Disinformation » Movies

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Stupid (Video)

LordSatan — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:05:52 +0000

This movie (parody) should be nominated for an Oscar:

Hollywood Stars Sign On For 9/11 Truth Film

Camron Wiltshire — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:30:58 +0000

Howard Cohen writes for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth:

“A Violation of Trust” (formerly titled “Confession of a 9/11 Conspirator”) is a feature film project that is willing to do what the world’s governments and legal bodies are unwilling to do – open a real investigation of 9/11 for the entire world to see. It dramatizes the first day of “The President’s New Investigation of 9/11”, with actors performing from a tightly-written, factually-accurate script that pits the 9/11 Commission Report and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Reports against the work of 9/11 researcher Dr. David Ray Griffin and the scientific research highlighted by leading 9/11 truth organizations, including Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

The filming of “A Violation of Trust” will be performed on a single set, depicting the investigation’s public hearing room. The single-set approach provides the most intense platform for the actors and the script to involve the audience. The film’s compelling drama, forceful images and real-time video clips will be woven into its often contentious question-and-answer dialogue to create opportunities for conflicting views that will be argued both passionately and in a scientific and logical manner.

The list of actors that have signed on to this film includes:

A dozen additional actors will be added to the ensemble cast…

More details at Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

You Gotta Horus Outta Control

Camron Wiltshire — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:40:06 +0000

Blindfold: A 9/11-Themed Short Film

Camron Wiltshire — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 02:41:25 +0000

Blindfold is a short film by Teace Snyder about the strained relationship between Tim, a widower father, and Eve, his pre-teen daughter, as they try to reconcile the emotional devastation 9/11 has caused their family.

The Conspiracy Against Freedom

Good German — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 03:50:10 +0000

From the 1971 movie Little Murders

Psychopathy: A Misunderstood Personality Disorder

Good German — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 02:23:35 +0000

Via ScienceDaily:

Psychopathic personalities are some of the most memorable characters portrayed in popular media today. These characters, like Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, Frank Abagnale Jr. from Catch Me If You Can and Alex from A Clockwork Orange, are typically depicted as charming, intriguing, dishonest, guiltless, and in some cases, downright terrifying.

But scientific research suggests that psychopathy is a personality disorder that is widely misunderstood.”Psychopathy tends to be used as a label for people we do not like, cannot understand, or construe as evil,” notes Jennifer Skeem, Professor of Psychology and Social Behavior at the University of California, Irvine. Skeem, Devon Polaschek of Victoria University of Wellington, Christopher Patrick of Florida State University, and Scott Lilienfeld of Emory University are the authors of a new monograph focused on understanding the psychopathic personality that will appear in the December issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Batman: Occupy Gotham

majestic — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:31:01 +0000

Don’t you love it when pop culture reflects real life? From the Wall Street Journal:

In addition to the morally ambiguous Catwoman and the enhanced strongman Bane, it appears the new Batman movie will tackle income inequality, according to the below trailer.

In the clip, a whispering Anne Hathaway (Catwoman) can be seen telling Bruce Wayne, Batman’s billionaire alter-ego: “There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne… when it hits, you’re all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”…

[continues in the Wall Street Journal]

Is Lisbeth Salander a Cyberpunk Hero?

moezilla — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 20:35:46 +0000

Author Sasha Mitchell compares how cyberpunk is defined by Stieg Larsson, by Hollywood, and by Google. Mitchell compares Lisbeth Salander to William Gibson’s heroines (arguing that she’s a combination of Gibson’s female and male protagonists), but saying the ultimate message of her archetype is “screw labels”. (”Does she really need to be sexualized to the extent … Hollywood illustrators would have her be?”)

In The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth “spreads resistant messages despite powerful mechanisms of top-down control,” which is ultimately a more empowering message than what you get from searching “cyberpunk” on Google Images. (”Note, if you will, how many topless, pantsless, or pigtailed schoolgirls you see here.”) But even Gibson himself once argued the cutting-edge of cyberpunk is too unfamiliar to be defined.

Dau: The Biggest, Most Insane Movie In Cinema History

JacobSloan — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 22:06:21 +0000

From GQ, Michael Idov visits the cult-like set of the Ukrainian film Dau — an enclosed bubble where thousands of actors have been living the lives of their characters 24 hours a day, ever since production began in 2006, using Soviet passports and money, in a world that is exactly as things were in the 1950s, while their real lives recede into the past:

Five years ago, a relatively unknown (and unhinged) director began one of the wildest experiments in film history. Armed with total creative control, he invaded a Ukrainian city, marshaled a cast of thousands and thousands, and constructed a totalitarian society in which the cameras are always rolling and the actors never go home.

