Metropolis

Metropolis is an anime flick currently playing at Dendy Martin Place. I am not a huge follower of anime, but I’ve seen enough of it to be familiar with the Japanese style. To Western eyes, it’s strange. A mishmash of styles, both Western and Eastern reverberate throughout the film, from architecture to music. The portrayal of the futuristic city of Metropolis is offset by the Art Deco buildings crouched under the towering techno Ziggurat. Ziggurat is, of course, the ancient Akkadian term for for a tower, of which the Tower of Babylon was one. Probably the strangest moment in the movie, but something so disctinctly Japanese was during the apocalyptical climax – a gigantic explosion is replaced, cut out instead by Ray Charles’ “I Can’t Stop Loving You”. There’s actually a lot of jazz in that movie, intermixed with more traditional sounding anime music. Was an enjoyable movie, but it’s a surreal world those tormented Japanese minds (could they be anything else?) concoct. Tormented, and a lot of issues with self-identity. Perhaps this reflects on national identity as well. When developing countries develop, they tend to Westernised. However, arguably Japan is more modernised in the technological sense than any other country in the world, yet its culture has still stood strong (from my armchair amateur’s point of view). You get Japanese youth walking around with crazy hairstyles and girls trying to look white, but these same people bow and appear subservient in the Japanese way. I dunno, this is all speculation on my part, could be totally off the track. But yeah, the movie was a good change from the blockbusters.

  1:31am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Movies  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Stuff

Last day of work. Origin was a blast on Wednesday night, too bad about the result. Went out to catch the Brazil-Turkey match in the city afterwards, then overslept and turned up late to work the following day.

Crude comment of the night, delivered by the plastered blokes behind us at the footy who provided the night’s commentary: (To one of the cheerleaders) “Show us where you got hit by the axe!”

  9:29am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow from Work, Parramatta  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Charlotte Gray

If you like wartime flicks, this is probably for you. Solid movie, but nothing for me that stood out.

  9:14am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow from Work, Parramatta  •  Movies  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

It’s Green

Dark Magnet is back. Except that it’s not called that anymore. It’s called Lime Jelly. That’s what happens when you forget to renew your domain name.

  12:14pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow from Work, Parramatta  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Hmm

You know, it’s a bit of a scary thing when you realise that peoples e-mail addresses in your address book are no longer ending in “@hotmail.com” or “@student.unsw.edu.au”, but “@corporation.com.au” and “@company.com”.

Finished my IS Security exam today, just have to get the thesis proposal in next Monday, finish up at OneSteel this Friday, and I’m on holidays! Going to Stadium Oz to watch the State of Origin match (go the blues!) tonight and probably head into the city afterwards and catch the soccer. The semester from hell is almost over!

  4:43pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Democratic?

Turning your back on the President when he makes a speech now constitutes as disturbing the peace. America, vanguard of democracy, threatens arrest of students for dissenting with the President – for facing the wrong way! Does anyone else find this distinctly troubling?

yeah, bush is a real totalitarian, ain’t he?

the story you linked was nothing more than a distorted whine of a
spoiled college activist (regardless of whether you disagree with the
policies of the president, he deserves a modicum of respect for agreeing
to speak at any commencement ceremony). your assessment of it was quite
inaccurate as well.

the author writes that the police officer told him “if we chose to
leave, the charges would be dropped immediately.” sounds like what
really happened is a couple people got ejected for being dicks at a
commencement ceremony and were threatened with arrest if they decided to
defy the ejection. i see no evidence that anyone was arrested for simple
symbolic dissent.

commencements in america are often stringent like this. i know of
several guys who were forbidden from participating in graduation
exercises for far, far less than this.

america has arrested no one for simple dissent, as you laughably claim.
come on!
-Nathan

Now that is an interesting point, isn’t it? True, these students were not arrested. They were ejected, and I assume if they defied that, then charges would be pressed. Whether the police could legally press charges for an act like that or not is really a separate issue. The fact is that they were censored, and subsequently threatened. I am not sure of the exact circumstances of this report, nor am I sure of American law. I suppose it is also the right of any organisation to eject visitors to private property (the stadium), but the motivations were not exactly democratic in this instance. I’d also agree with you that this is nothing new in society, but it is also interesting to note how it does not bother some people at all.

“regardless of whether you disagree with the policies of the president, he deserves a modicum of respect for agreeing to speak at any commencement ceremony” – I would agree that his status as President entitles him to respect. As part of a Democratic nation, even though one does not vote for the President, by being part of a Democracy you agree to defer to the majority. In the same token, no one is inherently wrong for disrespecting the President in a situation like this. It is rude, yes, but there is nothing unlawful about being rude (save for instances of contempt in court etc.)

  10:54pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Culture  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

World Cup Blunders

World Cup refereeing errors. Yep, the linesman flagging Morientes’ ball as out in the SPA v KOR match was plain wrong.

In other news, after England’s defeat, some pissed off Pommie commentators had their post-match chat broadcast out when someone forgot to switch off the microphone. Reference to “fucking Krauts” made. Commentators mortified.

  4:43pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Sports  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Monday

The torment, it continues. Thanks Tama!

  8:21pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Business & Finance  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

World Cup

Shit! Korea’s unbelievable dream run continues… Korea wins 5-3 on penalties over a third straight European soccer powerhouse, Spain.

