Well, I've gotten rid of my Twitter account. Now to get rid of LinkedIn and Facebook...

Got my copy of "A Dance with Dragons" this afternoon. How long can I resist the temptation to crack it open? (I was going to italicize, but Google+ stream posts don't support HTML. Then again, neither does Facebook.)

I finally got a chance to put on my vinyl copy of "Iconoclast" by Symphony X. They're a great band, but not quite the sort of heavy metal that does it for my wife. Fortunately, I can listen to bands she doesn't like on nights when I get home from work before she does.

It's unfortunate that more bands don't offer their music on vinyl, and Symphony X and Nuclear Blast Records deserve respect from all metalheads for being willing to stay true to metal's analog roots.

I just love it when I have to close and reopen a solution in Visual Studio 2010 because VS IntelliSense isn't willing to update itself as I add new classes.

Would it have killed Telerik to include a couple of sentences about formatting dates in their RadGrid, instead of shunting me off to the MSDN documentation for Visual Studio 2005, of all things? I supposed I should just note it here in case I need it again. To format a date by itself, do DataFormatString="{0:d}" in the column markup. For a time, do DataFormatString="{0:t}". For both, do DataFormatString="{0:d}, {0:t}".

This is how cats take over the world: emotional manipulation. It's a good thing they're so good at it. They're adorable.

It seems that once I share something with a limited audience (probably with the public, as well), my only options for letting more people see it is to repost it to new circles, or delete the old post and create a new post with a wider access range. I'm not sure either is optimal.

REVIEW: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (Xbox 360, PS3)

I just junked my LinkedIn profile, and I'm glad I did. I first created it when I had started looking for a new job in 2009, but I found two new jobs without it. All I get from LinkedIn is spam, and it seems that they can't even use a valid SSL certificate if I have the temerity to use HTTPS when connecting to them.

Good riddance, LinkedIn. I never really needed you after all.

Peter Baksa: Can Quantum Physics Explain God?

Is this supposed to be unique to writers? It's just as easy for software developers to exhibit the qualities Mr. Gekoski describes in his article for the Guardian. I do it myself at times, and I'm lucky Catherine puts up with me.

I'm going to be geeking out in this post, so don't be surprised if you don't understand. It's time for some fun with C# LINQ and Entity Framework, based on a situation I just encountered on the job.

Suppose you had a table in a SQL database called PerformanceReviews, and a table called Users. PerformanceReviews has two foreign key relationships with Users by UserKey, which are created by linking PerformanceReviews' ManagerKey and EmployeeKey to UserKey in Users.

Now, the Entity Framework in .NET 4.0 is pretty smart; you can use Visual Studio's code completion feature to walk through an entity's relationships. However, if the PerformanceReview entity is linked to the User entity twice, Entity Framework shows this by providing links in IntelliSense to a User entity, and a User1 entity. It doesn't tell you whether User is linked by PerformanceReview's ManagerKey or by EmployeeKey.

What this means is that if you need to format a collection of PerformanceReview objects for display in a grid, you don't know if the manager's name is going to go in the right column unless you add a bit of logic. Here's an method I wrote to solve the problem:

public static IEnumerable FormatForGrid(this IEnumerable<SupervisoryReview> records)
{
return from r in records
let manager = r.User.UserKey == r.ManagerKey ? r.User : r.User1
let employee = r.User.UserKey == r.EmployeeKey ? r.User : r.User1
select new
{
r.PerformanceReviewKey,
ManagerName = Manager.Individual.GetName(),
EmployeeName = Employee.Individual.GetName(),
r.ReviewDate,
r.ReviewNotes
};
}

The important part is this line: let manager = r.User.UserKey == r.ManagerKey ? r.User : r.User1 It's a test that compare's the ManagerKey in the PerformanceReview entity against the UserKey in the linked User entity. If they match, I create a "manager" alias for that entity. Otherwise, I create the alias for the other User entity associated with PerformanceReview, which Entity Framework labels as User1. By doing the same for the employee, I can be sure that when I display the PerformanceReview records in a grid, I won't embarrass myself by showing the employees' names in the ManagerName column.

Did you opt out of receiving targeted ads? Are you still getting targeted ads? Here's why.

It's Caturday, people. Show off your cats!

This was my other cat, Dante. Unfortunately, we had to euthanize him last month. He was a good little cat.

Did these guys miss me, or did they just want feeding?

Cats tend to get underfoot, especially if they're under a rug.

