How about Thursdays being ‘cartoon day’ on Merchantprince? Sound like fun? Well, maybe…

I’ve really been out of it the last two weeks. My posting here has really dropped off to almost nothing. It isn’t that nothing has been going on, just not a lot that’s significant. I’d like to get back to a few more personal entries so this doesn’t feel like a job, just putting up articles only about other stuff I’m into.

Anyway, I may be getting the new Dragon 9 voice-recognition software this week. That could make more posts easier (I’m not large with the typing). I have some eBay business to handle today, but I hope to get to putting up some articles about the Celtic Fling I went to over the weekend in Mount Hope. It was great, as always, and I have video, pictures and music to share.

In the meantime, how about some good music video right now? Here’s Jeremy Fisher’s “Cigarette”, released some months back. I really liked the song (reminiscent of one of my fave bands, Fountain of Wayne).

Since hearing about the Frank Darabont fiasco and the f’tarded meddling of George Lucas (a man who should be kept far away from film-making altogether by now), I’ve been nervous about the Indy movie. Count me among those who felt Harrison Ford hadn’t aged well enought to pull this off.

But, whether it’s lighting or makeup, this snapshot changes my mind.

Now if only I can get past the other abomination of this film, the boyband-like inclusion of Shia LaBeouf, which could rival the infamous Short Round in grating-kiddie-crap from Lucas/Spielberg.

Oh, and by the way, the first teaser trailer should be just the original theme by John Williams playing on 4000 dark screens next Spring. Make it so.

photo by Steven Spielberg courtesy of IndianaJones.com

Thought I’d share with you a quote I read earlier today, taken from Michael Bywater’s book Lost Worlds, on the purported “wisdom of the ancients” – so in vogue with New Agers and the like. If you are a true believer in God, it should be a matter of deep consideration that Bronze Age metaphors cannot be the totality of your understanding of Creation.

“The Ancients knew little and understood less. They scratched a living and died like dogs. Gripped by an uncomprehending egocentricity, they believed that the world had been made for them, and they believed that by a crude process of extrapolation: when they needed something, they made it. Finding themselves in a world which suited them to a remarkable degree, they assumed that it had been made for them; obviously, by someone much like them, but much bigger.

“Unable to understand any laws other than the law of will, they assumed that when something happened in nature, it happened because Nature commanded it. The river dried up because they had offended it; the volcano erupted because the Volcano Giants had not been placated; the harvest failed because someone – this is a bit of a leap of faith, but it leads eventually to Christianity, so it’s all okay in the end – had not had his heart torn out and then been ripped limb from limb and his blood poured onto the soil.

“In short, the Ancients spent what thinking time they had trying to make phenomenological bricks without ontological straw. They were wrong about almost everything, hopelessly confused sequence and causation, left the scantiest record of their thinking, and croaked in short order.

“So why do a significant number of people, even now, believe not only in the bits of the Wisdom of the Ancients that we know about (like astrology) but also that there is a huge corpus of lost wisdom which, if only we could find it, would guarantee us a future of bliss, with no wars or sadness or cancer ever again, a world of birdsong and crystal and……In our dreams. Specifically, in our dream that the world was created perfect, and has been drifting away from perfection ever since. The silver swan unlocks her silent throat – the initiates will spot Orlando Gibbons’ great madrigal, the others get a pretty image, everyone’s happy.

“Those who believe in the Wisdom of the Ancients disbelieve in any progress in human understanding…….In truth, it is not the Wisdom of the Ancients that we have lost; it’s any fathoming of their true Ignorance.”

How about this? Check out this amazing map of the United States (click thumbnail below to enlarge). Each state’s economic output is analogized to another country’s GDP.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a convenient way of measuring and comparing the size of national economies. Annual GDP represents the market value of all goods and services produced within a country in a year. Put differently:

GDP = consumption + investment + government spending + (exports – imports)

Although the economies of countries like China and India are growing at an incredible rate, the US remains the nation with the highest GDP in the world – and by far: US GDP is projected to be $13.22 trillion (or $13.220 billion) in 2007, according to this source. That’s almost as much as the economies of the next four (Japan, Germany, China, UK) combined.

The creator of this map has had the interesting idea to break down that gigantic US GDP into the GDPs of individual states, and compare those to other countries’ GDP. What follows, is this slightly misleading map – misleading, because the economies both of the US states and of the countries they are compared with are not weighted for their respective populations.

