Specter Deals with Bush

Reuters reports Bush agrees to court review of spy program. There aren't enough details to figure out if it's a good deal or not.

10 Senate Races To Watch

I don't know who John Hawkins is. He wrote this stupid article a week ago saying Democrats are racists. Nevertheless, today he wrote a list of the Top 10 Senate Races To Watch In 2006 which is interesting. Just keep your browser window narrow so you don't have to look at the ads for Coulter and Novak.

Hamdan and the NSA

The Washington Monthly points out that the Hamdan decision basically destroyed the administration's claims that the NSA spying program is legal (it's blatantly violates FISA). So now what will happen?

Billboard Escalation

I literally haven't been to a fast food place since seeing Super Size Me and I have no intention of changing that. Still McDonald’s new sundial billboard in Chicago is pretty cool.

Castro Dead?

Apparently rumors are going around that Fidel Castro has died, but no one can substantiate them.

Detainees get Geneva Rights

Pentagon to apply Geneva Conventions to all detainees in military custody

White House spokesman Tony Snow lived up to his name and attempted a snow job saying "It's not really a reversal of policy,".

The new policy described in a Friday memo by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England applies to "all detainees held in military custody". Those allegedly in secret CIA prisons aren't covered by it. But it's a start.

In case you're curious, this is Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions which now applies. Read it, it's short, and is just very basic human rights. Non-hostile detainees "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria." It's amazing the government fought against this.

Worlds Fastest Shoelace Knot

There must be something wrong with me. I did try Ian's Fast Shoelace Knot and I found it pretty amazing. Don't just read it, try it.

I also really liked this wmv clip of what can only be described as T-shirt Origami. I did this when I first saw the clip and it really does work, but I don't bother with it now.

Kids and an Open Can of Paint

Velcro Being Pulled Apart

Times on Roberts

The New York Times had two interesting articles on Chief Justice John Roberts yesterday.

His Hipness, John G. Roberts by Linda Greenhouse in the Week in Review.

What Chief Justice Roberts Forgot in His First Term: Judicial Modesty by Adam Cohen in the Opinion section.

Reason 600 to Hate Lindsey Graham

I still need to read the Hamdan decision. Here's more reason to. This is from John Dean, yes that one. It's yet another reason I hate Sen Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

"To assist the Administration, Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Jon Kyl of Arizona engaged in a blatant scam that was revealed during the briefing of Hamdan. Senators Graham and Kyl not only misled their Senate colleagues, but also shamed their high offices by trying to deliberately mislead the U.S. Supreme Court. Their effort failed. I have not seen so blatant a ploy, or abuse of power, since Nixon's reign."

I bet the ethics committee doesn't even know about it.

Another Secret US Intelligence Program?

Just read this from the Christian Science Monitor Another secret US intelligence program? "The Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said the White House briefed his committee on another "significant" intelligence program only after it was brought to his attention by a government whistleblower." I don't have anything else to say.

State of Politics Today

This Calvin & Hobbes might be a decade old, but it's sadly accurate. Karl Rove didn't invent this, not by a long shot, but he is it's current Sith Lord.

Reporting on Iraq

Interesting interview with Rod Nordland, who served as Newsweek's Baghdad bureau chief for two years, on Covering Iraq.

Digg for OS X Apps

iusethis is a new site that just started a public beta. The idea is to list Mac OS X apps and use some digg-like stuff to find out the popular ones. Tagging is of course in there and they'll be adding recommendations based on your rankings soon enough. It should also be able to tell you when new versions of your apps are available. You should be able to see what's on my mac, here.

Movie Review: Superman Returns

I had low expectations for Superman Returns and they should have been lower. I blame the script and the pacing. This is a long film, 2.5 hours long, and there's no reason for that. Much of this film is homage to Richard Donner's first two Superman films. Those films ushered in the modern superhero movie but they weren't that good. Bryan Singer seems to have copied the length but didn't bring enough of the intelligence he brought to the first two X-Men films.

It takes place after Superman II and Superman has been gone 5 years visiting the remains of Krypton. He found nothing and is back now, but the world has moved on. Including Lois Lane who now has a fiance and a young son. Lex Luther is back too, with another insane real estate plan. He got out of jail because Superman didn't show at his trial to testify, which is cute. Lex funds his plan by swindling a fortune from Noel Neill who played Lois Lane in the 50s TV show. Jimmy from that series has a cameo as a bartender.

Supes' first act is to save a falling plane. You'd think by now he'd know you grab a plane by the fuselage not the wing. Still it's a good sequence and I liked the ending of it. The one complaint I had, Perry White mentions a couple of minutes later, so I was happy. Well there were other problems with the scene but I was willing to suspend disbelief.

