things You Think Will Make You Happy (But Won't)". With the recurring sub-headings of "So, what the problem?" and "Wait, it gets worse..." An excerpt:
"Most of us get out of bed everyday purely because it edges us one step closer to some kind of financial future we want. If we won the lottery, most of us would show up to the office the next day wearing an ankle-length fur coat and enough bling to make Mr. T look Amish, and only stay just long enough to take a dump in our boss's inbox.
So What's the Problem?
Hey, remember when we said earlier that most people wouldn't do the body-switching thing for fear they'd wake up in Nigeria...."
There aren't a lot of days you're going to hear me saying that people like Carl Levin [D-MI] and Dianne Feinstein [D-CA] are on the right track. But there's at least one issue where I have to give them props for trying, and actually think their proposals make more sense than the White House or, to date, the GOP. Newsweek's "The Insurgents" talks about work that Maria Cantwell [D-WA], Byron Dorgan [D-ND] et. al. are doing to deal with financial industry regulation. They're closer to the heart of the matter than blathering about nebulous concepts like "systemic risk"...
"Dorgan warned in 1999 that "massive taxpayer bailouts" would result from the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, a move that allowed investment and commercial banks to merge. Both Dorgan and Cantwell are worried about loopholes that will permit firms to keep trillions of dollars of derivative trades in the shadows, escaping regulation. Levin, for his part, wants to rescind many of the Clinton-era laws that led to deregulation, including the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which exempted credit default swaps from regulation. Unless giant financial firms like Citigroup and AIG are broken up, Sanders says, they'll have to be bailed out again someday."
And you know what? I think they're right. Actually, I support guys like Chris Whalen, whose prepared remarks to the Senate Banking Committee argued, convincingly, that Credit Default Swaps should simply be prohibited outright, as fraudulent. That their pricing is so inherently so non-transparent, and that they are inherently wealth-destroying by increasing the level of risk and loss in the system for the very thing they're supposed to insure against, that they should not exist.
They do exist, because in the short term, their opaqueness generates supra-normal profits for certain firms, even though they are likely to trigger those firms' implosion at a later date. But by then, the people currently in charge have probably made millions in bonuses, and don't suffer from the crash. Unlike the people who still work there. Or the larger economy.
Hmmm.
I'm not certain whether to be oddly reassured by this, or highly alarmed.
"Dario Floreano and his team at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology built a swarm of mobile robots [with unprogrammed learning A.I.s], outfitted with light bulbs and photodetectors. These were set loose in a zone with illuminated "food" and "poison" zones which charged or depleted their batteries."
What followed was a set of standard 'genetic algorithm' type culls for most-fit results, as measured by scores, followed by redownload/ reproduction of the winners across the same robot set. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. What happened next has been seen in pure simulations like "Life," but with robots it's more explicit:
"Within fifty generations of this electronic evolution, co-operative societies of robots had formed - helping each other to find food and avoid poison. Even more amazing is the emergence of cheats and martyrs...."
Cracked.com, in "The 6 Best 2012 Apocalypse Theories"
"You may have noticed a recent trend of trying to fit every hackneyed doomsday prophecy into the same red-letter year of 2012. The theories are obtuse, their connections are flimsy and the perceived consequences are completely unsubstantiated.
Unsurprisingly, these prophecies are enormously popular."
Whereupon they proceed to explain, and deliver a major New Age ass-whuppin' to, each and every one of them. It's kind of like having a set of 6 hippies thrown into a Wrestlemania cage match.
Which, by the way, I'd pay good money to see...