Pakistan, for example, has a GDP that’s slightly higher than Israel’s – but Pakistan has a population of about 170 million, while Israel is only 7 million people strong. The US states those economies are compared with (Arkansas and Oregon, respectively) are much closer to each other in population: 2.7 million and 3.4 million.

And yet, wile a per capita GDP might give a good indication of the average wealth of citizens, a ranking of the economies on this map does serve two interesting purposes: it shows the size of US states’ economies relative to each other (California is the biggest, Wyoming the smallest), and it links those sizes with foreign economies (which are therefore also ranked: Mexico’s and Russia’s economies are about equal size, Ireland’s is twice as big as New Zealand’s). Here’s a run-down of the 50 states, plus DC:

1. California, it is often said, would be the world’s sixth- or seventh-largest economy if it was a separate country. Actually, that would be the eighth, according to this map, as France (with a GDP of $2.15 trillion) is #8 on the aforementioned list.
2. Texas’ economy is significantly smaller, exactly half of California’s, as its GDP compares to that of Canada (#10, $1.08 trillion).
3. Florida also does well, with its GDP comparable to Asian tiger South Korea’s (#13 at $786 billion).
4. Illinois – Mexico (GDP #14 at $741 billion)
5. New Jersey – Russia (GDP #15 at $733 billion)
6. Ohio – Australia (GDP #16 at $645 billion)
7. New York – Brazil (GDP #17 at $621 billion)
8. Pennsylvania – Netherlands (GDP #18 at $613 billion)
9. Georgia – Switzerland (GDP #19 at $387 billion)
10. North Carolina – Sweden (GDP #20 at $371 billion)
11. Massachusetts – Belgium (GDP #21 at $368 billion)
12. Washington – Turkey (GDP #22 at $358 billion)
13. Virginia – Austria (GDP #24 at $309 billion)
14. Tennessee – Saudi Arabia (GDP #25 at $286 billion)
15. Missouri – Poland (GDP #26 at $265 billion)
16. Louisiana – Indonesia (GDP #27 at $264 billion)
17. Minnesota – Norway (GDP #28 at $262 billion)
18. Indiana – Denmark (GDP #29 at $256 billion)
19. Connecticut – Greece (GDP #30 at $222 billion)
20. Michigan – Argentina (GDP #31 at $210 billion)
21. Nevada – Ireland (GDP #32 at $203 billion)
22. Wisconsin – South Africa (GDP #33 at $200 billion)
23. Arizona – Thailand (GDP #34 at $197 billion)
24. Colorado – Finland (GDP #35 at $196 billion)
25. Alabama – Iran (GDP #36 at $195 billion)
26. Maryland – Hong Kong (#37 at $187 billion GDP)
27. Kentucky – Portugal (GDP #38 at $177 billion)
28. Iowa – Venezuela (GDP #39 at $148 billion)
29. Kansas – Malaysia (GDP #40 at $132 billion)
30. Arkansas – Pakistan (GDP #41 at $124 billion)
31. Oregon – Israel (GDP #42 at $122 billion)
32. South Carolina – Singapore (GDP #43 at $121 billion)
33. Nebraska – Czech Republic (GDP #44 at $119 billion)
34. New Mexico – Hungary (GDP #45 at $113 billion)
35. Mississippi – Chile (GDP #48 at $100 billion)
36. DC – New Zealand (#49 at $99 billion GDP)
37. Oklahoma – Philippines (GDP #50 at $98 billion)
38. West Virginia – Algeria (GDP #51 at $92 billion)
39. Hawaii – Nigeria (GDP #53 at $83 billion)
40. Idaho – Ukraine (GDP #54 at $81 billion)
41. Delaware – Romania (#55 at $79 billion GDP)
42. Utah – Peru (GDP #56 at $76 billion)
43. New Hampshire – Bangladesh (GDP #57 at $69 billion)
44. Maine – Morocco (GDP #59 at $57 billion)
45. Rhode Island – Vietnam (GDP #61 at $48 billion)
46. South Dakota – Croatia (GDP #66 at $37 billion)
47. Montana – Tunisia (GDP #69 at $33 billion)
48. North Dakota – Ecuador (GDP #70 at $32 billion)
49. Alaska – Belarus (GDP #73 at $29 billion)
50. Vermont – Dominican Republic (GDP #81 at $20 billion)
51. Wyoming – Uzbekistan (GDP #101 at $11 billion)

This map was suggested by Morgan via strangemaps@gmail.com, and can be found here. Please note that the GDP data used for this comparison are not necessarily the same as those used in compiling the original map.

