GLOBADOM

Gene-mod Bacon that’s high in Omega-3 fatty acids. Bonus creepiness that will bother you, but not me: the gene donor was the roundworm C. elegans.

þ: Mr. Reynolds

So I’m rereading Evan Kirchoff’s Oscar movie analysis (very good), mainly to remember why I didn’t think much of “Good Night and Good Luck,” since that was the movie of choice tonight. At the end of that bit, he suggests an alternate director: “John Milius, circa 1984.”

I’ll spare you the link-checking. That would be a reference to Red Dawn, which is a fun thought. But then I looked up the details on John Milius. He’s not just some right-wing kook who directed Red Dawn, he’s some right-wing kook who wrote Apocalypse Now, Conan the Barbarian, Dirty Harry, and a bit of Jaws.

Whoa. And, er, also, 1941.

With a filmography that includes those highlights, you know he must have some stories. Does he ever! IGN has an old but excellent and very long, wide-ranging interview with him in which he dishes on Lucas, Spielberg, Coppola, and trashes Candace Bergen’s acting ability. And that’s just the tasty appetizers. I assure you there is more Hollywood meat in this article than a year’s subscription to Variety.

And how can you not like a guy who was the model for the character played by John Goodman in The Big Lebowski?

Cherry Blossoms
Originally uploaded by rcousine.

I wanted to post a bunch of photos of wet cherry blossoms, but thought that would be way too self-indulgent for the Vancouver metblog. Then I remembered: I have my own blog, and it’s totally self-indulgent! So now I inflict a bunch of photos of wet cherry blossoms on all twenty of you.

Update: I have tried the crop Andrew suggested in the comments. Here’s what it looks like:

I think he’s right. It does look good.

Updater: Oops. I think this is the one he wants:

I counted the topmost photo the first time. If it’s not, then just DIY! They’re all Creative Commonsed…

The dog likes peanut butter
Originally uploaded by rcousine.

Maybe the dog likes peanut butter a little more than is good for it.

I will treasure Tim Bray’s description of my writing forever (in internet time, that’s two weeks).

Hi Def is changing my viewing habits. I may return to network television, because high definition content is so compelling, I have started selecting it over shows I actually like.

Case in point: I am currently watching the Oscars. Normally the stupidest awards show possible, in high definition, it is nearly delightful. If nothing else, you can play the amazing game good in HD?

They showed a full-HD clip from Capote, too, which made it possible to do the fatal comparison: I think I liked the movie better shown on my (pixel-perfect registration, thanks) 37″ screen, with my $600-odd mixed bunch of surround speakers, than I did at the movie theatre.

Oh dear: as I type this, the president of AMPAS was giving a speech talking about how nothing (he was specifically trashing DVDs) could ever replace the movie theatre experience. The Lovely One looked at me and said, “he doesn’t have our TV.”

TLO is right, the president of AMPAS is wrong. They’d better start working on some sort of magic-def digital films, or maybe Ebert’s favourite new film idea, Maxivision, or maybe just making IMAX the new way things are done. Because if I I’m a movie theatre owner, the thing I should be scared of isn’t piracy, it’s HDTV.

Any other personal news? Um, did my first bike race of the season, took second in a sprint finish. Quit bothering me. I need to watch more television.

I couldn’t bear to have a spiffy TV without anything to show on it, so I ponied up $200 for Starchoice’s HD receiver.

After satisfactorily attaching it to the TV and the receiver, I wondered how normal people dealt with this: it was tricky, and presented several interesting choices, plus one dead end: it turns out the evil box has HDCP, but the odd-tech TV does not, and therefore no DVI-DVI connect for me. Thanks, DRM!

The answer is that normal people don’t deal with this stuff. HDTV–or, at least, a properly configured HD setup that is actually putting HD source material on the screen with full-on digital audio–is limited to those who either know the arcane secrets to assembling a proper system, or are willing to pay the considerable cost of having someone set it up. I bet this is a big reason a lot of people don’t bother. Which reminds me: I should check to see if my brother-in-law finally has an HD source on his enormous plasma TV. DVD is great on an HDTV, but true HD content is another big jump.

Even now, i am not done setting up our system: there are a few fixes to be made, and I’ll have to pull my ridiculous receiver out of its enclosure to move a plug or two.

But the picture, oh the picture. And the sound! But the picture most of all. As I started writing this, I was watching an HD version of A Beautiful Mind. The image was the fulfillment of television. At this point, remember, we’re dealing with an image that is considerably better than that offered by mere DVDs, and I daresay it showed.

To fulfill this trilogy of bad and good, we need the ugly: that would be a tie between stations that don’t have HD content enough to fill their HD channels, and specifically the CBC’s HD hockey schedule, which usually shows only one game of the Saturday night doubleheader in HD, with that game inevitably being the central Canada-oriented match. Number of times Vancouver appears on the HD side of the schedule? Zero. Oh yes, and the fact that to optimally set up my system, I’ll probably need to manually swap which device gets the only set of true HD component video inputs on the TV, the satellite box or the Playstation 2, which still does double duty as the primary DVD player in the house.

Two weeks, huh? Thanks for the note, Jak.

Here’s stuff I have done:

-separated dog from cat. Again.
-repeatedly cleaned up dog vomit. Then, bloody dog vomit. Then got licked on the face by the dog. Which tasted of blood.
-bought a 37″ HD TV. Is digimate a good brand?
-posted to the Metblog a lot.
-rode my bikes
-took photos
-saw my newest niece, Olivia
-other stuff too silly to note here

The Beeb is reporting that a group of old-guard commies in China are speaking out against censorship.

This is one of those key “China factors” in my opinion: if China has a free press, and its wild capitalist-ish (it’s a big “ish” in some ways…) economy continues, and corruption is limited (hello, Russia…), then the ground-work is laid for China to be a force for good (well, on balance good) within and outside its borders. In other words, a prosperous, free-press China probably won’t invade Taiwan (though Taiwan might just decide it’s okay to join a prosperous, free-press China; the issue isn’t Taiwan’s ultimate destiny so much as whether the Taiwanese get to freely choose it).

I don’t have a lot more to say: I suppose I should make some noises over how a responsible government is ultimately an important thing for keeping a government’s worst excesses in check, but I’ll leave that to more thoughtful people to say properly.

Two links worth posting here: The RAAM is a weird event. Jure Robic, repeat winner, is even weirder.

Also, it’s official. The CBC’s Quirks and Quarks says that if you don’t get any stronger after you exercise, it’s not your fault. Some people just don’t respond as effectively to exercise, and it seems to be almost entirely genetic.