Apparently, Yahoo! TM no longer wants to be a domain registrar. I got an e-mail yesterday informing me of a huge price increase on domain renewals (more than 3x what it had been). Since I have three domains registered, I didn’t want to be paying over $100 a year just to register the domains.
So I’m currently in the process of changing my registrar. I’m hoping it won’t cause any interruption in Over A Candle’s status. If so, bear with me.
I have been using Yahoo! less and less for things. This is just one more nail in its coffin, as far as I’m concerned. NameCheap, here I come. (Thanks to uberwald for the recommendation!)
I know I’m never going to be one hundred percent happy with any politician. I’m not a “mainstream voter” (whatever that is), so I’m always going to be annoyed when the politicians play to the mainstream. But this is a bit much…
CHICAGO - Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush’s program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and - in a move sure to cause controversy - support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.
I don’t know if Obama is doing this to burnish his image with more religious voters or if he really believes in this proposal. Either way doesn’t make me happy. If he’s just doing this for political expediency, then I’m both unhappy with his willingness to play this particular game and with the decision to placate religious voters by involving government into the funding of religious programs. And if he really does believe in this, then it simply makes me question his political beliefs.
Government has no business funding religious programs, of any stripe. It’s bad for religion (which may find it’s message constrained), and it’s bad for government (which is and ought to be a secular institution). In the end, our democracy is threatened by government and religion working too closely together. It threatens religious freedom. And it threatens government independence from dogmatic influence.
This was a bad proposal when Bush first put it forward. And it’s worse now that Obama wants to expand it. One hopes Obama would see the error of this decision.
Wesley Clark points out that John McCain’s experience as a fighter pilot and a prisoner of war doesn’t give him any particular credentials for an executive position. It’s true, but it’s not politically correct. (Only Democrats who served should have the value of their service questioned, ala Max Cleland from Georgia.) More importantly, it isn’t relevant. McCain has not made the argument that he should be elected because of his military experience. (Sure, he’d be a fool not to play it up, but he hasn’t made the argument.)
McCain then turns around and attacks Obama for Clark’s comments. Of course, he doesn’t take responsibility for the complete smear campaign against Obama that I have mentioned a couple of times. McCain doesn’t get to have it both ways. If Obama is responsible for his surrogates’ comments, then McCain is responsible for the attacks coming from his supporters. And frankly, if we’re comparing offensiveness of the attacks, McCain is going to come out on the losing end of that discussion.
The most difficult thing for Obama is the position he put himself in by promising to opt in to the public financing system if his opponent did. Now that Obama has the nomination (in all but name) and realizes he’s up against the GOP money-machine, he’s in a bind. The private groups (that have already begun their smear campaign) will spend a ton of money against Obama. And while McCain has had no where near the success of Obama’s money-raising, the GOP still has a significant edge on the Democrats. So if Obama takes public financing, he’s handicapped himself. If he doesn’t take it, he’s reneging on a promise he made earlier in the campaign. Not surprisingly, McCain is hitting him on it.
As well he should. Obama should have thought this through before making the promise. Of course, he didn’t know how successful he would become at raising money when he made the promise. But now he’s at the mercy of a situation in which he put himself.
Will it matter? It’s hard to tell. This sort of behavior (from both candidates) is what jaded me on politics. Obama might alienate his youthful and idealistic supporters. If they become jaded because of broken promises this early in the campaign, he could really find himself in a bad situation. On the other hand, maybe his younger supporters don’t care about a broken public financing system and don’t think the promise (broken or not) is all that important.
It’s shaping up to be an ugly campaign season. So nothing new to report, I guess.
Maybe I’m just in a mood. Maybe I just needed something warm and fuzzy. Maybe I just had my hopes set very high. Maybe. But whatever it is, I think I just saw the best film of the year tonight. It certainly is my favorite film so far (and I’ve seen some very enjoyable films this year).
I’ll say this for Pixar… I don’t think they know how to make a bad movie.
Wall-E has got so much heart and charm that I don’t think I’d want to know the person that wasn’t sucked in by this movie. (If any friends are reading this and didn’t like the movie, just don’t tell me about it. ) This is, for the most part, a very quiet film. Wall-E has a very limited vocabulary (by the end of the movie, I think he’s said about six different words, four of them names). But the animators pay such attention to detail that Wall-E speaks volumes with his face and his body.
The story, in brief, if you’ve somehow managed to miss it, is that humans have abandoned the Earth, leaving it to robots to clean up. Wall-E seems to be the last of the robots cleaning up. He goes about his work, picking out trash that he finds interesting and hanging out with his pet cockroach. It’s a quiet existence until Eve shows up. She’s a probe robot, looking for signs of life on the planet so that humans can return. After a very rocky start, they form the beginnings of a friendship. Just then, Eve is taken back by the ship that dropped her off, and Wall-E goes after her. (Anything more might spoil it bits of the film.)
