Wow. This guy... he cannot catch a break.

It does free him up for that second season of Firefly we've been hearing so much about, though!

Posted by: Ace at 01:00 PM | Comments (45)
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What a shock.

I expect the corrections from ABC and NBC to come rolling in.

Any. Minute. Now.

Posted by: Ace at 12:44 PM | Comments (26)
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I'm reposting this because hey, it's out on DVD and on PPV, and because it will give my lefty stalkers a chance to say, "HE SAID IT! HE SAID IT! He's afraid of brown people, just like we always say!"

Come on, guys. You know you want to say it. So say it. Your readers will buy it. They're stupid. Nearly as stupid as you.

...

Snakes On A Plane
Starring Samuel L. Jackson; Snakes

An incomprehensible premise riddled with plot holes you could fly a 747 through, ending up as a film that simply leaves you scratching your head in absolute befuddlement at the utter incompetence of the filmmakers

Snakes on a Plane is perhaps the the most perfect distillation of the "high concept" movie, a movie that can be summed up in a brief tagline. Here, the tagline itself is the title. You've got snakes. You've got a plane. You've got snakes on a plane. Simple, and yet potentially a vehicle for suspense and fun, you're thinking.

You could not be further wrong. For, while Snakes on a Plane does begin with the interesting premise of a crates full of venomous serpents being smuggled aboard a jetliner in order to kill a crucial witness being en route to a very important trial, it quickly devolves into a confusing, absurdist mess leaving you in slack-jawed wonder at how the screenwriters could have botched such a simple concept so badly.

The problems begin early, as we meet Samuel L. Jackson, who introduces himself as a cop escorting a witness to trial.

Intriguing questions are raised-- "How did this carthief/pimp get a hold of a policeman's badge? Is the genuine, white cop he's impersonating dead, or merely unconscious? What savage violence did he perpetrate to get his thieving hands on a cop's credentials?"

But the screenwriters, inexplicably, leave these questions hanging in the air.

Some suspense is created as we see crates filled with large, poison-dripping snakes being loaded into the cargo hold, and we meet the passengers (briefly, of course) who are altogether unaware of the horror they are about to endure. But much of this suspence becomes sheer farce, as "tension music" rises when we see the snakes hissing in their crates, and yet no one on board takes any notice whatsoever of the "brown person" walking unchallenged up and down the aisles of the cabin.

Helllooooo...?! Hollywood, this your scheduled Clue Call. "Suspension of disbelief"? "Realism"? Any of these words ringing any bells?

A six foot black mamba? How about a six foot three black man-- with a gun, as if we need any additonal terror. (Talk about gilding the lily.)

And yet, in the first of many plot holes, everyone from the passengers to the flight crew to the (inevitable) plainclothes air marshal seems to accept the presence of an unfettered brown person as just "business as usual."

Hey-- Hollywood is in the business of fantasy, right? What-ev-er.

From there, the film turns predictably, but quite fortuitously, to the escaping snakes. Again, an interesting tension is created-- and then wasted. As the menacing, savage figure of Samuel L. Jackson runs up and down the plane, terrorizing people with his dusky complexion and wild, flashing eyes, the viewer keeps wondering, "When will the snakes and the passengers put aside their differences to unite against their common enemy?"

And yet, once again, the screenwriter, apparently on braindead autopilot, lets this interesting possibility slip away.

The most ludicrously implausible plot contrivance occurs about one third of the way through, when Samuel L. Jackson is permitted -- get this -- to enter the cockpit without handcuffs or a straightjacket. A brown person! In the cockpit! The mind reels. I hope the America's real airplane security is a bit more on the ball than these yahoos.

But it only gets worse from there. Because they allow him into the cockpit to make a distress call from the radio. Absurd-- you never let a black man near a radio. He'll spend the next two hours giving "shout-outs" to "his peeps," all the while vital time is wasting away. But I suppose this is a mindless action movie, so I'll let that pass.

But what I cannot forgive is that they then let Samuel L. Jackson leave the cockpit without patting him down. All those pricey electronics everywhere, and they're just going to let a brown person waltz in and waltz out without making sure he hasn't boosted any "avionics bling" he can "fence" to his "homie" G-Dogg and then buy some crack?

In yet another gaping plot hole, the movie never explains how the plane is able to continue flying after Samuel L. Jackson has looted all the instruments and control mechanisms. Whoops! File it under "Hollywood magic," I guess!

Who the hell was the technical advisor on this movie? A retard? Or a retarded brown person? Who knows. Let's just say we've really gone into "Star Wars" territory at this point. Maybe the pilot was using "The Force" to steer the plane.

And that absurd catch-phrase from the movie -- "We got motherfuckin' snakes on this motherfuckin' plane!"

