David Lynch's A Goofy Movie

Need Coffee puts it best: "There are no words. None."

"Most Memorable URL of the Week" goes to...

... the official website for actor Bill McKinney, best known as one of the two hillbillies that assaulted Ned Beatty in Deliverance.

And what's the URL, you ask?

www.squeallikeapig.com

The continuing secession of America from everyone else.

On several occasions when Mrs. Mosley and I have talked politics, she has expressed bewilderment at how prominent religious leaders in this country have taken such a vigorous stance against the science of global warming.

I've tried to state it like this: Being that theirs is a very black vs. white worldview (and since that includes Democratic positions vs. Republican positions), their opinions on things that really have no precedence in the Bible default to what their good friends the Republicans think.

They're already inclined to be suspicious of scientific issues because of the whole Evolution vs. "Intelligent Design" debate. And since the rest of the world sees global warming as a valid threat, American Christians can view it as a United Nations/New World Order conspiracy that fits nicely with the whole End-of-Times line of thought.

I bring all this up because of a story today in the Independent about some recent moves by the Vatican:

The Pope is expected to use his first address to the United Nations to deliver a powerful warning over climate change in a move to adopt protection of the environment as a "moral" cause for the Catholic Church and its billion-strong following.

The New York speech is likely to contain an appeal for sustainable development, and it will follow an unprecedented Encyclical (a message to the wider church) on the subject, senior diplomatic sources have told The Independent.

It will act as the centrepiece of a US visit scheduled for next April – the first by Benedict XVI, and the first Papal visit since 1999 – and round off an environmental blitz at the Vatican, in which the Pope has personally led moves to emphasise green issues based on the belief that climate change is affecting the poorest people on the planet, and the principle that believers have a duty to "protect creation".

Incidentally, this declaration follows another from the Pope two years ago which stated that Evolution was a valid theory and that Christians should not take every single part of the Bible as, for lack of a better word, gospel.

Will this make a difference? Probably not. Religious fundamentalists in this country who aren't Catholic don't give a tinker's cuss about the Pope. Add into the mix that he's addressing the aforementioned United Nations, and his pleas can and will be easily ignored by the religious powerbrokers here in this country. More's the pity.

Yeah. And Walmart owns all the barcodes, too

Ho ho ho, this is rich.


Back when I was in college, students were at the mercy of the campus bookstores when it came to their textbooks. Today, they can save a bundle by just going online. Well, it looks like at least one campus bookstore ("The Coop" at Harvard University) is not going gracefully into that good, good night (Via BoingBoing):

Jarret A. Zafran '09 said he was asked to leave the Coop after writing down the prices of six books required for a junior Social Studies tutorial he hopes to take.

"I'm a junior and every semester I do the same thing. I go and look up the author and the cost and order the ones that are cheaper online and then go back to the Coop to get the rest," Zafran said.

"I'm not a rival bookstore, I'm a student with an I.D.," he added.

Coop President Jerry P. Murphy '73 said that while there is no Coop policy against individual students copying down book information, "we discourage people who are taking down a lot of notes."

The apparent new policy could be a response to efforts by Crimsonreading.org—an online database that allows students to find the books they need for each course at discounted prices from several online booksellers—from writing down the ISBN identification numbers for books at the Coop and then using that information for their Web site.

Murphy said the Coop considers that information the Coop's intellectual property.

Crimson Reading disagrees. "We don’t think the Coop owns copyright on this information that should be available to students," said Tom D. Hadfield '08, a co-creator of the site.

According to UC President Ryan A. Petersen '08, discussions with an intellectual property lawyer have confirmed Crimson Reading's position.

ISBN data is similar to phone book listings, which are not protected by intellectual property law, Petersen added. Every book title has a unique ISBN number, short for "international standard book number."

The alleged new rule is just the latest hurdle for Crimsonreading.org.

During a meeting of the Committee on Undergraduate Education last March, Petersen proposed creating a centralized database of ISBN numbers for all courses, streamlining the process for professors and cutting the costs for the Coop. The proposal, which could have also made it easier for Crimson Reading to collect information, was nixed.

"There's a very lucrative and sensitive relationship between the Coop and University Hall that is stopping students from saving money on textbooks," Hadfield said.

Zafran, after his altercation with the Coop, does not feel much sympathy for the store. "If they want to get their revenue up they should slash their prices," Zafran said. "I think if anything, this policy will have the reverse effect because if students aren't allowed to comparison-shop, students will just get all their books online," he said.

Zafran is correct. The only thing that the Coop has going for it is the fact that it is local and students can get a book from there right now. If they keep up these petulant little displays, then even that advantage will be overshadowed by their arrogant tactics.

Deconstructing Woody

I discovered a running feature on the Onion A.V. Club called "My Year of Flops". In this series, movie reviewer Nathan Rabin has been recounting in great detail some of the worst Hollywood films ever made. The following is an excerpt from his review of Scenes From a Mall:

So it’s understandably jarring to see Woody Allen, the quintessential New York snob, playing a pony-tail sporting Los Angeleno perfectly comfortable with the emptiness of his existence. That ponytail goes a long way toward negating the fundamental Woody-ness of Allen’s being, yet Woody remains Woody no matter how incongruous the setting. Mazursky has Allen’s character do things the real and reel Allen would never do. He buys Italian suits. He totes around a surfboard. He listens to music made after World War II. He says things like “Christ, where’s my fucking Saab?!” He seems comfortable in a mall. He goes hours without referencing Kierkegaard or Camus. Most shockingly, he has sex with a Jewish woman roughly his own age.

Press Secretary Matt Frewer

I can't believe I never noticed the resemblance before (via BoingBoing):