There are so many brilliant, disarmingly beautiful moments in WALL•E, I want to watch it – or at least the first chapter – a few more times to begin to understand what I’ve seen. The plot is easier to recall, especially as it’s a series of precise political punches. The EVE robot, newly arrived to [...]
from Wired: For instance, Google conquered the advertising world with nothing more than applied mathematics. It didn’t pretend to know anything about the culture and conventions of advertising — it just assumed that better data, with better analytical tools, would win the day. And Google was right. Almost everything I get paid to do, I [...]
What happened next in the life of a small-time revolutionary after he was given $25 million and was repatriated to the U.S. with a new identity, might make for quite a show: The hunt for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed involved the entire American intelligence establishment, with its billion-dollar arrays of spy satellites and global eavesdropping net. [...]
to the victor the spoils (of the GWOT): And of course if I were Barack Obama it’s very possible that I wouldn’t think giving the executive branch unlimited surveillance powers was a bad idea at all — I’m going to be president in a few months.
Is it possible to send both a contribution and a rebuke all at once? What Barack Obama did here was wrong and destructive. He’s supporting a bill that is a full-scale assault on our Constitution and an endorsement of the premise that our laws can be broken by the political and corporate elite whenever the [...]
I’m so naive, it never occurred to me that people did this in real life: There are reports from very reliable sources that Hoyer, after engineering this “compromise” and ensuring it has enough votes to pass, will then vote against it so he can claim it’s not his fault (as will Pelosi). Worse, the Democratic [...]
We would never permit a network to physically beat people in order to report on the beatings as sensational news. The body politic is another story. Frank Rich: The fictional scenario of mobs of crazed women defecting to Mr. McCain is just one subplot of the master narrative that has consumed our politics for months. [...]
World tips Hollywood on its axis: The studios may be Hollywood-based, but their conglom parents are thinking globally, which affects every business and creative decision. In the past, each country’s box office was a mix of Hollywood blockbusters, U.S. midrange and indie pics, and local fare. Recently, the midrange pics have been squeezed out by [...]