Category: Personal

BillLazar.com

…I can feel the spam oozing in over the doorstep already.

I’m reminded of old black and white comedy films showing bureaucrats behind their desks, except without the funny: DARPA chisels little guy out of $1 million race

Didn’t the Russsians learn their lesson under the decades of Soviet regime? Apparently not.

Swearing on the Bible is a carryover from English common law, and the oath-taking of Presidents is aped from the British coronation ritual.

When I read this letter (before seeing Garret’s post) my reaction was perhaps this is something that should be changed. Just because we’ve done something one way up until now hardly means we need to keep doing it. Swearing on the Bible (or the religious text of the person’s choosing, as is the case), the phrase ‘under god’ on currency, even the use of a chaplain to open Senate proceedings, all ought to go as part of a more complete (more perfect?) separation of church and state.

The NY Times is simply taunting me.

Spitzer, New York’s crusading attorney general, has written an outstanding essay for today’s NY Times OpEd page, Regulation Begins at Home, in which he tears a nice chunk out of the Bush Administration. Specifically he attacks the SEC’s settlement with Putnam over their misadventures in mutual funds and the administration’s decision to abandon pending enforcement actions and investigations of Clear Air Act violations. This guy is 44 years old, Princeton undergrad, Harvard Law (married to another Harvard Law grad), and clearly one of the brightest future stars of the Democratic Party if he can sustain the momentum–I absolutely look forward to seeing him take a bigger seat down the road and would recommend he be considered for Attorney General should (when) the Demos unseat Bush next year.

In the ’60s, I Spy was a fun TV show but like far too many films based on similar inspiration, I Spy the movie should never have been made. Eddie Murphy can usually be counted on for a laughs and he does deliver here and Owen Wilson is okay, but director Betty Thomas (yes, the former Hill Street Blues cop) makes everything easy and obvious. She has a track record of doing the same, so no big surprise.

Not recommended

Richard Curtis gives us one of the sweetest movies of recent memory with his meditation on the many aspects of love in Love Actually. This is not a slick, made for Hollywood movie and if you were expecting a love story with Hugh Grant’s Prime Minister falling for Martine McCutcheon’s Natalie, as some of the advertising might lead one to believe, you would be wrong though hopefully not disappointed.

Curtis, who made his directorial debut with this effort, is a veteran screenwriter who has long effective in combining romance and comedy (Bridget Jones’s Diary, Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral for romantic comedies, most of Rowan Atkinson’s oevre for pure comedy) and I think he’s really put it all together for Love Actually. The film is a melange of vignettes on different types of love, elegantly stitched together, and elevated to a lofty whole by an excellent cast. Grant is definitely a personal favorite, as is Emma Thompson playing his (younger?) sister–her Much Ado About Nothing is in my all-time Top 10–married to philandering Alan Rickman.

Love can be wonderful, sweet, endearing, unanticipated but also hard, painful, demanding, disappointing and unrequited, and Curtis covers them all. This is on my Top 5 for the year and I don’t expect that to change.

Definitely recommended

The nice people at the bank which holds the paper on my 4Runner’s loan sent me a letter saying that to celebrate the coming holidays I can skip my December payment. $279 isn’t a huge amount of money but in my situation it surely is helpful. The letter stated that I would be liable for additional interest at the end of my loan, so to be sure I wasn’t getting into something more expensive than it would be worth I called and asked. But according to the rep, the only effect is to move the December 2003 payment to somewhere in early 2008. Seems to me like a four year and a few months interest-free loan and I’ll be taking it. This is not the first time I’ve gotten a good break and good service from Bank One, I need to keep that in mind next time I need a loan or something similar.

Landon Donovan did it again, babies, scoring the golden goal tonight in the 117th minute of the MLS Western Conference finals to lead the Earthquakes to a 3-2 win over Kansas City. Second game in a row that the Quakes had to come from behind and did. I thought the referee wasn’t all there and missed badly on a foul in the box that he didn’t call that would have given San Jose a penalty about two minutes before the winner. But, oh yeah, Landon was the Man!

Interesting insight into the House of Saud’s burgeoning internal battles against a foe they created: Same Tactics, New Target

Darwin Award nominee: The Subway Surfer. Tragic but amazingly stoopid.

Personal Bankruptcy Filings Jump 7.8 Pct.: Go recovery go!

Cult finds ‘eternal youth’ formula: Wonder if only believers will get the treatment. Assuming that this is valid and not a hoax, of course.

Exploding Dog: You know I never used to cry.

Oddly, there has never been a TV series named Police Department.

Yes, FT is back, six full panels this week!

SprintPCS Tower Maps: a handy reference for us subscribers…

Nerdware alert!!!

Though one should always take vendor-sponsored research with a grain of salt, I think that corporations that can deploy reasonably secure WiFi networking to their workspaces will get some significant financial benefits and especially if wireless is used to replace the high cost of wiring new buildings.

Bushinations: When a White House spokesman has a script, he can sure stick to it! Fuck clarity, not to mention truth or fairness.

Uggh!: If you’re country star Wynonna Judd, you don’t want to be arrested without your makeup. Damn!

This article pissed me off. I’ve been thinking about what to write all day but I’m just not finding the right words. Had an email exchange with the writer and her editor but no satisfaction there, what a shock.

Those darn scientists! “New memory device could offer smaller, simpler way to archive data.” Plastic, one gigabyte of information per cubic centimeter.