How to play basket-ball

The "Bounce-Pass"




The "Behind-the-Back Pass"




The "Spin-Move"




The "Dunk-Shot"




The "Up-and-Under" "Finger-Roll"




The "Pick-and-Roll"






The "Post-up" "Turn-around" "Jumper"



Here’s a fun stat that’s real: Livingston has never missed a post-up turnaround jumper. Not once. There was one time in a game in 2006 where he shot it and the ball hit the rim as it was going in, but that’s the closest he’s ever come to missing it. I’ve watched this video of him posting up Tony Parker maybe 60 times. He knows before he gets to the half-court line that he’s about to put Parker in the torture chamber. He doesn’t try to sprint into a fast break or cause any sort of chaos among the defense. He just very methodically, in his most serial-killer manner, dribbles up the left side of the floor, turns his back to Parker, waits for Parker to provide a little resistance so he knows what direction to turn, spins, holds the ball at an impossible-to-block height, and flicks it in as Parker fouls him. It’s perfect and perfectly reliable. No move is more dependable.  (link)


The "Same Thing the Other Way"

RNC is just spitballing here, but...

Your vehicle, sir

So I got this car.  Consumer Reports says the BMW 3 series sucks now, so after 13 years I have to get a different kind.  

It's a good car, it's fine.  But it is somewhat...dull?  Some driver's notes from Road and Track when they drove it back in 2014:

• David Gluckman:  This car was good when it came out in 2009, and it's still very good now. Usually, when something's on the Grim Reaper's doorstep, you can find a fault or two that need to be addressed with the next generation. I really can't here.
• John Krewson:  If it lacks some of the bells, whistles, open-grain wood, and staggering power of bigger Audis, that's okay. You don't notice. You're too busy not being bothered while the car just plain works.
• Alex Kierstein:  It's fast, it's comfortable. It has a highly competent automatic and a great interior design. The seats are fantastic. It looks pretty sharp. Why can't I get all that excited about it? 

The morning after I got it, I was tossing and turning, as my subconscious tried to tell me something...something....

A hat.  I was thinking of a hat.  What hat? I asked my semiconscious self, as I tossed and turned.  What hat?!

Then it dawned on me.

This hat:

"You have chosen well."

I had purchased the Joubert-mobile.  If he were real and here today, this is exactly the car Joubert would drive, although he might think the S-Line badging a little too distinctive.

I wonder where I can get a plaid jacket and hat like that.

And then I just need a Mauser C96 for the trunk...

High praise...?

What direction did you give Leslie for that ['don't call me Shirley'] scene?
Jerry Zucker: I think we had shown him Zero Hour! previously because we wanted him to see the style. We told everyone that “playing it straight” doesn’t quite do it, because they think they have it, but they’re still winking. We told them to play it like they don’t know they’re in a comedy. Like no one told them. Just the way Leslie would have played this in The Poseidon Adventure, or any other of the films or television shows he had done. Leslie, more than anyone, really got that and relished it. He loved it. For the whole movie, Leslie didn’t need a ton of direction on performance.

David Zucker: He just jumped into the water and swam. He knew what he was doing.

Abrahams: You can intercut scenes from The Poseidon Adventure with his performance in Airplane! and you can’t distinguish, performance-wise, between them.

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Uwe Boll waits for redemption

“The man simply cannot direct,” Razzies co-founder John Wilson told me. “He doesn’t know where to put the camera. He doesn’t know how to suggest to an actor how to deliver their lines. Doesn’t know how to come up with an edit where you can tell where the hell you are and what’s going on. That’s kind of basic.”

Cast and crew members have denounced the films. “BloodRayne was an abomination,” said BloodRayne star Michael Madsen. “It’s a horrifying and preposterous movie.” Willam Belli, who acted in and had a co-writing credit on Blubberella, compared viewing the finished product to “watching a car accident with clowns”...

At the height of his infamy, a petition titled “Stop Uwe Boll” garnered 357,480 digital signatures, and the domain uweboll.com simply contained the entreaty, “Please stop making movies.” Now, at last, he has. With no fanfare—with hardly any acknowledgement at all, in fact—Boll’s swan song, Rampage: President Down, was recently made available on iTunes and Netflix.

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Haven't seen yet, but will

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Right....

