Stay classy, Kentucky.

[Edit: Now with correct linkage!]

The Sexy Accident will be releasing a new EP (with a new lineup) soon. For now, check out "You're Not Alone". It's beautiful x2.

First Nature just released an album. FN is partially comprised of members of the Forms, and there is a bit of that flavor in some of their tunes, but mostly it is fresher and more accessible than the Forms (and I say that as a true fan of the Forms and mean it in a good way). Some of the songs feature a woman singer ("Whose Side Are You On," "Karenmusic," and especially "The Conversation"), and she probably should have been featured more often. Check it out (at Amazon if the previous iTunes link didn't work)!

Considering that he's been in the news for 40 years, why can't anyone spell Libya's dictator's name correctly by now?

[Edit: I don't know what that spelling would be, but can't the networks at least agree on one spelling, correct or not?]

From Twitter: Col. Lawrence Wilkerson looks a lot like Marty Schottenheimer.
(but with pics here...)

Marty Schottenheimer:


Col. Wilkerson:



They even have a few similar speaking mannerisms.

That phrase is normally not in my vocabulary, and since I like former Vikings assistant coach Mike Tomlin and Ben Roethlisberger's game, it should still be a foreign phrase to me. Roethlisberger's off the field conduct has been despicable, though, and to a degree that it won't ever matter to me whether he is a changed man at some point or not. Despite getting on and falling off the Brett Favre bandwagon, I have not become an Aaron Rodgers fan since he plays for the sworn enemy and has been doing that silly championship belt celebration. But at least a victory for the Packers would gain the NFC North division some respect without elevating Ben Roethlisberger in any way.

Really, if I had someone to play Dominion with, I might not even watch this Super Bowl.

I'm not going to make fun of Bill O'Reilly for asking questions about how certain things got to be the way that they are.  Those are perfectly valid questions and actually serve as the basis of much scientific activity.  However, when one pretends to know that science can't explain the tides or acts as though asking such a question is somehow more conclusive than listening to or reading about the scientific answers (<a href="http://news.discovery.com/space/moon-core-formation-110107.html">this article from Discovery mentions the prominent theory of how the moon came to be</a>), then that can be funny-sad.  His assertion that other planets don't have moons is equally laughable (they do, and have more than one moon in some cases).  Here are a few other answers to O'Reilly questions:

It was all luck?

Not random luck so much as sensitive dependency in a chaotic (which is a misleading term since chaos can be predicted) universe.  B.O. insinuates that it must be because of a God (specifically the exact version that he believes in) while competing beliefs in deities and/or prime movers would have to be considered at least as valid as his.

Why does the Earth have human life while none of the other planets?

The conditions aren't right.  This concept is recreated all around us in so many ways.  Millions of sperm compete to fertilze an egg, but only one (and occasionally none) succeeds.  Rain happens often, but double rainbows do not.  Some people have freckles while others do not.  Albinos are extremely rare, but they occur in many species.  None of these outcomes are derived from random luck but from sensitively dependent sequences of events.  See also: the Big Dot Theorem.  And so on...

From Roger Ebert's blog:

Wikipedia writes: "Murch is widely acknowledged as the person who coined the term Sound Designer, and along with colleagues developed the current standard film sound format, the 5.1 channel array, helping to elevate the art and impact of film sound to a new level. "Apocalypse Now" was the first multi-channel film to be mixed using a computerized mixing board." He won two more Oscars for the editing and sound mixing of "The English Patient."

"He is perhaps the only film editor in history," the Wikipedia entry observes, "to have received Academy nominations for films edited on four different systems:

• "Julia" (1977) using upright Moviola
• "Apocalypse Now" (1979), "Ghost" (1990), and "The Godfather, Part III" (1990) using KEM flatbed
• "The English Patient" (1996) using Avid.
•  "Cold Mountain" (2003) using Final Cut Pro on an off-the shelf PowerMac G4.

Now read what Walter Murch says about 3D:
Hello Roger,
I read your review of "Green Hornet" and though I haven't seen the film, I agree with your comments about 3D.
The 3D image is dark, as you mentioned (about a camera stop darker) and small. Somehow the glasses "gather in" the image -- even on a huge Imax screen -- and make it seem half the scope of the same image when looked at without the glasses.

I edited one 3D film back in the 1980's -- "Captain Eo" -- and also noticed that horizontal movement will strobe much sooner in 3D than it does in 2D. This was true then, and it is still true now. It has something to do with the amount of brain power dedicated to studying the edges of things. The more conscious we are of edges, the earlier strobing kicks in.
 

The biggest problem with 3D, though, is the "convergence/focus" issue. A couple of the other issues -- darkness and "smallness" -- are at least theoretically solvable. But the deeper problem is that the audience must focus their eyes at the plane of the screen -- say it is 80 feet away. This is constant no matter what.

