I working with several new themes here @ronpemberton.com. I intend to develop a new site for Palm OS and associated hardware. The present theme is a three column. The "Tiga" theme can be found here

Been doing a hell of alot behind the scenes here. Excuse the appearance. I'm still learning CSS, and my site looks like crap in Internet Explorer. Of course everything looks like crap using IE. Get Firefox and see the web rendered correctly. Its beautiful. Its immensely more secure than IE; which wasn't in active development for seven years. Firefox is most up-to-date browser you can aquire;and its free!

Written by the Wachowskis — Andy and his brother, Larry — and directed by first-timer James McTeigue, their assistant on The Matrix, the film flies on a rhythm all its own. There's nothing Neo about V, the masked avenger who uses bombs, daggers and his telegenic charisma to take down a regime that has left him a burned remnant of its ungodly experiments. Mad as hell and out to rile up the politically lethargic.

Hugo Weaving — Agent Smith in the Matrix movies — plays this terrorist grandmaster behind a fiberglass mask that makes his vocal wit and physical eloquence doubly remarkable. Never mind that the Shakespeare-quoting, rose-carrying V comes dangerously close to Phantom of the Opera kitsch. Or that his politics can be as simplistic as Billy Jack's. V has his mojo working.

The source material is the 1989 graphic novel illustrated by David Lloyd and written by Alan Moore, who wants no part of what the Wachowskis have wrought. Moore took his name off the film's credits. Moore's novel skewered the 1980s England of Margaret Thatcher. In the Wachowski update, England is a police state ruled by Chancellor Sutler (John Hurt), a fear-mongering, gay-bashing, Islam-hating dictator who strips citizens of their civil rights and religious freedoms in exchange for protection from bioweapons of mass destruction. Some see parallels here to BushWorld. Come on. The chancellor, as acted to the hilt by Hurt, can't be W – he's hyperarticulate.

Natilie Portman, from The Professional to Closer, is one of the best actresses of her generation. On her first meeting with V, who saves her from rape by police thugs, Evey is taken to a rooftop for some fireworks. Not the sexual kind. V raises his hands like a conductor and directs Evey to watch as the Old Bailey blows up and lights the night sky. It's V who set the bombs, in honor of Guy Fawkes, the Catholic vigilante who futilely tried to blow up Parliament on November 5th, 1605. V, in his Fawkes mask, is determined not to fail, vowing that next year, on November 5th, 2020, Parliament will be history.

V's politicalization of Evey is the film's core. She evades arrest from Finch (a haunted Stephen Rea), the cop on the V case, but not the hands of a hidden tormenter who jails her, shaves her hair (Portman sacrificed her own locks for the role) and pushes her hard to betray V. Here she's dynamite, especially when Evey finds a letter written by a lesbian victim of torture and begins to understand V's true mission.

The explosive V for Vendetta is powered by ideas that are not computer-generated. It's something rare in Teflon Hollywood: a movie that sticks with you.

There are hundreds of millions of people. The bad far out way the good. The good have character, ethics, reasonable intelligence and discipline. The good in society learn at an early age to work toward goals and earn what they achieve and own in life. The bad look for the easy way to do everything. They will lie, cheat and steal to get what they want. They will use and exploit people. They take advantage of trust. They hide behind the façade of being like the rest of us. They look like us, talk like us and walk like us. They use promises to seduce us. They use flattery to make us feel important and appreciated. They pretend to take us into their confidence by talking discreetly with us in order to steal our trust in them.

How do we recognize them?

The old saying, that if, “it seems too good to be true…it is”, is true wisdom.

If the job they offer is easier to get than others or, the amount of money they offer or the perks – make them put it in writing. If they mean what they say they will. Most people should respect you for this. If they try to avoid this or outright refuse to do so – get up and walk away and do not waste anymore of your valuable time with them.

If they become your best friend over night – they are not. As Shakespeare said through the character Polonius;

those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried – grapple to thy soul with hoops of steel – but, do not dull thy palm with vagaries of a new found acquaintance

Each day this is proven to me. I have to deal with people who through their very ignorance itself, believe they know much more than they actually do. They do not humbly look at themselves and, truthfully take account of how little they know.

The more I learn……The Less know….LaoTzu

This can be further illustrated by the phases of our lives. When we are young, we are so sure of ourselves; then, as each decade passes, we realize with embarrassment what asses we have just made of ourselves. Oddly enough, by the time we know what we should; we are too damn old to make full use of it.