The Pale Blue Dot:

Thanks to Eric, whose gmail status message turned me on to Pale Blue Dot, a film by George Fu. Go watch it. It's that good. You'll need to download a DivX video player plugin for your brower, which is somewhat irksome if you're on a low bandwidth connection, but worth it for those blessed with broadband.

The short is less than six minutes long, but that's more than long enough to deliver a a moving narration from Carl Sagan that puts humanity and our small planet in the kind of perspective that perhaps only an astronomer can.

When that narrative mashed up over a montage of dozens of the most iconic moments from the history of film and popular culture, c'est voila:

Transcendence. Or something approaching it.

Frangland

According to this USA Today story:

The French government proposed a union of Britain and France in 1956 — even offering to accept the sovereignty of the British queen — has left scholars on both sides of the Channel puzzled.

Newly discovered documents in Britain's National Archives show that former French Prime Minister Guy Mollet discussed the possibility of a merger between the two countries with British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden.

What a bombshell. The article describes a British historian nearly falling off of his chair.

I can only imagine what such a cataclysm would have meant for the cuisine of the "froggies" and "rosbifs."

I kid the French and English. I'm glad that England and France remain sovereign, for any number of reasons. I like both roast beef and frog legs quite a bit, after all, just not in the same dish.