The robots and the trash that Wall-E compacts are given much greater detail in this film than the humans, both visually and story-wise. Wall-E has a bright-eyed earnestness about him. Eve has to overcome her programming. Even Mo, the cleaning robot, has a wonderful moment when he realizes he can jump the track and clean wherever he needs to. It’s hard not to laugh when Wall-E follows a red light around like a cat chasing a laser pointer. (An analogy I couldn’t help but make while watching the scene.)
As I said, this is a quiet film. There is more dialogue once they get to the humans, but the important communication is generally between robots, where few words are needed. The comparisons to R2-D2 (who also speaks no English, but still says plenty) are apt. As are some of the visual comparisons to E.T. This is a film about mis-matched lovers. Yes there is the backdrop of social commentary about our consumer culture, but that’s not the focus of the story. The focus is on Wall-E and Eve, and that allows the commentary to not seem heavy handed in the slightest. (I must admit, while many critics have noted the irony of a film critiquing consumerism being distributed by a huge conglomerate like Disney, I thought it was more ironic that many of the people in the audience were consuming more calories in pop, popcorn, and candy than they need in an entire day’s worth of nutrition.)
Much of the joy of this film is in the little details. Wall-E picks out his favorite items of trash to save and treasure. Sharing those items with Eve clearly brings him a lot of happiness. And the whole thing is just fun, trying to notice the little things dropped in along the way. (Mac users, for instance, should appreciate Wall-E’s start up sound.)
There are few films I think everyone should see. This is one of them. I loved this movie, without reservation. There have been some good movies this year. But this has already jumped to one of my all-time favorites. See this film.
MPR’s Midmorning program is doing a series of programs based around Howard Fineman’s book The Thirteen American Arguments. Fineman’s thesis is that we are a nation that argues, that that is an essential part of our identity. Midmorning is going to look at a different argument each month until the November election.
Tomorrow they are considering the second chapter from Fineman’s book, “Who is an American?” Questions surrounding immigration have been an ongoing source of consternation and disagreement throughout the history of the United States. I just finished the chapter. The debate we have been having over immigration in recent years is, as Fineman presents it, the latest instantiation of an old argument.
I found the chapter rather light reading. The arguments, on both sides of the issue, seem rather familiar to me. What was new for me is the history of the issue. Fineman does a good job distilling the main themes and points of contention. It’s clear that he doesn’t set out to arrive at an answer to the question, a fact I appreciated. It really is only an introduction to the issue, though, a starting point for the discussion.
I found this argument of little interest. Perhaps that’s because I find the anti-immigration arguments not persuasive at all. Still, it is clearly a debate that has played a role in this election and may yet be an important part of the general election.
James Dobson, during a Focus on the Family broadcast, attacked Barack Obama:
I think [Obama is] deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology.
Keep in mind, this is a man who takes select verses out of Leviticus for his own social engineering purposes while ignore lots of other laws laid down in the Hebrew texts. Talk about a man who distorts the Bible for his own confused theology.
So when I heard this, I just shook my head in disgust, but very little surprise.
But then a colleague informed me of a new website:
This is a site set up by pastors and other Christians in response to Dobson’s comments. They have a statement on their website. It begins thusly:
James Dobson doesn’t speak for me.
He doesn’t speak for me when he uses religion as a wedge to divide;
He doesn’t speak for me when he speaks as the final arbiter on the meaning of the Bible;
James Dobson doesn’t speak for me when he uses the beliefs of others as a line of attack;
He doesn’t speak for me when he denigrates his neighbor’s views when they don’t line up with his;
He doesn’t speak for me when he seeks to confine the values of my faith to two or three issues alone;
What does speak for me is David’s psalm celebrating how good and pleasant it is when we come together in unity;
The site, the statement, and the sentiment behind it, are all encouraging signs. Not for Obama’s election (well, at least that’s not what I’m thinking about here), but for religion itself, and Christianity in particular.
You can read the rest of the statement on the aforementioned site. They also take Dobson’s comments and place them alongside some of Obama’s comments for readers to decide for themselves. There’s not a ton of material there. But it is encouraging to see Evangelicals standing up to their more radical elements.
I had a 9:20 appointment. I was told to get there ten minutes early to fill out paperwork. That seemed odd to me, since I had mailed in a form already. But I usually do what I’m told. So I arrived a bit early.