I fouled up the aspect ration with this one, but kept it because I don't have too many videos of Dante.

I thought this was something that only dogs did.

You're not supposed to your hands when playing with cats, but we figure a hand under the blanket is fine. Unfortunately, the microphone on the iPod Touch is very sensitive, so I sound like Darth Vader.

Contrary to the results of a 2009 study, it isn't just that women aren't as happy as they used to be. Men aren't as happy, either. Considering that we're living through the second Great Depression, is it any surprise?

I don't know if the article's right, but their explanation is plausible. I know that I didn't choose a career in science because I didn't think I'd be able to earn a living.

I'd love to know exactly where my taxes are going, and get that information in plain English. It beats blaming the military-industrial-congressional complex for our country's economic woes.

The next time somebody asks me about my religious beliefs, I'm going to tell 'em I'm Orthodox Jedi. I think Han Solo shot first. Reform Jedi insist that Greedo shot first, but I don't agree with 'em.

By the way, block people still allows them to see your public posts. G+ warns you about this, but it's easy to click past warnings.

Video Game Sales Slump For Second Month Straight

Has anybody else been watching Torchwood: Miracle Day? I like the premise: people have just stopped dying, but babies are still being born. This sort of population explosion fear-mongering isn't new in fiction. It dates back to movies like Soylent Green, and even earlier than that, but Miracle Day gives the Malthusian menace a new twist: humanity isn't prepared for immortality.

Talk about poor customer service. A Verizon customer asks for an itemized bill, and is told to get a subpoena. Fortunately, a judge ordered Verizon to provide the itemized bill after the customer went to court.

I'm not surprised. Experience has to count for something in my trade, and good developers sometimes get tired of being mere developers and get into project management.

Since +Eric Beverly isn't familiar with the Protomen, here's one of the best songs, "Light up the NIght", from Act II: The Father of Death.

The first thing I did, when reading this article, was search the text for "Uwe Boll". The article doesn't mention Boll, but some other director. I guess Uwe Boll is busy working on a film production of Springtime for Hitler.

This is horrible.

I should be proud of having belted out 670 words for Starbreaker while sitting at a Firestone shop for an hour to get my car inspected and have the oil and filter changed, but I think I could have done more.

Since the About page on my profile has a "Places lived" but not a "Places visited" section, I'm just putting the places I remember visiting in "Places lived".

And it turns out that maximum capacity in "Places lived" is 15 places.

+Rahmel Jackson asked for advice on how to get into programming this weekend. I gave him some quick 'n dirty advice, but perhaps I should go into greater detail. First, I think it's important to distinguish between computer science and software development. Computer science is a branch of applied mathematics. Computer programming (or software development, if you insist) is a skilled trade.

Of course, Donald Knuth calls computer programming an art, but there's nothing wrong with seeing programming as both an art and a skilled trade. The same can be said of carpentry.

So, what do you need if you're going to get into programming? It's not a language, a library, a framework, or a development environment. It's deeper than that. You need to be able to think in abstract terms. You need a good grasp of Boolean logic. You need to like solving puzzles.

I'll write more later.

How Will Citizen Murdoch's US Empire Fare in Scandal's Wake?

Arrest, resignation roil Britain

I guess this explains the egotism of Yngwie Malmsteen.

As hunter-gatherers, humans never knew when they'd eat next, so it made sense to chow down when you had the opportunity. This instinct still worked reasonably well after the introduction of agriculture, until the middle of the 20th century. Now, with (artificially?) cheap food readily available, our instinct to eat, drink, and be merry (for tomorrow we may go hungry) is working against us.

I swear that at least half of my compiler errors are typos. I just can't seem to spell "tuple" right this morning; I keep typing "tuble" instead.

I can't believe what I just read. This is taken from the article: “One of children asked the teacher, ‘Wasn’t it true that the continents at one time were connected, many years ago?’” Plutzer recalled. “The teacher said, ‘I can’t answer that question, it’s not appropriate for your grade level.’ This got us thinking about a whole host of issues.”

What kind of teacher would have the temerity to tell a child, "it's not appropriate for your grade level"? Who, in good conscience, can answer a child in this manner while claiming to foster the curiosity and intellectual development of children?

Teachers like this were part of the reason I hated school and wished I could just spend my days reading in the public library and occasionally showing up to take a test and prove that I wasn't just screwing around.

I like getting emails from people looking to fill technical positions, even though I'm happy with my job at Computer Aid, Inc., but emails like this don't give me much confidence in the recruiter, his employer, or the position he's trying to fill. I've left out names and locations.

