Cuz We Said So

Summer '07 - Blockbuster 2 - POTCAWE

"At World's End" is the third - and presumably final - chapter in the amazingly successful "Pirates of the Caribbean" series. What started out as a risky gamble on making a feature film out of a Disneyland ride has turned into a tentpole for Disney Studios. The first film was fun and witty and a little doofy, but held together remarkably well, particularly on repeat viewings. The second film was far more complex but still very enjoyable. So, what's the deal with number three? Is it more of the same? Is it a worthy capper to the trilogy? First off, I was somewhat stunned by the tone. All of these films deal with fairly intense issues of death and freedom and betrayal, but "At World's End" is by far the darkest. It probably won't surprise anyone that, at the end of a series of films about pirates, some characters die, but from the opening montage there's violence all over this thing. It didn't bounce me out of the story or anything, but it was noticeable. The second departure is the truly bizarre Jack-Sparrow-in-Davy-Jones-Locker sequence. There's some great imagery in that, stuff that I wouldn't have expected to see in a summer film. Still, like the two previous films, this one is all about logistics. Getting the right characters onto the right ships with the right props at the right time. I have no doubt that all of it makes perfect sense, and tha watching it again will handle any questions about story holes I might have. (That happened with the first two films, too.) But you can almost smell the desperation as the writers work to get all the loose ends tied off and all the character arcs sorted out. I won't spoil the ending, but I did find the conclusion to be somewhat unexpected. I'm not sure if I like it or not. This one isn't nearly as disappointing as Spider-man 3, but it's still - at least on first viewing - the least impressive of the three films.

Fred Thompson's Reply to Michael Moore

Earlier today, at least going by the date on his letter, Michael Moore challenged Senator Fred Thompson to a debate over health care and, apparently, the relative merits of Cuban tourism and tobacco.  Senator Thompson has responded to Moore’s challenge—cigar in hand—on video. 

Bob Krumm observes, “I don’t know what’s the best part of this…:  the cigar, the appropriate disdain, the lecture, the humor, or the quickness of the response, but what I do know is that if Fred Thompson is the first politician anywhere to understand how the speed of the Internet can change politics.”  Personally, I enjoyed all of the above.

Uh, I Think I'd Prefer Leeches, Thanks...

There’s an unsavory photo accompanying this story; you've been warned.  ScienceDaily: Maggots Rid Patients Of Antibiotic-resistant Infection, MRSA:

University of Manchester researchers are ridding diabetic patients of the superbug MRSA - by treating their foot ulcers with maggots. Professor Andrew Boulton and his team used green bottle fly larvae to treat 13 diabetic patients whose foot ulcers were contaminated with MRSA and found all but one were cured within a mean period of three weeks, much quicker than the 28-week duration for the conventional treatment.

Uh... maybe some progress does come at too high a price.

Big Lithium Battery Boost?

If you’re into gadgets, this could be great news:

The U.S. government's Argonne National Laboratory has improved the capacity and stability of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries.

…In testing, the new materials yielded exceptionally high charge-storage capacities more than twice that of conventional rechargeable lithium batteries. In addition, by focusing on manganese-rich systems instead of the more expensive cobalt and nickel versions of lithium batteries, overall battery cost is reduced, the researchers said.

Unlike processor speeds and memory capacity, which have benefited from rapid improvement in electronics technology, batteries depend on good, old-fashioned chemistry, and the science there tends to advance more slowly.  A 2x improvement in capacity would be fantastic.

Average Temperature of the Planet

Me, here: “It’s entirely possible the Earth is warming at the moment.”

Russell asks:

This seems odd phrasing. Why not just say "The Earth is warming at the moment." Seems like the average temperature of the planet is a relatively objective thing to measure. I realize that David is concerned that there are incentives to make AGW seem like bad news, leading to doomsaying predictions of the IMPACT of the warming, but certainly the value of a single metric can't be that hard to agree on.

