1. Shamos: Why e-voting paper trails are a bad idea | The Iconoclast - politics, law, and technology - CNET News.com - Are e-voting paper trails actually useful, or desirable? I think what the whole e-voting thang has raised is how secure (or insecure) our voting process is, and what risks we need to take (and which we need to work on reducing).
2. When the Ex Blogs, the Dirtiest Laundry Is Aired - New York Times - I don't know if it's a good thing, or a bad thing, that my divorce from Cheryl was in pre-blogging days.
3. The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure DVD news: Announcement for DC Super Heroes: The Filmation Adventures | TVShowsOnDVD.com - This makes me sooooooo happy! The SAHoA was dearly beloved by me as a child -- esp. for all the non-Superman/Aquaman bits, which is what this DVD set will collect. Glee!
4. BMWSportTouring Forums: Space Shuttle Processing: Rarely seen by the general public - How to assemble a space shuttle for lauch. Cool. (via GeekPress)
5. The Art of the Title Sequence - This looks like an extraordinarily cool site, looking at TV/movie title sequence. Pretty. (via kottke)

Filed under :: Blogging :: Love and Marriage :: Media :: Media - Cartoons :: Politics & Law :: Potpourri :: Science
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Time to clear out the various tabs ...

1. At what point do fanfic and fan websites cross the line from fair use to infringement. A new Harry Potter case may help pin that down.
2. What actually kills you in a crucifixion?
3. Not quite sure what Six Apart's new ad network is supposed to give me that simply including Google Ads doesn't do. Not that Google Ads have netted me any big bucks.
4. Recreating childhood photos.
5. Dora the Carefully-Tailored-by-Committee Explorer. Bruce mentioned this article the other evening. I thought we were past Dora, but since Kaylee loves it, Katherine's gotten back into it, too. And, worse, Go, Diego, Go.
6. Worst baby names. It's almost impossible to come with a name that some kid, somewhere, isn't going to poke fun at, but it's nice to at least make the ffort.
7. How to terminate a Terminator.

Filed under :: Blogging :: Media - Cartoons :: Media - Movies :: Media Moguls :: Parenting :: Potpourri :: Writing and Language
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1. A store for time travelers.
2. Tech travel tips.
3. It's bacon! It's salt! It's Bacon Salt!
4. Things that only happen in movies.
5. Bulbapedia - everything you (or your daughter) want to know about Pokemon.
6. Super-heroes as fine art? No, super-heroes in fine art.
7. A flow chart of the results of being exposed to D&D early in life.
8. Those darned n00b time travelers ...

Filed under :: Food & Drink :: Gaming :: Media - Art :: Media - Cartoons :: Media - Comics :: Media - Movies :: Travel
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Randy sent me a note pointing me at SurfTheChannel, which looks like it aggregates online videos (of dubious, ah, copyright clearance) through a single site. I only briefly dipped into it, but it looks like it could be a huuuuuge time sink.

Not all the shows have full sets, but there's still an impressive array of things to watch (though some of the feeder sites are very slooooooow ...).

Filed under :: Hi-Tech :: Media - Cartoons :: Media - Movies :: Media - Sports :: Media - TV
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Hrmph.

So Katherine throws on a Dora the Explorer on TV. And here we have Dora saving a bunch of cute, capering puppies who were obsessively captured by a Javertesque - yet - buffoonish dog catcher.

Ah ... what?

Okay, so this is an old meme that was hoary back when I was a kid. But, as an adult, I realize that:

1. Dog catchers don't just randomly hunt for dogs to snatch away and lock in cages. 
2. Animals captured by animal control officers (as we call them these days) are running loose -- which, in most communities I've ever lived in -- means they are lost, out of control, and/or feral, and are a potential threat.
3. Dog catchers are called out by people who see a loose animal that's a problem. They don't just cruise around, actively hunting animals to lock up.
4. If dogs are licensed and tagged, then if they are caught by the dog catcher, they will be recovered.
5. If there are leash laws in your community, that's not the fault of the dog catchers, but the populace at large.
6. For the most part (presumably they are as human as anyone else), dog catchers are hardworking people who uphold laws/regulations and actually both protect animals and people.
7. If more people bought pound animals -- and spayed/neutered their pets -- the number of animals that get caught by dog catchers (and are then put down when not adopted) would dramatically drop.

I don't know if I'm being politically correct, or incorrect, here, but I think I may have a chat with Katherine about the episode after she's done watching it.

UPDATE: Margie actually said something before the very end of the show, and I echoed it, and Katherine indicated her understanding of what we were saying.

Filed under :: Media - Cartoons :: Pets :: ZT & PC
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Dubbed in Dutch, natch.

