21 Grams
I was expecting a drug movie – the 21 grams was the clue – but this movie, while having some drug use, is not about drugs.
It’s about the intersection of three people (and – peripherally – the people associated with those three) whose lives accidently intersect, told in a series of out-of-sequence vignettes (some brief, some extended).
Not a feel-good movie; not a great movie, but very, very good. Sean Penn again demonstrates that he’s one of the finest actors out there.
Some random musings on some non-related issues:
Microsoft Circles the Wagons
This issue is worthy of a full entry, but for now I’ll just make this point: With the spate of recent settling of scores (Sun Microsystems, InterTrust), MS appears to be circling the wagons by throwing money at companies with two objectives in mind: 1) Shut down expensive and distracting litigation, 2) Set the stage for the next version of Microsoft (the company), where it exercises it patent and DRM portfolio, and concentrates less on the actual software. It increasingly becomes a licensing company.I’m sure I could be wrong about all this – and it wouldn’t be the first time – but MS has blown through a few billion recently to settle scores. That’s a lot of money, even for a company with ~$40 billion in the piggy bank. These are strategic moves.
The Constitution Terminator
There’s been a lot of ink (digital and otherwise) tossed at the issue of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s erasure of recordings of a recent speech. (Note: A federal marshall did this; not Scalia.)Lost in this issue is, to me, a discussion as to why Scalia doesn’t want his public speeches recorded.
First of all, if it is a public speech, doesn’t that pretty much grant anyone the right to record? Private talks or off-the-record talks with reporters I can see as his call to define, but speeches?
Second, if he’s so against recording his speeches, why give them?
And what’s lost if they are recorded? There were quotations of his speech given in stories about this who situation, so – apparently – quoting him is OK…as long as it’s by hand (is recording his speeches with shorthand allowed? Apparently.
Supreme Court spokesman Ed Turner said that Scalia was unavailable for comment. “The justice generally prefers not to have audio or video recordings of his remarks,” Turner said.
— Washington Post, 4/9/2004I don’t know, this is just a little bizarre to me.