Cuz We Said So

2008 Blockbuster 1 - "Iron Man"

"Iron Man" is possibly the most perfect summer popcorn flick I've ever seen. It's not the best movie, by any means. (Not even in my top 20.) It's not the best comic book movie either. (Maybe in the top 5.) But it is remarkably well structured.

Robert Downey Jr. is spot perfect as Tony Stark, one-time nihilistic playboy, now a man with a mission to protect the innocent. But this doesn't play out Superman-style, with him righting wrongs around town. It's a largely technical story, revolving around the best methods for protecting US interests in a miltary setting. Stark Industries used to sell bombs. Lots and lots of bombs. Now, after a rough encounter with a terrorist organization in Afghanistan, Stark wants to completely revolutionize warfare with powered flight suits that seem more at place in anime.

The real conflict isn't with the terrorists -- they're clearly no match for Iron Man. The central conflict is with Stark's business partner, Obadiah Stane, who pretty much just wants to make money. However he can, and regardless who he works with or who gets hurt in the process. He's a much scarier bad guy than the kidnapper from the first act precisely because he doesn't seem like a comic book character.

Throw in an unrequited love story with Stark's personal aide, the ridiculously named Pepper Potts, and you have just the right mix. And that's why this is perfect popcorn fare.

The story is engaging enough to keep you awake, but not so complex that you have to try very hard to keep up. The political element is cleverly tuned so that it's pretty hard to call the film left- or right-leaning. (The left will love the idea of fewer bombs. The right will love the fact that Iron Man kicks much bad-guy ass.) The performances are all quite stellar (Downey is joined by Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, and the voice of Paul Bettany), but not so tortured that you feel like you're watching late-fall Oscar bait. And the action scenes are just big and flashy enough to sate the ten-year-old in your soul, but not so overblown or overlong that you feel like you're watching the cut-scenes from the latest PS3 game.

Kudos to Marvel (this is their first self-produced film) and the director, Jon Favreau, for starting off the Summer of 2008 so well.

10 Things Your Airline Won't Tell You

According to SmartMoney.com:

1. "Welcome to the crowded skies."

2. "Your hard-won air miles are worth less all the time."

3. "We'll give you a good deal — if we can get something out of it."

4. "We love hidden fees."

5. "Customer service isn't always our top priority..."

6. "...unless you have a lot of miles."

7. "Our planes are ancient."

8. "Even we don't understand our pricing."

9. "We're at the mercy of "Leave It to Beaver"-era technology."

10. "You'll wait because the system's broken."

 

Victory Conditions

Frederick Kagan defines success in Iraq.  His criteria, in brief, are for Iraq to be stable, representative, oriented toward the West, an ally in the struggle against militant Islamism, and for it to control its own territory.

Preparing for the Summer

No, this has nothing to do with dropping a few pounds (though I should) or working on my tan (I'll skip the melanoma, if it's all the same with you). No, this is about movies. Specifically, the blockbusters I know I simply must see. Here's the list. It's gonna be a busy few months.

2-May -- Iron Man
9-May -- Speed Racer
22-May -- Indiana Jones the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
13-Jun -- The Happening
13-Jun -- The Incredible Hulk
20-Jun -- Get Smart
2-Jul -- Hancock
11-Jul -- Hellboy II: The Golden Army
18-Jul -- The Dark Knight
25-Jul -- The X-Files: I Want to Believe
1-Aug -- The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
15-Aug -- Tropic Thunder

So, what are we looking at here?

Four comic book movies
Six sequels
Three films based on TV shows
Two Brat Packers (Robert Downey, Jr. and Anthony Michael Hall)
Average age of the leads: 42.8
Average age of the leads if you toss out Emile Hirsch: 44.6
Average age of the leads if you toss out Harrison Ford: 40.7
Film most likely to be actually pretty good but still a disappointment: Indiana Jones
Film most likely to be better than it has any right to be: Hellboy II
Film most likely to divide its audience into lovers and haters: The Happening
Film most likely to give me a hernia from laughter: Tropic Thunder

Two days and counting...

Is Al Qaeda Glad We're In Iraq? And Does that Matter?

