Tabs!

The #Occupy Little Rock crowd is pretty pathetic. Who even cares about LR City Hall? For that matter, doesn’t “march” imply that someone is leading?

The only thing better than a life-size VF-25 Valkyrie would be a functioning life-size Valkyrie. Because the only thing better than mecha are transforming mecha!

How scientifically literate are you? I got 43/50; I should’ve gotten a few more right, but made some stupid mistakes.

Ever wonder what Philip K. Dick thought of Blade Runner?

I think the last one is my favorite.

And just because Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention is awesome, here are a few screenshots (click to embiggen):

A boss tries to dictate to the main character how he should fight her.

A newly created Shaman introduces herself.

A new party member shows up to save the day!

Prinny Mask (who has nothing at all to do with Science Ninja Team Gatchaman) takes over as homeroom teacher.

The party faces off against an army of enemy gunslingers!

The gunslinger homeroom teacher gives us some good advice.

Jim McGovern came up with a genius plan to eviscerate Citizens United…

By amending the Constitution such that (H/T Eugene Volokh):

Section 1. We the people who ordain and establish this Constitution intend the rights protected by this Constitution to be the rights of natural persons.

Section 2. People, person, or persons as used in this Constitution does not include corporations, limited liability companies or other corporate entities established by the laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state, and such corporate entities are subject to such regulations as the people, through their elected state and federal representatives, deem reasonable and are otherwise consistent with the powers of Congress and the States under this Constitution.

Section 3. Nothing contained herein shall be construed to limit the people’s rights of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, free exercise of religion, and such other rights of the people, which rights are inalienable.

Prof. Volokh focuses on the impact this will have on freedom of the press; since most media organizations are corporations, and Section 2 expressly excludes corporations from any constitutional protections of any kind (including freedom of the press), this will make it more difficult to raise capital.

That’s all well and good, but as I read Sections 1 and 2, it occurred to me that Jim “NRA F-rated” McGovern had inadvertently delivered the coup de grace to the “collective rights” argument for infringing on the Second Amendment (which, after Heller and McDonald, was already practically dead (you know, aside from certain reactionary holdouts)).

After all, if “people” refers to natural persons, how could it possibly mean the right to keep and bear arms in the service of a militia? Or as part of an army?

Sure, those aren’t corporations, but the Second Amendment refers to the right of the people to keep and bear arms. And if this new amendment explicitly states that the rights protected by the Constitution are the rights of natural persons (and an army or a militia is no more a natural person than a corporation is), I don’t see how you could consistently argue that in this one case, the right isn’t an individual right.

Well done, Jim McGovern.

In your misguided quest to infringe on free speech, you inadvertently euthanized the antiquated view that the right to keep and bear arms is not an individual right.

Damn you, Woot!

In case you were unaware, woot.com is doing one of their periodic woot-offs right now, and so when a new item is posted, the image loads a few seconds after the item’s name.

When I saw “AR iPod/iPad Docking Station,” I got my hopes up. Surely this would be some kind of rail-mounted doohickey for hanging your phone off your AR!

Unfortunately, the image at right loaded.

The AR is the brand name abbreviation: Acoustics Research, and it’s just a regular old docking station/stand.

I should have known better, but given woot’s propensity for putting weapon lights up, I didn’t think I could rule it out.

Maybe next time!

If you like horror/slasher movies even a little bit

You’ll probably enjoy The Cabin in the Woods.

It hits all the classic tropes, but is self-aware (and yes, there’s a method to the madness). It’s not a parody like Tucker and Dale vs Evil was; it’s more like a deconstruction of the slasher/horror genre.

And since I don’t want to give anything away, I can’t really say much else about it. Go watch it; Joss Whedon doesn’t disappoint.

Crystal Bridges

While visiting some friends in the NW corner of the state this past weekend, I went to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and wandered through the gallery (though I didn’t take advantage of their nifty app).

The collection is impressive.

And since they let you take pictures of every piece (save one picture of Davy Crockett, for some reason), you can take pictures of original pictures and email/text them to friends in large cities who are aghast that Alice Walton would dare buy all this great art and then take it to Arkansas.

If you’re in the Bentonville area, you should definitely take the time to drop in and check it out.

I didn’t get the names for most of the pieces I took low quality iPhone pictures of, but I won’t let that stop me from sharing them.

Mount Etna

Rosie the Riveter

Does her pose remind you of anyone?

I'm sure she needs no introduction.

Edit: Resized the photos so they wouldn’t be cut off on the right side.

