This is one photo from the GLF. I can’t copy paste on this tablet and this has taken an hour.

This is an excellent video with a fascinating scientist (Neil DeGrasse Tyson), moderated by a very funny moderator (Stephen Colbert, out of character). It’s a bit long, I’ve queued it up to where it starts here. This is a great video cause it shows how exciting science is, how emotionally and spiritually fulfilling it can be, and also how fun.

The UNP has lost everything except Colombo. I volunteered for the UPFA candidate Milinda Moragoda, and this sucks. I think he had a better plan. We tried and failed.

So we finally tried the Domino’s Dehiwela, what a treat. Oh my God it was horrible. The service is bad, the pizzas aren’t cut and the toppings slide right off. I could still taste the garlic shrimp hours later, and that’s not a good thing. Overall, I only recommend visiting the Dehiwela Domino’s to see first hand how horrible it is.

As I get older, I get less presents but more wishes. This is kinda OK. I suppose this process culminates in a large funeral. People knock Facebook for taking the personal touch out of birthdays. It just tells you when peoples birthdays are. To the contrary, I appreciate FB wishes. I just wish FB could run facial recognition on my life so I could stop forgetting peoples names. What is modern birthday etiquette?

90% of resistance is showing up. Some diasporals are angry with the Sri Lankan government. They’re applying pressure through the UN, the US Congress and Britain’s Channel 4. It makes a big noise, but not a big difference. Why? Because they’re calling for radical change without making a radical sacrifice. If they want a separate homeland or a new government, it’s really quite simple. They just need to show up.

Super 8 is a lovely lovely film. It prioritizes child like wonder and the tense moments in the wake of great creatures more than the creatures themselves. I saw it in a theatre with about eight people. Next door, Transformers 3 was packed. Transformers is CGI porn. All action, no emotion. Super 8 is JJ Abrams (the director) making love to the opus of Steven Spielberg (producer). Uh, I think this metaphor has gone a bit off the rails.

Despite pretty vigorous rigging efforts by the government, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) won most of the seats in the north. The final count was UPFA (govt) – 45, TNA 18, TULF (another Tamil party) 2. The government won the overall vote count based on elections in the south, but all the attention was on the north. Despite bribery and dubiousness, people still voted for the TNA.

I just finished on the Stream. Got cut off at the end, but had a beginning and a middle! My basic point is that the Tamil/Sinhala frame is A) not accurate IMHO and B) not productive (in somewhat demonstrable fact). I think we need to look beyond who is wronged and get down to what do we do about it. Tamils have legit issues with land grabs. Colombians have legit issues with land grabs, as do Hambantotans, as do elephants. We can all work together on that. Look at the protests that made a difference:

Nobody declares war anymore, but we still fight. What’s going on? If you look at the use of the word ‘war’ it’s declined dramatically after World War II, at least in the Google corpus of books. If you’ll note the other data points, you can see that people finally began making love and not war around 2003. Peace fought an extended battle with conflict beginning in the 80s, only recently emerging ahead.