The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 forbids declarations of national sovereignty off Earth (according to something quoted by Travis). But can that be a serious barrier to imperialism?
Suppose you have political debts to more people than can plausibly be appointed ambassadors to Paris and the like. The rest of them declare themselves kings of whatever asteroids you’d like to exploit. You give them diplomatic recognition, foreign aid, and military advisors.
The Bad Seed (1956).
The Seventh Seal (1957).
蜘蛛巣城 (Spiderweb Castle) (Throne of Blood) (1957). Having seen it once before, I watched it only with the commentary track on, and learned some interesting details about Kurosawa’s technique. For example, he liked to shoot with multiple cameras; besides being a relatively cheap way to get more footage to cut together, this prevents the actors from “playing to the camera”.
Nights of Cabiria (1957).
Silk Stockings (1957). I endured the tedious dialogue only long enough to see Cyd Charisse’s first dance.
どん底 Donzoko (The Lower Depths) (1957). When the characters had vented their frustrations at each other for about twenty minutes, I dropped out.
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). Damn fine picture. I saw it just once before, in 1976-7, dubbed in French.
I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street) (1958) may replace The Lavender Hill Mob as my favorite caper comedy.
In November I linked to a “Political Compass” and mentioned some improvements I’d like to see. Chris Lightfoot apparently had already made them. Rather than assigning preconceived interpretations to the questions, Lightfoot waited until a large number of people had done his quiz, and then did a factor analysis to define the axes.
Lightfoot’s quiz was cited by Tim Lambert (Deltoid), who invites you to add your name to a chart. (I hope you will; only a few names on it are familiar to me.)
My score is {-1.37, +6.29}, near the top center of Lambert’s chart.
A chart of the crossovers linking many tv series. (cited by Nev Dull)
Tommy Westphall was an austistic child on ST ELSEWHERE who, it was revealed in the closing moments of the final episode of that series, had dreamt the entire run of the show. So if ST ELSEWHERE is part of his mind, so are the 167 other series to which it is connected.
And so is Henry Fonda, who played himself in an episode of Maude. A less drastic hypothesis is that only those episodes involving St Elsewhere characters are dreams. And even that is not necessary, if the revelation did not specify that the characters (as well as the events) were unreal.
. . . Popper said that it is reasonable to assume that sooner or later some rotten scoundrels will gain power. It’s not important who they will be precisely, but whatever your politcal views might be you must agree that a likelihood of such event is rather high. So whatever law you want to have in you country, don’t ask yourself the question “how this law can be used in good hands”. Ask the question “how this law can be used when the filthiest, dirtest, stupidest bastards will rule my country (and sooner or later they probably will)”. Only the law that cannot be used to anything wrong EVEN by the most vicious ruler is truly good. . . .
(Cited by Aaron Krowne.)
Over the years I have occasionally quoted the principle as “write your constitution as if your worst enemy were in power,” but without knowing where I picked it up. Popper, eh?
The Ugly Zoo collects a hundred photographs of surprising creatures, the best of which include the eagle-headed Retriever, the lynx-headed squirrel, the salamander-legged antlered anteater.
(Cited by JoAnne Schmitz.)