If Parents Can't Control Their Kids...

Someone has to...

Family removed from plane after child's temper flares - Boston.com

Too many parents these days have given up on their responsibility to control what are becoming their spoiled offspring. Now if only restaurants, theatres, stores and other "private public accomodations" would take the same laudable action as AirTran...

The President's Healthcare Tax Deduction

...as explained by Steven Colbert...

It's simple. Most people who can't afford health insurance also are too poor to owe taxes, but...if you give them a deduction from the taxes they don't owe, they can use the money they're not getting back from what they haven't given to buy the health care they can't afford.

Children of Men

See Children of Men if you get a chance.



On the surface, the plot's a fairly straghtforward escape/chase action pic, with a less than enthusiastic main character along for the ride, but it's an action pic with an emotional wallop, thanks to the context and the "hero journey" of that character, played perfectly by Clive Owen.

Yes, it's about a dystopian future, but don't let the review reference to it as the "forceful Blade Runner for the 21st Century" fool you. Yes, it's sci-fi in terms of storytelling set in a possible future, but it's much more real sci-fi than most, thanks to the attention to societal detail of what's going on in the background - the context of the surface story.

Even includes a few chuckles along the way, with the action and the tears. The Pink Floyd-inspired view outside the window of the "Ark for the Arts" made me laugh out loud. And the character of the new mother has some of the best tension-breaking lines.

Superb soundtrack as well (for an aging boomer, at least.)

(Spoiler Alert in these parentheses - Got to admit I do get a kick out of movies that kill off major characters early in the game. Keeps you off balance and paying attention. Best kind of "gimmick.")

Belief Tank

From Doonesbury.
 

Primatech Paper Company

Primatech Paper Company - Looking for people with special abilities. There could be more than meets the eye.

A Draft I Can Get Behind

DraftGore.com

If We Leave . . .

From a reader of Andrew Sullivan...

If we leave before he's out of office, the whole of this sorry affair is his. He has no one to blame for his failures. If somebody else comes in and, miracle of miracles, pulls something off, Bush will act as if he loosened the jar that somebody else finally opened. If the next (probably Democratic) administration pulls out, Bush will have succeeded in wiping his sticky booger on them, and his water carriers will take delight in trying to spread the meme that Democrats lost the war.

Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan

Two guys I read and respect a lot are getting into an exchange that should be a good one.

The opening "letter" from atheist Sam to Christian Andrew and links to subsequent responses starts on Beliefnet.com at Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan on Faith, Religious Tolerance, Moderates, Islam, Atheism, Letter to a Christian Nation

Get a First Life

Who needs a Second Life, when the first one is so underutilized by so many.
 

Faces of the "Blogosphere"

For some reason, the guy who put 2000 Bloggers: Links To Popular Bloggers (A-List), Not So Popular Bloggers (C-List), And More Blogs together found me on this relatively unread personal blog of mine, and not my original and longer-lived business-oriented Focused Performance blog.

Hmmm...interesting.
 

45 iPod Cases

Did you know that the click wheel on an iPod is the same size as the hole in a 45rpm record?

These Guys figured that out and made iPod cases out of the old vinyl.

Even weirder, did you know that the early MTV staple, Rock Me Amadeus - by Falco, was available on a 45?

Didn't know that.
 

She Told Them Boy Was Dead

...and she was wrong.

From a NY Daily News article on recently recovered Shawn Hornbeck, titled She told them boy was dead:

Montel Williams' psychic pal Sylvia Browne told the family of missing Shawn Hornbeck he was dead shortly after the Missouri boy vanished...

...Shawn, now 15, was found alive and well last Friday, living just miles away with a man now charhttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifged with snatching the boy when he was 11.

Browne's "vision" of his death caused search teams to redirect their efforts and drew dozens of calls from the public who believed they lived near the woods matching Browne's descriptions.

This is the kind of silliness danger that can result from the belief in the irrational claims of Browne and her ilk. Can't blame the parents for reaching out to any port in a storm, but some ports can be rock strewn and worse than the storm.

Hopefully, this will serve as a lesson learned about the limits evil phoniness (even if self-deluded) of psychics, spiritualists, and others claiming other than natural, rational, evidence-based, and logical skills in such matters.

(James "The Amazing" Randi challenged Browne to a supervised test of her "powers", which she agreed to in September of 2001. She has yet to show up for it.)

(The story on CNN.)
 

Yeah - That's the Ticket

From David Weinberger:

"I'm excited about Obama in 2008. I'm a little more excited about Gore-Obama in 2008."

 

The Older Gentleman

Recently, on a conference call with a DG client - a follow up to our first face-to-face pitch meeting - the client contact, trying to confirm his memory, asked if I were "the older gentleman with the beard."

A milestone in my 56-year-long life being referred to as...

"...the older gentleman..."

At least he called me a gentleman.
 

Max

The Max Headroom Chronicles: H-H-H-Home Page:

"20 Years Later...
and Still 20 Minutes into the Future."

Don't know what made me think of Max Headroom today, but that got me wondering about the parallels in today's media world. Big networks vs providers of user generated content. At least in our universe, the little guys aren't totally under the thumb of the nets. Yet.

For Good People to Do Evil...

From Lawrence Krauss, via RichardDawkins.net:

"The physicist Steven Weinberg, of the University of Texas at Austin, has said: 'With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil, but for good people to do evil -- that takes religion.' No doubt some would consider that too extreme a condemnation of religion. But while I recognize my own biases, as both an educator and a scientist -- albeit one who has come to better appreciate the significance of faith in everyday life -- I remain convinced that reason must be unfettered by faith if we are to truly educate our children and our students, and if we as a society are to overcome violence committed in the name of religion."

Guitar Solos

How does Carlos Santana show up no higher than #49 on a list of 100 Greatest Guitar Solos?

It Does Seem Absurd

From RAW Data:

"Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd."

Check out the post and the great comments attached.

Death is nothing.

It's just the dying that concerns me.

What I do take seriously is the hope that, when it's my time, I handle it with the kind of rational grace exhibited by RAW.