Bad Teacher: All the other reviewers are wrong. This is a good movie.

June 24, 2011

I’m giving this movie my highest rating, and I’ll tell you why: Partly, I feel the need to compensate for the unjustly low reviews it’s gotten elsewhere, but mostly because it’s funny. It’s really funny. And most importantly it’s smart funny- which is shocking when you consider that the flimsy plot looked like it couldn’t [...]

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Story Time: The Bear Pit

June 24, 2011

So, I was standing there trying to figure out how to kill a black bear with a pocket knife. The game is usually fair, and in a combat round you tend to be given weapons equal to the task at hand. The knife was part of a multi-tool, and though the blade was sharp, it [...]

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Cars 2: Pixar’s First Misfire

June 23, 2011

I had heard a few negative things about ‘Cars 2′ before I saw the film, but I wrote most of them off. It seems to me that sometimes people get overly-bothered by films not “having enough heart,” or not adhering to what they think they should have been about, or not being emotional enough. Depending [...]

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MtGox Dances With the Bear

June 21, 2011

MtGox, the largest online exchange for bitcoin trading by far, has had some staggering security issues this week. The administrator, Mark Karpeles, also known by his handle MagicalTux, says that the site’s database was leaked in an encrypted format after an independent auditor’s machine was compromised. After some of the encrypted passwords were cracked, he [...]

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Jose Guerena and America’s War on Gun Owners

June 15, 2011

26-year-old Jose Guerena, pictured in full regalia, was an ex-marine and Iraq veteran who served faithfully for two tours. He was brutally gunned down early last month inside his own home, shot at 71 times after his door was kicked in by an Arizona SWAT team on the morning of May 5th. Jose’s only crime, [...]

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Super 8 Review: Textbook Summer Fun

June 15, 2011

‘Super 8′ has done much better than expected in its opening run this week. It drew $37 million over the weekend which means, at least as far as revenue is concerned, the film has surpassed most predictions. It does make me wonder though: Why were expectations were so low in the first place? If we [...]

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The Tree of Life: Not Really That Profound

June 11, 2011

I had been looking forward to seeing ‘The Tree of Life’ for quite some time now, after all, the trailer was fairly exceptional and quite a few people have been saying that it will be Terrence Malick’s masterpiece. I ended up seeing it at a local art-house theater in the North Bay last night and [...]

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How Cloud Computing Changes the Way We Imagine the Future

May 12, 2011

I’ve always been a fan of science fiction films, but every now and then a real-world technical innovation changes the course of history, and makes our previous predictions look silly. The staggering evolution of computers, for example, makes the ones showcased in the original Star Trek television show look downright primitive in most respects. Cell [...]

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