Icelandic Minister, Johanna Sigurdardottir, Would Be World's First Gay PM

It is probably true that Johanna Sigurdardottir's homosexuality would be more noted and more controversial in the US than it is now in Iceland, but it would be incorrect to suppose that this is the only characteristic that would feature in news coverage of any similar figure in the US.



While former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey attracted nationwide attention almost entirely based on his sexual behavior, his scandal plagued administration was notable for little else. His sexual orientation played a crucial role in a sexual harassment AND corruption scandal,



Sigurdardottir by contrast has distinguished herself as unique in 'standing up for the little guy' and with so long and distinguished a record, of course Icelanders will focus on these characteristics that actually affect them.



We are not confined to idle speculation regarding American tolerance, because the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee is Barney Frank, an openly gay congressman. Frank has been reelected several times and holds a coveted chairmanship despite being caught hiring a male prostitute and misusing the power of his office to benefit them. Frank has recently attracted nationwide news coverage because of his role in overseeing the banking system, and the attention has been focused on his job, not his sexual orientation. Sigurdardottir's ascent to Prime Minister is still historic, but a close look would suggest that this ascent has more to do with her hard work and humanitarian efforts than disproportionate tolerance in Icelanders.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Completely mad reasons to support Apple and Mac

So the new online only PC magazine decides to celebrate 25 years of the Mac. This makes a fair amount of sense because the Mac did after all, introduce the GUI to general personal computing, and also because PC Magazine needs all the corporate support that they can get (why do the cynical reasons always come to mind whenever Apple comes up). To make an Apple product look good in PC Magazine, the writers and editorial board write articles describing their wonderful experiences with the Mac. The crazy thing is, the Mac is praised as ACTUALLY WORKING with iTunes!

But here's a great argument for Macs: If you have an iPod or iPhone, you need one. iTunes won't make your Mac run slow or conflict with your database software.

In a seperate article, he details further.

Then in 2002 , my wife got me my first iPod. It "worked" with my homebuilt PCs with FireWire cards, but there was something…lacking. I had to reformat the iPod way too often, and iTunes was a resource hog on the PC. I had to get a Mac so that I could have some stability in my music player. I was back to an Aluminum PowerBook G4, first a 12-inch then a 15-inch. The Intel transition of Macs happened in 2005, and now I carry both operating systems everywhere I go: a MacBook Pro that runs both Windows Vista and Mac OS X Leopard.

And this is written by no less than the Lead Analyst for the Desktops team at PC Magazine Labs! Even a technical expert, and indeed a technical expert cultivated by tech companies, has to put the term 'worked' in quotation marks when describing iTunes.

Should I mention at this point, that I HATE, HATE, HATE, Quicktime media player and its hellspawn iTunes?

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Quicktime, and what appears to be about a quarter of an operating system that comes with it, is the most invasive program that I have EVER run across, with the PARTIAL exception of pure malware.

People have been wondering lately why Steve Jobs is so emaciated looking. His problem is simple. The poor man simply installed iTunes/Quicktime on a PC while touching the back of the computer, or otherwise making a connection. The body of Steve Jobs is not Apple proprietary, and who would imagine that being made according to God's standards was good enough?

Now all this might be taken to imply that I disparage Apple and the Mac. To the contrary, I think that any system that can inspire loyalty against the prevailing Wintel quasi-monopoly AND inspire loyalty DESPITE functioning so poorly with Wintel products of any sort (I assume that Quicktime and iTunes will work properly on a Mac) , must have something going for it! I must admit to a certain amount of puzzlement as to what exactly this IS, but there must be something.

Any time that I have used a Mac, I have been annoyed by the unique path required to make any adjustment. This is actually praised in the PC Mag Widows vs. Mac point-counterpoint article. To quote "Windows has too many ways to do things". This strikes me as very odd, since virtually everyone has misplaced something at home, and then been forced to spend a disproportionate amount of time hunting for it. I fail to see how replicating the "lost it and I need it NOW" experience is desirable. Perhaps a Mac person out there can tell me what the special ingredient is. Oh, and yeah, I know about Vista.
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Vista SUCKS!

Anyway, having complained about Quicktime/Itunes, I should list a couple of programs that might help if they don't work for you. First item is a substitute for Quicktime; the QuickTime Alternative. This program is supposed to be a replacement for Apple's compu-cancer, and it is updated on a regular basis. In the past at least, it did not necessarily work as well as a person would like, but it doesn't have to. It isn't as invasive as the real thing.

The second program that I would recommend, if you want to remove Quicktime from your system would be Revo Uninstaller. QuickTime likes to leave chunks of itself on your system when you remove it, and if you run Revo on a more thorough setting, it helps to strip the invasive, interferes-with-other-programs monster from your system. Running the thorough clean takes time, but it is worth it!

