CNNN news report

CNNN is an Aussie satire show which is hilarious.
Obviously this show is just showing the worst of the worst but it is still very funny :-)

France's First Lady? or not.

Check out the following article about France's new president Sarkozy's wife. "... the recent cliff-hanger of the sporadic absences of Cecilia from her ambitious husband's side."

What a tolerant nation France is with respect to marriage - although I am not sure if this is a good tolerance or not. Is having affairs outside of marriage a good thing for society?
In my talks with an ex-housemate, she still questions whether monogamy is a natural behavior or even a good thing. I have always been of the thought that it is, but is it only because this is the accepted behavior in the societies that I lived in?
if in France this is the accepted behavior then maybe monogamy is simply behavioral as opposed to an inherently natural act. Maybe it is possible to separate love and sex. Maybe monogamy is good but not the forever kind and we are in fact supposed to have several partners instead of one in our lifetime.
It is very interesting when we think of about the whys and how much of the accepted and in fact revered behavior is natural and how much environmental. What do you guys think?

Monty Python - International Philosophy

This is a hilarious match between the Greeks and the Germans.
As my cousin wrote:
I like how when the Greeks score a goal, the commentator says:
The Germans are disputing it. Hegel is arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination, and Marx is claiming it was offside. and if you look at the replay, the Greeks were offside, Marx was right!
sigh... I wish I knew more about Philosophy and the exact ideas of each of the players!!

Joss Whedon

I got reminded of firefly today, the wonderful TV show I love and that got canceled after one season by the evil empire of Murdoch, that gray wily orange animal with foxlike tendencies.
Did you know Firefly is rated at 15 in the top 25 best scifi TV shows and movies, in the whole wide world? makes me want to go back and watch those last 4 episodes which I have left off watching because I don't want the season to end.

Also seems that Joss Whedon's next project is a scifi thriller called Goners which I hope won't have a lot of horror. Ok maybe it doesn't mean much based on the other movies on the list. However it is interesting that Heroes has had so much support. I saw the first episode and somehow never watched any other other ones. Maybe that was a mistake. But it seems that all the episodes are available free on the internet. You know having access to the old episodes is actually a really smart idea - people can catch up to the season any time they want.
Darn... Whedon should be making a new TV show - I would watch it, wouldn't you?

Medical Disasters

what a potential disaster with my health insurance coverage .... AGAIN!!

So last time i had been told that health insurance open enrollment was between 1-20th May - so I had been on the watch out for the emails in this regard for the past week. But no such email - finally today i dropped by the office and asked about it and was told enrollement ended on friday!! seems that was 12th not the 20th. And enrollment is I believe only once a year? anyway I was about to have a heart attack - it was bad enough as it was when my insurance got canceled last March due to a missed payment - My funding source was changing and they missed one payment. Anyway we managed to fix it by backdating it and then sending it saying it had actually been sent last friday. I found out that I was actually not on the mailing list which yes, can cause the problem. But what a brush with disaster... I am so happy I am once again covered. Well starting July 1st anyway.

I seriously don't understand this open enrollment period of insurance companies in the US - why is it that people can only enroll in insurance at only certain times?? I was once told because of the added costs associated with having an enrollment period all year long - but surely it is not just me that has been a victim of this limited time opportunity?!! In Australia, we had all year long enrollment I believe. It is so much more user-friendly.

I was talking to a health insurance economist on the weekend when I was in the airport (that was one weird conversation!!) and I thought of a fundamental question: the concept of health insurance for all is to a large extent an extension of socialist ideals - so can a strictly capitalistic country have a good health insurance?

Tandia

A novel that I love is The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay. I can't remember if I wrote about it before, but it is a lovely novel about a young white English boy Peekay growing up in South Africa. Courtenay himself was born in South Africa and then immigrated to Australia. The Power of One was his first novel and it won lots of awards - I think they adapted it to film as well.
The sequel to The Power of One is called Tandia which was impossible to find in US. I had already read it a long time ago and I really wanted to reread it. Anyway I finally managed to get it on eBay from this Australian bookshop. The book is finally in my hands and i am reading it slowly to enjoy it. [Side Note: I do that sometimes, do something slowly to elongate the pleasure. The funniest one is my Firefly first season which I still haven't seen the last 3 episodes because I don't want them to finish!! Of course it's been so long since I last watched them that I have forgotten what was happening!!! :-P ]
Ok back to Tandia. While I was trying to find the book I read more about the life of Courtenay and the critiques of Tandia - I found out that Tandia was not as well received as The Power of One, even though there was a lot of expectations. It seems that almost immediate after The Power of One was published, Courtenay's family found out that his son was diagnosed with AIDS due to a blood transfusion and he died within a year or so. Meanwhile the publishers were pushing Courtenay to meet his deadline for Tandia and so... well that might be a definite reason why Tandia is not up to the same caliber as the earlier novel. So now while I read Tandia I keep thinking about the hell that Courtenay must have been going thru as he was writing Tandia. How can you be creative when something like this is going on? I don't know.
As a final aside, Courtenay has a bunch of other books which I have bought maybe 5 of. One of them is called April Fool's Day and is about the son who contracted AIDS and the days leading up to his death. The son died on April Fool's Day. what a day.
That is not a good day for anyone.

Yann Martel

On my last visit to the library, I saw Life of Pi by Yann Martel on the bookshelves. I picked it up and sat down and reread the last 40 pages of the story - it is such a wonderful book and all the emotions that I went through went I first read it came upon me again. It was so sad and so hopeful and so.. I am not sure. Last time I had decided i would believe the story of the animals but this time, I don't why but I believed the story of the humans. Does that say something about my frame of mind?

I went in search of other books by Martel and I found a collection of 4 short stories entitled The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, which is actually the name of the first novella. I read that story on the plane on Friday and it is another extremely well written, emotional and insightful story. There were a couple of passages which really hit home for me, some expressions which were beautiful to read.

The story is told by a young man in college, whose friend is diagnosed with AIDS. The story describes the last few months of the friend's life that the story teller shares.
Here are some passages from the book which I loved:

"He puffs out his story weakly. I feel each breath against my cheek. I have so much energy compared to him, so much good health. It feels arrogant. To atone, I do the equivalent of what people are very tall do: I go about with stooped health."

Another passage describes the act of walking a dog as "giving purpose to aimlessness".

Finally, the last is a long passage which I will write later. It is long and I feel offers so much insight and reflects my feelings. It is interesting that Yann Martel has only three books out. I would really like to read more of his stuff. If you read his bio as well, he seems like a very interesting and well traveled man - he has even been to Iran!! Anyway I really recommend everyone to read his books :-)