Tuesday Tidbits

No essays, just a few quick comments:

• Last night’s 24 redeemed itself just a bit, by making it explicitly clear that the Secretary of Defense is irredeemable scum, and in all likelihood is at least tangentially connected to the whole terrorist plot. I can see the twists coming, but I’ll still keep watching.


• Russian lawmakers decide to solve the problem of anti-Semitism by... outlawing Judaism. Yeah, ’cause it’s the Jews’ fault that they’re being targeted by racist scumbags. (And on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, no less.)


• Bush says, “Hey, about that whole speech thing? I had my fingers crossed. Nyah-nyah.”


• The Academy Award nominations are in... and once again, I’ve managed to see only two of the pictures nominated in the top categories (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Incredibles). At least I’ve seen a few of the pictures on the rest of the list (Shrek 2, Shark Tale, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Spider-Man 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban). Still, a pretty poor performance for a so-called “film expert.”


• After watching Robert Rodriguez’s “Mariachi” trilogy, I’ve come to an uncomfortable conclusion: I’m not really a fan of the man’s work. I appreciate all he’s doing in the world of digital production, but I’m finding way too many problems with his actual movies to praise them to the degree those of us in the indie world are “supposed to.” Still looking forward to Sin City, though.


• Did I ever mention that I have become a fan of the new Battlestar Galactica series? I wasn’t too optimistic about this going in, but after seeing the miniseries (which I’ve since picked up on DVD), I was hooked. And the full series has, so far, done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm. This is what science fiction — or, frankly, any good drama — should be. It’s no wonder that corporate franchise-driven shows like Enterprise are failing so miserably (though, I’ll confess that I’m still watching that as well — and they’ve gotten a bit better this season).


• Thanks to Tom for pointing it out — Macintosh turned 21 yesterday. Happy birthday, little buddy! You’ve sure changed a bit.


• Sometimes, justice is served, as the District of Columbia found out. Sorry, but you can’t just arbitrarily institute a police state and expect to get off scot-free. Now if only this sets a precedent (de facto, if not de jure, as this was just a settlement, not a judicial ruling) for the federal government...


• And finally, I may have learned not to equate them with the set of all “evangelicals,” but there are a shocking number of complete idiots out there. I can understand the notion of there being a “guiding force” behind evolution (though I don’t believe it myself), or that Darwin’s specific attribution of evolution to “natural selection” may not be completely accurate, but to believe — as (apparently) 55 percent of all Americans do — that evolution simply doesn’t exist is rank stupidity.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled interminable rants.