==============================================================
Hello, Please support me with your updated resume for this position. Also let me have the following information to save time.
Full Name:
Cell#:
E-mail id:
Location:
Rate:
Work Authorization:
Availability:
Two Supervisory Level References (Preferably GC, Citizens) with their official email id’s and contact numbers (MUST)

Position:.Net Developer
Location: REDACTED
Duration:Contract to hire
Required:
· VB.Net
· SQL with strong DB skills.
· They need to have experience working on a lot of front end web design projects as well.
==============================================================

My problems with emails like this is that they're brusque and peremptory. There's no effort on the part of the recruiter to establish a relationship, or even to ask me if I'm looking to change jobs.

Is the situation worse than we thought? (Registration might be required.)

With all the talk about the debt ceiling, I remembered this article by Austrian-school economist Murrary Rothbard in which he offers a case for repudiating the national debt.

If you can get the original version of "Bumpin' on Sunset" from the Brian Auger's Oblivion Express album Straight Ahead, it's good programming music when looped. It's nice and mellow.

By the way, Visual Studio 2010 or one of its add-ons has a memory leak. I'm not sure if it's the IDE itself, ReSharper 6.0, the Atomineer documentation utility, or Microsoft's Productivity Power Tools, but after a week of heavy coding, my Visual Studio instance was using 1.5GB of RAM.

IE6 just won't die in China. Damn it.

I love the way the keyboard opens this piece. Lots of crunchy arpeggios, and then the guitar kicks in and overshadows the keyboard.

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No wonder workplace morale tends to be in the toilet.

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A recent study revealed that 65% of employees say they receive no praise or recognition at work. Source = book coming out called "The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace"

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This man is right on the money.

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GOOGLE + - A GIANT STEP BACKWARD!

Seems like, in the past decade or so, the internet has reduced us humans to miserable creatures who think two sentences is “social interaction.” Or even just reposting a photo somebody else took, is somehow, supposed to reveal our innermost selves to one another. I have supposed friends on social networks that all I really know about them is told to me in an endless stream of cartoons and memes.

That is the way things were in the Summer of 2011. We thought we had the ultimate tools to know the most intimate details of a few hundred close friends by finding out what they had for lunch.

In short, we were faking it. We didn’t really KNOW these people and they didn’t really know us.

Enter Google Plus.

Suddenly, millions of people are faced with a major dilemma. Google plus, which was supposed to be just another Facebook, challenged us to type more than two sentences. Oh no! A crisis.

You mean there is no limit on how many words I can put in my post?

What do I say?

And here is what separates the humans from the basic primates: Content.

It is one thing to google search for a cartoon and blast it out to your Facebook friends. It is a whole different animal to actually have something to say to others.

I remember back when I was going to Michigan State, in one of my undergrad writing classes I became good friends with one of my professors. One day I was talking with him and suddenly he just whips out this incredibly personal appraisal of me, and he was DEAD ON. For years, it puzzled me... how did this guy know me so well? I mean, it isn’t like I talked to him that much. Then, like 15 years later... it hit me like a vision. He had been reading what I had written, for six months. He had, through my own words, developed a really good feeling for who I was as a person. That is the magical thing about words. We can reveal our innermost selves, almost without realizing it.

This brings us to the Google + dilemma.

Suddenly, just faking it is not enough. Suddenly, we have gone way back in time to the days of properly chosen words and complete sentences. Imagine that?

Google+ is simply not a place where illiterate individuals can get away with faking it.

If you are severely lacking in education and breeding it will stand out on Google+. My advice for people of that caliber is to return to Facebook where single syllable grunts shall suffice.

So much for the internet as a great equalizer. Google+ has thrown a curve ball at us. All that old fashioned stuff like proper spelling, word use and sentence structure suddenly matters all over again.

A giant step backward.

A giant step backward in the right direction.

-Steve

Should all kids have to go to college? Why do we have to stretch schooling into our twenties in order to be educated? Why can't we learn what we need to know as children, not teenagers or young adults, but as children?

Ten hours is too long? Who do these people think they're fooling? I won't pay $60 for a "AAA" title unless I can get at least forty hours out of the single-player campaign. As a consequence, I tend to play a lot of RPGs.

One would think that a dog or a cat would be better than a teddy bear, since a pet can actually show affection. Then again, having cats didn't stop me from spending my teenage years and early adulthood as a misanthropic bastard.

