Last Tiananmen 'hooligan' freed [from the BBC]

Last Tiananmen 'hooligan' freed

China has reportedly freed the last activist still jailed for "hooliganism" relating to the Tiananmen Square democracy movement of 1989. Liu Zhihua was freed in January, but news of his release has only now been confirmed, according to the Dui Hua Foundation, a US-based pressure group.

Mr Liu had been jailed for life for leading a strike at a factory.
His reported release comes two weeks before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen protests.
The events on June 1989 are still considered a highly sensitive topic by China's Communist authorities, and the anniversary is unlikely to be publicly marked in mainland China.
Inciting crowds Mr Liu was one of several workers who were given long jail sentences for organising industrial strikes.

According to Dui Hua, he was accused of inciting crowds with anti-government speeches.
The strikes were linked to weeks of student-led pro-democracy protests in the spring of 1989.
Six weeks into the protests, tanks and troops were sent in. Hundreds - possibly thousands - of people are believed to have been killed, but the government has never allowed for a full accounting of the events.
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/8057624.stmPublished: 2009/05/19 12:57:29 GMT© BBC MMIX

How do you draw a monkey when you're five (on a Magna Doodle)?

Pre-Kindergarten Class Homework May 2009

There is a mascot in Super Girl's pre-kindergarten\kindergarten class. "Mister Bear" comes with a bag containing a blanket, his toothbrush, a pillow, and his teddy bear. The assignment that comes with him involves doing stuff with him and writing in "his" journal about his evening.

This is Super Girl's latest Mr. Bear story. It reads as follows.

"I pulled Mr. Bear in the wagon. I pushed Mr. Bear in my baby swing."

Not bad for five (and no meddling parental help).

B.

Terminator/John Connor(s)

For the record, I am a huge Terminator series fan and am really pumped about Terminator 4 opening in a week's time.

Here's a link to an article:

These are the John-Connors I Know I Know from filmchatblog.blogspot.com

When I found this article, I had been writing something similar. This article is better than I would have written.

I would actually go so far as to put the Terminator franchise in the top seven science fiction film/tv dynasties of all time, along with , in no order, Star Wars, Battelstar Galactica 2003-09 version), Star Trek, Babylon 5, Firefly, and Lost. The idea of a holocaust that all humanity faces at the hands of our own creation has teeth and resonance. The Stalingrad-like view of the Earth after "Judgement Day" is one of the bleakest future visions ever put to screen.

John Connor is the center of the series. He is flawed and fallible, preordained and ultimately victorious. If you've never seen any of the Terminator films or the TV series, John Connor is the leader of the human global armed resistance to the Skynet computer system that triggers a nuclear war and then enslaves the survivors, with a view to eventually exterminating them. Remind anyone of a certain world war?

John (with humanity) is eventually victorious, sometime after 2029. In response, Skynet sends a number or "Terminators" or killer robot/cyborgs back to kill him, at least four different stages of his life. More than any other series, these movies and TV programs have presented time travel in a way that says "yeah, they traveled back in time- get over it and enjoy the story."

For me, the best single aspect through the entire series has been the urgency, the pressure, and the burden that John and other characters feel in face of the realization that their actions may cause either humanity or Skynet to succeed. That's a lot to live with for anyone. I'll avoid the usual Christ parallels for Connor's character, except to point out the parallel to Jesus' "wholly divine/wholly human" dichotomy to John Connor's state of simultaneously being at pre-ordained to be the leader of the resistance and able to mess things up.

Three movies and a season and a half of television have actually lead to a number of different timelines for how John goes into the future, when the nuclear war/robot attack occurs, and other important details. I was one of only three fans I know for the now cancelled TV series (Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles). The writing was solid and the urgent burden I explored above was very present.

I'm almost finished re-watching the movies and will write about that when I finish. Terminator: Salvation opens on May 21st and I can't wait.

The above picture is an image from Wikipedia of the different "ages and stages" of John Connor.

B.

Bike and Scooter Ride April 2009

Sleep Over Adventures This Weekend

I am a fair-to-middlin' sleepover facilitator... I mean grapes AND marshmallows- who else would have thought of that as a movie snack? Good for five year olds, good for Moms and Dads.

On a less positive side, we were up at 6:25 on a Saturday... Its better than the last one our eight year old had, they were "up" (to stay, they claimed at 2:30AM).

B.

R2D2 Soap Out of Package

R2D2 Soap 1

Found in my parent's basement... I have a few boxes of weird old stuff still in my parent's basement, fifteen years after I last lived there. A recent discovery in one of those boxes was this Star Wars soap. R2D2 is made of hard plastic, BUT you have to use the soap to get him to play with... Tricky! B.