Migration today

I am hoping to move this weblog from cogeco to philipdowney.com today. There might be problems. Hopefully, the new link to the weblog will be working soon. I am hoping all the swoon posts will be left behind on cogeco, and this will serve as a redirect.

Throwing away influence

The New York Times recently changed its totally free website. It now has a few sections where you must pay to read it, mostly of their op-ed columnists. Of course, it's very hard to get people to pay for what is formerly free, without offering actual improvements. (Sirius and XM Radio both offered improvements -- no commericals over regular radio -- and that is a good example of an improvement.) I bet they will learn that very quickly.

The dailykos has this nice graph of how weblog citations of their columnists. How fast before they hit zero? via Gordon Watts at Quantum Diaries.

Serenity movie review

I saw Serenity earlier this week. It was good. This will be a short review, because I don't want to spoil things. I haven't seen every episode of Firefly, but I knew the characters and the series' outline, and knew who was who. Even so, I don't think you need to be familiar with the show to figure out the movie.

The movie was quite a bit bleaker than the tv show. Yes, there were a few jokes there to keep the faithful happy, but the point of the movie is to put the characters through the wringer, which Joss Whedon certainly does. The movie centres on Mal, the star, and River, one of his passengers and more mysterious character from the tv show. (There are lots of interesting characters, but it's only a two-hour movie, and I think he picked the right ones to follow.) Basically, they are running from things that catch up to them. For Mal it's hatred and disappointment of the government, for River, it's the government scientists who messed with her mind.

Lots of fighting ensues, some characters die, others don't. At some point everybody is hurt. This is probably Firefly's last gasp, unless there is a huge groundswell that turns it into a cable series. It could happen.

Summary: good movie, not great, but certainly better than the average space action movie.

Homeless or Jesus?

I only got 260, which is pretty poor. See if you can do better at determining who is homeless and who is Jesus.

Doug McKenzie, Chachi, Super Dave Osborne and Aileen Wuornos

Watching Arrested Development last night, I thought it was 1983, with Dave Thomas, (same hometown as me) best known as Doug McKenzie, Scott Baio, best known as Chachi, and Bob Einstein, best known as Super Dave Osborne. But it was nice to see them all, Bob Einstein had the best role.

Throw in Charlize Theron as Rita, and you have the best (American) (comedy) show on tv.

Einstein's New Clothes

Here's a great post from Jochen Weller on Einstein's discovery of general relativity, and how it has helped understand our universe. It's the universe in a nutshell, covering space time, dark matter, dark energy and extra dimensions.

Swoon 113 - October 3, 2005

Casino Versus Japan - It's Very Sunny (Wobblyhead)
Plaid - Diddymousedid (Warp)
Mike and Rich - Mr. Frosty (Rephlex)
Static - Spawn (City Centre Offices)
Crouched Head - Scratch for Papa
Deadly Wiz Da Disko - Game (!K7)
Maldoror's Gambit Remix (Thirsty Ear)
Autechre - Montreal (Warp)
Shout Out Out Out Out - Nobody Calls Me Unless They Want Something (Normals Welcome)
Black Dog - Further Harm (Warp)
Anthony Rother - La Bete (psi49net)
Kraftwerk - Tour de France Live (EMI)
Tim Tetlow - Matasuro (Planet mu)
Clothesline Revival - Crawdad Song (Paleo)
Wechselspannung (Fax)
Kiss Me Deadly - Track 7 (Alien8)
Lobby - Kurmbox
Datacide - Data Haiku (Fax)

Satire is not for stupid people

Well, the title of the blog is 90 Percent True, so take it with a grain of salt. In any case, this is the funniest post I have read in a long time. At least until the terrorist bit.

Queen's Once, Queen's Twice!

Sounds like I missed quite a party at my 10-year anniversary for Queen's. Flipped cars, brawls with police, assorted mayhem. Should have been there! For an alternative view, try Golden Words, and here. (I used to write for them.)

The Intelligent Design Prayer

There's going to be a billion posts on intelligent design in the next few weeks, as the Dover trial progresses. This post gives the best summary I've heard of intelligent design.