This doesn't surprise me. It's easy to dismiss government help for the unemployed or unemployable as "socialism" when you're making good money and need not fear being unemployed yourself.

I bet you could get the same benefits without the surfboard. It's hard to not have your mind focused on the present and on your current surroundings when you're swimming, or just floating, in the ocean.

I think +Cheryl White has the right idea with regard to publishing the names of interest-related circles so that people in my existing circles can subscribe and not see posts that don't interest them. So, I think I'll follow the lady's lead. Here are my circles. If you add me, please send me a message indicating which of these you'd like to join.

Apple/Unix: Anything related to Apple computers or Unix-based operating systems will go here.
Books: When I read a good book, I'll probably talk about it here.
Cats: I like cats. I like seeing cats do cute cat things.
Humanities: Anything related to the arts, history, or philosophy.
Music: I'm a metalhead, but I'm also into prog, jazz, classical, and some fusion.
News: If I see a news article of interest, I'll probably post it here.
Politics: I do try to pay attention to US politics, as well as events outside the US. If I see something of interest, I'll post it here.
Science Fiction/Fantasy: Pertains to science fiction and fantasy in text, image, video, and interactive media.
Software Development: I do this for a living. Sometimes I even write about it.
STEM: Anything related to science, technology, engineering, or mathematics.
Starbreaker: I'm rewriting a science fantasy novel. If you care, join this circle and be able to brag about being a fan before I even published the book.
TV/Movies: If I see a good movie or TV show, I'll talk about it here. There may be spoilers.
Video games: Yes, I play them. Games and books are my favorite forms of entertainment.

I may dissolve these circles if Google provides a better way for me to avoid spamming people with irrelevant posts as they continue developing G+. Also, if you post something interesting in a conversation related to a particular circle, I might ask you if you want me to put you there after following you.

Why is Borders going out of business? They screw up too many times. It's really that simple. I'd say good riddance, but that would be unfair to the 10,700 employees who are going to find themselves unemployed.

Here's a long article from Foreign Policy that attempts to explain why Congress is so dysfunctional lately. The article describes when I'm starting to think of as a Hegelian nightmare, with the two major parties acting as Thesis and Antithesis, but refusing to meet each other halfway to form a Synthesis.

Instead of statesmen, we've saddled ourselves with a bunch of pampered careerists who are insulated from reality as experienced by the average American. These people can't even govern themselves well enough to deliberate and reach the the consensus necessary to justly rule a nation of over 300,000,000 people spread out across the width of North America.

I know I said that I was going to use circles to restrict posts to particular people based on interest, but I've come to think that this might be counterproductive. If I restrict all of my most interesting posts to limited views, people who might otherwise find me or what I post interesting won't see anything. So, I'm just going to post everything as unless I have a reason to keep something private.

If I've posted something you're interested in, mute it. If I never post anything of interest to you, then block me. I won't know either way.

Here's MacWorld's review of Lion. I think it's on the money, as I'm not too impressed with Launchpad at the moment. However, I find one of the user reviews to be worthy of concern; somebody named "Hawei" claims that his Macbook Air's battery life was reduced by two hours, from 6.5 hours to 4.5 hours, after installing Lion.

I think Linksys gear got better after Cisco bought Linksys, and it would be a shame if Cisco's recent mistakes continued to hurt the company.

Here's something for the women, especially those who feel insecure about their looks or the appeal to their partners or a potential partner. Science-fiction grandmaster Robert Heinlein wrote the following in one of his best novels, Time Enough for Love:

"A man does not insist on physical beauty in a woman who builds up his morale. After a while he realizes that she is beautiful--he just hadn’t noticed it at first."

More Heinlein, in which Lazarus Long encapsulates how I met my wife in a parody of Gaius Julius Caesar: "I came, I saw, she conquered.” (The original Latin seems to have been garbled.)"

I've got some badass jazz with Frank Zappa's "The Gumbo Variations" from Hot Rats.

So, this is how censorship in corporate media works. I suspected as much.

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Poor kitty.

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If you're having a day like this just remember, even cats find cat herding a challenge sometimes.

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China's culture has existed for over five thousand years, but some Chinese still act like barbarians.

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Meanwhile in China, Local Men and women surround a non-Chinese boy and beat him around for fun while they laugh and taunt him....

Feeings?

I never really cared for The Lord of the Rings, but novelist Michael Moorcock does a better job of explaining why Tolkien's most popular work is a wee bit overrated than I can.

