Tonight’s movie: Osmosis Jones

It’s gross! It’s funny! It’s inside Bill Murray! It’s Osmosis Jones, the latest movie from Peter and Bobby Farrelly (the brothers gave us Me, Myself & Irene, There’s Something About Mary, and Dumb & Dumber). We go for a wild animated ride inside Bill Murray’s insides, led by Chris Rock and David Hyde-Pierce as coppers chasing Lawrence Fishburne’s deadly virus, not to mention William Shatner’s weasly mayor of the City of Frank. Cool but not for the really young.

SciFi Weekly weighs in with their review–only a C+. I’d give it a B+.

It’s a Microsoft world

And we’re just living in it. The Register has a disheartening interview with MS SQL Server VP Gordon Mangione, who points out that (a) Sun and Oracle live and die by each other (which has been pretty true for at least ten years) and (b) SQL Server is beginning to eat up Oracle as Windows gets (arguably) better and Intel-based servers get more powerful. Urggh!

Slashdot has a raging debate on open source databases that may, as with Linux/Apache/etc…, provide an alternative. The debate was prompted by this Interactive Week article.

We will remember

We must remember the millions who died at the hands of the Nazis before and during World War II. The Nizkor Holocaust Educational Resource has extensive resources to help ensure this continues to be so. Amazingly, there are people who’ve gone to great lengths to deny this terrible fact; why do the deny it? “The real purpose of holocaust revisionism is to make National Socialism an acceptable political alternative again.” And that, for sure, can never be allowed!

The right not to be a parent

The New Jersey Supreme Court, in a ruling today, granted a women the right to dispose of frozen embryos that were prepared while she was still married to the man whose sperm is involved. The man involved is a devout Roman Catholic and such a disposition violates his religious beliefs. What I really find most intriguing about the court’s decision is that “the fundamental right of [the woman] not to procreate outweighs [the man’s] right to procreate.” What if the situation were a little different: a couple separate, the woman finds out she is pregnant, and the man does not want to be a father? Can he go to court and force the woman, citing this precedent, to have an abortion? After all, to again quote the ruling, “the woman [would presumably be] capable of having other children, [her] right to procreate is not lost if [she] is denied the opportunity…; whereas if the [baby is bought to term, the man] will be forced to become a biological parent.” Is this another slippery slope?

If this guy shows up at the office, be very worried

C|Net interviewed James F. O’Brien Jr., CEO of Promethean Asset Management. Seems like an interestin guy, except that each of the companies the article mentions as a Promethean investment has made major layoffs or gone out of business. Critics call him a purveyor of toxic loans although he claims to be misunderstood. Either way, I wouldn’t really want to be working at a company that takes money from this outfit.

How much is your brain worth?

Most people are probably cautious when it comes to protecting the muscle inside their skull. Eric Lindros, unquestionably a great hockey player, missed the past season after suffering the sixth concussion of his career. Another one and he could lose, literally, some of his mind. But ESPN is reporting that he still wants to make a comeback and the Flyers (who own his rights) are talking with the Rangers about a trade. I realize Lindros will likely make more than $9 million per year for four to six years with a new contract but is the money really worth the risk?

Other star players have made the other, more difficult choice to retire. Steve Young and Troy Aikman, both of whom would probably have made Lindros-class money, decided to retire rather than risk further damage. Making their decisions a little easier was that both knew they would make the move directly into well-paying TV gigs but I have to wonder if Lindros is prepared to take the consequences.

Need a Sopranos fix?

Yeah, I know HBO began showing the first 39 episodes last night. But I’ve seen all of them at least three times (except for the third season) and I can’t believe we’ll be waiting another 13 months for new shows. Our good friends at Democratic Underground are trying to help fill the void with The Supremos, by The Shifties. Tony’s family is replaced by the US Supreme Court, with Antonin ‘Nino’ Supremo (i.e., Antonin Scalia) as head of the family and Chief Justice Rehquist as the proxy for Uncle Junior. Nino also consults with his attractive brunette psychiatrist Dr. Phlemmi, of course. Good for some laughs.

What is the Democratic Underground? It “was founded on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2001, to protest the illegitimate presidency of George W. Bush and to provide a resource for the exchange and dissemination of liberal and progressive ideas. Since then, DU has become one of the premier left-wing websites on the Internet, publishing original content six days a week, and hosting one of the Web’s most active left-wing discussion boards.”

Another amusing feature on the site is The Top Ten Conservative Idiots, a list that is posted weekly.

Hornby on the Billboard Top Ten

Nick Hornby, author of favs About a Boy and High Fidelity, looked at the gap between aging rock critics and popular taste and cast a critical eye on the Billboard Top Ten (from July 28, 201) for The New Yorker magazine. One might get the impression that Hornby didn’t care for much of the music or the lyrics of Staind, P. Diddy, D12 featuring Eminem, or even Melissa Etheridge but he certainly gives them a fair hearing.

