Saturday, December 27, 2008

Song For Sally



Song For Sally, by Flight of the Conchords

Thursday, December 25, 2008

And then some...

Atrios sez:
50 or so years from now the history dissertations about this time will start being churned out. And those poor students will have to wade through the contemporary press accounts from the 9/11-Iraq war era. I hope their advisers provide them with puke buckets, because they're going to need them.


The future is going to need many many many puke buckets.

Driving one's wife crazy



Even funnier than the wife is the smile on Riccardo Patrese's face.

Agbonlahor

A football story: Villa's gamble pays off as Agbonlahor adds grace to pace.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Happiness

Robert Solomon on Philosophy Talk from 2004.

Maybe my impression is wrong, but the hosts seem pretty dismissive of callers' comments, even though they beg for them (especially if the caller is a woman). Solomon is worth listening to.

WALL-E

I saw WALL-E last night for the first time -- I know, I know, always late to the show -- and I have to say that it is one of the best films that has ever been made, not necessarily the best, but definitely in the top ten. WALL-E manages to capture and present the magic that is cinema. Little touches, like Pong and the Macintosh boot sound, were humorous and endearing.

However what sold me on the movie, and what captivated me, was the movie's implicit dissection of what makes us human, as opposed to intelligent automatons -- it is an argument with two different prongs. On the one hand there is the romance between WALL-E and EVE. And on the other there is the effect that WALL-E has on the humans aboard the AXIOM space ship. It is a subtle and deft treatment of an ages old philosophical question, with an answer that is both illuminating and humanistic. It also lends the movie a greater heft than other Pixar fares, such as the incredibly entertaining Ratatouille or The Incredibles.