I've never even heard of Lucian Freud, but that's my fault.

My cat Virgil doesn't like it when it's quiet. If the music stops, he starts meowing. If I ignore him, he jumps up on the entertainment unit and lifts the cover off the record player. Then he meows some more.

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Let me make something clear. I will not play WhateverVille with you. :)

Even if Google is a major investor in Zynga, Zynga isn't a game developer. It's a developer of experiments in behavioral psychology worthy of B. F. Skinner. I'm not interested in directly supporting that business model with my time, attention, or money.

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GOOGLE+ LAAJENEE PELEIHIN?
Hakukonejätti on lähellä laukaista sosiaalisen peliverkon, jonka ohessa Facebook saattaa tulla kalpenemaan. Ehkäpä suurin ero näiden kahden alustan välillä on hinta: monien lähteiden mukaan Google tulee ottamaan alle 30 prosenttia liikevaihdosta, jonka seurauksena Facebookin sekä Applen viime vuosina luomat toimialastandardit murenevat.

Jos pelisuunnitelma toteutuu, G+ voi itse asiassa tarjota nopeita etuja pelinkehittelijöille. Yksi etu on luonnollisesti kanava, jonka avulla pelintekijät voivat tuutata ideoitaan ulos. Toinen kiinnostava aspekti on se, että uudet pelituottajat voivat näpäyttää Facebookkia siitä, että sillä on ollut kohtuullisen vaikea suhde Zynga-tiimiin (markkinajohtaja). Jos hyvin käy, pelintekijät alkavat perveilemaan Googlen ovien takana.

If you haven't read "The Six Lesson Schoolteacher" by former NYC teacher John Taylor Gatto, you should. He explains how the system is intended to work.

Here's a curse for Jason Salas: May Ben Bernanke's next girlfriend have a bigger penis than he does.

+Amy Ayers linked to this video in a comment, but since we can't share comments I'll just share it this way and give her credit.

I know I said nice things about Cisco yesterday, but I take it back. If Cisco is willing to trump up charges against a former executive, then they deserve to be prosecuted under the relevant antitrust laws and broken up. Hell, they should face the corporate death penalty: immediate dissolution and liquidation of its assets.

Antics like this make the entire web advertising/web marketing industry look untrustworthy, IMO.

Hearing about the bombing in Oslo, Norway, and something from +James Overheul about some pusbag taking potshots at children reminds me of something I wrote back in September 2010 after hearing about a hostage situation in the states. Violence is supposed to be a last resort, damn it. When are we going to learn that a single violent person isn't a revolutionary hero, but a murderous asshole?

Here's something for +Thomas Paine: "Declaration Day" by Iced Earth, from The Glorious Burden.

Have any other Spotify users seen this article? I have a Spotify account myself, but I haven't bothered to use it much because it reminds me of Pandora, and Pandora wasn't an adequate replacement for owning the tracks I buy on iTunes and being able to move them on and off my iPod at will.

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I tend to avoid getting involved in this sort of meta stuff, but I think +Christina Trapolino has the right idea.

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My vision for G+ is one where, because of the way Circles and Streams work, we don't have to sacrifice real thought because of media fodder. If you want to use Google+ to improve your career by demonstrating your talent publicly, and to talk to your family/friends, and to catch up with Justin Bieber's latest haircut/girlfriend, you can. There is no reason that an influx of the masses will stop the sense of enlightened intellectual banter/discussion we're excited about right now. If anything, it might add to it!

The technology in the platform allows us to separate our conversations, and hopefully with the acquisition of Fridge, Google is planning to make this even easier and more refined. I can have a great debate in one Circle about politics and in another, I can watch animated gifs if that's what I want.

What do you think is the most exciting thing about Google+'s potential? I've been doing a lot of comparing and suggesting, but I am really curious how other people are finding new and more interesting ways to interact.

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A moment of G+ silence for those murdered in Norway today. Spread the word.

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It is 1:44pm PDT here. In memory of those lost in Norway, and in honor of them and their families, G+ postings go quiet from 2:00pm PDT to 2:01pm PDT. pass along

Fortunately, this article points out the same reservation I have about Peter Corning's notion of a "fair society": how do you create solidarity in a heterogenous population of over 300,000,000 people spread across the width of North America (as well as Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, etc)? Is it even possible today, now that the Internet has shattered the illusion of a common American culture?

