kimmy

That story sounds completely different from Coraline! hmmm... I wonder if we'll get "Sleepy Hollow" Tim Burton, or if we'll get campy showtunes Tim Burton. If it's the former, I'd be interested in seeing Alice done in a scary, surreal style. But if it's the latter I don't think I could sit still for two and a half hours of Danny Elfman "caper" music. -k {"Cue the tubas!" boompa, bompa, boompa, bompa, boompa, bompa, boomp! boompa, bompa, boompa, bompa, boompa, bompa, boomp! boompa, bompa, boompa, bompa, boompa, bompa, boomp!}

In a surreal turn of events, "Big Brother" has deleted copies of George Orwell's 1984 from Kindle e-book reading devices. Customers who purchased the book in e-book format from Amazon.com to read on their Kindle e-book reader device discovered, to their astonishment, that their purchased copies had vanished without a trace. The problem, apparently: Amazon made a mistake regarding regional licenses: they didn't have the right to sell the book (as well as "Animal Farm") in the United States. Upon learning of the mistake, Amazon decided to simply delete the books from their customers' Kindle devices, and-- --wait a minute... they can just go into your own Kindle and delete stuff that you already bought!? Apparently they can, a discovery that has many Kindle customers startled at the lack of security of stuff they've paid for, as well as giving many prospective customers second thoughts about purchasing Kindle units after-all. Apparently, it's technologically possible for them to do so. And, apparently, they're willing to use that power, despite the strong possibility that it appears to violate their own License Agreement. Amazon has apologized profusely, and promises to do better in the future. But how can they win back the trust they've lost in this, and how can they reassure consumers that the same thing won't happen in the future? Overall, it's an incredibly dumb misstep that could do serious harm to a device that had been starting to build some momentum. -k

yeeaaahhh... I don't think there's a lot of "abortion on demand" of 30-week-old fetuses, so I don't think this is exactly the nail in the coffin Shady was hoping for. By 30 weeks the fetus can likely survive premature birth, so it's not terribly surprising that it has memory by this stage. But there's still those photos of happy little fetuses sucking their thumbs and waving to the camera. Stick with those, Shady, they'll get you farther. -k

I was 21 when I joined, and am 26 now! You have watched me grow up before your eyes, changing from a young, idealistic kimlet to a bitter old hag before your very eyes. There were, but Caesar and Eureka have both departed this forum (and probably this mortal coil.) -k

Roads don't turn a profit. The business model for a road is pretty pathetic... you spend millions of dollars to build something that people will use for free, and you have to keep spending money to maintain it. Why bother? What kind of fool would invest in something like that? Air doesn't turn a profit. There's a strong, predictable demand... but the supply side is just this huge glut that makes the stuff completely unsellable. It doesn't belong to anybody, so why not dump exhaust and smoke and waste into the air? If it costs millions of dollars to upgrade the scrubbers on the chimneys at my factory, and there's no reason not to dump waste into the air, how does it make sense for me to spend the money to clean up my emissions? Air costs nothing... is it valueless? August, you've talked in the past about the difficulty of assigning value to things like clean air and roads... things that have collective value, yet no reasonable model for people to profit from providing them. It seems to me that there are other sorts of things that fit that sort of argument as well. The military and justice and law enforcement are obvious examples of situations where there's no way of incorporating a profit motive in a way that corresponds with our fundamental values. Education... some people might argue that education is a service that people should pay for; others would argue that the cost to society of making education a priviledge that people must be able to afford for themselves would be catastrophic. There are things that we believe to be in the public good that we have a difficult time assigning value to because they are of benefit to us as a group in ways that go beyond what can be easily governed by commercial transactions. We have no difficulty accepting this in situations like building roads or maintaining police and military and justice systems, or in government regulation of radio frequency bands. I think the scope of things that fall into this area is broader than that. -k

Tell us what we really need to hear, Mr Canada... how do immigrants factor into this issue? -k

As I said, I already knew it would be about Jews when I saw your name by the post. I clicked because I was interested to see what was going on this time. I had used to think of Israel as an island of sanity in the region. I'm being forced to re-evaluate that opinion with each passing day. And I would agree. -k

