Linkage

• When “the narrative” becomes more important to you than the facts, you become a truly pathetic creature.
• Two of the earliest Japanese animations have been unearthed. Hope they show up on YouTube at some point.
• A voice recorded in 1860 was played for the first time this year. Very cool.
• A megalodon tooth was found in the St. Clair River.
• Ian Fleming interviewed Raymond Chandler in 1954, and you can listen to it as an MP3. (I dispute that Chandler was the better writer, however. Fleming could keep track of his plots, something Chandler rarely cared to do.)
• Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, will boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics due to China’s continuing abuses of human rights. Good for her, and it’s exactly the sort of thing that will drive Chinese leaders nuts — making them lose face.
• VariFrank tells us:
  

  This is why all Iraq war movies suck. They always fail to capture the essential truth of the event. Those of us who stayed home while it was being fought, only know about the war from the spittle of the people on the other side of the table at Starbucks.

  And he uses Kurosawa to show why.