I Tivo Law & Order and SVU. Having watched at least 70% of episodes from both series, I have come to notice a trend. Comments on everything from the health of food to the dangers of the internets are mentioned off-the-cuff or used as central plot concepts with irreverance for the truth.
While fishing, a character mentions the dangers of the mercury in the fish he’s catching. Another episode deals with the ease of obtaining your entire life story by ‘following the bread crumbs you leave on the Internet’ or emailing a worm that renders one’s computer completely vulnerable to eavesdropping. These factoids are often subtle and always unverified.
Taken together, these factoids verify existing suspicions in people’s minds. Coincidentally, these suspicions often support entrenched industry. In the two cases above, the farm-raised fish industry and organizations that capitalize on identity theft and virus protection like banks, credit card companies and software producers.
Microwaves do not pentrate metal, and exposure sufficient to vaporize water [i]kills people[/i].
The female lead is installed for formula plot purposes only.
The Batmobile lacks panache and does [i]way[/i] too much damage.
The Scarecrow has no history; Raj al Ghul is flat; and the master plan is a simple terrorist plot, entirely unworthy of a great supervillain.
Case 1:
The question of the Ten Commandments in courthouses has finally been answered by the High Court. As expected, the justice system must operate within the bounds of the Constitution without any competing guidelines.
The ruling was delivered 5-4, however, which is only one vote away from condoning the use of the Ten Commandments before the Constitution in judicial decisions.
Justice Souter delivered this opinion on behalf of the majority:
“The touchstone for our analysis is the principle that the First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion. … When the government acts with the ostensible and predominant purpose of advancing religion, it violates the central Establishment clause value of official religious neutrality.”
Case 2:
In a unanimous decision, the court sent the case of services/software used for copyright infringement back to the lower court, which had previously found in favor of the services.
Souter delivered this response:
“We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by the clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.”
It is now for the lower court to decide what constitutes ‘affirmative steps’.
Just so there can never be any doubt, if the chances of [i]my[/i] meaningful recovery are less than 30%, I prefer an overdose of morphine.
And if I end up in a hospital permanently disabled, attached to a machine and too weak to leave under my own power, sign me out, fly me to Africa and introduce me to the nearest pride of lions.
Horse + Donkey = Mule
You know this. Well, you should.
Apparently there are many animals that…appreciate variety.
Whale + Dolphin = Wholphin
Leopard + Lion = Leopon
Cow + Buffalo = Beefalo
Only George Lucas could take a rich mythos and talented directable actors and create such a disappointing film. Good news for Lucas that fans are blinded by laser blasts and finger-force lightning. The dialog and acting are positively unbearable, stooping to such hackneyed lines as “She’s just lost the will to live” and “I loved you, So-and-so!”.
Oh and the story is positively unbearable: Anakin kills Mace-Windu to ‘save’ Palpatine, realizes he’s done wrong, then does Palpatine’s bidding and slaughters a room full of children. WHAT?
Palpatine is the only decent character, decidedly evil and possessing the best fashion sense. We can only assume he had Vader’s costume planned well in advance. “All black, with a shiny, evil mask. Oh! and a cape…down to the floor. To the floor, I say!”
Two weeks: Prague, Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Brno.
Petrol (Gasoline) is $1.25/l ($5/gal).
Trucks are only allowed to go 90km/h (55mph).
Cars are supposed to go 130km/h (80mph), but there wasn’t any speed enforcement that we could see.
Most cars have smaller (often diesel) engines, but there are still plenty of 3l and 4l gasoline VWs, Audis, BMWs and Mercedes who make it very clear that 160km/h is a cooler speed.
McDonald’s is everywhere but with local flavor and language. (Achievement award plaques are always in English.)
Instead of WalMart, they have Tesco, equally everywhere and equally putting local businesses out of.
Almost everyone speaks some English in the larger cities, though you sometimes have to inflect as a local to be understood. In smaller towns, pointing suffices.
Don’t panic go see this movie!
I have seen movies from books and been disappointed. I have seen just plain bad movies. But nothing could have prepared me for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. The wit from the book is absent with no attempt even made to translate it to the screen. The story is a jumbled mess of the book’s characters rearranged to fit movie formula with romantic inevitability; designated ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’; and the most important aspects of the main characters are completely misunderstood or absent altogether.
There are about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes of decent film where the story or dialogue was lifted directly from the book. The rest of the time, we sat there wondering when it was going to get better, only to be shocked as it actually got worse. It was not that material from the book was cut, that’s to be expected. More than two thirds of the movie was contrived, confused and unnecessary. From the opening musical number sung by the dolphins to the cell phone that exists only to plug Vodaphone to the tragic death of Marvin, this is a movie utterly without merit that everyone should avoid vigorously.
Marvin sums it up: “It’s incredible; it’s even worse than I imagined.”
If you are a fan, and you simply must see it, go reread the book and imagine the big screen.
The Kansas Board of Education is at times in the hands of a conservative (read: religious) majority. During such times, evolution comes up for debate.
Having recently ambled through the Natural History Museums in New York and Washington, D.C. (and since then Vienna as well), I find this hard to believe. In museums, evolution is a an undisputed process, responsible for the ever changing cabaret of life through the ages. Only art museums contain alternatives to evolution, being archives of fantasy as well as fact and history.
But perhaps they’ve no museums in Kansas.
It’s difficult to tell sometimes, best advice is to follow the money. If you can’t follow the money, follow the influence.
The White House changed a news conference time slot to accomodate prime time line-ups yesterday, mostly in favor of NBC.
This might seem a hasty, conspiracy-nutish conclusion were it not for Dubya’s closing utterance: “I don’t want to cut into some of these TV shows that are getting ready to air, for the sake of the economy.” Story.