i m N s h o

Originally , I was amused by the name Quantum of Solace. (Admittedly, I was hardly alone in this.) Then I heard that there was a new villainous organization in this new Bond film, that it had actually been hinted at in Casino Royale, and that the title reflected the name of this new organization. And I thought "well, that could work… SMERSH, SPECTRE, SOLACE. Kinda has a 'Bondian' ring to it. (And, if I stretch my brain far enough, I can find a way to make "Quantum of Solace" make sense, if the bad guys are now SOLACE.) However, a few months ago I read in a preview article that the new organization is actually "QUANTUM", and that the producers have no idea what the name means. (I guess it just sounded cool at the time.) Of course, now we're back to square one, where the title of the movie is, if possible, even MORE meaningless than when it was announced. After all, a quantum of the organization SOLACE could, I suppose, mean something. But if the bad ...

On this past week's episode of Chuck ( Chuck vs. the Fat Lady ), one of the characters, in describing her ex-boss's paranoia, says that "the log-on for his computer was a randomly selected word from a piece of Vogon poetry ." I'm pretty sure that may be the geekiest moment in TV this season. (Which, when you consider you've got both Chuck AND The Big Bang Theory competing in this arena, is really saying something.)  

I've been batting the phrase " paradigm-shift " around for a while now. With all the changes we've experienced in the past 20 years, with the changes imminent on the horizon — both for good and ill — the concepts, problems, ideas and beliefs that simply didn't exist 15, 10, even 5 years ago (when did you first hear the word Google?), could we be in the midst of a paradigm shift? (I am HARDLY alone in this thought, as you can see here .) Watching Tuesday's historic election, and listening to the discussions after Obama's victory was declared, I saw another sign of a paradigm shift. A lot can be made of Obama's victory, and it will take time to see if any of it rings true years from now. But I realized that, for all the overblown rhetoric, all the exaggerated emotion, there's a fundamental change that took place last night. Barack Obama is 47 years old. When he was born, there were parts of this country where his father could not have ridden in the f...

Repudiation was something of a minor buzz-word for a couple of weeks after the last Obama/McCain Presidential Debate. McCain took Obama to task for not repudiating inflammatory remarks made by a Democratic senator, then MSNBC took McCain to task every chance they could for his not stepping up and repudiating similar remarks aimed at Obama during campaign stops and other Republican events. As with most campaign moments, this burned itself out fairly rapidly. Watching the election results last night and listening to the commentators speculating as to what this could mean for the Republican party (which, to listen to the reports circulating today, is eating its own tail trying to figure out who to blame and how to bounce back), I found myself coming back to that concept of repudiation. I felt as if the country had stood up and repudiated the past 8 years of Bush/Republican/Conservative control of this country. Eight years of failed economic policy that's led to the worst stock market ...

Well, not so much, really… No candy for Obama fans | Otago Daily Times Online You've almost got to respect that kind of crazy. Or maybe just be afraid of it.