Roger Ebert reviews Michael Moore’s newest film.

Noting that we treasure urban legends designed to make us fearful of strangers, Moore notices how TV news focuses on local violence (“If it bleeds, it leads”) and says that while the murder rate is down 20 percent in America, TV coverage of violent crime is up 600 percent. Despite paranoia that has all but sidetracked the childhood custom of trick or treat, Moore points out that in fact no razor blades have ever been found in Halloween apples.

I’m glad he included this little factoid. I’ve been trying to tell people for years that we’re safer now than we ever have been, but nobody believes me. A friend of my daughter’s just the other day said she wasn’t going trick-or-treating because she was afraid of razor blades! Unbelievable!

The movie is rated R, so that the Columbine killers would have been protected from the “violent images,” mostly of themselves. The MPAA continues its policy of banning teenagers from those films they most need to see. What utopian world do the flywheels of the ratings board think they are protecting?

Isn’t that pathetic? This movie, a documentary about violence in our society, is rated R, and yet “Mission Impossible 2” was PG-13!?!?!?!?! That’s just plain warped.

Spammers have co-opted an administration feature in Microsoft’s Windows operating systems and are using it to bring up intrusive advertisements on Internet-connected computers.

The feature, known as the messenger service, typically lets a network administrator send warnings to users when, for example, a server is scheduled to go down for maintenance. Now some advertisers are using it to send bulk messages to anyone connected to the Internet with an accessible address.

You just gotta love well designed operating systems like this… NOT!

As the “Libertarian” candidate for governor, nobody really takes her seriously… that is, until they really try and understand what she has to say.

She sought out area Libertarians and attended party meetings on health care. In 1995, Howell went to her first Massachusetts Libertarian convention. She read works by Harry Browne and David Bergland, Libertarian Party leaders and presidential candidates. The next year, she again attended the party’s state convention and this time, the broader Libertarian philosophy clicked.

*I saw a pattern,” she said. ”Big government didn’t work – whether it was guns or health care or education – it just didn’t work.*

I think I’ve seen the same pattern. The more government we have, the less we have.

Jeff Jacoby presents a case that former President Carter should not accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

During the runup to the Gulf War in 1990, in what even Brinkley [Jimmy Carter’s biographer] calls *the low moment* of his post-presidency, Carter actively tried to sabotage President George H. W. Bush’s efforts to win approval from the UN Security Council for armed action to liberate Kuwait. Without notifying Bush, he wrote to the heads of state of each member of the Security Council, urging them to vote against the US-drafted resolution.

*In his letter,” Brinkley found, ”Carter urged these influential world leaders to abandon US leadership and instead give `unequivocal support to an Arab League effort’* to link the Iraqi conquest of Kuwait with the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Lobbying foreign governments to subvert the diplomatic efforts of a sitting president is something ex-presidents simply do not do. But Carter did it.

If this is true… I’ve lost a lot of respect for Mr. Carter. Politics aside, he should have more respect for the office than that, and more respect for his successors. He knows how hard the job is, and he knows that since he’s no longer on the inside there’s quite a bit of information that he has no access to that influences things like the decision to enter the Gulf War.

I’m sure that President Carter wouldn’t have liked it very much had Presidents Johnson, Nixon or Ford tried to undermine his authority in trying to free the US hostages in Iran by encouraging Israel send in the Mosad to do what Jimmy couldn’t.

It’s official. Macworld is coming home!

IDG World Expo on Thursday officially moved Macworld Conference & Expo back to Boston, leaving New York, where the show spent the last several years. The conference, which will move for the 2004 show, will be the inaugural event at new Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.

Excellent! I can’t wait to go!

U.S. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Eric Haney, a 20-year military veteran and founder of the Delta Force who has visited nine of the sniper crime scenes believes so.

I’m convinced there are two. They’re operating in tandem. One shoots while the other either drives the vehicle and is sitting in the driver’s seat watching. He’s also pulling security. He tells the shooter, “OK, no one’s nearby us right now. When you have a person in your sights, take the shot.” Then when the shot is fired, the driver slips it into gear, and they unobtrusively pull way. Inside of 20 seconds, they’re a couple of blocks away.

OK, so there’s 2. Now, when are we going to find them?

Not really. This is just way too funny.

It appears that the **Switch** campaign is getting to Microsoft. They’ve posted their own version on their site:

There’s a new page on Microsoft’s web site that tells the first-person story of an unnamed ‘freelance writer’ who made the switch from the Mac to Windows XP. The author of the page — who never identifies herself, and who could very easily be fictional or a composite sketch — says ‘Windows XP gives me more choices and flexibility.’ How, you ask? Why, through Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and modern operating-system features like separate accounts for each user and easy access to the Internet, of course. Maybe somebody should email Microsoft and let them know that the Mac has had all of these things for years now … nah. It’d just embarrass them. Anyway, it’s an entertaining read that’s good for a laugh.

And if you read the followup thread, it uncovers the fact that **IT’S NOT EVEN A REAL PERSON!!!** I guess that can’t find someone that actually switched from the Mac to WindowsXP and likes it enough to admit it!

