Oscar Night

As far as controversy goes, this has actually been a fairly dull year in terms of movies.

Brokeback Mountain: Gay shepherds. In ancient Greece, this was more the norm than the exception.

Syriana: Makes the shocking allegation that the U.S. manipulates Middle Eastern politics out of concern for the oil supply.

Munich: Palestinian terrorists at the Olympics.

Paradise Now: More Palestinian terrorists. It seems like their year.

Jon Stewart for Host: maybe he can inject some decent humor into the proceedings. I doubt it. Updates to follow.

Updates: So, Brokeback Mountain took alot of awards - although mot Best Picture. 'Crash' won that, and though I haven't seen it, everyone else in the room seemed pissed.

Jon Stewart was mildly amusing, although the negative ads voiced by Stephen Colbert were probably the highlight of the whole thing. I

Something Happened in South Dakota

PIERRE, S.D., Feb. 22 — Setting up South Dakota to become the first state in 14 years to start a direct legal attack on Roe v. Wade, lawmakers voted on Wednesday to outlaw nearly all abortions.

...

After more than an hour of fierce and emotional debate, the senators rejected pleas to add exceptions for incest or rape or for the health of the pregnant woman and instead voted, 23 to 12, to outlaw all abortions, except those to save the woman's life.

They also rejected an effort to allow South Dakotans to decide the question in a referendum and an effort to prevent state tax dollars from financing what is certain to be a long and expensive court battle.

Clearly, they're testing the waters - seeing if this Alito fellow is the anti-abortion ideologue they were all assured he would be. Even if he votes against Roe V. Wade, that will still work out to 5-4 upholding it.

I think, though, that any attempt to outlaw abortion all over again would be the political blunder of the new century. If they tried a stunt like that, heck, the Democrats might actually start winning.

Some years ago studies were done comparing birth rates before and after abortion was legalized. What they found was that birth rates did decline slightly, but not nearly as much as the number of abortions would indicate. The moral: women have abortions, whether it's legal or not. The only question is whether those abortions are safely administered.

My question to (most) pro-lifers is this: why don't you support all the programs that actually reduce abortion? Safe-sex education, universal health care, easily obtainable contraception.. are these worse than abortion, in your opnion? let me know.

Aaron Burr Lives

Run for your lives, everyone! Vice-President Cheney is ARMED AND DANGEROUS:

Via the Guardian:

Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, accidentally shot a man in the face with a shotgun while hunting for quail on a Texas ranch.

Mr Cheney, 65, sprayed birdshot into Harry Whittington, a fellow hunter, while trying to hit a flock of quail on Saturday afternoon. Mr Whittington, 78, a lawyer from Austin, Texas, was taken to Corpus Christi Memorial Hospital where he was treated for pellet wounds to the right side of his face, neck and chest.

A spokesman for the hospital said he was not seriously injured and described his condition as "stable".

A witness, Katharine Armstrong, said Mr Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Mr Cheney and a third hunter walked to another spot and discovered a second flock. She said: "Whittington came up from behind the Vice-President and the other hunter and didn't signal them or indicate to them or announce himself.

"The Vice-President didn't see him ... the covey [flock] flushed and the Vice-President picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by God, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good." Mr Cheney was said to have visited his friend in hospital.

Politically, does this mean anything? I doubt it. Still, considering all the scandals floating around, it would've been too perfect an image if Cheney had actually shot himself in the foot.

Goerge W. Bush vs. The Minotaur

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos.

- President Bush, in his 2006 State of the Union adress

While certainly everyone is entitle to their opinion of how much life is worth and the limits of science, I think in this case Bush has gone too far. His hard-line stance against inerspecies breeding negates everything we hold dear about the future human-animal relations.

This piece of midieval dogma would rule out the combination of people and goats:






























bulls:




























super-intelligent dogs:



















and even harmless insects:





























So, I say: shame on you, Bush. Keep this up, and Mr. Peabody will use his WABAC machine to ensure you were never born.

Happy Birthday, Mozart

Yesterday was the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birth, and probably only a month or two from now will be the 250th anniversary of when he started composing.

Mozart was not, as most people think of him, simply a composer of light, fluffy minuets and coldly perfect serenades that provide accompaniment for little girls to scatter flowers and drink tea. He tackled a range of issues which landed him in hot water with the censors, from the rising tension between the social classes (The Marriage of Figaro) to the abuses of the nobility and sexual liberation (Don Giovanni) to Freemasonry (The Magic Flute).

His music can be tender, sweet, harrowing, life-affirming, and even - especially in his unfinished Requiem and in the finale of Don Giovanni - tempestuous and fiery. The amazing thing is not only that he managed to write such amazing music, but that he never wrote anything bad which wasn't meant as a joke. Genuis, as we think of it, isn't supposed to be like that. It's something unpredictable, which burns brightly one minute and is gone the next. Yet Mozart kept the light shining his whole life.

So happy birthday, Mozart you genuis.