The rumors started seeping out of Ukraine about three years ago: A young Russian film director has holed up on the outskirts of Kharkov, a town of 1.4 million in the country’s east, making…something. A movie, sure, but not just that. If the gossip was to be believed, this was the most expansive, complicated, all-consuming film project ever attempted.

A steady stream of former extras and fired PAs talked of the shoot in terms usually reserved for survivalist camps. The director, Ilya Khrzhanovsky, was a madman who forced the crew to dress in Stalin-era clothes, fed them Soviet food out of cans and tins, and paid them in Soviet money. Others said the project was a cult and everyone involved worked for free. Khrzhanovsky had taken over all of Kharkov, they said, shutting down the airport. No, no, others insisted, the entire thing was a prison experiment, perhaps filmed surreptitiously by hidden cameras.

I’m about to write the rumors off as idle blog chatter when I get to the film’s compound itself and, again, find myself ready to believe anything. The set, seen from the outside, is an enormous wooden box jutting directly out of a three-story brick building that houses the film’s vast offices, workshops, and prop warehouses. The wardrobe department alone takes up the entire basement. Here, a pair of twins order me out of my clothes and into a 1950s three-piece suit complete with sock garters, pants that go up to the navel, a fedora, two bricklike brown shoes, an undershirt, and boxers. Black, itchy, and unspeakably ugly, the underwear is enough to trigger Proustian recall of the worst kind in anyone who’s spent any time in the USSR. (I lived in Latvia through high school.)

The twins, Olya and Lena, see nothing unusual about this hazing ritual for a reporter who’s not going to appear in a single shot of the film—just like they see nothing unusual in the fact that the cameras haven’t rolled for more than a month. After all, the film, tentatively titled Dau, has been in production since 2006 and won’t wrap until 2012, if ever. But within the walls of the set, for the 300 people working on the project—including the fifty or so who live in costume, in character—there is no difference between “on” and “off.”

One of the twins admiringly touches my head. Before coming to wardrobe, I’d stopped in hair and makeup. My nape and temples are now shaved clean in an approximation of an old hairstyle called a half-box. All to help me blend in on the set. Only, from here on, I can no longer call it that. According to a glossary of forbidden terms posted right in front of me on the wall, the set is to be referred to as the Institute. Likewise, inside the Institute, there are no scenes, just experiments. No shooting, only documentation. And there is certainly no director. Instead, Ilya Khrzhanovsky, the man responsible for this madness, is to be referred to as the Head of the Institute or simply the Boss.

Read the rest at GQ.com

The Neverending Will Shakespeare Conspiracy Theory

majestic — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 19:21:17 +0000

Randy Dotinga writes for the Christian Science Monitor that despite theories like those in the new movie Anonymous that William Shakespeare was someone else entirely, drama professor Scott McCrea says conspiracy theories surrounding the playwright are all false:

This weekend, thousands of moviegoers will get their first glimpse of the theory that the playwright and poet named William Shakespeare wasn’t a balding guy named William Shakespeare. “Anonymous,” starring Vanessa Redgrave, suggests a grand conspiracy obscured the true identity of the Bard of Avon. (Well, make that the Bard of Not-Avon.)

The Will-wasn’t-Will idea isn’t ancient, but it’s not entirely new either. Ever since the 19th century, skeptics have been questioning whether an upper-middle class man with a rather ordinary background could have become one of the most influential humans of all time.

Recent books have debunked the doubters, including 2010’s “Contested Will,” by Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro (you can read my review here) and 2005’s “The Case for Shakespeare: The End of the Authorship Question,” by Scott McCrea, a drama professor at Purchase College, State University of New York.

This week, I asked McCrea about the history of Shakespeare conspiracy theories and why he thinks they’re, to borrow a phrase, “the stuff that dreams are made on.”

Q: When did people start wondering if Shakespeare was actually Shakespeare?

A: In the mid-19th century, when there was a guy who wrote a book and claimed that Shakespeare lacked erudition and could not have been very well educated, so it must have been [famed writer] Ben Jonson must have been the real writer of the plays. He writes these plays about dukes and earls, yet he was a commoner, a son of a glover. How could he have written these plays? Then people thought it must have been Francis Bacon. He was the most learned man of his time, and Shakespeare was the most learned man of his time, so they must have been the same guy…

[continues in the Christian Science Monitor]

Was Shakespeare A Fraud? Is Hollywood Officially Out of Ideas? (Video)

Easy Rider — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 06:40:02 +0000

Is Hollywood officially out of ideas to tackle the Shakespeare authorship question in film called (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink …) Anonymous?