Russell wondered a few weeks back whether global terrorist organizations are glad that we're in Iraq.  While the question may be new to Russell, it's been an article of faith on the activist left since at least 2006 that they are indeed glad, as seen, for example, in this release by Senator Russ Feingold.  The truth is, we can speculate about all manner of crazy things.  The real question is whether there is enough credible evidence to conclude that the premise is true.

Here’s some data on the matter that appears to come from Al-Qaeda itself, via quotes from documents released by the US military in February:

…”The Islamic State of Iraq [al-Qaeda] is faced with an extraordinary crisis, especially in al-Anbar province. Al-Qaeda’s expulsion from Anbar created weakness and psychological defeat. This also created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight.

That doesn't sound like gladness to me, but maybe the author is just a glass-is-half-empty sort of person.  He is a terrorist, after all.  How is the recruiting going?

“The morale of the fighters went down and they wanted to be transferred to administrative positions rather than be fighters. There was a total collapse in the security structure of the organization.”

So at least recruiting for the mail room is up.  Here’s a different document:

“There were almost 600 fighters in our sector before the tribes changed course 360 degrees . . . Many of our fighters quit and some of them joined the deserters . . . As a result of that the number of fighters dropped down to 20 or less.”

“We were mistreated, cheated and betrayed by some of our brothers who used to be part of the Jihadi movement, therefore we must not have mercy on those traitors until they come back to the right side or get eliminated completely.”

This last, by the way, is a quote from an al-Qaeda leader’s diary recovered by the 101^st Airborne Division on the occasion of my 40th birthday.  What a thoughtful gift.

To judge from these documents, it appears that as of the middle of last year, there are some elements within al Qaeda very much not glad we're in Iraq.  But let's assume, for the sake or argument, that these documents are an anomaly.  Suppose global terrorist organizations are glad that we’re in Iraq.  What does that tell us?  Only that our enemy believes our being in Iraq benefits them.  Does that mean we shouldn't be in Iraq?  Of course not.  For one thing, the enemy could be wrong.  They could be glad we're in Iraq because they believe it benefits them, when on balance it does not.  It wouldn’t be the first time Al-Qaeda miscalculated the outcome of a gambit on the battlefield.  They doubtless believed their brutality in Anbar would benefit them as well, yet the evidence suggests that it harmed them greatly, turning the population against them, and toward us.

On balance, I'd rather see us concentrate on what is real, rather than on what the terrorists think is real, and pursue our objectives in Iraq on those terms.

The Good News Is That Your Next Commercial Flight...

….is not likely to plunge from the sky due to lack of fuel, accordingly to Patrick Smith.  Of course, “Airlines Carrying Ample Fuel, No Need for Concern” wouldn’t be a very catchy headline.

Free Health Care

From: Stuff White People Like (edits mine):

Though their passion for national health care runs deep, it is important to remember that white people Democrats are most in favor of it when they are healthy. They love the idea of everyone have equal access to the resources that will keep them alive, that is until they have to wait in line for an MRI.

This is very similar to the way that white people Democrats express their support for public schools when they don’t have children.

Precisely.

Psystar: White Dwarf or Black Hole?

Psystar announced it's $399 Mac clone "OpenMac" Monday, April 14.  Within minutes their website was taken down, reasons unknown.

Today the website came back up, and the name of the product has changed to "Open Computer".  It's still the same package, though: you get a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 Processor, 2GB of DDR2 667 memory, Integrated Intel GMA 950 Graphics, a 20x DVD+/-R SATA drive that is Lightscribe-capable, and four rear USB Ports.  More importantly, you get a licensed copy of Mac OSX 10.5 "Leopard".  Psystar claims the $400 machine is roughly equivalent to a $2000 Mac.

At issue is Psystar's ability to resell Leopard for use on its clones.  The Leopard EULA specifies that Leopard is for use only on Apple-branded machines.  Psystar asserts that the EULA is anticompetitive.

Surely Psystar is aware that they face an immediate legal battle from Apple.  So the question is: are they prepared to fight it, and do they have a plan to win?  It seems like they might have a case, but Apple will probably be able to get a temporary cease-and-desist order, which may keep the thing locked up for years.  And odds are Apple will eventually win out.

Though the odds are small, however, this could spell the end of Apple's monopoly on Mac hardware, which would change the landscape irrevocably.

