A Comedy of Errors

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"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." -Morrow
"Take care of the minutes, and the hours and years will take care of themselves." -Anonymous
"Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile." -F.P. Jones

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2004-01-15
The Future of Space

1:34 p.m.

Well, Bush made his speech yesterday regarding the future of space. I didn't hear or see it, but it sounds pretty ambitious, and I can only hope that it will be followed through. I am somewhat skeptical, however. First, he's not going to be in office when all of these grand ideas are supposed to come to fruition, so he can make these statements. Secondly, retire the Shuttle in 2010 and then have a Crew Exploration Vehicle in 2014? I can't see four years without manned spaceflight. Well, US manned spaceflight. Sure, the station will (should) be done by then, but how are we going to get people to/from there, as well as maintain it? Thirdly, an extra 1 billion dollars spread over 5 years? C'mon. That's just over a 1% budget increase. Not much of an incentive.

Well, I guess it's something. We can do better, though.

There's also the bit about Alexander Kaleri, who 'happens to be a Russian cosmonaut'. Like it's an accident.

I'm less than inspired.

Maybe I'm just being cynical, because I got my exam grades back and I did about as bad as one can do. No exaggeration. I did passable on the interdisciplinary question, and horribly on the disciplinarey questions. No one failed this time, so I'm not sure if they'll offer a resit, but if they do, I'm taking it.

This week has definitly been quite the emotional roller coaster. Or maybe I'm just really moody. ;)

Last night a large group of us saw The Last Samurai. I really didn't have any expectations. I liked it. I guess it's hard for me to feel passionately one way or another about a movie; there are few that I absolutely love (Pride and Prejudice or Lord of the Rings) or hate (Head Above Water), and most fall somewhere in between. I thought that Tom Cruise did a very good job, and that the love story was nicely understated, a current running underneath that never quite surfaced.

Here, I give away a bit, but not really. So, there is one scene that I adore and think is one of the most erotic scenes that I have ever viewed, and that is near the end, when Taka is dressing Nathan Algren (Tom Cruise). The only flesh shown is his bare chest, but there's no talking, and between the music, the imminent battle (from which he is almost guaranteed to not return), and their surpressed attraction, I just found it very moving.

There was one aspect of the movie that I was pleasantly surprised about, and it didn't really even have to do with the movie itself. There was a lot of Japanese spoken, and the subtitles were all in French so that made things interesting. There was a lot that I didn't understand, although I was pleased that I was able to get the gist. However, there was one scene in which they were speaking Japanese and it took me several subtitles to realize that I was reading in French and not even thinking about it! That was awesome, and such a breakthrough. I was really happy about that. So, yay me on that.

Exchange rate is down slightly to 1.26295 USD to 1 Euro. Small victories.

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