Product Placement Reaches New Heights

JacobSloan — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:38:03 +0000

Wondering how out of control product placement in film has gotten? Check out this reel of highlights from The Marine, a crappy Twentieth Century Fox action flick from a couple years ago which apparently stars Miller Genuine Draft. It points to an emerging form of cinema — the low-quality, low-budget Hollywood movie that serves as an extended two-hour commercial.

Samsung Claims That iPads Are Stolen From Kubrick

JacobSloan — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:00:16 +0000

It’s fascinating to examine the point at which an element of science fiction actually comes true. Apple is in a legal struggle with Samsung to prevent it from selling tablet devices that resemble the iPad. Samsung’s defense: The iPad is in fact ripped off from a tablet design created by Stanley Kubrick for 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. FOSS Patents writes:

Late last night, Samsung filed its opposition brief to Apple’s motion for a preliminary injunction in the United States.

One element of Samsung’s defense strategy is interesting enough that I wanted to report on it beforehand. Ever since Apple started to assert the design of the iPad against other manufacturers, many people have been wondering whether there’s actually prior art for the general design of the iPad in some futuristic devices shown in sci-fi movies and TV series. And indeed, Samsung’s lawyers make this claim now in their defense against Apple’s motion for a preliminary injunction.

This is how the related declaration explains why this movie picture is valid prior art for a certain iPad-related design patent:

Attached hereto as Exhibit D is a true and correct copy of a still image taken from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In a clip from that film lasting about one minute, two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers…As with the design claimed by the D’889 Patent, the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table’s surface), and a thin form factor.

It would be amazing if the court agreed with Samsung that this constitutes prior art for that particular iPad-related design patent. Whether or not Samsung will succeed, the mere fact that they proffer this kind of evidence is remarkable and will be exciting for many fans of movies in general — and of that movie in particular — to find out about.

Washington Health Sec.: Contagion Movie Is Very Real

majestic — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:24:47 +0000

[Note spoilers below and in the link.] Josh Kirns amps up fear of contagious diseases for Mynorthwest.com:

Talk about a horror movie. The global outbreak thriller “Contagion” topped the weekend box office and it prompted a lot of extra hand washing and increased hesitance to touch door knobs, hand rails, or just about anything else we all come in contact with. Of course it’s prompting many to ask if the fictional story of an unknown virus spreading around the world in a matter of days can come true.

“What was rolling around in my mind was when SARS happened,” Washington Secretary of Health Mary Selecky told Seattle’s Morning News on 97.3 KIRO FM. “And then of course, there was H1N1 (commonly known as Swine Flu,) it was an unknown novel virus just like in the movie.”

She said just like in the movie, we didn’t know what it was or how to treat it, and we didn’t have a vaccine. Of course, the big difference is 14 million die in the film (including superstars Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Winslet.)

Selecky said “Contagion” does a good job of showing what public health experts do to try and identify and stop the spread of infectious diseases.

But she says the biggest outbreak we should worry about is what she calls an “epidemic of fear” that could cause rioting, looting, or other break downs in society. She said it was most recently on display amidst the worries of radiation spread after the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami that destroyed the Fukishima nuclear power plant. “That epidemic of fear sent people to grocery stores to empty shelves and things like that,” she said…

[continues at Mynorthwest.com]

Mr. X’s Speech From ‘JFK’ (Video)

bluemana — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 15:36:51 +0000

Should All Human Beings Pop the (Theoretical) ‘Limitless’ Pill?

LordSatan — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 04:28:31 +0000

Yes, a pop culture way to ask a “Brave New World” question. Rahul Parikh poses on Salon:

The film’s “miracle” drug may seem far-fetched, but it’s based in a medical reality: Taking certain medications, specifically those developed to treat psychiatric and neurological disorders, can boost cognitive performance in otherwise healthy people.

Many of us instinctively recoil from such an idea for moral reasons. Sculpting our brains, unlike, say, sculpting our noses, seems like cheating. But consider this: 7 percent of surveyed college students (and some 25 percent of those on elite campuses) have taken an unprescribed Ritalin — or a similar drug used to treat attention deficit disorder — to boost their performance on an exam.

