How Is It That THIS Did Not Make the News? Liberal Bias, I Tell Ya!

This is Bad in So Many Ways

A total marketing nightmare. Mr Brain? Whose mouth wouldn't start to water with a name like that?

Oh, and FYI - “Faggots are traditionally made from pig's heart, liver and belly fat meat as well as other meat cut offs.”

Two words: Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Good.

Katie Couric Has a New Job. Finally.

More Great Dancing. Tiger Mother - Take That!

Best Dance Video. Ever.

Not a bad cover of a Whitney Houston, either - which I understand is hard to do without the drugs.

Go ahead and watch.  You know you want to. Focus on the older, balding gentleman (with the semi-comb over).  The next John Travolta, perhaps?

Those Nuts at Google Are At It Again

Investment Club Names

My friend Debbie has started an investment club.  She asked me today to see if the name "WIN Investment Group" was available with the Tennessee Secretary of State.  I guess this was because the copyright value of that name will be HUGE someday.

Then again, maybe Debbie is a little too detail oriented.  (Debbie is so focused I think they should inject her blood in people with ADHD).

Anyway, it's an all-female investment club, so I suggested these as alternative names:

Stocks R Us

Victoria’s Financial Secrets

Stocks…or Shoes?

Babes Beating Buffett

Soon Parted

Berkshire Debbie J

Somewhat sexist, I know, but still better than WIN Investment Group, no?

For My female Readers

Okay, reader.

For Besty

Advertising Gone Wrong

Glenn Beck & Frances Fox Piven - WTF?

This is an interesting story, though confined mainly to the blogosphere (so I can't talk to my wife about it).

On his daily radio and television shows, Glenn Beck has elevated once-obscure conservative thinkers onto best-seller lists. Recently, he has elevated a 78-year-old liberal academic to celebrity of a different sort, in a way that some say is endangering her life.

On Jan. 5, 2010, Glenn Beck delivered one of several attacks on Richard Cloward, now deceased, and his wife and collaborator, Frances Fox Piven, who wrote about ending poverty.
Frances Fox Piven, a City University of New York professor, has been a primary character in Mr. Beck’s warnings about a progressive take-down of America. Ms. Piven, Mr. Beck says, is responsible for a plan to “intentionally collapse our economic system.”

Her name has become a kind of shorthand for “enemy” on Mr. Beck’s Fox News Channel program, which is watched by more than 2 million people, and on one of his Web sites, The Blaze. This week, Mr. Beck suggested on television that she was an enemy of the Constitution.

Never mind that Ms. Piven’s radical plan to help poor people was published 45 years ago, when Mr. Beck was a toddler. Anonymous visitors to his Web site have called for her death, and some, she said, have contacted her directly via e-mail.

In response, a liberal nonprofit group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, wrote to the chairman of Fox News, Roger Ailes, on Thursday to ask him to put a stop to Mr. Beck’s “false accusations” about Ms. Piven.

Glenn Beck rails against the ideas of an avowed, lifelong, far left liberal college professor by ACCURATELY QUOTING HER? This is retarded.

Death threats are bad, although if I had a quarter for every death threat or unpleasant comment posted on the internet I would also have a Lear Jet on 24 hour standby. And I am not a big Glenn Beck fan in general. But all the guy did was to QUOTE HER ACCURATELY. If that generates a bad reaction, isn't that, uh, HER OWN DAMN FAULT?

I had never heard of this Frances Fox Piven until recently, and if I had heard of her, it didn't register. But I have been doing some reading about her. She's a socialist, and I do not like socialists. She is well intentioned, I think, but in that uniquely Orwellian way that socialists tend to be - that is, we need to do X, and if you disgare with that you need to be censored and/or shipped off to the gulag.

I am most disturbed by her connection to President Obama. If this is someone who influenced him, he needs to be out of the White House.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words, But the Caption Completes the Picture

The Oscars

This year I am going to have Oscar commentary. I have no idea why. I hate the Oscars. And all I saw was Inception and Harry Potter, so my analysis will be more succint than the acceptance sppech for best costume.

