Picturing the phone call between Obama and President Hassan Rouhani of Iran.

It was "the first direct contact between the leaders of Iran and the United States since 1979," and by President Obama's report, the 2 men found "a path to a meaningful agreement."

I'm just trying to imagine how this phone call sounded...

Hello? Uh, hello, Hassan... Listen, I can't hear too well, do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little?... Uh, that's much better. Fine. I can hear you now, Hassan, clear and plain and coming through fine...  I'm coming through fine too, eh? Good, then, as you say, we're both coming through fine. Good... Well, it's good that you're fine, and I'm fine. I agree with you. It's great to be fine. Now, then, Hassan...

Source material:

A montage of last moments.

(Via Andrew Sullivan.)

Isn't it odd that the most iconic last moment is the image of a fetus in "2001," from 1968? Like it's the ultimate profundity, 5 years before Roe v. Wade. How did that happen? A strange cultural convergence, possibly more mysterious than "2001." What was going on with that big baby? Wikipedia says:

Stanley Kubrick originally intended that when the film does its famous match-cut from prehistoric bone-weapon to orbiting satellite that the latter and the 3 additional satellites seen would be established as orbiting nuclear weapons by a voice-over narrator talking about nuclear stalemate. Further, Kubrick intended that the Star Child at the end of the film would detonate the weapons at the end of the film. Over time, Kubrick decided that this would create too many associations with his previous film Dr. Strangelove and he decided not to make it so obvious that they were “war machines.” 

That's news to me. I thought the big baby was supposed to be uplifting. That throws a different light on my abortion question!

Please don't let this issue overshadow the montage, which is excellent and worth watching for all sorts of interesting and interestingly similar shots.

"You know when fluoridation began?...1946. 1946, Mandrake."

"How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works."

From the comments at "Fluoridation fails in Portland by 20-point margin."

"Taking over the controls of a drone is beyond the capabilities of members of such militant organizations."

"For that to happen they need to hack into the private encrypted network of the Pentagon or physically overpower the links between the drone and GPS with airplanes, which these organization do not have."

Okay, then.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian said:

"It is the stated position of the U.S. Air Force that their safeguards would prevent the occurrence of such events as are depicted in this film."

"We do find that apologies do make apologizers feel better..."

"... but the interesting thing is that refusals to apologize also make people feel better and, in fact, in some cases it makes them feel better than an apology would have.... When you refuse to apologize, it actually makes you feel more empowered.... That power and control seems to translate into greater feelings of self-worth."

When you think of not apologizing, what are your first 2 associations? Mine were:


1. "And I'm not sorry/It's human nature...."

2. Mitt Romney's book title: "No Apology." (Looking up that link, I'm noticing that Barry Goldwater wrote a book called "With No Apologies.")

Without revealing my associations, I asked Meade for his. He spouted 2 famous aphorisms, the first of which is not about not apologizing, the second of which is the no-apologies aphorism:

1. "It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission."

2. "Never apologize — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway." Actually, Google seems to think this aphorism is "Never explain — your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway."

I enjoyed that Google search, which led me to this line from "Paths of Glory" (written by Stanley Kubrick):

I Pity YouPaths of Glory at MOVIECLIPS.com