Sunday, January 31, 2010

Potpourri

  1. Prediction: the IPad will bomb. I think it has a couple fatal flaws: 1. no flash support, 2. no keyboard, and 3. no device to hold it up. One of the great things about a laptop is you can put it on your lap and adjust the angle of the screen and get a good, hands-free view of the screen. 4. No gray-scale screen. The Kindle screen I think makes is better for people who want something like the IPad for reading. 5. Not as portable as the IPhone. most people will think they're covered with their IPod Touch/IPhone. Could be wrong, but this is what my gut tells me.
  2. Did you see Superman Returns? I just watched it again recently. It seemed to me that the story was a dramatization of the gospels. First, Superman goes off for several years by himself, to investigate his destroyed planet. Something similar to Christ's fasting, or maybe the unaccounted for time before his ministry begins. When he returns, Lois tells superman that the world doesn't need a "savior," but it clearly does in the form of Superman. Superman proceeds save a number of people miraculous for some period. In the mean time, Lex Luther creates the crystal island in the middle o the ocean which threatens to destroy almost all humanity. Superman knows he is going towards the kryptonite that Lex Luther has, but he intentionally submits to his own death.  He is killed by Lex Luther on the crystal island, even stabbed in the side, before falling into the water to his "death." He is pulled from the water and his wounds are tended to by Lois for some time. He then returns to the water only to emerge to purge the world from sin crystal island. It's not a perfect analogy, but to me, the parallels are striking.
  3. Has there ever been a more uneven movie than Up? I wish the whole movie was like the first 20 minutes, but that probably would not keep 4 year-olds interested.
  4. My new most hated company is Samsung. I bought a Blu-ray player for Christmas, and it worked fine except that it never would connect to the internet, despite saying "Wireless LAN ready" on the box. I finally broke down and read the instructions, and it said I needed a USB wireless card. If a Blue-ray player can't connect to the internet immediately it's not "wireless ready" it's "wireless compatible" at best. So I bought the cheapest wireless card I could find, not really knowing how it would work with the system. After trying that a bit, and not getting it to work, I went online to discover that, to get the wireless to work, you have to buy a Samsung proprietary "dongle" (no really), and that dongle costs 70 bucks, or almost the cost of the Blu-ray player itself. So I took the player back. I think I'm just going to get a PS3, mostly for Blu-ray, although I'll probably play it some. I do like the aesthetic of Samsung products, though.
  5. I love this short post about the Alito-Obama Citizens United confrontation. I wish supreme court justices like Alito would do more media. I can only see it helping. I also like this Althousian post. Every once in a while, between photo blogging, and other semi-serious posts, Althouse criticism someone witheringly. You make a lot of enemies with posts like that. I think I care too much about being liked to write posts like that.
  6. In an effort not to insist upon the last word, I'm not going to post any more comments over at B v. E on the last two blog posts (Avatar, and Education). I do have more thoughts about education. Brett, the reasons I used economic analysis on this education question, is that I essentially view the problem as an economic one: we have a finite amount of resources (money and time); how do we best allocate those resources in the classroom? Do we teach math, science, dance, psychology, self-help, curiosity, architecture? When you have so many alternatives and each person derives different utility from different options, you need a market responsive to individual preferences.
  7. I just got a copy of No Country for Old Men, and I'll re-post on it when I'm done reading (which could be a while).

1 comment:

Brett said...

1. I don't think that the IPad will bomb, though I don't see it being a smash hit either. They have a couple of niches going for them: the people who must have all things Apple (those who lined up to pay $500 for the iphone), and the netbook market.

No flash is a killer. They also didn't include a webcam. And who in the world pays over $100 for 16 additional gigs of storage? Only people in the Apple world.

Maybe I should do an Apple post sometime. They are surely great innovators, but their products are almost always overpriced. I think most of their sales are based on people wanting to be in the loop. Or the fact that most of my (supposedly tech-savy) students couldn't tell you the difference between kilo, mega, and giga.

3. I loved UP. Particularly the beginning. I also love the beginning of Wall-e. Both clever and not exactly kid oriented.

4. Lame, lame, lame.

5. I was blown away when Obama did that.

6. I believe Covey said something about not looking at people in terms of efficiency.