The National Geographic Photo of the Day is absolutely great — your own little dose of National Geographic photography on a stick. I guess this is sort of the natural complement to the Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Population: One
I honest to god am not sure why Below hasn’t gotten more attention. OK, sure, it’s a submarine movie, and we’ve seen one of those this summer. It’s a B movie, clearly. But surely Miramax remembers that David Twohy has directed two B movies so far, and while The Arrival kind of tanked there’s a rumor that Pitch Black did fairly well and launched some bald guy’s career.
Or perhaps they don’t. In any case, a week or so before it opens, they released a trailer. No spoilers in the trailer, although it gives the setup for the movie and makes it clear that it’s a horror flick. I am so much going to see this.
I’ve got to stop doing this; it’s raising my blood pressure.
But where does the Pentagon get off complaining about Iraq sneakily hiding arms before the UN inspectors arrive? I’m sure Iraq is hiding arms, yes; it’s a fairly obvious conclusion. Now. Who’s been holding back UN inspectors? Where’s the delay coming from? Hint: it’s not bloody well the inspectors dragging their feet.
The anonymous TPB, Esq. presents this compelling explanation of the proper interpretation of the word “shall” in New Jersey’s election law. It is compelling because he provides examples to support his argument; take careful note, oh pundits of all stripes. This is why I like most lawblogs.
You know how you can be muddling along in your life, never realizing there’s something missing, and then all of a sudden boom there it is? That one object that will fill the elusive hole in your existence? The object that calls to you, not like siren luring you to disaster, but like an old friend you’re meeting for the first time?
That’s how I feel about this. Now with Mac OS X support.
Gaiman wins! Neil Gaiman’s essentially been suing Todd McFarlane to clarify who owns the rights to Miracleman (who is not from the Spawn universe), along with Angela, Cagliostro, and Medieval Spawn (who are). The jury found for Gaiman and the trial now enters the damage phase, in which the jury decides who gets what as a result of McFarlane’s misconduct.
This is excellent news in that it probably means we’ll see Miracleman reprints. Plus, hey, you gotta cheer for Neil.
daidala is another one of those cursed typographical blogs; lovely stuff, written by a man with a wise enthusiasm for the craft of typography. He points me at Bitstream’s Cambridge Collection. $200 for 200 fonts, none of them spectacular showy display fonts, most of them rather nice: that’s what I call a good deal. And the license is for five users! And it comes with a poster! And a Gill Sans clone in three weights!
Purists keep kvetching about the wild card in major league baseball. The common argument is that the wild card makes pennant races meaningless. I’m sorry, but was I somehow hallucinating when I watched the Red Sox straining to get back into the wild card hunt? Was the race between the Dodgers and the Giants somehow less interesting because it was for the wild card, not for the pennant?
In fact, the wild card increases the opportunity for meaningful races in September, because it is not limited to teams within one division. If the Yankees and the Red Sox are sparring for the pennant, there’s no way the Twins can challenge either of them for that spot. If the Red Sox and the Blue Jays are going for the wild card, the A’s may well be involved — and to me that’s more exciting than watching the A’s sit around 10 games behind Seattle with nothing meaningful to do than play spoiler.
Sure, it didn’t work out that way this year; there were no meaningful wild card chases in the last weekend of the season, and there clearly would have been a meaningful pennant race without the wild card. Let’s not, however, extrapolate endlessly from one season’s example.
In a spate of weakness and nostalgia, I picked up Callahan’s Key earlier this week. (I am riding the bus to work these days, which means I get to read all the good books I haven’t gotten around to yet. But also that I run out of books to read.)
Sum total of information imparted is this: Key West was a great place to live in 1989, and the current owners of the marina at which Travis McGee docked are ignorant idiots. Thanks, Spider!
Normally I’d review the plot, but when one of the characters has the power to be amazingly lucky, there’s not really much point in the narrative. Events occur, and by fortunate coincidence, they’re the right events at the right time. Quel surprise.