Joe Szilagyi - Seattle person

From my friend Andy K. on twitter:

Bear with me: Captain Kirk had an older brother, George Sam Kirk. In the new movie, Kirk has no older brother. He’s the first born.(1)

Simple: The altered timeline resulted in a scenario by which the Kirks named their firstborn James Tiberius Kirk instead of George Sam Kirk.(2)

As such, I submit to you the film’s James T. Kirk is in fact GEORGE SAM KIRK. The true Jim Kirk will NEVER BE BORN.(3)

William Shatner played George Kirk, James’s brother, in his only on-screen appearance. It’s therefore totally reasonable to assume that older Spock Prime would have mistook the younger once-George for unborn James. Sure will be a mindfuck for now-James when and if Spock Prime ever tells him the truth.

Will angry nerds burn a J.J. Abrams effigy in front of the Paramount backlot now?

Click here to Digg this and spread the gospel of the False Kirk According To Andy.

UPDATE: Apparently that little kid that young “James” drives by in the stolen car in the beginning of the film–according to the original script–was supposed to be George Kirk. According to IMDB, there is no George Kirk in Star Trek beyond the very dead one that fathered False James. Director’s cuts don’t count in my book.

Happy 8th, babe

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hello

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Found on Digg:

During the “Red Scare”, Reagan became a secret informant, code name T-10, for J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI. Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act indicate that Reagan and his first wife, Actress Jane Wyman, provided federal agents with the names of Screen Actor Guild members they believed were Communist sympathizers.

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At Lily Allen show in Seattle

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Mike, Topher and Andi

For those that want a very in-depth review from someone who simply gets both film AND comics.

We got to see Watchmen tonight thanks to the magic of a pair of free passes. Right off, no spoilers.

It’s the most faithful comic book adaptation I’ve ever seen, and the best adaptation overall. It works as an adaptation, and most importantly it works as a film. There are some entire scenes and sequences that are recreated almost literally from the books–in gorgeous detail–and some that are tweaked just enough with judicious cuts and adjustments that they work perfectly for the film.

Are there flaws? Probably, but I didn’t see them, and I was dissecting the film as I watched it. I’ve read Watchmen end to end on a scale of dozens of times, and read the odd chapter or page more times in the past 20+ years than I can imagine; I’ve had a copy of the trade in the house non-stop since forever.

The casting is perfect. If I had to pick any nits, and this is how far I have to dig, it’s that in some shots and angles something felt ‘off’ about Sally’s old-age makeup (typically on some early shots of her straight ahead, right in her face) and especially that in a few close-ups of her hands, they didn’t look old enough–but they screw that detail up in every film with aged younger actors. The actor playing Rorschach was the best bit of the film, to me, overall; Andi thinks the famous end of the Mars conversation was the best–she cried there. All of the Doctor Manhattan CGI was fantastic. Yes, there was the odd shot where you would say, “Yarp, that’s CGI,” aside from the fact he’s blue, clearly made of energy rather than flesh, and is literally glowing bright blue.

I really don’t know what else to say. Is it the best film ever made? I don’t think it’s a Lawrence of Arabia. It’s head and shoulders better than The Dark Knight. Go see it.

I said to Andi on the bus on the way home, “This film, together with Dark Knight, and the crazy grosses of all the Spider-Man films completely validates this art form we’ve all been passionate about so long as a mainstream art form.” That is NOT to take anything from sequential art–comics–which stands on it’s own, but fuck: if this is the end result of a comic book, then anything is possible artistically. Watchmen is LITERALLY in vast stretches a comic book come to true life.

Frankly, I loved it.

Already all over Facebook and Twitter, but too funny to not post again…

Read this article…

The company’s product managers and engineers were laid off, leaving only a handful of finance and operations workers — which speaks to a website to be left on life support. Matt Berardo, a Yahoo executive hired on last summer, is also believed to be gone.

Plowing? What plowing?

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All city streets are ice and packed snow. I don’t think Seattle even HAS plowing, but why would we? This happens every 18 years.

Uh oh

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From his interview with Barbara Walters:

“When people are pulling down hundred-million-dollar bonuses on Wall Street, and taking enormous risks with other people’s money, that indicates a sense that you don’t have any perspective on what’s happening to ordinary Americans. When the auto makers are getting paid far more than their counterparts at Toyota, or at Honda, and yet, they’re losing money a lot faster than Japanese auto makers are, that tells me that they’re not seeing what’s going on out there, and one of the things I hope my presidency helps to usher in is a, a return to an ethic of responsibility.

That if you’re placed in a position of power, then you’ve got responsibilities to your workers. You’ve got a responsibility to your community. Your share holders. That if — there’s got to be a point where you say, ‘You know what, I have enough, and now I’m in this position of responsibility, let me make sure that I’m doing right by people, and, and acting in a way that is responsible.’ And that’s true, by the way, for members of Congress, that’s true for the president, that’s true for Cabinet members, that’s true for parents. I want all of us to start thinking a little bit more, not just about what’s good for me, but let’s start thinking about what’s good for our children, what’s good for our country. The more we do that, the better off we’re going to be.”

