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Our planet spun around its access 365 times since we last celebrated New Years’ Eve. We travelled around the sun one more time.

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A few days ago I watched One Day, a love story based on an award-winning novel. The movie is a romantic drama, it is not a comedy. Still, some sites include “comedy” in the genre tags, for what John O’Connell calls “comic gloss” (see below).

I usually shy away from Hollywood “romantic” movies, in part due to an aversion to how such movies represent relationship ideals. Sure, we all know movies are fiction, that real life does not work in quite the the same way, but such narratives still have much power in shaping our thoughts on what we expect in life. The emphasis on love-at-first-sight, the “there is only one person in the world for me” mentality, the example narratives of how relationships supposedly progress? I find the typical Hollywood “romantic” movies somewhat harmful.

One Day was not a typical Hollywood romantic movie, something I really appreciated. This would be thanks to it being based on a good novel. Consider the reviewers’ quotes used to represent the novel’s major themes on its wikipedia page:

Writing in The Times, John O’Connell writes, “For, in spite of its comic gloss, One Day is really about loneliness and the casual savagery of fate; the tragic gap between youthful aspiration and the compromises that we end up tolerating. Not for nothing has Nicholls said that it was inspired by Thomas Hardy.” A critic in thelondonpaper observes that One Day “may be a love story, but it’s no fairytale: Nicholls doesn’t shy from the dark side of growing up, the disillusionment, regrets and random cruelty of life.”

That probably says enough, this may be a book worth reading. The movie itself received rather mixed reviews from critics (metacritic: 48, Rotten Tomatoes: 37), suggesting it does not do the book justice. Nevertheless, with my limited exposure to romantic movie genres, this remains one of the movies I really liked, grim as it may be.

Can you suggest other good movies in the genre that I really ought to see?

Every year of this blog’s existence, I wrote a 10 October post, marking the day’s significance for me.

Today we added to its significance.

This post marks the day, let’s leave it in silence – we can talk more tomorrow.

I’m cleaning up this blog a bit. Executive summary in bullet form:

• Does anyone use the MiniBlog in the right sidebar?
• Can you suggest a pen-name for me to use on this blog?
• If you are close to me personally, or just generally care about me (as opposed to this blog’s topics of interest), you may want to following me elsewhere instead — this site is no longer used for personal news. Please ask me so that I can point you in the right direction.

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Grim, a question you might have come across before:

Would you rather lose a loved one in a sudden unexpected accident, or through a long-running terminal disease?

Unlike a philosopher’s dilemma, this is not a quandary that one considers in order to develop some understanding of ethical or moral considerations. Personally I think it is a dumb question, don’t waste your time with it: you simply don’t get to choose such things.

Surely both simply suck.

It’s a question on the same level as the lamest of “what if…” questions. Things happen as they happen, it is up to us to deal with whatever life chooses to throw at us, and simply do so as best we can.

A 2009 article on The Guardian presents arguments against saving the panda as well as arguments in favour:

TV naturalist Chris Packham said pandas might not be worth saving. Mark Wright from the World Wide Fund for Nature is one of the many who disagree.

What do you think? Read the whole article: Should pandas be left to face extinction?

Either way, in the light of Time to Start Giving, I’m going to add the WWF to my list of regular donations.

Today was Pluralism Sunday. Initiated by the Center for Progressive Christianity, Pluralism Sunday is an interfaith effort celebrating religious pluralism, a term used to describe the acceptance of all religious paths and promoting their coexistence (some words borrowed from wikipedia as usual). A part of the first paragraph from the Pluralism Sunday website:

On the first Sunday in May- this year, May 1, 2011 – (or other times during the year) churches around the world dedicate their worship to a celebration of our interfaith world. Progressive Christians thank God for religious diversity! We don’t claim that our religion is superior to all others. We recognize that other religions can be as good for others as ours is for us. We can grow closer to God and deeper in compassion—and we can understand our own traditions better—through a more intimate awareness of the world’s religions.

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Two weekends ago I went to see The Adjustment Bureau, starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. To be honest, I found it rather too fantastical. Not the sci-fi aspect mind you, the love story! I am not a big fan of the stereotypical love story, as they usually seem very far removed from reality to me. The science fiction side of the story was actually of value in the context of this blog.

The story is very loosely based on a short story by Philip K. Dick. Dick is famous for having written Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the novel that the famous movie Blade Runner was based on (directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford). Other movies based on his short stories include Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck and A Scanner Darkly.

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I always claim to be more interested in “reading” than one would expect based on the amount of time I put aside for it. One reason may be that reading has become much broader than just books.

So much of my time is spent reading stuff on the internet. Very interesting stuff certainly, but mostly many little things. I reckon defragmenting this reading time and spending more of it focused on larger units is worthwhile, and I’ve already started making improvements. And I talk about larger units because I need to be inclusive: ways of consuming good material has become very diverse, being open to that diversity could improve efficiency.

The first significant shift I made last year was to start reading ebooks. I started in August last year by installing the Kindle app on my Android phone and buying Kurt Vonnegut’s book Cat’s Cradle.

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This blog hasn’t touched on racism much, if I recall correctly. Given that I was pointed at an Academy Award winning short film from 1993 (won Best Short Subject in 1994) on the topic of racism in Germany, I thought I’d share it. The German title, “Schwarzfahrer”, means either “fare-dodger” or “black traveler”:

A penny for your thoughts?