Pimco agreed to pay Gross $81 million to settle his breach-of-contract lawsuit, the proceeds of which will be donated to charity. (The statement noted that the suit has "never been about money," although Gross had been seeking at least $200 million in damages and accused younger co-workers of conspiring to get some of his 20 percent share of the profit-sharing bonus pool.) 

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AP approves 'they' as a singular pronoun, civilization totters

“We specify that you need to make clear in the context that the ‘they’ in question is just one person,” Froke said. “We don’t, among our own staff, want to open a floodgate. But we recognize a need for it, so we want to open it a bit.

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If I am reading this correctly...

So we're arguing over what The Bible says again.

[N]o one is disputing the larger point of Christ’s compassion for the poor, which is found throughout the New Testament.

Buuut....

As Erickson told me in an email: 

“I made clear in both prior and subsequent tweets that the Bible does require Christians to care for the widows, orphans, poor, and refugees (one reason I oppose the President’s immigration stance), but Matthew 25 does not."

Because in his reading...

‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

...refers only to church leadership, not to the poor, because Christ referred to church leadership in that way in chapter 18, verses 6, 10, and 14.

This is chapter 25, verses 20-26.

*Sigh*

[Walks down hall.  Gets the Lattimore translation.]

Lattimore is my go-to guy in these matters.  Some would say that he is not the most ideal translator because as a primarily classical scholar he may have been a little under-equipped to understand the Hebraisms and other colloquial expressions that crop up in the New Testament.  On the other hand, he was the greatest Greek translator of his generation, and did try within the limitations of his poor capability to get the text into modern American English.  So, as Alec Baldwin said in another context, "I'm goin' anyway."

This comes up right after the Parable of the Talents.  And then Jesus said:

When the son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit upon the throne of his glory, and all the nations shall be gathered before him...

So I'm going with the topic here being every human being on earth, if not every human being that ever existed.  Continuing:

...and he will sort them from one another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will station the sheep on his right hand, and the goats on his left.  Then the king will say to those who are his right:  Come, you who are the blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom which has been made ready for you from the beginning of the world. For I was hungry and you fed me.  I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stranger and you took me in, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.  The just will answer him saying:

Now we are talking about the subset of people whose behavior was praiseworthy.  Continuing:

Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you to drink?  When did we see you a stranger and take you in, or naked and clothe you?  When did we see you sick or in prison and come to you?  And the king will answer and say to them:  Truly I tell you, inasmuch as you have done it for any one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it for me.  Then he will say to those on his left:  Go from me, cursed, to the everlasting fire which has been made ready by the devil and his angels.  For I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink, I was a stranger and did not take me in, I was naked and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not visit me. And they will answer him, saying:  Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and not take care of you?  Then he will answer them and say:  Truly I tell you, inasmuch as you have failed to do this for one of those who are least...

 Nice opportunity here to clarify that this is just about church leadership, if that was where he was going.

...you have failed to do it for me.  And these shall go to everlasting punishment, but the just to everlasting life.

It's also interesting to me that the larger point is valid even if we accept the alternate reading.  In either interpretation it is good to feed hungry people, give drink to the thirsty, take in strangers in need, provide clothes for those who need them, care for the sick, visit those in prison.  It is bad to not do those things.

I attended a Catholic conference once and heard (through a closed door) a nun just hammering a group of lay people, many of them quite affluent.  "There is no ambiguity," she said - clearly and deliberately - "WE are on the SIDE of the POOR."  Eight one syllable words.  So clear even a Bible scholar could understand it.

Nicholas Kristof has had enough...I can't say I blame him.


Addendum

Here is the text from Kenneth Wuest's Expanded Translation of the New Testament, which was intended to be as clear possible, using as many English words as necessary to convey the meaning of the Greek.

Now, when the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, then He shall sit upon His throne of glory. And there shall be gathered before Him all the Gentile nations. And He shall separate them from one another even as the shepherd separates the sheep from the young goats. And He shall stand the sheep on His right hand and the young goats on His left. Then shall the King say to those on His right hand. Come, my Father's blessed ones. Inherit the kingdom which has been prepared for you from the foundation of the universe : for I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink, I was a stranger and you received me hospitably, naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, in prison I was and you came to me. 

