URLs du Jour

2007-09-27

  • Bryan Caplan's Reason article (referred to here) on "The 4 Boneheaded Biases of Stupid Voters" is available for free on the magazine's website, so go check it out. Don't worry, he's not talking about you. Unless he, um, is.

  • Jim Geraghty reports from beautiful Durham, NH here and here. At the former link, he reports on his encounter at downtown Libby's Bar and Grill, where:
    … the not-quite-entirely sober young lady at the bar will begin regaling you about her childhood journey to Washington and meeting "the President—I'm not sure whether it was Clinton or the one before him."
    I'm confident this was not the Pun Daughter. Who was in my sight the entire time we visited Washington.

  • I will shamelessly echo this link from Dave Barry: analysis of the ingredients of a Twinkie;

    I'll also echo Dave's identification of the key quote: "I was surprised that so many not only came from petroleum, but at least five came from rocks."

    But a close second is: "Sorbic acid is made from natural gas. That really blew my mind."

The Phony Campaign

2007-09-27 Update

I continue to be surprised at the volatility of the Phony Campaign. I'm also surprised that candidates' phoniness numbers ever go down. Especially John Edwards'. Anyway:

Query StringHit CountChange Since
2007-09-20
"Hillary Clinton" phony397,000-19,000
"John McCain" phony301,000-24,000
"John Edwards" phony300,000-47,000
"Barack Obama" phony249,000-32,000
"Ron Paul" phony236,000-95,000
"Mitt Romney" phony215,000-18,000
"Fred Thompson" phony207,000-25,000
"Rudy Giuliani" phony184,000-14,000
"Dennis Kucinich" phony113,000-8,000
"Dave Burge" phony61+2

The big news is that Ron Paul has stumbled badly; even in this week of generally declining phoniness, he plummeted from second place all the way down to fifth. And John Edwards edged under John McCain to eke a third place showing.

I'm in agreement with this part of Paul Mirengoff's analysis of last night's Democratic debate:

… [P]art of me hopes that Edwards did make headway because he's too phony for anyone but a committed Democrat not to see through.
Indeed. How can this man not be the clear leader in this analysis?

Last Modified 2014-12-01 10:44 AM EDT

Murderous Intent

[Amazon Link]
(paid link)
[0.5
stars] [IMDb Link]

Sometimes we watch movies just because Mrs. Salad sees them at Blockbuster and likes the look of actors on the DVD box. Occasionally this works out, other times we get stuck with utter turkeys like this.

This is a deservedly-straight-to-DVD movie; at some point in its past it was titled Like Minds, and that's the title that appears at IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. The new title, Murderous Intent, is breathtakingly generic, probably generated by the same Adjective-Noun software that gave us Basic Instinct, Lethal Weapon, Fatal Attraction, etc.

It's about a police psychologist, played by Toni Colette, tasked with interviewing a sullen kid about the death of his classmate. The tale is told with a lot of flashbacks, showing the relationships between the kid and his equally obnoxious and creepy buddies. There's a thick layer of pretentiousness overlaying the whole thing. Dialog meant to be cleverly elliptical is just stupid. Shots seem to go on way longer than they need to. The "shocking twist" at the end can be seen coming from the beginning of the movie.

They probably could have made a mediocre hour episode of Law & Order out of the premise. Come to think, they probably have.


Last Modified 2024-02-02 4:21 AM EDT