This movie is cool, especially if you're as big a fan as I am of the "Make Them Fight" subgenre (an enthusiasm spawned from a youth prodding crayfish and spiders together at the bottom of cardboard boxes). It also reaffirms the ageless adage that Japanese people are weird. It's the future or something, and teenagers have become so disrespectful of adults that it's become necessary to select 42 of them every year, take them to an island, give them weapons, and... Make Them Fight! It's very entertaining. 8of10.

Today is the day we Americans celebrate our independence from the throne of England. It's sort of amusing (and a little unsettling) to consider that many of the cumulative causes of that rebellion have their present day analogs imposed upon us by our own throne in Washington (I'm sure George is cringing to learn this); over- regulation and restrictions placed upon industry (cf the Iron Act of 1750), restricted land settlement (the Proclamation of 1763), unreasonable tariffs and centralized trade governance (Sugar Act of 1765, Townshend Revenue Acts of 1767), the power of the central government to legislate any laws in the colonies (1776 Declaratory Act), and of course taxes (Tea Act of 1773 etc).

The main complaint was that the colonists were forced to pay taxes directly to England rather than (or in addition) to their local legislatures. In May of 1765, Patrick Henry (heard of him?) presented seven "Virginia Resolutions" to the House of Burgesses (the first popularly elected legislature of the New World, later dissolved by the British), the gist of which were that only the local assembly of Virginia had any right to tax Virginia residents. Speaking to the assembly, Henry said, "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third..." -- at which point he was interrupted by cries of "Treason!" (since this was a list of rulers and their assassins). After a pause, he concluded "...may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it." (One might also find personal joy while reading Henry's famous Liberty or Death speech of March 23, 1775.)

I have no enthusiasm for comparing those Americans with the ones we have now; it makes for confusion and dark speculation. But I think it is noteworthy that the government those men and women established in 1776 and finalized in 1787 with the adoption of a state-of-art Constitution still exists today. That's pretty remarkable, especially when you consider that the governments of Europe, whose statesmen are so fond of proclaiming that their nations are so much older and therefore wiser than ours, are almost all younger, often much younger than our own; we have the oldest Democracy in the world, and one of the oldest cohesive political bodies.

Incidentally, I'm presently watching Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, making a speech in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia (he's got to be like "holy crap, look at how *these* people live!") after receiving the Liberty Medal, and he's just quoted Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty or give me death." Now that's a powerful meme.

Here's a nice little homage to probably the most underrated (and wrongly vilified) US President, Calvin Coolidge. We would do well to have another like Coolidge instead of these nincompoops were stuck with now. Just read the bulleted quotes; your eyes will pop out of your head. (Not really.) You'll say, "Wow!" Come to think of it, don't read the quotes; it's kind of depressing.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Michael Badnarik is not and never has been a lawyer. He is a computer programmer. (Yes.)

Great, now we've got two lawyers seeking the uber-office. And this second guy, this John Edwards, seems to have made a personal fortune chasing ambulances all around the Carolinas. So Kerry wants to have the Federal Gov subsidize the share of healthcare costs incurred by trail lawyers like his VP -- I guess there's a kind of symmetry to that. I like today's scrappleface headline better though: "Kerry Places Edwards a Heartbeat from Anonymity".

Speaking of the next US President(not) check out Michael Badnarik's class on the US Constitution (just in case you went to school in the USA and didn't learn this stuff). It's well worth the time, and provides an inspiring lesson in some of the foundations of the Libertarian philosophy. Just listen to it, okay?

This election proceeds like a product launch, like a marketing campaign: rabid press coverage, colorful and patriotic logos, a movie tie-in; focus groups reflexively press buttons as clips of speeches fly by, and eager market-psychologists scribble down words like "values" and "strong" -- from their ears to the candidates' lips.

I recently re-watched the classic political campaign documentary War Room (1993) about the 1992 Clinton campaign. What struck me most was how little the rhetoric has changed since then: Lowest economic growth in years! Pessimistic Democrats! Health Care for all! Both sides of every issue! Jobs are down! More prosperous than ever! One gets the feeling the Kerry campaign watched this movie in order to come with material, and that the Bush campaign was always already hard-wired with the other side. It's all like a stage play, the roles defined, with little room for improv. It's appalling how manufactured everything is, from the hand-written signs at the convention to the stunned outrage over issue x. The campaign staff hears about something then tries to figure out what the candidate's reaction should be, how he should appear to feel about it.

The point is? This: it's all so artificial. We are about to elect an automaton. And nobody seems to care! It makes me... well, grumpy.