Then the righteous ones shall answer Him, saying, Lord, when did We see you hungering and feed you, or thirsting and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and hospitably received you, or naked, and clothed you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and we came to you? And answering, the King shall say to them, Assuredly, I am saying to you, in so far as you did this to one of these my brethren, to the least, to me you did it. Then shall He say to those on His left hand, Be proceeding from me, you who have been doomed, into the fire, the everlasting fire which has been prepared and is in readiness for the devil and his angels :  for I was hungry and you did not give me food, I was thirsty and you did not give me drink, a stranger I was, and you did not receive me hospitably, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not look after me. Then they themselves shall also answer Him, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungering or thirsting, or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not relieve your necessities? Then He shall answer them, saying, Assuredly, I am saying to you, in so far as you did not do it to one of these least ones, neither did you do it to me. And these shall go off after me. Then they themselves shall also answer Him, saying, Lord, when did we see you hungering or thirsting, or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not relieve your necessities? Then He shall answer them, saying, Assuredly, I am saving to you, in so far as you did not do it to one of these least ones, neither did you do it to me. And these shall go off into everlasting punishment, but the righteous ones into life eternal.

More on the quarterback data

So WDIJ put in touchdowns like that inferior website.  There are two reasons.  The first is that I have less certainty that TDs reflect quarterback skill in the same way that interceptions do, the second is that adding TDs increases complexity, but doesn't really change the rankings much.  Here are the two measures plotted against one another:

We know that YPA correlates strongly with winning in the NFL, so that's important.  We know interceptions are costly, and some quarterbacks throw a lot while others throw just a few, so we should adjust for that.

But I'm not convinced that throwing a lot of touchdowns is in the same category in terms of information add.  "Sure, you dummy," I hear you say, "that's why the coefficient's 0.2."  Well ok, but let's put Marshawn Lynch on the Packers for a moment, and let Rodgers hand the ball to him in the Red Zone.  Rodgers' touchdowns and Adj YPA will go down, but I don't think that makes him a worse quarterback.

So if I stick with IAYPA, who am I slighting?  I took each player's rank on IAYPA and compared it to their Adj YPA rank.  Here are the big changes:

IAYPA likes better than Adj YPA

• Alex Smith (four ranks higher - #10 on IAYPA vs. #14 on Adj YPA)
• Kapernick, Tannehill, Cutler, and Bradford are all three notches better on IAYPA, but stay in the same general zone.

Adj YPA likes better than IAYPA

• Cam Newton (four slots higher)
• Andrew Luck (three slots higher)

That's about it.  Everyone else rates within one or two slots on either metric.

Since all of these guys are in the same general zone, the argument becomes:  which is more important in a mediocre quarterback, the ability to drill the ball into the end zone, or the ability to move the chains without throwing it to the other team too often. 

But I also agree that if I am using IAYPA, I ought to take account of touchdowns in some way, because there's clearly some skill involved, and touchdowns have some passing relevance to the outcome of the game.  ("I always thought if you're kicking field goals you're on your way to losing the game." - Steve Young).

So what can we do about this?

I think I would, if I were not about to ignore the NFL for the rest of my natural life, do something like this.

Historians are somewhat unclear on who first said "three things can happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad," but it was probably Darrell Royal.  The problem with this phrase, which has been endlessly invoke by bad coaches with boring teams, is that it recognizes one kind of optionality (interceptions) while ignoring another kind (touchdowns).  In point of fact, four things can happen:

• The ball is not caught
• The ball is caught by the other team
• The ball is caught for a yardage gain
• The ball is caught for a touchdown and everyone runs off the field cheering and throwing high-fives

It seems irresponsible to ignore that last one.

I know the TD/INT ratio is a sacred to some, but for me it's not useful.  Too much information gets destroyed.  If Brady throws 40 touchdowns with 10 INTs, that is not the same as if Alex Smith throws 12 and 3 in the same number of attempts.  So let's look at the data - who has the most positive optionality and the least negative optionality?  Oh Lawd...

