Life of Smiley

Israeli missiles hit Gaza; militants say truce on again GAZA (Reuters) - Israel fired more missiles into Gaza on Tuesday and vowed no respite in an offensive to halt renewed cross-border rocket salvoes by Palestinian militants two weeks after its withdrawal from the territory. After air strikes destroyed two bridges and two buildings Israel said were used by militants, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said militants "will be hit again and again until they understand there are new rules to the game." "Quiet means quiet," Mofaz was quoted by the YNET media web site as saying. After Mofaz's remarks, a political leader of Islamic Jihad said it and other militant groups had decided at a meeting to abide once again by an informal truce. But afterward, another Gaza rocket crashed inside Israel, causing no injury or damage. It's like the Israelis are exasperated parents trying to control their ornery children. Except both the parents and children have missiles. Shortly...

The recent controversy over the Hot Coffee mod of Take2 Interactive's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas video game -- a hacker-created modification unlocks a hidden mini-game involving graphic sexual intercourse -- is completely missing the point. I'll get to that, but first let me address the points that others have been debating. The first point is the obvious one: is this sort of thing appropriate for a video game? From what I've seen , the content is certainly graphic and I can understand how it might be shocking to people who are not used to seeing such acts depicted in visual media. A movie containing such a scene would no doubt earn an R rating, restricting access to moviegoers age 17 and over. By this measure it seems appropriate that GTA:SA was originally rated M by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), restricting purchase to gamers age 17 and over. Furthermore, the offending content is not even accessible without applying the aforementioned software p...

In response to this post , I don't see how the Grokster decision can be considered a "stupendous strategic loss" when it is in fact irrelevant. As the author points out, the P2P cat is out of the bag. There will always be technologies such as BitTorrent which are freely available as open source with no companies to sue. Bottom line: give people a reasonably priced, convenient, legal option (e.g. iTunes) and they will use it. As a side note, did anyone ever use Grokster? I didn't. The music industry's reaction to file sharing reminds me a bit of the US' reaction to 9/11. The (il)logic seems to be, if you can't reach the real culprit, at least go after somebody.

This post is in response to the question of what is the best comic book movie ever? Or more to the point, is Batman Begins the best of all time? Batman Begins is a good movie and I would recommend anyone to go see it. But frankly I have no desire to see it again. When you get right down to it, that's the only measure of greatness that matters. I agree with everyone that the backstory is great. In fact, it may have been too good. I really enjoyed the early scenes in Japan (?), and when we got back to Gotham I just felt like things went downhill. I had a couple of specific, though minor, complaints. I didn't like how Bale's face looked squeezed into the bat mask, or how he did the cheesily gruff bat voice. And, as most reviewers have noted, Katie's performance was weak. But in general, the story, set/SFX, direction, and acting were all spot-on. And yet, I couldn't help feeling that the whole was less than the sum of its parts. As the movie went on, my interest wane...

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About Life of Smiley

I was having a discussion with a friend recently about America's War on Terrorism. He took the devil's advocate position that if we are going to fight such a war, rather than making surgical strikes with special forces we should go in full force and kill everyone - men, women, children, and the elderly alike. Now of course we don't actually condone the killing of innocent civilians. America is not a country of murderers, and no responsible nation would ever sponsor such a course of action. The point here is that if we are not willing to do the job right, why bother to do it at all? Does anyone truly believe that killing bin Laden will bring an end to terrorism? The following is an excerpt from Black Hawk Down, an account of the US special forces raid on Somalia in 1993. Somalia is on the coast of northeast Africa, and I believe the situation and attitudes of the people there are common throughout the Middle East. "It was a watershed," says one State Departmen...