Category: Uncategorized

A Democratic administration is in power, so of course, time has come ’round again for a rise in popularity of Ayn Rand’s so-called philosophy.

Very popular in geek circles, and of course, among Conservatives who want a label that doesn’t lump them in with the Southern Regional Populist crowd that has taken over the Republican party.

Of course, I’ve always been very fond of this quote from the blog kung fu monkey:

“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. ”

The reason why *every* political philosophy, across the spectrum from conservative to liberal, is better than Libertarianism, is that the other philosophies aren’t based on bad novels.

The sad thing about Libertarians, is that they apparently all think that they are John Galt — that they are the alpha-industrial-creatives that the “masses” live off of — who will stop production and really show them all.

What they never seem to grasp is that they are the masses, not the alphas. It’s sad — a bunch of wanna-be Galts, toiling in obscurity, who think the world should work the way it was presented in a badly-reviewed bomb of a novel from 1957.

It would be almost funny, if they didn’t actually believe it.

They’re like the Scientologists of politics.

OK, this is just cool. A fan-created animated propaganda short, entirely in Klingonese, apparently done for the www.tlhingan.org fan site.

Brilliantly animated. (…and apparently uses a Turkish children’s song from the late 70s/early 80s as the background — Turkish was one of the languages that was the inspiration for the development of the fictional Klingon language for the Trek films, so that works…)

This past weekend was the time when and I were supposed to be at SteamCon in Seattle. Alas, for reasons previously explained, we were unable to attend.

The SteamCon Twitter Feed has been aggregating convention reports and pictures, though — so if, like us, you were not able to be there, you can at least see what you missed, and regret.

In place of surrounding ourselves with Steamy Goodness, we instead took the opportunity this weekend to watch the two-film, four-hour original Chinese version of John Woo’s Red Cliff (edited down to a single 2 1/2 hour film for the ‘international edition’ currently making its way through art-house cinemas here in the US).

Wow — FANTASTIC. The story will be familiar to fans of the Dynasty Warriors video game series, or the Romance of the Three Kingdoms — the battles for China circa 208 A.D.. The iconic characters are all present: Liu Bei, Zhou Yu, Sun Quan, Zhuge Liang, Cao Cao, etc. — and played by the top actors in Asian cinema.

Most of all, though, this is a Woo film. His trademarks are there: slow-mo, the freeze-frame reaction shot, and, of course, doves. It’s his first period film since 1978’s Last Hurrah for Chivalry, and it’s fascinating to see the techniques that I normally associate with his modern-era films used in a historical epic.

From what I’m hearing, the edited version in US theatres (which was edited down by Woo himself, so that’s something, at least) is also very good — go and see it. But if you have the option available, also try to get ahold of the original, which was released on DVD in Asia already, and is available in multi-region from several internet mail-order sites (as well as other, less strictly legal methods online).