If Octavius just wanted the nano-glue (or whatever that crap was) from Osborn, why didn't he just take it instead of agreeing to track down and capture Spiderman for it? And how come lab accidents are the only way to produce super-beings? And why does Spiderman start to lose his powers, then regains them, and then loses them again, and then regains them again. What's the mechanism there? Does he have to *want* them in order to have them? And why won't Raimi make Evil Dead 4 instead of Spiderman 3? And why won't Romero make Twilight of the Dead? And why won't anyone make a movie about how the government tries to destroy Zombie Island with a nuclear bomb and ends up creating Radioactive Super Zombies who can fly and shoot deadly energy rays from their eyes and then Superman has to fight them? It just pisses me off.

In case you're as addicted to bad SF television as I am (which would make you functionally retarded), you'll be alarmed to learn that the new Stargate: Atlantis series premieres this Friday. In order to thoroughly divorce it from the existing series, they've placed the setting on the other side of a one-way trip across the galaxy (or maybe it's the universe -- these t.v. writers tend not to fully grok cosmological scale), with a whole new enemy to run around shooting at. Which is really innovative and original, this new enemy, although one might sum them up with a single word: vampires! Yeah, that's what they figured out. Vampires.

Speaking of SF television, the Farscape miniseries -- Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars is scheduled to air Oct 17 (it probably took some time to rebuild all the sets they trashed when the series ended). It will pick up from the last season cliffhanger (my bet is that flying dude was a bounty hunter hired by Scorpius, oh yeah, that's right).

The Firefly movie -- called Serenity -- has begun shooting.

The scifi channel production of Battlestar Galactica (which didn't quite suck) has made it to a series, and will air around the end of the year.

J. Michael Straczynski, creator of such legendary (and actually good) SF series as Babylon 5 and Jeremiah has posted to a newsgroup that he and Dark Skies creator Bryce Zabel have developed a treatment for a new Star Trek series "that would restore the series in a big way" (he claims). Somebody has to buy into it first though (for instance Paramount, who owns Star Trek).

Speaking of Star Trek, Manny Cotto, creator of Odyssey 5 is the new "showrunner" for Enterprise, taking over for the verifiable incompetents Brannon Braga and Rick Berman. So maybe Enterprise won't suck anymore? Don't count on it! Anyway, UPN has only given it a limited renewal of 12-episodes (and moved it to Friday in order to compete with Stargate instead of American Idol).

Let's see.... There will be no Daleks in the new Dr. Who series (scheduled to begin airing on BBC One in early 2005).

It looks like the long-rumored Watchmen movie is actually getting produced, which might not suck.

And the USA channel has a new SF series called The 4400 which I know nothing about and couldn't be bothered to study because I don't know where the USA channel is located on my cable service.

Just look at these Doom 3 cds. Just look at them. (Because you can't have them yet.)

On the face of it, the Free State Project seems... well bizarre. The idea is to get 20,000 people or more to commit to moving to New Hampshire in order to cultivate a "Free State" there. If you sign up, you've promised to move to NH within five years of the total number of signatures hitting 20,000 (they're at 5,924 now). Here's the Statement of Intent: "I hereby state my solemn intent to move to the state of New Hampshire. [ignore the laugh] Once there, I will exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of civil government is the protection of life, liberty, and property."

I'm not sure how the current citizens of NH feel about this.... The state was chosen through the use of a Simple Condorcet's Method which attempts to compare and then rank every state based on criteria that make the project most likely to succeed (for instance a low number of voters makes it more likely that an influx of 20,000 voters will have an impact). The results are here in case you're curious.

It's bizarre, yes. But what if they succeed? I mean... it could work, couldn't it...?

I guess it was as good as the first one, I don't know. I'm not a real big Spiderman fan, it's always seemed a little dull to me, a little corny, lacking the edginess of Batman and the cool uber-villain of Superman, and the whole web thing never made sense (and still doesn't -- are they like secreted out of him? Weren't they mechanical in the comics?). Anyway, it's got cool special effects, and I guess some people would be interested in the character development and attempted depth: the love triangle (quadrangle?), the question of perceived duty vs personal happiness (a comic cliché really), overcoming irrational guilt, etc. Mostly it's about those webs though. (Maybe they grow in his wrists like male jelly...?) And the whole Superman 2 thing with the powers, that was annoying. 6of10.

This guy has a tiger for a pet. The tiger escapes, the police are forced to shoot and kill it, and now the owner accuses them of murder. It's a tiger. It's not a tabby cat. Go get a tabby cat now. Go on. Moron.

Look damn you I don't think GWB should be President either. Here's a pretty good list of reasons why. But it blows my mind to shreds that the only apparent alternative we have is that tree-ent John Kerry. I mean it's a viscerally negative reaction I have to him. I mean I really don't like this guy.

Why two-party system, why?

Three days ago I entreated George Romero to make a fourth Dawn of the Dead film. Today he has agreed to do so. While a better title would be Twilight of the Dead (given the sequence of Night, Dawn, Day, Duh), Variety is now reporting that Land of the Dead will begin production in October. Damn, I hope that wasn't my only wish....

