5thPercentile.com

« November 2006 | Main | January 2007 »

December 30, 2006

New Years Resolutions me arse - give me love or give me anonimity

I have two promising new years resolutions for this coming year - make more money and make more love.

I need a woman and I need to stop just scraping by.

I feel that I have already begun to address the money situation and there are plans afoot for the new year.

Relative to the monetary situation, my love life is as if I am standing in a filed staring at the stars hoping someday to invent a rocket.

I need to cop myself on and get out in the world. I used to have a mantra - find yourself in others - I've lost sight of that for such a long time. The universe is me, my room and the rut I have worn walking between here and where I work.

I need to take some chances.

But I have forgotten how.

Jesus, I'm a moany fucker, no wonder I'm alone...

Posted by dottie at 2:48 AM | Comments (0)

Marks & spencers

I have no dominion over you
but every time I think I own you
you should know you own me

Every soft step I take
as I think back through the days
wets my feet in some stream filled with memories

If you know there is a key
if you have it, turn it, set me free

or feed me

Posted by dottie at 2:25 AM | Comments (0)

December 29, 2006

Quick review of Richard Dawkins latest book God Delusion

I got this for Christmas (thanks Mum!) and I am just working my way through it - for the first time. I plan on reading it again and making noes this time!

A quick sum up in Prof. Dawkins words, and this is directed towards his critics, not him:

"Dream on"

Loving it!

Posted by dottie at 9:30 AM | Comments (2)

December 19, 2006

geeky but slightly obscure films to satisfy your loveable nerd's inner hipster

Well okay, some might be well known by geeks but these babies never made it big in the mainstream so have some 'gimpster' cred (gimpster - geek hipster!!).

Seven Samurai

One of my favourites and of course the inspiration for the magnificent seven. Its a long film but worth it. Toshiro Mifune shines as the dodgy Kikuchiyo. The rest of the cast are no slouches either.

The baby cart series

This series of six films is sublime and ridiculous in equal measure but well worth a viewing. Also known as Lone Wof and Cub or Sword of Vengeance. These films follow the exploits of Ogami Itto, executioner to the shogun, as he and his son Daigoro seek retribution on those that betrayed him. Full, of excellent fight scenes. Ogami pushes Daigoro around in his gadget equipped babycart - hence the name of the series.

Recommended in one weekend - plenty of popcorn and refreshments!

Lord of the Rings - the animated movie

I remember well yearning or someone to throw enough money at this to get it finished. Back in the day it was amazing - real-life action mixed with cartoons! I guess the remake is OK too ;)

THX 1138

This movie proves the point that necessity is the mother of invention. THX 1138 before George Lucas had huge wads of cash and time to allow him to 'perfect' his vision.

A classic dystopian tale of drugs, sex and deviance set in the not-too-distant future.

City of Lost Children

Those mad french. From the same crew that brought you Delicatessen...

I dont even know how to summarise this film - it's just nuts! also Ron Perlman rocks the house with dodgy french :)

Battle Royale

This is the way all 'reality' TV shows should be run. Give the contestants guns and let them loose on a tropical island.

In this case the contestants are a class of Japanese students.

Hajime!

Tetsuo : The Iron Man

Metal fetishist (who likes inserting pieces of metal into his body) gets run over and experiences weird changes to his body. The driver also experiences these changes.

Kick-ass final showdown between Tetsuo and the original metal man.

Many, many toe curling moments in this one

Wickerman - the original

Edward Woodward (the equalizer) stumbles across strange goings on when he is on the trail of a missing girl. Paganism, sex, conflagrations. It has all the elements of a hollywood blockbuster but is still enjoyable!

Probably best to avoid the remake...

Dernier Combat

Another dystopian movie set after an apocalyptic world war. The hero wanders around a ruined landscape trying to survive. The film contains no dialogue so the characters emotions and motivations must be guessed at which can either draw you in to the film or bore you to death. Things get very interesting when the main character meets an old man and the two team up to survive.

