[META] New Icon

Thanks go out to bitterlawngnome for having taken the source image back in January.

[BRIEF NOTE] Upcoming Attractions

Last night, I watched Revenge of the Sith with schizmatic and larkvi. I'll be posting my review of it later tonight.

In the meantime, watching the coming attractions I was interested to for Disney's upcoming film The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Tilda Swinton, a British actress who first gained renown for her collaborations with experimental filmmaker Derek Jarman, will be playing the White Witch. I'm excited, though if Disney drops the ball on this film I'll be--actually, I won't be disappointed since I've such low expectations of them, but I'll still be upset.

[LINK] Blessed by an early death

There's an active interesting discussion on soc.history.what-if right now, imagining what would have happened had Napoléon III died of an unfortunate accident in the middle of 1861. One interesting possibility is the survival of the Bonaparte dynasty on the French imperial throne and a transition to British-style constitutional monarchy; another is the crushing defeat of Prussia and its allies in the Seven Weeks War when Empress Eugénie prompts France to invade the Hohenzollern state's territories on the Rhine. Certainly, without the Mexican expedition, the failure to prevent German unification under Prussia, and the military collapse of the Second Empire in 1870, Napoléon III would have had a much better reputation, and late 19th century France would have been in rather better shape.