Gareth Keenan Invetigates

A Real John Doe

2009-07-29T13:36:00.000-05:00

First he turned “Jang” into “John.” Then, he talked his family into adding an “e” to their last name. He was concerned, he said, about razzing and wanted to make sure it would be pronounced like the “do” in “tae kwan do” and not the “do” in “hairdo.”

He has been John Doe ever since.

Vintage Coke Cans

2009-06-17T12:40:00.002-05:00

Most of these are still neat.

Worst Yahoo Questions

2009-06-11T12:46:00.001-05:00

"Why are there school?"

David Lynch on Product Placement in Films

2009-06-11T10:54:00.000-05:00

A List of Bad Movies

2009-06-10T22:09:00.002-05:00

Here is a list of the worst movies made from tv shows. Interesting: I didn't know there was a Masters of the Universe movie, and I didn't know Dolph Lundgren starred.

Video Games and Directors

2009-06-04T20:25:00.006-05:00

What person would make a good director for the movie adaptation of Oregon Trail? Terrence Malick, obviously. This is a pretty dead on list.

A Different Angle of Tank Man

2009-06-04T16:13:00.003-05:00

In light of the Tiananmen Square 20th anniversary (and since I'm traveling to China in July), I found this story interesting

Keyboards

2009-06-03T17:13:00.004-05:00

Where are You?

2009-05-31T22:32:00.002-05:00

The internet knows!

At Night, on a Ship

2009-05-30T22:20:00.003-05:00

This whole video just looks great.

Alien looking caterpillars

2009-05-28T19:50:00.002-05:00

Shamelessly taken from digg

Frank Lloyd Wright in LEGO form

2009-05-21T13:30:00.001-05:00

Here

Steroids

2009-05-19T22:23:00.002-05:00

Are steroids so bad? A lively question that people (myself included) love bloviating about.

MC Hammer

2009-05-18T22:57:00.005-05:00

Athletes who went broke, or at least spent most of their money.

Conservative Movement

2009-05-13T21:06:00.005-05:00

I am a big fan of Richard Posner, the Chief Judge on the 7th Circuit in Chicago. He's prolific and has a sharp mind. He wrote an interesting column about the rise and current confusion in the chambers of conservatism.

"By the end of the Clinton administration, I was content to celebrate the triumph of conservatism as I understood it, and had no desire for other than incremental changes in the economic and social structure of the United States. I saw no need for the estate tax to be abolished, marginal personal-income tax rates further reduced, the government shrunk, pragmatism in constitutional law jettisoned in favor of "originalism," the rights of gun owners enlarged, our military posture strengthened, the rise of homosexual rights resisted, or the role of religion in the public sphere expanded. All these became causes embraced by the new conservatism that crested with the reelection of Bush in 2004."

"The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation."

Another example of Posner's writing from the case of U.S. v. 1990 Toyota 4RUnner:

"Taking away [drug dealers'] cars, boats, and planes, like taking away their stash house and guns, is bound to cramp their style. . . . All this is not to say that the statute requires the automatic forefeiture of every drug dealer's car. The car must be used in his business to come within the statute's scope. If he just uses it to haul groceries he is not using it to facilitate transportation, sale, etc. of drugs. It is true that if he didn't eat he would be too weak to do drug deals, so that, by "facilitating" his eating, the car in which he buys groceries could be said to facilitate his drug dealing. . . . But the reach of a statute is rarely coextensive with its rationale."

Spaghetti

2009-05-11T23:10:00.004-05:00

Justice Scalia loves wry humor and Jack Bauer.

A recent talk he gave at American University touched on several topics. Regarding his law clerks being from top ranked schools: "They admit the best and the brightest, and they may not teach very well, but you can’t make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse."

Directions

2009-05-07T13:03:00.003-05:00

I'm feeling conflicted about this blog's content after reading David Simon's testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee about the future of newspapers. Here's a quote:

"The internet is a marvelous tool and clearly it is the informational delivery system of our future, but thus far it does not deliver must first-generation reporting. Instead, it leeches that reporting from mainstream news publications, whereupon aggregating websites and bloggers contribute little more than repetition, commentary and froth. Meanwhile, readers acquire news from the aggregators and abandon its point of origin--namely the newspapers themselves."

