Quick Hits 5/1/08

Via a friend, this is nerdtastic.

Related to yesterday’s Heartland Institute post, another right-wing organization is paying children to “debunk” global warming. There is no “debate”, flat-earthers.

Hmm, look at this: the Rockefellers are pushing ExxonMobil to focus less on quarterly profits (only $11 billion in the last quarter) and more on cleaner energy. Yeah, that’d be nice.

Random Pieces 3/25/08

The Denver Post issued a second editorial regarding the cut in funding for the science building at Auraria in Denver. They even correctly identify the real culprit behind Colorado’s budget woes: “Of course, the larger issue at work is the current tangle of constitutional spending restrictions that make the state budgetary process a convoluted exercise. This is another example of how worthy projects get shoved aside when revenues are projected to dip and mandated spending rules make a mockery of representational government.”

*****

I’m not really into college basketball. College hockey? That’s a different matter. DU, CC and Air Force all made it to the NCAA tournament. The bracket. The action moves to the Pepsi Center in Denver on April 10th and 12th for the Frozen Four.

Two good movies

I watched two movies last week that I would recommend:

I Am Legend - Will Smith is a pretty good actor. This film does an okay job of portraying what might happen if humans were to ‘disappear’. I recently finished reading “The World Without Us” by Alan Weisman. He spent some time talking to a number of experts about this very subject. Not to be too picky, but there were a few things that weren’t taken into account in the movie. Overall though, the movie was good. It moved at a decent pace: not too fast nor too slow. Having heard it was a remake of an earlier film, I’ll have to do some searching and watch the older version - with Charlton Heston!!

The Golden Compass - good fantasy flick. It followed along fairly predictable plot lines. There were elements of numerous other fantasy films, but at this point, it’s hard to come up with something new, right? Anyway, it has an impressive list of cast members. One of my favorites was Sam Elliott. His role as an old western-dressed gun-slinger fits him perfectly. He certainly added an element of levity to the film. I know there was discussion about the book pushing for atheism and the film not including that aspect. I want to read the books and watch the next two films to see how that plays out. I can’t imagine folks actually have that much faith in their own belief system if they think a movie will brainwash viewers. I just wish they’d stop telling the rest of us how to live our lives.

Both films contained CGI, of course. The Golden Compass probably included more of it, but I think it made sense. What was nice was neither movie went overboard using it. It added flavor and some dimensionality that would have been much more difficult to effect using real-world props and such.