http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Republic_of_Macedonia

Good work, Kyle.

The M16 Rifle- Wikipedia

Ultra Surf bypass ftw. Download it now.

I just wish the bar hadn’t been set so low the previous few years. The basic sciences departments really need to step up their game to the same level as the clinical people. You can’t just keep teaching medicine out of one or two books that have been used for years– that won’t make anyone a master of the subject. But in any case, the final year docs are doing an awesome job and are bombarding us daily with enough information to finally make us feel like we’d be okay on our own even before graduating this December.

Speaking of which, I can’t wait. I’ve been here a long time, and I’m ready to go home.

First up- Supercooling. Now that’s awesome.

[Warning: Spoilers ahead]

I for one love a good action movie. After seeing all the Die Hards, Lethal Weapons, Sylvester Stallone/Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, the Bourne series, plus about 30 James Bond films, it’s hard to come up with original material.  Fortunately, Taken is one of the best action movies I have seen in a long time. One thing I really liked is that they try their best to make the movie as realistic as possible. Unlike James Bond (and I’m not attacking him here, I am a huge Bond fan) Liam Neeson doesn’t drive a car off a bridge at 75mph to land on a moving boat then get out of the car and kill 100 people with just a pistol and a punch to the face while there are hundreds of explosions everywhere before getting back into his car which suddenly turns into a nuclear submarine all courtesy of BMW. I mean yeah, that’s pretty sweet, but let’s face it, no secret agency balls that hard– yet.

In Taken, Liam Neeson is a retired, out of work bodyguard/secret service agent who wants to build a relationship with his daughter whom he rarely saw in her childhood because of his job. When she goes on a trip to Paris with a friend and gets kidnapped, her only chance at survival is the fact that she happens to be on the phone with her dad during the kidnapping and is able to warn him that she’s in trouble. Jedi knight that he is, Liam Neeson springs to her rescue (or maybe it’s cuz he’s her father). Either way, Liam Neeson ends up in Paris and does a great job at pulling off not only some awesome action scenes, but also doing the whole detective bit. Towards the middle of the movie, you realize that he’s not just a bodyguard but was really well trained in the whole spy genre.

For a while they make it seem like he’s completely invincible. He seems like he can’t be stopped, which is where I started to lose interest, but only briefly. Even though he gets really far into the movie without getting hurt, he’s not just constantly fighting the same “bad guy” or even the same group. Since he’s up against such a huge ring people who are into the whole chick-trafficking thing, he keeps having to beat down on all kinds of different people, and in entirely new ways. On some, he gets pretty brutal. He doesn’t just do your run of the mill punch-kick combo. Oh no, not jedi knight Qwi-Gon Jinn. Instead, what he does come up with is a little bit of karate chop action to the neck, a bit of wine bottle breaking on the face, a little stabbing to the heart, smashing the guy’s teeth on the sink before letting him drop to the floor where he is then shot anywhere from 2 to 47 times. Then he moves on to the next guy.

Ok so it’s obvious I liked the movie. I think they did a really great job of what us primordial testosterone driven males do with women, ie overprotect them. This movie is all about showing OUR side of that story, and for being such an intense action packed movie, Liam Neeson does an excellent job at displaying the emotions only a father could display after truly losing a child. Those scenes are few and far between, but when they come up, he really nails them dead on.

There were a few scenes where I was left scratching my head. He emphasizes that his main goal is only the safe return of his daughter. A couple of different times though, he kills unarmed men, who he had already shot or beat down enough to disable them so that he could just go on with his business. But no. He finishes them off. Why? Does he feel like he’s ridding the world of scum? Or maybe Qwi-Gon Jinn just senses that they’re affiliated with Dark Side and Co? Either way, there was one scene where he has already shot a guy about 4 times, once in each limb. Obviously, the guy’s not going anywhere. But is that enough? Not for a Jedi knight it’s not. He empties the clip in him.

Long story short- go see the movie. Afterwards, pretend you are Qwi-gon Jinn and talk exactly like he does everytime you speak.

RJD2, Mae, Bossanova, Yppah, The Knife, and of course, Queens of the Stone Age.