So, there you have a pretty good supplemental indicator, I'd say.  Just a few observations:

• Remember, this is everyone who played steadily over the past two years, plus Prescott.  No one stays on the field with an INT rate above 3% (Fitzpatrick lost his job), or a TD rate below 3%.
• Northwest is good, southeast is bad.
• Over past two years, Brady has been a rage-beast from the 24th dimension.  When the ball leaves his hand, as it often does (#14 in attempts despite missing games), it is six times more likely to end up in the end zone than in the hands of the other team.  So, ok, that does appear to be valuable.
• Omar...I mean Rodgers...is comin'.  Rodgers is the one guy I would say IAYPA clearly has wrong, but Adj YPA doesn't fully correct the error.  This chart shows why he's valuable even with an average IAYPA.  And remember, he's getting a lot of shots of on goal, since he is #6 in attempts over this period.
• Flacco is almost a coin flip, but his IAYPA is also bad, so we didn't think he was valuable anyway. 
• Osweiler's a coin flip, but his IAYPA is also bad, so we didn't think he was valuable anyway. 

As a result of this, I will pay more attention to TDs, but not add them to IAYPA.  For me avoiding interceptions is the more important skill, and the one more reflective of quarterback value.  But quarterbacks with average IAYPAs who are northwest on the chart above (assuming comparable attempts) are more valuable than those who are not.

So I propose this summary chart:

Interestingly, the man who emerges as the closet thing to Brady (NE quadrant) is not Rodgers, but Wilson.

Now, you might not agree with my techniques, but if my system is flawed, that would imply that the results are flawed, and that would imply Russell Wilson is not one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL.  And I am not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth Russell Wilson.

I believe this concludes my (already distant) relationship with the NFL

It doesn’t matter that there are laws, rooted in freedom of speech, in some places in this country that protect employees from punishment by their employers due to their political views or activities. Washington, D.C., is one such place. California, where Kaepernick played since entering the league as a rookie in 2011, is another. What Kaepernick dared to do was spit in the NFL’s eye.

Unless and until Kaepernick is back in the league under a contract commensurate with his résumé, blackballing is football’s payback.

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When men were men, and hockey was war

As I was sitting in that hospital bed, I promised myself two things:

1. I wasn’t going to let the hit affect me mentally.  
2. It wasn’t to change the way I played.

You have to understand what hockey means to me. It was always my joy in life. I was a small guy to start with, and I made it to the NHL by playing a certain way. If I took my foot off the gas even just a little bit … if I was even just a little bit timid because of that hit, I wouldn’t be effective. I’d be letting my teammates down. I’d be letting the city down. The people of Detroit were in my corner every single day of my recovery. I mean, the response from fans was so overwhelming that I had to get two hospital rooms: One for me, and one to store all the flowers, cards, and stuffed animals that people sent to me. There was so much that I couldn’t take it all home. I donated all the stuffed animals to the pediatric ward.

Detroit is such a blue-collar town, and they love their Red Wings so much.

We had to get back to the Western Conference finals. We had to beat Colorado. We had to win a Stanley Cup.

I would close my eyes and picture the weight room and think, Soon.

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Notes on the quarter-back position

There are 32 quarterback jobs in the NFL, and 28 men who have shown the ability to play the position at all over the past two years.  Here is the list, with combined 2015 and 2016 statistics (sorted by harmonic mean of TD/INT, Rate, and IAYPA ranks).  I include Dak Prescott, taking his 2016 season as down payment on a nice future career:

There are four teams that will have to play someone not on this list - a rookie, or Gino Smith or someone.  Some of the teams at the bottom are already moving on to their next option:

• Brock has been traded by the Texans to the Browns, who will either trade him again, or cut him.  David Carr:  "Bill [O'Brien]'s system works, and I don't think he's coaching it poorly. But in the times we live, it's going to be difficult for him to have enough patience to stick with one guy. And it's not just the quarterback. It's the combination of quarterback and receiver. Julian Edelman practically lives with (Tom Brady) during the offseason. They go through game situations three times a week. How many times did Brock do that? Probably never."
• Ryan Fitzpatrick will not re-sign with the Jets.  
• Flacco is not only one of the three least productive starters of the past two seasons, he will, if Tony Romo is cut or traded, become the player with the highest salary cap number in the NFL.  No sign his job is in jeopardy...Ozzie Newsome is now reportedly looking to sign some receivers to see if that would help.
• Blake Bortles - New coach Coughlin is not a fan.

That gives us at least eight teams - a quarter of the League, where there is not clear incumbent, or the incumbent has been awful for two years.

In the middle, Matthew Stafford, Alex Smith, Marcus Mariota are the median NFL quarterback, and therefore extremely valuable.  

Not far south you can see Colin Kaepernick, who had the fewest starts of anyone but Prescott, but has actually performed well.  INT/Attempt of 1.6% is well below median of 2.1%.  For all the criticism, he is better than what about 1/4 of the League has.

