Wall-E Spotted in LA! from Blink on Vimeo.

Look, if the idea of watching bright and shiny colors that requires zero attention span for 2 hours doesn't appeal to you, if you don't want to watch the equivalent of the PowerPuff Girls on meth, (the main character is called "Speed"...) then you probably won't like the movie. And I guess maybe there are a lot of people who don't want that, and that's why they didn't like the movie. But if that does sound like a good time to you, then you will like this movie, regardless of what the critics say.

P.S.: I have never actually watched a single episode of the original cartoon, but now I wanna say, GO SPEEDRACER GO!

[ IMDb Entry ] [ Trailers ]

Speed Racer leaves any semblance of reality in the dust and never looks back. I didn't have any problems with suspension of disbelief while I watched it because there was nothing to believe in the first place. It was just completely insane. People sometimes complain about CG in movies looking too fake, including in the Matrix sequels, but here the Wachowskis have embraced the fakeness and made you not even think about it.

I also liked the editing, which involved nearly non-stop gimmicky sweeps, cars flying across the screen to reveal another scene, that sort of thing. A trailer for The Incredible Hulk preceded the movie, and that reminded me of the comic book editing in Ang Lee's Hulk. Here, they took it to an extreme, so the whole thing felt like the spirit of a comic book directly transposed onto the screen... except shinier and more brightly colored. Excuse me. Except SHINIER and more BRIGHTLY COLORED! That's better. :)

The plot was sort of a standard sweet families good/corporations bad message, but my favorite part is that it actually featured patent abuse! When was the last time you saw what's essentially a kid's movie talk about "IP infringement"? And in a negative light, too! Awesome. Speaking of the family-friendliness, the movie was firmly PG-rated, but with the one allotted instance of "shit", just like the animated Transformers movie from the 80s. :)

My only complaint is that the plot kind of disappeared toward the end. The motivation for the final race wasn't very strong, and the montage near the end was cliched, but the sheer primary-colored craziness of the whole thing outweighed that. It's not at all a perfect movie, and not everyone will like it (only 35/100 on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic), but I went in not quite knowing what to expect, and I got a really fun time with shiny bright new sights.

Update: I added a few comments in a new post.

We already know of one practical application: They could provide RAM-like speeds but be non-volatile, keeping their data while powered down. According to some of the comments in the /. article where I read about this, they could also simulate a transistor at smaller than what we have now, and it could be used as analog memory, which may have some AI uses, among others.

In any case, it sounds like there will probably be tons of applications for this that we haven't thought up yet. I don't know how far out commercialization is for any of this, but it's still a great reason why science research is important.

Update:: Ars Technica has a nice writeup that describes how HP's memristor works. It also shows the symbol for it, which apparently looks like a square wave (whereas the resistor's symbol is a sawtooth wave).

I've had a few conversations lately about how I've been fortunate not to have experienced direct racism much growing up, at least not of the "Hey, Jackie Chan Ching Chong!" type. A week ago, I experienced it for the first time in a while, late night in front of Denny's in Santa Clara: A drunk white couple in their 20s walked by me and said, "Yo, Harold! Where's Kumar?" I kind of had this, "Um, is that it? Is that the whole joke?" reaction. I didn't actually say that, of course, non-confrontational Asian that I am. :P

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay often felt a little like that racist comment. For instance, they had an unsympathetic character talk in mock Korean, "Aaa waaa looo zaaa moo taaa," that sort of thing. I was like, okay, your point is that racist jokes like this are lame, so why are you spending so much screen time on this racist joke, without any real follow-up? Breaking a taboo isn't inherently funny; you have to do something more with it. In the original, when Kumar's dad unwittingly said lewd things because of his Indian accent, it was funny not just because he had an accent, but because he was Kumar's dad, and so the comment was embarassing to Kumar. Layers.

When the original was released, I compared it favorably to that darling of Asian-American cinema, Better Luck Tomorrow. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle didn't treat Asian-Americans as a totally separate group, but as Americans who also have Asian in them. It basically said that Asian-Americans don't have to ignore their race, but they don't have to let it define them, either. The sequel ruined that by making race the primary topic.

Despite all this, though, I still found myself enjoying the movie, and it's only because of the fundamental likability of the two main characters. That's why I'm giving it two slices of toast instead of one and a half or less. Occasionally, the movie did focused on personality traits of the characters that rang true, like the math joke, but those moments were few and far between. I think this sequel was a misstep, but I think there could still be life in these characters. I would look forward to seeing Harold and Kumar back in action if they came up with more subtle and nuanced writing again.

Recently, Texas law enforcement raided the ranch and removed over 400 children. Here is an interview with three women from FLDS who want their children back:

YouTube link

Oh, and here's that former FLDS member who recorded a statement in that video talking about her escape [YouTube]. It's pretty intense. The summary of her autobiography is worth a read, too.

Break.com Link