Howzabout, "We got a motherfuckin' brown person on this motherfuckin' plane" ? You want high-concept action-terror-- there's your premise, dummies.

Anyway, the movie lumbers towards its downer ending as Sam Jackson savagely threatens all the passengers to grab on to the seats and then blows open a window. The sudden depressurization sweeps all the snakes out of the plane, while the passengers remain safely inside.

Yeah-- "safely." Except now they're left alone, without any snakes to use as defensive weapons, with a frightening brown person right within "stabbing distance."

Some ending. That's just how I want my popcorn movies to end -- on an ambiguously terrifying note, wondering how all those poor passengers will possibly survive with a rampaging brown person having free rein of the plane and their watches and wallets and white women.

I knew I'd have to set my brain to the "Off" position for this movie. I didn't know I'd have to switch my brain's dial to "Full-Out Retard."

Zero stars. One of the most implausible, contrived, and incomprehensible messes of of absurdist illogic I have ever had the misfortune to witness.

Although, I do have to admit-- the parts with Sam Jackson? Some of the scariest scenes captured on film, ever.

Posted by: Ace at 12:40 PM | Comments (109)
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Update: This post. At the end.

Here's the Google cached version. In case anyone wants to suggest that I just added something.

They keep saying that Marcotte's posts were "satirical." So they were, I suppose. But satire can be vicious, and intentionally so -- as Marcotte's anti-Christian rants were.

The left seems to be hoping that the public will confuse "satirical" with "ironical," the latter of course meaning "conveying an meaning differing from the superficial meaning."

But Marcotte's posts about the Catholic Church and Christianity were not "ironical." She meant every damn word; she meant precisely the meaning it seemed she meant. Irony is, in fact, in very short supply on the hyperpoliticized left.

Memo to the left: My constant posts about being afraid of "brown people" and vaginas are "ironical" -- I'm making fun of the left for constantly making this charge by spoofing it.

Marcotte's posts are decidedly not ironic, and the left should really stop trying to spin them as such.

Not that that will make any difference. What annoys me isn't the charge-- it's the childish dishonesty.

...

I violated Rule Zero: I got into a spat on someone else's blog.

Here's the deal: There are a lot of (sadly) low-traffic leftie blogs that "monitor" me, like unhinged liberals "monitor" Rush Limbaugh, and enjoy taking statements out of context.

They like asserting, for example, that because a conservative argues in favor of greater sexual restraint and less public displays of sexual imagery, and maybe thinks it's best if 13 and 14 year old aren't having sex, he must hate sex, and, ergo, any post noting that this or that woman is attractive is hypocrisy of the highest order.

They're also determined to read things in the most absurdly uncharitable ways possible. For example, when I asked "Are Elisha Cuthbert's looks actually holding her back?" they took that as a claim that Elisha Cuthbert was ugly, rather than getting the obvious meaning, that I was wondering if she was a little too good-looking to be acceptable as lead actress. What, he's such a prize?, they demanded to know.

(They gave this sentence this absurd reading despite simultaneously accusing me of masturbating to Cuthbert -- i.e., I was both attracted to her and thought her ugly. But internal consistency has never been their strong suit.)

Allah just got annoyed by this tendency of theirs as well. Some idiot on Huffington Post took Allah to task for the hypocrisy! of his using salty language (actually kind of unsalted salty language -- he wrote the word "poop" in a post about Sheryl "We Can Only Spare A Square" Crow), wondering how on earth such a flagrant profanity could come from a conservative in whose mouth sugar would most assuredly not melt.

Childish. But their stock in trade. It never ceases to amuse me that lefties stereotype conservatives so blatantly, and put together such shoddy Straw Men, and yet scream Straw Man! Stereotype! when you state the truth about them.

This word you keep using-- Straw Man Stereotype. It do not think it means what you think it means.

The other thing they do is this. And, if this is boring you, they do it to you too, as I frequently see you morons -- yes, you morons -- quoted by them as evidence of how evil and stupid you are.

A while ago I -- we -- started the whole "fear of brown people" and "fear of vaginas" schtick in response to the claims of various lefty bloggers that we we soiled ourselves upon the sight of a "brown person" and (a favorite of Marcotte's) we tremble at the power -- the fearsome power -- of the vagina.

So, to mock them, I, and you, began the whole "I saw a brown person today, and my life flashed before my eyes" schtick. And the "don't hurt me, scary vagina person" schtick. Mocking them. Parodying them. And farily obviously too; this is irony, of course, but not of the subtlest sort.

Here's the problem: Everytime we write something along those lines -- spoofing their stereotypical beliefs about conservatives -- they actually cite it as evidence that their stereotypes are accurate.

When I confess soiling myself at the sight of a “brown person,” and then, without the slightest evidence of a clue, lefty bloggers link me screaming, “HE SAYS HE’S AFRAID OF BROWN PEOPLE! He said it! He actually said it!”