  7:11pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Sports  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Title Pics

Thanks to Pete who created a couple more title pics for me: 1, 2. And just in case anyone from PwCC visits this site (and I was told at my interview, they have)… it’s only a joke :)

  3:10pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Site News  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Joke

Thanks Dac for this e-mail forward entitled, “Shake it, don’t break it.”

Howard is 95 and lives in a senior citizen home. Every night after dinner, Howard goes to a secluded garden behind the centre to sit and ponder his accomplishments and long life. One evening, Mildred, aged 87, wanders into the garden. They begin to chat, and before they know it, several hours have passed. After a short lull in the conversation,
Howard turn to Mildred and asks, “Do you know what I miss most of all?”

She asks, “What?” and he replies, “SEX.”

Mildred exclaims, “Why you old fart, you couldn’t get it up if I held a gun to your head!”
“I know”, Howard says, “but it would be nice if a woman just held it for a while”.
“Well, I can oblige”, says Mildred, who gently unzips his trousers, removes his manhood and proceeds to hold it.
Afterward, they agree to meet secretly each night in the garden where they would sit and talk and Mildred would hold Howard’s manhood.

Then one night, Howard didn’t show up at their usual meeting place. Alarmed, Mildred decided to find Howard and make sure that he was O.K. She walked around the senior citizen home where she found him sitting by the pool with another female resident, Ethel, who was holding Howard’s manhood! Furious, Mildred yelled, “You two timing creep! What does Ethel have that I don’t have”?

Howard smiled happily and replied, “Parkinson’s”.

  4:39pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow from Work, Parramatta  •  Humour  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Change under the couch

Ever wonder how you’d go about buying yourself a private jet?

  2:08pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow from Work, Parramatta  •  Miscellaneous  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

War3

I have played the final version of Warcraft 3. And it is Good.

  1:54pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow from Work, Parramatta  •  Consumer Electronics  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Goedel’s Incompleteness Theorem

An intriguing theorem:

In 1931, the Czech-born mathematician Kurt Gödel demonstrated that within any given branch of mathematics, there would always be some propositions that couldn’t be proven either true or false using the rules and axioms … of that mathematical branch itself. You might be able to prove every conceivable statement about numbers within a system by going outside the system in order to come up with new rules an axioms, but by doing so you’ll only create a larger system with its own unprovable statements. The implication is that all logical system of any complexity are, by definition, incomplete; each of them contains, at any given time, more true statements than it can possibly prove according to its own defining set of rules.

Gödel’s Theorem has been used to argue that a computer can never be as smart as a human being because the extent of its knowledge is limited by a fixed set of axioms, whereas people can discover unexpected truths … It plays a part in modern linguistic theories, which emphasize the power of language to come up with new ways to express ideas. And it has been taken to imply that you’ll never entirely understand yourself, since your mind, like any other closed system, can only be sure of what it knows about itself by relying on what it knows about itself.

  12:19am (GMT +10.00) tomorrow  •  Science & Technology  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

The Mothman Prophecies

This movie just didn’t do it for me. It’s more suited to be one of those discovery channel documentaries than a Hollywood movie. That’s the risk you take, I suppose, when you use a real-world unsolved mystery as a plot vehicle. I can’t recommend it.

  9:11pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Movies  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Below the Belt

I’ve heard about having to be aggressive and going for the ball, but this is just too much. Yellow cards for shirt pulling, what about shorts pulling? heh

  8:13pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Humour  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Spiderman

Yep, go see it. Great casting, great camerawork, great adaptation. If you read the comic books, all the better.

  4:30pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow from Work, Parramatta  •  Movies  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Stranger than Fiction

Man sentenced to a 5-mile run. Reminds me of that episode of Ed, “Wheel of Justice“.

Sidenote: Television Without Pity is an excellent resource. Great for you missed last night’s episode of <insert showname here> because your mum couldn’t find the Record button on the VCR.

  3:08pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow from Work, Parramatta  •  Current Affairs  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Kuro5hin

I’m not a regular reader of K5, but in response to the threat of closure, K5 readers have poured in a torrent of cash ($20k over the last couple days). Personally, I’m still trying to figure out why he needs $70k to run a web site, if he doesn’t have to pay for bandwidth or hosting! I suppose that is his annual income, but an annual salary of $70k is not exactly a non-profit level of revenue…

Some would argue purchasing power parity, but the equivalent salary level of someone making US$70k in the US would be around A$70k in Australia (doing the same job). Factoring in exchange rates and even burgernomics, goods sold in the US are probably only 50% more dear than those in Australia when prices are converted to US$. I’m sorry, $70k is a more than comfortable salary, even by american standards. More so when the median US household income pegs at just over $42k.

Now, I guess Rusty (K5’s owner) may claim that if he had a real job, his skill set could earn him $70k, so he wants to make that much from K5 if he’s going to keep doing it. And I suppose that’s fair enough, but it does seem a little devious to me.

  1:16pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow from Work, Parramatta  •  General Media  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

The Date Project

Some guy from Portland trying to get a girlfriend. I would acutally recommend someone like him to read RooshLog, there are some valuable nuggets of info on that site (and often the advice can be transferred into general success in life, as opposed to just getting in someone’s pants).

  1:00pm (GMT +10.00) tomorrow from Work, Parramatta  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  •