Brian Holtz for Congress

As a new U.S. citizen, I get to vote here in the United States for the first time in November. As this is all new to me, and as I live in California where they tag all of these propositions onto the official ballot, I've been trying to do my homework and find out who all the players are and understand as much as I can about each issue.

Well I nearly fell off my seat when I read through the list of candidates for United States Representative for District 14. There was the name of somebody who I used to work with about ten years ago. Brian Holtz is the libertarian candidate. I'm sure that there are a lot of other people at Sun who remember Brian. If not, there are more details about him and his beliefs at his web site. I see that Brian is also still working on his freely available book, Human Knowledge: Foundations and Limits where he continues to thunk deep thoughts on an eclectic range of subjects.

This morning, I've been finding the reading up on all these propositions very tedious. Having a friend and ex-co-worker in the elections is going to make the November vote a whole lot more interesting.

[Technorati Tag: Congress]

( Oct 10 2004, 12:13:16 PM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [3]

Ice Age

Last night was family movie night at our house, so we played the DVD for Ice Age. This was actually one of the few movies we've seen with Duncan at the theater when it first came out a couple of years ago. Because he's already seen it, had it explained to him, knows where all the scary bits are and doesn't need to be taken to the restroom every half hour, Mom and Dad actually got to see it as if for the first time. It's either that, or my mid-term memory lost is getting bad, or I was really tired when we saw it the first time, because last night, there were several scenes I didn't remember at all.

For those of you who haven't seen this (and I find it hard to believe there are many), it's the animated story of how a mammoth, a sloth and a saber-tooth tiger return a young human baby to its tribe during an ice age 20,000 years ago. Add in a pack of sabre-tooth tigers as the bad guys, an hilarious sequence with an army of dodo's and a running gag with a sabertooth squirrel called Scrat who has a passion for nuts plus various other odds and sods, and you have a wonderful movie. There is excellent comedic voiceover talent with people like Ray Romano, John Leguizamo and Denis Leary. The IMdB review is here. Two thumbs way up in my view, but then I've always had a passion for good animation (which is probably why I'm still watching Father of the Pride even though the writing is terrible, the jokes are lousy and I now have a strong urge to go see to Siegfried and Roy in person just to see if they are really that strange in real life).

The Ice Age DVD has a bonus disk which includes an animated short which contains Scrat's missing adventure Gone Nutty, which is also very funny. The Ice Age web site has some games young kids will like too.

[Technorati Tag: Films]

( Oct 10 2004, 08:03:34 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [1]