Quivering Now, Shivering Now, Withering

Conditions: Overcast.


Weighing Shit.

See if this adds up. Bernie Madoff, asshole extrordinaire and universally-hated financial crook was sentenced this week for operating a 20-odd year Ponzi scheme.

The man responsible for what has been called the greatest con of all time, American financier Bernard Madoff, looks set to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

Madoff, 70, was remanded in jail on Thursday awaiting sentencing after he plead guilty in a New York court to the 11 charges he faced over an alleged US$50 billion fraud.
[...]

Judge Chin set June 16 as the date for Madoff's sentencing. He faces a maximum penalty of 150 years in prison.

- newsroomamerica.com/

Ok, 150 years for stealing money, albeit a lot of money. Now, compare and contrast with Josef Fritzl, the beast who locked his daughter in a homemade prison for 20 years, raped her repeatedly, fathered a bunch of children, and allowed one of them to die. He was convicted this week in Austria.

Fritzl, 73, will be sent to a psychiatric institution and according to his lawyer, Rudolf Mayer, had "come to terms" with the fact that he would probably die behind bars. Officials said he would be treated for a severe personality disorder. In theory he could be released after 15 years, if experts deemed he had been cured of his condition and no longer posed a threat to society.

- guardian.co.uk/

Fifteen years in a psychiatric institution? Fifteen years in what's basically an Austrian hospital? Does this add up?

It just seems odd to me that literally terrorizing and abusing someone, and causing the death of another, in the eyes of the law does not even remotely add up to stealing money from a lot of people. This seems to be our culture, where we hold money over individual life and liberty. It's as much a tragedy of our civilisation as anything else



Near Miss O' The Month.

I missed it at the time, but Earth had itself yet another celestial near miss back at the start of March. Harvard University astronomer Timothy Spahr was one of the few that was forewarned:

On Friday night, Spahr received word that an asteroid was headed our way. Though it received little publicity, the asteroid passed by Earth early Monday. At its closest, the asteroid, named 2009 DD45, came within 45,000 miles of Earth, which is around twice as high as some satellite orbits and about one-fifth of the distance between the moon and Earth.

The cosmic object, which was estimated to be 20 yards to 30 yards across, came closest to Earth near the equator somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.

It was about the same size as the one that burned up over Siberia in 1908, leveling nearly 800 square miles of forest in the infamous "Tunguska Event" event.

This asteroid wouldn't have wiped out life on the planet, but it could have taken out a city. And, we didn't see this coming?

Brian Marden, a senior astronomer at the center, said that many such objects pass this close but go unobserved.

"No one is watching the whole sky all the time," Marden said.

He said that light and celestial objects like the moon can affect astronomers' visibility. "If the moon is full, no one is watching," Marden said.

- boston.com

Oh, well I guess as long as the moon isn't full the astronomers will keep a watch out. And a partial watch for Armageddon is better than no watch at all.



Film Review: Underworld 3: Rise Of The Lycans.

It's so important for a film to end well because, obviously, the ending is the last thing the audience leaves with. Even a film with a bad opening can be saved with a good ending. And so, oddly we have Underworld 3 which is actually a prequel to the previous 2 films, which starts badly but ends quite well. Prequels are a tricky business. All these characters you already know are suddenly reanimated and set back to a previous timeframe. Of course the giant catch is that we know what happens to these guys, so obviously no one can actually die because they have to appear in the next film. And the story of Underworld 3 had already been covered in flashbacks in the first Underworld film, making this film not only predictable, but totally pointless.

Underworld was a pretty good film. It combined an interesting take on Vampires and Werewolf legends with a Romeo and Juliet love story. It was exciting, dramatic and gothic. Underworld 2 couldn't recapture the magic and kind of descended into a chaotic mess. You'd think Underworld 3 would be the proverbial lead balloon, but the filmmakers have played themselves an ace: British actors!

Specifically, Michael Sheen, who was in the first film, missed the second, and most recently was the Frost part of Frost Nixon. All that is forgotten as he again plays the rebellious Lycan leader Lucius who defies Vampire overlord Victor and pursues his daughter Sonya in another similar Romeo and Juliet format. You know, this would have all been crap if it weren't for all these characters being Brits, and bringing that heavy, Shakesperian, meaningful, 'Englishness' to their roles. There's even some primeval chemistry going on here between the leads. And while we know how it's going to end, and it is kind of dull to start with, it turns into a pretty good story about rebellion and doomed love. This is by no means a perfect film: it uses a large amount of shaky cam for most of the fight sequences, and I guess it is a little hoky. But it's a well-acted hokiness, which kinda makes the difference. Three and a Half Moons out of Five.


- Peace out.