Please excuse Arnold from class today. He is dead. Signed, Horschack's Mother.

I mean, really, do I have to add anything to this that y'all couldn't think of for yourselves?

You know, I tend to be very suspicious of anyone who says, "I'm all for free speech, but..."

If there's a "but", you're not for free speech. What it invariably boils down to is "I'm all for free speech, unless someone says something I disagree with."

Yeah. Well, I'm all for free speech, but...maybe there are things which simply should not be permitted. No, I'm not talking about hippies wearing American flags as diapers and then setting them on fire (sadly, after removing them), or the Westboro Baptist Church even existing, or hardcore porn involving midgets, donkeys, and midget donkeys, but, rather, things like this.

This is the extended promo. This is, as near as I can tell, real. Someone got paid money to come up with this. People are going to watch this. Mass media has always served to help convince the lumpen proletariat that there were people who were poorer and dumber than they were, but the majority of Americans are now so poor and stupid that finding anyone below the new middle has become increasingly difficult. (Then again -- they get paid a lot of money to humiliate themselves on national TV, so, they're not really poor. And they've managed to get paid for doing nothing more than *existing*, so they're not really stupid, are they?)

Wait. DALLAS?

They banned pork in DALLAS?

That's like banning it in Washington, DC! Hah! You see what I did there?

Anyway, assuming that this decision wasn't already the result of a massive bribe from Fat Freddies All-U-Can-Gorge Bar-B-Q Buffet, conveniently located 10 feet from the campus, upwind, there's an obvious business niche for anyone who wants to serve REAL food (which means, "food that used to go 'oink', 'moo', or 'cluck'") to the soon-to-be-starving-and-desperate students.

Note to anyone in the UK who might be watching the Olympics: Smile, darn ya, smile... or ELSE.

Well, not so nassssty. More like awesome, actually, even though I can hear the literary purists crying already, huddled over their well-worn 1970s paperbacks of The Hobbit, caressing them gently and calling them Preciousssss.

As with far too many issues these days, I can see both sides. I need to get my eyes checked. On the one hand, literature should be respected. Even in adaptations, if you deviate too far from the soul of the thing, you commit an aesthetic crime. (I recently watched the Green Lantern movie. My wife asked "Was it as lame as you thought?" My reply was "It was lamer than a deaf, blind, quadruple amputee with Parkinson's." We do not have a politically correct household.)

On the other hand, creative works are rarely pure. Tolkien built Middle Earth from multiple sources, "...endlessly combined, in living shapes that move from mind to mind...". All creation draws on prior creation, and while the cores of stories are eternal, the clothing they wear needs to be updated to reflect the times in which they are told, or they lose meaning and become dead, empty words repeated without meaning.

Certainly, the lust for filthy lucre drove Peter Jackson to greatly extend Tolkien's story, but the lust for filthy lucre is, and was, behind the creation of most of the great works of art. Art created for art's sake rarely achieves greatness; it tends to be overly topical, self-indulgent, navel-gazing crap. Without actually seeing the films, I can't render full judgment, but I can have faith that while past performance is not a guarantee of future performance, it's one of the strongest indicators we've got.

My mental images of the Hobbit are shaped by my initial reading, and by the Rankin-Bass animation. Re-imagining Thorin Oakenshield as pure estrogen bait is a gutsy move, but a well-calculated one. While judging a movie from trailers is very difficult, as trailers are deceptive and tricksy things, I'm guessing that Thorin's story arc is going to be more prominent. With three full movies, each likely pushing three hours, to play with, they will have a lot of time to add subplots and complexities. They have, oddly, one advantage over Tolkien: When he wrote the Hobbit, he had not yet read The Lord Of The Rings or completed the Silmarillion. There was ample material and backstory which is only evident in retrospect; indeed, the Hobbit had to be edited after publication to better fit the world that grew from it. (Much like Larry Niven, who linked his 22nd century stories and 28th century stories without having intended them to be aspects of the same universe, and then had to retcon things to make sure they all fit properly; when Ringworld was written, Pak did not exist, and the Slaver hyperdrive worked very differently from the Outsider hyperdrive.)

So, we shall see. I know I am desperately looking forward to it, and looking forward to three years of having something to look forward to.

Of course not. Only a batshit-crazy loony-toon would think so.

Like, you know, this guy.

For extra giggles, read the comments, and remember: They don't have internet access in mental institutions. Therefore...

"These are the people in your neighborhood... in your neighborhood...."

Dear whiny bird-huggers:

When a prey species is faced with a competent predator species, some members of the prey species will be able to survive better than others. These will leave more offspring, and their genes will spread through the population. Over time, subgroups containing only those genes will come into being. Likewise, as the predators exhaust the easily killed prey, some will be better able to respond to the changes in their food source, or begin to exploit an alternative source, and the mixture of genes within the predator population will shift. This is called "evolution". Without it, life is impossible.

Those birds which are endangered because of cat predation should not be preserved. They're failures. Let them adapt or die out.

To anyone saying "But... but... different! Because humans!" Humans are a feature of the environment. Having traits which makes humans value you and refrain from killing you is a powerful adaptation. It might be the most important one in the modern world, as it enables your species to co-opt human ingenuity and the ability to manipulate the environment for your own survival. Eventually, humans will become extinct, and the species which evolved dependence on them will either adapt or go extinct along with us.

Evolution doesn't take prisoners.

"If they can send an SUV-sized rover to Mars and land it using the kind of technology that the hypothetical offspring of Rube Goldberg and Wyle E. Coyote might dream up, why can't they land a man on the moon?"

Because, you know, they can't. Not any more. If space aliens showed up and said "We've built a moonbase. Come up and visit us, we'll give you infinite free energy, the cure for cancer, and microwave popcorn where absolutely every kernel pops without any getting burned, really, but we're leaving the next time your planet reaches this orbital position.", we couldn't get there. (Heck, by the time they were gone, the bill to fund the Emergency Moon Mission would still be stuck in Congress, because it would have been amended to include pork for every single congresscritter's home district.)

The Chinese might make it, though, come to think of it. It might require them killing half their population to do it, but it would hardly be the first time. Sacrificing minions. Is there anything it can't do?

"If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be -- a Christian." (Mark Twain)

Or alive very long. The modern-day Pharisees (who call themselves Christians) would be just as quick to nail up anyone who deflated their pomposity and exposed their hypocrisy.