Spoiler
We were having a big film fest in Pensacola, and five minutes into The Prestige my son asked me if I knew how it was going to end.
This started a long time ago. They think I am amazing. Most of the time, I get it right. Sometimes, with Law and Order, or CSI, there is a twist I hadn’t thought of. I read a lot of mysteries and . . . there is a secret.
Don’t go any further if you like NOT knowing how a show is going to end.
Here is the secret. A movie or a TV show only has a limited amount of time to tell the story. You can figure that most of the information they give you is significant. Like in Law and Order, a lot of times it’s one of the people they originally interview, even if they came off well in the interview. (Those guys have gotten more and more tricky, though, and it gets harder to figure out all the time.) Listen for something that could be a lie.
The Prestige suffered a little from it’s own arrogance. They TELL us right at the beginning what the story will be, what the twist is, and how it will be accomplished, if you are watching closely and thinking “why might this be important?”
My son had already seen it. I told him “this, this and this” and he didn’t say anything, just said I had to see if I was right. Hee Hee heee . . . I was. And he was so poker faced I didn’t know how blown away he was that I had figured it out.
You can, too.
And if you haven’t seen The Prestige, it is a very good movie. It appears to be coming to Super Movies sometime soon.
Some Misery Unavoidable
Accepting the bad times could make for a happy marriage
From BBC Health News
The key to a happy relationship could be accepting that some miserable times are unavoidable, experts say.
Therapists from California State University, Northridge and Virginia Tech say accepting these problems is better than striving for perfection.
And they blame cultural fairytales and modern love stories for perpetuating the myth that enjoying a perfect relationship is possible.
The report was published in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy.
The authors, Dr Diane Gehart and Dr Eric McCollum say it is a “myth that, with enough effort we can achieve a state without suffering.”
And they say healthcare professionals may not be helping the situation.
“The field of mental health perpetuates this myth with the very concept of “mental health,” which implies a state without suffering,” they say.
Potentially damaging
But this belief can eventually cause people to believe that with enough effort they can eliminate suffering.
And experts say this is an unrealistic aim in relationships, and striving to achieve it can lead people to feel they have failed.
Jan Parker of the Association of Family Therapy said: “The authors are right to point out that the pursuit of relationship nirvana can be potentially damaging.”
She said it was important to explore what people mean by a happy and healthy relationship, because nobody’s life or relationship can be in a permanent state of happiness – there will always be more difficult times.
She said couples need to build strengths, such as understanding, in their relationships to help them cope in these hard times and appreciate the good times.
Mrs Nadine Field, a consultant psychologist, said it was a “fantasy” that any relationship could be perfect and that striving for such an impossible state could lead to bitter disappointment.
She said this disappointment could then cause people to focus on the negative aspects of a relationship, and lead to more disappointment and resentment.
She said: “People need to try to understand their partners through communication, rather than demanding perfection of them.”
Read the rest of the article here.
Google Street View Peeping?
I found this article on AOL, but it is from the New York Times originally.
Google Zooms In Too Close for Some
By MIGUEL HELFT, The New York Times
The New York Times
OAKLAND, Calif. (June 2) – For Mary Kalin-Casey, it was never about her cat.
Google said it takes privacy seriously and considered the implications of its service before it was introduced. “Street View only features imagery taken on public property,” it said.
Ms. Kalin-Casey, who manages an apartment building here with her husband, John Casey, was a bit shaken when she tried a new feature in Google’s map service called Street View. She typed in her address and the screen showed a street-level view of her building. As she zoomed in, she could see Monty, her cat, sitting on a perch in the living room window of her second-floor apartment.
“The issue that I have ultimately is about where you draw the line between taking public photos and zooming in on people’s lives,” Ms. Kalin-Casey said in an interview Thursday on the front steps of the building. “The next step might be seeing books on my shelf. If the government was doing this, people would be outraged.”
Her husband quickly added, “It’s like peeping.”
Ms. Kalin-Casey first shared her concerns about the service in an e-mail message to the blog Boing Boing on Wednesday. Since then, the Web has been buzzing about the privacy implications of Street View — with varying degrees of seriousness. Several sites have been asking users to submit interesting images captured by the Google service, which offers panoramic views of miles of streets around San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Miami and Denver.
On a Wired magazine blog, for instance, readers can vote on the “Best Urban Images” that others find in Street View. On Thursday afternoon, a picture of two young women sunbathing in their bikinis on the Stanford campus in Palo Alto, Calif., ranked near the top. Another showed a man scaling the front gate of an apartment building in San Francisco. The caption read, “Is he breaking in or has he just locked himself out?”
Google said in a statement that it takes privacy seriously and considered the privacy implications of its service before it was introduced on Tuesday. “Street View only features imagery taken on public property,” the company said. “This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down the street.”