Filed under :: Media - Cartoons :: Travel
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1. How a cockroach got 30 people fired. It's good to be the king ...
2. Lesson from the Heathrow baggage snafu -- don't upgrade both your redundant systems at the same time.
3. That River certainly is a creepifying girl.
4. Using Google Spreadsheets to run a survey. I might have to try this.
5. Blogger gets fired for having a blog. Corporate myopia, employee naiveté, or both?
6. The risks and costs of using the Internet as your hard drive. That remains, honestly, why I keep so much of my online stuff on my own domain (where, if it goes away, it's probably my fault). Though, even there, I still host my mail on Google ...
7. Satellite spotting sounds like a fun hobby -- even if (or perhaps because) it causes the government security fits.
8. Now that security has made air travel even more miserable (and perhaps lethal), let's start ruining train travel, too.
9. I didn't do an obit for Steve Lieber Steve Gerber because, honestly, I was never much of a Howard the Duck fan. Thundarr the Barbarian, on the other hand ... (via Scott)
10. Exporting contacts from Outlook to Gmail is a fine idea -- except that it doesn't transfer snail-mail addresses. *sigh* 
11. One of the coolest things about the Internet is that if Katherine is trying to sing along to the lyrics to a favorite TV show, I can probably find the text for her online. Of course, it's usually transcribed, and so subject to individual interpretations.
12. Disney's Night Kingdom? If it saves the Adventurer's Club from oblivion, I'll fork over my money.

Filed under :: Blogging :: Blogging - Technical :: Hi-Tech :: Homeland Security :: Job Jollies :: Media - Cartoons :: Media - Music :: Media - TV :: Potpourri :: Travel
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Yes, I'm likely the last person out there to have seen this.  Katherine's seen it in theaters and a dozen times on DVD at home.  It was definitely on my list -- but it wasn't until she threw it in the DVD player last night that I'd actually had a chance to watch the latest bit of joy from Pixar/Disney.

 

Ratatoille (2007) 

Overall		Story
Production		Acting

Story:  A fun and positive tale of creativity, learning to dare, and becoming comfortable with yourself and your abilities, there's certainly a positive message here for everyone.  All the characters deal with issues of integrity and authenticity -- who am I, who do others think I am, what do I want to be, how do I trust myself and others to become what I can be?  The good guys answer positively -- recognizing, then following their dreams, learning integrity and pride.  The bad guy answers negatively -- trying to be be something he's not, and trying to make others something they are not.  It's a similar motif to Brad Bird's Incredibles, but writ here in a very different setting and in a more complex fashion.

That complexity may be the biggest problem.  The movie evidently had length problems, and though Bird says he was "brutal" in hacking it back, the resulting plot still feels rushed, the cast crowded (too many secondary characters we'd like to know more of), and the inevitable twists and turns of the story seem neverending.  Both Remy and Linguini have full-blown plots and character arcs, even with some overlap overlap, and it's just a teeny bit too much to fit into 1:51. 

Acting:  The voice artists all do a solid job, aided and abetted by the Pixar animation, to the point where it's difficult to distinguish the contributions of the two.  There's an odd mixture of accents for a movie set in France with mostly French characters -- American (multiple varieties), British, and French.  It's not noticeable after a short while, though.  While there are a number of "name" actors, there are plenty of fresh and low-profile talents, too, and nobody stands out as a "movie star doing animation."

Production:  Probably one of the most amazing efforts yet by Pixar.  One expects good, realistic (as appopriate) animation from them, but the detail, lighting and shadows, and textures in this film are positively exquisite. Even if it were an awful story, it would be worth seeing.

The music adds to the movie, but subtlely, part of the overall fabric rather than standing out on its own.

Overall:  Who could imagine that a tale of gourmet cooking could be so fun and popular?  Well, yeah, I guess they have a Food Network now, and everything, but to make a "kids" movie out of it is (to sound like a food critic) both fresh and daring.  Ratatouille is another creative triumph for Disney/Pixar (and Brad Bird), and will, I suspect, stay popular for many years come -- at our household, at least.

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So while Margie was sleeping off her all-nighter, I gave Kitten an early Christmas gift -- the Bird Man and the Galaxy Trio DVD collection.  Woot!  Yes, the classic 1967 Hanna-Barbera cartoon series, collected on two DVDs.

Yes, it's inutterably goofy, but in a charming, retro, nostalgic way.  And Katherine just ate it up like candy.  My plans to raise a little geek proceed apace ...

The two different serials (which ran on a single show, with a Birdman ep, a GT ep, then a Birdman ep) were part of the Alex Toth-designed era at HB, when (goofiness aside), the adventures were taken fairly seriously.  Birdman is a solar-powered flying hero (duh), vaguely associated with the sun god Ra, but now working for an international police organization against various other super-powered threats.  The plots were simplistically formulaic -- villain threatens, Birdman is called to the rescue, they fight, Birdman runs short of solar energy, Birdman regains solar energy to escape near death, Birdman defeats the villain -- but still fine, and the art design, and classic HB music / sound fx / voice artists all make it a quality production for the period.

The Egyptian connection shows in the show's visual design, mostly.  There's one very brief allusion to it in the show, and in some promotional materials, but it was seriously downplayed in production, for whatever reason.  On the other hand, the show did a nice job of establishing that there was a back story to all this -- villains were often someone Birdman had faced in the past, etc.

The Galaxy Trio are a bit more interesting -- a trio of super-powered future space cops, sort of a mini-Legion of Super-Heroes crossed with Space Ghost, and with a lot of visual influence from Star Trek (which was on its third season when this premiered).  The plots and their resolution are a bit more varied than Birdman, since the mix of powers and personalities were more varied, too -- but there's nothing here that's particularly ground-breaking.  Just good fun.

More on info on both sets of heroes here and here.

And, yes, I choose to consider the later incarnation as Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, however amusing, to be non-canonical.  :-)

Actually, Birdman wasn't my favorite HB super-hero from that era -- but that's another gift for Kitten this Christmas ...

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Here he comes ... here comes Speed Racer ... 

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