Here are the Nominees:

BEST PICTURE
127 HOURS (Fox Searchlight)
An Hours Production Christian Colson, Danny Boyle and John Smithson, Producers
BLACK SWAN (Fox Searchlight)
A Protozoa and Phoenix Pictures Production Mike Medavoy, Brian Oliver and Scott Franklin, Producers
INCEPTION (Warner Bros)
A Warner Bros. UK Services Production Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan, Producers
THE FIGHTER (Paramount)
A Relativity Media Production David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman and Mark Wahlberg, Producers
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (Focus Features)
An Antidote Films, Mandalay Vision and Gilbert Films Production Gary Gilbert, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte and Celine Rattray, Producers
THE KING'S SPEECH (The Weinstein Co)
A See-Saw Films and Bedlam Production Iain Canning, Emile Sherman and Gareth Unwin, Producers
THE SOCIAL NETWORK (Sony Pictures)
A Columbia Pictures Production Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca and Ceán Chaffin, Producers
TOY STORY 3 (Walt Disney)
A Pixar Production Darla K. Anderson, Producer
TRUE GRIT (Paramount)
A Paramount Pictures Production Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, Producers
WINTER'S BONE (Roadside Attractions)
A Winter's Bone Production Anne Rosellini and Alix Madigan-Yorkin, Producers

I only saw Inception. It was okay but not great. The Black Swan has lesbians. It should win.

BEST ACTOR
JEFF BRIDGES - TRUE GRIT (Paramount)
JAVIER BARDEM - BIUTIFUL (Roadside Attractions)
JESSE EISENBERG - THE SOCIAL NETWORK (Sony Pictures)
COLIN FIRTH - THE KING’S SPEECH (The Weinstein Company)
JAMES FRANCO - 127 HOURS (Fox Searchlight)

Jeff Bridges won last year. While I think he should win every year, he's out. Javier Bardem? Give me a break. Jesse Eisenberg? Should have been nominated for Zombieland. I can't believe the Social network is better than Zombieland. James Franco? I heard he was good, but he loses points for being in those Spiderman movies, which sucked. So the Oscar goes to Colin Firth. I heard he was good, so I can accept this.

BEST ACTRESS
ANNETTE BENING - THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (Focus Features)
NICOLE KIDMAN - RABBIT HOLE (Lionsgate)
JENNIFER LAWRENCE - WINTER’S BONE (Roadside Attractions)
NATALIE PORTMAN - BLACK SWAN (Fox Searchlight)
MICHELLE WILLIAMS - BLUE VALENTINE (The Weinstein Co)

Two lesbians. Hmmm...that makes this tough. I'll go with Natalie Portman.

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
CHRISTIAN BALE - THE FIGHTER (Paramount)
JOHN HAWKES - WINTER’S BONE (Roadside Attractions)
JEREMY RENNER - THE TOWN (Warner Bros)
MARK RUFFALO - THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (Focus Features)
GEOFFREY RUSH - THE KING’S SPEECH (The Weinstein Company)

The Oscar goes to Jeremy Renner here because he was so good in The Hurt Locker and because if you can get nominated in a movie that has Ben Affleck in it you have to be good.

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
AMY ADAMS - THE FIGHTER (Paramount)
HELENA BONHAM CARTER - THE KING’S SPEECH (The Weinstein Company)
MELISSA LEO - THE FIGHTER (Paramount)
HAILEE STEINFELD - TRUE GRIT (Paramount)
JACKI WEAVER - ANIMAL KINGDOM (Sony Pictures Classics)

The Fighter must be good. We need more boxing pictures. I'll take Helena Bonham Carter for her work as Bellatrix LeStrange.

BEST ANIMATED PICTURE
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (DreamWorks Animation)
TOY STORY 3 (Walt Disney)
THE ILLUSIONIST (Sony Pictures Classics)

Toy Story 3. Buzz and Woody rule.

BEST DIRECTOR
DARREN ARONOFSKY - BLACK SWAN (Fox Searchlight)
DAVID FINCHER - THE SOCIAL NETWORK (Sony Pictures)
TOM HOOPER - THE KING'S SPEECH (The Weinstein Co.)
JOEL AND ETHAN COEN - TRUE GRIT (Paramount)
DAVID O. RUSSELL - THE FIGHTER (Paramount)

Got to go with the Coen Brothers.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
ANOTHER YEAR, Mike Leigh (Sony Pictures Classics)
THE FIGHTER, Scott Silver and Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson, Story by Keith Dorrington & Paul Tamasy & Eric Johnson (Paramount)
INCEPTION, Christopher Nolan (Warner Bros)
THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT, Lisa Cholodenko & Stuart Blumberg (Focus Features)
THE KING'S SPEECH, David Seidler (The Weinstein Co)

I'm sure Inception will win because no one understood it, which in Hollywood means it's original and edgy.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
127 HOURS, Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy (Fox Searchlight)
TOY STORY 3, Michael Arndt, Story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich (Walt Disney)
THE SOCIAL NETWORK, Aaron Sorkin (Sony Pictures)
WINTER'S BONE, Debra Granik & Anne Rosellini (Roadside Attractions)
TRUE GRIT, Joel Coen & Ethan Coen (Paramount)

