We have a metric whack of stuff to get through today and I am in a bit of a rush, so let’s jump in.
First off, something that I think is righteous cool : the entire run of 80’s science mag OMNI is available for reading and downloading at archive.org now!
When I was but a budding nerdling with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, OMNI and Discovery were the twin stars of my nerdly world. We got both via subscription (ours was a periodical-loving home), and I would always snatch them both the minute nobody was paying attention and rifle through the contents like I was frisking a prisoner for weapons.
I could never pick one over the other. They were fairly alike, and the differences were subtle. OMNI was a little more populist, with slicker graphics and colorful diagrams and so on, and when I was younger, that made it my favorite because I was an impatient reader back then and wanted everything to be as short as possible. Blame being raised by TV.
But once I got older, I started to prefer Discovery because not only was I more patient, but I was learning more about science all the time and wanted better, more thorough explanations. So I guess by the time I left home for college, I was leaning more towards Discovery.
OMNI always had one thing, though, that kept it in play versus Discovery : fiction. Science fiction. And pretty good stuff, too!
So if I go exploring the OMNI archive, it will be in search of fiction, instead of getting caught up in science that is now absurdly out of date.
Next up, check out this epic Bar Mitzvah invitation :
Now you might ask, how the heck does some 12 year old kid put together something like this?
Well, he kind of had help. As this CBC article reveals :
Jorel’s parents are David Hoffert, a director and music producer with lots of TV experience who also produced some of the Beastie Boys’ earliest tracks.
His mom is Mei Lee, a classically trained vocalist and opera instructor.
Even Jorel’s grandparents got in on the act (in the ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ homage), and they have some serious chops too. His grandmother Brenda Hoffert is a former lyricist and music supervisor for the movies, and his grandpa Paul is a jazz musician, scientist and new media guru.
So as you can see, the kid has good genes and a highly supportive family. How many people can say their grandparents did Bohemian Rhapsody with them?
Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, he is named Jorel (or Jor-El) after Superman’s dad.
With a name like that, he has to name his first born son Kalel (or Kal-El).
Or at least Clark.
Also, I just would like to say that I think bar mitzvahs are cool. I think every culture needs a coming of age ceremony, so that the young people know exactly when they will be expected to become adults.
Having it at age 12 is a bit too early for modern life, granted.
And now for some good news about a terrible thing.
After a year of inaction and amid RCMP claims that there is “no evidence” in the Rehtaeh Parsons case, this case has finally been solved.
By Anonymous. In under two hours.
And we Canadians are going to have to ask ourselves some hard questions about our justice system, because according to sources inside Anonymous, it was not even that hard.
The four human excretions that raped Rehtaeh and drove her to suicide did not exactly cover their tracks. In fact, they shared pictures of the rape all over the Internet and bragged about it to all of their friends and anyone else who would listen.
That is why it did not take Anonymous long to build a case against them, and it really makes you wonder what the fuck the RCMP has been doing all this time.
Right now, people are going with “massive incompetence” as the excuse for why the RCMP thought there was “no evidence”, but I do not buy it.
The brutal truth is that I do not think the RCMP and Rehtaeh’s community wanted to solve the crime. Everybody knew who did it, but nobody wants to think the golden boys of their town are capable fo doing such a thing, so they were happy to just pretend like it never happened until it went away.
Historically, you can get away with unthinkable crimes precisely because nobody wants to believe they can happen in their world.
And it takes something like this to force people to confront the ugly truth of the situation.
OK, so much for the serious stuff. Let’s end with something fun!
A grandmother in Birmingham, England got the shock of her long life one morning when she woke up to find a fox sitting on her chest, looking down at her.
Yes, that actually happened, amazingly enough. Mary Small, an English grandmother who apparently sleeps on her back, woke up to find a young fox peering down at her.
Obviously, the curious fox meant her no harm, and probably got into the home through some little gap in a wall somewhere, or the like.
Why it was sitting on her chest looking down at her is another matter. My guess is, she snores, and the inquisitive little fox wanted to figure out what the heck was making that awful noise.
Now as you all know, I love foxes, so I would like to think that I would have handled the situation better than Mary did. She screamed her lung out, which is understandable.
But I like to think I would have just held very still (this is a wild animal, after all), and said “Well hello there, Monsieur Reynard.” and seen what happened next.
Probably, it would have led to me getting bitten when I tried to pet it.
Still, that is one heck of way to wake up, is it not?