Here's a nice succinct version of what was wrong with the Patriot missile system during Gulf War I. Link via Colby Cosh, who still doesn't have permalinks.

We're visiting family over Christmas so posting will be lighter than usual.

The news media are reporting that American forces captured Saddam Hussein last night (8:30 PM Baghdad time).

Now the public arguments will begin about how and where he is to be tried and punished for his crimes (I don't feel like writing "alleged crimes"). The US has announced that he will be held in Iraq and tried in Iraq, but the composition of the court has probably not been decided.

Paul Martin, the new Prime Minister of Canada, has called for the court to have "an international character." Then let me be the first to suggest that the court should be composed of Iraqis, Kuwaitis, and Kurds....

Yesterday while I was returning a DVD at The Movie Station I saw this sticker stuck on one of the "Parking for Movie Station Customers Only / All Other Cars Will Be Crushed And Melted" signs. I grabbed it because I abhor graffiti.

I was kind of hoping that it would be a serious hardcore anarchist's site, but it's just some self-described ex-Communist guy's weblog, basically. And he's showing conservative tendencies in this article:

Just a few choices make everything different. One choice means an unusually early retirement and HIV medication, one choice means one or more wife and kids. As one of the blessed middle class white boys who got the world handed to me on a plate I realize I didn't have to make a lot of the choices that our guests were faced with. I can't even guess what I would have done.

Oh well. Just another Edmonton weblog.

Posted by Sam at 10:56 AM

I just finished watching The Battleship Potemkin while Kaija slept in the sling. This DVD thing rocks.

Some quick observations:

I didn't expect it to be silent; although I know some facts about the history of film, I don't have them at the top of my mind.

The film is just as impressive as I expected it to be. Not surprising, but still pleasant to find out.

The plot is less simple than I expected it to be, but it does still boil down to: workers and sailors good, bosses and officers bad. There were a couple of surprises for me: at the beginning, with the firing squad; and at the end, with the confrontation. I don't want to give spoilers so I won't say more.

One thing which I noticed was that when the people of Odessa turned out in support of the sailors, there were working-class women, working-class men, middle-class women, upper-class women ... but no middle or upper-class men. I don't know if Eisenstein just liked women in tsarist-era finery or if there was a deeper political point here.

Another thing: I had heard that Gone With the Wind was the film with the record for the most extras in one scene (the wounded in the streets of Atlanta). But I can't square that with some of the huge crowd scenes in Potemkin. Just as one example, the scene where the people of Odessa are walking along the breakwater, and the camera pans up and there's at least a quarter-mile-long line of people ten across walking.

Perhaps Gone With the Wind has the record for the most paid extras in a single scene.

Yes, I am still alive. We're trying to work again, so that's sucking up most of my non-sleep, non-baby time.

ObLink: I don't usually link to IMAO but this one is worth it. "Ooh. Ooh. I'm a monkey!" "Oh no they're looking this way - HIDE!"

In other news: Kids, don't do drugs. No, really.

Finally got around to upgrading the MovableType installation -- we're now running the latest (2.64). At the same time, I moved the data from Berkeley DB's to our MySQL database, so perhaps things will run a little faster for me when I rebuild.