Archive for the ‘Entertainment’ Category
Artificial intelligence is dangerous in State, not private, hands
Monday, July 7th, 2008I was reading about the Three Laws of Robotics at Wikipedia, and for anyone who hasn't read any Isaac Asimov, I highly encourage you to start with I, Robot and go all the way through Foundation and Earth. That's 12 books altogether: five robot novels and seven Foundation novels, which ...
Funny, scathing review of Love Guru
Thursday, June 19th, 2008Dana Stevens of Slate magazine pans Mike Myers's latest movie. It sounds like the movie was about as funny as we all expected it to be. This review is probably much funnier than the movie. It's kind of funny: the funnier the review, the worse the movie probably is.
Tyrannicide
Saturday, May 17th, 2008Last night I finished watching the first season of the HBO historical drama Rome, on DVD. It was absolutely fantastic and I highly recommend it to anyone and everyone. The DVD set is worth almost any price they are likely to charge. They only made two seasons and won't make ...
Libertarian lyrics
Saturday, May 10th, 2008I think the Eagles, like most music artists, and particularly their main songwriters, Don Henley and Glenn Frey, have the reputation of being quite liberal. For instance, Don Henley founded the Walden Woods Project, a non-profit effort to buy land in and around Walden Pond to preserve it from development. ...
TANSTAAFSTVARS
Friday, May 9th, 2008BBC News claims, "A free satellite television and radio service backed by the BBC and ITV launches across the UK." I hope even my non-libertarian friends aren't fooled by any government's claim that something is "free"; obviously it is funded by money that was taken at the point of a ...
Even Cartoons Get It
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008Why are you looking at me like that? You act like you haven't seen me in a while or something. This past Sunday, lacking anything to entertain myself, I tuned into an episode of King of the Hill. The fates must have been smiling upon me that day because it turned ...
R.I.P., Arthur C. Clarke
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008The author of Rendezvous With Rama, Childhood's End, The Fountains of Paradise, and 2001: A Space Odyssey and one of the "big three" Grand Masters of science-fiction (Heinlein, Asimov) has died at the age of 90.
Dilbert on nonvoting
Monday, March 10th, 2008I was perusing Francois Tremblay's blag and was delighted to find this post, consisting entirely of a Dilbert comic on nonvoting that Wally Conger posted. (By the way, at first I assumed that whoever first uploaded this comic got it from February 16 (my birthday) of the 2008 Dilbert page-a-day ...
Overlapping fan bases
Monday, January 21st, 2008When I was at the aforementioned midnight showing of Serenity, I couldn't help but think, somewhat smugly but most likely correctly, that there has never been a political cause and a movie or TV show that had fan bases that overlapped as extensively as those of Ron Paul and Firefly. ...
The philosophy of Firefly
Monday, January 21st, 2008The State Theatre in Ann Arbor did a midnight showing of Serenity on Saturday night, so, naturally, I was extremely excited about it and was looking forward to it for two weeks. I went with my girlfriend and several other friends, most of whom are huge Firefly fans. I pick ...