You can read the rest of the article on AOL MOney News by clicking here.
My comment: I am a huge fan of transparency, so you might think this new ability wouldn’t bother me. But the transparency I favor is transparency of business and government transactions, not people taking in my behavior in my own house! I am also a huge fan of personal privacy, and while a street view that just shows my cat in the window wouldn’t be alarming, it tells me that photos shot at night, which would show the interior of my residence, are also possible, and that thought troubles me very much.
Our homes are our castles! If my husband wants to walk around in his underwear (or less 😉 ) and I want to wear my nightgown all day when I am working on a special project, honestly, it is not YOUR business, nor anyone else on the internet! Do you want photos published, taken of you unaware in your own house? This capability is terrifying!
Competitive Family Values
Even within national cultures, there are family cultures. You don’t really think about it when you are a kid, you think all families are like your family. It isn’t until you get older that you understand just how unique – even quirky – your own family is.
In our family, we were bred to be competitive. We started early, with simple card games and board games. We swam on swimming teams, we competed for grades. Doing well, doing our best was expected of us.
And then, we turned around and did it to our own children!
We used to have big family reunions in a small town along the Oregon beach. We stayed in an old complex, where there were two large units that shared a deck, and then several small cabins. The very social parts of the family shared the two large units – my mom and dad, and her brother and his wife – and the rest of us had the cabins, one to each family, althought the kids roamed from cabin to cabin – our children have always had the freedom of belonging to one great tribe!
Daytimes would be full of adventures – not everyone doing the same thing, but smaller groups having dodge-boat competitions, groups going on shopping expeditions to nearby towns, hiking in the parks, having some beach time – jumping the amazingly high waves in the amazingly cold Pacific ocean.
Around 5, people would start to gather on the big deck in preparation for dinner. Dinner might come out of the kitchens, or we might order food in, but once dinner was out of the way, the BIG competitions would begin.
Every year there was a huge hearts tournament, and a Liar’s Dice tournement. The family took these very seriously, from oldest to youngest, everyone entered, everyone competed. We took it so seriously that we had trophies that would be engraved with the winner’s names and passed along from year to year. We took it so seriously that sometimes there would be injured feelings when someone lost. Everyone wanted to be the winner, and in a family full of people used to winning, feelings ran high.
Giving up needing to win all the time has been seriously hard. There are still times when I am in a situation where I feel the adrenelin start pumping and I have to stop myself and say “Do you want to win this battle or do you want to win the war?” i.e., like chess, sometimes you have to sacrifice a pawn to achieve a greater victory down the road. Do I need to win every arguement at the cost of losing a friend? Do I need to win at the cost of my community?
I also think needing to win takes its toll in one’s health – when I allow myself NOT to need to win all the time, I feel calmer, more serene, and happier. I can’t help but think that being calm, serene and happy are probably good things to be in terms of health. Competition gets your heart beating faster, pumping through the veins, but can also take it’s toll in bad eating, bad sleeping and bad exercise habits.
My parents did a good thing encouraging us to be our best, to seek personal excellence and to strive for personal achievements; I honor them for that. When it comes to winning, however, I want to stop and count the cost before I proceed full steam ahead.
What does your family value? What attributes did they encourage you to develop?
Widad Kawar’s Passion
Many years ago, in another life, I was honored to visit the collection of Widad Kawar in Amman, Jordan. I was so young, and so completely in awe of Widad, who had made it a life mission to collect traditional clothing of the area, Palestinian, which was her own heritage, and nomadic.
It was like being a little girl and getting to play dress up as we oooohed and aahhhed over these gorgeous old dresses and head dresses. I had no idea she had become an institution, until I began to research a style of hijab I had seen there which I found very elegant.
LIttle Diamond, these are for you. They are from several sources, including The Arab Heritage site on Widad Kawar which I urge you to peruse when you have a spare hour or half a day or . . . a lifetime. She has created a monumental body of work with her passion for preserving these fabulous textiles.
From Widad Kawar’s collection: North Jordan
Shows a little of the glitz – this one is from Salt, photo from Widad Kawar’s collection:
I love this photo. The woman has a plain version of the headdress, and is wearing a double dress . . . and her husband is holding her hand!
Rare Case of Lying
In today’s Kuwait Times is an article I found utterly hilarious – WHAT WAS HE THINKING????
Exam Fraud Discovered
Kuwait: The director of a secondary school in Khaitan discovered a first of a kind cheating case wehre an unidentified young man sat for a Quran exam instead of one of the school students, reported Alam Alyawm, noting that being unable to identify the young man and suspecting him, the director requested an ID to verify his true identity.