I had heard someone describe the animated movie Coraline as a horror movie for children, but I don't really agree. It's not really a horror movie, and I don't think it's a childrens' movie either. At times the movie is quite creepy and some of the images might be disturbing to children. Coraline Jones is an 11 year old from Michigan who has been uprooted and taken to live at the strange, decrepit "Pink Palace" apartments in some countryside location. She has no friends, and her parents are too busy with work to pay her any attention at all. Left to her own devices, she explores the Pink Palace and meets her bizarre neighbors. She also discovers a tiny door, which leads to nothing less than another world... one exactly like her own, but better. Way better. The Pink Palace really is palatial in this other world, and instead of broken down eccentrics, its inhabitants are brilliant and fascinating people. In the other world, Coraline's parents are interesting and attentive. Disturbingly, however... in this other world, everyone's eyes have been replaced by buttons, like on a doll. Everything else about the other world is so nice, however, that Coraline quickly gets over the buttons, and she visits again and again. Soon, her "other mother" invites her to stay in the other world forever. It's a simple enough story, not much different from The Wizard of Oz or The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Child enters magical kingdom of make-believe, learns important life lessons, performs feats of daring, returns to real world with increased appreciation and improved sense of self. Coraline differs in having a more frightening and sinister tone than those films, and by closely paralleling the child's dream world with the real world she wants to escape. Voiced by prolific 15-year old Dakota Fanning, Coraline is a bit of a brat, but she's a good kid at heart. "Enchanting" is a word that kept coming to mind as I watched this movie. The animation is simply amazing. The film was done using stop-motion photography, but this isn't your dad's Claymation stop-motion. The creators used "3-d printing" technology to transform computer models into thousands upon thousands of actual physical objects that were filmed on a soundstage. I can only guess at the reason for creating actual physical models rather than leaving everything inside the digital... but whatever the reasons, the results are spectacular to look at. Coraline was a considerable critical success and a moderate commercial success this year, and I think deservedly so. I quite enjoyed it. -k

Well, anybody who knows Kuzadd's work knew before clicking any of the links that this would be about Jews. And yes, these ultra-orthodox jerkwads sound just as stupid as their Muslim counterparts. -k

The "director's cut" was released on home video this week (my first Blu-Ray disc! It seems oddly fitting to have Dr Manhattan on Blu-Ray.) I take issue with the phrase "director's cut". The theatrical release was the "director's cut". The version I have on disc contains about 25 minutes of extra stuff that Zach Snyder filmed, but cut out to make the movie a more reasonable length for theatrical release (and at two and a half hours, many thought he should have cut more yet.) Watching the uncut version, I felt that for the most part Snyder was very astute in deciding what to cut. An overly long and completely pointless scene has Laurie detained by Dr Manhattan's government handlers. The scene serves no purpose at all, other than to disrupt the flow of the film. Another has Rorschach wandering through the alley pondering Laurie as a possible suspect in his "mask killer" theory... Laurie as a possible suspect is not explored previously or afterward in the film; throwing this scene in seems like a completely red herring in an already involved plot. The only value in using the scene in the film would have been to illustrate the fear and dislike Rorschach holds for women and sex and lust, an aspect of his character that's quite evident in the book but rather unnecessary to the movie. A lot of the material cut from the movie consists of alternate reality newscasts, as well as alternate reality politicians and military people discussing nuclear war. Again, completely unnecessary; the movie already paints a pretty convincing picture of a world living in deep fear of nuclear war; the extra material in the uncut version becomes a little tedious. The one scene that Snyder cut that I would have been very tempted to leave in was the murder of Hollis Mason. After I read the book, I wasn't really sure why it was necessary. Did Moore just do it to upset the reader, or was there some more important thematic reason? Mason's death is an unexpected consequence of Dan and Laurie's participation in the prison break, I suppose, but I'm not convinced that Moore intended Mason's death to have direct a cause-effect relationship with the prison break. After seeing the movie, it occurred to me that Hollis Mason and Edward Blake are opposite sides of the same coin, and that the symmetry of their fates is completely intentional. Mason represents the idealism of the Golden Age heroes, just as much as Blake represents everything about the masked vigilantes that wasn't golden at all. Both characters are a bridge between the events of the story and the backstory. The flashbacks of Blake's cruelty and cynicism tie all the characters together in some sense, but so do Mason's reminiscences, particularly in the book where pages of his autobiography provide additional background material. And while the two characters couldn't be more opposite in terms of their outlook and their spirit, they meet the same fate: attacked and beaten to death in their own homes. Or, as Sally put it, "it rains on the just and the unjust alike." -k

That's not what he said at all, unless (as suggested in another thread) you have some capability to read minds that the rest of us lack. What Mr Canada actually said was this: What he's implying is that the media made a big production about this because it was white attackers and a black victim. And, he's right. This is big news only because the attackers are white and the victim was black. Race is played up in situations where whites attack non-whites, and race is not mentioned at all in situations where the victim is white and the attacker is non-white. This is, at its core, a "Man Bites Dog" story. You hadn't thought of it? That surprises me. I suspect all of us have probably thought of it at one point or another. As for playing the "Stormfront" card to shut him up, Strangles beat you to it... Yeah, well, that's what they say at the US Department of Justice, too. plbbbbt! Sure, Mr C is a tool, no question about that. However, it seems to me as if your demand that he provide proof strikes me as more an attempt to shut up a poster you perceive as weak and inept rather than an attempt to advance discussion of the issue. Upon being provided with information to support what he said, your only response is "yeah, well, Mr Canada still sucks", which does not speak well for your intent. -k