But their eyes must converge at perhaps 10 feet away, then 60 feet, then 120 feet, and so on, depending on what the illusion is. So 3D films require us to focus at one distance and converge at another. And 600 million years of evolution has never presented this problem before. All living things with eyes have always focussed and converged at the same point.
If we look at the salt shaker on the table, close to us, we focus at six feet and our eyeballs converge (tilt in) at six feet. Imagine the base of a triangle between your eyes and the apex of the triangle resting on the thing you are looking at. But then look out the window and you focus at sixty feet and converge also at sixty feet. That imaginary triangle has now "opened up" so that your lines of sight are almost -- almost -- parallel to each other.

We can do this. 3D films would not work if we couldn't. But it is like tapping your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time, difficult. So the "CPU" of our perceptual brain has to work extra hard, which is why after 20 minutes or so many people get headaches. They are doing something that 600 million years of evolution never prepared them for. This is a deep problem, which no amount of technical tweaking can fix. Nothing will fix it short of producing true "holographic" images.
Consequently, the editing of 3D films cannot be as rapid as for 2D films, because of this shifting of convergence: it takes a number of milliseconds for the brain/eye to "get" what the space of each shot is and adjust.
And lastly, the question of immersion. 3D films remind the audience that they are in a certain "perspective" relationship to the image. It is almost a Brechtian trick. Whereas if the film story has really gripped an audience they are "in" the picture in a kind of dreamlike "spaceless" space. So a good story will give you more dimensionality than you can ever cope with.
So: dark, small, stroby, headache inducing, alienating. And expensive. The question is: how long will it take people to realize and get fed up?
All best wishes,

Walter Murch 
 
Salt shaker and landscape Photoshops by Marie Haws.

(Personally, I LOVE 3D movies, but I'll take his word.)

(Stolen from Jaquandor)

FAVORITE THINGS:

Star Trek Series: The Next Generation, very closely followed by Deep Space Nine.
Star Trek Movie: The Motion Picture, very closely followed by First Contact.
Star Trek Character: Dax or Odo, as good as so many of them were.
Star Trek Pairing: Kes and Neelix just seemed to belong together and met only because of a malfunction that took Kes across the universe...awwwwwwwwwww.
Alien Race: The Trills or Cardassians. They were interesting.
Alien World: Rigel VII. (Love that giant purple moon.)
Federation Class Starship: I always liked the look of the Miranda class ships, including the USS Reliant.
TOS Episode: No idea.
TNG Episode: Too many to mention.
DS9 Episode: The one in which Odo goes home.
VOY Episode: The one where Janeway and company meet Q. In truth, Voyager just wasn't terribly compelling (aside from Neelix and Qes).
ENT Episode: I never bothered watching it. By the time it came along, I was Trek'd out.
Star Trek Quote: Captain Picard once said, "We exist in dimensions of which we are not aware."

LEAST FAVORITE THINGS:

Star Trek Series: Voyager. I agree that it wasn't bad; just seven seasons of "Meh". (And no, the arrival of Seven of Nine didn't really help matters.)
Star Trek Movie: The most recent one, due to its portrayal of Kirk as an entitled brat and the crew dumb enough to follow someone who had proven absolutely nothing (other than that, it was great).
Star Trek Character: McCoy. Sorry, but McCoy was too grouchy to be real. Sulu is probably next.
Star Trek Pairing: Anyone with the pre-collagen injected Troi, who I wanted for myself very badly.
Alien Race: The Ferengi (or any number of alien races from TOS).
Alien World: There were some "identical Earths" in the original series that were pretty lame.
Federation Class Starship: Picard's first command, the Stargazer, is a pretty goofy-looking vessel. All ST ships looked at least a little awkward.
TOS Episode: No idea, although I suspect that there were a few worthy of mentioning here.
TNG Episode: I can't argue with Jaquandor's picks: The second-season finale, which is a clip show, is legendarily bad. But picking on clip shows is shooting fish in a barrel, so I'll go with this one from Season Seven where Dr. Crusher falls in love with a ghost that lives in a candle, or something like that. I remember this actor with an awful Scottish accent saying over and over, "Dinna light that cahn-dle!"
DS9 Episode: I would dare say that there is no such thing as a truly disappointing DS9 episode, but perhaps there was one after the Maquis entered the picture.
VOY Episode: I didn't watch many Voyager episodes, but none were memorably bad.
ENT Episode: No idea.
Star Trek Quote: I can't really think of a ST quote that was memorably lame.

CHOICES:

Trekkie or Trekker? What does this mean?
Kirk or Picard? Picard. And then Sisko. Neither had to resort to Kirk's arrogance.
Defiant or Delta Flyer? The Defiant.
Tribbles or Targs? Tribbles, but not by much.
Coffee, Black or Tea, Earl Grey? I like tea, including Earl Grey, even though it isn't my favorite.
Porthos or Spot? Spot, by default. I don't know who Porthos is.
EMH or Data? As much as I liked Data, the EMH was a lot more entertaining.
Pah-wraiths or Prophets? The Prophets (or neither).

I hope that this apparent revolution actually amounts to something, unlike Iran's demonstrations, as long as the militant Islamists do not end up in control. Especially now that there is almost no other news at all.