* Something you may not know about me is that I'm a fan of Tarja Turunen. Tarja is best known for her former stint as the soaring soprano voice in the Finnish power metal band Nightwish (heard at its best in the song Nemo).
Tarja, after a falling out with the band, was replaced with Anette Olzon. Amaranth is a song that Anette does very well. There is an astonishing amount of bickering on YouTube over whether Tarja or Anette is better, whether Nightwish is any good without Tarja, whether Tarja is any good without Nightwish. You could see it by searching for "Anette, Tarja" on YouTube, if you felt like it. None of it is actually interesting, because it's all YouTube bickering of the stupidest sort.
* Awesome in a weird way: Matthew Lickona and his commenters have been working on casting suggestions for The Lord of the Rings, asking what African-American actors would be good in the various parts: Aragorn and Gandalf; Gimli and Legolas; Saruman and Arwen; Boromir and Gollum; Elrond and Denethor; Frodo and Pippin; Merry and Faramir; Galadriel and Sam; the Balrog; Bilbo and Eomer; Eowyn and Grima Wormtongue. Gandalf was a no-brainer, of course, since there's one and only one obvious choice; but Elrond, Denethor, Frodo, and Eowyn were all excellent selections. The choice for Eomer is intriguing, since I think the actor would excel at giving one a sense of Eomer's fitness to be king, which is important; but it's hard to imagine him in the role. I am definitely skeptical of the selections for Galadriel and Sam. Galadriel needs to convey more maturity, and Sam needs to be more everyday and ordinary.
* At "in illo tempore" I discovered that October 12 is the anniversary of the beginning, in 1428, of the Siege of Orléans, which was famously lifted by Joan of Arc's first major victory in the Loire campaign in 1429. The Xenophon Group's Military History Database has a nice page on the military aspects of that Battle.
* This has been going around lately: a magnificent Periodic Table of the Elements.
* A newly rediscovered document from the Templar trials will soon be available; they apparently suggest that Clement V absolved the Templars of blasphemy.
* A Simpsons and Philosophy video.
* The Monty Python sketch, Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Conclusion. The Sartre jokes are very funny.
ADDED LATER:
* Also at YouTube: Plato's Republic in 2 minutes; it oversimplifies some things, but it's decent enough given what it's trying to do. A fun representation of Plato's Allegory of the Cave. Selections from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Jesse Griffin's, a.k.a. Wilson Dixon's, song Philosophy.