Check-in was my first clue. Though there were half a dozen people sitting behind the receptionist’s desk (a large circular enclosure, more complex than can be adequately conveyed by the word “desk”), there was a sign instructing me to use the computer terminal to check-in. I was to place my index finger on the scanner and type my name. I did so and then, seeing no other instructions, took a seat.
I cannot remember which I noticed first, the three gaming consoles hooked up on one side of the waiting area or the full-service coffee bar with full-time barrista. I was just amazed. A couple of kids were playing guitar hero. The barrista brought a couple of the receptionists smoothies.
Looking around, I was clearly the oldest patient waiting to be seen, as most of the people there were young enough that their parents had driven them.
After some pictures and x-rays, I was taken into another office. (Apparently, there was no additional paper work for me to fill out.) There were several large flat screen monitors where the pictures and x-rays that had just been taken were displayed (not a pretty sight). I discussed some of the details of my chart with the person identified on her business card as a “Treatment Coordinator.”
She left for a few minutes to go get the doctor, and that’s when I noticed the Nintendo Wii installed into the wall of the office. I was almost tempted to try it, but she returned with the doctor. He made small talk for several minutes and then examined me. He laid out his recommendations. Then the treatment coordinator laid out the price and payment options.
I told her I wanted to think it over, but made an appointment to come back and have braces put on, with the understanding that I could cancel if I changed my mind.
After talking it over with Ronni, I’ll probably be going back to the orthodontist in August. After all, someone has to pay for all those gaming consoles.
One of the reviews I read of Get Smart said that it didn’t stay true to the original. Perhaps it’s been too long since I’ve seen the original television show. I remember enjoying that show. But perhaps it’s buried too far in my past.
So I walked into the film with no firm sense of what I should be comparing this film to. Instead, I simply decided to enjoy it (or not) on its own merit, rather than how well it lived up to the past. Perhaps that’s why I enjoyed the heck out of this film. Perhaps, I would have enjoyed it even more if I had remembered the original better. Whichever is true, though, I enjoyed this film a lot. I cannot remember the last time I laughed out loud this long and this many times at a film.
Steve Carell was born to play Maxwell Smart. Well, he may have been born to play Michael Scott on The Office. But if so, he was born to play both roles. He is as perfect for this role as anyone I can imagine, barring Don Adams returning from the dead. He brings the right mix of intelligence and goofiness to the hapless Smart.
Other actors bring quite of bit of fun to the screen as well. Anne Hathaway as Agent 99 is terrific. And though romantic tension between Hathaway and Carell seems implausible given their age difference, that is explained in a very amusing scene on a plane as they head on their first assignment together. And she adds depth to the character by letting her guard down just enough during that rapid-fire exchange to reveal that she’s feeling pestered by her mother.
Alan Arkin as the Chief and Terence Stamp as Siegfried both add a bit of gravitas to the proceedings. And James Caan turns in a wonderfully goofy performance as the President of the United States. (There is a very funny exchange between Caan and Arkin. Brilliant!)
There are just a number of great performances here. Many small, but all very fun to watch: Kevin Nealon, Patrick Warburton, the ubiquitous Masi Oka, Bill Murray. There’s even a small cameo by Bernie Kopell, the original Siegfried. (I hope that’s not a big enough spoiler to ruin this for people. But it was fun to see him briefly.)
Beyond the great acting, the movie itself was a blast. It was not a bunch of goofiness trying to poke fun of spy movie stereotypes. It was an action film with a hefty dose of comedy. There was a serious undertone to the proceedings that made the movie more interesting than if it had gone for nothing but laughs. People die in the film, and not just for laughs.
Even though it didn’t spend the entire film cracking wise, it managed to keep the pace of humor up. I laughed, out loud and often. And even though there were a couple of dozen or so people in the theatre, I wasn’t the only one laughing out loud regularly. I don’t generally go in for physical comedy. But the physical comedy in this wasn’t too over-the-top. And there was enough intellectual humor to mix it up and keep me engaged.
I’d like to think Don Adams would be proud of how the source material was treated. But whether or not he is, I know that I really enjoyed the movie. Probably the best comedic films I’ve seen in a long time.
Well, I assume the title of this post got your attention. But before you freak out too much, watch the video. A friend pointed it out, and it was too good not to pass on to as many people as possible.
My first reaction was that it was funny. Then I began to think it was really sad. A little too accurate to laugh for too long.
) This is, for the most part, a very quiet film. Wall-E has a very limited vocabulary (by the end of the movie, I think he’s said about six different words, four of them names). But the animators pay such attention to detail that Wall-E speaks volumes with his face and his body. 
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