Results tagged “international”

While trolling through today's Floor Proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives for our other job (it's an exciting one), we noticed something that will probably get no coverage anywhere else. However, we think it is important to note when Congress singles out one faith as important. We think it's doubly important to note when the vote is taken while Congress fights with the Bush Administration over funding the government for the next year, haggles...

The snow is here, and people are already missing on Crystal Mountain. They apparently hit the backcountry (seems way to early to be doing that, we think), and by all accounts were properly equipped, including avalanche beacons. But shit can go sideways in the backcountry, and "properly equipped" is most relevant if you really know how to use that stuff. We're hoping those lost folks do, and are found any second now.

The Program (Dec. 18-22) will be way cooler than we initially thought, folks. Not only will some of the biggest names in NW hip-hop be on stage for your entertainment five nights in a row, but the latest news is that there are all kinds of technological tie-ins that will make this event very, very 21st-century.

We had no idea that FOSEP was hosting firebrands like these guys. As blogfish (where we also learned October 8 was International Cephalopod Awareness Day) puts it, the duo's Framing Science talk "has stirred some blogging scientists to react with great umbrage." Great fucking umbrage, indeed! (It turns out it's just the atheists, being thin-skinned again.) The Seattle event didn't umbrage that many Seattleites that we could see. Many headed over to McMenamins for beer after. But it should have, and not just Dawkins' apologists. We'll explain.

It's a big, bad world out there, and there are plenty of reasons to be mad as hell. An undisclosed conflict of interest? Well, depends on the circumstances: whose conflict, whose interest?

So, you think you have been to a beer festival before? Maybe you went to Fremont Oktoberfest , or maybe you even went to the Seattle International Beer Fest this summer. If you really want to go to a beer festival, get yourself to Denver in 10 days.

The past two days, contributors Jeremy "The Seattle Samurai" Barker and Katie "The Kalama Quickdraw" Tiehen debated the age-old question of whether Seattle or Portland is better.

No question about it: there's too much Bordeaux on the market. The answer: find new ways to sell it. Howard Goldberg, who once wrote for the NewYork Times, thinks the answer is for Bordeaux estates to sell shrink-wrapped, powdered wine, which could be reconstituted (with designer water, to be sure) into vino. Great idea, Howard; we'll get back to you.

Chicken broth-based soups are some of the ultimate comfort foods, and are especially good when sick. We love them all, from matzo ball soup (a.k.a. “Jewish penicillin”) to tortilla soup to good ol’ Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup (or, better yet, Chicken & Stars – our childhood favorite, though we shudder to think about the sodium content).

While our colleagues in Houston wonder "whether the public might actually learn something about early human history from Lucy's exhibition," we're with the Smithsonian on this one. Unlike old, fragile museum pieces of art, Lucy is still an active scientific subject, despite her deadness. As Slate points out, there's still research that can be done with her frail old bones. We thought of a treasure near and dear to our country's heart--the Declaration of Independence--and how, when it has gone on tour, solely copies have been used. (In some cases, "rare original copies" were used, a phrase which will make our brain hurt for at least a few days.) And then we ran across this:

The International Association for the Study of Human Paleontology, a group affiliated with UNESCO, passed a resolution in 1998 saying such fossils shouldn't be moved outside the country of origin. The resolution, unanimously approved by representatives of 20 countries, including Ethiopia and the United States, said replicas should be used for public display.

One film you won't find on 2007's best-of lists is the first movie we caught on Saturday night, Nothing is Private, the debut feature from American Beauty-scribe/Six Feet Under-creator Alan Ball. It's not that his adaption of Alicia Erian's semi-autobiographical novel Towelhead--the coming-of-age story of a seriously messed-up thirteen-year-old girl living with her strict Lebanese father in early 90s suburban Texas -- is bad, just fundamentally flawed. We just didn't buy that an adolescent so used by nearly every person in her life would be so relatively undamaged, though we did appreciate Ball's restraint in not further abusing a victim via exploitative camerawork. Issues of post-traumatic stress disorder aside, big ups to the ensemble cast, including a hugely pregnant Toni Collette, a seriously conflicted army reservist/creepy racist Aaron Eckhart, and dynamic newcomer Summer Bishil as the young girl at the heart of this darkly comic, occasionally absurdist tale.

Seattle a sports town? After this weekend, sure. Hawks win! Huskies win! Mariners win! Cougs win! Shit, everybody wins.

It's run by an actual French expatriate, Marc -- who recognized us when we stopped in last week despite our three-year absence, and came over to see how our life up north was going. Oddly, no matter how irregularly we stop in, it always seems like one of the baristas has just gotten back from Seattle. (This time one had just returned via Amtrak, a 28-hour trip thanks to one of Amtrak's we-don't-own-our-tracks "delays.")

Starbucks, give 'em credit, is able to do more than one thing at a time. Mark of maturity, that. The papers are full of its plans to expand into every corner of the globe; this week it's Russia. On the domestic front, meantime, they're promoting a slogan to follow up on last year's "Geography is a Flavor." The new catchphrase: "Coffee is Culinary."