When I confess that "Vaginas are scary,” again, the lefties link me screaming “HE’S AFRAID OF VAGINAS! He said it! He actually said it!”

more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:20 PM | Comments (285)
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I'm getting a lot of questions about this. Someone just wrote to say my commenters are much better than me and the big draw.

The old "Comments" button does not work and probably will never work again.

You must use the New Comment Thingy button next to it to view comments.

And to post comments, you must include an email address, even if it's a fake one. The system will not post your comment without that -- and there's a glitch in the system that doesn't even tell you why your comment didn't go through. (Usually you can page back to get the comment back, though, and just fill in an email address, then post it.)

Sorry about this. I've meant to remove the Comment button entirely in order to avoid the continuing confusion, but I'm not quite sure where it is, or if deleting it will cause unforeseen problems.

Use the New Comment Thingy, please. The old commenting system is disabled forever.

Update: Phin is fixing this stuff for me. What a great guy.

Here's another thing: Many of you complain you get porn warnings about the comments when at work or otherwise using some sort of safe-search system.

Here's what's going on: The commenters are frigging filthy and they activate all the porn tripwires.

No, not really.

The new comments thingy takes you from this mu.nu domain to the minx.cc domain. Because comments are hosted on that domain.

But many "safe-search" systems have built in protections against links that take you to an unexpected domain. Or something. They don't like the fact you're clicking on mu.nu but the link takes you somewhere else, and they flag that as "likely porn."

I think a workaround for this is just to copy the new comments thingy link location and paste it in the URL, so you're going directly to the minx site, rather than being redirected along the way. Going there directly from your URL bar should, I think, stop the software from thinking this site is "phishing" you.

Incidentally, if you get a "phishing" warning -- that's due to this rubber-band-and-paper-clip comments patch we have too. A lot of browsers and safe-search software just doesn't like how clicking on mu.nu takes you to minx, and thinks it's a scam redirect.

Posted by: Ace at 09:52 AM | Comments (69)
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51-46. Hegel and Gordon Smith voted in favor of it, I'm guessing.

Joe Lieberaman has a good point:

My colleague from Nevada, in other words, is suggesting that the insurgency is being provoked by the very presence of American troops. By diminishing that presence, then, he believes the insurgency will diminish.

But I ask my colleagues—where is the evidence to support this theory? Since 2003, and before General Petraeus took command, U.S. forces were ordered on several occasions to pull back from Iraqi cities and regions, including Mosul and Fallujah and Tel’Afar and Baghdad. And what happened in these places? Did they stabilize when American troops left? Did the insurgency go away?

On the contrary—in each of these places where U.S. forces pulled back, Al Qaeda rushed in. Rather than becoming islands of peace, they became safe havens for terrorists, islands of fear and violence.

So I ask advocates of withdrawal: on what evidence, on what data, have you concluded that pulling U.S. troops out will weaken the insurgency, when every single experience we have had since 2003 suggests that this legislation will strengthen it?

Faith-based foreign policy on the part of the Democrats, then?

Or simply lying? Claiming that withdrawal is not defeat but in fact some sort of novel way of winning in which we get to lose no further troops and Al Qaeda is somehow defeated, roundly and soundly, by our very absence?

I think the latter. No one is this stupid -- not even liberals.

A bit of speculation is going around that Lieberman may switch to the Republicans due to this vote, but Allah is doubtful. Me too.

And the hell of it is -- Lieberman's flipping wouldn't even give Senate orgainzational control back to the Republicans. Yeah, it seems true -- hit his link about that.

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 AM | Comments (33)
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The guy has a lot of opinions -- and strong ones -- for a reporter. Cuts both ways -- he called McCain delusional when he said Baghdad was safer.

Always cuts this one way, though: He's always editorializing.

Reporter Kyra Phillips agreed that withdrawal equals victory for Al Qaeda: “It would be a disaster."

The left continues its favorite talking point, that the fight in Iraq is not really a fight against Al Qaeda. They continue insisting terror attacks are almost entirely due to indigenous insurgents, despite the rather well-known fact that Al Qaeda is responsible for most of the deaths and mass-bombings, and the inigenous insurgents are trying to restrain Al Qaeda, and even exchange gunfire with them.

It's just too amusing to hear Democrats and liberal media types like Juan Williams insist they're all gung-ho in favor of fighting Al Qaeda... they just don't want to do so in Iraq. To repurpose Dennis Miller's joke, they've decided there are no Al Qaeda in Iraq -- just "Al Kinda."

There's that claim that bin Ladin is actually "directing" Al Qaeda in Iraq, which I think is nonsense for several reasons (like that he's probably dead), but it can't be denied that Al Qaeda itself certainly believes that Al Qaeda in Iraq is part of Al Qaeda. (One supporting bit of evidence: they call themselves Al Qaeda in Iraq.)

