Cuz We Said So

3:10 to Yuma

As is often the case, I haven't seen the original film of which this is a remake. Nor have I read the Elmore Leonard short story that preceded them both. All I've seen is this new movie, and it's pretty good.

Russell Crowe is Ben Wade, the tough as nails leader of a gang of outlaws in the rough and tumble American southwest, a few scant years after the Civil War. That conflict seems to hover in the background, not overwhelming the story, by any means, but giving it a nice added flavor. Christian Bale is a down on his luck rancher who is pulled into the railroad's attempt to incarcerate and execute Wade. He is, at first, more interested in reward money than justice.

There are plenty of interesting secondary characters: Peter Fonda as an obsessed Pinkerton, Alan Tudyk as a doctor, and in the " I wondered where she'd gotten to" category, Gretchen Mol as a long-suffering wife. There's also a nearly unrecognizeable Luke Wilson playing drastically against type. But the film belongs to Crowe and Bale. Their relationship is the core of the movie, leading to an ending which sacrifices a bit of logic, but delivers dramatically.

Thumbs up on this one.

iPhone uPdate

I had to reboot my iPhone for the first time today. (Thankfully, a relatively simple and painfree process, once I figured out how to do it: hold "power" and "home" buttons simultaneously for about seven seconds.)

That's about ten days without a glitch. Not bad, considering the newness of the technology and the fullsome nature of its overall coolness.

However, not hanging at all would be both

in line with the vaunted Apple-as-Justin-Long-we-never-crash-mythology, and

better.

This does not, I will make clear, change my review from its original "thumbs up".

Zubkov

I was reading an article about the appointment by Putin of Viktor Zubkov as the new Prime Minister of Russia, and ran across this sentence:

Zubkov, who turns 66 on Saturday, is considerably older than most Russian political leaders.

Who remembers the Cold War, when that sentence would have made no sense at all?

New Toy

I'm writing this post using my new iPhone. The keyboard will take some getting used to, but I'm doing pretty well already.

I love the fact that all of my contacts and IE links porter over automatically.

The Safari browser is also seven kinds of sweet, at least on my home wi-fi connection.

Maybe I'll even use it to make phone calls!

Madeleine L'Engle

I was saddened to hear that Madeleine L'Engle has died. Her novel "A Wrinkle in Time" was one of the iconic pieces of literature of my childhood. She followed it with "A Wind in the Door" and "A Swiftly Tiltling Planet", both also favorites of mine.

Whether it was the approach of my adulthood, or a change in her writing, I never found any of the other of her books nearly as engaging as those first three, but they were enough. I suspect those three books were the first to set me on the path of writing speculative fiction.

She'll be missed.

Something to Look Forward to: Flight Delays

Unwelcome news for frequent flyers.  Reasons "include an overtaxed air traffic control system that is probably at least a decade away from being replaced, ...a handful of big hub airports that at times are operating above their practical capacity," and cost cutting by the airlines.

The "overtaxed air traffic control system" has been a known problem for something like twenty years, at this point, yet remains broken, an example of the government falling down on boring infrastructure maintenance while spending like crazy on pork projects popular with voters back home.

"I Have a Nagging Feeling We've Forgotten Something..."

“Let’s see, what could it be?  Oh, yes, I remember now, we forgot to remove the W80–1 nuclear warheads from six cruise missiles before flying them from North Dakota to Shreveport, LA.”  I would expect this to end a few careers.

I'm Tempted to Scoff

at this story, but if researchers (in Boulder, CO, appropriately enough) have indeed figured out not only that two asteroids collided 160 million years ago, but also accurately estimated their individual masses based on the location of the debris today, I’m prepared to be impressed.

(Not that there’s any way for me to know, of course.)

Apple Event Post Mortem

So the ‘Pod rumors were pretty close to the mark this time around, barring the usual sprinkling of surprises from His Steveness.  Apple did indeed release the “fattie” iPod nano ‘3G and the iPhone-without-the-phone iPod touch.  Disappointingly, however, it’s a flash-only device.  Hard drives are confined to the I-didn’t-hear-any-rumors-in-advance iPod classic, a mild upgrade of the legacy iPod design with a slim new metal case, an OS refresh, and bigger drives.  This effectively splits the features I want in my next iPod across two models.  Nice try, Steve—but I’m not buying two!  I think capacity will win, this time; I’ll probably snare a classic model.

Apple also whacked two hundred Washingtons off the price of the iPhone, which I’m sure will leave Russell glad he didn’t guy one a while back, and hack off a bunch of people who did.

And, alas, no Beatles this time, though their songs and cover art made some suspicious cameo appearances in the demos.

Autoblog's G37 Coupe Review

Sounds like they liked it, overall: “The sum of its evolutionary details adds up to a revolution.”  They say Infiniti has further refined the already excellent handling of the G35, which is impressive.  They also mention, to my mild annoyance, that iPod integration is now available.  That’s the only option on the G35 that I really, really wanted that was not available.  I don’t want it enough to trade up, though.  Also, I still much prefer the look of the older car.