Harry Potter and the Golden Turd

Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling testified today in her lawsuit against Steven Vander Ark for his unpublished book, Harry Potter Lexicon.  Rowling claims that the book, which is based on the popular website of the same name, "constitutes wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work."

Hardly. Vander Ark has clearly put in a significant amount of work on his part, including creating a timeline of all the events in the Potter universe.  When his work was just a website, Rowling was tremendously supportive, saying

This is such a great site that I have been known to sneak into an internet café while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter (which is embarrassing). A website for the dangerously obsessive; my natural home.

However, now that the work is to appear in print (read: for profit), Rowling is out for blood.  Shame on her.  It ought to be obvious that Vander Ark's work in no way compromises sales of her (absurdly lucrative) Potter franchise.  On the contrary, it probably complements sales well, in much the same way that companion books support Tolkien's sales.  Surely she cannot in any way claim that the sale of a copy of Lexicon equates to a loss of sale of any of her material.

I liked the summary offered by Vander Ark's defense group:

In support of her position Ms Rowling appears to claim a monopoly on the right to publish literary reference guides, and other non-academic research, relating to her own fiction. This is a right no court has ever recognized. It has little to recommend it. If accepted, it would dramatically extend the reach of copyright protection, and eliminate an entire genre of literary supplements: third party reference guides to fiction, which for centuries have helped readers better access, understand and enjoy literary works.

Indeed.  Cliff's Notes beware!

Moreover, Ms Rowling appears to be a sniveling, whiny muggle when she claims

I don’t want to cry, because I’m British, but the [Harry Potter books] meant setting aside my children.

Snork.  Well, thank you, Ms Rowling, for unselfishly setting aside your family obligations to devote your time to the betterment of humanity through fantasy fiction.  What a philanthropist.

She also stated

Should my fans be flooded with a surfeit of substandard books — so called lexicons — I’m not sure I’d have the will or heart to continue.

Oh, please, Ms Rowling.  Your fans have already been flooded with a surfeit of substandard books: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to name a couple.  Perhaps you should sue yourself.

Besides the fact that she simply has no case, I want Rowling to lose the suit because she is so unimaginably petty.

Martian Headsets

A must-read from Joel Spolsky on the travails of conforming to "standards".  Here's an excerpt, in which Joel is discussing Microsoft's recent decision to make IE8 conform strictly to W3C standards:

I looked at my watch.

Tick, tick, tick.

Within a matter of seconds, you started to see people on the forums showing up like this one:

I have downloaded IE 8 and with it some bugs. Some of my websites like “HP” are very difficult to read as the whole page is very very small… The speed of my Internet has also been reduced on some occasions. Whe I use Google Maps, there are overlays everywhere, enough so it makes it ackward to use!

Mmhmm. All you smug idealists are laughing at this newbie/idjit. The consumer is not an idiot. She’s your wife. So stop laughing.

Entertaining and interesting.  Go read it.

Google Notebook

If you aren't already familiar with Google Notebook, you probably ought to be.

Combined with a very nifty extension for Firefox, Google Notebook allows you to very easily collect and organize content from all kinds of web sources:

• Right-click on a page or selected text to immediately capture the text or URL to the page, or add your own text directly into the notebook
• Drag and drop content into different notebooks with sections, and add labels to categorize by topic
• Invite collaborators to allow several people to work together
• Use search to find information in your notebook

Like most things Googly, it is curiously elegant and powerful.  For example, if the information you're collecting is location-based (say, hypothetically, you're finding disparate activities you might want to do in Barcelona, and collecting the clippings into a notebook) you can choose to view all notes on a Google map.  It will place pins for each clipping onto the map.

Betting on the Racetrack

IBM is promising a new breakthrough in storage using new "racetrack" memory based on spintronics.  The technology will enable a potentially order-of-magnitude increase in memory storage.

Ultimately, the researchers expect spintronics to move into the third dimension, with 3D racetrack memory devices that will be even faster and cheaper, since they won't be dependent on the miniaturization dictates of Moore's Law.