Do you have fun at your job? Probably not as much as these people. A company called Connected Ventures, a group of friends who work for Vimeo, CollegeHumor, Busted Tees, and Defunker, is evidently where people dance around and drink soda and make music videos.

This does look like a lot of fun and the song is great, too! (Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger)

Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo

In yet another step in the ongoing proof that Christopher Hitchens is the Greatest Pundit in the World Today, I provide an excerpt from his most recent book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Since the death of Asimov and Sagan, we have had so few voices raised loud enough in the wilderness to stem the tide of religious darkness currently enveloping our world. I cheer with every new article and interview in this man’s ongoing, righteous battle against fear and ignorance.

Mark Twain would be proud…

There are four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum of servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking.

I do not think it is arrogant of me to claim that I had already discovered these four objections (as well as noticed the more vulgar and obvious fact that religion is used by those in temporal charge to invest themselves with authority) before my boyish voice had broken. I am morally certain that millions of other people came to very similar conclusions in very much the same way, and I have since met such people in hundreds of places, and in dozens of different countries. Many of them never believed, and many of them abandoned faith after a difficult struggle. Some of them had blinding moments of un-conviction that were every bit as instantaneous, though perhaps less epileptic and apocalyptic (and later more rationally and more morally justified) than Saul of Tarsus on the Damascene road.

And here is the point, about myself and my co-thinkers. Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, openmindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically: the disagreement between Professor Stephen Jay Gould and Professor Richard Dawkins, concerning “punctuated evolution” and the unfilled gaps in post-Darwinian theory, is quite wide as well as quite deep, but we shall resolve it by evidence and reasoning and not by mutual excommunication. (My own annoyance at Professor Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, for their cringe-making proposal that atheists should conceitedly nominate themselves to be called “brights,” is a part of a continuous argument.)

We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and—since there is no other metaphor—also the soul. We do not believe in heaven or hell, yet no statistic will ever find that without these blandishments and threats we commit more crimes of greed or violence than the faithful. (In fact, if a proper statistical inquiry could ever be made, I am sure the evidence would be the other way.)

We are reconciled to living only once, except through our children, for whom we are perfectly happy to notice that we must make way, and room. We speculate that it is at least possible that, once people accepted the fact of their short and struggling lives, they might behave better toward each other and not worse. We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true—that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow.

Read the rest of this entry »

As part of my ongoing efforts to break out of the stupor that I’ve been in, I’ve gone back to watching the entire series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer once again. For the first time in three years, I’m watching the whole show from beginning to end. Anyone who knows me knows that this particular television show has had a unique influence on my life: namely it heals my soul.

I’m going to watch the first three seasons through on DVD, and then pick up right around the same time that TNT is showing the remaining four. I need something to get my head screwed on right. And every time I have watched this show and enjoyed the journey of its characters over the last seven years, I have subsequently improved my life in some meaningful way. It just gets my head screwed on straight, and gives me a fresh outlook on life.

So for today’s entry in the My Jukebox category, I give you the love theme from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the beautiful instrumental piece by Christophe Beck, Close Your Eyes.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

As always, my policy is that if anyone would like a download link for this song, just make a Comment below and ask – I’ll hook you up with a link in a comment-reply of my own (check back with this article).

Download links are automatically embedded in my RSS feeds.

What is it with all these movies coming out of which I have heard nothing? Here’s another intriguing trailer for a film which looks like a cross between John Carpenter’s The Thing and his Assault on Precinct 13 films. It’s produced by the great Sam Raimi and looks pretty damn cool.

30 Days of Night is a vampire movie set in an arctic town where the daylight sun has become clouded over and the sharp and fangies come out to play.

Here’s the brand new trailer for Shoot ‘Em Up, starring Clive Owen, Monica Bellucci, and a crazed Paul Giamatti. I’ve never even heard of this movie until today and it looks like a blast.

Clive Owen is The Man, but Giamatti looks like he could steal the film.

Paying for bullets with food stamps… awesome.