A year ago, under the headline "Eatin' Good Outside the Hood," we wrote about dinner at Union Bay Café in Laurelhurst. Couple of months later, owner-chef Mark Manley announced he's closing down: "After 21 years, it's time to move on." Gulp.

Seattlest took a little jaunt up to downtown Pacific Rim Canada the other weekend. Vancouver is the Toronto of western Canada and, just like its gritty eastern counterpart, we just *big throbbing heart* the place. We love its density, its layout, and its landscape. We love the architecture, even its endless kilometers of glass and steel high rises. Moreover, it's a walkable city. If you're a reasonably able-bodied tourist, you should be able to stomp all over Vancouver's geo-stylistically pornographic downtown peninsula without problem.

Once upon a time, we had a nice boyfriend with whom we discovered Szechuan Noodle Bowl, a veritable gem in the International District. We ate noodles, we held hands, we gazed into each others’ eyes. But somewhere along the line, it seemed that not all of the times were as good as those we spent at the Noodle Bowl and sadly, we were...let go. Now, getting dumped was painful, but giving up Szechuan Noodle Bowl would have been insupportable. We resolved to go at once with our friends and family and rid the Noodle Bowl of its aura of failed romance.

At work the other day, Seattlest was talking to a coworker and friend who originally hails from Minnesota. Naturally, we talked of the bridge collapse. As one would expect these sorts of conversations to go, the conversation logically ended with us looking up the coordinates for the northernmost point in Maine.

In anticipation of French house DJs Daft Punk's show at WaMu Theatre this Sunday, head to Lower Level at the Capitol Hill Arts Center tonight for a screening of the first film directed by the electro duo:

Remember—or recognize—Silverchair? Chances are the last song you heard from the Australian trio was 1995’s grunge-ish "Tomorrow," which hit #1 on US charts. The band’s mates were 14 when that single, off debut album Frogstomp, made them international stars. American interest in their music may have ebbed since, but Silverchair remains Australia’s biggest act. Young Modern, their new—and decidedly un-grunge—album is their record-breaking 5th Aussie chart-topper. It hits US bins on July 24. The band hits the Showbox this Friday; the show is sold out.

N.P. Thompson went to SIFF, and we all benefit now that he's written about the best and worst films of the festival -- and launched a few broadsides at SIFF and select members of its audience:

The 33rd Seattle International Film Festival ended two weeks ago; it’s taken me this long to gain enough distance to sort and sift through all I might conceivably have to say on the subject. Even so, the movies under discussion here represent only a small fraction of what I took in. There were several screenings I walked out on, a few more I considered walking out on, and perhaps a baker's dozen of screener discs I couldn’t eject quickly enough. This year, as in other years, festival officials emphasized the sheer quantity of it all: 25 days, 600 screenings, X-number of North American premieres. They take this approach, because qualitatively, especially this time, there was almost nothing to point to. Which isn’t to say that weren’t some good films, but that they were in short supply.

Whether it was the warm weather, the accompaniment of canines, or the abundance of fantastic alcohol, people were blissed-out at Saturday’s go-round of the Seattle International Beerfest. Here’s a taste of what we observed during our first SIB experience.

It is finally here!

It was a week of bizarre, embarassing headlines at DCist. The trial of the local administrative law judge who sued his cleaners for $54 million over a pair of missing pants left everyone shaking their heads. Then the capital city was nearly brought to its knees, twice, by poop. Finally D.C. contemplated taking Vermont's place as a state and marveled at the GOP lessons learned from the "Macaca Moment."

Apparently, there's some other annual festival this weekend besides Sasquatch. That's right, Memorial Day also hearkens the return of Folklife, Seattle's hippiest fest, held every year at Seattle Center. Local singer-songwriter/friend of Seattlest Ali Marcus will be playing the festival (Sunday, 4pm at Cafe Impromptu in McCaw Hall), so we turned to her for an expert opinion on what's worth your time this weekend, besides hackysack and drum circle. Seattlest Kim's already given you her picks, but if you're looking for a few more options this weekend, Ali's selections are listed below.

At long last, after months and months of announcements and press releases, it's finally time to kick off the 33rd annual Seattle International Film Festival. Tonight's the opening gala event (7pm), held for the first time at SIFF's swanky new digs at McCaw Hall. This year's opening night film--Son of Rambow--much like last year's, falls somewhere in between previous year's selections, including the mawkish abomination that is The Notebook and the precious artsy genius of Me and You and Everyone We Know. Rambow won't be out in U.S. theaters until 2008, so this screening is way early, offering you the ability come next year to sigh and say to your lesser-connected friends, "Son of Rambow? Oh, I saw that last spring."

National film festival correspondent Kyle Anderson on Seattle's other one

Last year we lamented a less-than-stellar meal at a forgettable Japanese restaurant, wishing we’d instead gone to ol’ reliable: Takohachi. Especially after an active day, we crave the salty goodness of the grilled mackerel dish known as saba shioyaki, or saba-shio for short.