Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (that's right)
It's hard to understand how what appears to be a student film gained the rights to the (presumably valuable) Starship Troopers franchise. (RAH spinning like a dynamo in his grave.) This sequel couldn't possibly have involved anyone professional. I suppose it might be useful as a film school training exercise by comparing several similar scenes with the original's (dark barren planet at night, some rocks, a cluster of the eponymous troopers clustered on an escarpment, big monster bugs everywhere attacking, just look at their faces as they pretend to watch mind-blowing scenes of carnage, look at their postures at they hoist up those gigantic guns -- the acting, while passable in the original, is atrocious here). 1of10.

Shrek 2
This actually didn't suck. But the volume of gags relating directing to the real world threatened to sink it eventually. Probably good for kids, who knows. 6of10.

The Chronicles of Riddick
A lightly connected sequel to Pitch Black. This one is pretty cool, great effects, cool visual design (some gothic-deco set-pieces a little reminiscent of Star Wars without being a total ripoff), and Vin Diesel is tolerable (did you know he was in Saving Private Ryan?). A lot of the historio-mythology of the general setting is muddled, so it's not clear who is who or why, but it doesn't really matter. I hope they make another one. 7of10.

House of the Dead
Since I loved the new Dawn of the Dead remake, I wanted some more zombie violence. But, well, too much of a dead thing.... House of the Dead is about a rave on a deserted island where the ravers get all zombified and there's this house and... holy crap, this movie is terrible! It actually contains clips from the crappy video game it's based on. The only thing it had over Starship Troopers 2 was slighter better weapons effects. I should have watched Dawn of the Dead again instead. 1of10.

Troy
Some of the battles are pretty cool, especially where the opposing infantry lines meet, one line charging, one line defending -- it's hard to do that well because it's so dangerous, and most similar movies just avoid it (I recall that Braveheart did it well too). Brad Pitt is mostly terrible; while Achilles might very well have looked something like that (the golden god thing, only no golden armor here), he's unable to stop being Brad Pitt the way he did in Fight Club. And there are too many dudes running around in skirts. 4of10.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
As is typical with a Charlie Kauffman script, it's hard to decide what to make of this movie. It's hard to talk about too, which can sometimes be a good thing (see David Lynch), or a bad thing (see anyone French), or a Charlie Kauffman thing (see this movie). Kauffman is hard to talk about in his own unique way, which is probably why I remain aware of what he's working on. He seems to have the potential to write something that will blow the mind the way the protagonist's mind here gets blown. But about that: The premise of selective memory wiping portrayed here is pure fantasy, especially with current technology: the computational power required to remove precise pieces of memory without affecting any of the vast and tangled trees of association connected with them is difficult to conceive of, and certainly beyond the capability of that little laptop they were using to do it. But who cares; it's well written, well acted, worth seeing -- especially if you liked Adaptation or Being John Malkovich. 7of10.

I suppose it must be a real challenge trying to sell a new dictionary edition every year. The form is pretty well fixed, and there hasn't been a whole lot of room for innovation since Samuel Johnson added quotations back in the 18th century. So the only way for Merriam-Webster to try to compel people to pick up a new one is to add new words. In the past, Webster's has added words of such dubious merit as bling bling, McJob, and Frankenfood. This year we have teenspoitation (the exploitation of teenagers by producers of teen-oriented films) and pleather (a plastic fabric made to look like leather). And since the most fertile source of new words is Information Technology, they've added lots of common technical terms (including "Information Technology"), for instance MP3, MPEG, lossless, and DSL.

Also interesting is this list of the most commonly searched for words from last year. Together they make a sort of terse poem emphasizing what people were wondering about then.

For those interested in learning stuff about stuff, Knowledge Storm seems a useful tool for learning about business technology stuff. It's also part of a new trend that seems ultimately necessary. Pseudo-websites formed of meta-content in directory-style links typically pointing to other meta-sites, and redundant generic sites with content supplied by syndicators have begun to make finding anything useful or unique through a tool like Google sometimes difficult or even impossible. Search for song lyrics for instance. There's a kind of noise pollution going on that generalized search engines are not yet able to filter out, and maybe never will be. Ultimately the concept of a search engine may need to be reduced to a set of specialized engines monitored by human editors.

