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Quote for 16-Jan-07

17-Jan-2007 • Quote Of The Day • by Ken

John Oliver on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart describing the current situation in Iraq:

I remember some time ago there was a coyote who was achieving remarkable success in the pursuit of a desert fowl. He would have caught that bird, but for one thing. At the last minute, he made a tragic mistake. He looked down. So yes, Jon, perhaps the President has run America off a cliff but what I’m saying now is “everybody, don’t look down”. Whereas people like you, Jon, people like you – all you have to offer is this [holds up sign that says “YIKES!”].

Quote for 15-Jan-07

17-Jan-2007 • Quote Of The Day • by Ken

After excusing Prince’s tardiness to the Golden Globes due to traffic, Hugh Grant continued

It’s very easy to get caught in your car in this town.

Iraq – What To Do, January 2007

12-Jan-2007 • Politics • by Ken

The President is getting slammed for his new plan, announced Wednesday night in his televised address. I can’t believe I am saying this, but I think he might be right about this one.

I was against the Iraq war in the first place, and that’s when I believed their story about WMD. And I have been grinning from ear to ear since the Democrats took the Senate and the House away from the Republicans that were running amok. So why in the hell am I backing Bush on this one?

It seems obvious to me that to begin an immediate withdrawal now would make things worse for the US in the long run. The lack of a solid governing body in place would certainly lead to increased sectarian violence and more influence from outside forces like Iran and Syria and al-Qaeda. We can’t maintain the status quo either though, because we’ll just end up in the same place as if we started immediate withdrawal, but it will take longer.

So, is increasing the number of troops likely to solve the problem? No. But it also isn’t a guaranteed failure either. There is a chance that it might work. Everyone who says it is “too late” is partially correct. It is too late to get it right with the right number of troops at the beginning. But it isn’t too late to give more troops a try. Bush’s new plan of securing an area and sticking around, rather than moving on, does reverse the military’s (Rumsfeld’s) long-running mistake. And I do feel the US has an obligation to do our best to leave a stable Iraq – after all, we broke it so we should fix it.

The definition of winning and losing in Iraq has always been a little confusing to me. I suppose if we had gotten rid of Saddam, destroyed WMD, helped establish a new democratic government, and had our military out within 2 years, maybe that would have been a “win”. But today, winning has been redefined as not losing. Or, more specifically, not losing as badly as we might. We’ve already lost the public relations war – that happened as soon as some knucklehead put an American flag on the Saddam statue. We’ve lost respect and we’ve lost the implicit right to police the world as we see fit. And so far, we are losing Iraq to Islamic Fundamentalism; and considering that Iraq was not a candidate for Islamic Fundamentalism before we arrived (as much as Bush wants to believe it was), that means we are losing a battle of our own making. So, now, winning can only be defined as not losing that too.

Winning in Iraq is now getting out of Iraq without creating a terrorist haven, leaving it only moderately more dysfunctional than it was before. Our odds are not good, but our only chance is to try more troops. As Baker himself has said, we’ll know if that’s working within a few months. Let’s hope that it will.

Quote for 9-Jan-07

10-Jan-2007 • Quote Of The Day • by Ken

Steve Jobs, discussing the new iPhone’s user interface called MultiTouch:

It works like magic, you don’t need a stylus, it’s far more accurate than any touch display that’s every been shipped, it ignores unintended touches (it’s super smart), you can do multi-finger gestures on it, and boy have we patented it!

LCD Display shopping advice

8-Jan-2007 • Technology • by Ken

The way LCD computer displays are being marketed these days makes me crazy. If you believe the hype, any LCD ever produced is automatically better than every CRT every produced and even the bargain basement LCD display is something that you’d be lucky to have in your home – because it is flat and flat is where it’s at. (Sorry, didn’t mean to rhyme.) Hype!! So before you run right out and buy a flat panel to replace that “old, clunky, tube” do yourself a favor and think about the purchase. Here are some things to look for when shopping.

[ continue reading  »» ]

Geostationary Banana Over Texas

8-Jan-2007 • Really? • by Ken

Actually, that headline isn’t misleading at all. That’s exactly what is being proposed at the site with the very accurate URL: geostationarybananaovertexas.com.

Shutterfly, Kodak/Ofoto, Winkflash, and ImageStation

8-Jan-2007 • Technology • by Ken

Back in April 2006, I did a comparison on photo sites and developing services for digital pictures. I did it for my own benefit and then e-mailed the results around to friends and family. That was before the blog. Since the blog seems like the perfect place for stuff like this, I thought I’d post what I had e-mailed around back then. Some things may have changed since I wrote this, but I suspect the basics remain the same. I tried four different sites: Winkflash, KodakGallery (formerly Ofoto), Shutterfly, and ImageStation.

[ continue reading  »» ]

DVD: Miami Vice 2006

5-Jan-2007 • Review • by Ken

Long a fan of Michael Mann and his original TV series, I had to give this movie a shot. I’m glad I did. I don’t know why it didn’t have more success at the box office, although I do have my complaints.

The story is reasonably solid. And while the good guys do have a couple of neat techno gizmos, they end up defeating the bad guys primarily by hard work and smarts. The hostage situation is also grittily realistic – almost too real. Furthermore, I like the fact that the bad guys are pan-national and that Li Gong is upper management in the bad guy biz. Amazing locations for filming, too, including Ciudad del Este in Paraguay.

But the pan-national locales and top-level stakes is one of my complaints. This is, after all, Miami Vice. And yes, I’m sure that lots of the vice crimes in Miami have international origins and connections. But that opening scene in the club seems like a more applicable story for these cops.

And I guess that’s part of my complaint with movie franchises these days. They feel like they need to up the story intensity by having every superhero fight multiple bad guys in one movie or have regional cops taking on international jobs. The story from the first Bad Boys movie with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, for example, would have been a great Miami Vice movie story. Now, if the Miami Vice movie franchise had gone on to make 20 movies and the moviegoer was getting somewhat tired of them cleaning up prostitutes and drugs in Miami, okay, then get a little bigger. But for the first one out of the gate, the story was too much for the title.

Still, the story was good and would have made a good Bond film – better than Casino Royale. Maybe the Broccoli family will wise up and hire Michael Mann to make a Bond film.

The DVD has some good extras on it. The ones about locations was really good. And there was one about how Colin Farrell got duped into believing he was on a real undercover deal.

Rating: 7 (out of 10)

Local news Romney editorial

4-Jan-2007 • Politics • by Ken

The local newspaper conglomerate has a really good editorial on Romney’s tenure. It is factual, unbiased, and remarkably succinct. Definitely worth a read.

Movie: Dreamgirls

29-Dec-2006 • Review • by Ken

I think it is safe to say that Tracy dragged me to see the new Dreamgirls movie. It turned out to be a really entertaining movie with some great music. Great acting all around. And it was great to see Eddie Murphy not making an ass of himself. (Except for Shrek where even though he played Donkey, he was not an ass!)

Rating: 7 (out of 10)

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