I think Simon may be speaking too generally in the last sentence. The point of origin hasn't entirely been abandoned through blogs--most blogs that provide news commentary link directly to the article and the website. That, in turn, leads to potentially greater exposure for the original reporter and subsequent ad revenue for the company. On the other hand, by cherry picking news stories first hand through a blog, potential readers do limit their exposure from the rest of what the original source has to offer.

The key issue, maybe, is whether a blog directly links and gives credit to the original news source, as opposed to copying/pasting the story without directing the reader off the blog and to, say, the Sacramento Bee or the St. Louis Post Dispatch. If the bloggers give credit to the original, the newspapers (and Simon) may find that a blogger's work is actually an asset by increasing readership.

Overall, Simon's testimony speaks positively of the internet, and he doesn't blame the internet for the newspaper's readership problems. I say that because I don't want to be accused of cherry picking what he said, when his real anger is directed at newspapers and not bloggers.

Retiring from the Supreme Court

2009-05-01T15:46:00.003-05:00

I liked the conciseness of Justice Souter's letter he sent to Obama this morning announcing his retirement. I hope I can announce my retirement one day through the authority of the United States Code.

Japan Pays Foreign Workers to Leave

2009-04-22T22:21:00.004-05:00

Japan is offering its foreign born Latin American workers with Japanese heritage a plane ticket home and a stipend to leave and never come back for employment. I don't think this is a smart thing to do, and it certainly doesn't look very nice. Unemployment is low at 4.4%. A huge swath of the population is nearing retirement. People aren't reproducing.

It appears that the country is uncomfortable with the idea that foreign workers are likely an inevitable part of their future. The article is overly sentimental and reads more like an editorial, but even reading between the quotes and the photos, the idea is probably misguided.

Premium Tickets

2009-04-22T07:27:00.003-05:00

Looks like the Yankees and Mets are concerned about empty seats at the new ballparks. This looks bad for the teams. It's also clear they're losing out on lots of cash.

The comments to the article struck me--they're spiteful, angry. Most of these empty premium seats cost thousands of dollars. This is apparently representative of how out of touch major league baseball is with normal sports fans. But aren't tickets to Cubs and Red Sox games expensive too? Perhaps people are mad because the executives slapped a price on new seats and no one has really been able to determine the real value of them yet.

I have not understood the national push to build new baseball stadiums: Milwaukee, San Francisco, Cardinals, Yankees, Mets, many more. The construction costs are truly incredible. Attendance goes up for a while, and then when the team doesn't perform, people stop showing up. It's probably for the city's benefit; a new stadium is something they can advertise to the rest of the world. It impresses tourists. Kansas City has remodeled their stadium again this year, and I can't see why else it would.

The Best Restaurants in the World

2009-04-21T16:04:00.004-05:00

What would you pay for a plate of food? I personally love food and don't mind paying a lot for really good food. "A lot" is relative, however. For me, a really fancy Friday dinner in St. Louis is 25 dollars a person. That's at least a plate of decent sushi. No drinks.

But those numbers are a pittance compared to what's out there. In what could be one of the more pretentious lists on the internet, I present the 50 best restaurants in the world.

The names--I love the names. Forget about the foreign ones, they mean nothing to me. But in the US: #41 is "Daniel." 27 is "Masa." The 31st best restaurant in the world is "Momofuku Ssam Bar."

I have seen one of these: The French Laundry in Napa. Unfortunately, it has dropped 7 spots on the list, down to 12. When I moved to Davis, a friend told me I had to go. I'd never heard of it. She said the chef was... the name eludes me now. Thomas something. One night I seriously considered going, and I was ready to call them before deciding to check the menu online. I didn't go through with the call when I saw it was at least 250 per person and required 3 months notice.

The French Laundry. Why laundry? Does that mean something other than clothes you wash and dry? What does laundry even mean.

What do you want to be?