A new life awaits you in the offworld colonies!

Here, sign this petition to stop the FCC from regulating you. Just in case there's a problem of disconnection, and our elected officials actually believe we want censorship (chuckle chuckle). It's kind of odd how this regulatory agency -- created in 1934 and charged mainly with assigning broadcast frequencies -- assumed the role of Federal Censor (much to the dismay of old Madison's bones). Read here for some history and what seems a plausible solution.

Being a handy sort of fellow I've just sprayed some WD-40 around these living quarters (I use it the way cleaning ladies use Lysol), and recalled the peculiarly American axiom: "If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape; if it moves and it should, use WD-40" (to which the aforementioned parenthetical cleaning lady might add: "if it smells and it smells bad, use Lysol"), and then wondered where the name WD-40 might have originated (pre-dating as it obviously must Madison Avenue product name production software). The rumor is that WD stands for "Water Displacement", and that it took forty attempts before they got the mixture right. The exact formula, by the way, is still a closely guarded industrial secret. And check out their website for the Top 50 uses of WD-40 by state. Apparently in PA the favorite use is to "Keep the Liberty Bell from squeaking", which is just stupid in several ways; but it certainly works on my desk chair, and on Mr. Mossberg.

Speaking of which, it's a wonderfully autumnal day here, deep in the heart of the Dog Days of Summer (global warming my ass), and such weather inspires one, as is natural and appropriate, to shoot guns. Nothing compliments the crisp autumn air like the sound of a few slugs or shells firing off, the solid thumps from the target as the projectiles impact, the rolling echoes of the weapon's report across hills, dales, through trees, into the ears of potential enemies. I think the ancestral (atavistic?) association must be of chopping wood, preparing stockpiles of fuel for the impending winter, defending one's self and one's family against the uncertainties of the future; but content in the task because it is easily handled. Nothing inspires a man to contentment like a job capably done.

Hey it's the Olympics! Who saw this coming? (I was distracted by hurricanes.) I watched some of those opening ceremonies but found the commentary out of Bob Costas and Katie Couric a little cloying, a lot annoying. It was just so dumbed down -- as if the expected education level of the audience was around 3rd grade; they're explaining what Greek gods are, who Socrates was, which language coming from the announcers was English (it was the third one). And but it seems like the thing was choreographed by Cirque du Soleil, with all the people flying around on wires, robed ominous marchers on the fringes, syncopated drumming, a red centaur. And if they were into showing highlights from Greek history, why no mention of Thermopylae and the 300, the Battle of Marathon, or the sacking of Sardis? (Well, maybe not that last one....) The stadium the Greeks built is pretty damned cool though.

Anyway, I'm okay watching the major events, the running around, diving into water, swinging from balance beams and so forth; but it's the wacky stuff I love, the stuff you gotta go to the deep cable channels and the internet for: archery, fencing, air rifle, table tennis, badminton, trampoline. Trampoline! I can't wait to sit on my couch, drink beer, eat pizza, and watch some competitive trampoline. Olympics! Who would have guessed?

This is basically a teensploitation movie, and there *is* a lot stupid gunk in it, but it's also pretty funny. It's mainly concerned with stereotypes: every character in this movie is a stereotype except for Harold and Kumar (although I have known some Indian guys like Kumar), and they're genuinely likable characters too, which is another thing that sets it apart from movies like American Pie and Dude Where's My Brain. 5of10.

