People Powered Politics

Wow. Now that's a demonstration!
Depicted on the image to the left^[1] is just a scant few of the 2.4 million who were out demonstrating in Mexico this past Sunday.
They were out marching in favour of leftist presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who lost by 0.58% against right-wing conservative candidate Felipe Calderón a few weeks ago (López Obrador got 35.31% to Calderón's 35.89%, the difference being approximately 244,000 votes out of about 30 million votes cast between the two candidates, according to the official count). López Obrador has not accepted defeat, however, alleging irregularities in the voting process and hence demanding a recount. Florida 2000 anyone?
The outcome will ultimately be decided by a special tribunal called Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación, whose primary purpose is deciding electoral disputes. Certifying the validity of the presidential elections also falls within its jurisdiction, and it's within the tribunal's discretion to order a recount or an entirely new election.

2.4 million. Mexico has about 107 million inhabitants, meaning approximately 2.2% of the entire Mexican population was out demonstrating. I wonder what, if anything, could inspire that kind of passion in 2% of the Finnish population...oh yeah, Lordi. Though, perhaps that's a sign of just how well off we are in Finland...or how bad things are in Mexico. Whoever ends up winning the elections certainly has his work cut out for him.

The Wikipedia entry has more information on the elections.

^[1] Update: The picture was removed from the website I was linking to, so I removed it here as well.

Vacation

Yours truly goes on a well-earned vacation, so for the next couple of weeks I will only be posting sporadically, if at all. Everyone have a great summer!

Seacrest out. No, wait...surely I could think of a better sign-off than that. Hm...eh...hmm...aahh...
Good night, and good luck? Nah....hmm...
Take care of yourselves, and each other? Eeh....
...aah, what the heck. Seacrest out.

Newt Gingrich: Jackass

Is there a bigger jackass in politics today than Newt Gingrich? I mean, apart from every other politician.
He rose to fame as the brains behind the Republican take-over of the US congress in 1994. He was subsequently elected Speaker of the House and made Time Magazine's Man of the Year. It's all downhill from there. After a government shutdown, ethics charges and leading the charge to impeach Clinton, all the while having an affair himself, he resigned from the house altogether in 1998.

Okay, this is all well and good (and lord knows I left out some of the nastier stuff about his personal life, which can be found elsewhere), although it's nothing new. However, these recent comments (via Political Wire) about the conflicts in the Middle East are new:

Gingrich said in the coming days he plans to speak out publicly, and to the administration, about the need to recognize that America is in World War III.
...
"This is World War III," Gingrich said. And once that's accepted, he said calls for restraint would fall away...
...
There is a public relations value, too. Gingrich said that public opinion can change "the minute you use the language" of World War III. The message then, he said, is "'OK, if we're in the third world war, which side do you think should win?"

My God. People are dying left and right, and this guy's worrying about the PR value? How brazenly cynical a human being must one be to think of death and destruction in those terms? Can such a person even qualify as a human being? I'm by no means a naïve person and I'm well aware that politics is a dirty business, but this really takes the cake.
So, thought of the day: Newt Gingrich is a jackass.

Defeat of the Will

According to an article in Sweden's premiere tabloid rag (which is in Swedish, of course), a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Neurological Research, Wolf Singer, contends that a criminal can not be held responsible for the crimes he committed, as human beings do not possess free will, at least not in the sense it's commonly understood.

All the choices we make are the result of a pre-determined biological chain of events, with the choice being made before we're even aware of it. In a sense we are programmed by our upbringing and other environmental factors to react in a predictable manner to choices we are to make. A criminal is a human being with a faulty programming.

I'm neither a neurobiologist nor a philosopher. I am a blogger, though, which is all the credentials one needs in this day and age.
What little I know of how the brain functions, Singer's proposition of us being programmed to act a certain way makes sense.
And, as an aside, clearly there's something not quite right in the head of a murderer.

But "criminals can't helpt it" as an approach to lawmaking doesn't seem particularly smart at all. Not guilty of shoplifting due to insanity? Although, it might make for a viable defense, should the MPAA come a knockin'...

Things I Got Wrong

I have a habit of predicting things, being dead positive the future will prove me right. My areas of expertise are near infinite, as I dabble in politics, sports, entertainment, science, you name it. Unfortunately, more often than not, my predictions turn out to be dead wrong. Which brings us to this very blog entry. Here's a list of embarrassing predictions I've made in recent years:

• John Kerry would win the US presidential elections in a landslide
• Germany would make it to the World Cup finals
  
• Sauli Niinistö would narrowly win the Finnish presidential elections
• The Matrix Reloaded would be a great movie
• Paul Giamatti would win the best supporting actor Oscar. C'mon, George Clooney?!?
• There's no chance in hell that Finland would ever win the Eurovision
  

What can I say? Oops.