In other cases things are just dumb. You'd think a newspaper editor, or anyone over 12, could recognize latitude and longitude coordinates. A bank robber, instead of escaping, sets up an enormous machine gun on a roof and does his best impersonation of Arnold from T2 shooting the cops below. It's all just to give one cool shot of bullets bouncing off Superman, who cares if it makes sense? I realized towards the end of the film, that nothing in this movie that takes off, without first falling. That includes Superman, planes, helecopters and space shuttles. The pacing of every action scene was the same, first dangerous bad stuff, then climaxing in certain doom, which goes on for twice as long as it should, followed by unexplained recovery. In a 2.5 hour film the same thing repeated gets old.

The script touches on a lot of good ideas but then doesn't develop any of them. How does Superman deal with Lois when he returns from a 5 year absense and she's moved on? Turns out he doesn't really have a conversation, he just flies her around. Lex accomplishes the first part of his plan and then his henchmen sit around playing cards while Lex, well...just sits around. Why does the world need a Superman? That page is literally left blank and all we get is "I'll always be around". Sure there's more than enough Christ metaphors in the film but that didn't help me either.

I thought the actors were fine, they just weren't given enough to say. For all the length of the film, there isn't that much dialog. This particularly hurts in the scenes between Lois and Superman. There's a scene where Superman spies on Lois and her fiance which is kinda creepy. She say she doesn't love Superman and she's obviously lying to her fiance and herself, but somehow Superman is dumb enough to believe it. In fact, Superman is all brawn and no brain. I also wanted much more of Kevin Spacey as Luther, he's gotta a lot scenes but only a couple of speeches.

I found the pacing slow and with a few exceptions I was pretty bored at times. Batman Begins is still the standard for comic book movies. If you're going to go see it, don't read the following until after you do.

*Spoilers*

Ok, I needed to say this but it is a big spoiler. This is your last warning.

There's a reason Lois is so upset that Superman left. It's not just that she loved him and he didn't say goodbye. It turns out Superman is a deadbeat dad! Apparently during that scene in Superman II she got pregnant and while Superman was gone had a son. Since Superman erased her memory at the end of Superman II, maybe she was surprised she was pregnant. We see little Jason throw a piano across the room so he's got superpowers. Lois didn't seem surprised by this so maybe he's demonstrated his powers before? Raising superbaby must have been difficult. So when Superman returns does Lois tell him he has a son? Nope. When he finds out he's a father does he do anything other than whisper to the kid while he's asleep? Nope. Jor-El had an excuse for being a crappy father, he was dead! In 70 years of the character this is a genuine new development, but they do anything with it.

So why didn't Jason try to open the locked door in the ship? And I was sure he'd be solution to the new continent. It would have made much more sense for the kryptonite-proof kid to help rather than have Superman lift a continent of Kryptonite while still having a good sized piece inside of him. I guess it really doesn't affect him much. It's stuff like this that really bothered me about the film. Do dumb things until disaster happens, then resolve it with no explanation. Add slow pacing and lots of character non-interaction and it doesn't add up to much.

Holland Tunnel

CNN is showing live feeds from the Holland Tunnel in NYC. Police are stopping and inspecting every car. All this because we arrested someone in Lebanon who was talking about blowing up the tunnel but hadn't done anything to start the plot. Which wouldn't have worked anyway since the tunnel is underground and not in water. This really sounds ridiculous to me. If the plot was so early why not follow it and see who he talks to and try to get more people. Oh yeah, it seems al Qaeda wasn't involved.

Update: Listening to the press conference sounds like things aren't so easy. This investigation lasted 1 year and involved other intelligence agencies. The plot wasn't a specific tunnel but was PATH tunnels, hadn't moved out of the planning stages but was about to start surveillance activities. It's not clear if a train was to be involved but explosives and martyrdom were. There are 8 suspects but only 3 are in custody on 3 different continents, not in the US. From what I heard, sounds like it was a job well done.

US Copyright Code in Verse

I'm not one for poetry but this is quite impressive. Yehuda Berlinger has written U.S. Copyright code, in verse which is just what it says, one verse for each section of the code. He's even got a disclaimer:

But I'm not a lawyer
Don't rely just on me
Go find one to ask,
Better yet, two or three

Mac Address Book Annoyances

I've been using a Mac for a year and half and I love it. I'm one of the few people I know who use Address Book. It's not great but everything supports it, so the integration is good, and I've enjoyed having pictures in it and seeing people's faces in other apps. I've looked briefly at Entourage but seperate tabs for all the info drove me nuts. And really, how much do you need from an Address Book?