Doom 3 has gone gold!

Since I've been playing with the subject of political quizzes, I'd might as well add this one: The Libertarian Purity Test. Find out how libertarian you are! The problem with this one is that the questions are all binary -- yes/no -- and many of the questions beg for grey answers. But it also amounts to good practice in really studying the implications of a particular position.

It seems the Armed Females of America (AFA) has endorsed Michael Badnarik for President. Armed Females of America!? I've got to find out where they meet; nothing sexier than chicks with guns. Armed Females of America. Hot damn.

Found again! He's been detained by Japanese authorities at Narita Airport while trying to leave Tokyo with an invalid passport. Now it looks like he'll be extradited and put on trial here (recall the incident concerning the Spassky rematch in Yugoslavia; what are the penalties for violating UN sanctions anyway? They must be like the Comfy Chair or something). One has... ambivalence of course. Fischer was a great chess champion, probably the greatest American player ever, but his unpleasantness, his paranoia, his raging anti-Semitism, his loud hatred for America, all make it difficult to have much sympathy for him.

Alien uber-ship lands in sparsely populated farmland -- think Kansas -- and projects a force-field dome around itself and several square miles. Aliens come out, start building little alien dwellings, planting alien crops, living alien lifestyles. Humans -- interested in these developments -- gather around to watch, try to communicate (aliens ignore them), express their frustration by trying to break through the force-field (fail). Then some observant fellow notices that the force-field has been expanding....

How come everybody in the Pegasus Galaxy speaks English? How come The Ancients, who predate human civilization or something, spoke English too? But the submerged city was pretty cool (force-fields!), and even when it floated to the surface I didn't mind.

Clearly NGC 7635 (The Bubble Nebula) is some kind of vast, interstellar amoeba, the kind of thing Mr. Spock will one day fly a shuttle pod into and mind-meld with as it approaches Sol system.

Six Feet Under is really good this week (episode 405: "That's My Dog!"), although (spoilers) I counted at least 5 times where David could have gotten away from that guy. The lesson is: Don't be like David. If you see a chance to get away, take the chance. It should be your number one priority. (Number two is to try to humanize yourself as much as possible in order to make it psychologically harder for him to kill you.) Also, don't pick up hitchhikers, even if you're horny. And keep a handgun under your driver's seat. And don't vote for people who want to take your guns away. Like that guy Kerry.

See also, Larry Niven's The Deadlier Weapon for more strategies on how to deal with car-jackers. Also see Niven's Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex because it's funny.

Actually, NGC 7635 (The Bubble Nebula) may very well be a force-field around an entire solar system. (See Greg Egan's Quarantine if you like that idea.) It looks kind of like a rotting skull though. Must be in the Galaxy of Terror.

I love force-fields, I've got a thousand force-field scenarios. In one of them, a force-field sphere, opaque, about 10 meters in diameter, turns up in the middle of Times Square, blocking traffic. Scientists determine that it rests on a molecular point invisible to the naked eye, that it's a perfect sphere as far as they can measure, and that it's backing up traffic. All attempts to move it fail. What does it want? Is it an alien artifact? (Most of the force-field scenarios involve aliens.)

Or this one: a mysterious translucent force-field settles over and around New York City; nobody, nothing can get in or out. The people inside have to adjust to a new and difficult lifestyle while the rest of the world moves on without them. They become like zoo animals: outsiders come to see what the New Yorkers are up to, point fingers at them, crack jokes. All communication must take place via written signs since not even radio transmissions will pass through the barrier. Soon the outsiders lose interest in the New Yorkers. The two races evolve separately.... Hundreds of years pass... and so on.

Now that much of America has submitted itself to the federal do-not-call list program forbidding telemarketers and similar ilk from triggering that annoying sound telephones sometimes make, some companies have begun sending their goons out to market their services door to door. It happened to me! Just now! Several loud raps in an official manner, the way rapping on a door can be made to sound official. Fearing the Feds, I quickly flushed down and/or de-magnetized any incriminating evidence I had lying around (all that loss!), kicked open a path through the piles of accumulated junk mail in my foyer, and cracked the door an inch.

There were two of them! The first, the one with the clipboard who did all the talking, was an elderly black man whose most notable feature was a thumb nail that resembled a grave-digger's shovel (long and pointy); the second a young woman, presumably a Muslim from the black stretch of cloth she had slung over her head. "Terrorists!" I thought immediately, and estimated the time it would take me to run to the north-east bookcase and retrieve Mr. Mossberg before all kinds of chemical hell could break loose. But the black man immediately identified himself as an associate of AT&T, showing me his AT&T badge like he was a Fed or something, and then pointed to my name on a list. He said something about speaking with each of my neighbors, and then rolled into the sort of script typical of a telemarketer: "I want to save you some money on your phone bill!", words like "rebate" and "deregulation" and so on. "Are you trying to sell me something?" They never like to boil it down like that. "No sir, I just want to give you your rebate! You'll need to go get a recent copy of your phone bill--" "A recent what?" "--so we can determine--" "...don't have time for--" "...save you money--" I started wondering when Mossberg would invent the fido-rail (an attachment that would cause the shotgun to come running in response to a whistled summons). "Hold it!" I cried, still mainly staring at the giant shovel-like thumb nail that AT&T has seen fit to equip its employees with, "So you're trying to get me to switch from Verizon back to AT&T?" "Yes, we would--" And then I closed my door, blissfully rebate-free.