TUMotW: Below

Previous installments: Spartan, The Core

This week's movie: Below
Directed by David Twohy
Written by Lucas Sussman, Darren Aronofsky and David Twohy
Starring Matthew Davis, Bruce Greenwood, Olivia Williams, Scott Foley

Below is a world war II submarine horror movie. That sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it actually works quite well. The pedigree of the makers are not bad: David Twohy also wrote the movie adaptation of The Fugitive and directed the decent horror sci-fi flick Pitch Black (and its spectacularly crappy sequel The Chronicles of Riddick). Co-writer Aronofsky is of course an indie movie favourite whose other movies include Pi and Requiem for a Dream. Leading man Bruce Greenwood is of course a personal acting favourite, having starred in several excellent, but tragically underappreciated, features.

Clearly someone involved in the movie pissed off someone at distributor Dimension, as the movie only got a severely limited theatrical release. The movie went on to make about two bucks in theaters. Which is a pity, because this movie deserved better.

The plot is relatively straight-forward: a US submarine rescues the crew of a sunken battleship. Strange events begin to unfold aboard the submarine. Unlike many horror movies these days, Below doesn't go for all out gore and sheer explicitness. In fact, there's really only one jump-out-of-your-seat moment in the entire movie. The rest of the movie is spent subtly building up a creepy, uneasy atmosphere, greatly enhanced by the claustrophobic setting of a submarine.

Overall a highly enjoyable and well made movie.

Album of the Month: Music for the Divine

Glenn Hughes
Music for the Divine
2006, Frontiers Records

Produced by Glenn Hughes and Chad Smith

Glenn Hughes is a man who hardly needs any introduction, though I'm about to give a brief one nevertheless. Hughes is one of the best singers in the music business. He's perhaps most famous for singing and playing the bass on three of Deep Purple's best albums^[1], Burn, Stormbringer and Come Taste the Band during the mid-seventies. His career following his departure from Purple has been a bit of a mixed bag, but since the early 90s he's been regularly and consistently releasing solid solo albums. Favourites of mine include 1994's AOR masterpiece From Now On and last year's Soul Mover. To that list I'd like to add Hughes' latest album, Music for the Divine.

Music for the Divine builds and refines on the direction Hughes took with Soul Mover, which features a more funk rock approach than earlier Hughes records, though Hughes is certainly no stranger in that genre. Given the involvement of Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith, who co-produced both albums, the funkier style should perhaps not be particularly surprising.
Stand-out tracks include opener The Valiant Denial, Steppin' On, You Got Soul and Black Light.

Glenn Hughes' fantastic singing voice, the excellence of the other musicians involved and the impeccable song writing all come together to create not only the album of the month, but one of the musical highlights of 2006. Highly recommended stuff, and essential to all fans of good rock music.

^[1] In my humble opinion, MkII fans need not freak out

LotW: Kumyk

Previous installments: Occitan, Luxembourgish, Catalan, Faroese

As you can see by the previous entries, LotW has thus far been rather eurocentric. Not only that, but the languages presented thus far have perhaps not been particularly obscure, but are in fact quite well known. In an effort to counter that, it's time to head out east for this week's language: Kumyk.

Kumyk is a Turkic language, spoken primarily in the troubled Russian republic of Dagestan (okay, technically that's still in Europe, but it's a step in the right direction). It's spoken by some 300,000 people in that region and in small communities in Chechnya, Turkey, Syria and Iran. There are several closely related languages spoken in nearby regions, such as Nogai and Karachay-Balkar. Kumyk has also been heavily influenced by the major languages of the region, such as Azerbaijani and Russian, and bears many a ressemblance with Turkish (which is hardly surprising, given its classification as a Turkic language).

Both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets are currently in use when writing Kumyk; by 2010 it's planned that the Latin alphabet will be used exclusively. Written Kumyk has at time also used the Arabic alphabet. The Latin alphabet currently in use are based on the Turkish alphabet, containing such special characters as ş and ğ.

The Rosetta Project has samples of Kumyk, along with grammar and orthography.
The English Wikipedia entry consists of about three sentences, so this time I suggest brushing up on your German instead. In what appears to be Russian I also found this article, which may be of use to some (ironically it appears to have been written by a Finn).

Giving Head

So you're one of the best football players in the world. You've won a World Cup, a European Cup, a Champions League, the Spanish League, the Italian League, and numerous individual player accolades. You're in another World Cup final, which also happens to be your last game. The game is dead even and you're one of the key players, if not the key player. Your place in football history being secure, how do you go out in style, in a way people are not soon to forget?

