Film review: The Avengers

I watched this film a couple of days ago. I am frankly not a big fan of action films in general and the super-hero genre in particular and this film has both in abundance. Furthermore, growing up in Sri Lanka we had limited access to American comic books and I don’t recall any other than Superman and Batman. The entire stable of Marvel comics superheroes that appear in this film (Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Incredible Hulk, Thor) were almost all foreign to me, so there was no nostalgic tug either. The only Hawkeye I had heard of previously was Chingachgook’s buddy and this was clearly not him. [Read more…]

The puzzling god gap in this election

Given all the talk that takes place in the fevered swamps of right-wing American paranoia about president Obama secretly being a Kenyan/Indonesian Muslim or godless Commie, coupled with the major war waged by the Catholic hierarchy against Obama on the issues of contraception and abortion (which has conveniently pushed aside all discussion about its abusive and pedophilic priests), one would expect that there might be a big gap in support among religious people for the two candidates. [Read more…]

Cabinet members and plebs

[UPDATE: It looks like George Osborna has a habit of sitting in first class while paying only for standard class.]

Over in the UK, the conservative government has been pushing ‘austerity measures’, by which it means of course not austerity for their oligarchs but for ordinary people. The contempt that the global ruling classes feel for the public is usually discreetly hidden but, just as in the US, on occasion the mask drops, revealing the real face. [Read more…]

A minor milestone

Although I started blogging on January 26, 2005, I joined the FreethoughtBlogs network just this year, on January 10. I noticed that yesterday, I had reached the one million mark in page views since I came here.

Of course, that is small compared to many other blogs but I am personally very gratified by the level of interest. Thanks to all those who have visited and also to those who have taken part in the discussions in the comments. It has been fun and I hope to continue the relationship for a long time.