A bit further down we find Cutler.  He is the median quarterback on IAYPA, but his TD/INT ratio shows why Bears fans became exasperated.  Andrew Luck threw 46 touchdowns in 22 starts over the past two years, Cutler only 25 in 20.  I still think he could play somewhere, but his numbers are fully consistent with the criticism - he moves the chains but not the scoreboard.  But again, do the Bears really think Glennon is going to be better?

The view from the summit:

• The Legend of Tom continues.  The best quarterback in football over the past two years, by a lot.  The typical competent NFL quarterback throws about twice as many TDs as interceptions (2.3 median for this group).  Brady's ratio the past two years has been 7.1... 
• Dak Prescott had as great a rookie seasons as Dallas could have hoped for.  
• Russell Wilson is not just good, but great, much better than people seem to realize.  This article says the offensive line needs repairing, but, like Rodgers, Wilson has shown he can perform at the highest level even with a weak supporting cast.
• Rodgers' IAYPA has slipped, but he is, as Simmons says, the moral equivalent of Omar from the Wire: "Rodgers is Omar. He’s a one-man gang. You’re always afraid of him, you can’t ever count him out and you never know when he’s coming. And those three Hail Marys (THREE!!!!) were football’s equivalent of Omar escaping Marlo’s crew with the five-story balcony jump."
• Drew Brees - just two years younger than Brady, and has more yards than anyone the past two seasons, with elite-level efficiency.  No sign of decay yet.
• Kirk Cousins, who is demanding a trade on a one-year contract, is now one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL.

I've never seen it all so wide open.  One NFL GM commented on the Bears' signing of Glennon:  "I’d take Glennon over Osweiler in a heartbeat.  He won’t do it himself, but if he has people around him, he’s got a chance. And that’s three-quarters of the league at quarterback."

How to drive properly

World Rally Championship driver Kris Meeke said he “got caught out by a bump” less than a kilometer away from the end of the final stage of Rally Mexico... Meeke went flying off into a parking lot next to the stage road and unbelievably still won the rally.

From the cockpit:



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'Smart vibrator' lawsuit climaxes with...

...somethingsomething...  Now that's what I call 'Big Data'.

At least we've found the local limit for this atrocious business model.

According to the lawsuit filed in the North District of Illinois Eastern Division District Court, the We-Connect app was transmitting information including dates and times of use as well as vibration mode and pattern to the company’s servers along with personally-identifiable email addresses without notifying customers.

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The GOP healthcare plan swings into action

More TOR NPCs have died than there are people on earth...

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Thanks Unky

Matt Bai has an interesting conversation

I asked Obama when, theoretically, he would consider Islamist terrorism to be an existential threat. I expected him to say it would be when al-Qaida or ISIS got its hands on nukes or managed to take down the computers that power our banks.

But Obama’s answer was different, and immediate — clearly he’d thought about it. He said terrorism would rise to the level of an elemental threat only when we responded to some eventual attack, as a culture, by turning against each other and betraying our own ideals.

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Your loyalty has been rewarded

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Sanity check from Dave

Proposed captions for that "It's a Wonderful Life" picture (see post below)

• "The TARP money came through!"
• "Look at this fucking house!  Just look at it!"
• "We're pawns in a supernatural game far beyond our ability to comprehend!"
• "If only predatory capitalistic practices could be eradicated none of this would have been necessary!"
• "The entire happiness of everyone in this town hangs by the precarious thread of my mortality!"
• "Capital is dead labor, that vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks."

Sorry, that last one was Marx.  But still...

La La Lear

We went to see La La Land the other night, and everyone is still pissed off.  #2 son called it a tragedy, although that seems a bit strong when you consider that both leading characters get exactly what they wanted.  Nevertheless, the general sentiment in our group was similar to that of the critic's girlfriend who turned to him during the final act and said: "fuck this movie."

I'm annoyed for a different reason.  I paid good money to see a musical about Los Angeles with Ryan Gosling and some girl.  When you do that, you have a right to expect light entertainment.  I believe California even has a law about this.

And instead of light escapist entertainment, I get what?  I get King Lear.  King Fucking Lear.  

You think I'm shitting you?

I am not shitting you.

