28 Mar 2009
On Thursday, I reviewed the special edition graphic novel which I loved.
The movie, on the other hand, was a real disappointment.
I couldn’t wait to see the movie. I’d actually only read the book to prepare for the film. After reading the book, I was curious to see how the screenplay would handle some of the more difficult parts of the book. One of the books characters lives outside of time as we know it and I thought that alone would be a problem. I was very disappointed to learn that the screenplay “handled” these things by simply using narration.
That was just one of the disappointing features. You’ve heard the rest from others probably. The movie is very self-indulgent. It has much more nudity than necessary (the book had plenty to make the points), and the ending was re-written. Even the special effects did not justify the price of admission to the big screen in my opinion.
If you’re a fan of the movie, you may want to pick up the Blu-ray or DVD. If you haven’t seen the movie, don’t bother with the theater. Spend your $10 on a better film.
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27 Mar 2009
The Minnesota Atheists and a United Methodist church in Minnesota are teaming up to sponsor a secular bible study. The study will focus on the will focus on the the Bible’s historical and cultural context and aims to “foster and nurture relationships between folks who would otherwise avoid each other,” according to Chester O’Gorman, community outreach director for the church.
O’Gorman says:
We’ve discerned that people have lost or lack the skills to engage in constructive and respectful dialogue in the context of profound disagreement,
I am a theist – no question about it – but I have many atheist friends and acquaintances. I think this gives me a well-rounded perspective on things. I may vehemently disagree with the conclusion they draw but by engaging in sensible discourse, I learn to spot fallible arguments on “my side” of the debate. More importantly, I learn to respect other human beings and their opinions.
I wish more people would take this approach in other areas. Our culture emphasizes exclusionary thinking and I think that’s a shame. One debate where this comes to mind is the abortion debate. I am pro-choice but I have many, many friends who would love nothing better than for Roe v. Wade to be overturned. Many of them don’t take advantage of opportunities to actually solve the problem. People on both sides of the debate may have a lot they can agree on. Why can we not get together in the spirit of this Bible study to help solve a real problem?
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26 Mar 2009
I don’t usually read graphic novels. Not because I am too old for them but because my eyesight is very poor. This one was an exception. After a very strong recommendation from my son and armed with the knowledge that Time magazine named it one of the 100 greatest novels since 1923, I grabbed my magnifying glass and set out to read this before the movie release.
I finished just in time for the movie and I am glad I did. I’ve since heard reports that many viewers couldn’t follow the movie – I did not have any trouble at all.
Anyway, I’ll post thoughts on the movie Saturday but I very much enjoyed the book. It was a fascinating read. I’m not a huge fan of super-heroes. I realize that’s odd for a geek, but it’s true. I actually don’t care much for science fiction either – another oddity for a geek. What I do like, however, is time travel stories and alternate realities. I am also a fan of political science. If you’ve heard anything about the novel, and I’m sure many of you have, then you know this book holds a lot of promise for me.
Watchmen is an alternate reality which deconstructs the very concept of the super hero. It is based in a world where Nixon does not resign and where a man exists who is essentially as powerful as God Himself. It is full of though-provoking ideas related to the natures of time and freedom. It is worth a read for the content alone.
You should note, however, that this is not a book for kids. It explores very dark ideas and touches on very mature topics. You should also know that the edition I link to in this post is worth the purchase if you are fan of graphic novels. If you are a fan of graphic novels, I’m sure you already know that. 
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25 Mar 2009
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the “rule of law.”
One of the great things about our country is that we are a nation ruled by law and not people. Very few people appreciate that as much as I, but I wonder if we have not been brainwashed into thinking that everything is about the law. I decided to write about this after a few games of football.
We bought several video games for the kids last Christmas. One of those games was FIFA ‘09 for PS3. We don’t normally enjoy sports games but Billy had played this one and raved about it. It’s hard to surprise him these days, so it was at the top of my list for him this year. He was absolutely right, the game is a blast. It is certainly the game we play the most. Others are more qualified to review the game for you, but I loved it and I think you will too.
Playing the game got me thinking about our obsession with rules in the U.S. It’s a football game – what we call soccer in the U.S. If you know the game well, you may see it differently than I do but to me soccer is a game that is ruled by people, not laws. Interestingly enough, soccer rules are actually referred to as laws. I know this complicates my argument, but hear me out for bit. Soccer officials make a lot of judgement calls – penalties, yellow and red cards, the offside rule (a player is only offside if he is “involved” in the play), and the timing of the match.
