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Today's Fortune: |
   
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Saturday, May 17, 2003
I just looked at that little "mural" that Andy linked to. I think the painting itself isn't necessarily inappropriate, but the context certainly is.
.: posted by Jeremy 5/17/2003
Beth and I saw the Matrix 2 last night. The fight scenes were all pretty good. I guess that's an understatement. They were all really good. But by the end I did get a little tired of the same old kung fu. Everytime a fight scene was starting up, I'd be like, "ok, here we go," and then I'd realize that it would be more of the same fist-style, with a little foot-style. It seems like the Wachowskis made a definite decision that this is a kung fu movie, not a gun movie. The guns in the movie were all useless, except for one little four-barrel pistol a chick had in her purse. People would open fire with the guns, empty the clip on full auto, and then it's punching again. For that matter, I can only think of one fight scene that really got fancy with the special effects. The rest were just speeded up a notch so that you don't forget that these people are in the Matrix. But yeah, they were still really good fight scenese. Especially the one in the park and the one in the mansion.
The only other part I didn't like was this music video they seemed to insert into the middle of the movie. There's this boom-boom-boom techno score, and all these people with gyrating bodies (and a bunch of gratuitous nipple shots), with a sex-scene between Neo and Trinity interspersed. It was really long and I can honestly say that this is a time where I saw something in a movie that just screamed "GRATUITOUS!" Beth said it was supposed to emotionally connect us to the people of Zion, but to me it seemed like a rap video from MTV or something. All the people were modelesque and of indeterminate race with excellent bodies, none of them said anything, and all of them were hopping around and rubbing up against each other. I came away thinking maybe the robots should kill them.
Still, you should go see it. I enjoyed the ending pretty well, even though it's very similar to the Empire Strikes Back. Neo finds out that the person who built the Matrix is his father, and then he loses his hand and learns that Trinity is his sister. They say there will be Ewoks in the next movie.
.: posted by andy 5/17/2003
Friday, May 16, 2003
What a weird argument Rosenzweig is making. I don't understand if it's supposed to be a cautionary article, or if he's trying to justify our government's attempts to enact legislation that infringes on our Constitutional rights. If he's trying to justify the current Administration's behavior, why did he rattle off a series of laws and executive orders that we frown upon as a nation?
It seems like he's trying to say that we should just put up with all these infringements, because the Supreme Court or a Democratic President will eventually bail us out. In fact, only one of the cases he mentioned actually made any contribution to national security (Lincoln's suspension of Habeas Corpus--questionable at best). The rest were out-and-out oppression.
Benjamin Franklin said (and my father repeated 62,400 times, a la Brave New World), "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
I wonder what Franklin would have to say about Rozenzweig's article.
One more irony--the Republicans and the NRA used Franklin's quote ad nauseum to defend the Second Amendment (and more power to them), but you sure haven't heard it since 9/11.
.: posted by andy 5/16/2003
The only thing of value our friend Paul Rosenzweig of the Heritage Foundation said in his defence of measures taken by the Bush administration to tighten domestic security is: "We�re merely witnessing a recurring pattern in American history." Yea, I agree. A return to McCarthyism.
.: posted by aida 5/16/2003
Have you seen this painting on a wall in NYC? What do you think about it?
.: posted by andy 5/16/2003
Thursday, May 15, 2003
Space.com is a neat site. I wonder if it's a viable business.
.: posted by andy 5/15/2003
When we're ready to change the Who Are We pic again, I recommend this one.
.: posted by andy 5/15/2003
Man, I want to work for the Ministry of Disinformation. What a job, you sit around all day thinking of news stories to slander the cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 5/15/2003
I got paid handsomely on monday and tuesday for installing windows xp on a bunch of computers. i'm glad i have a friend with a business that's willing to pay me. I think it's time to update the who are we picture again.
.: posted by Jeremy 5/15/2003
Now here's a weird-looking gun. 12 ga/.223 over/under combo. Allegedly made for police and military use.
.: posted by andy 5/15/2003
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
I heard a rebuttal today from someone with the Heritage Foundation regarding Jose Padilla. Really it wasn't so much a rebuttal, but compared Jose Padilla's situation to that of the Japanese-American internment camps of WWII, Lincoln's suspension of Habeas Corpus during the Civil War, and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. His conclusion was that while the situation is similar, it is okay because there are very few US citizen 'unlawful combatants', and eventually their rights, and our constitution, will be upheld. Since this is inevitable, there is no reason to worry about it now, and would all of you liberals and libertarians please sit down?
Here is another good one. Bush is going for his third tax cut in three years, yeay, whoot, cheer. The purpose of this cut is to stimulate the economy and according to our esteemed colleagues at the Heritage Foundation will create 1.2 million jobs by 2004. This is needed because in April unemployment jumped to 6%! Who can argue with that? I just want to know what happened to the 283,000 jobs per year that were created by the Bush�Grassley tax cut of 2001.
Think tanks in the political arena are similar to those in economics, only success in economics is based on financial results, whereas in politics all that matters is popularity. Too bad people that sound good aren't necessarily smart.
.: posted by Grand Inquisitor Fnord Moco 5/13/2003
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