Well two things drove me nuts. First labels on different values of fields (like home and work for email or phone numbers) seemed to change on their own and certainly if I changed them, they didn't always seem to stick. Also if someone had several email addresses it wasn't always the first one that got used when I sent email. And again, I couldn't see a pattern.

Today I think I found easy solutions to both of these. First if you change labels be sure to change from edit to view mode before leaving the card. That seems to be a save. It's dumb if this is needed, but it seems to work. Second, if you select a group you can choose Edit Distribution List from the Edit menu. This brings up a window showing everyone on the list and all their addresses with the used one in bold and lets you change it. This way you can have the same person on different lists using different addresses. This is good but it seemed very hidden to me. Wouldn't you think this would be on the context menu if you control-clicked on a group?

On This Day

On This Day the following people are turning 60: George W. Bush, Sylvester Stallone, Fred Dryer, and Burt Ward. Must have been a particularly vapid day.

Wither Comedies

Over July 4th we were trying to figure out if there have been any 5 star comedies in the last few years. By that I mean really great pure comedy stories, not stand-up. Here are some examples from the 70s:

MASH (1970)
Sleeper (1973)
The Front Page (1974)
Blazing Saddles (1974)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
The Front (1976)
Annie Hall (1977)
Animal House (1978)
The In-Laws (1979)
The Jerk (1979)
Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)

Maybe not every one is to your taste, but these are all clearly classic comedies deserving to be on any list (ok, maybe The In-Laws is only 4.5 stars but I loved it, and the Front Page is a remake but was great). Examples from the 80s:

Airplane! (1980)
The Blues Brothers (1980)
The Gods Must Be Crazy (1980)
Stripes (1981)
A Christmas Story (1983)
Trading Places (1983)
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
Ghost Busters (1984)
This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
The Princess Bride (1987)
Raising Arizona (1987)
A Fish Called Wanda (1988)

Again this list is pure gold. Maybe The Princess Bride isn't a pure comedy but it still counts. And I think Planes, Trains and Automobiles is a bit under-appreciated. The 90s gets a lot harder, here's the best I came up with

L.A. Story (1991)
Groundhog Day (1993)
Dumb and Dumber (1994)
Mars Attacks! (1996)
The Birdcage (1996)
There's Something About Mary (1998)
Being John Malkovich (1999)
Galaxy Quest (1999)
Office Space (1999)
American Pie (1999)

I'm not sure that any of these, except for Office Space and the Birdcage, are really 5 stars. We're almost 2/3 of the way through the 2000s and this is the best I've got:

Best in Show (2000)
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
Meet the Parents (2000)
Old School (2003)
The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005)
Wedding Crashers (2005)

I don't think these are 5 stars, maybe the 40 Year Old Virgin. There are others like the Scary Movie series and Not Another Teen Movie and that kind of stuff, but go back and look at that list from the 70s and 80s, they don't compare at all. And it's not because the more recent ones are low brow, Stripes and Airplane are not sophisticated.

I did leave out one class of movies from all of this, animated. It's not because I don't like them, I love them. The Pixar and Dreamworks films have been very funny, and 5 star worthy, the Wallace and Gromit films too. But that's perhaps my question, has comedy been relinquished to animation? Even on TV the best comedies are South Park, Family Guy, and The Simpsons with just a few sitcoms even on the air. Why can't Hollywood create great live action comedies anymore?

Please add to this list. What films am I missing? Help me out with foreign comedies, I'm not sure I've seen any to make the list (ok, maybe Amelie).

Powers of Ten

This from kottke.org, Some sweet soul has put Powers of Ten online. If you've never seen it, I can't recommend it enough.

How in the hell did I miss this Powers of Ten Simpsons couch gag?

Ted Stevens Shouldn't Be a Senator

Remember all that stuff about the 2 bridges to no where in Alaska that were going to cost tax payers $320 million dollars? It was Senator Ted Stevens (R-AL) who threatened to resign from the Senate if his pork didn't get through. Well the latest flak is about his speech against network neutrality which shows he's an idiot and doesn't understand what he's voting about (shouldn't that be impeachable?). His vote left the bill deadlocked in committee at 11-11. At least someone could make something funny out of this.

C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden

This could just be a re-org to be more efficient or effective, but it sounds bad, C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden. After 10 years of failing, maybe a re-org is needed, then again, maybe they were reassigned to find the WMD's in Iraq.

Then again, we're not doing too well in the war on terror.

Music For One Apartment and Six Drummers

Music for one apartment and six drummers is a fun 9 1/2 minute video. The first piece, Kitchen, was my favorite, though I also liked the last, Living Room, particularly the vacuum.