Somusing

It’s hard not to be at least a little paranoid when I come across all the following articles in a single day not of concerted search on the subject, but simply following a few links I came across on Twitter:

• The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) by James Bamford, longtime NSA watcher — I guess Utah is supposed to thank Orrin Hatch for bringing in some new jobs! Jobs and money über alles.
• Democratic Senators Issue Strong Warning About Use of the Patriot Act — Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall say they are “skeptical about the actual value of the ‘intelligence collection operation’” where even the rules surrounding it are secret.
• RIAA chief: ISPs to start policing copyright by July 1 — Comcast, Cablevision, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and other Internet providers plan to monitor customers’ Internet traffic and issue warnings if in their opinion any copyright is violated, absent any legal requirement or framework.
• How Not to Attract Tourists — “Imagine that you’re the citizen of a prosperous, democratic ally like Britain, Spain or Japan, and you’d like to visit America. Before traveling, you must pay $14 to complete an online United States government form called ESTA, short for Electronic System for Travel Authorization.” So we're becoming less welcoming to friendly visitors, like spoiled brats in our fortress. Only those who never travel internationally can ignorantly think such friction is no big deal.
• New York passes DNA requirement for convicted criminals — Perhaps this seems reasonable if you don’t consider the United States’ absurdly high incarceration rate and the precedent the U.K. has already set by collecting DNA on every arrest, not just every conviction.

Lest anyone think U.S. citizens don’t care, I’ll make it clear for myself at least: I disapprove.

Some further reading and viewing with more philosophic and encouraging value:

• We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• The Tripods trilogy and prequel by John Christopher
• The Right to Read by Richard Stallman
• essays by Václav Havel
• essays by Neil Postman
• Gattaca
• Idiocracy
• The Conversation

This actually has nothing to do with the sex lives of cannibals, unless you count the chapter about dogs. It's an arresting title, though, isn't it? It's also very funny and entertaining, all about the author's adventures living on a pretty desolate island in Kiribati. Always irreverent, sometimes downright vulgar, it was a fun way to learn about Kiribati (which, by the way, is pronounced "Kiribas"--I don't know why). There's some history and background and lots of hilarious stories about learning to live in a place that's really different from America. I liked it.

The one redeeming element of Letters to Juliet was the travel. I liked that the English and American characters were in Italy, speaking Italian to the people they met (although, of course, switching to English pretty quickly for the sake of an American audience). Otherwise, I thought it was kind of dumb.

I usually like the movies that Luke Wilson is in, and this one is no exception. It's light-hearted and funny and pleasant. I really liked it (in spite of the too-high-pitched laugh of Denise Richards).

As of October 2, 2011, it is streaming on Netflix.

It has been a long time since I enjoyed a book as much as I enjoyed this one. I can't think of anything I didn't like about it. Thanks to Ivy for encouraging me to read it.

We had this DVD from Netflix for quite a while before we watched it. I can't remember why I moved it to the top of our queue, but after watching (and hating) Paper Heart, I had very little desire to see another movie with Michael Cera in it. Even before that, I suspected and feared that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World might be kind of like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow--I'd hear about how wonderful and innovative and amazing it was and then I'd see it and be kind of bored.

But I was wrong. I found it delightful, funny, strange, clever. My favorite ex-boyfriend was the vegan one. I wish it were cleaner, so I could show it to my kids. I'm sure they'll all see it eventually, but there's too much "adult" material in it for a family flick.

Friday morning I left on an overnight backpacking trip with Zed, Jacob, and Phin. We drove up Teton Canyon from the Idaho side and had our camera take a picture of us.

We hiked past the Devil's Stairs fork toward Alaska Basin, and stopped for lunch here.

We arrived in Alaska Basin having met only 2 or 3 other hikers.

We had made good time, so unlike the last time we hiked up to Alaska Basin 3 years ago, we decided we'd hike all the way to the east side of the Tetons to Jenny Lake.

Thus motivated, we hiked up to Sunset Lake.

These were some of our views leaving Sunset Lake and heading up to Hurricane Pass.

Soon we arrived at the border between the Jedediah Smith Wilderness and Grand Teton National Park.

