I just got back from seeing The Hobbit in 3D IMAX today (unfortunately in 24 fps, which made for some ugly, blurry pans of the countryside). I can confirm that I have zero enthusiasm for this "trend." I would pay premium prices for a 70mm class, true THX theatre experience, but stereoscopy adds little to my experience, and creates too many problems. Going from silent to talkies it ain't.

The only thing I ever saw that really worked was the Tron sequel. A bad movie, but it had some very nice computer generated 3D sequences. But not while you can see the actors. That's the real problem. For me, people as stereoscopic subjects enter that uncanny valley where something tiny isn't right, all the time, and it activates a sense of revulsion, distraction, and displeasure. Multiple people create problems because if you turn your head even slightly during the scene, the fact that you are watching stereoscopy and not a true 3D scene becomes immediately apparent. It gets worse rather than better on the bigger screens, because you're more likely to need head movement. I understand fully CG animation does very well, but that's for my kids, not me. It makes sense, as animated characters are a major discrepancy from real images, not the tiny and unsettling sort.

The motorized Lazy-boy seats my local theatre just put in add more to the experience than stereoscopy ever has. So I am a dissatisfied customer, and I won't pay a thin dime more for any "3D," and am now actively seeking 2D presentations.

My open mind is now closed for business on the subject. It's been a disappointment. If I were to suggest a good place for a new trend to make theatres worth the trip, it would be wiring all the seats with a speaker array and using that to generate truly spatial and also asymmetrical (crowd noise, ambient) sound effects.

Yup. It appears that we are at this step:

3. ???

Here's the only way I will accept them coming back: They come back as weeping angels.

Now Jo, I want you to pull that lever.

Will it end "high-end graphics?" No more than CAFE standards ended the auto industry. If it's the standard, I have no doubt that innovative solutions will be designed to allow us to live within it, or close enough to it that no regulatory actions need be taken. We're just redefining what "high-end" means, and given the power profile of an Nvidia 480 vs. a 680, it's high time for that kind of high-end progress.

Ah, like the first scroll I write with my blessed magic marker is a blessed scroll of charging. Then another for the Wand of Wishing (0:3), so I can wish for another magic marker, and write another scroll of charging for that one. LOL.

No wishing for more wishes. You also can't wish someone dead. You can probably print love, though, in a sense.

But don't forget that the other side was crying "fascists." Then, when that didn't stick, it was "crypto-fascists" and we were expected to believe that everyone in the right secretly wore a Hitler moustache beneath their Klan robes, while they kept up a clean cut facade for the cameras.

And that back and forth, between cries of "Commie!" and cries of "Fascist!," came directly from Joe Stalin's CCCP and the Nazis, when Hitler and he fell out. We just took it into our own politics with very little consideration of the results in Europe.

The problem with all of these labels, my friend, is that our entire political dialogue is based on war propaganda. We live in a world dominated by the propaganda methods of Joseph Goebbels. For better, but usually for worse, he was extremely successful to the point that everyone in modern U.S. politics uses some form of his methods of media and public control. We use a variety of labels, instinctively at this point, to cause people to stop considering the opposition as human beings, and consider them instead as "the other," brutal in their methods and deserving of whatever aggression we can dream up. When we go too far and become brutal ourselves, our defense is that "their means justify our means," and that the other gets what they deserve.

All can be mended if we open our ears and our minds though. Not from a point of weakness, we don't have to accept everything in some misconstrued overture of "tolerance," but simply by listening and thinking from a position of strength, and not of despair.

The CIA consists of human beings trying to make the world a better place, generally for the American people first, then everyone else if possible. They, for the most part, don't wipe their butts without congressional authority, a Congress whom we in the U.S. elect. If we reject these methods and stop electing war propagandeers on both the right and the left to Congress (War on Poverty or War on Drugs, it doesn't matter, War isn't the way), their actions will better reflect the values of a peacetime society, and we won't be inexorably marched to yet another actual war.

I have but a tiny little hope that may happen someday.

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to slide to unlock, tap open and app out.
You will not be able to lose yourself in birds and pigs,
iTune in and swill beer during the keynote,
Because the revolution will not be an app.

The revolution will be... um, Live... oh hell, that's a Microsoft product.

Of course, their mistake was that rock and roll will never die, unlike Armstrong. RIP.

Hmm. With substitutions in place, I'm detecting a disturbance in the force...

But all said and done, for me it would go a long way towards reparations if Mr. Octopus showed up and started bitch slapping Jonny Moseley with a live squid. Bread and circuses, baby.

I think the funniest part is watching the two commentators ignore each others teleprompted crap, wait for their cue, then say "That's right," and plow right on with a complete non sequitur. Disturbingly often.

Our group of viewers dreamed up this example:

Has SNL hit this turkey yet?