And Al Qaeda is greatly heartened by Harry Reid's statement that the war in Iraq is "lost," quoting it in propaganda statements. More thoughts on this from Bryan at Hot Air.

So it seems Al Qaeda thinks Al Qaeda is fighting in Iraq, President Bush thinks Al Qaeda is fighting in Iraq, even reporters think Al Qaeda is fighting in Iraq.

The only people who claim otherwise are anti-war Democrats, determined politically to lose Iraq but not willing to admit they're really not all that interested in fighting Al Qaeda anywhere.

Posted by: Ace at 09:09 AM | Comments (25)
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A particularly forward-leaning member of the reality based community was arrested for sticking a rifle in a Republican official's face and threatening to assassinate Bush -- if he didn't go along with Reid's and Pelosi's timetables on war funding.

Matthew Hunter Kramer, 31, did not resist officers who arrested him on a warrant issued after the April 3 confrontation at state Republican Party offices in Las Vegas. It wasnÂ’t clear why he was not arrested earlier.

It's clearer to me -- lefties are allowed to do this, because to arrest them is to "chill their right to free assassination." You have to be very sure of yourself to overcome that burden.

In the aftermath of the Cho shooting -- with the media searching far and wide for similar ratings-boosting madmen-with-guns stories -- you'd imagine that maybe they'd be interested in this one.

And yet, for reasons unfathomable, no, not so much. The "guns are bad" narrative -- which they love -- is, alas, offset by a competing narrative they're not quite so big on.

Posted by: Ace at 08:37 AM | Comments (17)
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Soccer Dad doesn't think Kalb went far enough. For example, there's this:

Kalb noted that a reporter from Australia's Herald Sun took and smuggled pictures out of southern Beirut showing confirming Israeli charges that Hezbollah indeed hid its military equipment among the civilian population. Why didn't he criticize the rest of the media for failing to pick up the story? Did he find it incredible?

And then Kalb for no particular reason drops this jaw-dropper:

When bin Laden wanted to help tip the 2004 presidential election in the U.S. to the incumbent, George W. Bush, he criticized Bush in a taped message delivered to Al-Jazeera.

Yes yes yes, that's how lefties think, of course. bin Ladin loves Bush because he aggressively fights Al Qaeda, and hates Democrats because they wisely wouldn't fight much at all. So of course a tape implicitly endorsing Kerry must be a double-bluff to encourage people to vote for Bush.

Right.

Does bin Ladin have a history of demanding that people do the opposite of what he really wants and rely on the power of reverse psychology, or does he tend to make his demands directly?

Seems to me it's the latter. I don't hear him, for example, urging Israel to "stay, stay in the occupied territories... yes, please do... it's your right..."

This is a common thing with left-leaning Jews. They tend to support Israel's right to defense -- fair enough. But then they offer opposite policy prescriptions and analysis for the US and America -- Israel is acting prudently when it fights terrorists, but the US is "merely encouraging more terroirism" and "playing into bin Ladin's hands" when they do the same.

A bit of intellectual consistency on this basic point might be useful.

Posted by: Ace at 08:29 AM | Comments (5)
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Two different programs. The first may see battlefield use by 2009. To compensate for the effects of wind and "eddies" in the air for long distance shots, DARPA's working on a system to quickly "map the air" and calculate the adjustment needed for a shot:

The first method (to grossly, grossly oversimplify), is to shoot out a series of thousands of laser pulses, creating a "profile" of the "eddies" in the local atmosphere as the light bounces back. The second involves using use a high-speed camera to take an image of the target. The eddies distort the phase of the light in that picture. The scope, through a series of algorithms, can take those into account for the sniper team.

Coming sniper detection systems will send out pulses of laser light (eye-safe, due to treaties against the use of blinding lasers) to "illuminate potential hiding places... and detect retro-reflections from the sniperÂ’s scope." They've even got a cool acryonym -- "BOSS," which stands for Battlefield Optical Surveillance System.

An infrared camera/illuminator uses backscattered infrared (808 nm) illumination to light up an area of interest at distances up to 1 km. Optical augmentation (glint) from an individual's rifle scope/binoculars or even a person's retinas provides a means of detecting that individual.

Here's what that might look like, from a company working on a handheld binocular implementation of the same basic idea:

The system will further be integrated with the "Boomerang" system, which will (hopefully) figure out exactly where a sniper shot came from by triangulating it, basically, based on the slightly different sound signatures of the shot as captured from seven different microphones. Click on the link for more details -- hopefully, the thing will not only give the direction of the sniper, but possibly even his exact GPS coordinates.

Posted by: Ace at 08:10 AM | Comments (23)
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