Topliner

A Korean singer named Jisun, with a great voice: (Farewell without Farewell)

You're from the "holy land"? Does that mean you're from Athens, Greece? Lexington or Concord?

Incubus' song Drive is certainly a great one, and it even sounds melodious, unlike many of their songs. And the video is great, too.

It's spectacularly good. I was just wondering aloud the other day when it would finally be released on DVD, and here it is. It says "with deleted scenes." I hope they didn't put them back into the movie proper, because the deleted scenes were deleted for good reason. If they are just segregated in some bonus feature area, that would be ok. But if I remember correctly, the stuff that was deleted was collectivist and altruist garbage that was not part of the novel, obviously. Can't wait for it to come out, though. It's one of the very few VHS movies I still own.

A couple of my favorites: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcN5Vaqd9sg, by The Sundays The lyrics are beautiful, and Harriet Wheeler has the voice of an angel: Do some people wind up with the one that they adore In a heart-shaped hotel room its what a heart is for The bubble floats so madly will it stay sky-high? Hello partner, kiss your name bye-bye Ooh sometimes... Romantic piscean seeks angel in disguise Chinese-speaking girlfriend big brown eyes Liverpudlian lady, sophisticated male Hello partner, tell me love cant fail & its you and me in the summertime We'll be hand in hand down in the park With a squeeze & a sigh & that twinkle in your eye & all the sunshine banishes the dark Do some people wind up with the one that they abhor In a distant hell-hole room, the third world war But all I see is films where colourless despair Meant angry young men with immaculate hair Ooh sometimes... Get up a voice inside says theres no time for looking down Only a pound a word & youre talking to the town But how do you coin the phrase though that will set your soul apart Just to touch a lonely heart & its you & me in the summertime We'll be hand down in the park With a squeeze & a sigh & that twinkle in your eye & all the sunshine banishes the dark & its you I need in the summertime As I turn my white skin red Two peas from the same pod yes we are Or have I read too much fiction? Is this how it happens? How does it happen? Is this how it happens? Now, right now http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOMuK7YYxeg, by Jefferson Starship I've always thought this was a perfect song for a wedding: Precious love I'll give to you blue as the sky and deep in the eyes of a love so true beautiful face you make me feel light on the stairs and lost in the air of a love so real And you can count on me girl you can count on my love woman you can count on me baby you can count on my love to see you through Emerald eyes and china perfume caught on the wheel and lost in the feel of a love so soon ruby lips you make my song into the night and saved by the light of a love so strong CHORUS: See you thru ....oooh you can count on me girl you can count on my love

I imagine he was saying "epochal," not "epical."

I haven't received my Kindle 2 yet (it's due tomorrow), but I've been looking over the Kindle book store on Amazon. The "collected works" of various authors by Mobile Reference look like a great value, and each has a table of contents from which you can navigate to any of the works, and to any chapter in the particular novel or other type of book. For an average of under $5 each, you can get the collected works (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) of writers like Plato and Aristotle, Kipling, Stevenson, Dickens, Shakespeare, Hugo, Dumas, Voltaire, Dostoyevsky, Twain, Cicero, Tolstoy, Wilde, Scott, Goethe, and many others. Someone mentioned downloading books from the Gutenburg project onto Kindle. Do those come with a navigable table of contents?

I watch CNBC every day also, and all three of those show hosts are statists to the core, like any Republican. They simply argue about how much regulation there should be, or how much stimulus there should be. None of them are capitalists --- except Rick Santelli. He's the only one worth listening to on that network.

Ovechkin is definitely a great one. But it looks like Alexander Semin is at least as key to the success of the Capitals lately. The Wings have had some of the greatest Russians in the game - Fedorov, Konstantinov, Datsyuk, Larionov, Fetisov - but now they have nearly cornered the market on great Swedes, with Lidstrom, Holmstrom, Zetterberg, Franzen, Kronwall, and more in the pipeline. Great European scouting has kept Detroit afloat, in spite of always having to draft at the worst position -- since they are perennial President's Trophy winners. It still boggles the mind to think that Fedorov, Mogilny, and Bure were once on the same line on the Russian national team they played on. That had to be the fastest line ever.

There's never been a better stickhandler than Pavel Datsyuk:

I am a big hockey fan. And the team I follow is the Detroit Red Wings - best won-loss record, overall, for about the last 15 years. If anyone doesn't think they would like hockey, just watch Pavel Datsyuk perform his magic on the ice. It's a thing of real beauty.

Hear, hear!

That picture was clearly a casual, at home picture. If she were "out on the town," I'm sure she would have worn a stylish dress. Even Jessica Biel does not wear stylish dresses when she is just sitting at home watching television. It's a matter of context.

I said often, not always. When the Mongol conquered China, which side was more civilized? When the barbarians conquered Rome, which side was more civilized? When the Macedonians conquered Greece, which side was more civilized? As for America, how are we doing against the pathetic, rag tag Moslem bands attacking us? Civilization does not have to make a people soft, but historically, it usually does. The cure for it, obviously, is a rational philosophy. If we were an Objectivist society, we wouldn't be getting soft and afraid to fight to win.

I'm sure there are a lot of reasons. Among them, the Mongols had an extremely mobile army, compared to China or anyone else at the time. The Mongols had good generals and tactics. The Chinese were probably comparable to the Persians that the Greeks defeated, in spite of always being outnumbered. Often the most civilized nations are also the softest, militarily. The Chinese population may also have been indifferent to their rulers, and not minded a new dynasty. In other words, there may have been internal dissension in China. Perhaps Genghis Khan sat on his horse, in China, and said: "Sun Tzu, you glorious bastard, I read your book!" So to speak.