Chris Rock? Certainly. -k

Well it just makes sense. After all, "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it ... whose fault is it, the cats or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem." -k

The plural of "toast" is "toast". It is a paradox, a recursive riddle that I am sure will keep you fascinated for hours. -k

And toasters toast toast. -k

Killing one's own daughters is demonstrably in opposition to the goal of preserving one's bloodline. Only an idiot of the highest order would argue otherwise. -k

false and irrelevant. -k

outstanding. -k

The flip side: for every white American who commits a violent crime against black people, there are 7.5 black Americans who commit violent crime against white people. So ... per capita, that would make blacks about 50 times more likely to attack whites than whites are to attack black people. A pretty stunning figure, yes? Before we run ahead and try to start rationalizing it, can we at least agree that that's a remarkable statistic? Does this actually correspond with the public perception? I mean, "Mr Canada" talks about this and people react like he's a retard posting crap from Stormfront... but the truth of the matter is that the statistics back up what he's saying: whites are far more often the victims than the attackers in interracial crime. Yet, saying so provokes an angry reaction from some people. Sure, that makes sense. However, I wouldn't be quick to dismiss the possibility of racial hatred in a factor in crimes where whites are the victims rather than the attackers. Doesn't it make sense that when people believe they've been mistreated, they'd resent the people they believe mistreat them, that they'd take the opportunity to express their anger at their mistreatment? Anecdotally, my experience tells me that there are a lot of non-white people who have a chip on their shoulder and look for an excuse to lash out at whitey. As if the Klan and the Nazis have a monopoly on hate. Of course there are no black Klansmen or black neo-Nazis running around. However, we're both aware that there are black groups advocating hate and violence in the name of race. It takes little effort to find such groups on the web. As I said, far be it from me to stick up for "Mr Canada". I simply wanted to provide some perspective. Someone reading this thread would be under the impression that bands of whites are roaming the street looking for non-whites to beat up. In the US, the stats show that the opposite is much more likely the case, and we Canadians imagine ourselves to be less racist than our American neighbors, don't we? I'd love to see corresponding Canadian statistics, but as I mentioned before, Canadian authorities keep this kind of information top secret. Maintaining statistics about the race of criminals and victims in Canada would hurt peoples' feelings too much. -k

Given the opportunity, I'd be proud to have attempted to defend these girls. Honored, even. With 2 years of boxing and 20 years of judo at my command, I'm confident that I would turn that fat old bastard's face into a crimson mask of anguish. However, protecting someone from murder is about as opposite as it gets to the sort of "honor killing" being discussed. -k

Quote Shakespeare, from his early days with Hallmark: "Roses are red Violets are blue Victims are black Like 2 Live Crew." -k

Well, far be it for me to stick up for Mr Canada, but what he says seems to be true. I found this US Department of Justice report from 1993 that contains some facts and figures. http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/144525.pdf In four-fifths of all violent crimes, the victims and offenders are of the same race Of all single-offender crimes of violence, 80% are intraracial including * 69% where the victim and offender are white * 11% where the victim and offender are black. For the 20% of violent crimes that are interracial * 15% involve white victims and black offenders * 3% involve white victims and other-race offenders * 2% involve black victims and white offenders. (page 23.) Of interracial attacks in the US, 90% of the time the victim was white and the attacker was non-white. Surely that has to be a stinging rebuttal to the theory that whites are the ones going around attacking people of other races. It's a particularly astounding number when one considers the relative populations. Of course, that was 1993. Now that we're in the new Post Racial America, I'm sure there are no interracial crimes of any description. And while I'm sure it will be argued that these are US figures and don't apply to Canada, it must be pointed out that our politically correct police forces don't maintain information about the races of attackers and victims, and so providing equivalent figures for Canada is impossible. -k

I think the relevant point is that attempting to equate the "honorable" duels of swordsmen or gunfighters of days gone by with fathers killing teenaged girls is clearly moronic. Someone attempting to create such an analogy to suggest that honor-killings are a long-standing part of western civilization is clearly suffering from mental impairment of the most severe kind. How can one even address such stupidity? The only rational response to that comment is pure, blinding hatred. -k

Immigrants don't come to Canada to settle the wide open spaces anymore. That hasn't happened for at least 50 years. Immigrants come to Canada to live in the same ethnic enclaves in Canada's biggest cities where thousands of their countrymen already reside. -k

oh, boo hoo. Kimmy stopped the lulz by rudely attempting to discuss some of the drivel being posted. I feel terrible to have ruined your ice-floe fun, but since you think it's such a hilarious idea, maybe you could write a sit-com about it. Maybe the CBC would air it. -k