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A list of my favorite films. It occurs to me that I should examine them for commonalities. “Blade Runner” (1982) — This film is a visual masterpiece. The story, and the novel it is based on, really miss a great opportunity to explore a deep philosophical question, but in both cases it seems that merely […]
Frank Herbert’s Dune is a story about many things, but perhaps the most central is the formation of a superhuman mind. Much of the story and its plot points takes place within the inner thoughts of Paul Atreides. In its written form, these thoughts are easily expressed, and the resulting story is deep and powerful. […]
[Disclaimer: This is not, of course, a suggestion that we should try to avoid having a female President. Rather, it is an attempt to see the future.] The election of Barack Obama to the office of President was a huge win for Black Americans. However, it had an unforeseen side effect. The insult to racist […]
A few weeks ago, I was lamenting the sad state of the downtown riverfront. I took it as a sign of decline in St. Louis. Other signs have been the apparent loss of momentum in revitalizing areas like the Washington Avenue district, midtown, and Cherokee Street. Today, I went for a ride up in North […]
The thing that the Daniel Craig series of James Bond movies did, apart from casting an actor who is not naturally suave, was to make James Bond a tragic figure. It was long overdue, really. Prior to the 2006 “Casino Royale“, 007 movies have defied the standard storytelling ingredients of character flaws and character growth […]
It seems I have become a rice snob, or at least as much as one can be in America. I now keep a supply of Jasmine rice, broken Jasmine rice, and Basmati rice, and I can’t bring myself to mismatch them with the wrong dish. At the moment, I also have some Sona Masoori rice […]
I almost abandoned Pride and Prejudice early in the book. There was a scene where the “adults” were arguing about meaningless things like a bunch of middle-schoolers, but in formal early 19th century English. I reminded me of the banter my school friends had in fake English accents and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” […]
The world needs a Micro Four Thirds webcam. Someone could make a killing by manufacturing one. Why? Shallow depth of field in a web cam. What I mean is a USB webcam with a MFT mount and image sensor, with no display, no controls, battery, no additional power requirements, no HDMI, and no display artifacts. […]
I finally found some time to make progress in my Programming AWS Lambda book. Lambda’s support for different languages sent me down a rabbit hole of popular languages, and I landed on the TIOBE Index (as of December 2023). I’m a bit surprised about the current popularity rankings. Along with the possibilities of Lambda, it […]
I love “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” for many reasons, but it occurs to me to consider the story structure. There’s a lot going on, actually. The premise, of course, is that Scott must fight Ramona’s seven evil exes (in a live action portrayal of video game combat). The inciting incident doesn’t reveal that immediately, […]