Apparently you lunge head first right into an opposing team member's chest. I don't know what Materazzi (the lungee) said to Zidane (the lunger), but clearly it must have been the mother of all insults. My theory?

Materazzi: - Yo momma so ugly even the US team could score on that ass!

The moral, if there is a moral to be had, is that sports really does bring out the best in all of us. Or not.

The Weekly Box Office Commentary: Holy F***ing S**t! Edition

The weekend estimates are in, and all I can say is wow. Just wow. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is breaking records left and right. Apart from biggest opening weekend ever (at $132 million), it managed biggest opening day ever ($50 million), and if the estimates hold, it'll be the first movie ever to cross the $100 million line in two days. Wow, just wow. Hard to say how much money the flick will ultimately make, but rest assured it will be quite a lot. Though, X-Men: The Last Stand, which also opened to over $100 million earlier this year, took a nasty beating in subsequent weeks, and looks to end up with a comparatively paltry $230 million total. The word of mouth was mixed at best, though; if PotC is better received, $400 million is not out of the question. Non-probable, but not out of the question.

Superman apparently returned a bit too soon, as it took a nasty 58% drop, making "only" $22 million in its second week, for a grand total of $141 million (which PoTC almost made in a mere three days!). Not very good news for what supposedly is the world's most famous comic book character. Here's a brief list of superheroes beating Superman: Batman, Spider-Man, X-Men, Jesus.

An Inconvenient Truth is chugging along, having moved up to fourth highest grossing documentary, at about $15 million. At some point a few months ago I made the prediction it would end up with about $25 million, good for third place overall, which I think will hold.

In other box office news, the star power that is David Hasselhoff propels Click over the $100 million, making it the Hoff's second $100 million hit in a row, following 2004's Dodgeball.

TUMotW: The Core

Previous installments: Spartan

This week's flick: The Core
Directed by Jon Amiel
Written by Cooper Layne and John Rogers
Starring Hilary Swank, Aaron Eckhart, Stanley Tucci, Delroy Lindo, Bruce Greenwood, DJ Qualls

I get the feeling my entire blog readership (yeah, both of you) is having a WTH?^[1] moment right about now. But hear me out.
Don't get me wrong. The plot is ridiculous. Here's a brief run-down:

1. The earth's core stops spinning
2. Shit happens
3. A crack team of scientists decides to nuke the core into spinning
4. More shit happens
5. Saved!

This is essentially a big budget b-movie^[2]. It's a fun, stupid movie with a stellar cast, including the great Stanley Tucci and the tragically underrated Bruce Greenwood^[3], who unfortunately snuffs it about half way through the flick^[4].

This movie essentially belongs in the same category as fellow disaster movie Armageddon: it's not high art, but it's a good way to kill a couple of hours.

^[1] What the Hasselhoff?
^[2] b₃m?
^[3] Who also stars in several upcoming installments of TUMotW...
^[4] Spoiler? I'll give you a spoiler: at the end, Bruce Willis realises he's been dead through the entire movie. I'm not saying which movie, though.

World Cup Fever. Don't Catch It.

So we got two finalists. Ample time for petit moi to jump on the football bandwagon!

I always thought Germany would get to the finals, unless they met Brazil on the way there, but I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

As for France, I thought they were down for the count until they beat Spain. Then, after beating Brazil, there was little doubt in my mind they'd make it the finals. Don't get me wrong, I was definitely rooting for Portugal in the semifinals. We all love the underdogs.

Also, as for football being the world's sport, looks more like it's Europe's sport, after both Argentina and Brazil getting the boot in the quarter finals.

So, for the finals. I'm rooting for France. No particular reason why, other than to stick it to all the France bashers out there.
And then I can go back to not caring about football for another four years. Or two, the Eurocup is coming up...

The Weekly Box Office Commentary

Happy July 5th! No one celebrating July 5th? Okay then.
The latest box office numbers are in, and apparently Superman has returned, bringing in 74 million over the extended weekend^[1]. About time too, apparently the movie has been in the making for some 10 years and ended up costing 260 million dollars (of which at least 100 million had been spent before filming even began!). It doesn't beat the two Spider-Man flicks or the latest X-Men one, but it's a not too shabby number nevertheless.

An Inconvenient Truth brought in $2.6 million, moving the Truth up to the fifth highest grossing documentary of all time.

Other than that, not too much of interest. Other than The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift is making way too much money. I opted out of that franchise after...the first movie, and the idea that the box office returns may well secure the production of a fourth fast and furious flick...oh, the horror, the horror.