Damien Chazelle takes La La Land in the world of possibility and dreaming, which is nice, and also sort of like playing mumblety-peg with an electric carving knife.  You are entering deep waters.  The Bard touched on these topics in the final scene of Lear:

Re-enter KING LEAR, with CORDELIA dead in his arms; EDGAR, Captain, and others following

KING LEAR
Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones:
Had I your tongues and eyes, I'ld use them so
That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone for ever!
I know when one is dead, and when one lives;
She's dead as earth. Lend me a looking-glass;
If that her breath will mist or stain the stone,
Why, then she lives. 

KENT
Is this the promised end 

EDGAR
Or image of that horror? 

ALBANY
Fall, and cease! 

KING LEAR
This feather stirs; she lives! if it be so,
It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows
That ever I have felt.

The feather, alas, is not going anywhere.  Shakespeare is not letting anyone off the hook, least of all the man who told his daughter - when she was unwilling to trivialize her love for him with words - that "nothing will come from nothing."  Wishing can create some powerful delusions, but Lear's mind can dance the watusi and still not  Cordelia's status.  After life has kicked him around a little, Lear wishes Cordelia alive as much as any human can wish such a thing.  But as another poet once said, and Shakespeare ratifies:

The moving finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on; nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

What's been done can't be undone.  Except...well, actually, there's a big exception to this.  In Hollywood movies, especially those of the Golden Age, there were a few occasions when the moving finger hit the rewind button, perhaps most memorably in Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life".

Proposed captions here

And from there to Groundhog Day and beyond.  One of the first films to employ this device was the silent 7th Heaven, which came out in 1927.  It was based on a 1922 play of the same name, and Chazelle says it influenced him as they were putting together that accursed final act for La La Land.  Here are the salient plot points (from TCM's page on the 1937 talkie):

...Chico fights in the trenches and Diane works as a nurse. The couple think of each other every day at 11:00 a.m. and mentally send the message "Chico, Diane, Heaven." After the war ends, Gobin and Aristide, who has become Diane's friend, try to convince Diane that Chico was killed, but she refuses to believe them until Father Chevillon gives her the medal that Chico gave to him when he lay wounded on the battlefield. Diane is heartbroken and renounces her belief in God, but when the clock strikes 11:00, she once again feels Chico's presence. She rushes home and finds Chico, who was only blinded in the explosion that was thought to have killed him. The young lovers embrace and tearfully reaffirm their belief in each other and in God.

Diane essentially wills Chico back to life, and into her presence.  To paraphrase Coppola in "Hearts of Darkness", Chico's not dead until she says he dead.

Well, two can play that game.  Sebastian and Mia aren't split until I say they're split.

And I ain't sayin' nothin'.

Stop, my penis can only get so erect

The 1980s-vintage Warthogs — built around a 30-millimeter rotary cannon and capable of carrying a variety of bombs and missiles — did fire inert rounds on unmanned boats at a different time during the exercise. The munitions expended during that other phase of the exercise also included delta-wing AGM-65 Maverick missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs.

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It's not a witch hunt if you're up to your ass in witches

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Two comments from Epictetus

The chief task in life is simply this:  to identify and separate matters so that I can clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control.  Where then do I look for good and evil?  Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself, to the choices that are my own...

. . .

These things don't go together.  You must be a unified human being, either good or bad.  You must diligently work either on your own reasoning or on things out of your control - take great care with the inside and not what's outside, which is to say, stand with the philosopher, or else with the mob!

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The Lego Batman movie is fun, also destroys the Batman myth forever

BLIND ITEM #5 - This A+ list mostly movie actor who also directs is doing his best to get out of making the next installment of a franchise.   He will make it if forced but would love for them to say they found a replacement. He is miserable.   (link)

I'm sorry, Mr. Affleck, but your job just became somewhat harder.  A new movie has come out that redeems Batman, but wrecks the Frank Miller archetype in the process.

Oh, shut up

The Lego Batman Movie does something no other DC film has done:  it actually tries to conceptualize the hero as a human being.  A flawed, rich, narcissistic human being, hovering on the edge of self-awareness.  Even Iron Man didn't go this deep:



The Lego Batman Movie calls Frank Miller Batman on his bullshit, tells him what he is, and ultimately persuades him to adopt a more constructive, team-oriented approach.  This is more likely to work for him, and will be less dull for us.  I alway liked team Batman better anyway:




(link)