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The Sniper
I finally finished watching The Sniper, a good film noir from 1952. It’s a good tense drama about a compulsive sex killer (who uses an M1 carbine, heh). One funny moment comes after the protagonist burns himself on a stove and goes to the emergency room. In addition to the memorable scenes of doctors smoking in hospitals, it has the line
E.R doc: A man’s got no business messing around with stoves, it’s strictly a woman’s business.
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Blogger is back!
It’s been hanging on posts for the past few days. Now it’s working again for some reason.
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An excellent flick
I just finished Knock on Any Door and was quite impressed. It’s quite similar Dead Man Walking in that it explains a path to crime and it’s resolution in the death house.
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Quote of the evening
From the movie Knock on Any Door
Female Lead: If I were as cynical as you I’d hang myself.
Bogart: I don’t trust the rope. -
Manhattan project for energy independence
Some ideas never go away; to wit, in what way does the statement, said by many “we need a Manhattan project for energy independence differ from Soviet industrial policy? It’s quite different from the original Manhattan project in that it’s quite wide in scope and chases an ill defined goal, whereas the original Manhattan project was quite specific in both method and destination.
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An interesting interview
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A nice short overview of Kurdistan
From Stephen DeAngelis, who is in Kurdistan right now.
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How to be a better photographer
In video no less, on Digital Photography School.
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Apocolyptic quote of the moment
From Michael Lind
Modernity shot itself in the head in 1914. How much longer ought we expect the body to live?
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Lou Dobbs is the perfect man of the age
By repeating the dumber parts of the conventional wisdom in a solemn tone he continues to be taken seriously. Case in point, his newest CNN.com column (he drags down the whole franchise IMHO) A call to the faithful. It’s an adventure in the non sequitur. While lauding the separation of church and state he points to examples of church based groups having opinions on matters of pure politics, i.e. Iraq and immigration.
Neither of those are religious matters. If they were trying to implement Sharia, force church attendance, establish a state religion or mandate that government personnel had to be of a particular sect, or any sect, that would be one thing. But these are either pro/anti war choices, or pro/anti amnesty choices, which have no inherent religious significance. Religious people may care a lot about them of course, but so can a lot of people. He then quotes Romans 13, with
Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.
In a democracy, the governing authority is the people, and the above verse would seem to encourage public participation in the process. Dobbs would seem to want separation of people and state.