Random Thoughts
Next Entries »Spiderman 3
Friday, January 12th, 2007 One of the films I am most looking forward to this summer is Spidey 3, and I know that there are quite a lot of folks out there quite excited to find out about the villain Venom, but until now the studios have been keeping the look of this enemy pretty much under wraps. So take a look at this:
It seems that the toy company with rights to the project, Medicom Toy Corporation, have released some shots of their Venom figure. I suspect there may be a few angry phone calls/e-mails over this one.
Original source from EMPIREonline.
Thank Fleck For That
Tuesday, January 9th, 2007 One of the tools that I have found useful lately is "Fleck", an on line application that allows you to make notes on just about any web page and save it to your account. You can then share these with others or just keep them to yourself for future reference. See screen shot:
Fleck actually saves a copy of the page to your account to make the notes on, so it does not work on most password protected pages such as forums. I have found it very useful to keep track of various applications, widgets and items that I want to blog about at some point, or just to save a page that I want to read more fully at a future date.Christmas
Monday, December 18th, 2006 As I was making my way through town this morning I noticed this poster in a coffee shop window:
Now this got me thinking, as I thought I recognised the sentiment that the company was putting to the fore, "eat, drink & be merry". I was pretty sure that the next bit of the quote went on to say something along the lines of, "for tomorrow we die", the Greek philosophy propounded by Epicurus (341-270 B.C.), which most people would not consider to be very Christmassy at all.
But once I got home and did a little research on the ideas behind this way of thinking I began to feel more and more that it was possible this poster might be the most truthful one I was ever likely to see.
The philosophy centres around the idea that the pleasure you, the individual, is the sole or chief good in life. As learning, culture, and civilization as well as social and political involvements could give rise to desires that are difficult to satisfy and thus result in disturbing your peace of mind, his followers were discouraged from pursuing such. Knowledge was sought only to rid oneself of religious fears and superstitions, primarily the fear of god(s) and of death.
This began to sound more and more like the way people live their lives today.
The philosophy was also characterized by the complete absence of any principles, in fact lawbreaking was counselled against simply because of the shame associated with detection and the punishment it might bring. Never break the 11th Commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Get Caught"!
Virtue in itself was held to have no value and was beneficial only when it served as a means to gain happiness. In fact, reciprocity was only recommended, not because it was right and noble, but because it paid off. Friendships rested on the same selfish basis, that is, the pleasure resulting to the possessor.
The conclusion I was drawn to was that Epicurus and his philosophy still has a strong hold on us today. Regardless of whether or not you celebrate this coming holiday as a Pagan festival (which it is) or as a Christian one (which it isn't) the main thrust has become the commerciality of it, what people as individuals can gain from it, the pleasures that it affords. At one point the Christmas celebrations at least had the good of the poor and needy as its central theme, with those such as Charles Dickens in modern times using it as a means to promote a better social consciousness.
Not so much in our secularised times.Apologize for Slavery?
Monday, November 27th, 2006 It seems that 200 years after slavery began its final death throes in the former British Empire that some feel a more formal apology for what went before is needed and reparations need to be paid. I am not a history major, nor am I very knowledgeable about the Politics of the situation, and perhaps as a white male I should stay well away from any comment that could be construed as racist, but I must confess to being a little confused as to what this all means. As far as I am aware the vast majority of slaves that were brought to this country and other parts of the then empire were already slaves when they were bought. If this is the case, should it not be the ones who enslaved the individuals and sold them on that should make recompense? Were these ones not themselves black tribesmen who had conquered their neighbours or captured the slaves in raids on rival villages? This may not be the case in every single instance, consider the Amistad case, but it surely is what occurred in the vast majority of instances. Even the Amistad case shows that Western society had already rejected what was still considered a normal way of life in Africa, the capture of freemen purely for the purpose of sale. So many of the ethics of modern-day do not sit well when transported into the past, the modern day Native Americans feeling that their ancestors were hard done-by when the white man took their land, where as there seems to be no rush on their own part to issue formal apologies to the peoples their tribes displaced as they migrated into the Americas. The mistreatment of the peaceful peoples and breaking of the treaties is, of course, an entirely different matter. I realise that a lot of what I have said is an over-simplification of very complex issues, and I am sorry if what I have said is inaccurate, I am happy to receive any feedback that helps me increase my understanding of these issues.Moving Home
Sunday, November 26th, 2006 So I did it. I made a choice and found a new home for my blog. I went with afmu in the end. The expense wasn't too great, the learning curve was perhaps the hardest part as I tried to find out about transferring files and finding a free up-loader that was within my capabilities. So here I am, with no spell checker! I tried to install two different plug-ins, one that I couldn't get to work in any way shape or form and one that seems to be incompatible with the version of Wordpress that I have installed. I guess the easiest thing for me to do would be to test out my posts in "Outlook" first, that should help me avoid too many calamities, but I will have to give that a try another time, else it will make this post a little redundant in the main! I was a little dissapointed that there was no way to import my blogs from the freebie version, at least no way that I could find, but a quick bit of "copy and paste" sorted that out. Anyways, I managed to install Wordpress on my server, and I managed to find the same theme that I had previously and get that set up too, not bad work for one weekend. Well, not for me anyways.Next Entries »
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