The Invisible Library

Some Catholics are throwing a hissyfit over the Da Vinci Code movie:

May 13, 2006 –- The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) and its America Needs Fatima campaign are inviting concerned Catholics to join a petition against The Da Vinci Code. So far, the effort has garnered 100,946 signatures and steadily continues to gain steam.

“A growing number of Catholics are expressing their unequivocal rejection and disgust of the blasphemous Da Vinci Code film,” said America Needs Fatima director Robert Ritchie. “The more Hollywood mocks our faith, the more it demonstrates a brazen contempt for God.”

The petition addressed to Columbia Pictures is available online at www.tfp.org and states:

“I am deeply opposed to the showing of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code as a movie. Please consider that millions of Catholics see this as Christ-bashing and insulting to the Catholic Church. The book, written as fiction, attacks all I hold sacred – the Divinity of Christ, the Gospel, the Papacy and the holy mysteries of my Faith.”

This really is something quite amazing. Here you have people getting uppity over a movie based on a book that has the unmitigated audacity to suggest Jesus did something incredible and unbelievable: he got married and had kids.

As if all that other stuff about walking on water and raising the dead, turning water into wine and curing leprosy and blindness, was just your run of the mill, first century sort of a Saturday night.

Judas: Hay Jesus, me and the guys are going out for a few drinks, want to come along?

Jesus: Nah, I’m gonna hang out at home and transubstantiate for a while, then toss one off and hit the sack. Say hi to Mary, though.

Come on Catholics, are you going to let those Muslim fanatics hog all the faith and glory? They rioted for nigh on a month over a few comics! and all you can manage is a cranky petition? That’s just week. Two hundred years ago, you would have rioted, burned down the cinema, and hanged the projectionist.

Link via Neil Gaiman

My Uncle works for the NSA. In fact, two uncles and an aunt work there. well, this one uncle, let’s call him Joe, he’s been there for going on twenty years or more, His job is so secret, he can’t tell his own mother (or brother or nephew) what he does.

About a year ago, Uncle Joe and I were driving along and we got to talking, which is a rare thing because Uncle joe is a perennially quiet man. He told me that at the NSA, every year they have to sign a legal document the thickness of a novel that says, in plain english that they will not spy on American citizens, under penalty of law.

Looks Like it’s about time me and Uncle Joe had another talk, because something’s not right over there:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added.

[…] Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated Monday by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency’s domestic call-tracking program. Hayden declined to comment about the program. [emphasis added]

Gee, can’t imagine why General Hayden didn’t want to stick his dick in that beehive.

Apparently, President Codpiece says that the database won’t be mined or used for fishing, so don’t you worry, valerie Plame, we won’t be outing whistleblowers, or making partisan attacks. Which of course we know is total Bullshit.

As someone who mines databases for a living, I can tell you straight up, The President of the United States is a motherfucking liar. The databases I fish are filled with publishing information on books, MARC records and archival materials. These databases actually have something important in them, info about who you talk to. What harm could come from President kill Again getting his paws on that?

I love, love, love Battlestar Galactica. The only thing that could make it even better, is if the show were animated in the style of the Simpsons. Here’s more.

The Sunday Times:

DOLPHINS may be closer to humans than previously realised, with new research showing they communicate by whistling out their own “names”.

The evidence suggests dolphins share the human ability to recognise themselves and other members of the same species as individuals with separate identities. The research, on wild bottlenose dolphins, will lead to a reassessment of their intelligence and social complexity, raising moral questions over how they should be treated.

The research was carried out by Vincent Janik of the Sea Mammal Research Unit at St Andrews University, who has found bottlenose dolphins to be among the animal world’s quickest learners of new sounds.

He said: “Each animal develops an individually distinctive signature whistle in the first few months of its life, which appears to be used in individual recognition.”

[…] Dolphins may, however, be just the first of many species where individuals are found to have their own names. Other researchers have already found evidence for highly developed language skills in parrots, crows and primates.