But is it a single metric?  This from the University of Copenhagen, via ScienceDaily—neither known for Evil Republican shilling, that I know of— back in March:

Researchers Question Validity Of A 'Global Temperature':

Islamofascism Not A Debate Club

Mark Steyn:

“[D]on’t say we’re violent or we’ll kill you. As I wrote in National Review at the time, quod erat demonstrandum.

But that’s a debating society line. Islam isn’t interested in winning the debate, it’s interested in winning the real fight – the clash of civilizations, the war, society, culture, the whole magilla. That’s why it doesn’t care about the inherent contradictions of the argument…

“…Western societies value logic because we value talk, and talks, and talking, on and on and on: that’s pretty much all we do, to the point where, faced with any challenge from Darfur to the Iranian nuclear program, our objective is to reduce the issue to just something else to talk about interminably. But …The quality of your argument is only important if you want to win by persuasion. But it’s irrelevant if you want to win by intimidation.”

I agree, though I would say “radical Islam”, rather than “Islam.”  I think sane Muslims are as eager to be free of Islamofascism as the rest of sane society—or more eager, since as if you’re Muslim in Iraq or Afghanistan, there’s ample evidence the bomb-hurling madmen are all around you.

"Public Warning"

So now I'm going to review an album from a diminutive non-American with crazy fashion sense and a desire to seem iconoclastic when she's really pretty much a total product of her chosen genre. No, I'm not talking about Avril Lavigne again. This is a review of "Public Warning" by an English rap artist, Lady Sovereign.

This is officially the first rap CD I've purchased... since they invented CDs. I stumbled across her music while listening to something else on Yahoo!, and I found it strangely compelling. Yeah, there's an extraordinary amount of language, of which in music I have never been a fan, but the ideas behind the songs aren't nearly as dark as I expected. "9 to 5" is about (you guessed it) working normal hours for a normal wage. "My England" is similarly obviously titled, wherein young Miss Sovereign deconstructs the myths about her countrymen ("Cricket, bowls, croquet, nah PS2 all the way"). My favorite track is "Hoodie" ("Fling on an Adidas hoodie and just boogie woogie with me"), a song about ignoring the concepts of fashion... which is in itself, a fashion, but whatever.

To be sure, I'm unlikely to rush out and get the latest from Unk or Young Jeezy, but it's kind of cool that I found a rapper who doesn't make me just plain angry.

1,363rd Most Popular Site Disses Bush

Don Surber:  “The 1,363rd most visited Web site in the world tried to diss the president of the United States as not being among the world’s 100 most influential people.” 

Time’s “100 most influential people” list did strike me as a little corny.  I’m not a big fan of the president, these days—but Time thinks Tina Fey and Kate Moss are more influential than the man who, with one signature, is extending the fight in Iraq?  Come on.  Like him or hate him, the lives of millions of people still rest in president Bush’s hands.  Leaving him off makes Time look either lacking in judgment (because they don’t know any better) or un-serious (because they do.) 

In a possible effort to underscore the post-shark-jumping nature of the newsweekly format, Time also posted an "Alt Time 100"—”…the most influential people in the world, as chosen by a panel consisting of a rapper, a Playboy bunny, a UFC, fighter, a party planner, and Joel Stein."  Seriously.  It’s hard to decide which list has less gravitas.

"The Enduring Failure of the Bush Administration"

Andrew C. McCarthy:: "If one listens, truly listens, to the gloomiest war critics — Democrat congressional leaders and presidential candidates — the president has already won the debate about what is to be done in Iraq.

"That’s because, (1) whether or not they actually believe it, top Democrats keep saying we should be fighting al Qaeda, and (2) al Qaeda, like it or not, is in Iraq — massed, determined and deadly. It is the enduring failure of the administration that it cannot seem to make Americans see these two stark realities."

AGW Consensus Watch

Reid A. Bryson, Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of what is now the University of Wisconsin Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, was one of the first scientists to propose that global warming might be caused in part by human activity,  and “has shaped the future as well as the present state of climatology.”  Today, Bryson questions the theory he helped launch, and criticizes the computer models so popular among AGW theorists.  “Asked to evaluate the models’ long-range predictive ability, he answers with another question: ‘Do you believe a five-day forecast?’”