And the phenomenon is not restricted to college students trying to raise their grade point averages: The military has a history of encouraging — and sometimes even ordering — soldiers to take Ritalin or Provigil, a drug that boosts alertness. Canadian researchers are now looking at a drug called metyrapone that may help dull the sting of painful memories. Already common is the number of executives who swallow a little dose of Propranolol — which is normally used to treat high blood pressure but has also been prescribed for performance anxiety for many years — to calm their nerves before they speak. And with so many of us already hustling to Starbucks morning, noon and night for shots of caffeine to keep us going, the question arises: Is there a case to be made for cognitive enhancement?

Preacher Protests The Midnight Harry Potter Screening

JacobSloan — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:09:42 +0000

“You have stuff on your head, Jesus has stuff in his heart.” A bible-loving preacher, AKA comedian Paul Gale, ruffles feathers when he comes out to protest the deviance of the New York City midnight premier of Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Pt. 2. His voice sounds like a soft Southern wind:

Willy Wonka States: Enjoy Your Room of Half-Rooms (Video)

ralph — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 04:55:18 +0000

This is NOT a kids’ movie, at least in the first part of this scene. Yes, I admit, it has the hopeful message for the children in the end. Sure beats that crap that Depp and Burton did.

The First Science Fiction Film

JacobSloan — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 16:14:56 +0000

Dreamy and surreal, it lives up to its name:

A Trip to the Moon (French: Le Voyage dans la lune) is a 1902 French black-and-white silent science fiction film. The film was written and directed by Georges Méliès, assisted by his brother Gaston. It is based loosely on two popular novels of the time: From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne and The First Men in the Moon by H. G. Wells.

It is the first science fiction film and uses innovative animation and special effects, including the well-known image of the spaceship landing in the moon’s eye.

Can A Man Still Fly? Happy Fourth of July (Video)

ralph — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 00:35:35 +0000

Superhero movies, should still be this good, for the world. And I am saying this against that craptastic Green Lantern movie produced. What the fuck happened … ?

Alamo Drafthouse: She Texted During The Movie So We Kicked Her Out (And Here’s Her Stupid Response)

bluemana — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 07:01:16 +0000

Via the Alamo Drafthouse:

Recently, we had a situation where a customer persisted in texting in the theater despite two warnings to stop. Our policy at that point is to eject the customer without a refund, which is exactly what went down that night. Luckily, this former patron was so incensed at being kicked out, she quickly called the office and left us the raw ingredients for our latest “Don’t Talk or Text” PSA:

Cheery Optimists Die Younger

vulcan — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 09:31:51 +0000

Via UPI:

Personality can affect longevity — those with the most optimism and cheerfulness die younger than their less positive counterparts, U.S. researchers found.

Study leader Howard S. Friedman, distinguished professor of psychology at the University of California, Riverside; Leslie R. Martin, a psychology professor at La Sierra University in Riverside; and staff researchers — over a 20-year period — tanalyzed data from a study of 1,500 bright children who were about 10 years old when the study began in 1921.

“Longevity Project participants who were the most cheerful and had the best sense of humor as kids lived shorter lives, on average, than those who were less cheerful and joking,” Martin said in a statement. “It was the most prudent and persistent individuals who stayed healthiest and lived the longest.”

Part of the explanation lies in studying the health behaviors of the study subject — the cheerful, happy-go-lucky kids tended to take more risks with their health across the years, Friedman explained.

Why Don’t More People Care About Criminal Activity in Our Recent ‘Financial Crisis’? (Video)

ralph — Tue, 24 May 2011 18:47:04 +0000

If I had to pick one issue that I think many more people should really, really be curious about, I’d say the backstory behind so-called recent “financial crisis”, (which has been documented in such films as Inside Job, Capitalism: A Love Story and Plunder: The Crime of Our Time to name a few), is at the top of my list. Therefore, I was surprised when I saw at the end of the Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg comedy, The Other Guys, to find this “message” embedded in a mainstream entertainment film. As Gary Susman wrote on Moviefone’s Blog:

The movie may be a silly farce about New York cops who stumble upon a Bernie Madoff-like Ponzi scheme that threatens to defraud billions from city workers. But buried in the comedy is a serious point about what really constitutes grand theft these days, a point illustrated over the closing credits by a PowerPoint-like presentation full of jazzy infographics and serious statistics outlining just how much Wall Street and corporate leaders have enriched themselves at the expense of American workers and taxpayers…

It’s a fascinating sequence, both from a design perspective and from the unlikely prospect of seeing a major corporation (in this case, Sony) release a mass-entertainment movie that also wants to educate moviegoers about the legalized wealth-grab that’s benefiting major corporations…

The figures cited in the sequence, for example, note the following:

that the TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) bailout cost every person in America enough to take a trip around the world

that after the bailout, some $1.2 billion in taxpayer money went to pay the bonuses of just 73 AIG execs, while Goldman Sachs got a huge tax break that saw its tax rate drop from 34 percent to 1 percent

that the average CEO earned about eight times the salary of his average employee a century ago, but earns more than 300 times his average employee’s wages now

that the typical American 401(k) retirement account has lost nearly half its value over the last five years

that New York cops may earn a maximum pension of about $48,000, while the average retiring CEO reaps benefits of about $83.6 million.

