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Third of Americans Say Evidence Has Supported Darwin's Evolution Theory Sadly, I have no comment but to shake my head in sorrowful disbelief (or some such over-the-top expression of my incredulity.)

I often say I don't understand studio marketing departments. It's usually after I've seen a movie on DVD that tanked at the box office, only to find that, not only is it a pretty good film, but it's also nothing like the film I expected from the trailers. ( Dead Presidents and The Order are two films that immediately come to mind in this category.) It's the slavish devotion to the opening weekend box-office receipts that apparently drives this marketing technique… the theory that it's better to get a bunch of bodies into the seats opening weekend, even if they're going to hate the movie they didn't want to see, rather than have a modest opening and let the people that might be interested find out about the film. But, as I blogged the other day, I couldn't really buy into the idea that ABC had decided on the Desperate Housewives opening, despite knowing that complaints were likely. I didn't see the point in stirring up controversy to get rat

My first reaction to the ridiculous uproar over the Desperate Housewives opening to this week's Monday Night Football was, "oh god, the morons are at it again." Don't get me wrong, I still think the Coalition of Assholes Determined to Inflict Their Morality on Others (CADITMO, for short) are knee-jerk reactionaries best relegated to the fringe of public opinion. And I think the FCC is WAY too inclined to listen to said a-holes, but that's kind of beside the point. (There's an interesting article on this guy's blog showing that the last round of big fines doled out to Fox for Married by America were generated by a grand total of… 23 complaints, 20 of which were simply copies of a form letter complaint. So much for the millions of people who watched that show—admittedly, probably to their great detriment—and weren't offended.) But I started thinking about it and realized that, much as I disagree with this whole mess (it was the lead freaking story o

Don't get me wrong… I don't think Colin Powell's going to go down in the history books as a great statesman, or even an adequate Secretary of State. (I don't think that's entirely his fault, as it's been pretty obvious that no one in the Bush administration's been particularly interested in his point of view on, well the State. But then, maybe that IS his fault, as he certainly doesn't seem to have done much to assert his point of view. He's been a very good soldier , but not much of a leader.) But his has been the only voice in the Bush administration that seemed to think that diplomacy had any value and that cooperation with other nations (and even—mock shudder here—the UN!) wasn't a bad idea. Now he's gone and we get Condoleezza Rice. Look out world, diplomacy has no place at the table now! Meanwhile, we get quotes like this from his son over in the FCC: " I still am having fun . There are still things that are really significant

Ok, so I recognize that I now live in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood and that Jesus (pronounced semi-phonetically Hey, Zeus!) is a common Hispanic name. So I wasn't terribly surprised to see on the big display at a local car dealership that their salesman of the month was Jesus Maldonado (or something like that… last name changed to protect the innocent and because I can't remember it exactly). But I had to laugh when the sign changed to the next screen and, sure enough, it said: "Congrats Jesus!" 'Cause really, how often DO we give Jesus his props like that, you know?

Ok, I'm really looking forward to the new Batman movie, Batman Begins . I like Christopher Nolan, I think Christian Bale's a great choice for Batman and it's got a great cast. Having said that, the pics of the new Batmobile leave me woefully unimpressed… Batmobile front view Batmobile rear view Call me a purist (as well as a comic geek, nerd or whatever mildly-deprecating term you may choose to describe my affinity for the Batman) but what the hell is up with this Batmobile? It looks like a stripped-down Hummer or something. Shouldn't the Batmobile somehow tie in to the whole "bat" motif? I know every version I've ever seen has. If this is some indication of the way they're reimagining the Batman universe, I'm suddenly worried.

Just this week, I discovered blogdex , a "research project of the MIT Media Laboratory tracking the diffusion of information through the weblog community", as they so blithely put it. It's an interesting site, as it tracks the most "popular" blogs of the day, based on the links to those blogs (kind of like the Google method, as I understand it). As should surprise no one, election fallout is high on the list right now. My favorites right now are these two sites, in heated competition for the most buzz… Sorry Everybody -- How Can We Make It Up To You? and We're Not Sorry These are both photo-based sites, pictures of people with signs either apologizing for the results of the election, or stating that "we're NOT sorry" about said results. Not surprisingly (to me), the "we're not sorry" crowd tends toward the "f you!" attitude, trumpeting the themes of freedom & democracy and the idea that voting

I had a couple of hours to kill the other day while I was waiting for Dani to get off work and figured I'd go catch a movie. Turns out that I'd just missed showings for films I really wanted to see and was left with the choice of killing time at Best Buy/Frys/Barnes & Noble (and I've got MORE than enough books, games & DVDs to occupy my time already) or go see something not necessarily on my "must see" list. So I ended up seeing Birth . I like Nicole Kidman (especially in recent films) and figured that, while it sounds kinda creepy, there's the possibility it could be good, or at least interesting. Well, interesting it was. And creepy in spades. Just not in a terribly good way. The interesting part was the director's style. Jonathan Glazer almost single-handedly gives new meaning to the term "leisurely". Long, slow tracking shots, leisurely scenes of minimalist conversation… it's like he set out to make the antithesis to t

I had to start there, simple because it'll start my more conservative friends foaming at the mouth. 4 years ago, it was Florida, hanging chad and misleading ballots. Whatever. This year, it's Ohio and electronic voting machines with no paper trails… Kerry Won By Greg Palast TomPaine.com I'll go ahead and say it now (and attempt to beat you guys to the punch). Whatever. It doesn't matter that the polls showed Kerry winning in key states, it doesn't matter that votes haven't been counted, it doesn't matter that the election's been stolen once again… even if you believe all these things are true, it doesn't matter. We're tired, no one wants to hear it and I sincerely doubt that any legitimate challenges will come out of these allegations. Bush is President for 4 more years and those of us bothered by that fact are going to have to get over it and move on. What DOES matter, and is vital to understand, is that this is not a partis

A Blue City (Disconsolate, Even) Bewildered by a Red America By Joseph Berger The New York Times Of course, some of their comments sound damn elitist, even to me (but then, they're well aware that they're being elitist, so I guess that counts for something). And, of course, they come off as self-involved and self-important, but then, they're New Yorkers… it's kind of redundant to accuse a New Yorker of being self-involved. But that whole "out of step with the rest of the country" feeling? I'm right there with them on that.

But a couple of interesting editorials from today's New York Times. Living Poor, Voting Rich This one takes a pretty good look at what went wrong and why Democrats keep losing "the heartland". Waiting for a President And this one, sadly, makes some really good points about what we need from our President now (and makes some pretty good points about both Bush and Kerry). But if this IS what's needed, we're in deep trouble… we've already seen that Bush has neither the ability nor, apparently, any interest in balancing "his enormous self-confidence with a large dose of humility." ( ibid ) It's going to be another long four years.

A couple of election day laughs (at least for some of us)… Since I was discussing the President's intellectual capabilities (or lack thereof) a few days ago, when I saw these last week I had to laugh and then share them: a Kerry/Edwards button: "Bring back complete sentences" (Equally amusing here is that, gramatically speaking, I don't think this IS a complete sentence.) and bumper sticker: "Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot." I haven't seen any funny Bush stickers, but then, we all know Republicans don't have a sense of humor, so that's not a surprise. Sometimes, you just have to laugh at it all, right? (envision the smiley emoticon of your choice here, to convey me smirking at my own wit, as I refuse to use those damn things here!)