Certainly it has little similarity to the Asimov story collection of this name, other than some borrowings: the 3 Laws, the "robot psychologist" character, some names (but why change the name of the robot company from U.S. Robots to U.S. Robotics? Ah, I see. Well, if U.S. Robotics wants to be associated with dangerous machines intent on conquering humanity, so be it -- I'm sure they paid a few bucks for the honor). But it's a decent pseudo-SF action movie if you're not expecting much more than that; the questions it attempts to pose regarding the borders between machine and human sentience were much more effectively explored in Blade Runner (and more entertainingly portrayed in Futurama). One of Asimov's niche themes is lightly tossed in though, the question of whether a sufficiently complex cybernetic system might at some point begin to evolve on its own. The idea, at first perhaps dubious, is made more reasonable by the (possibly inevitable) technological revolution of machines able to competently program and manufacture themselves; and then accelerated by placing these self-programming robots in hostile environments (Asimov had his robots working in mines on Mercury for instance). Anyway, don't expect this movie to do much with it -- it's more about Will Smith shooting guns at CGI robots, which isn't necessarily bad, just... different. 6of10.

I noted some months ago that John Kerry, blue-blooded elitist from Massachusetts, went to Pat's Steaks here in Philadelphia and ordered a cheese-steak with Swiss cheese. This, of course, made me irate -- and may have been the moment I decided to dislike him. In contradistinction, GWB, surely supplied with the phrase by one of his staffers, claimed to prefer his cheese-steak "whiz, with" (which, for you weird aliens, means cheese-whiz with onions.) This is the preferred protocol at Pat's, who typically has a long line of customers and doesn't like to waste words. I learned it many years ago, incidentally, by a pretty girl now lost -- alas -- to paranoia and condescension, but that's none of your business.

Just thought I'd mention them.

I'm in the process of trying to decide if I should be thinking about switching over to WordPress for this weblog. Pros, cons, etc. It would mean spending the effort to cobble together enough script and SQL to insert all the old posts into mysql, and some time devoted to making it look okay. I'm torn between this -- mostly default -- template, and some variation on the old one without all the crap on the right side. I lose the archive files, which Blog is good at generating, in favor of an actual database for long-term storage. Maybe I just won't bother with the old posts.

When the Puerto Rican basketball team defeated the American basketball team at the Olympics it was a sad embarrassment for most people in this country. Basketball is, after all, possibly the only sport invented and perfected by Americans; other sports are American, but derive from European prototypes: baseball from rounders and cricket, football from soccer and rugby, etc. But basketball was invented in Massachusetts, built from scratch in a gymnasium much like those in which the game is routinely played today. And nobody could argue that any country has a greater array of basketball talent than the American NBA. We own that game, it's a part of our national pride that we excel at it. So Americans were pretty unhappy, pretty dismayed when their team lost to Puerto Rico.

That is except for some Puerto Rican Americans. Certain neighborhoods in New York threw parties like certain other neighborhoods might celebrate the 4th of July, people cheered and danced around, honked their car horns. It seemed strange that these people live in the US. To what country, what culture do they see themselves belonging?

One might draw a distinction between immigrants and settlers. An immigrant will move himself, his family, to another country with the full intention of joining in its culture, merging with its national identity, assimilating its values; he'll place his new home above all others -- even above the place he came from (one would assume there was some good reason for leaving). But the settler goes to another country and tries to create a small version of his own country there, his own culture, language, customs, and values. He is instantly at odds with his new host country, because he isn't really living in it; he's only residing there.

Similar phenomena occur elsewhere. For instance in Europe large Muslim populations have taken root within larger cultures, and then gone about pretty much ignoring them. They speak different languages, attend different schools, practice a different religion, etc. Often they don't get along with the larger culture very well; I recently read a statistic that Middle Eastern males now make up around 45,000 of the 90,000 inmates in French prisons. That's a higher ratio than blacks to whites in American prisons.

But there have always been immigrant neighborhoods in the US, places that have served as staging grounds until its occupants were ready to spread out into the wider culture. Usually this takes a generation, and I've read that something like 90% of second generation Hispanics are fluent in English. So there's probably no real cause for concern; I just wonder how long it takes before immigrants start rooting for their new country's Olympic teams...?

Nobody around here seems very interested in the Olympics. Apparently nobody in Greece either; most of the viewing stands are mostly empty. Maybe there are too many trial heats, semifinals, irrelevant events, too many boring sports. About all they show on CNBC is boxing. Who cares about Olympic boxing? And badminton! What a snooze festival. I think sports like badminton are just charity for pansy countries that can't compete in real events. Somebody was trying to tell me a badminton shuttlecock can sometimes exceed the speed of a fastball or a tennis serve. Which is pretty bizarre, but still doesn't save it from being boring and stupid.