Movie Director Shocks Stars By Admitting He’s A Nazi

majestic — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:41:22 +0000

Lars von Trier. Photo: Christian Geisnaes

Movie director Lars von Trier’s new movie is called Melancholia. At the press conference for the movie at the Cannes Film Festival, Von Trier shocked his stars, including Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, by telling everyone that he’s a Nazi, that he understands Hitler and that his next movie could be called The Final Solution.

Some choice quotes:

“For a long time I thought I was a Jew and I was happy to be a Jew. Then I met Susanne Bier and I wasn’t so happy. But then I found out I was actually a Nazi. My family were German. And that also gave me some pleasure. What can I say? I understand Hitler…I sympathize with him a bit.”

“I don’t mean I’m in favor of World War II and I’m not against Jews, … In fact I’m very much in favor of them. All Jews. Well, Israel is a pain in the ass but…”

“Now how can I get out of this sentence? Ok. I’m a Nazi.”

Those bits start at about 35 minutes into this video of the conference. If you want to watch more of his madness, earlier on he describes his wish to make a porn movie with Kirsten Dunst.

UPDATE: Von Trier has now been banned from the Cannes Film Festival, which has issued this statement:

The Festival de Cannes provides artists from around the world with an exceptional forum to present their works and defend freedom of expression and creation. The Festival’s Board of Directors, which held an extraordinary meeting this Thursday 19 May 2011, profoundly regrets that this forum has been used by Lars Von Trier to express comments that are unacceptable, intolerable, and contrary to the ideals of humanity and generosity that preside over the very existence of the Festival.

The Board of Directors firmly condemns these comments and declares Lars Von Trier a persona non grata at the Festival de Cannes, with effect immediately.

23,000 Defendants Sued In Biggest Illegal Downloading Case In History

JacobSloan — Thu, 12 May 2011 14:59:30 +0000

Movie makers are suing thousands of individuals who downloaded and watched Sylvester Stallone’s latest film? Shouldn’t that read vice versa? Via Wired:

At least 23,000 file sharers soon will likely get notified they are being sued for downloading The Expendables in what has become the single largest illegal-BitTorrent-downloading case in U.S. history.

A federal judge in the case has agreed to allow the U.S. Copyright Group to subpoena internet service providers to find out the identity of everybody who had illegally downloaded the 2010 Sylvester Stallone flick — meaning the number of defendants is likely to dramatically increase as new purloiners are discovered.

All told, more than 140,000 BitTorrent downloaders are being targeted in dozens of lawsuits across the country, many of them for downloading B-rated movies and porn.

Inflatable Crowds For Rent

JacobSloan — Tue, 10 May 2011 15:38:12 +0000

In need of a massive crowd of people, but don’t have thousands of adoring followers at your disposal? Why not go with Inflatable Crowd? The company rents out blow-up versions of giant masses of humanity, for use in films, political rallies, or other needs. When decked out in clothing, wigs, and masks and viewed from a distance, the blow-up denizens are nearly indistinguishable from the real thing, and are far cheaper than paying large numbers of extras. Their Flickr is pretty disturbing.

The Inflatable Crowd Company was created for SEABISCUIT in 2002. Since then, our Inflatable Crowds have been seen (but not noticed) in over 80 feature films & many TV shows & commercials.

Mummified Body of Cult B-Movie Actress Found

bluemana — Wed, 04 May 2011 17:35:44 +0000

This is creepy as well as tragic. Andrew Blankstein writes in the LA Times:

Vickers Yvette Vickers, an early Playboy playmate whose credits as a B-movie actress included such cult films as “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman” and “Attack of the Giant Leeches,” was found dead last week at her Benedict Canyon home. Her body appears to have gone undiscovered for months, police said.

Vickers, 82, had not been seen for a long time. A neighbor discovered her body in an upstairs room of her Westwanda Drive home on April 27. Its mummified state suggests she could have been dead for close to a year, police said.

