Both of Us .org

Well the time for the top 100 of 2005 is upon us.

We are bracing for predictions about what will happen in 2006 and for the lists of ins and outs for 2006. We probably won't notice the leap second that the time people are tacking on to 2005, and the inevitable moment that is the end of 2005 is just around the proverbial corner.

I hope your 2005 was good; mine was a bit flat. I hope 2006 goes better for you and for us.

We will be celebrating with friends of ours in Jersey City just across the water from the Statue of Liberty.

Best wishes from Both of Us in Philadelphia. Drink some champagne and be thankful that you are alive to experience yet another year.

Anyone interested in physics, or even if you aren't and just want to see a cool video, I suggest you peek at the video of a floating magnet over at realboring.com

This is by no means a new invention/phenomena, it is just a cool video of it.

The New York Times has an interesting article on real life gay cowboys reactions to the film Brokeback Mountain.

The film is absolutely wonderful. It got me teary eyed, and leaves you with a very strong impression, the way that only excellent films do. If I had been born a few decades earlier and a bit further west, it could easily have been the story of my life. I give this film my highest recommendation. If you are considering seeing it, do. You will not be disappointed.

Finally back to blogging after a while away from the internet, I seem to keep stumbling onto interesting stuff. An article posted at tech website Ars Technica: "The new technology at the root of the NSA wiretap scandal" speculates about just what sort of surveillance techniques and technology has been used. The author postulates that international calls from Americans are being recorded to be used at a later date. The system may track who is called and be able to link you to the people that you know and the people that they know etc. I probably cannot adequately describe the excellent points that this guy makes in his article. He calls himself a conservative, but in the "knee-jerk anti-government" sort of way. If you have a few minutes and are interested in the Bush administration spying on you, it is worth your read. I can't help but wonder if somewhere out there, an agent that knows the name of every person I have ever slept with. (Gee, I'd sure like to see the list.)

DefenseTech, normally a website I don't like because it hypes up "cool" weapons that are used to kill or incapacitate people, also has a good article titled Bastard Children of "TIA" on this issue which dates back to February of 2004 and a more current one titled New tech Behind NSA Snoop Case. There is also an intriguing read about the reactions of some people in the "intelligence community" called Wiretap Mystery: Spooks React.

See also: ECHELON at Wikipedia

It seems that all the alarms that people were raising about the Diebold paperless voting machines being easy to use to commit election fraud is completely true. Read more about it here.

This suggests to me that since the company producing it strongly backs Republicans, that it is likely that key voting machines in Florida and Ohio were hacked this way before the last presidential election. I hope we hear more about this in the mainstream media... do you think we will?

I just returned home from seeing the film adaptation of C.S. Lewis' first book in the Narnia series. I have to say that it seemed a very true to the novel retelling of the story.

I love Tilda Swinton as the White Witch, she has impressed me in every roll I have ever seen her in starting from her title roll in Orlando. The children gave competent portrayals and the CGI work was beautiful.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was one of the first novels I ever read as a child, and as such, I always felt it was special to me. Even after outgrowing C.S. Lewis' religion, there was something special about his children's books. They were simple it was true, the good guys over here and the bad guys over there, but still, for all their simplicity they offered an escape from the mundane required activities of my childhood like going to school and church.

While I was not completely blown away by the movie, I enjoyed it and it told the tale faithful to the original.