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(H/T)
1) I actually get what these guys are talking about. Sad.
2) Both of them dance better than I do. Sadder.
3) I now have a crush on the one in glasses. Saddest.
Hubbard posted this at 7:51 PM EDT on Saturday, May 24th, 2008 as Nerdom, Random Bloggish Things
He did not call him out.
H/T: Independent George.
Tom posted this at 10:38 AM EDT on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 as Nerdom, Audacity of Hype
HP VII will actually be HP VII…and VIII!
LOS ANGELES (AP) - entertainmentminute Harry Potter was the center of seven novels, but he’ll star in eight films.The final book in the wildly successful series will be made into two films, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.
Producers are expected to announce Thursday that J.K. Rowling’s last “Potter” installment, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” will be split into two parts on the big screen. The first film is slated for release in November 2010, with part two following in May 2011.
“It was born out of purely creative reasons,” producer David Heyman told the Times. “Unlike every other book, you cannot remove elements of this book.”
You know, it’s one thing for Mr. Heyman to squeeze a couple million dollars more out out of the Harry Potter franchise. It’s another for him to subject us to the unedited version of that interminable 100 pages of Harry, Hermione, and Ron playing Lord of the Rings together when they should be busy destroying Horcruxes.
Tom posted this at 10:54 PM EDT on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 as Nerdom, It's Economics - Stupid!
I’ve never understood why we criminalize selling something that can be given away for free. Derb seems to agree, complete with a bonus geek reference:
Prostitution, like drug trafficking, is one of those zones where libertarianism bumps up against the realities of human nature.
To a lover of liberty, it’s hard to see why a woman shouldn’t sell her favors if she wants to. Trouble is, weak or dimwitted women end up in near-slavery to unscrupulous men, and I think there’s a legitimate public interest in not letting that happen.
The best private sector solution would be a guild system, like the geishas had in old Japan. There’d be entry standards for the guild. Women would have to pass exams, and have some entertainment skills other than the obvious ones. The guild would police itself, expelling miscreants. Freelancing outside the guild could be under strong social disapproval, even made illegal.
Now if you’ve ever looked at The Smoking Gun you know that most prostitutes don’t look like Inara Sera - we should do something about this.
**UPDATE**
I’ll be in my bunk.
Jamie posted this at 4:29 PM EDT on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 as Nerdom, I have seen the future. . .
I used to play D&D, but until last week I’d never heard the name Gary Gygax. Evidently he invented the game, and now he’s dead. Bully for him.
At any rate, over at Slate, always in pursuit of the next contrarian angle, Eric Sofge uses Gygax’s death to say that D&D was a bad game. But the game he describes bears very little resemblance to the game I remember. We had long-running character development, complex and interwoven plot lines, and oodles of things to do that weren’t rolling dice to see how many orcs we killed. Sure, we sometimes killed orcs because rolling dice is fun, but that was a small minority of our time.
I’m willing to accept the possibility that my friends in high school were a unique collection of rambling free-thinkers, but I think it improbable. Instead it seems to me that D&D was precisely what you made it, and evidently Eric Sofge and his friends were a bunch of lame-oes who couldn’t manage to be creative when given the blank slate of D&D. And if there’s one thing sadder than writing an article about your D&D experiences, it’s writing an article about being a bad D&D player.
Apollo posted this at 2:16 AM EDT on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 as Ourselves, Nerdom
We were wrong; Barack Obama is the the Democratic Party’s Kwisatz Haderach. He is the shortening of the way, the one who shall give meaning to our lives and make our planet anew.
Like Paul Muad’Dib, his youth was shaped by the untimely loss of his father, who was not of this land. He has been rigorously trained, and recently endured a painful test at the hands of a Bene Gesserit Witch. He achieved a surprise victory in his first combat and it is said that his greatest power is his voice. By some reckonings, he has come before his time.
His enemies consider him a lightweight and dismiss his followers as religious fanatics, prone to chanting his name over and over. Though he has inherited powerful advisers, his wife is counted as a liability.
His true enemy is accused of launching a preemptive war to secure a precious resource in a desert land. Though this enemy has now left the stage, he has been succeeded by a battle-tested champion. Soon, they shall meet in single combat, and the victor shall take the reins of power.
Tom posted this at 6:34 PM EST on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 as Nerdom, Audacity of Hype
Back in the day I had my “Apollo Has Too Much Time on His Hands” series detailing factoids about senators and governors running for the presidency. I then started an Excel spreadsheet with the ambition of categorizing the public service experiences of every presidential election’s first and second place vote getters (i.e. winner and first loser). After not working on it for about a year, I’m now sorta finished with half of it, giving information for every winner of a presidential election.
I’ve got some notes on methodology, and some factoids. Were I a scholar, I would give you the methodology first. So here are some factoids:
Some notes on my, um, methods:
This list will get significantly more interesting when I fill in the information for the losers. When that happens, Dorothy will run some fancy pants statistical regressions to see what shows up. And then I’ll be sure to thank you all in my Nobel acceptance speech.
Apollo posted this at 2:47 AM EST on Saturday, March 1st, 2008 as Nerdom, Politics