Monday, May 07, 2007

Global Warming Remedy

Connecticut senator Chris Dodd appeared on Meet the Press yesterday (May 6th) and announced his plan to fight global warming with increased corporate taxes and regulations! Now who could have guessed that?

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Spiderman 3

My usual rule is to keep low expectations about movies, especially adaptations and sequels. But the Spiderman movie franchise is my favorite, bar none, and I thought the first sequel was the best superhero movie ever made. As a result, I couldn't contain my excitement to see the 3rd movie. When I walked out of the midnight show, I was not disappointed.

Director Sam Raimi's affection for Spiderman is obvious. It also nearly undid his movie this time around. While it was fantastic to see so many well-rendered characters from the Spiderman mythos like the Stacy family, Venom and Sandman, there were so many characters and subplots that a couple of times I disengaged from the movie as I actively wondered how he was going to tie all of the elements together. This was the exact problem of the third X-men movie. There were too many new characters and subplots. The ending did not make sense, and I wasn't even able to get through a second viewing of characters I loved without falling asleep.

In this movie, Raimi successfully wraps thing up in a heroic last half hour. While the weakest of the three movies, it's still one of the best of the genre. If the first movie was a 9 of 10 and the second a 10 of 10, this one is a solid seven.

Global Warming Hysteria

I should not be surprised, but the success that the global warming zealots have had in convincing Joe Public that the carbon dioxide coming out of their cars will end life on earth is just incredible.

Of all of Mencken's hobgoblins that the elites could use to keep the public agitated and manageable, the idea that human beings will be able to manage the climate of the entire planet seems so preposterous that I find it inconceivable that it could be believed. People who never passed a Geometry or Chemistry test in high school will argue with you until they're blue in the face of how "the scientists" are right, and "we've got to do something." The frosting on the cake is they believe that the same state institutions that can barely manage entirely man made traffic control or central banking systems will somehow know how to manipulate the climate to save the beach houses of upper class people.

The more of a whopper you try to put over, the better chance you'll pull it off, it seems.