Freyburg

I don’t want to give anything away to you non-downloaders out there, but the season finale of Doctor Who was absolutely stunning. In the words of the Doctor himself, it was “fantastic.”

How did Whovians luck out? How, against all reason and logic, did a crew of talented folk take a British institution and successfully update it for the 21st century, unlike another moribund (cough…Trek..cough) franchise I could mention? I’m not sure why fate decided to smile on the greatest television show ever made (and old Who is still a whole lotta fun) but I ain’t gonna question it. I’ll just bask in the greatest second act I’ve ever seen grace the small screen.

That, and pine for the next new episode. Which, unfortunately, isn’t until Christmas. Damn! 🙂

I’ll be in Penticton over the weekend, staying at a cabin with an net connection that only barely lets me check my email. The site won’t get much content in the meantime, but I’ll try to make up for it when I get back on Sunday.

Certainly one of the most insightful and unique takes I’ve seen on the Star Wars saga in a while. Stephenson might not be right on the money, but he does raise a few interesting points about the role of the Jedi and how it reflects on current society.

…which I think comes from living in the hermetically sealed confines of academia for decades at a time. Here’s a good example; eminent beret-wearing philisophe Michel Foucalt apparently thought the Iranian revolution in 1979 was a fine bit of business.

This seems odd; you’d think such obviously smart people would be able to to figure out that governments founded on slapping people around who disagree with them is fundamentally bad, whether it’s Islamic radicalism, communism or a paid vacation in Gitmo. But I think the dirty little secret of a lot of intellectuals is that, deep down, they think if only people did things the way their obviously brilliant smartypants overlords wanted, the world would be a utopia. That didn’t work out too well in Russia (or anywhere else for that matter) but that doesn’t stop them.

At least now most intellectuals have been squared away in the blog-ghettoes, where they won’t do any harm. 🙂

Of course, if you ask me, it’s a clear bitch-slapping by Spielberg, who has two Oscars for directing under his belt. They both have untold millions, and Spielberg never foisted Jar Jar Binks on the world. But I imagine fellow cineaste PG Shitgunner has a thing or two to say about this blockbusterian tete-a-tete. 🙂

(from the webmaster:)

We apologise for Freyburg.com’s lack of new material in the past few days; Freyburg’s hosting company moved the site to a new server, the result being the need for this site to undergo a database upgrade. Freyburg will be posting shortly though, and not a moment too soon, as we’re told he managed to replace his urge to share his musings with an addiction to eating flowers during the downtime… (his secret shame!)

Ah, nothing says the great outdoors like neon, New York City cops and pavement. And if you’re looking to work in Whistler, you might just be able to join an Ewok village too.

The NYT has a really good opinion piece detailing how the media have declined since the glory days of Watergate, especially the “oops, we kind of got jerked around on that whole ‘lying about WMD’ issue, tee hee,” egg-on-the-face that passes for journalism nowadays. There’s probably nothing about Watergate or the current sorry state of the media you don’t already know, but it is all tied together very well.

Out here in Vancouver, the housing market is, well, insane. I happened to do pretty well by that insanity, after buying and then selling a condo, but the prices have just kept climbing up, to the point where it’s actually cheaper (by a substantial margin) for me to rent a place.

But clearly I’m not the only one thinking about this state of affairs. There’s a great blog dedicated to debating when the property bubble in Vancouver will go “pop”, and the comment section is a hotbed of “you’re all crazy/haha I’m rich” back and forth. Here’s an article in the Guardian about how property madness in Britain threatens to create more of an underclass, and there’s a good article in the NYT’s Week in Review about the possibility of a crippling global recession if property values plummet anytime soon.

Technorati tracks what’s what in the blogosphere. It used to be sort of clunky, but now it’s gotten a lot more slick and useful. And I found out through the site that I got a shout-out in the latest Lego podcast from BiMP for mentioning their site here on Freyburg.com.