^[1] July 4th is Independence Day in the US, making Friday - Tuesday a five day weekend.

LotW: Faroese

Previous installments: Occitan, Luxembourgish, Catalan

We've ended up in the North Atlantic for this week's language of the week: Faroese.

Faroese is a Germanic language, or more specifically a West Scandinavian language, spoken primarily on the Faroe Islands and by Faroese expats in Denmark (The Faroe Islands is an autonomous region of Denmark). There's also a sizable minority of Faroese-speakers on Iceland. All told, about 80.000 - 90.000 people world wide speak Faroese.
Thanks to the remote location of the Faroe Islands, the Faroese language has evolved quite differently than mainland Danish, Swedish or Norwegian from the (now extinct) old Norse language, which was the common ancestor language spoken in Scandinavia during the Viking ages. Faroese grammar is relatively similar to Icelandic and old Norse, although the three are quite different when spoken. The same also holds true for the nynorsk dialect of Norwegian.

Although Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are pretty much mutually intelligible, this does not extend to Icelandic and Faroese, and Icelandic and Faroese are not typically mutually intelligible either.

For further reading, check out the English Wikipedia entry, or the Faroese one if you feel so inclined.

New Lordi Members, part two

About a month ago I took it upon me to, for the well-being of the Finnish music industry, replace all members in Finnish superstar rock band and surprise Eurovision 2006 winners Lordi. Clearly winning the Eurovision is bound to go to their heads, so we might as well line up replacements now, so we're prepared for the inevitable split.

Clearly Finland's only chance of ever winning the Eurovision again is to let Lordi represent us once more. I'm just doing my part to make sure Lordi is still around for next year's debacle in Helsinki.

So, without further ado, the second replacement is...Ann Coulter.

(Coulter's the one in the bottom right corner.)

To be continued...

"Some Mother******s Are Always Trying to Ice-Skate Uphill"

Apparently Blade: The TV Series premieres tonight in the US. I quite like the Blade trilogy of movies, particularly Blade II. If you're not familiar with the Blade movies, Blade is a half-man, half-vampire, who runs around killing vampires, equipped with various forms of high-tech gadgetry. What can I say, it's a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. I know some people are not particularly fond of Wesley Snipes^[1], who stars as Blade in all three movies, but he does quite well for himself in that role^[2].

I'm not sure about this TV series though. For one thing, it stars one Kirk 'Sticky Fingaz' Jones, a former(?) rapper, as Blade. Now, I'm not familiar with Jones' work as a rapper or as an actor, but picking 'Sticky Fingaz' as your artist name certainly raises some quality concerns. Besides that, what else is there to do storywise? In Blade: Trinity, Blade fought against Dracula (ably portrayed by Dominic Purcell and various forms of CGI). Where are you going to go after that? Fighting off Predators?

I'll definitely watch the series whenever it airs in Finland^[3], but I'm not expecting much.

^[1] Whose career has since been lost to the ravages of straight-to-video
^[2] Okay, the Blade character is not much of a stretch actingwise, but you have to admire a guy who gets paid to act like a prick. Isn't that everyone's dream job?
^[3] It should premiere on Finnish television in a couple of years, if ever...

Good News Everyone!

I can't quite believe it, but it appears to be true. Futurama is being revived, and at least 13 new episodes will be produced. At least if we are to believe Reuters:

Comedy Central has resurrected the former Fox animated series from "The Simpsons" creator Matt Groening and David X. Cohen. At least 13 new episodes will be produced -- the first since the series' original run from 1999-2003.

As the article then goes on to quote executives at Comedy Central, I would think Reuters aren't making stuff up. Although there's been talks about TV movies and new episodes since the series first was cancelled in 2002^[1], this time, for once, it seems to be legit. I can hardly wait! Futurama is one of my favourite series. While The Simpsons (Futurama creator Matt Groening's other animated TV series) have gone a bit stale over the years, I felt Futurama really could have gone on for a quite a while longer.

It should be noted that the new episodes won't premiere for quite a while, as we'll have to wait until 2008, some five years after the last batch of first-run episodes were aired. Still, something to look forward to!

And a special message to whatever executive at Fox that decided to cancel Futurama in the first place: Bite my shiny metal ass!