Please, not Aaron Sorkin. Other than that I don't care.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Algeria, Hors la Loi (“Outside the Law”) (Cohen Media Group) - A Tassili Films Production
Canada, Incendies (Sony Pictures Classics) - A Micro-Scope Production
Denmark, In a Better World (Sony Pictures Classics) - A Zentropa Production
Greece, Dogtooth (Kino International) - A Boo Production
Mexico, Biutiful (Roadside Attractions) - A Menage Atroz, Mod Producciones and Ikiru Films Production

Who cares?

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY
Black Swan (Fox Searchlight) - Matthew Libatique
Inception (Warner Bros.) - Wally Pfister
The King's Speech (The Weinstein Company) - Danny Cohen
The Social Network (Sony Pictures Releasing) - Jeff Cronenweth
True Grit (Paramount) - Roger Deakins

Again, steamy pictures of lesbians making out always win. Duh!

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Exit Through The Gift Shop (Producers Distribution Agency) A Paranoid Pictures Production Banksy and Jaimie D'Cruz
Gasland - A Gasland Production Josh Fox and Trish Adlesic
Inside Job (Sony Pictures Classics) - A Representational Pictures Production Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs
Restrepo (National Geographic Entertainment) - An Outpost Films Production Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger
Waste Land (Arthouse Films) - An Almega Projects Production Lucy Walker and Angus Aynsley

Bor-ring.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT
Killing In The Name - A Moxie Firecracker Films Production Nominees to be determined
Poster Girl - A Portrayal Films Production Nominees to be determined
Strangers No More - A Simon & Goodman Picture Company Production Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon
Sun Come Up - A Sun Come Up Production Jennifer Redfearn and Tim Metzger
The Warriors Of Qiugang - A Thomas Lennon Films Production Ruby Yang and Thomas Lennon

Warriors of Qiugang. I think it might be based on the original Warriors film from 1979, which makes it AWESOME.

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN FILM EDITING
Black Swan (Fox Searchlight) Andrew Weisblum
The Fighter (Paramount) Pamela Martin
The King's Speech (The Weinstein Company) Tariq Anwar
127 Hours (Fox Searchlight) Jon Harris
The Social Network (Sony Pictures Releasing) Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter

Probably should go to Apple.


BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN ART DIRECTION
Alice in Wonderland (Walt Disney) - Production Design: Robert Stromberg, Set Decoration: Karen O'Hara
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1 (Warner Bros.) - Production Design: Stuart Craig, Set Decoration: Stephenie McMillan
Inception (Warner Bros) - Production Design: Guy Hendrix Dyas, Set Decoration: Larry Dias and Doug Mowat
The King's Speech (The Weinstein Company) - Production Design: Eve Stewart, Set Decoration: Judy Farr
True Grit (Paramount) - Production Design: Jess Gonchor, Set Decoration: Nancy Haigh

Don't care.

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN COSTUME DESIGN
Alice in Wonderland (Walt Disney) - Colleen Atwood
I Am Love (Magnolia Pictures) - Antonella Cannarozzi
The King's Speech (The Weinstein Company) - Jenny Beavan
The Tempest (Miramax) - Sandy Powell
True Grit (Paramount) - Mary Zophres

Don't care.

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKEUP
Barney's Version (Sony Pictures Classics) Adrien Morot
The Way Back (Newmarket Films with Wrekin Hill Entertainment and Image Entertainment) Edouard F. Henriques, Gregory Funk and Yolanda Toussieng
The Wolfman (Universal) Rick Baker and Dave Elsey

Care even less. Clint Eastwood movies have the least amount of makeup and they are always good. So this is a stupid category.

BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES (ORIGINAL SCORE)
How to Train Your Dragon (Paramount) - John Powell
Inception (Warner Bros.) - Hans Zimmer
The King's Speech (The Weinstein Company) - Alexandre Desplat
127 Hours (Fox Searchlight) - A.R. Rahman
The Social Network (Sony Pictures Releasing) - Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Do you own any of these soundtracks? Do you want to? I didn't think so. Enough said.

ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC WRITTEN FOR MOTION PICTURES (ORIGINAL SONG)
“Coming Home” from Country Strong (Sony Pictures/Screen Gems) - Music and Lyric by Tom Douglas, Troy Verges and Hillary Lindsey
“I See the Light” from Tangled (Walt Disney) - Music by Alan Menken, Lyric by Glenn Slater
“If I Rise” from 127 Hours (Fox Searchlight) - Music by A.R. Rahman, Lyric by Dido and Rollo Armstrong
“We Belong Together” from Toy Story 3 (Walt Disney) - Music and Lyric by Randy Newman

I think it is a rule that Randy Newman has to win avery few years. You know why? Because Hollywood is run by short people.

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
Day & Night (Walt Disney) - A Pixar Animation Studios Production Teddy Newton
The Gruffalo - A Magic Light Pictures Production Jakob Schuh and Max Lang
Let's Pollute - A Geefwee Boedoe Production Geefwee Boedoe
The Lost Thing (Nick Batzias for Madman Entertainment) - A Passion Pictures Australia Production Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann
Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Madagascar, a Journey Diary) - A Sacrebleu Production Bastien Dubois

No one ever sees these anyway.

Best live action short film
“The Confession” (National Film and Television School) A National Film and Television School Production Tanel Toom
“The Crush” (Network Ireland Television) A Purdy Pictures Production Michael Creagh
“God of Love”
A Luke Matheny Production Luke Matheny
“Na Wewe” (Premium Films) A CUT! Production Ivan Goldschmidt
“Wish 143” A Swing and Shift Films/Union Pictures Production Ian Barnes and Samantha Waite

Again, why have this category?

Achievement in sound editing
“Inception” (Warner Bros.) Richard King
“Toy Story 3” (Walt Disney) Tom Myers and Michael Silvers
“Tron: Legacy” (Walt Disney) Gwendolyn Yates Whittle and Addison Teague
“True Grit” (Paramount) Skip Lievsay and Craig Berkey
“Unstoppable” (20th Century Fox) Mark P. Stoeckinger

Seriously. I'll bet you have to adjust the sound when you get the DVD, so no one should win.

Achievement in sound mixing
“Inception” (Warner Bros.) Lora Hirschberg, Gary A. Rizzo and Ed Novick
“The King's Speech” (The Weinstein Company) Paul Hamblin, Martin Jensen and John Midgley
“Salt” (Sony Pictures Releasing) Jeffrey J. Haboush, Greg P. Russell, Scott Millan and William Sarokin
“The Social Network” (Sony Pictures Releasing) Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick and Mark Weingarten
“True Grit” (Paramount) Skip Lievsay, Craig Berkey, Greg Orloff and Peter F. Kurland

How about "Achievement in making fart noises"? Now that would be funny. Can't you just picture the guy coming up to get his award and they play his work in the background?

Achievement in visual effects
“Alice in Wonderland” (Walt Disney) Ken Ralston, David Schaub, Carey Villegas and Sean Phillips
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1” (Warner Bros.) Tim Burke, John Richardson, Christian Manz and Nicolas Aithadi
“Hereafter” (Warner Bros.)
Michael Owens, Bryan Grill, Stephan Trojanski and Joe Farrell
“Inception” (Warner Bros.) Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley and Peter Bebb
“Iron Man 2” (Paramount and Marvel Entertainment, Distributed by Paramount) Janek Sirrs, Ben Snow, Ged Wright and Daniel Sudick

Okay, I'll go with Inception here because the collapsing city stuff was pretty cool.

Now you don't even have to watch. I won't.

I Fell in the Fountain While Texting and It Got on YouTube and That Hurt My Feelings

Gee, I'm sorry and all that, BUT GET A SENSE OF HUMOR! It was funny. Laugh at yourself.

And if you can't then I am happy to do it for you.

Keith Olbermann, RIP

To be fair, I cannot stand Keith Olbermann. I find him to be so loathsome and fundamentally dishonest that it is beyond my descriptive powers to convey the depth of my contempt for him both intellectually and personally.

But this was funny.

Education in America

A Washington Post commentary I think is spot on.

I have, however, become increasingly concerned in recent years - not about the talent of the applicants but about the education American universities are providing. Even from America's great liberal arts colleges, transcripts reflect an undergraduate specialization that would have been unthinkably narrow just a generation ago.

As a result, high-achieving students seem less able to grapple with issues that require them to think across disciplines or reflect on difficult questions about what matters and why.

Unlike many graduate fellowships, the Rhodes seeks leaders who will "fight the world's fight." They must be more than mere bookworms. We are looking for students who wonder, students who are reading widely, students of passion who are driven to make a difference in the lives of those around them and in the broader world through enlightened and effective leadership. The undergraduate education they are receiving seems less and less suited to that purpose.

