“Short version: utterly gorgeous 3D and a phenomenal cast are wasted on one of the most profoundly, fundamentally stupid movies I’ve seen in a long time.”
We went to see Marvel’s Avengers yesterday (great movie), and noticed that Prometheus was just starting in another theater as we were walking out of the one where it was playing, so we could have done it for nothing, but weren’t up for a double feature, particularly given what I’ve been reading about it.
I’ve uploaded the video from the Kickstarter project to Youtube in the hope of giving it more exposure, with only a little over four days to go. Unfortunately. I can’t come up with any way to steer people to the project from there. I don’t seem to be able to edit the description of the video, and comments don’t allow links.
Don’t miss Mark Steyn’s latest on Barack Hussein Kardashian:
…there are some cheap seats available. A year and a half ago, big-money Democrats in Rhode Island paid $7,500 per person for the privilege of having dinner with President Obama at a private home in Providence. He showed up for 20 minutes and then said he couldn’t stay for dinner. “I’ve got to go home to walk the dog and scoop the poop,” he told them, because when you’ve paid seven-and-a-half grand for dinner nothing puts you in the mood to eat like a guy talking about canine fecal matter. And, having done the poop gag, the president upped and exited, and left bigshot Dems to pass the evening talking to the guy from across the street. But you’ve got to admit that’s a memorable night out: $7,500 for Dinner with Obama* (*dinner with Obama not included).
At least he didn’t say he had to go home and eat the dog.
Less than $2500 to go for the space-safety Kickstarter project, but it has to happen by Friday afternoon.
The moral of the story:
Even the best tax regimes are cannibalistic: Every tax is an incentive for the taxpayer to relocate to a more friendly jurisdiction. But tax rates are not the only incentive: Google is not going to set up shop in Somalia. Healthy governments create conditions that make it worth paying the taxes — which is to say, governments are a lot like participants in any other competitive market (with some obvious and important exceptions). The benefits of being in Detroit used to be worth the costs, but in recent decades millions of people and thousands of enterprises large and small have decided that is no longer the case. It is not as though one cannot profitably manufacture automobiles in the United States — Toyota does — you just can’t do it very well in Detroit. No one with eyes in his head could honestly think that the services provided by the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan are worth the costs.
The third lesson is moral. Detroit’s institutions have long been marked by corruption, venality, and self-serving. Healthy societies have high levels of trust. Who trusts Detroit? This is not angels-dancing-on-the-head-of-a-pin stuff. People do not invest in firms, industries, cities, or countries they do not trust. Corruption makes people poor.
And here are some recent graphic images of the results, from (Michigan ex-pat) Amy Alkon. As went Detroit, so will go the country, if the Democrats get their way on a national level, as they did in Detroit.
[Late-morning update]
“Detroit is liberalism’s Nagasaki.” Except there’s nothing “liberal” about it.
…continue to shred their credibility:
By saying that its investigation, carried out by unknown parties, confirmed Dr. Gleick’s account, the institute was implicitly backing the scientist’s claim that he was not responsible for cobbling together a document labeled a fake by Heartland, which he disseminated along with other genuine ones.
The bogus document spoke of effective ways for “dissuading science teachers from teaching science” and of “cultivating” respected writers on climate issues. Dr. Gleick said he had received it “in the mail.”
The Heartland Institute, which has a Web site related to the document release that Web site it calls “Fakegate,” responded scornfully to Dr. Gleick’s reinstatement. “As near as we can tell, this was not an investigation. It was a whitewash,” the institute’s president, Joseph Bast, said in a statement.
Reactions to the Gleick affair have varied widely. Some environmentalists have praised his actions, saying that the risks posed by climate change are so great that using misrepresentation to uncover details about a group like Heartland is justified. But many others in the environmental camp, including his own board, said that such conduct was unworthy of a scientist, particularly one of Dr. Gleick’s stature.
Not enough of them. Remember this the next time the Pacific Institute says anything about…anything.
As a commenter asks, when did Oz become such a nation of bed wetters?
The specter that will not die. This is the most important election in my lifetime.
Not to mention the hypocrisy.
These people don’t care about any of the things they claim to care about. They care about nothing but power over other people.
Barring spectacular reviews, I’m not inclined to see it. Of course, I haven’t seen the second and third Alien movies, either. I didn’t like the first one that much. I view this as more in the horror than SF genre, and I’m not a fan.