I guess this teaser trailer for the new Star Trek movie has been out for a while, but I just noticed it. I thought the movie was originally scheduled to be released in December, but now it’s a summer 2009 release. I can’t wait!
This is kind of cool- “live” camera images of the Enterprise under construction. J.J. Abrams has brought some of his Cloverfield style of viral marketing to Star Trek. To see the images, adjust the slider until you get to 100%. Supposedly the 4th camera shows a glimpse of the interior hallway of the new Enterprise. I’ve been watching it now for a while and haven’t seen anything yet.
I went to see a performance on Saturday night of Tan Dun’s “Water Passion” at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. I really didn’t know a lot about the piece, but I loved the music that Tan Dun had composed for the movie “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon“.
It’s a little hard to describe the piece, so I’m referring to an NPR story that describes it in more detail.
From NPR.com: View from the Choir: Tan Dun’s ‘Water Passion’
Performing for the noted composer presented plenty of new challenges for the singers, Lunden says. There were lip trills and overtone singing, and even more unusual sounds: growling and shouting, for example. And, Lunden recalls, “There were also passages of great beauty.”
I was not prepared for the growling and the strange noises coming from the stage. I found it distracting. And I didn’t find the music to be very engaging.
So the stage is awash in water, with 17 clear plexiglass bowls laid out in the form of a cross. Three percussionists “play” the water with a variety of homemade instruments.
Among them is David Cossin, who has performed the Water Passion since Stuttgart. “The main instrument is the water and there’s everything from just dripping sounds, to playing the actual water with your hands in different ways,” he says.
The use of water as an instrument was the one thing that I found interesting. But, I guess that means that I would have probably been better off watching Stomp or Blue Man Group.
I’m sure the performance was performed well, but overall it was just not my cup of tea. There was good crowd in the hall. I wonder what others thought of it.
From the NYTimes.com: Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace
Where did they go? The Chinook salmon that swim upstream to spawn in the fall, the most robust run in the Sacramento River, have disappeared. The almost complete collapse of the richest and most dependable source of Chinook salmon south of Alaska left gloomy fisheries experts struggling for reliable explanations — and coming up dry.
This is frightening. When something that’s been around for years and suddenly disappears. It’s a signal that something is wrong. The problem is that there are a lot of questions and possible causes, but they’re not exactly sure what happened.
Cincinnati has gotten a severe case of Ikea madness. I was told by a West Chester official that Ikea had to turn people away on Saturday because they were over the capacity of 10,000 people. West Chester allowed the capacity to be exceeded slightly during the grand opening, but now they need to enforce the code because of liability issues. Customers trying to enter the store were denied entrance and told to come back later in the day. It seems that main problem is that people were going in and not coming out for 3-4 hours.
Amazing.
From the LATimes.com: Maybe Spitzer just needed time at La Costa
In fact, I’m not sure why going to a brothel is illegal but visiting a spa is considered classy. Because, really, a spa is just all the parts of sex that women like: candles, soft music, scented oils, questions about how you feel. How can it be psychologically healthy in a marriage for either partner paying to be touched in pleasurable ways? As a husband, I know I can’t compete with a $100-an-hour shiatsu guy with an iPod full of flute music.
From Newsday.com
It seems like Bush believes that by avoiding the use of words like recession or torture, that somehow they aren’t happening. We aren’t in a recession, but we are having a “tough time”. We’re not torturing people, we’re using “enhanced interrogation techniques”.
From LATimes: Governor’s high-flying commute draws flak
Schwarzenegger has eschewed living in Sacramento, preferring his Brentwood mansion and traveling back and forth in his private jet. Some question his concern for the environment.
After flirting briefly with buying a Sacramento abode for his family, then living alone for a while in a 2,000-square-foot hotel penthouse across from the Capitol, the governor has decided to stay nearly every night at his Brentwood mansion.
That’s an approximately 780 mile round trip daily commute by private jet. That’s about 3 hours of commuting.
The governor’s Gulfstream jet does nearly as much damage to the environment in one hour as a small car does in a year, according to figures compiled by the Helium Report, an online publication for buyers of luxury items.
Schwarzenegger doesn’t have to do this. He could have moved his family to Sacramento like every other governor before him. The rich and powerful shouldn’t get a pass because they can afford to do this.
I thought this following paragraph was kind of amusing in light of the Spitzer scandal:
The governor rarely sleeps now in the $62,000-a-year hotel penthouse paid for by a tax-exempt charitable foundation. But in the early years of his administration, Schwarzenegger spent most weeknights there, working late, receiving visitors and playing chess, former aides said.
So “playing chess” is what they’re calling it these days.
From Foxnews.com: Hillary Had No Role in Irish Peace, Despite Bill’s Claim
Recently, as only Hillary can do, she claimed that she was “deeply involved in the Irish peace process.” Bill has also picked up the theme, citing her “independent” role in resolving the century-old conflict as “experience” with which to justify a White House run.
How odd that Hillary forgot to mention her pivotal role in Ireland just four years ago, when she wrote her $8 million memoir, Living History.
According to Hillary, while Bill met with the “various factions” of Irish politics, Hillary met with women leaders of the peace movement. Rather than discuss the difficulties of the peace process, Hillary focused on a teapot used by the women:
“They poured tea from ordinary stainless steel teapots, and when I remarked how well they kept the tea warm, Joyce insisted that I take a pot to remember them by. I used that dented teapot every day in our small family kitchen in the White House…”
Hillary seems determined to spin being the wife of the President as some kind of foreign policy credential. As the article shows, Hillary doesn’t even claim the accomplishments as “ours”, but “Bill’s”, like she’s just a bystander. Being First Lady doesn’t make you more qualified to be President. Otherwise, why don’t we just have Laura Bush takeover?
From NYTimes.com: Clinton and Obama Split Over Florida and Michigan
“The results of those primaries were fair and should be honored,” she told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here.
Mrs. Clinton said last October that the Michigan primary was meaningless, but she left her name on the ballot. Mr. Obama and the other major Democratic candidates removed their names from the ballot in a gesture of good faith to early-voting states whose primaries were officially allowed by the Democratic Party. Neither candidate campaigned in Michigan; Mrs. Clinton won with 55 percent of the vote over 40 percent for “uncommitted”.
So this Hillary’s idea of “fair”. How are the results of Michigan anywhere close to being fair? How can you count an election where the only two choices are “Hillary” and “Uncommitted”? If you were an Obama supporter, would you even bother going to vote in an election where you’d have to vote “uncommitted”?
Hillary’s sense of “fairness” is whatever gets her into the White House. If you took this to any non-partisan arbiter, there’s no way they would say that these elections should be counted as is.
A re-vote would probably be the best solution, but then the punishment against Michigan and Florida for moving up their primary would turn into a reward for those states as their votes would become the last two states to vote in the primary.
CNN.com has a good commentary about this: Florida, Michigan don’t deserve revote