Puzzles

Question - 11/03/07, what is significant about this date? Turns out it's Osama bin Laden's 50th birthday, assuming he's still alive. And I find it significant, since he orchestrated the twin towers atrocity to happen on my birthday, that his is exactly six months before mine. Exactly six months before or after that anniversary.
He's certainly more famous than I am, more infamous, both of which, fame and infamy I'm more than happy to have so far avoided, but it make you think. When I meet my God I'll have a few bits and pieces to account for, but the errors of my ways just pale into insignificance beside what he'll have to account for before his.

We watched the movie 'Babel' last night. It was excellent, as you'd expect from the director of 28 grams. Events in Morocco, Mexico and Japan are shown to subtly intertwine, each from the perspective of one of the characters. The Japanese character was of particular interest, partly because there was clearly a whole back story that you were left to think about and construct for yourself, and I always like a story that leaves you thinking, but partly because she was a deaf-mute and belonged to a whole group of similar friends. The camera watched her, sometimes in a voyeuristic way, and sometimes we moved inside her head and we were doing the watching, the silent watching.

I had rented the movie a couple of weeks ago. When I took it to the counter in the shop, the assistant said,
'Ah, Babble.' Unsure whether he was joshing with me I said,
'It says Babel on the box, babble would be spellt with a double b.'
'Babble, like the tower of Babble,' he said,
'That's the tower of Babel,' I said, even less sure now that he was joking. It turned dark.
'I've lived in Canada all my life,' he said, 'and I've never heard it called anything else.'
Yet still, this seemed too preposterous for him not to have been winding me up. I showed the box to Kevin.
'What's this film called?' I asked.
'Babel.' Phew.
When I got into the car with my friend Yvonne later, I asked her about the tower of...?
'Babel,' she said, double phew.
I asked at Writers' group. All but two said 'Babel' and then I asked Lori the following morning, without hesitation she said,
'Babel.'
Babel, like label, Mabel, Abel, able, table, gable, stable, cable, fable, sable.
I'm still not sure whether the guy in the video shop was pulling my leg or whether he was just stupid, but one thing's for sure, he never had any RE lessons and he never went to church.

Still, it was a superb film.