What I found more personally interesting about the story, however, is the inscrutability of the technology.  Now, I basically understand the technology underlying ICs, conventional memory, hard drives, and the like.  Of course, I couldn't detail the engineering or physics, but I'm comfortable that there really isn't anything about a modern computer that I find technologically out of reach.  This, however, is over my head:

"Recent developments in the controlled movement of domain walls in magnetic nanowires by short pulses of spin-polarized current give promise of a nonvolatile memory device with the high performance and reliability of conventional solid-state memory but at the low cost of conventional magnetic disk drive storage," according to the abstract for the article in Science.

Huh?

Sweet, Sweet Irony

Beautiful.

Idaho Senator John Goedde sponsored a bill to increase fines for speeding in school zones.

Then, on the day his bill was to be debated, he received a ticket for doing 32 MPH in a school zone.

Mwwahahahahaha!!

Dumb Protest of the Year Award

A small group of truckers protested high fuel prices today by doing their part to consume as much fuel as possible, driving around the White House in circles.  What a bunch of imbeciles.  I guess having the entire interstate highway system subsidized isn't a sufficient freebie.

What do these people think the government is supposed to do about high fuel prices?  Offer a credit?  Set a price ceiling?  Invade Iran?

Encryption

T H I S S U I J G U J M F A O B G C G B
S V O L J W M B U O U J G A W T O D Q M
O I X K Z K D J Q M I Q D D R I Y U Q Z
V I Z I H Q D Q O D R U D Y I O O U G I
O W U Z V I I Z W K X I X U Z X X I W K
X I X P I J U D Q B I J S O Q Y L J S A
Q D R L U L I P U Z X L I Z D R I O Q T
I K H D R I D I U E G M V F N H P P G H
I H T Q P E R R E O A N H Y G Q B P M Q
W B I H Q E R Y I A V P I U M D R Q O J
C D T P U D S U R K K X K D W K Y

"The World Without Us"

Believe it or not, I decided to read this book not because of some interest in the environmental message it contains, but from a juvenile fascination with the premise. What would happen to the world if humanity, as Alan Weisman puts it, were to be "raptured away"? He explores a variety of aspects of this question through the book.

What would happen to your house? (It would be down to the foundations inside a century.)

What would happen to your city? (The subway tunnels would collapse, the cars would rust away to nothing, and the windows would all be reduced to sand in mere decades.)

What would happen to the 441 nuclear reactors spread around the world? (441 Chernobyls... or worse.)

What would happen to the oil refinery center known as Texas City, outside of Houston? (Firestorm unlike any seen on Earth since the last giant asteroid collision.)

What would happen to bronze statues? (Not a friggin' thing. They'll last for millions of years, easy.)

If you've read my previous post, you may notice a similar theme in this next comment. While Weisman does have a fair amount to say about the negative impacts of man on the environment (look up the term "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch" for a horrifying read), the overall message is optimistic. If we leave, nature will reclaim the land and readjust very quickly.

Case in point: one of the most pristine and natural areas on the planet is one that you (or, at least I) wouldn't expect: the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea. The cessation of hostilities between these two nations has left the DMZ so untouched by man that it's a naturalists dream. And that's in just over fifty years.

The book is fascinating, and doesn't descend too much into preachiness. I liked it well enough.

150 Days of Fiction

I recently finished reading the "Science in the Capital" trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. I've already reviewed the first in the series, "Forty Days of Rain". It was followed by "Fifty Degrees Below" and "Sixty Days and Counting".

Unfortunately, the second and third books don't have the same sheer oomph of the first. But they're still remarkably well written. Robinson continues to impress me with his ability to put words on paper.

But, this series being what it is, and this blog being what it is, the political/scientific aspect of the series is really the meat of the review. The premise of the series is, in a nutshell, that global warming ticks up a notch, causing a flood in Washington, D. C., a terrifying cold snap in the Northern Hemisphere, and the beginnings of the melting of the Southern Polar Cap. But it doesn't read like a disaster movie, like "The Day After Tomorrow". These events occur, much like I imagine they would, by degrees, slowly piling up until, finally, the world has to respond.

In the story, everyone responds, but it is the role of the US government to collate those efforts, which actually have a nifty, just-barely-believable sci-fi quality to them. A tremendous convoy of decommissioned oil tankers dumps trillions of tons of salt into the North Atlantic to attempt to keep the critical currents there from stalling. A vaguely scary genetically engineered lichen is released into the Siberian forests, causing extraordinary draw down of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. My favorite subplot is the pumping system designed to pull water out of the ocean and spit it back up onto the Antartic plain, basically reforming the Southern Polar Cap.