2009-04-13T22:19:00.003-05:00

Since a job in finance has suddenly becomes less prestigious and less valuable, people are wondering what kind of jobs smart kids will want now. We might be discussing this too early--as evidence of the shift that's underway, the article weakly notes that computer science 101 enrollment is up at Stanford--but there's some interesting observations here. When you're at the top of the socio-economic chain, there's few monetary or mental restrictions on what you can do. It appears that, at this level, money and prestige matter, but this has apparently been giving way to public interest work. Overall, though, the sciences probably hold the key to future career fulfillment. But will the sciences be prestigious enough? There's no longer the Soviet threat that drove many students to the field during the Cold War. And the sciences certainly don't carry the luster of Wall Street.

Wall Street's replacement?

Animation and Money

2009-04-06T19:41:00.004-05:00

Looks like Pixar is treading into territory that's a bit too weird for investors and toy manufacturers. The heroes in their latest movie, "Up," are an old man and an overweight child. This doesn't make for easy marketing.

People are nervous because the last two Pixar movies were also difficult to market, and they didn't do well at the box office, relatively speaking. In fact, Pixar is telling seemingly stranger and less mainstream stories with each film. (Rat cooking story to robot wandering around polluted planet story to the current story about a guy traveling to South America in his airbone, balloon-supported house.) This is a problem when the films cost 175 million and take years to create and carry the Disney name.

The alternative, I suppose, is something like Ice Age or Madagascar or Kung Fu Panda or Monsters v. Aliens--films with a healthy dose of slapstick and pop culture references that seem to garner a good portion of their large audience due to people mistakenly thinking Pixar made those movies.

But "Up" may be the last scrappy Pixar film for several years. Toy Story 3 is due in 2010, which will be followed by Cars 2.

New Movies

2009-04-05T21:28:00.008-05:00

I saw the movie "Adventureland" this weekend. I didn't know much about it going in except that it had good reviews and the lead actor was excellent in The Squid and the Whale. I ended up liking it quite a bit. Sort of like Dazed and Confused, but more comedic. Not as observationally sharp, but it will likely end up in a top 10 email that I'll circulate at the end of the year. It had great music. It used The Cure to excellent effect.

However, it did poorly at the box office, and it will likely be making its way to DVD soon. It did not do poorly, however, because of tough economic times. How can I be so sure? Because Vin Diesel and Paul Walker steamrolled through a billion theaters and cashed in nearly 75 million for "Fast and Furious."

This, friends, is extraordinary. For a long time, I have been predicting Diesel's career was sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and it wasn't coming back. However, Mr. Diesel has proven me wrong, showing the world he is still all kinds of charming.

One need only compare the success of Fast and Furious with the previous film from the franchise, Tokyo Drift, to understand how mighty Diesel's achievement really is. Tokyo Drift made about 24 million in its opening weekend, but went on to gross 10 million less than Fast and Furious made just this past weekend. Amazing. But maybe it's not all Vin Diesel. Paul Walker was absent in Tokyo Drift, and he was back for this outing. Perhaps they must come as a pair to create box office magic.

In any event, I am eagerly awaiting Diesel's next film, "Rockfish," due in 2010. According to imbd's Balderdash-like description: "A man on an alien planet quests to catch an elusive giant fish."

Cassette Tape Art

2009-04-04T17:22:00.011-05:00

Look what someone did with the reels from cassette tapes.

I was pretty young when cassettes were on their way out. Nevertheless, I had some experience with them. On road trips I'd sometimes rewind a Genesis or Fine Young Cannibals tape for my parents. My brother also owned a Talkboy, like from Home Alone.

Cassettes were the worst. If you played them in subpar equipment, your tape could get "eaten." Handling the cases was confusing---the tape is in but why won't it shut?---and they contained lots of small plastic pieces that broke easily. Worst of all, if you really wanted to hear that one song over and over that pumped you up, you had to rewind---STOP--rewind---STOP---fast forward---STOP (too far into the song)---rewind.

I might be exaggerating. They weren't all bad. People swapped music by making mixtapes. Cassettes did start the portable music craze---everyone knew what a Walkman was. Arguably they were better than portable CD players for quite a while, which skipped if you even tapped them. Sure, eventually you could buy players with "10 second ESP" (and later) "40 second ESP," but that wasn't long before the ipod.

I have a fond memory buying my first (and only) portable CD player on New Year's Day. It must have been 1999. Immediately I went home and sat down and listened to Bush on my couch with the flimsy, hair-snagging Sony headphones that came with it. You may wonder how that sounded any better than listening to it on a stereo. It didn't. But it was handy when I came around to Limp Bizkit and all those types when I started high school. I didn't want that to blare through the house.

