• February 1, 2000
     • March 25, 2000
     • April 20, 2000
     • June 20, 2000

The good old days. It was a bit surreal at ECCC yesterday, given I think this was the largest per capita concentration of old WEFers in one place for easily 5+ years that I know of, in North America at least.

EDIT: Ugh, there were home heinous typos on a couple of those.

Minor spoilers ahoy:

Way, way better than I was expecting.

The movie is much, much funnier than the trailer gives any clue it would be, and it’s much, much funnier than the comic book. Some bits of the comic are nearly perfect reproductions of the film. KICK-ASS and the car after his first superhero incident and his superhero public reveal in the camera phone video scene in particular. That scene from the trailers (“I’M KICK-ASS!”) was done INCREDIBLY well and a near perfect example of how to show a character transformation and origin in one go on-screen–it was thrilling and the single best scene in the film (second best is the hilarious Ennio Morricone bit).

Yes, the violence was at times totally absurd, but that was sort of the point–over the top and brutal violence is really the only weapon a “real life” superhero would have. No “Spider-Sense”, no Superman-style bouncing bullets off of your chest. You’d have to beat the holy hell out of someone–or shoot them–before the same happened to you. You’d get the tar beat out of you. Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale alluded to this in a few scenes in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, but in that fantasy Batman has the world’s most cutting-edge armor, the world’s greatest ninja training, he’s the most driven and single-focused crime fighter of them all… and he’s still a battered mess of bruises and stitches. A normal person, trying to fight crime? It would be straight up kill-or-be-killed. Beat them rotten before they knife you.

She's going to piss off conservatives.

There’s some unevenness in the acting, but that’s really my only sole complaint. Nicolas Cage is Nicolas Cage, and to me at least he can sometimes seem to veer far off the rails in performances, but that’s what I love about him. My wife unfortunately absolutely doesn’t like him as an actor because of this and thinks you get Nicolas Cage too much in films. She had no complaints about him in KICK-ASS, and by her rating that’s like forcefully shoving an Academy Award into his hands for playing Big Daddy in KICK-ASS. Seriously. I thought he was great. Chloe Moretz gets ALL the best lines, and the sheer madness of her spouting things like “Let’s see what you cunts can do now” and “Show’s over, motherfuckers!” is endlessly surreal paired with her adorable “Look what I did!” expressions when she’s sending body parts and viscera flying. For a little kid, she’s actually got some chops. The pacing, editing, soundtrack and structure of the film were perfect. It grabs onto your typical modern film ADD-riddled mind and just keeps shoving you forward in a very good way. The film visually was gorgeous.

I adored the last film Matthew Vaughn and Ben Davis did, Stardust, and I admit I like that film even a bit better than Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s book that it was based off of. I think KICK-ASS is a better film.

I’d summarize my review by the first thing I said the minute the credits popped up: “Yeah, we need this on Blu-Ray,” to which my wife said, “Are you fucking kidding? Hell yes.” It’ll be either a Zombieland+ level hit or a cult classic. I’m not sure which.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today will release a new report showing more dramatic health insurance premium increases are proposed in Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington.

The report quotes National Association of Insurance Commissioners officials predicting the nation will “see rate increases of 20, 25, 30 percent.”

From this article, which everyone should read.

I challenge a single conservative to successfully argue that the right of a company to turn a profit is more cherished than the simple human right to have access to medical care. I dare you.

Canada
Mexico
Cascadia (possibly merged to Canada)
California
New England (including New York)
“The South”
Montana
Various unique, small nations (Dakota, Minnesota, Wyoming, etc.)
Texas (or possibly joining The South)

Here’s how it’ll break down, give or take:

The former American states north and east of Pennsylvania and New Jersey (New York included) have become their own nation. New Hampshire, being New Hampshire, may tell everyone to screw off so that they can continue being New Hampshire. Maybe they’ll name themselves literally “New England”. Fiscally stable and progressive independent nation. Strong commerce. Strong economy. They’d be wise to retain New York as a member of New England for it’s economic, culturarl, and agricultural firepower.

The mid-Atlantics: PA, NJ, MD, DC, places like that–depending on how local state-level elections flow, they could end up anywhere.

The American south will be their own thing. A conservative, religious, red nation, and the beginnings of a Christian theocracy in North America comparable in many ways to Egypt and to a lesser degree Iran. Florida, insanely, will be the liberal corner of their nation. No idea what they’d call themselves. Couldn’t care less.

The American midwest, from Utah, Arizona, Texas, the Dakotas, Wyoming, et all may or may not align in a southern national strip with the south, bordering along Mexico. If they do, I expect nothing less than economic war between Mexico and this new nation.

Illinois and the upper midwest–Michigan, folks out that way–may or may not form their own nation. Some of them would be an ideal fit for annexation with and merger into Canada as new provinces. Illinois in particular may be appealing.

The rest of the massive midwest? Either small independent nations or alignment with their neighbors depending on the prevailing local politics and trends. None will align south with Mexico. With Texas, flip a coin whether they go solo or join the South.

California: it’s own nation.

Oregon, Washington: either our own nation, or merger into Canada. I prefer Cascadia as a national identity, e.g. Cascadians. At the same time, I think Washington and Oregon would do fine as a new province of Canada. God save the Queen?

Montana: it’s own nation, and they’d probably do fine.