Sources said that the examined young man confusingly showed a driving license belonging to the student he had substituted. Realizing his fraud had been discovered, the young man fled the school leaving his exam paper and driving license behind.
Upon contacting the real student, he told the police that his driving license had been missing and that he had lodged a report with the police in this regard. Further investigations are in progress.
Uh . . . yeh, I bet they are. 🙂
I am sorry, this just gives me such a giggle. Cheating on a Quran exam? ? ?
Before I wrote the above, I had to do a lot of thinking . . . like the bible, our book, does not say “thou shalt not lie” as one of the 10 commandments, neither is it one of the two great commandments in our New Testament (love the one true God before all others, love your neighbor as yourself), so what does the bible say about lying? Fortuntately for us, there is Google, and the internet, and you can click on What the Bible has to say about lying if you want the specifics. It reminded me that Satan is called “The Father of All Lies.” *shiver* That’s good enough for me.
There are several places in the bible, however, when even good people lie, like because they are scared or because they don’t want to face the wrath of God. One is Sarah, when the messengers tell her she is going to have a baby and she is something like 80 or 100 years old and she laughs, she can’t help it, Sarah laughs. And God says “Sarah! Are you laughing at me! I can do anything!” and Sarah lies and says “oh no, Lord, I wasn’t laughing.”
Since the Bible and the Quran spring from the same spiritual source, I am willing to bet the Quran also has a few things to say about lying and dishonesty, and fraud, and how you can’t fool Allah or cheat him.
Anyone out there willing to step up and educate us?
Dead Man Walking
An Irish joke:
Paddy’s wife bought a new line of expensive cosmetics guaranteed to make her look years younger.
After a lengthy sitting before the mirror applying the “miracle” products she asked, “Darling, honestly what age would you say I am?”
Looking over her carefully, Paddy replied, “Judging from your skin, twenty; your hair, eighteen; and your figure, twenty-five.”
“Oh, you flatterer!” she gushed.
“Hey, wait a minute!” Paddy interrupted. “I haven’t added them up yet.”
The Great American Library
Today there is an article in the news about a small library in Vermont that actually sits on the border and is used by both Americans and Canadians. The US government is considering changing that, as they think the unguarded entry to the US is being used by bad people.
Maybe. I don’t know. Post 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security can say or do just about anything in the name of National Security, limit or modify our consititutional rights, behave in ways contrary to everything we believe in, and no one seems to be able to stop them.
And that is not the point. The point is that at one time in our history, an industrialist, Andrew Carnegie, donated money to build libraries throughout the United States, Canada and even Scotland, over 2,000 libraries in all.
In almost every town in America, you will find a library, where you can borrow, free of charge, books on any subject.
When I was a little girl, where I lived was so safe that my mother would put me on the bus with my basket family library books and send me to the library, call the librarian to tell her I was coming, and I could spend hours there, and no-one had to worry about my safety. My Dad would pick me up on his way home from work, and I would have a basket of fresh books – the librarian would pick out books for my Mom.
One day, the desk person was sick, and the librarian let me sit at the desk, checking books ou to library patrons. I must have been six or seven years old, and could barely get on the high chair behind the library desk.
Here is what was so cool. I could read at a very early age, and my nine or ten had worked my way through most of the children’s section, and started choosing books from the adult section. The first time, the librarian called my Mom and asked if it was OK, and my Mom said “if she thinks she can read it, check it out to her.” My library card was annotated to inform all the desk people that I could read whatever I wanted, even from the adult section. Woooo Hoooooooo!
My husband has similar stories, growing up in his home town. He loved the library as I did, and one day, rode his bike to the library and then fell asleep there, hidden from view. The librarian closed the library and he woke up alone and very scared. These were pre mobil phones – I know, I know, it’s hard to believe. His family came looking for him and found his bike, called the librarian, who lived nearby, and she let him out.
We still love libraries. It’s an amazing thing, to be able to walk into a treasury of books, pick up a couple hundred dollars worth, and walk out with just your signature as pledge. The newest books on every subject are available, either in the library itself or through their inter-library loan system. Now, too, most of the libraries have a computer section, where you can check your e-mail or do research online – totally free.
Libraries are staffed mainly by females, I don’t know why, it seems to be seen as a female job. But what power these women have! They are the guardians of so much knowledge! Children and adults come to them and ask all kinds of questions, and they know where to look for the answers!
Isn’t learning how to access knowledge one of the true great secrets in life? So these librarians, the guardians of knowledge, are like Superman, holding the front lines against ignorance, promoting access to new ideas and new ways of doing things, combating the forces of darkness and superstition.
Librarians were a powerful force in my life, and in my husband’s. Has there been a powerful figure in your life who made a difference in how you saw the world, in choices you have made?
Who’s Checking Kuwait’s Toothpaste?