This being a book written about science, from the perspective of scientists, there is a measure of humility to be seen. The salt-convoy is described as barely a pin prick in the problem, a desperate delaying action that costs billions. The lichen, on the other hand, may well be a horrible mistake, if the carbon draw down is too much. (Though, they do say that compensation is as simple as burning a few billion tires.)

All in all, there's little propagandist about the series. Robinson isn't saying, "The world is about to end! Listen and learn!" He's making the assumption that the scientific community is right, and telling a story about how it all might go. His tale is one of optimism. (Just like every other book of his I've read, incidentally.)

I guess the reason I like Robinson's work so much is that he's a writer that seems to be doing what I hope to with my career. He's got a world view (which I don't necessarily agree with) and he's writing a variety of novels in different genres to explore that view. I look forward to his next.

Withdrawl Pains

I was reading this story about Petraeus asking to stop troop withdrawls because of a flare up in violence in Iraq, and it got me thinking... I'll admit, this is a random thought, not anything grounded in real, analytical knowledge of military strategy. (I last won a game of Risk in the mid 80's.)

I wonder if the big terrorist organizations (AQ, et. al.) are glad that we're in Iraq. We are stirring up the Muslim world, which makes it easier for them to (a) recruit and (b) get funding. More importantly, we're less able to deploy elsewhere, particularly in Afghanistan, where the real work needs to be done.

And maybe we are running the risk of turning what was a stable (if tyrannical) secular leaning nation into a new hot bed of jihadism. Because, let's face it, we're going to pull out of Iraq someday. If we pull out today, in the midst of 5-year-old chaos, will things be better or worse than if we pull out in 2013 in the midst of ten-year-old chaos. (Yes, I know, the goal is to pull out in the midst of peace and democratic prosperity, which is the ideal case, but one which cannot be guaranteed...)

Like I said, just idle thoughts. (And probably thoughts that have been proposed, argued over, and dismissed three years ago. But they're new to me...)

The Latest in Bioweaponry

I don’t know how no one thought of this before:

NZ man 'used hedgehog as weapon'

Police said William Singalargh, 27, had hurled the hedgehog about 5m (16ft) at a 15-year-old boy.

"It hit the victim in the leg, causing a large, red welt and several puncture marks," said Senior Sgt Bruce Jenkins, in the North Island town of Whakatane.

It was unclear whether the hedgehog was still alive when it was thrown, though it was dead when collected as evidence.

The police spokesman said the suspect was arrested "for assault with a weapon, namely the hedgehog."

This story is about a week late to be an April Fool’s joke, and about forty years late to be a Monty Python skit, so I”m not sure what to make of it.

Why I Hate "10,000 B.C."

I don't hate "10,000 B.C." for being scientifically inaccurate. I don't particularly care if woolly mammoths died out before the pyramids were built, because those visuals were just too fun to look at.

I don't hate "10,000 B.C." for having a bizarre and contradictory sense of geography. It clearly ends in Egypt, but what kind of path did D'Lay (the hero) take to get there? He's a white-skinned guy, so I assumed he was from somewhere in Europe... but then he crossed a snow-capped mountain range, a jungle, and a desert plain (where he met up with a bunch of Africans) before he even got to the huge sand dunes, at which point he went north to the Egyptian city. So I suppose it all took place in Africa... which doesn't make sense. Anyway...

I don't even hate "10,000 B.C." for its somewhat doofy "magical" story points. (Though, if I see one more movie about a hesitant yet heroic young man who fulfills a prophecy of being "The One", I may just puke.)

Here's why I hate "10,000 B.C." It's entirely freaking predictable! As soon as the characters were introduced, I knew every story beat. I knew who would live. I knew who would die. I knew how they'd die and what revelations would occur before they did.

But I hate it even more because they teased me with the promise of unpredictability. There were four different moments that suggested that maybe, just maybe, I was wrong about how the story would go. And every one of those four was subverted, made pedestrian and pointless by subsequent moments when the story went back to the obvious path.

Yes, I enjoyed a few of the set pieces, but overall this is a very forgettable waste of celluloid.