Tell me I’m wrong. It’s happened to every single empire in the history of the world: every single, solitary one, since the Romans. We’re at the approximate long end range of longevity right now, for the United States. By 2150 the former United States of America, on a map, will look like modern Europe.

Apparently, Facebook will make you socially retarded, rewire your brain, get you fired/keep you from getting a job, and give you cancer in the end of your suffering. I guess it sucks that there are about 250,000,000 of us world wide on the site. Facebook as the new bubonic plague? Zuckerberginia pestis?

I remember when it was just random people strictly limited to connections from .edu domain names, and it was just the annoying little cousin of TOTALLY AWESOME websites like Friendster.com. Now it’s going to wipe humanity, but I’m sure the dog will outrun the status updates and live.

What a shocker… Blackwater USA, an American company founded by a Christian fundamentalist, runs mercenaries across the Middle East. A bunch of heavily armed Blackwater “staff” shoot up a bunch of innocent Iraqis one day, and eventually have the legal case against them tossed on a technicality. Along the way, Blackwater USA renames itself “Xe” to rebrand themselves. Not unlike how AIG is trying to rebrand themselves, I imagine, after AIG almost destroyed the whole of the financial realm in the Western world. Turns out that Xe/Blackwater thugs shot up more people, this time in Afghanistan.

The particulars of what happened last May 5 — including whether the contractors had been drinking and whether they were acting in self-defense — are in dispute, but everyone agrees the shooting occurred after a traffic accident in Kabul.

The charges have attracted attention for coming so soon after a federal judge dismissed a case against Blackwater contractors who allegedly killed 17 civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007. That shooting also unfolded after a traffic incident.

The contractors in the Kabul case, Christopher Drotleff, 29, and Justin Cannon, 27, were arrested last week in Corpus Christi, TX, and Virginia Beach, VA, respectively. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

How long until the Obama administration grows up and cuts off all Federal funding for this operation? It seems like their continued employment is not in the political interests of the United States, to put it mildly. If we’re spread so thin with our actual legal military that we need to hire mercenaries, perhaps that a sign that we shouldn’t be still fighting in these countries that the useless Bush administration dumped us into?

Dietmar Plenz and Tara Thiagarajan at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland observed that groups of brain cells of two awake macaque monkeys appear to have their own version of quantum entanglement, or “spooky action at a distance” that could explain memories.

And if you didn’t know anything about quantum entanglement:

Quantum entanglement is a physical resource, like energy, associated with the peculiar nonclassical correlations that are possible between separated quantum systems. Entanglement can be measured, transformed, and purified. A pair of quantum systems in an entangled state can be used as a quantum information channel to perform computational and cryptographic tasks that are impossible for classical systems. The general study of the information-processing capabilities of quantum systems is the subject of quantum information.

That’s the short answer from Stanford University. Here’s the short answer as of now on Wikipedia (with no references to your mom, at the moment):

Quantum entanglement, also called the quantum non-local connection, is a property of a quantum mechanical state of a system of two or more objects in which the quantum states of the constituting objects are linked together so that one object can no longer be adequately described without full mention of its counterpart—even if the individual objects are spatially separated in a spacelike manner. The property of entanglement was understood in the early days of quantum theory, although not by that name. Quantum entanglement is at the heart of the EPR paradox developed by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen in 1935. This interconnection leads to non-classical correlations between observable physical properties of remote systems, often referred to as nonlocal correlations.

You thought it’d be simple?

That means we will start by going to air with only the most essential, basic, and manageable elements. To share a key quote from today’s meeting: “It is more important to get it right, than it is to get it on.” We may then build up again slowly as deadlines and workloads allow so that we can be sure we can quality check everything before it makes air, and we never having to explain, retract, qualify or apologize again.

They were already called out in very public fashion once for falsifying graphics. They played it off as it if wasn’t falsified, playing semantic games. I wonder how they’ll play it off now that someone was caught on-air literally making up stuff as blatant as Rudy Giuliani trying to spin politics by saying there were no domestic terror attacks while George W. Bush was President (it’s more important to slam a black President than be truthful).

What’s the new shameless lie aimed at America? Someone inflating the amount of money that Barack Obama has spent on economic recovery by deliberately padding it with the more unpopular TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) bailout money. More here.

BOLLING: The federal government certainly likes to spend your and my taxpayer dollars. Recently — check it out — they spent $700 billion on TARP, $787 billion on stimulus. Hey, by the way, that stimulus package, those are $400,000 per job — jobs they’re creating. $180 billion is either spent or lent to AIG. Don’t forget the $115 billion — these are all B’s — billion to Fannie and Freddie. $83 billion to cars. We’re not going to see a dime of this. Don’t forget the $1 trillion on health care, cap and trade, et cetera, et cetera. And this one, this one. Can you get a close-up — take a look at this one. $60 billion as of last night going to the unions to buy health care votes.

The problem is that BUSH signed the TARP money away from us–the portion of the economic stimulus that went to parasitic corporate entities like AIG–not Obama. I’m guessing by the time the 2012 elections roll around we’ll be saying that Obama was responsible for invading Iraq and the 9/11 attacks on New York City, at this rate.

Odds that Bolling gets anything more than a some laughs with everyone over at the Fox News coffee room over this rather than disciplined, reprimanded, or terminated as the previous internal memo implied he would?