Or maybe the Olympics was a Cold War thing after all, East vs. West conflicts sublimated through games into sweat to evaporate, or manifestations of patriotism that now seem embarrassing for some, or too serious to waste on what amounts to television spectacles for others. Maybe we don't need the Olympics anymore, or don't have time for them.

Globalization may also play a role. It used to be that an Olympic team was a kind of embodiment of its given country, emblematic in some way of what of that nation could accomplish, like incarnations of a whole people. But now it's no longer clear that the athletes really represent the country they play for. 20 of the 24 players on the Greek baseball team are Americans. The guy swimming for Austria last night was from California. And many athletes live, work, and train in the US, then go compete for the country they were born in. The opportunities for training are greater, they say, the facilities better, and one can go to school in the meantime, earn money, not have to fear the Religious Police coming around or the Rebel Militia or the goons from the Drug Syndicate.

So why watch a bunch of Americans and American products compete in marginal sports when Football is on another channel?

I don't know if it's related to recent MS security fixes or some system config disharmony on my part, but Internet Explorer has lost it's mind. It can't view source anymore, thinks every image should be saved as an unnamed bitmap, and crashes at least once a day. I've been through all the workarounds, all temporary file and object purges, all the registry key modifications, but nothing has helped. It seems like they've really made a nightmare out of IE. Granted it's the script-kiddie target of choice, the only elephant in a room full of big game hunters (Outlook is maybe a gazelle?), so they've been forced to patch patched patches in order to close obscure vulnerabilities about once a week, but, but... I'm using Opera now.

Opera is very configurable compared to IE. It has built-in web-search boxes, skins (and its own stylesheet), a pop-up window blocker, a fully alterable interface. A-and when you key Ctrl-F in Opera it does what you expect. I should have switched years ago.

It's the Gold Medal final for Men's Badminton. The stadium is actually filled for this event, stuffed shouting with great contingents from Indonesia and South Korea (they claim it's "Korea", with people from both North and South, but let's be honest here okay?), and weird flags are waving all about. (That South Korean flag is kind of cool actually -- it's like a white-bearded philosopher's flag, but also militant somehow.) This seems a very popular sport in the Far East. (Apparently it originates in China.) The South Korean player is nicknamed "The Bad Boy of Badminton". I'm not kidding.

Those little rackets they use are pounding so hard it seems they might break, but I'm a little dubious of this 205 mph shuttlecock claim -- 85 mph faster than a Bobby Hull slapshot, they proclaim. But the thing's got a parachute attached to it! Whatever speed it does achieve is quickly squashed. Bobby Hull's slapshot *stayed* fast when it got to the goalie. And hockey pucks hurt.

And this guy from Indonesia seems to be wearing lipstick. You won't ever catch Bobby Hull doing that.

Badminton Update: the guy from Indonesia wept when he won. He may have smeared his makeup, I'm not sure (I was busy cringing), but hell, I've never won anything like he has. Maybe I would weep too. Maybe Bobby Hull would weep (though I kind of really doubt it).

As is well known, the utility of a thing can best be measured by its degree of usefulness in a post-apocalyptic warzone. If we apply this principle to the Olympics, we discover little value in events like volleyball, diving, table tennis, or badminton. Of somewhat greater utility is a sport like gymnastics, where at least physical conditioning and superb balance might help one out of a difficult situation. Much superior are the various track and field events, especially those involving running, since radioactive mutants tend to give up the chase after a few dozen meters. But by far the most useful Olympic skills in a post-apocalyptic warzone are those concerned with hand-to-hand and ranged combat: judo, boxing, archery, shooting. Practitioners of these sports have a much higher rate of survival than, for instance, synchronized divers or trampoliners. I'm just saying.

I admire the audacity of "Great Britain". I think we should rename our country "Fantastic United States".