As we played match after match, the timing really struck me. I watch a bit of soccer on television too and I’ve always noticed the same thing. It is quite different than what we see in an American football game. American football is a game of inches and seconds – very judgment calls involved.
I thought about this for a couple weeks as we played and then I saw another football game in early January. This was an NFL playoff game – Ravens v. Titans. With just minutes left in the game, the officials missed a delay of game call in a very obvious way. If you don’t remember the play you can read about it <a href=”“http://nfl.fanhouse.com/2009/01/10/no-delay-of-game-call-hurts-the-titans/”“>here</a>. After the game, the huge debate that ensued about this play made me think once again about our obsession with rules. It is not my intent to debate the call itself here. I think anyone that understands the NFL delay-of-game rule would agree that the call was blown. The interesting thing to me is that so much energy be expended on the discussion. Are we so fascinated with the enforcement of the rules that we cannot enjoy the game?
Basketball strikes me as even worse. The clock counts down tenths of a second and the officials sometimes watch video replay to see if a player took a shot before time expired. Last weekend a small controversy erupted over a timeout that was not granted. Once again, it seems clear to me that the officials missed the call. Who cares? Bad for the kids on the team – of course. That’s the way it goes, no?
I am also not arguing that these games be changed. Not at all. My observations are not even so much about the games involved. Obviously, each game is different and should be regulated differently. I just wonder if the popularity of soccer in other countries is a result of a different perspective on life. Could it be that Americans are so fascinated with laws that we cannot enjoy a game?
As an aside, baseball is much more like soccer in my opinion because it is ruled by the umpires and judgement calls are a large part of the game. I might argue that this makes baseball the perfect game, but I’m not here to talk about that today.
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24 Mar 2009
A while back I found a site that’s a whole lot of fun. Every post is a fun representation of an interesting observation. A lot of Venn diagrams and charts but more fun than math class for most people. I like math class but I know most people don’t.
The author explains the site this way:
This site is a little project that lets me make fun of some things and sense of others. I use it to think a little more relationally without resorting to doing actual math.
Indexed
Here are a few of my favorites:
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23 Mar 2009
Apparently, some scientists use their own children as test subjects in the name of science.
At a birthing class, Dr. Sinha, a neuroscience professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stunned everyone, including his wife, by saying he was excited about the baby’s birth “because I really want to study him and do experiments with him.†He did, too, strapping a camera on baby Darius’s head, recording what he looked at.
— A New Crop of Scientists Are Using Their Children as Research Subjects – NYTimes.com
I love science as much as anyone, but this is very disturbing to me. Does anyone NOT see an ethical issue here?
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22 Mar 2009
My latest project was not a money making venture at all. It was motivated by my love for baseball and disdain for the outrageous price of attending games.
I set up my newest website, getmetstickets.com, as a way to help fans who might not otherwise be able to attend.
I was excited to see the site mentioned in today’s NY Post but I was disappointed they did not stress the donation angle of the story. It was originally planned for a longer story.
If you can afford to help, please do. If not, please help by getting out the word. Tell your friends, tweet about it, and/or Digg the story for me.
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22 Mar 2009
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The journey of trash animated.
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Tutorials in pictures. A lot of clicking from page to page but good info.
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Birds are a priceless part of America’s heritage. They are beautiful, they are economically important—and they reflect the health of our environment. This State of the Birds report reveals troubling declines of bird populations during the past 40 years—a warning signal of the failing health of our ecosystems.
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19 Mar 2009
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University president has a meltdown in the middle of the conference.
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Some people really don't think straight.
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Yet while the field of stem cell research holds great promise, hype and misconceptions cloud the picture. Here are a five such misconceptions.
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17 Mar 2009
I’ve just stumbled upon two sites which provide a simple but very handy service. You can use each to turn a list of links into one link.
If you’ve ever needed to send a list of links to someone via e-mail or IM, you may have benefited from one of these services.
The sites are 1link.in and linkbun.ch. They are almost identical. On both sites you enter URLs one per line and click a button. This takes you to a page with a new link you can share. Clicking on that link takes will take your friends to a landing page that shows them the list of links so they can click on them separately, and a button which will open all the links at once in a tab enabled browser.
1link.in allows you to password protect your link, while linkbun.ch allows you to click a special link on the landing page that copies the links to the clipboard.