Cronos

A vampire movie with a difference. An antique shop owner finds an interesting relic which injures him before he falls foul of some shadowy figures that were searching for the relic for years.

The characters in the movie are very strong especially the grandfather and child - Ron Perlman plays the villain considering rhinoplasty. Classic.

Posted by dottie at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2006

Mary Harney portrayed as a bloodsucker - seanad demands apology

The Star ran with a front page image of Harney altered to resemble a vampire.

Apparently this was 'biting' political commentary on her intentions with care for the elderly.

The seanad (the Irish senate) are up in arms with crosses, torches and all the paraphenalia conducting a witch hunt in order to procure an apology from the tabloid.

Seanad demands apology from the Star newspaper

Feck em. If they can close ranks and let Bertie away with his shenanigans then they should harldy be surprised when the public starts acting in the same manner. You cant turn a blind eye on one hand and demand the letter of the law on the other. Consistency please! Or accountability!

Mary is a big girl now (...) she should be able to take this kind of thing on the chin.

Maybe this is a chance for Irish politics to turn itself around and actually implement some level of accountability in Irish politics.

Or maybe not.

Still it would be a shame to waste all those torches and what with Christmas coming up and all the homeless on the streets - a PD BBQ would be in order with some roast suckiling something or other.....

Posted by dottie at 2:15 PM | Comments (0)

Laurence Lessig releases Code 2.0 to creative commons

Laurence Lessig, the man that had Microsoft by the balls, has released an updated version of his text regarding the future of copyright 'Code'

Funnily enough it is released to the creative commons and all proceeds are donated to the creative commons (its freely downloadable but available as a dead tree version too).

Cant wait to get some free time to read this so I know what the hell its all about! :)

Posted by dottie at 2:10 PM | Comments (0)

December 10, 2006

Peanuts meets Marvel!

An impressive collection of Peanuts characters rendered as various Marvel characters - I particularly like the cover homages :)

The artist seems to have also produced posters and T-shirts bearing the re-imagined characters! Christmas presents please!

Edit (2/1/06) :

It seems that the forum has been made private. This does not mean that you cannot view the art, just that you will have to register first! A bit of a pain but worth it I think!

Posted by dottie at 10:21 PM | Comments (1)

Heaven or Hell - you choose!

This is hilarious!

A message from God

Posted by dottie at 4:21 PM | Comments (0)

Richard Dawkins gets into a Donnybrook

Richard Dawkins was a guest on the Late Late show the other day with a co-guest. This co-guest was a philiosopher from Trinity College apparently - I didnt catch his name.

Pat started the porceedings by asking the audience who believed in God. Well over half the audience raised their hand. Oh dear.

Prof. Dawkins got to kick off the ball being asked a good leading question by the surprisingly able Pat. He explained quite clearly the reasons he thought that believers in God were deluding themselves based on their own reasons for their belief. He pointed out that your religion is a matter of your accident of birth - catholic in Ireland (mostly), muslim in Iraq (mostly) and so on. He alson pointed out that all catholics know what it is not to believe in Zeus or Apollo.

The response was typically emotional and varying from the sublime to the ridiculous. There were two scientists one of whom was a creationist (oops, intelligent designist) and the other a biologist. The creationist spouted the usual crap about the complexity of life demanding a creator - Richard answered him succinctly by pointing out who created the creator? The biologist was a little verbose, telling of his college days spent debating the merits of the points raised by Richards earlier books. He was a little strange in trying to claim that faith was part of everyday life - faith in the love you receive form others, faith that scientific experiments are reproducable etc. How odd!

Prof. Dawkins pointed out that you needed no faith in the love of others as you had proof in body language, a look in the eyes and while not scientific it is evidence. The biologist actually tried to rake Dawkins over the coals for not responding in a scientific way to such a question. The science of human love? The level of philisophical and scientific discourse in Ireland is sorely lacking I'm afraid.

One of the other guests was a young woman who had recovered from some illness claiming that it was her faith that pulled her through and that it was a miracel. No praise for the doctors, nurses, surgeons, friends and REAL, tangible acts that lead to her recovery then.

