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Strong opinions, weakly held

Month: January 2009 (page 2 of 8)

Links from January 25th

Links from January 24th

Slumdog Millionaire

I watched Slumdog Millionaire last night. Some people had said it was overrated, but Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes indicate that most people loved it. Roger Ebert gave it about as good a review as he ever gives any movie.

Anyone going into the movie should go in with the thought that while the circumstances faced by the characters are realistic (and at times difficult to watch), the plot is somewhat fantastical. I think a lot of people who came out disappointed did so because they didn’t expect a fairy tale.

The movie reminded me most of season four of The Wire. It’s a story about kids trying to make it on their own — making choices few adults will ever have to make.

The most interesting aspect of the movie is the relationship between the two brothers. It’s the story of Cain and Abel, told in long form.

In short, I loved the movie. I haven’t seen enough movies this year to know if it deserves the best picture award, but it’s certainly the best movie I’ve seen in quite some time.

Not migrating to Disqus

I’ve switched over to Disqus for comments. Let me know if you hate it.

Update: I changed my mind. I’m going to dig into some other options that provide features I’m interested in without taking over the whole comment system.

Today’s post on economic stimulus, episode IV

Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok both lay out their alternatives to massive fiscal stimulus today. Both argue along roughly the same lines — play defense and wait for the measures already taken to work. Tyler also helpfully quoted Warren Buffett’s argument for stimulus yesterday.

It’s important to remember in this argument that nobody really knows what’s going to work and economists are relying on the philosophies that have gotten them this far. The main line of argument right now seems to be over the consequences if the policy we pursue misses the mark. Is it worse to not pursue fiscal stimulus and find that we really needed it or is it worse to run up a big deficit and find that doing so was insufficient to address the crisis?

Links from January 23rd

I’m going back to packaging up my del.icio.us bookmarks daily and posting them here.

  • The Black Triangle is an article from 2004 about game development found by Jason Kottke. It describes the disconnect between programmers and users, where users are unimpressed by seeing something relatively simple on the screen, and developers are thrilled at the huge amount of work that into getting that simple thing onto the screen. I’ve found it’s never a good idea to show customers the Black Triangle. It always comes later in the process than they’d think and often freaks them out.
  • waferbaby: The Setup. Interviews with people about their computer setups. I can never read enough of these.
  • New York Times: Gazan Doctor and Peace Advocate Loses 3 Daughters to Israeli Fire and Asks Why. The horrific cost of war.
  • Dr. Saturday: Australian Rules’ blood’s worth bottling. A proposed playoff structure for college football. A more interesting approach
  • Going.com: Newspapers Covering Obama’s Inauguration. A huge collection of newspaper front pages from President Obama’s inauguration. And yes, it still feels weird to type “President Obama.”
  • CSS Newbie: The EqualHeights jQuery Plugin. I’m always looking for better ways to set columns to equal heights on a Web page.
  • Glenn Greenwald: Mohammed Jawad and Obama’s efforts to suspend military commissions. When anyone questions whether the United States tortures people or tortures the wrong people, you can forward them the story of Mohammed Jawad, a teenager captured in Afghanistan who was coerced to confess to killing US soldiers with a grenade. The military prosecutor in his case petitioned that he should be released and ultimately resigned rather than prosecute him.

Has Flight Simulator met its end?

James Fallows reports that Microsoft has laid off the team that works on Flight Simulator. I was never much of a player of Flight Simulator, but it should be recognized as one of the most important games in the history of personal computing. It was one of the very first games to offer a first person perspective on the action, it was one of the first games for the IBM PC platform, and I think it’s likely that it’s the oldest continually developed computer game on the market.

Wikipedia has a lengthy article on Microsoft Flight Simulator.

PC Magazines has further details.

I can’t help but wonder if the better choice would have been to spin off ACES Studios and give them the Flight Simulator intellectual property to try to make it on their own.

Tyler Cowen’s call for civility

Tyler Cowen makes a good argument for increased civility in the debate over economic stimulus, but it could apply to plenty of other subjects as well. I’m in favor of not treating the people you’re debating as though they’re stupid or dishonest (even if you suspect that they are) simply because such treatment inevitably turns persuadable people on the other side away from your arguments.

Things are tough all over

Foreign workers in Dubai have abandoned thousands of cars on the side of the road near the airport, catching one-way flights back to their countries of origin. I’ve often said that Dubai is to Las Vegas as Las Vegas is to everywhere else. Looks like that counts double when it comes to the real estate bust.

Obama likes eavesdropping more than torture

Threat Level reports on the Obama administration’s decision to fall in line with a Bush administration request to keep evidence classified in a wiretapping case involving two American lawyers. Obama has taken a strong stand against torture, but his positions on surveillance have been less encouraging.

It would be ideal if the Obama administration would clearly outline its philosophy on the government’s right to spy on Americans. The actual mechanisms can stay secret, but we should know how much power the executive branch is claiming to possess.

Update: David Kris, an outspoken opponent of warrentless wiretapping, has been nominated to run the Justice Department’s national security division.

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