US checks toothpaste for toxins
Toothpaste is the latest Chinese export to raise safety concerns
Health officials in the United States say they are checking all shipments of toothpaste imported from China for contamination with toxic chemicals.
Panama and the Dominican Republic have reported finding diethylene glycol, a chemical used in engine coolants, in toothpaste from China.
The toothpaste scare is the latest involving products from China.
Earlier this year, contaminated pet food ingredients killed a number of cats and dogs in North America.
The toxic chemical, melamine, was found in wheat gluten exports from China for use in pet food, prompting a recall of at least 100 pet food brands.
The tainted wheat gluten was even thought to have made its way into livestock feed.
Low-cost substitute
Cough syrup containing containing diethylene glycol originating from China killed more than 50 people in Panama last year.
The New York Times said a Chinese chemical maker had sold the industrial-grade chemical as glycerine, which is often used as a moistener in products from toothpaste to soap and cosmetics.
CHINESE FOOD SCARES
May 2007 China probes reports that contaminated toothpaste was sent to Central America
March 2007 Melamine is found in wheat gluten exports from China for use in pet food, prompting a recall of at least 100 pet food brands
Nov 2006 A dye farmers fed to ducks to make their eggs look fresher is found to contain cancer-causing properties and 5,000 ducks are culled
August 2006 About 40 people in Beijing contract meningitis after eating partially cooked snails at a chain of restaurants
Diethylene glycol is sometimes used as a low-cost substitute for glycerine and Chinese toothpaste makers have said small amounts of the chemical are harmless in toothpaste.
“We are going to be sampling and testing all shipments of toothpaste that come from China,” said Doug Arbesfeld, a spokesman for the US Food and Drug Administration.
The FDA says China is the second-largest exporter of toothpaste to the US after Canada.
Food safety investigators in Panama said two brands of toothpaste were imported illegally from China through a free-trade zone.
Chinese officials say they are investigating the claims.
The Dominican Republic and Panama have pulled thousands of tubes of Chinese toothpaste brands Excel and Mr Cool from store shelves.
Beijing recently pledged to clean up its tainted food and drug industry after the series of safety scares. The subject was raised by the US in bilateral trade talks this week.
The former head of China’s State Food and Drug Administration is facing trial, accused of taking large bribes to approve untested medicines.
From today’s BBC News.
Travel Karma Failure
I have really good travel karma – most of the time. Even when things go wrong, something good comes out of it. And before you read any further, you must know that during this trip, I had a really good time, surrounded by friends, good conversation, a lot of laughter and a very understanding husband – it had a happy ending. But this was a serious travel karma failure.
Oh, I had planned to carefully – fly out early, my friends pick me up, we loll around the pool catching up, grab a bite to eat, and eventually they drop me off at my hotel where I hook up with my husband.
Only this is what I saw on my way to the airport:
And this is what I saw as the plane was delayed – and delayed – and delayed again:
And this is what the airport looked like as more and more planes got delayed:
After – literally – hours, we board. We are rolling away from the airport when a guy a couple seats up from me says . . . something . . . to the stewardess and the guy across from him. As the plane continues rolling, I watch the guy across the aisle get up, go to the galley and make a phone call. The plane keeps rolling rolling rolling, but . . . rolls to a stop and all kinds of vehicals come out to the plane.
They all have a discussion:
But you know this part of the world, everyone has an opinion and wants to be heard. Back and forth up and down the aisle. The entire Qatar soccer team weighed in on this one:
Somehow, it all got resolved. I get to Doha – not early morning, but six at night. I’ve already told my friends to forget picking me up in peak traffic time, but I would see them the next day – we already had plans. But the topping on this perfect day is that my suitcase didn’t come. People were sent looking here and there, and another hour passed.
No suitcase. No explanation, but they assure me the suitcase is still in Kuwait. Get it here, I tell them, I need it. Send it to my hotel. And I rush to duty free to pick up some face cream and mascara and lipstick – you know, the essentials. When I get to the hotel I realize I have nothing, but the gift shop, thank God, has very large T-shirts I can sleep in, a hairbrush, a toothbrush and even underpants.
My greatest fear, as the suitcase continues to NOT show up, is that I will never see it again. It is a great suitcase, and inside it is my computer power cord. Normally a balanced, easy going person, I have bad dreams, angry dreams, frustrated dreams and I wake unrested, and wanting clean clothes.
My husband, not normally known for his patience, was very tenderly patient with me. I think he was more than a little bewildered to see me so bent out of shape. It was probably funny – if you weren’t me.
For three days, for every event, I wear the same clothes. Three days. The bag finally showed up this morning – still at the airport – just in time for my return trip to Kuwait.
Now that, my friends, is a SERIOUS travel karma failure.
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Early Voting in Florida