An outstanding biochemistry major wants to be a doctor and supports the president's health-care bill but doesn't really know why. A student who started a chapter of Global Zero at his university hasn't really thought about whether a world in which great powers have divested themselves of nuclear weapons would be more stable or less so, or whether nuclear deterrence can ever be moral. A young service academy cadet who is likely to be serving in a war zone within the year believes there are things worth dying for but doesn't seem to have thought much about what is worth killing for. A student who wants to study comparative government doesn't seem to know much about the important features and limitations of America's Constitution.


When asked what are the important things for a leader to be able to do, one young applicant described some techniques and personal characteristics to manage a group and get a job done. Nowhere in her answer did she give any hint of understanding that leaders decide what job should be done. Leaders set agendas.

I wish I could say that this is a single, anomalous group of students, but the trend is unmistakable. Our great universities seem to have redefined what it means to be an exceptional student. They are producing top students who have given very little thought to matters beyond their impressive grasp of an intense area of study.

This narrowing has resulted in a curiously unprepared and superficial pre-professionalism.

Perhaps our universities have yielded to the pressure of parents who pay high tuition and expect students, above all else, to be prepared for the jobs they will try to secure after graduation. As a parent of two teenagers I can understand that expectation.

Perhaps faculty members are themselves more narrowly specialized because of pressure to publish original work in ever more obscure journals.

I detect no lack of seriousness or ambition in these students. They believe they are exceptionally well-educated. They have jumped expertly through every hoop put in front of them to be the top of their classes in our country's best universities, and they have been lavishly praised for doing so. They seem so surprised when asked simple direct questions that they have never considered

.

It's not that kids today are dumber or college professors are failing us (although many probably are), it's that they don't learn the way they used to. I could care less about who might be to blame, and I am sure that's a complicated issue anyway.

All I care about is fixing the problem. A discussion like this is a start.

A Thoughtful Person

An interview worth reading

Seasteading was thought up by acolytes of Milton Friedman. The idea is that we need to create competition between governments. If it’s very hard to reform existing ones, we need to create new sovereign states — in the oceans or elsewhere. There’s a technological question about how far away we are from these kinds of things. It’s probably not around the corner. But these technological projects are worth pursuing.

It’s one of the ways in which I see things in the U.S. as having declined from the 1950s, when people had a real sense of the future, and the future was an important subject for public discussion. We thought about being on the moon, or living underwater, and what we were going to do about farmlands and forests and so on. Different ideas about how technology would change in the future played an important role in our society. That sort of collapsed with everything else in the late ’60s and into the ’70s. I want to go back to the future and back to a time when people were thinking about how to use technology to make the world a dramatically better place — not like the present, where technology is largely seen as irrelevant and specifically as bad.

Now, the broader issue with seasteading is that a lot of people are quite sympathetic to the idea that we need more competition in government, though you can debate whether seasteading is the best way — or a possible way — to bring it about. If there weren’t some competition between governments, the overreach would be dramatically worse than what we’ve seen. A lot of state governments would like to dramatically increase taxes and increase regulations on businesses, rather than reform their bad ways. But they’re under extraordinary pressure because people may just choose to leave.

The U.S. government is under somewhat less pressure, because it is a lot more difficult to leave the U.S. But it’s under more constraints today, because the U.S. is now living in a much more competitive world than it was in the 1970s. It’s hard to simply devalue the dollar, or simply inflate, or tax in a confiscatory way. So competition among governments is an extremely valuable and very good thing. The seasteading netroots are best seen against that larger background.

Read the whole thing.

Kill Bill

I had never seen Kill Bill Volume 1 or Volume 2. Now I have.

While I have a fondness for Quentin Tarantino in general, and these were not bad movies, I'd not rank them among his best work. Entertaining, but I am not quite sure why.

Other observations:

It's hard to eat after seeing a closeup of Uma Thurman's feet.

Uma Thurman is strangely more appealing when her face is covered with dirt.

I owe it to my Dad not to hate on an homage to Kung Fu, the classic 1970s TV show.

Michael Madsen gives me the creeps, though I do think he is a good actor.

So that's what happened to Daryl Hannah.

Regarding Loughner

He was a nut job.

Period.

Anyone who suggests that he was in any way motivated or influenced by political rhetoric is a moron. Which proves, rather conclusively, that most of the national media is comprised of morons.

Which I think most of us already suspected anyway. It's just nice to have some hard evidence.

Cats

Random thought: you know that saying-"who let the cat out of the bag?"

Doesn't that imply that they used to did they used to keep cats in bags?

Wonder why they started letting them out?