^[1] While cancelled in 2002, the last remaining episodes were aired in 2003

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Discworld

Via Slashdot^[1] I found this interesting article by Client DeBoer on the competing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD formats, both touted by their respective backers as the replacement for the DVD format. DeBoer posits that neither of the two will catch on with the general public, and lists the top ten reasons for them failing to do so. The point that rings most true to me is this one:

3. HD DVD and Blu-ray are NOT Quantum Leaps in Technology
Consumers came over in droves when CDs were released back in 1982. The new format offered not only a new digital media, but also a way to instantly access tracks across an entire album. Convenience, not technology, drove this format to almost instant consumer adoption. Fast forward a bit to 1997 when the first DVD player was released. Again, convenience, not technology, drove people to the market en masse. Unlike VHS tapes, the new DVD format was smaller, easily navigated and would not wear down over time like existing tape-based formats.

Exactly right. The introduction of the DVD was nothing short of a revolution. Blu-Ray? HD-DVD? Okay, so it's better than DVD, but is it better enough?
DeBoer also mentions the spectacular failure of SACD and DVD-Audio, two competing format intended to replace the CD. The first thing I thought the first time I heard of either a couple of years ago was "eh." Audio CDs are good enough. Perhaps not for those of you with golden ears, but for us mere mortals they most certainly are.

Besides, I wouldn't spend money on a player of one format or the other until I'm absolutely sure the one I'm picking is the format that will ultimately prevail. Let's just say I'm in possession of waaay too many Betamax tapes for me to get into the early-adoption game again. Another important issue is backwards compability; I'm not going to replace my DVD collection^[2], so any player I buy had better support DVDs as well.

Though, unlike the VHS and Betamax, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD have the exact same dimensions, and I can't imagine it being to difficult to create a player that could handle both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs. The end result might be much like the format war between the DVD-R and DVD+R burnable DVD formats: ultimately all burners just supported both, the format war essentially ending in a tie.
For the time being I'm sticking with my DVD collection, though. Until HVD comes along, that is.

^[1] Oh, don't start.
^[2] Which numbers well over 200 at this point. My salary is way too high.

Intraffication

A staple of the science fiction genre is the concept of virtual reality - an entirely artificial, computer simulated world, available at the flick of a switch. Many a science fiction story, most famously The Matrix, present an often dystopian world where one can lead an entire life being jacked in to a computer, not having to ever move a muscle while losing the very things that make us human in the process.
I submit that being a brain in a vat may not be such a bad idea after all - for one thing, one wouldn't have to endure traffic to get to work.

You see, traffic really brings out the worst in man.
For example, when you get a green light and thus are entitled to cross the road, and some jackass in a car comes within inches of hitting you, and then he has the audacity to be annoyed at you because you're standing in the way of his oh-so-precious car and hindering him from going about whatever incredibly important business he supposedly have.
Another example, you're crossing the road, only to be almost hit by three mopedists who apparently think red lights don't really apply to them. I don't know the fatality rates for collisions with mopeds, but I imagine being run over by a moped can result in rather serious injuries. If your goal in life is to die with some sense of dignity, clearly being run over by a freakin' moped is to be avoided. Standing up for freedom and democracy by standing in the way of a military tank with the very real danger of being killed is one thing, but being run over by some 15 year old punk who missed a few lectures in traffic class?

I want to believe in the inherent goodness of man, I really do. But it is very hard to do so when getting from point A to point B within a predetermined timeframe becomes more important than the people you run over in the process.

The Weekly Box Office Commentary

Here's another new pseudoweekly feature, wherein I'll comment on the latest box office figures. I've already commented on box office numbers in at least one previous entry, though that was specifically for An Inconvenient Truth. I don't intend on writing longer dissertations on the inner workings of the box office, I suggest going to Box Office Prophets or Box Office Mojo for that. Rather, I plan on commenting on a select few movies currently in theaters that I find interesting.

The number one movie of the weekend is Click, Adam Sandler's 510^th hit movie in a row. To be honest, I never did understand the appeal of Sandler. I mean, his movies are fairly amusing, but box office gold? Nevertheless, it should come as no surprise that Click is a hit, as it also stars David 'The Hoff' Hasselhoff.

Speaking of overrated comedians^[1], Jack Black apparently also has a hit movie out called Nacho Libre. In two weeks, it's taken in about 52 million dollars.

Over all, this didn't appear to be a good movie-going weekend in the US.
The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift? Man, those Japanese horror movie really are scary!
Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties? Starring Academy Award nominated actor Bill Murray...my head almost exploded typing that.
The Lake House? Yeah, because we've all been clamouring for a romantic movie starring Keanu Reeves. "Woah! We'll. Always. Have. Paris! Duuuude!"

Outside of the top ten, An Inconvenient Truth is chugging along. It's now the seventh most successful documentary of all time, with more to come.

^[1] Sandler, not The Hoff!