This was the one

There really was something great about listening through headphones with no one else to hear. You had a listening booth. Play it blaring loud--who cares. There wasn't inhibition. You could try a lot of different sounds and feel out a lot of different things. And since you could only play one disc at a time, you had to stick it out with what was playing. You couldn't skip around as easily as you can today, so sometimes you would tough out the weak spots on an album and actually find those songs were worthwhile.

Fire

2009-04-02T12:37:00.000-05:00

I'm curious to see a video of this.

Albums to play from start to finish

2009-04-01T20:32:00.004-05:00

The Onion's AV Club devised a list of 25 albums you should hear from start to finish. Many I haven't heard of, but I do have a few opinions. I really like Nebraska--excellent Springsteen album; the best. I have never cared much for The Wall, and the Flaming Lips have, in my opinion, made better albums than Zaireeka. I'm intrigued by their Tom Waits pick.

What would I have added? Entroducing (DJ Shadow) is a long standing favorite of mine. Zeppelin II, Sgt. Peppers, Revolver, Funeral (Arcade Fire), Freewheelin Bob Dylan, Downward Spiral (Nine Inch Nails), Nevermind, Automatic for the People (REM), Mezzanine (Massive Attack), Heartbreaker (Ryan Adams), What's the Story Morning Glory. Really, it's hard to pick. Some albums I like because I like all the songs. Some are impressive for their cohesiveness. I think AV Club is picking albums that have a striking mood and theme that spans all the songs.

100 Great Movies

2009-03-31T18:50:00.005-05:00

Or "100 movies you should see before you die." Thanks to Branden for the link. Obviously there's lots of room for debate, as evidenced by the nearly 3000 comments that appeared on the story today. It's certainly an American dominated list, but this is yahoo movies, not Sight & Sound. I think the picks are pretty good overall.

Prohibition

2009-03-25T14:13:00.003-05:00

With Hilary Clinton's arrival in Mexico City to discuss, among other things, the illicit drug trade, there's been more articles popping up akin to The Economist's several weeks ago. One that intrigued me was Jeffrey Miron's concise piece on cnn.com. I remember an episode of The Wire where D'Angelo (I think) wonders aloud why his job carries with it so much violence. One answer, perhaps:

"Prohibition creates violence because it drives the drug market underground. This means buyers and sellers cannot resolve their disputes with lawsuits, arbitration or advertising, so they resort to violence instead. . . . Violence results from policies that create black markets, not from the characteristics of the good or activity in question."

Art by means of a CT scan

2009-03-23T22:39:00.007-05:00

In this link, you can see the results of an artistically inclined medical student using medical imaging to scan common cultural objects like chicken nuggets, iphones, and barbies.

His comments on each item show a person who expresses a lot of wonder toward seemingly trivial things.

Sugar vs. High Fructose Corn Syrup

2009-03-21T12:09:00.003-05:00

I'm sure you've been to a social gathering in the last few months and had your local Wal-Mart hating friend discuss the apocalyptic consequences of consuming high fructose corn syrup. If you've ever asked why the stuff is so bad, you might have been left with a blank stare. "Well, it's not natural."

The alternative to high fructose corn syrups, is, of course, sugar. Is this any better for you than the sweet, sweet syrup? Does that seem like a ridiculous question: that one is "better" than the other?

Apparently it is not ridiculous, as sugar has seen surging popularity over the past couple years. My view is that the recent appeal of sugar is part of the organic and natural foods trend.

In in article today, the Times covers the sugar phenomenon and compares it to high fructose corn syrup.

"Dr. Robert H. Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco Children’s Hospital, said: “The argument about which is better for you, sucrose or HFCS, is garbage. Both are equally bad for your health.”'

HBO miniseries

2009-03-17T16:14:00.003-05:00

Intriguing new HBO miniseries announced, with Sopranos' creator David Chase at the helm.

"The network announced on Monday that Mr. Chase would write and produce an ambitious mini-series that would dramatize the history of Hollywood moviemaking, from the early days of the 20th century to the present day."