The moral of the story is not to be wary of pedimarketers (although you should be), but rather how nice it was in the old days when it was cheaper and more convenient for these goons to operate by phone. It is much easier to hang up on someone than it is to shut a door in their face (for most people that is -- I managed it just fine). This new development marks a return to the old-old days of traveling door-to-door salesmen, the type who would lug around vacuum cleaners or encyclopedias, and bang on people's doors in official sounding ways. How annoying that must have been! So it's more evidence that technology does indeed make life better, despite all indications to the contrary.

Next time, I'll send them to Beefy Lou's apartment. He'd ask about the thumb-nail, I know he would.

This thing is a genius. It can figure out if you're thinking of a sitcom character or a dictator. It got Pervez Musharraf! And Colonel Hogan!

Apparently humans share two thirds of their genome with a pumpkin.

SETI sez: First contact within twenty years. Or never? Or else the The Drake Equation is wrong....

Star Wars Episode III has been given a subtitle: Revenge of the Sith. Which, while not of Shakespearean proportions, is a bit improved over last installment's Attack of the Killer Clone Machines. Some bits of the setting and plot have also been revealed: The Clone Wars are drawing to an end [and we barely knew ye], the Jedi conduct a manhunt for the Separatist Droid Army leader [I'll have you yet, General Sanchez!], and Coruscant is in political turmoil [will they ever pass that appropriations bill? I can't wait to find out]. Oh, and Anakin Skywalker is drawn to the Dark Side. Click here to buy a tee-shirt.

Of course a specialized vocabulary is always important if you're a drunk. My favorite term is: "bungie-shot n. a shot likely to come back up."

I realize the propagation of this photo is Political, and that the GOP effort is to summon that image of Dukakis in the tank, and while I loathe to find myself participating in their PR effort, well... It's just too funny!

It's almost as funny as the Pope.

I see the Empire has decided to take it out on Saturn. Let's hope that obstinate Princess Leia gives up the stupid plans before they get to Earth....

The Demi-crats have been cavorting about on TV lately, pretending to hold a political convention but really just putting on a PR show. The mode for major party conventions seems to center on communication rather than on decision making. It used to be -- and still is for some smaller parties -- that the convention was where the delegates worked out important issues: mainly the nominee and the platform. The Libertarians for instance still run an old-fashioned, old-school political convention. Their presidential candidate this year was surprised by his nomination. The platform was actually voted on, revised, ratified.

Nothing like this is happening at the Dem convention. It's been reported that around 95% of the delegates disagree with the party plank regarding Iraq -- which amounts to Stay the Course -- but they've all agreed to accept it in order to avoid presenting any show of disunity. It's all about image for the Kerry crowd, all about role-playing, motions meant to congeal into a big television commercial, planned, governed, managed, and monitored. In fact, I just watched the nominee-to-be cruise into Boston on a boat crowded with Vietnam veterans. It's all theatre.

The Democrat bosses are even censoring speeches in order to remove negative references to GWB. What kind of a political convention is this? I could imagine if they tried something like that at a Libertarian convention; the delegates, speakers, and candidates would probably all walk out -- but first trashing the place, seizing the microphones, and politely taking turns saying whatever they damned well pleased.

No doubt the Rep-ublicans will throw a similar commercial for their convention. And it's all just more evidence that the two major political parties have long ago ossified. No life remains in them. No growth. No (public) contention, no synthesis, no -- dare I say -- democracy....

Here's a toast to Rev. Al Sharpton for handing the Democrat bosses one speech, then delivering a completely different one from the podium. He may say a lot of smack but at least he didn't allow himself to be censored.

Corporate welfare? What about Political Party Welfare? The Democrats and Republicans don't pay for their pointless political conventions; taxpayers do. Both the Demos and the Repubs got checks for $14.5 million from the Federal Election Commission in order to finance their pointless conventions. Add to that around $25 million in security costs for each hosting city, and that's a bill for around $40 million quietly presented to the taxpayers from each party. Just so they can advertise. And most people don't even pay attention! (DemCon 2004 wasn't exactly the highest rated TV event.) Anyone else have buyer's remorse?

Vote for Cthulhu. Why settle for a lesser evil?