The worst udience member was a young man who lashed in to an attack on Richard with the old line that the depth of Richards conviction and devotion to atheism and essentially the spread of humanim was fundamentalism. He went on and on about it at high volume.

For a start Richard Dawkins is not promoting atheism or humnism per se. He is promoting the opening of minds, the use of the intellect that we were given (either by evolution or God depending on your point of view). Dawkins points out again and again that religion narrows peoples minds and leads ultimately to unhappiness, oppression, division.

Neither is he a fundamentalist. Time and again he has told people that he would accept proof of the existence of God and admit he was wrong. The young man of course jumped on this, dismissing Prof. Dawkins openess by saying that his definition of proof was too narrow!
Narrow definition? Of course its a narrow definition. It is the scientific method, it's logic, it's rigourous, it's not just opinion! The young man claimed that God was beyond the physical and coulnt be proven to exist or not by scientific methods.

One humanist in the audience managed to make the point that after 40 years without religion she was still living a good, moral life. Well done. It fell a little flat in the face of the indigntion from the god-botherers which is a pity. It strikes me that the biggest problem that aheists and humanists have is that there isnt the drive to indignation that the religious feel because there is very little that threatens a 'non-believers' placidity. They have usually accepted that shit happens and its best to get on with things causing the least amount of fuss.

Richard made the point that not too long ago people believed that the Earth was flat and that the sun revolved around the Earth and other such nonsense that was part of religious dogma. These nonsense opinions have been overthrown and replaced by rigourously tested and confirmed theories. The notion of God has been chased from being omnipresent and almost tangible to being something beyond pace, time and human understanding! Its a cop-out and if god botherers could muter up the intellectual courage they would realise that too.

The parting shot was given to our own home-grown intellectual, the philosopher from Trinity. He claimed throughout the interview/debate that he was an ex-atheist which should have sent warning bells ringing. To be fair he agreed in principle with many of the aspects of Richard's opinion regarding morality in the absence of religion etc. However, he let himslef down badly by quoting at RichardDawkins from his own book. I'm paraphrasing here as I havent recieved my copy of the 'God Delusion' yet but the phrase was something like 'I find it very probable that extra-terrestrial, super-hiuman lifeforms exist that might very well appear to us as god-like...' it went on a little longer but the 'philosopher' was indulging in some underhanded tactics.

he sought to discredit Prof. Dawkins by making it seem that the phrase 'very probable' meant that Richard was a believer in little green men - I'm sure he meant to create a link in the mind of the public between Prof. Dawkins and UFO conspiracy theorists.

Unfortunately Dawkins never got to properly answer this as time ran out. He did get to point out that statistically there almost certainly was life on other planets and that 'very probably' was a perfectly acceptable supposition based on the fcts of the situation. Which it is. Will the public think so?

Prof. Dawkins, on behalf of people in Ireland I thank you for appearing in holy Ireland and rattling the snakes pit so that we can remind ourselves by their hisses that we are still walking a tightrope and the division of state and church is not as clear as it should be.

This bodes ill for the future as we have a highly multi-cultural population now that the typical Irish attitude of 'sure it'll be grand' just won;t work with.

Posted by dottie at 3:05 PM | Comments (1)

December 9, 2006

Digital Photography back on the cards!

I finally went and got my digital camera (Canon EOS 300d - you know, Didigtal Rebel to the Yanks) repaired. Yay!

It cost me over €360! Boo!

But it works great now and has a six month warranty! Yay!

Unfortunately when they were 'replacing the lens helical assembly' they tore up the rubber grip on the telephoto lens! Boo!

Fortunately the agent who handled the repair (well, they sent it to Canon) was pretty sheepish when I told them about it and will sort out some solution! Yay!

So now all I have to do is to learn how to take photos again! Boo!

But I will probably take a course on how to do this properly! Yay!

So watch this space for badly framed, questionably exposed, unfortunate subject mattered photographs! Boo!

Posted by dottie at 8:00 PM | Comments (1)