"The project is expected to cover each period of Hollywood movies, beginning with silent westerns and comedies, through the golden era of the studio system, to the emergence of auteur film directors in the 1970s, and up to the current mix of studio blockbusters and independent films."

The title, "Ribbon of Dreams," is from Orson Welles: "A film is a ribbon of dreams."

I'm looking forward to see how they portray the 70s era players like Scorsese, Warren Beatty, George Lucas, Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, etc. I would also like to see some modern day scenes with Michael Bay pitching his crappy films as representations of the modern effects-laden era. I'm also expecting an apperance from Marco Abel in some form or another.

Fancy weapons

2009-03-16T20:43:00.006-05:00

Not a week goes by where some newspaper/website/science magazine starts foaming at the mouth over military robotics. I feel like people have been talking about this for years, and we haven't really seen any big results. I've been led to believe that we should have these sorts of things out in Iraq by now.

If we don't have that sort of stuff, what do we have? Drones, apparently.

There's an article about them here. Why are drones intriguing amid all the noise about robots? For one, they are actually operating in the field. They appear to be successful, and the military wants more.

Pilots in trailers in the western United States control the drones through remote control and video. The drones survey insurgent sites, primarily in Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal regions, and when they see something dangerous, either the drones attack or the Pentagon uses the intel to implement a bigger surgical strike.

"Some pilots said it can be hard to transition from being a computer-screen warrior to dinner at home or their children’s soccer games."

Big rip offs

2009-03-15T22:03:00.006-05:00

What kind of stuff can you buy that's overpriced? Lots. Scientology counseling, Monster video cables, LSAT prep classes (MCAT prep classes), a shade of gray on matte paper at an art auction, Taco Bell fiesta bowls, organic deoderant. Walnuts.

But no one really needs those things. However, there is a particular overpriced item that most readers acquired around the age of 15 or 16 that was basically a necessity: the TI-83 Plus. Or the TI-86. Or the TI-89 for supernerds who already knew how to do algebra on their own.

For all those out there who are investing your time in various liberal causes, I recommend you focus your energy at Texas Instruments and their crazy prices. The company released the TI-83 Plus in 1999. The device has 512k of flash memory, a 96x64 monochrome screen, and a processor that runs at 6 mhz. It's equivalent to, say, a shrunken computer from the mid 1980s. But its price, even on Amazon, is $97.99.

Why is this not thirty dollars? Twenty? It appears to be subject to the same laws of economic illogic as college textbooks. That is, make the product appear to be a necessity for all students who have the slightest desire to succeed.

When you sign up for a class, whether it's in high school or college, it takes a while before you discover how to get a good grade while doing the least amount of work possible. So you always work too hard for the first test, and after a while, you get a sense of what's really expected to you. Since those first few weeks are filled with uncertainty, it's only natural to buy all the required textbooks, or, in the case of high school math, the fancy calculator, the TI-83 Plus.

What are the consequences if you don't have the big textbook or the fancy calculator? In hindsight, of course, there are no real consequences. But try telling that to a 15 year old student (or his mother/father) who has just started advanced algebra with John Graff. Fear of failure and confusion will drive the purchase.

In any event, once the student sees his peers playing tic-tac-toe or space invaders or hears rumors about X-rated sex games, he won't be able to resist.

Drug Wars Part II

2009-03-09T23:01:00.005-05:00

The cover story on The Economist this week is "How to Stop the Drug Wars."

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, they argue that the policy of prohibition on most drugs continues to be a failure. In other words, gangsterism thrives, violence overruns weak states, and addiction levels in developed countries hold steady despite decades of international effort to curb the drug problem. As a solution, they propose legalization.

In another section of the magazine, they discuss attempts to curb supply and demand in Mexico; the cocaine business; enforcement; and drug education in America.

I worry that legalization would not entirely stop the gangsterism. Why? Obviously, if Europe, for example, legalized most drugs, other major markets (the United States) would still be ripe for smuggling. Devising an international legal consensus on the issue would be nearly impossible. And even in a fairy tale world where a consensus would be possible, I worry that regulated drugs would be expensive enough that a black market would still thrive. Prostitiuion and drugs in the Netherlands are mostly legal, but that doesn't mean everyone wants to pay the high regulated price for those items. Alternatives abound.