Edit 2: I forgot to post the photo I took of one of their two portraits of George Washington:

Well, that’s that.

Law school has wrought havoc on my sense of humor, because I couldn’t stop laughing at this video (language alert!):

They did a pretty good job of at least mentioning damn near everything we’ve covered this year in Civil Procedure.

Apparently being a reporter is the easiest job in the world

Because you don’t have to do research, or make sure you’re not just fabricating shit out of whole cloth, or anything else. You can just write whatever the hell you want, and CNN will publish it (H/T Tam). Presumably their “solution” to the “problem” will be some kind of ban on violent games*.

Too bad that’s unconstitutional.

Rock Paper Shotgun actually does real journalism in their piece on Brevik and his trial.

I’ve played video games, violent and nonviolent, for almost 25 years (The earliest games I remember playing were The Black Cauldron and Lords of Conquest). And yet, somehow, I have never killed anyone, never planned to kill anyone, never plotted world domination, or anything else. Just about every American in my generation can say the same.

Games are ubiquitous, and playing games is normal. The breathless media is just trying to gin up a controversy to stay relevant for a bit longer. If they keep publishing tripe like this, they’re more desperate than I thought.

This is another case where the Gell-Man Amnesia effect comes into play. If journalists can’t be bothered to do the due diligence required to print truthful information about a vile human being who killed nearly 80 people, why should we expect them to bother doing enough work to make sure their less consequential stories are truthful?

*Those are sarcasm quotes; banning wouldn’t be a solution, and violent games are no more a problem than rock music, D&D, or whatever the next generation will come up with to scandalize this one.

The Martin-Zimmerman case proves we need to reinstate the assault weapons ban!

Wait, what?

Nice to see Jesse Jackson is still crazy.

OTOH, if someone being shot one time is enough to justify an AWB, that gives us a nice idea of what the anti-gunners consider is reasonable.

One round is too many!

And in the role of Kurt Russell…

Will be Guy Pearce!

Lockout is every bit as bad as the trailers make it look.

And yet is still an entertaining, awesome movie.

Sure, it might just be Escape from New York IN SPACE, with Kurt Russell Guy Pearce playing Snake Plissken ex-CIA agent Snow, but Pearce is so good at hamming it up and cracking wise that you don’t care about stupid plot devices or bad science (QUICK! TURN ON THE GRAVITY GENERATOR!). And instead of rescuing the president from a prison island, he’s rescuing the president’s daughter from a prison space station, where all the prisoners are kept on ice.

The movie is billed as “Based on an original idea by Luc Besson.” Which can only mean that he was drinking with his buddies and said “We should totally remake Escape from New York, only instead of Manhattan as a prison, it should be a space station! That would be awesome!” And everyone agreed, and since he’s credited as a producer, I bet he helped bankroll it.

Fortunately, Luc Besson is the master of so bad it’s awesome filmmaking, and the movie will probably end up doing okay.

It had several other actors I recognized but couldn’t place at the time, including the military dictator from Sahara, the captain from 300, and Lucifer from Constantine. I suppose that makes me more of a cinematic gourmand than gourmet, but I’m okay with that.

Anyway, it’s a great popcorn movie, and Guy Pearce’s character is hilarious.

I really should stop doing these tab clearing posts

But they’re great for when I don’t really want to devote a whole post to any one thing (and for when I can’t come up with a substantial post on a real topic!).

Thinkgeek is selling an Aperture Science 1970s era coffee mug. Right down to the retro form factor!

Bill Amend has put together a few Foxtrot collections formatted for the iPad.

The Japanese have gone and made an anime series about a moe anthropomorphization of Nyarlathotep. Because nothing says eldritch horror like taking the Crawling Chaos and turning it into this.

Nihon Falcom has added more details to the Nayuta no Kiseki official site. They’re marketing it as an action story RPG (whatever that is), and have posted character profiles and some battle screenshots.

Sega, Capcom, and Namco are collaborating on a Super Robot Wars style crossover mashup SRPG, Project X Zone. It’ll have Ryu and Ken (Street Fighter), Shinguji Sakura and Ohgami Ichiro (Sakura Wars), Kurt and Riela (Valkyria Chronicles 3), Jin and Xiaoyu (Tekken), KOS-MOS and T-elos (Xenosaga), and Yuri and Estelle (Tales of Vesperia). And that’s not even an exhaustive list!

And finally, Looper comes out this fall, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis in an action-packed SF time travel flick. The trailer looks pretty good: