As I've probably mentioned, good movies and bad movies - for me - have one similar point: I dwell on them. The key difference is with a good movie, I find more reasons to like it. With a bad movie? I find more reasons to dislike it. Guess which one Avatar falls in? So on this sunny Memorial Day, I will pour out my thoughts ( Read more... )

There was also a bunch of sturm and drang over something as pedestrian as the President talking to high school students. This article from Reason.com, The President is Not a Guidance Counselor is pretty typical of the bad reasoning surrounding Obama talking to kids. In particular, what everyone doesn't want to say, I feel, is the obvious: that ( Read more... )

I'm actually physically ill right now, an ear infection that hasn't gone away and the antibiotics haven't kicked it's ass, yet. I'm confident they will, but until they do I've got weird hearing, balance and feel generally poopy ( Read more... )

The Obama administration wants to break up GM. In particular, the administration wants to slash salaries and pensions. Remember, folks, this guy's a Democrat. They're supposed to be the pro-union party. But the Obama administration is specifically targeting health benefits and pensions for "liquidation ( Read more... )

I recently found another absolutely predatory business practice that's arriving on the heels of the mortgage crisis. There's a firm out there called Private National Mortgage Acceptance Company - aka PennyMac. What PennyMac does is buy mortgages from the government at steep discounts - pennies on the dollar - and then presses the homeowners to ( Read more... )

OK, I know science news is full of crazy, but this amuses me. Apparently Dr. Aric Sigman believes that online networking is v. bad for people. Ahem: "[Online social networks], he claims, could increase the risk of health problems as serious as cancer, strokes, heart disease, and dementia ( Read more... )

I found this article about the most serious offenses in the eyes of the Vatican over at Pharyngula and it was so offensively idiotic I had to say something ( Read more... )

The Senate rejected the auto bail-out planAs I've covered recently, the US government has spent more money bailing out the banks in America than we spent in World War II. The fed has given out about six billion in loans, and assumed about six billion in debt . . . much of which will never be recovered. When the fed did this, they made sure to ( Read more... )

I guess it's official that we're in a recession. And have been for over a year, apparently.

I've mentioned before on this journal about the deep frustration that I've felt with economic reporting - that I feel that the idea of honest reporting has somehow vanished. Now they're getting around to saying what people have known for a year - that we' ( Read more... )

Tsar Nicholas and his family have been rehabilitated. By the Russian Supreme Court, no less. Apparently, they were the victims of political oppression ( Read more... )