Via Warren Ellis

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if we had a genuine appreciation of the arts in the US? I mean a real culturally ingrained love for the spectacle and pageantry of art, not just some underfunded office that occasionally gives money to some dipshit who submerges a crucifix in urine.

We could probably have something as wonderful and fun as, The Sultan’s Elephant, the four day event that is currently going on in London:

The Sultan’s Elephant is a spectacle you’ve only imagined… Created by theatrical magicians Royal de Luxe, it tells the story of a sultan from far-off lands and his magical, time-travelling mechanical elephant. Forty feet high and 42 tonnes in weight, this beautiful creature will capture the hearts and minds of everyone who sees it.

The Sultan’s Elephant is played out over four days in the streets, squares and public spaces of central London. Whether you dip into it for three hours or follow its progress for three days, this breathtaking show will live in your memory forever.

The story (with pictures):

Once upon a time, there lived a sultan who was tormented in his dreams by visions of a little girl who was travelling through time. This is his story, incredible but true.

The sultan could no longer sleep, his growing anguish diverting his attention from affairs of state. In order to cure his sickness, and believing that he would find the girl in the land of dreams, he commissioned an unknown engineer living in 1900 to construct a time-travelling elephant. A few months later, the sultan set off with his court in search of the little giant, which, in the course of his nightmares, had been transformed into a marionette 5 metres high.

The trip was awful, but they found a series of clues as to her wherabouts. The giant loved sewing - she liked to stitch cars to the tarmac, boats to quaysides, trains to railway tracks and sometimes even envelopes to letterboxes.

The elephant followed the trail left by the puppeteers. And as in all love stories, strange things began to happen. Such was his happiness at getting closer to her, he began to expel hundreds of living birds which disappeared into the sky in a burst of joy…

Ah, to be in a city that spent hard earned tax dollars on something so frivolous and joyful… Maybe some day, after WW III, when Canada and Europe rehabilitate us into a real civilized country…

Sometimes, whining does pay off:

In response to overwhelming demand, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release attractively priced individual two-disc releases of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Each release includes the 2004 digitally remastered version of the movie and, as bonus material, the theatrical edition of the film. That means you’ll be able to enjoy Star Wars as it first appeared in 1977, Empire in 1980, and Jedi in 1983. This release will only be available for a limited time: from September 12th to December 31st.

Steve Gilliard already said what I wanted to about Moussaoui:

Moussaoui was a half-wit, someone Al Qaeda barely trusted to get trained, and he fucked that up. State murder would have given him a dignity he never deserved.

Believe me, I understand the desire to see this idiot die. Osama isn’t gonna be dead any time soon, the rest are in some US gulag, probably to have long trials where their treatment becomes the issue.

But murdering Moussaoui would have been a mistake.

[…] Instead, the prisoner will be tossed into SuperMax, this awful underground prison designed to isolate you in what is in effect a dungeon. And best of all, will be forgotten. He will be lost to the Bureau of Prisons, each day spent in isolation, going madder by the day. No martyrdom, no 72 virgins, no posters in Arab slums. Just a sad loser in permanent lockdown, unable to do anything but think about how he wasted his life.

And that is what he deserves.

Some bobble heads are irrate that they won’t get their vicarious revenge fantasy, now that Moussaoui is going to spending the rest of his life in jail. well, boo fucking hoo. You’d rather reward him for conspiring to (but not actually) attacking us? Because he wants to die. He wants to be a hero but instead, he’s going to Hell. The psychological effects of people in Supermax confinement doesn’t sound pretty:

Prisoners may suffer from hallucinations, anxiety, problems with impulse control, and self-mutilation. In addition, confinement may encourage anger and rage, resulting in further violence. Depression may set in, with prisoners becoming extremely lethargic, losing memory, and refusing to exercise.

Sounds about as close to the Hell as there ever will exist. So why all the complaining?

Have you ever wondered what it would have sounded like if Bob Marley had covered the Pixies? How About Frank Sinatra? Sure you have.