Thanks again, to the President that took our good name and utterly ruined it globally. Thanks again to the complete fools that elected this fool, who was completely and utterly unqualified to run a baseball team (which he failed at) let alone a world superpower. January 20th can’t get here any sooner.

Only took 32 years and a civil rights movement happening to coincide with it, but some of my work is finally in print, sorta. The Stranger used three of my photos November 20, 2008 edition, on the “Anatomy of a Protest” (click for the online version) article on page 16. It’s in the free news boxes now all over the Seattle metro area, and the photos are from my Prop 8 Seattle protest photos. Silly little thing, but it made me happy.

I joined in today at the rally at Volunteer Park in Seattle, Washington, which then became a march across Capitol Hill, down Pine Street, and finally into a huge celebration and second rally at Westlake Center. I guestimated about 10,000 people, and am seeing estimates online now of 6,000-9,000. It was amazing, and a strong nationwide civil rights action. There were protests and actions in nearly all major American cities, it looks like. These are my photos:

Click here for a non-slideshow view of them all.

Prop 8 protest Seattle

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Must be 10,000 people here, about to march

Update: Photos here.

I don’t know if I like this. I need to see the whole episode… the characters seem down-pat, for what they should be, and I like the art and animation, but I can’t tell if the old-school vibe is a put-on or homage…

Via Warren Ellis, you should read this. Warning: some comic, television, and Quantum of Solace/Bond spoilers.

First “photos” ever of extrasolar planets. This is made if extra awesome. I wonder what the intelligent design people will have to say about this. Or when Gort arrives, on December 12th.

Thank you, Amazon, fom sparing me from lines with your discount pre-ordering. This should be waiting for me when I get home tonight:

How is it my home state gets things right, while California gets it so wrong? Did the church money overlook Connecticut?

“It shows me that public opinion is really changing,” said Robin Levine-Ritterman, the first in line at City Hall in New Haven to get a marriage license with her partner of 17 years, Barbara, who already shares the same last name as a result of their prior civil union, as she clutched red roses.

The official start of gay weddings, a month after the state’s top court struck down a gay-marriage ban, underscores a steady expansion of gay rights in the U.S. Northeast in sharp contrast to California’s November 4 vote to ban such marriages, which sparked weekend protests by thousands.

Government by proposition, referendum, and initiative is great up to a point–but sometimes you need a neutral and bipartisan judiciary to tell the people crafting illegal and unconstitutional laws, well, when they’re crafting illegal and unconstitutional laws.

Brian Krebs, who does a tech blog here for the Washington Post, apparently got word that McColo, a big hosting provider/ISP in San Jose, California, was responsible for “75% of all spam” in the United States. This guy tracked down all of the information, and then brought all that info to the backbone carriers for McColo (a backbone, or carrier, in simple terms is the ISP that gives your ISP connectivity. What happened? McColo is history–they’ve been shut down by everyone and as far as the Internet today goes, no longer exists. Since spam is such big business, I wonder how long until Krebs gets targetted for some kind of retaliation? That was an act of balls of brass–read that article.

So far, so good. A fantastically accessible walkthrough and overview of quantum physics.

The concept of additional spatial dimensions is as far from intuitive as any idea can be. Indeed, although Harvard physicist Randall does a very nice job of explaining—often deftly through the use of creative analogies—how our universe may have many unseen dimensions, readers’ heads are likely to be swimming by the end of the book. Randall works hard to make her astoundingly complex material understandable, providing a great deal of background for recent advances in string and supersymmetry theory. As coauthor of the two most important scientific papers on this topic, she’s ideally suited to popularize the idea. What is absolutely clear is that physicists simply do not yet know if there are extra dimensions a fraction of a millimeter in size, dimensions of infinite size or only the dimensions we see. What’s also clear is that the large hadron collider, the world’s most powerful tool for studying subatomic particles, is likely to provide information permitting scientists to differentiate among these ideas soon after it begins operation in Switzerland in 2007. Randall brings much of the excitement of her field to life as she describes her quest to understand the structure of the universe.

How does this work? The Church moved to import millions (tens of millions?) of advertising dollars across state lines from Utah to California to ensure Proposition 8 and the banning of marriage rights for same-sex couples passed, and they’re upset now that others are using their free speech rights to protest the free speech that the Church used. That’s only extremely hypocritical, boys. Did the Churches honestly think they were exempt from scrutiny and criticism here…?

It is disturbing that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is being singled out for speaking up as part of its democratic right in a free election.

Members of the Church in California and millions of others from every faith, ethnicity and political affiliation who voted for Proposition 8 exercised the most sacrosanct and individual rights in the United States - that of free expression and voting.

While those who disagree with our position on Proposition 8 have the right to make their feelings known, it is wrong to target the Church and its sacred places of worship for being part of the democratic process.

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