The official cause of death will by determined by the Los Angeles county coroner’s office, but police said they saw no sign of foul play.

Vickers had lived in the 1920s-era stone and wood home for decades, and it served as the background for some of her famous modeling pictures. But over time it had become dilapidated, exposed in some places to the elements.

Ayn Rand In Congress

majestic — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 13:40:03 +0000

The National Journal has taken the time to analyze the number of times Ayn Rand has been mentioned in the last ten sessions of Congress. Only 23 times (here we go again – 23 enigma fans stand up) it turns out, mostly by Ron Paul and now his son Rand. The awful new Ayn Rand movie Atlas Shrugged that debuts this weekend will probably put a stop to it though!

Yesterday, Senator Rand Paul did what many saw as inevitable: he quoted at length from Ayn Rand, specifically from Anthem, during an Energy and Natural Sources committee meeting to make a point about individual will being squashed by a collective rules society. The speech got us wondering: before Paul the younger arrived to the Senate how often does Ayn Rand get mentioned in Congress?

A good measure, we thought, would be searching through the Congressional Record, which is the official record of the proceedings in the United States Congress as well as a sort of a bulletin board that legislators use to place written remarks about people they like, occasions they want to celebrate and other things they want to put in the record.

In our search of the Record from the last 10 sessions of Congress, spanning from 1993 to 2011, the libertarian hero has only been mentioned 23 times. Ayn Rand has been invoked in praise of her former book printer, Caxton Printers, and during references to her book Atlas Shrugged in arguments to eliminate the death tax in 2001 and while denouncing the National Competitiveness Act of 1993. She also gets 5 mentions by legislators who were quick to note that Alan Greenspan was once a disciple of hers (”Don’t hold that against him,” Congressman Harkin said in 2000.)

By far, though, the person most likely to mention Ayn Rand is Ron Paul, the current libertarian hero and father of the newest Senator from Kentucky, Rand. (That his son and his hero share the same name is just a happy coincidence.) He has invoked Ayn Rand’s name nine times in the span we surveyed: when criticizing the post office, while commemorating the 100th anniversary of her birth, and in an article submitted mentioning her during a tribute to Milton Friedman. And Ron Paul is notably the only member of Congress to actually quote Ayn Rand during this period…

[continues in the National Journal]

China Bans ‘Time Travel’ On Television

BananaFamine — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 16:55:55 +0000

Kevin Voight writes for CNN:

Hong Kong, China – China has been cracking down on dissent of late, as the recent detainment of artist Ai Weiwei suggests.

But the latest guidance on television programming from the State Administration of Radio Film and Television in China borders on the surreal – or, rather, an attack against the surreal.

New guidelines issued on March 31 discourages plot lines that contain elements of “fantasy, time-travel, random compilations of mythical stories, bizarre plots, absurd techniques, even propagating feudal superstitions, fatalism and reincarnation, ambiguous moral lessons, and a lack of positive thinking.”

“The government says … TV dramas shouldn’t have characters that travel back in time and rewrite history. They say this goes against Chinese heritage,” reports CNN’s Eunice Yoon. “They also say that myth, superstitions and reincarnation are all questionable.”

For more information, see original article.

‘First Orbit’ Celebrates Today’s 50th Anniversary Of Man In Space

majestic — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 16:10:33 +0000

Move over PBS: YouTube/Google funded this very cool and very free movie about the beginning of spaceflight, with today being exactly 50 years since Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space.

You can download the movie or watch it on YouTube.

From the official First Orbit site:

April 12th 1961 – Yuri Gagarin is about to see what no other person has seen in the history of
humanity – the Earth from space. In the next 108 minutes he’ll see more than most people do in a lifetime. What sights awaited the first cosmonaut silently gliding over the world below? What was it like to view the oceans and continents sailing by from such a height?

In a unique collaboration with the European Space Agency, and the Expedition 26/27 crew of the International Space Station, we have created a new film of what Gagarin first witnessed fifty years ago.

By matching the orbital path of the Space Station, as closely as possible, to that of Gagarin’s Vostok 1 spaceship and filming the same vistas of the Earth through the new giant cupola window, astronaut Paolo Nespoli, and documentary film maker Christopher Riley, have captured a new digital high definition view of the Earth below, half a century after Gagarin first witnessed it.

Weaving these new views together with historic, recordings of Gagarin from the time, (subtitled in Englsih) and an original score by composer Philip Sheppard, we have created a spellbinding film to share with people around the world on this historic anniversary…