Giving your users the option to open all links at once is nice, but I was looking for something that would save me a bit of time so I put together a simple app to give me more what I was looking for you. You can check it out over here.
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17 Mar 2009
Steve Rubel thinks Twitter is peaking and I agree with him. When I signed up in 2006 I did not update a lot but I loved following lots of my favorite geeks. I still enjoy Twitter but it seems like more work now and there is too much noise.
In the last six months, Twitter has gone nuclear. There are three reasons why and I explore them in this post. However, they also point to why Twitter is about to jump the shark and we should begin asking ourselves what’s “the next big thing.”
via Micro Persuasion: Twitter is Peaking.
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17 Mar 2009
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A very cool flash clock!
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Thousands of passwords on scribd?? How does this even happen?
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I attended LU but I am not a creationist kook.
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I'd rather not use Windows myself, but if you need to.
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Very interesting list. Numbers two and three were especially interesting to me. Beware – the list is spread over ten pages. I hate that!
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An Excellent Idea
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Am I to take this pastor seriously when he preaches?
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16 Mar 2009
Kottke points out an interesting list of books people lie about having read.
I’ve read all of numbers 1, 4, 6, and 10.
The only one I ever lied about was number one. I read about half of it in high school and told people I’d read it for several years. Then I realized I needed to read the whole thing.
On a side note, I can’t believe Jason did not get past page 20 of The Selfish Gene. I think Richard Dawkins is a pompous, arrogant snoot and I don’t subscribe to his devotion to Darwinist explanations for all evolution, BUT I think the writing is compelling.
What books have you lied about reading?
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16 Mar 2009
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Tetris on a giant screen
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A list of things not named in the movies – or some of the movies.
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I'm not a designer but I work with many and I understand what they do (intellectually). My favorites are 3, 4, and 10.
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04 Mar 2009
I am looking forward to the movie on Friday and I thought this was appropriate topic for today.
Sometime prior to February 2004 an arrest warrant was issued in Dale County, Alabama for Bennie Dean Herring. The warrant had been issued in error and was recalled and removed from the files in February 2004. Unfortunately, the warrant database for the Dale County Sheriff’s Department does not automatically update to reflect such changes.
On July 7, 2004, Herring drove to the Sheriff’s Department in neighboring Coffee County to retrieve something from his impounded truck. Investigator Mark Anderson learned of the warrant in Dale County, followed Mr. Herring out of the lot, arrested him, and searched his vehicle. The search turned up illegal possession of a weapon and drugs. Not more than fifteen minutes after learning of the warrant, the mistake had been cleared up but Mr. Herring had already been arrested and was being charged with the crimes.
Mr. Herring claimed that the arrest was unlawful as a result of an invalid/recalled warrant but the court denied his motion to suppress the evidence and convicted him to 27 months in prison. The 11th Circuit later affirmed that decision citing United States v. Leon, 468 U.S. 897 (1984).
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments concerning this case on October 7, 2008. They upheld the decision of the 11th Circuit (link) and published two dissenting opinions – Ginsburg with Stevens, Souter, and Breyer; and Breyer with Souter.
The Court’s argument is two-fold. Firsty, they argue that the exclusionary rule should not be applied in any case where the damage to the case far outweighs the deterrent effect suppression would have on the police in future incidents, and I would argue with this on two fronts. In the first place, I patently disagree that there is not sufficient deterrent effect. Secondly, I would argue that no such consideration should be made. I would argue that the exclusionary rule should be applied in all cases of police misconduct, incompetence, and negligence.
Justice Ginsburg in her dissent argues that these inaccuracies “so outraged the authors of the Bill of Rights” and quotes Justice Stevens dissent in Arizona v. Evans.
Inaccuracies in expansive, interconnected collections of electronic information raise grave concerns for individual liberty. “The offense to the dignity of the citizen who is arrested, handcuffed, and searched on a public street simply because some bureaucrat has failed to maintain an accurate computer data base†is evocative of the use of general warrants that so outraged the authors of our Bill of Rights. Evans, 514 U. S., at 23 (Stevens, J.,dissenting).
In his Evans diseent, Justice Stevens also explains that the exclusionary rule is not, as some claim, “extreme” and I agree with him wholeheartedly on this point. In his own words …
The exclusionary rule is not fairly characterized as an “extreme sanction,” ante, at 9. As Justice Stewart cogently explained, the implementation of this constitutionally mandated sanction merely places the Government in the same position as if it had not conducted the illegal search and seizure in the first place. [n.1] Given the undisputed fact in this case that the Constitution prohibited the warrantless arrest of petitioner, there is nothing “extreme” about the Arizona Supreme Court’s conclusion that the State should not be permitted to profit from its negligent misconduct.