Robot fights

2009-03-07T10:27:00.001-06:00

Friday night with some cool dudes in Japan

Read something while you should be doing work

2009-03-06T21:41:00.003-06:00

If you're bored with a job at the office and worry that someone important might be watching your screen, try this site.

Dead Technology

2009-03-06T10:30:00.004-06:00

Here are some fun advertisements of dead technology from long ago. Some were successful for a while: portable CD players, Walkmen, huge televisions, and the Polaroid camera. Others failed big time: HD-DVD, Betamax, Laserdisc, Neo Geo, Minidisc.

HD-DVD victimized me. I bought one because of Planet Earth in summer 2007, and the format effectively died within a year. Betamax fleeced my parents in the 1980s. I remember thinking Minidisc was worthless, so I never bought into that. Laserdisc was crazy expensive, but by 2007 the format had become famous in geek circles for having the only digital edition of the original Star Wars trilogy. (At that point, the only DVD edition of Star Wars was the terrible "Special Edition.")

Speaking of Neo Geo, it's worth noting other videogame failures: the Panasonic 3DO, the Atari Jaguar, the Sega CD, and (arguably) the Sega Dreamcast. And don't forget Nintendo's Virtual Boy.

What sports records cannot be broken

2009-03-04T07:19:00.005-06:00

Interesting article about that here. There's a broad consensus that DiMaggio's hitting streak can't be broken. Some of my favorite sports records involve Wayne Gretzky. Only one player in NHL history has accumulated more than 200 points in a year: Gretzky did it four times. Of course, there's the famous statistic that he had more career assists than any player even had points. I don't think any other player has dominated a sport as much as Gretzky. As for baseball, Babe Ruth comes to mind. He was hitting 50-60 home runs a year when the next best guy was hitting only 25. That kind of domination of a sport---being that much better than anyone else---rarely happens.

Baseball records that will never be broken:

Hornsby batting .424

Hack Wilson's 191 RBI

Cy Young's 511 wins (the one record I can say with certainty will never be broken)

I don't know enough about golf to be sure, but it appears that Tiger Woods is on pace to be the best golfer ever. Maybe he already is.

I have said this before, but ESPNs list of top North American athletes was practically made illegitimate by putting Secretariat at 35.

Starring role

2009-03-03T13:10:00.001-06:00

According to the news, the new Woody Allen film stars Larry David.

Drug Wars

2009-02-25T22:26:00.006-06:00

Every few months I see an article in the Times relating to the gruesome drug wars in Mexico. Since 2006, the Calderon administration has stepped up efforts to combat drug gangs, and the results have been mixed. On the one hand, seizures of drugs and weapons have increased, and there's been some high level arrests. On the other hand, police and civilian deaths are sky high. I am continually baffled by the brutality of the whole thing:

Last May, the acting chief of police in Mexico city was assassinated; at that point, there'd already by nearly 1,400 killings as a result of drug violence, and there'd been nearly 4,200 since Calderon took office in 2006. In December, I read an article describing assassinations in hospitals, kidnappings of doctors, shootouts in the ERs.

"Doctors feel particularly vulnerable. When they leave their offices, they say they face the risk of being kidnapped and held for ransom, as about two dozen local physicians have been in the last few years."

"A video taken by a hospital worker revealed a terrifying scene, with two state police officers firing inside the emergency room to protect patients while doctors, nurses and others cowered in closets, under gurneys and wherever else they could find cover."

Today a Times article noted the link between United States gun dealers and Mexican drug gangs:

"The Mexican agents who moved in on a safe house full of drug dealers last May were not prepared for the fire power that greeted them.

When the shooting was over, eight agents were dead. Among the guns the police recovered was an assault rifle traced back across the border to a dingy gun store [in Phoenix] called X-Caliber Guns.

Now, the owner, George Iknadosian, will go on trial on charges he sold hundreds of weapons, mostly AK-47 rifles, to smugglers, knowing they would send them to a drug cartel in the western state of Sinaloa. The guns helped fuel the gang warfare in which more than 6,000 Mexicans died last year."

