December 14, 2004
When I was a kid, every night at bedtime, my dad would sit next to my bed and read me a book. We’d go through lots of books, one chapter a night. The Prydain books by Lloyd Alexander, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, a bunch I don’t even remember anymore …
Anyway, I flipped over to Ain’t-It-Cool-News today and saw this:
Click here for a documentary type thingy with behind-the-scenes footage. Cool stuff, and just when I thought I couldn’t anticipate any movie more than Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith … or Serenity …
For some odd reason, I sometimes have the urge to look at various apartment floorplans. I live in a very boring apartment, and I think creative floorplans can inspire those who live within them. At the very least, when people walk in, they can say: “Dude, Awesome!”
This is the floorplan of my apartment. It is, as mentioned, BORING:
But look at this incredibly creative floorplan:
How friggin’ awesome is THAT? I can’t afford to LIVE there, true, but I mean … WOW!
I just sat down and watched I, Robot, the new Will Smith flick, which came out today on DVD.
Oh boy did I waste MY time.
(Stop here unless you want to read potential spoilers for ze flick).
I don’t quite know what I was expecting. I sort of thought it would be a lesser Minority Report, featuring, of course, robots (and not three folk swimming in a pool with no hair). But whereas Minority Report didn’t focus on the “futuristic” technology of its late 21st Century setting, I, Robot does - on everything: the “garage” that lifts and stacks cars like one might a box of crackers; the tiny little earpiece that makes todays cell phones look big and clunky; the auto-pilot feature on the vehicles. What made Minority Report so great was that it said “We’re a film set today, with tomorrow’s tech”, and didn’t care if you got to see a closeup of a “pulse shotgun” being pumped. In the case of I, Robot the F/X showboating is, to put it mildly, distracting.
I certainly wasn’t expecting a Matrix prequel, and yet that is exactly what this movie is, preaching the evils of relying too much on technology to run our lives. I suppose we can draw some appreciation that the bad guy at the end is a supercomputer; on the other hand, doesn’t the notion that a bunch of computers might someday say “These humans can’t be trusted” put a chill down all of our backs? But - really, haven’t we had these warnings so many times before? From The Twilight Zone to the aforementioned Matrix films, technology can’t be trusted, robots will obtain intelligence and turn on their masters — it’s an old theme, and not particularly well executed here.
I think what I was hoping to find was a good old fashioned mystery, in a sci-fi setting. Did the robot kill a human? Why? How did it overcome its programming? What are the legal and societal ramifications of this action?
Instead, its “I’m Will Smith, and I’m in a thong. Now, I’ll drive a motorcycle really fast and shoot some robots up.” There was also an exchange between Smith and Bridget Moynahan that seemed absolutely straight out of Bad Boys, and it went something like this: “You shot that thing off me with your eyes closed? Next time you shoot, you look and you aim! That’s what I’m talking about!”
Give me a BREAK, as I gave you a break by watching this so YOU don’t have to!
From the AP:
The former New England chairman of President Bush’s re-election campaign pleaded innocent in federal court Monday to charges he helped jam Democrats’ get-out-the-vote phone lines on Election Day 2002.
James Tobin, 44, of Bangor, Maine, faces two criminal counts each of conspiring to make harassing telephone calls and aiding and abetting telephone harassment. The operation also involved a ride-to-the-polls phone line set up by the nonpartisan Manchester firefighters’ union.
Tobin is free on personal recognizance and prosecutors agreed he did not pose a flight risk or a danger to the public.
But U.S. Magistrate Judge James Muirhead ordered him to surrender his passport and any weapons Monday and said he should report to pre-trial services, just like any other criminal defendant.
Muirhead threatened to jail Tobin if he gets so much as a speeding ticket before his trial begins Feb. 1.
“He’s no different than a street hooker in Manchester,” Muirhead said. “If he’s guilty, then I find his crime as offensive as any other crime.”
Disrupting the electoral process is an “outrage against the constitution,” Muirhead said.
No different than a street hooker! For an ex-lieutenant of Senator Frist that has to … well, be right on the money, I guess!
Hat Tip: Talking Points Memo.
Yahoo! News reports:
A portrait of President George W. Bush using monkeys to form his image has led to the closure of a New York art exhibition over the weekend and anguished protests over freedom of expression.
Chepooka comments, “Say what you will about liberals, but if somebody created a portrait of Clinton made out of tiny images of cigars or something, I’d probably laugh.”
Loaded Mouth adds that the story “could have been ripped from a German newspaper circa 1937.”
Over at a right-wing site, however, Lee at Right-Thinking From the Left Coast DOES have a sense of humor … at a portrait of our president made from ABS plastic, or Lego, as they’re better known. In fact, the title for the post … oh, it’s too easy.
So, if you’re going to make a portrait of George W. Bush, you should remember ONE thing: Monkeys Bad, Legos Good.
Don’t read this article over at Rick’s unless you want to be really upset.
So how did professionals get it wrong in states critical to Bush? How did Bush go from losing Iowa with only 48.4% (predicted) to winning by 50.1% (tallied)? How did he shift from a loss at 47.9% in Nevada to a win at 50.5%? A New Mexico loss at 47.5% to a New Mexico win at 50.0%? An Ohio loss of 47.9% to an Ohio win at 51.0%? How did the differences between exit polls and final vote counts in eleven battleground states range from 0% difference (only in Wisconsin) to as far off as 9.5%? How did George Bush go from losing the 2004 President election by 289 to 249 electoral votes in favor of Kerry to winning the election by 286 electoral votes to 252 in favor of Bush?
Chances are, the exit polls didn’t get it wrong. Given the track record of exit polls, it’s more likely the election was stolen by re-tabulating electronic votes in Republican-owned Diebold’s voting machines.
Were it not for this fraud, Kerry, not Bush, would be preparing for his inauguration. Kerry, not Bush, would be appointing the next several Supreme Court Justices. Kerry, not Bush, would be President. (And we wouldn’t be seeing international anti-U.S. sentiment in European countries starting to spill over towards the American people — historically, any distaste for America has typically been directed at our government, while American people were generally appreciated.)
If this had happened in, oh, say the Ukraine, no one would doubt that the election was fraudulent. They might even decide to hold the election over again!
The next time you see some right-wing site whining about how liberals ALWAYS steal the election (like they were doing over the “Best of Blogs” a week ago), just roll your eyes and try not to hurt anyone.
So here’s the way it is.
You get shipped off to war. You realize your trucks aren’t exactly as well armored as you might like, so you and your fellow soldiers go through some abandoned trucks, scrounge metal and parts — whatever you need so you don’t break down in the middle of an ambush, dont’cha know — and add your own makeshift armor. You know — so the odds of you getting pocked full of holes aren’t quite so good. Reasonable, right?
But of course, as any good government agency, you are then charged with a crime. I mean, so what if the trucks were abandoned? They should have been returned!
True story. A couple of abandoned vehicles are worth more than the lives of the folks heading into harm’s way. And, of course, the right-wing slogan is that the left doesn’t support the troops. It seems to me its the Pentagon that doesn’t support the troops, but what do I know? I just call them as I see them.
Hat Tip: Borgified Rudolph.