From the thread at [[Slashdot]]:

The AP already picked up this story, and tracked down the marketing company hired to create this fake ad. The woman, Valerie G. Mallinson of Shoreline, Wash works for a public relations firm, Wes Rataushk & Associates Inc. Microsoft hired Rataushk to produce fake testimonials when their own research turned up no usable customers.

Here’s a [screenshot](http://www.scripting.com/misc/msSwitchAd/gustavson.png) of the page before Microsoft nuked it.

###Just in case

Just in case you think that Apple’s switch campaign is a fabrication as well, here’s some info from the guy who posted the original story on [[Slashdot]]:

I’m the guy who submitted the story, and I’ll be happy to answer your question. Apple did something that most people aren’t aware of. They actively solicited, on their web site, write-in testimonials about switching from Windows to Mac OS X for almost a year before running the first “Switchers” ad. Also, Apple paid for the Switchers airfare and accommodations when they shot their TV spots, but they themselves received no money at all.

And check out this [interview](http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1737) with one of the people from the switch campaign… seems real to me [[:-)]]

It’s gonna be an all California World Series!

Barry Bonds sprinted across the field so fast, he could’ve run all the way to the World Series.

At long last, baseball’s biggest star will get his first chance to play on baseball’s biggest stage.

Congratulations Barry and the rest of the team for a job well done. Now… let’s show those American Leaguers how the game is really played [[:-)]]

###Welcome

Welcome to my movie reviews. Here’s where I tell you what I think about various movies that I’ve seen. You might notice that there’s more 4 star movies than 1 star movies. That’s because I tend to write reviews for the movies that I like and ignore the ones that I don’t. It takes a lot of energy to write a review, and I’d rather not waste it on movies that I just don’t like. Oh well.

###Rankings

I have a pretty simple way to rate a movie of any kind. Each movie starts out with 4 stars. Each time the movie falters enough that I am pulled out of its reality, it looses either 1/2 or 1 star depending on how completely I’m pulled out.

It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the Earth/Minbari war. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal, to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It’s a port of call – home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it’s our last best hope for peace. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5. – Commander Sinclair

With the completion of the last of the Babylon stations in 2257, the galaxy is enjoying a fragile peace. Babylon 5 is functioning as planned, defusing disputes among the five major governments and acting as a hub for interstellar commerce and communication.

The Earth Alliance, headquartered in Geneva, is in charge of the station and the surrounding space. It is led by President Luis Santiago, a forward-looking politician who values Earth’s participation in Babylon 5 tremendously. Of special note is a branch of the Earth government called Psi-Corps, responsible for the tracking and training of human telepaths. Pictured here is Jeffrey Sinclair, commander of Babylon 5.

Earth’s former adversary, the Minbari Federation, was the major alien contributor to the construction of Babylon 5. An old, highly spiritual race, Minbari are humanoid with exterior bone crests on their heads. The Minbari are ruled by a body known as the Grey Council, three members from each of the three castes of Minbari society. The reason behind the sudden Minbari surrender at the climax of the Earth-Minbari War is a closely-guarded secret, but what isn’t a secret is that the warrior caste was none too pleased about the order; even today, it is a source of tension within Minbari society.

The Centauri were the first aliens encountered by humanity. Physically, they look nearly identical to humans, and in fact the Centauri initially claimed that Earth was a lost colony (a claim they later retracted after humans discovered that the similarities weren’t so great after all.) Centauri women are bald; men wear their hair in peacock-style fans whose length indicates the wearer’s social standing. The Centauri Republic is a fading empire, slowly losing control of its member worlds, a decline much like that of the British Empire.

Among those formerly under Centauri domination are the Narn, a reptilian-looking race who fought off their oppressors in a century-long war of attrition. Now the Narn Regime is building its military up, trying to settle the score through an aggressive expansionist policy. Most Narn would like nothing better than to see the Centauri wiped from the face of the universe, and from all appearances, they’ll shortly be in a position to get their wish.

The final major government represented on Babylon 5 is the Vorlon Empire. The Vorlons are shrouded in mystery. Even though their ambassador is on the station, nobody knows what they look like; they dress in bulky encounter suits. Whether the suits are there to keep a noxious atmosphere in or prying eyes out is a matter of some debate. The Vorlons are an extremely powerful race; no expedition into their space has been heard from again. They seem to have had dealings with the Minbari in the past, though neither the Minbari nor the Vorlons care to discuss the matter.

Each of the five races has an ambassador on the Babylon 5 Advisory Council, something like the UN Security Council. In addition, a number of smaller governments are members of the League of Non-Aligned Worlds, which is also represented on the Council. This group is generally sympathetic to Earth, largely because Earth stepped in to save many of them from invasion by a hostile race (now extinct.)

The peace is most often threatened by aggressive behavior on the part of the Narn, or by lingering tensions between Earth and the Minbari warrior caste, a sizable fraction of which wouldn’t mind a rematch. And there are enduring mysteries to set everyone on edge: the reasons behind the Minbari surrender and the sudden disappearance of Babylon 4, the nature and motives of the Vorlons, the hint of dark forces moving behind the scenes in the Earth government.