Then we descended down to Hurricane Pass.

Here was our view over Schoolroom Glacier.

Zed looked down from Hurricane Pass into the South Fork of Cascade Canyon and the Teton Crest Trail.

Morning sun made it a nice time to play around the lake under Schoolroom Glacier.

Here Phin and Jacob filter water from a snowmelt stream for us to drink.

We met a lot of other people on the trail the further down we went in Cascade Canyon. It was a nice late-summer day and lots of day-hikers had headed up the trails from the Jenny Lake side.

Erin picked us up at Jenny Lake at 4:30 pm. Our total hiking distance over those two days was about 24 miles.

Here's what IMDb says about this movie:

Charlyne Yi embarks on a quest across America to make a documentary about the one subject she doesn't fully understand: Love.

Jon and I watched it a few nights ago. Well, Jon fell asleep about halfway through, so I guess I'm the one who watched it. I didn't hate it while I was watching it, but the more time that goes by since I saw it, the more it makes me kind of mad that I wasted my time on it. Charlyne Yi doesn't believe in True Love, so she travels around the country (and even to Paris towards the end) asking people about True Love--do they believe in it, what is it, what are their experiences, etc. She even consults some "experts" who might have something to say about love--some professors of biochemistry or something like that. She has some famous friends, one of whom is Michael Cera, with whom she starts a relationship. In spite of her experience with him, she refuses to change her mind about the existence of love. Nobody can teach her anything. Why are they driving and flying all over the place, presumably spending a bunch of money? Apparently, it is just to make this documentary. There are also scenes featuring paper cut-out figures.

IMDb says this is a partially-scripted documentary, and I'm not sure what that means, but I don't care. The director, Charlyne's friend Nick, is played by an actor, but everyone else is just who they are. What I learned is that Michael Cera acts just like every character he's ever played (as far as I have seen, and I guess it's possible he was acting in this movie, too). I also learned that some people think they're clever enough that we should watch them making a "documentary." I think it was meaningless, self-referential, and self-indulgent. You could probably put some more "self" words in there. I hope I can stop being annoyed by it now. (I supposed there are some people who would say the movie succeeded because it got stuck in my head, but again, I don't care.)

After our trip to Helsinki, we went to Amsterdam for a night. We stayed in a hostel that was movie themed. Our room was Star Wars themed, and had a huge picture of Darth Vader on the wall.

We went to the Anne Frank house, and looked at some of the older buildings along the way. One of them was an old church that had a really weird Roman numeral on it.

It looked like cbbc, but for real it was C I backwards C = M, I backwards C = D, C which adds up to 1600. Wikipedia has a close-up image.

At the Anne Frank house we saw a lot of cool stuff. I didn’t really know anything about her before going, so I’m glad I could go.

We went to an Indian restaurant that was really good, and then we returned to our hostel for our last night in Europe. This square was nearby:

Our ferry to Helsinki from Tallinn was canceled because of rough seas and they sent us over to another ferry, but we had to wait another two and a half hours so we walked around Tallinn for a while. Finally we got on the ferry and there we met these two Finnish guys who didn’t speak any English at all. They didn’t even understand hello. Dad thought they were speaking Estonian at first and kept trying to communicate with them using our phrase book. Finally one of the people next to us asked us if we wanted them to translate for us. After that little adventure, we went to our hotel. We just stayed in there because it was late.

The next morning was Sunday. We went to church at a building about a quarter mile down the street. A lot of the people there spoke English, and missionaries translated for us.

After church, we walked around in the bay area for a while, then went to a ferry to go to the fortress island Suomenlinna. That was awesome. It was probably a ten or twenty minute ferry trip, and was really cool. It has lots of old cannons, and stuff.

At the south island there were a lot of tunnels running around underneath the walls.

It was totally one of my favorite parts of the trip.

After Suomenlinna we went to a couple of the big churches near the docks. In one of them we heard an organist practicing for his performance that night.

Then we met up with someone Dad knows from Interchange named René Hertell. We went to dinner at a restaurant called Virgin Oil. After that we went back to our hotel.