wow... I didn't know whales could live to be this old...

imagine carrying a fragment of a weapon someone shot at you in your skin ... for a century...

This is a pretty good intro to crazy quantum physics

Schwarzenegger's an interesting politician. In spite of all the ridiculousness that surrounded his initial election (the dozens of opponents, the idiotic "Governator" branding), he really seems to have found his own way. The quiet story of the US elections last fall is that he won quite handily in a real campaign (I think the margin was something like a million votes.)

Maybe all that rhetoric about not needing to tie himself to special interests actually meant something. I mean, how many politicians would be willing to publicly that their great political inspiration (especially after having married into the Kennedy family) was Nixon?

He's definitely not afraid to do what he thinks is right (his emergence on the environment, and his strong climate change stance is definitely a departure from his party affiliation.) Should be interesting to see how the rest of his term plays not, not to mention where he heads once he hits his gubernatorial term limit in 2010.

Maybe I haven't given this _____ Has Talent thing a fair shake. This video is about as feel-good as I've seen from reality TV, but I have a gnawing feeling it's not a common occurrence on shows like these:

well, Arnie just made a very good impression on me...

he's on the Hour with George Strombolopolous... and said that he didn't get elected to be governor by the republican party, he got elected by the people, and so he does what the people want/need him to do, not the republican party. i'm impressed.

programa tetris japoneses:

One last thing on the whole meta-story of Paris Hilton coverage, and then I'll be done.

On June 8, 1972, Nick Ut snapped this infamous image, which followed an American napalm attack on the Vietnamese village of Trang Bang. It became a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph, and remains a defining image of that war.

On June 8, 2007, the same photographer is taking this image of the world's most famous hotel heiress in a police car on her way to court, while another disastrous war has the United States mired in a nation on the other side of world.

I get the sense that the second image will define the present war, albeit in a completely different way.

My opinion of Christopher Hitchens seems to be in a constant state of flux. He's the embodiment of a pompous ass, and yet seems to relish it. His television appearances smack of a sneering intellectualism, but it's almost comic, as though he's having one big laugh with himself and the audience, often at the expense of the host.

You need look no further than Hitchens' appearance discussing Jerry Falwell on Hannity & Colmes for an example of that (Actually that's a great picture of how I generally feel about Hitchens. He starts off rather intelligently and ends with "If you give Falwell an enema you could bury him in a matchbox.")

And my opinion of him remains in flux over this piece in Salon: Siege of Paris. On the one hand, parts of his opinion piece rub me the wrong way. On the other hand, this seems very nearly perfectly aligned with my take on the whole thing:

Stuck in my own trap of writing about a nonsubject, I think I can defend my own self-respect, and also the integrity of a lost girl, by saying two things. First, the trivial doings of Paris Hilton are of no importance to me, or anyone else, and I should not be forced to contemplate them. Second, she should be left alone to lead such a life as has been left to her. If this seems paradoxical, then very well.

McSweeney's needs some help:

As you may know, it's been tough going for many independent publishers, McSweeney's included, since our distributor filed for bankruptcy last December 29. We lost about $130,000—actual earnings that were simply erased. Due to the intricacies of the settlement, the real hurt didn't hit right away, but it's hitting now. Like most small publishers, our business is basically a break-even proposition in the best of times, so there's really no way to absorb a loss that big.

Yeah, Bobby on the boat was saying how you probably don't even hear it or know it when it happens.

I think the point of the ending is that you don't know what happened. I'm pretty sure they just want people to speculate and create some buzz, and I think they were pretty successful on that front despite how much some people hated the ending. But I agree with the idea that whether or not Tony did or didn't get shot, that the last scene sort of puts you in Tony's shoes; every person everywhere looks suspicious and you're wondering "IS THAT GUY A HIRED GUN? IS HE A COP/FBI?". Just the level of paranoia is incredible, even when you're trying to relax, just eating in a greasey spoon diner with your family. I think the end of the show just sort of says THIS IS TONY'S LIFE, and this is all it can ever be. It goes on and on and on until one day it all just goes black.