Iknadosian sold more than 500 AK-47s including a .50 caliber rifle, a particulary powerful looking weapon that can shoot through bulletproof glass:

Being on the law enforcement side of the battle is obviously fraught with danger. In addition to combatting the sophisticated weaponry listed above, one must worry about surly characters like this as well:

Formatting

2009-02-24T10:14:00.003-06:00

I'm slowly learning the tricks of formatting the blog. Making videos and pictures fit in the right way is sort of difficult, so don't be surprised if things look a bit off for a couple days.

Dubai Architecture

2009-02-24T09:26:00.006-06:00

Here's a pictorial overview of Dubai's growth in the last twenty years.

http://www.dubai-architecture.info/DUB-GAL1.htm

I do not know the current condition of the country's finances, but I imagine that the government is not thrilled about the downturn in oil prices or the global economic downturn generally. The information on this site is a little dated (2008), so I am curious whether all these grand projects are still progressing. In any event, I have not heard about any catastrophes like the fire visited upon China's CCTV campus several weeks ago:

Dubai has also had trouble with fleeing debt-ridden foreigners, which also could be hindering expansion. From the NY Times:

"With Dubai’s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai Airport, left by fleeing, debt-ridden foreigners (who could in fact be imprisoned if they failed to pay their bills). Some are said to have maxed-out credit cards inside and notes of apology taped to the windshield."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/12/world/middleeast/12dubai.html?em

Flight of the Conchords

2009-02-24T09:03:00.007-06:00

Jermaine sleeps with an Australian girl:

Explanatory video on the credit crisis

2009-02-23T13:04:00.001-06:00

Thanks to Mark for the link

Recreating Abbey Road

2009-02-23T10:28:00.002-06:00

Residents of Abbey Road don't like The Beatles:

Best of Leon

2009-02-23T08:59:00.002-06:00

I hear a new season is in the works. Perhaps Leon will be back:

Music on demand

2009-02-22T15:39:00.001-06:00

I recently discovered the site www.deezer.com. It allows you to search for artists on demand, load songs from that artist onto a playlist, and listen to them indefinitely. I think you can search for users of deezer and add them as friends. From there, you can apparently share playlists and such. My user name is nin_fragile14. That means you have to register, but it's pretty painless.

Movies of 2008

2009-02-22T13:48:00.001-06:00

I am making a list of movies I saw in 2008. I may have been prompted to do this because the Academy Awards are on tonight. But that is irrelvant. I used to care about the Academy Awards in the same way I used to care if the Royals had a winning record. Now I have come to the conclusion that it does not matter. The Academy is giving a lifetime achievement award to Jerry Lewis for goodness' sake. I'm not saying that in itself makes the show irrelevant, but it sort of does. Also there is lots of crying. And the risk of actors making political statements is quite high, so that scares me away.

Okay, here are movies I saw in 2008.

Cloverfield

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Iron Man

Baby Mama

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Wall-E

The Dark Knight

Tropic Thunder

Pineapple Express

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Slumdog Millionaire

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Revolutionary Road

The Visitor

Here are movies I was interested in but never saw because they failed critically and commercially:

Funny Games

My Blueberry Nights

Blindness

What was my favorite? 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days was the best film, probably. Pineapple Express was the funniest. Revolutionary Road was my favorite movie that was largely disliked by critics. Cloverfield and Indiana Jones were the worst. I don't know which was worse. Probably Indiana Jones because of the monkey scene, which I can't find a picture of.

I liked Revolutionary Road enough to want to read the book. However, people have grabbed up the book in a post-film frenzy, and I can't find it to rent anywhere. I could buy it, but guess what, all the editions right now have a picture from the movie on the cover. You just can't own that edition.

Basically looks like this

Free song that is neat

2009-02-22T10:06:00.000-06:00

Michael Hunter wrote the song "Soviet Connection" as the Grand Theft Auto IV theme music, and it sounds pretty slick. I'm not the only one who thinks so. On Hunter's myspace page, John Williams, the composer, wrote:

'"Soviet Connection" is truly an outstanding piece of composition. The usage of strings is profoundly dramatic and piercing. Your ability is evident and I will keep my eyes on your work. Never cease to produce and you will achieve greatness Mr. Hunter. You have my support.'

It's free on amazon.com right now.

http://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Connection-Theme-GTA-IV/dp/B00189B4XE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&qid=1235318829&sr=8-3