Real Word Sydney...looking interesting

So I just finished watching the real world sydney premiere, it was pretty interesting. First, the girls:

KellyAnne is the smoking hot brunette is is definitely a little crazy
Then there's a blonde who's already buddy-buddy with KellyAnne, her name's Trisha and is really a nice, classic valley girl air-headed blonde stereotype....bravo mtv.
There's one other blonde, Shauvon, she was pretty amusingly narcissistic, and long-winded which makes for great idiot quotes.
Then there's Parisa, who seems like the tomboy who revels in pissing off the valley girls, a perfect instigator for all sorts of bitchiness, cattiness, and hilariously petty feuds.

guys:

First, Cohutta, or something, which is a bizarre name. He is hard-core southern, from like deeeeep Miss. A unique character for the real world, I think he might join parisa to start some fun.
There's a shaved headed guy, Isaac, who was hard to read, other than he was the silent type with a crazy eye who's going to have to be placated every once and a while.
Lastly is a dude with the classic long-term gf, Dunbar. I cant tell it he's a tool yet, or if he's going to be the detached player-type who stirs things up.

all in all, looks like an excellent season to look forward too.

My bro, one why mascarpone is delicious

after he put his finger in the tub it came in:

"whoa...man, it's like 'what is your density?'" - JR

another great quote of the day, related to my posting of Miss Teen South Carolina, from the Newshole:

"Even in the gritty, dark world of beauty paegants, it was one for the ages. Lauren Caitlin Upton, Miss Teen South Carolina. Who long ago made the right choice. The contests with the tiaras. In lieu of, say, the national geography bee."

This guy has his whole material life online

It's amazing! And its catalogued by colour, size, material, use, usage amount, location, cost, and ownership. From perusing his life, its obvious he's a photographer (asides from the fact he took thousands of pretty good pictures) because he has about 14 of these:

plus gadgety stuff like this:Anyway, I'm guessing that this is him and his partner:

But I could definitely be wrong.

Anyway, its a bizarre scene, but I like it, I think its amazingly cool. When I found it earlier this afternoon I was blown away...my friend ER was far less impressed. She was appalled. Why do I like it?

Mainly because it represents the unadulterated freedom of the internet.

Maybe also because I'm an unabashed contrarian. Many people would and will recoil in horror at the very concept of having the whole of their worldly possessions cataloged in intimate detail for everyone to peruse. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't do it, but that doesn't really hold me back from looking at the pictures in intimate detail. I mean, as I look at them, I try to puzzle out who this guy and his partner are, as human beings, but the more I try, the more I realize he's getting the last laugh.
Everyone is out there, right now, sifting through the material detritus of his life trying to understand him, or at least relate, or something. Their quest, and my quest, is ultimately futile. We can never even come close, with even this intimate a set of detailed miscellanea.

Pretty cool.

"I Have a dream" anniversary

It was given 44 years ago today, by certainly one of the greatest English-language orators ever recorded. Right up there with Churchill, JFK, and MacArthur as my favorites. American Rhetoric has a full-length copy right here. Skip to the last half-cm or so if you dont want to hear it all.

Some of my personal favorites are just rhetorical flourishes or turns-of-phrase (I'm not sure if that should be hyphenated...I'm keeping it because it looks good) that exemplify MLK's oratorical genius. A few that don't get mentioned much are:

"but we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt"

"in the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred."

"we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream"

I was pretty sure that I had heard Obama mention this last line in the speech announcing his candidacy, so I googled it. Well. Turns out that "justice roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream" is from Amos 5:24, in the good, old King James version of the bible (not so nice in other versions: "And roll on as waters doth judgment, And righteousness as a perennial stream"). I never even got to Obama.

Anyway, please listen, at least to the last 30 secs to 1 minutes of MLK's speech. It will give you chills. He rallies everyone, and then builds to a delirious crescendo: "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Nice. Very nice. Still goose-bumpy here.

Bizarre Furor over Lucy, our Ancestor

So, check out this article, or this TIME one, about the first exhibit in a globetrotting 6-year voyage of the bones of Lucy, our 2.3 million year old ancestor. There appears to be some long-drawn out debate over whether its appropriate to be moving these kinds of objects around, or to exploit african countries, or something. I am a bit perplexed by the various arguments, having myself always been a fan of seeing the real thing myself. On one side is the renowned (but a little patronizing and batty) Richard Leakey:

"This iconic fossil is a unique biological specimen that should never be placed at risk: travel, packing, unpacking and handling exposes the skeleton to dangers that are unacceptable," says Leakey. "The decision to send Lucy on tour to the U.S. and perhaps elsewhere is to be deplored by any right-minded person."
"I definitely think that Lucy should not have been sent to America. ... Unique biological specimens and fossils such as Lucy are for science and should be retained in their country of origin,"
"Nobody will benefit from Lucy's tour apart from American museums, which are exploiting Africa's resources," he said.

This last bit is rich. According to TIME,

To borrow her, HMNS agreed to pay the Ethiopian government an undisclosed fee — estimates range from $300,000 to several million dollars — plus part of the proceeds from ticket and museum-store sales, money that the government has promised to Ethiopian museums. Ethiopian officials are also hoping that Americans who come to see Lucy in Houston or on tour might come to see Ethiopia too.

I fail to see how this is exploitative, especially since this is the fee for ONE museum, among presumably about half a dozen that will show these bones. I can see an argument (made by ECOH in the TIME article) that the money will just line the pockets of various Ethiopian officials and hardly benefit anyone. In addition, this last bit, about touting Ethiopia for tourism, will have to be synchronized with, you know, an actual campaign. So that will have to materialize. That being said, I think Leakey is out-to-lunch when he says this is exploitative. I object to a bunch of other things he said too. Saying that Lucy's tour should be "deplored by any right-minded person" is spitting in the face of any reasonable opposition. And to say that 'unique biologic specimens and fossils such as Lucy are for science and should be retained in their country of origin' is paradoxical, arrogant, narrow-minded, elitist, and frankly, bullshit. Especially Lucy. Especially Lucy.

First of all, I don't understand what the 'for science' part has to do with being retained in their country of origin, considering that regardless his opposition to Lucy's move, Leakey did at least acknowledge that the American museums are going to benefit from this tour. How is that not a benefit to science? I guess he would argue that keeping them in Ethiopia is better for science ....huh? Isn't Ethiopia a poor, corrupt country potentially at risk for the kind of instability that could destroy Lucy?

Oh....wait, what he actually means is that NOT keeping them where they are irrevocably harms the fossils. But haven't they already successfully carted papyrus Dead Sea scrolls and the First Emperor's terra cotta warriors all over the world?

Oh...wait, what he actually means is they should stay in Ethiopia, so that his poor african friends wont be exploited by the big, bad, swaggering White Museum Men from the West. (The funniest part of Leakey's evil 2nd-rate museum condescension is the hilarious paradox that these guys are all geeks and nerds in pop culture).

I think that the original discoverer of Lucy (who I originally thought was Leakey) Don Johanson, has this to say, which I think is an appropriate summation:

"While I cannot overemphasize my personal concerns for Lucy's safety, a broader exposure of Lucy to the public does have great educational value. Seeing the original Lucy will surely heighten public awareness of human origins studies, particularly at a time when the validity of evolution has come under fire in our schools."