Evans, 514 U. S., at 23 (Stevens, J.,dissenting).
The majority opinion in Herring also raises one other point that simply doesn’t make any sense to me. Justice Ginsburg brilliantly points out the wrongfulness in her dissent. Since I cannot state it any more succintly, I’ve quoted her arguments against this point below.
The Court assures that “exclusion would certainly be justified†if “the police have been shown to be reckless in maintaining a warrant system, or to have knowinglymade false entries to lay the groundwork for future false arrests.†Ante, at 11. This concession provides littlecomfort.
First, by restricting suppression to bookkeeping errors that are deliberate or reckless, the majority leaves Herring, and others like him, with no remedy for violations of their constitutional rights. See supra, at 6. There can be no serious assertion that relief is available under 42 U. S. C. §1983. The arresting officer would be sheltered by qualified immunity, see Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U. S. 800 (1982) , and the police department itself is not liable for the negligent acts of its employees, see Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U. S. 658 (1978) . Moreover, identifying the department employee who committed the error may be impossible.
Second, I doubt that police forces already possess sufficient incentives to maintain up-to-date records. The Government argues that police have no desire to send officers out on arrests unnecessarily, because arrests consume resources and place officers in danger. The facts of this case do not fit that description of police motivation. Here the officer wanted to arrest Herring and consulted the Department’s records to legitimate his predisposition. See App. 17–19.6
Third, even when deliberate or reckless conduct is afoot, the Court’s assurance will often be an empty promise: How is an impecunious defendant to make the required showing? If the answer is that a defendant is entitled to discovery (and if necessary, an audit of police databases), see Tr. of Oral Arg. 57–58, then the Court has imposed a considerable administrative burden on courts and law enforcement.7
Most people agree that the exclusionary rule is not a perfect remedy in cases like this. Most of us would agree that Mr. Herring should have been arrested, tried, and most likely convicted of his crimes in this case. The importance of this case goes far beyond the details, though. The exclusionary rule may not be perfect but it is the only remedy we have and it seems to be fair on its face.
The point to me seems self evident. If the police obtain evidence based on any wrong-doing, incompetence, negligence, inaccuracy, or other “mix up;” the evidence should be inadmissible. This places the government in the same position as if it had not obtained said evidence. It is the ultimate “do over” we all used as children on the playground. It seems to me that it is the epitome of fairness.
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03 Mar 2009
This great site lets you donate your computer’s processing power to be used for good.
When I signed up there were six active projects – five related to health issues directly and one for clean energy. I decided I wanted to participate in all six but you can choose the ones you are interested in on the website.
You begin by signing up for an account on the website and downloading some software. After downloading, you will want to configure it so that it runs when you want and works on tasks related to projects you care about.
The first thing I noticed was that one of the projects was World Community Grid which actually covers all of the project you select on the website. The software also allows you to assign other projects which are not part of World Community Grid but I did not look into any of them.
Then I set the runtime settings so that this program runs as my screen saver. Anytime my Mac goes into screensaver mode, it will request tasks and begin working on them. It’s a nice thing to be able to give in this small way.
You should check it out. If you find other projects online worth checking out, let me know.
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02 Mar 2009
This is one of those stories I just can’t believe.
Big guy forces the little guy out of business. Little guy sues. Big guy, forced to pay $50 million, vows to appeal and spends $3 million to help elect a judge. Then he appeals and wins.
I simply can’t believe that anyone thinks this is how things should work – I can’t believe it.
I’m not thinking due process and I’m not thinking 14th Amendment; as a citizen I’m sitting there saying, ‘How in the world? I’ve got two votes against me and we haven’t even started yet,’
Hugh Caperton (the little guy)
Andrew L. Frey, attorney for Don Blankenship (the big guy) posed a few interesting questions but I think they are all easy answers.
Should a judge sit on a case involving a newspaper that endorsed his campaign?
Yes.
Is recusal necessary when one party is an interest group that worked for the judge’s election?
Yes.
If the justice Blankenship worked so hard to oust had been reelected, would he harbor such animus that he should recuse himself from the case?
Probably, yes.
Am I the only one who thinks these are not difficult ethical questions?
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