Reason to love the web, part {next}

Check out these No-Effort Online Movies by Chris Coutts. I especially liked “tales for the l33t,” a stick figure version of Romeo and Juliet with dialog rewritten for the chat/ICQ generation. Roxor!

A Tolkien Encyclopedia

J.R.R. Tolkien’s tales of hobbits, elves, and other fantastical creatures have been pop culture mainstays since the 1960s and are finally coming to the big screen beginning in December. Mark Fisher, in a labor of love, is creating a beautiful, detailed Encyclopedia of Arda as possibly the ultimate reference to this masterwork of fantasy.

Related: Ranjit Matthew wrote up his recent effort to set up an intranet using open source software in the guise of Samwise Gamgee working for Frodo Baggins at Hobbitware.com. There is no mention of why Matthew uses this ‘literary’ device nor does it particularly add or detract from the tutorial nature of the article.

And for laughs, the folks behind SevTrek are doing it cartoon fashion featuring Fraudo and Gonedaft the Grey.

I like this word

German is an interesting language and some words “just don’t translate into English. My favorite is weltschmertz, which means “Sorrow or sadness over the present or future evils or woes of the world in general; sentimental pessimism.” Sounds like Maynard Krebs, doesn’t it? Say it out loud, weltschmertz.

Tonight’s movie: Chocolat

The best movies are all about emotion, about evoking an emotional response inside the viewer. Chocolat is all about that. There is a plot, revolving around a chocolate shop in a small French village in 1959, but the movie, nominated for five Academy Awards in 2001, is about pulling happiness straight out of your heart. The beautiful Juliette Binoche stars as the wandering chocolatier, Alfred Molina smolders through his own interior walls as the village count, Judi Dench and Carrie-Ann Moss as a mother and the daughter who can’t forgive her, and, not the least, Johnny Depp as a wandering minstrel. The cinematography by Roger Pratt (Batman, 12 Monkeys, The End of the Affair) is lovely, capturing the wind pushing Binoche, the light at a dinner party, a boat floating on the river. Sophisticated direction by Lasse Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog, Cider House Rules) and script by Robert Nelson Jacobs (Disney’s Dinosaur). A sweet, wonderfil film, watch it.

Yesterday’s book: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Stayed up half the night to finish the fourth Harry Potter novel. Longish but good pacing. Still surprised that I’m enjoying this “children’s series” so much but it is true. Harry’s quidditch playing was getting a bit old so instead she starts off with the Quidditch World Cup with HP as a spectator and Harry’s competition this time around is a test of wizarding skill against (older) students from two foreign wizard schools. You Know Who’s still the baddie behind everything but I have to hand it to Rowling, she’s really got this going good. And there’s even an HP weblog.

Today’s Movie: Once Upon a Time in China

If you like pure Hong Kong cinematic martial arts, Once Upon a Time in China is not to be missed. The video we watched was dubbed in English, which tends to take away from my enjoyment because the voices are so obviously fake and the dialog is so poorly translated. On a DVD I would have had a choice to use subtitles instead but… This is the first of a trilogy where Jet Li plays Wong Fei-hung. Wong is a healer and martial artist in turn of the century China, reacting to the intrusion of Europeans and Americans into China.

Is He the One?

I have someone very special in my life, who loves her privacy, so I don’t generally write about her or our activities together. She did give me permission to mention a test she took today on eMode, Is It Time to Break Up? The resulting analysis was very gushy but so true:

“Do other people say your relationship makes them feel sick? Ignore them–they’re not trying to drop a hint, they’re just jealous. And we don’t blame them–it looks like your relationship is perfect. So why are you wasting your time taking this test, anyway? You should be with your boyfriend, taking advantage of the passion that’s still in full-force.

On a more serious note, the respect and admiration the two of you have for each other makes your relationship a rare find. Not only do you feel a strong romantic connection, but you’re also extremely close friends–a truly wonderful combination. Please accept our sincere congratulations, and go enjoy the love you’ve found!”

To try some of the tests yourself, click here

Bill likes to be read

He has an ego, are you surprised? So he read this WebMoinkey article on Search Engine optimization by Paul Boutin and decided to add some meta tags (keywords, description, and abstract) to the pages on the website. This was easy to do since most pages rely on single function to generate the HTML header–don’t you just love modular coding? The Web Developer’s Virtual Library also has a good tutorial on the topic, with more detail on all the meta tags. Allegedly, using these tags will help this website show up in more search engine result pages and send more people over.

This will get blogged to death

Good thing Slashdot has some powerful servers because this post about Billy Evans is funnier than almost anything emailed to me in the last three years. Of course th post is completely off topic but who really cares?

Update: Apparently this is not a new message but has spanned the globe many times over. It has even been posted to the Urban Legends Reference Pages and that reference says it was collected in 1999. Update via long range sensors