Unfortunately, by the time you detect that you really have a problem, there is a good chance that you will already have tried to uninstall Quicktime, and have discovered that the removal was ineffective. For this problem, you might try CCleaner. This useful utillity will remove garbage of all sorts, not just that left by QuickTime/iTunes, and though I have yet to come across a program that completely undoes the damage of 'Apple's revenge', this will often solve the problem.

Finally, there is an old program that might or might not work; QuickTime Killer. This 2005 era program was designed to stop QuickTime from placing itself in the system tray as an autorun program. As of this writing, you can still download the program, but I have never used it, and for obvious reasons, I do not wish to infect my system to test whether or not it will work with the latest versions of QuickTime. If you are trying to tame QuickTime, but can't remove it, you might try the program.

Since so many people have had problems with Apple's media-invader, I would be very happy to hear any other suggestions, or means of removal. You can of course, put your experiences in the comments, but I also would be happy to publish a guest post if someone wants to write one.

Film Review

A characteristically personal scene from a movie that is supposed to be depicting the story of a globe-spanning conqueror .

Mongol: A Film With Limited Appeal

If for no other reason than that people around the globe tend to like certain categories of story, there are several straightforward and standard ways of making a movie about a great conqueror.

The first would be as a full spectrum historical biopic, spinning together any and all of the dramatic elements of so notable a figure's life. The second would be to make a historical romance, using real or imaginary events and characters to make a conventional romantic story, with the conqueror's adventurous life adding spice and extra drama. The third would be to make a story of trial and triumph, with the protagonist overcoming incredible odds. Fourth, and finally, one could make a story of villainy, tragedy and moral decay, with a driven protagonist falling due to his moral flaws, or inflicting misery and suffering on the world. Any one of these narratives would have broad appeal to people around the globe.

'Mongol' however, is not so straightforward. While I do not know enough about Genghis Khan's life to definitively rule out most specific incidents or subplots in the movie, Mongol is clearly not a full biopic, covering only the early portion of Temudjin's life, having a distinctly personal focus (the protagonist goes from family and retainers, to an army of thousands with almost no exposition), and emphasizing monogamous and faithful love in a man who (albeit he might well have been loyal to his family), it is well established, entertained a wide variety of relationships with more than one woman. The one thing that Mongol takes away from the historical biopic is a somewhat grim and serious tone.

Mongol does have the man-woman relationship emphasis of the historical romance, but the story is not built into a smooth and sleek narrative around this. Rather than being a historical romance, the romantic element seems to have been added to establish the humanity of the conqueror, and to anchor the personal emphasis of the film. The romantic narrative of 'Mongol' is too choppy, and the tone of the film too dour to be a successful historical romance on the genre's own terms.

'Mongol' does contain many ingredients of the trial and triumph story, but likewise, would not be a very good movie by the standards of this genre because the adventurous tension, action, and triumph are all very incompletely developed if these elements are what the film entirely rests upon.

Finally, so far as a narrative of tragedy and moral decay are concerned, there is little of this in the film*,and this absence points to the motivations and understandings behind its creation. Mongol is a film that attempts to present the character of Genghis Khan in a reasonably sympathetic, but not quite celebratory light. The conqueror Temudjin is something of a hero, or at least is respected in the steppes where the film is set, but is likely to be seen in a grim light by many Russians (a disproportionate number of whom are involved in the production) and much of the world at large. In its selective coverage of Genghis Khan's life, the film can avoid confronting the beliefs of people who have widely varying opinions of him. Any film that deals with so notable a character is going to have a certain amount of appeal to people living in lands directly impacted by him, but the peculiar mix of plot ingredients is likely to limit its appeal elsewhere.

This is not to say that the film is specifically bad, and certain elements; much of the acting for example (particularly Honglei Sun as Jamukha), are very good. The costumes, photography and soundtrack are all well done and give the film an authentic appearance (while liberties appear to have been taken with some historical events and the battle tactics, absolute accuracy does not necessarily define good and bad in film). The natural environment in which the film is set is quite beautiful, and is likely to be even more striking to those people who are less accustomed to such an environment (the climate and terrain are actually very similar to parts of Western Nebraska).

Good acting, cinematography, and some interesting costumes however, are not enough to make the film one I would recommend to everyone. These elements of craft combine to put flesh on the disparate themes I mentioned earlier, and you would be justified if you liked this movie, but you would not be wrong or unsophisticated if its thematic mix did not leave you impressed.

*

'Mongol' is apparently, the first installment of a planned trilogy, and it is very possible that such themes will show up in sequels, possibly providing a more balanced, albeit six hour long trilogy experience.


Film Also Known As (AKA)

Монгол	Russia
Cengiz Han	Turkey
Czyngis-Chan	Poland
Der Mongole	Germany
Mongol: The Rise to Power of Genghis Khan	UK
Mongol: The Untold Story of Genghis Khan	Netherlands