Recently:

Endurance: Shackelton’s Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing

In The Heart Of The Sea: The Tragedy Of The Whaleship Essex, by Nathaniel Philbrick

Next:

To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World, by Arthur Herman

The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty, by Caroline Alexander

A replica of HMS Bounty, built in 1979

Get in mah belleh!

Photograph ©2009 Barry D. Jones. All Rights Reserved.

For months I have been under the impression that my pc was a piece of crap. Then I downloaded and installed Firefox 3.5.5 with Adblock. Pages now load in scant seconds, and I can use WordPress without wanting to smash my pc with a hammer.

It turns out Internet Explorer 7 sucks, not my pc. Thank you, Firefox.

Two days ago was the 189th anniversary of the sinking of the Nantucket whaleship Essex after being rammed by a sperm whale in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America. This real-life incident became the climactic scene in the Herman Melville novel Moby Dick.

The men of the Essex took to 3 open whaleboats and made for the western coast of South America, some 2000 miles away. Although islands to the south and west like the Marquesas and Tahiti were much closer, and the winds to those islands more favorable, the men chose not to try for them, as they had heard stories of the natives’ penchant for cannibalism. This decision on their part was highly ironic, given that the men of the Essex ended up eating each other to survive.

Of the 21 men who sailed from Nantucket on the Essex on 12 August, 1819, 1 deserted in Chile on a stopover before the sinking; 2 were buried at sea; 3 were lost when their boat became separated from the others; 7 were eaten; and 8 survived.

This blog recently deleted several post which included image galleries of Sarah Palin and Danica Patrick. Accordingly, my blogstats have crashed to near zero. This is my 4th blog. I’m not getting better at it.

Because there’s not enough 60s French girl pop music on teh interwebs for my taste.

“7 heure du matin”

Former lead singer of  the 90s band Letters To Cleo Kay Hanley has a new album in release- “Weaponize“. Kay is one of the few artists who I will automatically purchase/download when they come out with something new.

Many times I will read a book or see a movie because of references to it in modern culture, and the desire to simply know what everyone is talking about in relation to that book or movie. This is why I have read Moby Dick and Wuthering Heights and some of the works of Dickens and Kipling, among others. Some good flicks I’ve seen lately include Touch of Evil and Out Of The Past.

This week I saw two great movies, Wuthering Heights (1939) and Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961).

With Wuthering Heights, I have now read the book and seen the movie. Suffice it to say, it’s a great story of ill-fated romance, and the movie version is far more streamlined than the novel. Merle Oberon’s acting is a little over the top by contemporary standards, and at times her machine-gun delivery had me reaching for the remote so I could replay her lines and try to understand what the hell she said. Lawrence Olivier is excellent as Heathcliff: by turns smitten, devoted, angry, and cruel; and I identified with that character, because I’ve known a woman or two who were like Cathy- come hither one minute, get the f*** out the next; ‘I’ll love you forever, but I’m marrying another man’. Yeah, I’ve known some Cathys.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s was a surprise, in that it had a few jarring elements I was not aware of in advance. I knew it was basically an Audrey Hepburn vehicle and was familiar with all the references to her iconic style and presence, but that was it- I didn’t know what the story was about. It’s implied that Holly Golightly (Hepburn) might be a callgirl or escort, and that she depends on the generosity of anonymous men to pay the rent. Paul Varjak (George Peppard) moves into the building and becomes Holly’s neighbor; he is a struggling writer who is not above whoring himself out to his older lady literary agent.

Holly and Paul ‘meet cute’ and embark upon a series of adventures and encounters around New York City, they dispense with some subplots, and eventually the movie gets to the happy ending in the rain. The element that nearly spoils the movie is fat little Mickey Rooney as the Japanese upstairs neighbor “Mr. Yunioshi”- complete with a dental appliance to give him buck teeth and makeup to appear Asian. Other than yelling down at Holly about her noisy revels and doing pratfalls in his apartment for comedic relief, this character adds nothing to the story. He has no other interaction with Holly or Paul. To my mind, the film doesn’t miss a beat if they lose this character; but if the producers had to have this character, why not just have the part played by a Japanese actor?

All of this is redeemed by Audrey Hepburn, who is adorable- there’s no other way to put it- and the Oscar-winning song “Moon River”. When Holly sits on her windowsill and signs this song, Hepburn’s star power closes the deal with the audience.

Obama’s Comments Could Set KSM Free

My friends, the time has come to consider whether or not the President of the United States is a complete idiot.

In our country, in civil court, the defendant enjoys the presumption of innocence. It is up to the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant is guilty. This has been a bedrock principle of our legal system that predates the Constitution, and can trace its roots back to the Magna Carta.

“Presumed innocent, unless and until proven guilty”.

When a person in power who holds sway over the fate of the defendant makes prejudicial statements before trial, a defense lawyer can use those statements in an effort to free his client. Defense can move that his client cannot possibly receive a fair trial in light of such statements, and can- and if he has any brains at all, SHOULD- move to have the case dismissed, or have a mistrial declared.

President Obama, on the upcoming trial of Kalid Sheikh Muhammed, and the negative public reaction to the decision to hold that trial in New York City:

In an interview with NBC News, Obama defended his administration’s decision to try Mohammed and four other accused plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack in a New York court. Critics have said it is offensive to afford Mohammed the same legal rights and privileges granted to defendants in U.S. courts but Obama said those critics will not find it “offensive at all when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.”

“…when he’s convicted and when the death penalty is applied…”

Not ‘IF’, but ‘WHEN’.

The President of the United States has expressed the prosecutorial bias of the United States Government. He has announced IN ADVANCE not only the verdict, but the punishment.

With this flippant, ill-considered, and blatantly stupid off-hand comment, the President has greatly increased the chances that Kalid Sheikh Muhammed, the mastermind of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, the man who claims to have personally sawed off the head of Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Pearl, will be acquitted in federal court.

The President of the United States is a fool.

So says Anthony Dick, writing at NRO’s The Corner:

Unseriousness, Again  
The strange thing about the Obama administration’s decision to hold these civilian al-Qaeda trials is that the project is flawed even based on the premises of its staunchest defenders:  They talk about due process and the rule of law, but the trials can’t possibly provide anything close to the level of objectivity that applies in an ordinary criminal-law setting.  There is no way the defendants will get an impartial jury in New York, and there is no way the government will actually release the terrorists if they are acquitted.  Thus the courtroom proceedings in Manhattan will be, in a very real sense, show trials. 

Click on the link for the entire piece.