Sunday, February 27, 2011

Watson, Oscar and Remo take a ride in my Mustang

- Annual Oscar predictions:
Best Picture: The King's Speech.  A mature movie with great acting and earnest dialog.  Hollywood doesn't make these kind of movies anymore.
Best Director: David Fincher.  Bleh.  Any movie written by Sorkin should be cast aside.  I am fed-up with smug characters quickly talking at each other, instead of to each other.
Best Actor: Colin Firth
Best Actress: Padme Amidala, opps...I mean Natalie Portman.
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale.  Pulling for Geoffrey Rush.  Rush is incapable of delivering a bad line.
Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo.  The most wide-open race of the night.  Anyone could win.


For further predictions, try these two links:
http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20311937_20463415,00.html#20915551
http://www.moviefone.com/oscars-academy-awards/features/oscar-predictions




- Remo Williams reboot.  The original flick felt like a bad TV-movie, but Chiun was one heck of a wicked character.  If they cast Chiun correctly, the remake could be worth watching:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jmullaney/2011/02/09/rebooted-remo-williams-could-be-the-next-indiana-jones-if-hollywood-doesnt-blow-it-again/




- Watson trashed the two human players on Jeopardy.  I watched the whole thing.  I was slightly disappointed with the computer getting fed questions through text messages, and not listening to Alex Trebek's voice.  Seems a little like cheating.  How close are we to a computer that can truly think?
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_machine_age_tM7xPAv4pI4JslK0M1JtxI/0




- History of the Ford Mustang.  Bought a new Mustang a few weeks ago. I have orbited around the Sun almost forty times, and only now am I taking an interest in how an automobile actually works:
http://www.thecarconnection.com/image/100316208_ford-mustang-history




- Are you getting eight hours of continuous sleep each night?  No?  Here's why you should not worry:
http://www.livescience.com/12891-natural-sleep.html




- Alcohol consumption per country:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/02/daily_chart_global_alcohol_consumption




- Ambidextrous people are easier to manipulate than right-handed people.  I doubt this is true.  Oh wait, well maybe it is.  I cannot decide.  I am going back and forth.  What do you think?  I will follow your judgement:
http://io9.com/#!5766480

Sunday, February 06, 2011

The Gipper and Jackie Robinson loved pasta

- The ruins of Detroit.  Certain parts of Detroit literally have become ruins. The government and private industry don't have the funds to rebuild these areas.  Families don't want to live in these areas.  These "ruins" will stay this way for a long, long time:
http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html




- Dumbest reviews of classic movies:
http://www.trutv.com/dumb_as_a_blog/gallery/dumbest-reviews-of-classic-movies.all.html?link=DCF



- Is science-fiction getting more conservative?
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/is-science-fiction-getting-more-conservative/




- Who was worse, Hitler or Stalin?
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/jan/27/hitler-vs-stalin-who-was-worse/




- Jackie Robinson was a Republican.  Very cool:
http://grandoldpartisan.typepad.com/blog/2011/01/jackie-robinson-republican.html




- The case for moving the Super Bowl to a Saturday.  NFL regular season games are mostly played on Sundays.  For numerous reasons, I have always felt the Super Bowl should be on a Saturday:
http://blogs.forbes.com/marketshare/2011/02/03/the-case-for-moving-super-bowl-to-saturday/



- What kind of pasta are you eating?  An exhaustive chart:
http://www.infographicsshowcase.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/pasta-types-rigatoni.jpg




- Five myths about Ronald Reagan:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/04/AR2011020403106.html