Where is the sun god people?

Apollo was one of the most beloved and worshiped of the Greek gods. Why is he missing from the modern pantheon?

There has been a slew of films / books etc that feature Greek mythology but Apollo has never had much (if any) of a role in them. Why people? He was the most popular god.

He's god of the sun. The sun! Come on people, does it get more important than that?

Proof that the creators of House are Holmes fans

Would the US gov't do this to us?

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Picasa

I have been using Picasa to sort out my 76 gigs of images.

Picasa has this great feature that recognizes a face (after a few tries) and labels it automatically. Sounds great right? But there are a few issues that I think the good folks at Picasa HQ didn't quite think through.

1) Movie screen caps - Picasa is going loopy on me because it can't decide if the pirate is "captain sparrow" or Johnny Depp. Same for every actor. Zachary Quinto, is he Syler or Spock?

2) Non-photographs - I have anime pics. A lot of anime pics. Problem is not every image of a character looks the same in every episode or fan-art. And that's nothing compared to comics. Picasa crashed twice trying to identify Gambit.

3) Twins. Laura, Carrie you make Picasa crash every time. The does not recognize any difference and sticks all twins in the same folder. I have to manually sort through every image and if I'm going to do that I could just manually put the image into folder myself.*sigh*

4) Multiple Identities - A good example would be "the Doctor." He has several faces but he's still "the doctor." I had to start labeling them as "doctor #." Of course, even then Picasa start flipping out and saying, "but you told me this was David Tennant!!"

Arg. This is taking forever. I am going to take a break now before I kill Picasa.

So apparently Merlin is shot in a region called Pierrefonds in northern France in a castle appropriately called Château de Pierrefonds.

Just goggle it! It's Camelot!

Dramatic Americans

So you know, I like to download and watch documentaries while I work. I was feeling upset this morning (my kitty Lucky might be dying) so to stave off sadness till my sister came home I watched two.

The first was a BBC documentary about the discovery of a long lost Leonardo da Vinci painting, Salvator Mundi, (pictured to the left) and the second was about Nemesis, a hypothetical star that causes comets to fling into the inner solar system every 26 million years.

The discovery of a long lost painting done by the epic renaissance master is, forgive me for this Laura, slightly more mind blowing than a star which may or may not exist and may or may not cause comets to hit the Earth in ten million years. Not that Nemsis isn't exciting. Anyone who knows me knows I love love physics and astronomy. However, the theory is not as immediately relevant in my life. (Except for the fact that I might use the idea in RT.) And it's still unproven.

At any rate, the first vide was made by the BBC so the announcer says, in a calm and composed British accent, "what an amazing discovery. How lucky we are to see it [the painting.]"

Meanwhile, the second video, made by the History channel, opens with a deep voiced American accent booming, "does our star have an evil twin out in the solar system bent on destroying us?!"

Wow.

Normally I would not have noted a difference but because I had played the videos back to back I found myself really annoyed with the stupidly over hyped and garish History Channel presentation. It was filled with ominous BGMs, overblown assumptions and over simplified explanations. Such a great topic too. I just found myself longing that the BBC had done the presentation instead of the History Channel.

I think Eddie Izzard is right. Americans just cannot present information (to the masses) without tossing it in a coating of pompous hype. It lessens the drama and importance (for me) when the information is presented like a trailer for the newest Armageddon du jour film. Why are we so dramatic I wonder?

Captain Kirk in the Twilight Zone

I was watching the Twilight Zone episode, "Nick of Time" when I saw that the main lead was William Shatner. Instead of saying, "oh my gosh it's William Shatner," I said, "oh my gosh, it's Captain Kirk!"

I can understand why Shatner is staying away from the Star Trek front.

Even though I know (logically) that it's Shatner on screen, I don't know him personally therefore I identify his face and voice with Kirk. Emotionally, it's as if Kirk was an actor before he joined Star Fleet while the entity known as WIlliam Shatner is his flesh and bones, Earth bound avatar.

I have a friend who gets very annoyed when I say things like, "Kaiba (from Yu-Gi-Oh!) must have been pissed off when he lost the battle." He responds with, "Kaiba isn't real. He cannot feel anything." Factually, he's right. Kaiba isn't real the same way William Shatner is, but since I will never meet William Shatner then he, emotionally, exists in the same space as Kaiba.

I feel this way about most celebrities and famous folk. Yes, they exist but they are "out there," the same way that the Loch Ness Monster is "out there." I don't emotionally distinguish the "real but never verified" from the "not real" so it's easy for me to assign emotions and feelings for non-living entities (or even objects.) I can't imagine not doing it in fact. I looked over one day and saw my favorite blanket on the floor gathering dust and I felt "sad" for it. It's not real. It can't feel abandoned or neglected but the emotional response is still there.

So, what's real in the end? If characters and objects can illicit an emotional response, such as the happiness when I saw "Kirk," then why can't the concept of "Kirk" be any more real than William Shatner?

It's something to think about... in the Twilight Zone.