This is pretty technical, and formatted as a PDF, but the International Telecommunications Union appears to have adopted a standard for volume limiting on all audio uploaded to the cloud. This means an end to the Loudness Wars, as record producers will no longer hand any reason to distort music by cranking the gain up to 11, thus sacrificing dynamic range.

I think this is good news for music lovers.

Looks like Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot when it comes to independent game developers. They can make more money and do a better job of promoting their games on Steam than on Xbox Live.

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This just looks badass. It's a sand sculpture with sprites/graphics from four classic NES titles: Super Mario Bros., Mega Man, Final Fantasy, and The Legend of Zelda.

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Epic....

I'm sitting at the Barnes & Noble in Camp Hill, PA to work on Starbreaker while my wife pokes around the shops nearby. We had just had lunch at the nearby Appalachian Brewing Company, which makes excellent beer as well as a good burger and good fish and chips. No beer for me, though; I've got to drive.

Back before they released St. Anger, when Metallica was still worth listening to, they did a cover album called Garage, Inc. Here's their best track from that album, a cover of "Astronomy" by the Blue Oyster Cult.

A few days ago, I mentioned Arjen Anthony Lucassen and his bands Guilt Machine and Ayreon. He also has a band called Star One (which features several Ayreon alumni like Floor Jansen of After Forever and Russell Allen of Symphony X), whose name was inspired by the British sci-fi show Blake's 7.

Star One's schtick is "space metal", progressive metal songs whose lyrics are inspired by a sci-fi movie. They're similar to Hawkwind in that regard, who were pioneers in space rock (and the band for which Lemmy played bass before he started Motorhead). Star One has two albums, Space Metal and Victims of the Modern Age. This track, "Starchild", is based on 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the Space Metal album also includes songs based on Stargate, Star Wars, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Alien, Blake's Seven, Enemy Mine, Dark Star (John Carpenter's first movie), Dune, and Outland.

Tell me why I had to be a powerslave
I don't want to die
I'm a god, why can't I live on?
When the lift-giver dies
all around is laid waste
and in my last hour I'm a slave to the power of death...

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It doesn't matter if it's Islam, Christianity, or Discordianism. Voltaire is still correct: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

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According to this article, Facebook is the Ma Bell of social media. It doesn't care about its users, because +Mark Zuckerberg thinks it doesn't have to. However, Google+ is changing that. With over 20,000,000 users (almost the entire population of Australia as of 2009, according to Google Public Data) while still in invitation-only testing mode, Google+ is poised to give Facebook its first taste of real competition...

...and I hope Facebook damn well chokes on it.

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I'm disappointed that +Xeni Jardin and +Anthony De Rosa would think that giving a terrorist's manifesto media attention is a good idea. As far as I'm concerned, when you resort to violence to get attention, you throw away the right to be heard or considered. I know where Anders B. Breivik can put his manifesto.

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Unverified video that appears to be the manifesto of alleged Utøya shooter Anders B. Breivik

I managed to write 3000 words today, but only 1000 of them are worth keeping. Unfortunately, I haven't taken the story as far as I want to take it in "House and Home", so Chapter 9 of Starbreaker isn't quite done yet.

Hey, +Maria Rossi! You want hard rock? I'll give it to you.

Do I mind disturbing the priest? Hell no. Not in the least.

Never mind hard rock. Let's have some PIRATE METAL! Here's Running Wild, with "Under Jolly Roger"!

My wife and I went to see Captain America: The First Avenger earlier tonight. While I'm not a Marvel fan (or a comics fan), I thought it was a solid movie. It's yet another origin story movie, but I think it also works as a basic WWII movie. Strip away the Marvel Comics/science fiction trappings, and you have a movie about an Axis general gone rogue and a squad of Allied commandos assembled to stop him before he can carry out a plan that will change the course of the war.

Unfortunately, Hugo Weaving is more or less wasted as the Red Skull, and Chris Evans seems to have been cast more for his physique than his acting skills, as Steve Rogers remains unchanged throughout the film. In fairness to Mr. Evans, this is more likely to be due to the limitations of the character during the origin story.

Captain America is a fun movie, and worth renting or seeing during an afternoon matinee. However, I prefer Inglorious Basterds. Who needs the Red Skull when you've got Hans Landa?

Got an earworm? I've got the cure.

There's men underground / who have never seen the sun / but they really know how to party.

It isn't Caturday any longer, but I'm not letting that stop me.

Aaron Swartz isn't the only one releasing bootleg scientific papers.