underdogs have won against the odds, especially defending on home ground.  Invasions can be hard if the general population is hostile.  From what I've read - Internet and James McPherson - there were quite a few errors made by the Southern politicians and their generals.

I know why you're having apoplexy and agree with you that getting the Federal government involved in home life is not the answer. To me differences in early development between poor and well off children accounts for much of the differences in inequality of opportunity.

Furthermore, a generation ago, most preschool-aged children stayed at home with their mothers. Now, many are enrolled in some sort of child care. But the quality of their experiences varies. Affluent parents can send their children to nationally recognized education-oriented preschools. Poorer parents might have little choice but to leave their children with a neighborhood babysitter who plops them in front of the television. Research by the economist James Heckman and others finds that much of the gap in cognitive and noncognitive skills between children from poor homes and those from affluent homes is already present by the time they enter kindergarten.

So there is a nasty feedback loop at work. Poorer families can't provide the environment necessary for children to achieve success. To make inroads in this problem will require breaking this cycle somehow, either by providing more support for single mothers in the form of childcare or support so they don't have to work as hard and can spend more time raising their children.

Any discussion of whether people deserve support in this fashion (not that I'm accusing you of this) is worthless. Ultimately, providing people with the opportunity and tools to become successful productive citizens benefits all taxpayers.

Traveller

It is depressing.  I have quite some friends and family in the ME.

That defense is going to get *worse* for the next month?

*Scott wanders off to make four weeks of obvious choices for one game a week*

That may be the case, I don't know.

The innovation costs to imitation cost distinction was what was new and valuable to me when I first read it.

The pop opera and its participants won applause and a few ovations from audiences who woke up that morning dreaming a dream and had no problem giving themselves over to material that demanded they feel something, anything, for the people and their struggles and for young girls who really, really like cute, socially conscious rich boys who don't notice them until they're dying and then, sure, now you hold me and caress me, but where were you when I was alive?

Well written, well thought out!

Best Wishes, Traveller

We need guidance.

I mean, I've seen it, but I'd like someone infinitely more fashionable and "hip" to tell me if it was the right thing to do.

I brought my wife (or maybe she brought me? Is that hipper?). Should I have gone with colleagues instead? The local vegan collective? We don't have a vegan collective, so should I start, sorry, "curate" one? I think I coyuld make it either artinisal or bespoke, but not both. Is it enough?

Anyway, I quite liked it. Lots of pretty stupid bits (well below the running level of average James Bond Movie Stupidness), lots of continuity errors (I assume, since I spotted one and I never spot those), some great action, more or less no gadgets, more or less no Bond style hotties and I would haev shot whoever was responsible for doing the soundtrack. I love the new theme tune, but to have such a national treasure to work with as the twonky deng-de deng deng, deng deng deng etc(11 years of theory of music, folks, right there staring back at you) and to never ever manage to apply it correctly should be a crime in civilised countries.

Anyway. Doo-do, do doo, do doo do and all that!

Oh yes, and it's a much better movie than the last one.

that the reviews, especially aggregated on Rotten Tomatoes, are way overblown.

Go in expecting a middle-of-the-road Bond picture, with plenty of entertaining action scenes, exotic locales, absurdly attractive women who appear with key information at each turn of Bond's investigation, and you'll have a pretty good time.

But also expect the plot & premise to come apart like a cheap suit the first time you a) try to remember how some detail fit into the overall story or b) someone asks you to summarize what the film's 'about.'

[SPOILERY SECTION BELOW]

It's about how James Bond and MI6 are antiquated, old-fashioned, obsolete and completely unable to cope with modern supercriminals. No wait! It's a foundation story about the beginning of the Bond franchise. No wait, it's a strangely intimate revenge story with Bond caught in the middle between a sacrificed agent and an unrepentant M...it's about loyalty and how one can remain loyal to an agency that uses people like, well, like James Bond uses attractive women. 

What about Javier Bardem, what's his deal? Well, he's a former star field agent like Bond, once the apple of M's eye. Ok, so why's he a cyberterrorist? Why would someone with badass Bond-like operational skills become a geeky hacker type person? No explanation. Why would he acquire these amazing skills if all he wants to do is kill M? After all, old-fashioned field operatives are plenty capable of whacking people without world-class cyberhacking skills. No explanation. Answer: because we have two different, incompatible storylines vying for control of the film. One storyline is about MI6 falling behind in cybertech. The other storyline is about Bond's Ahab-like predecessor, bent on revenge -- blowback, in other words. It's possible these two storylines could have been massaged into a single movie, but unfortunately they weren't and what we're left with instead is a chunk of cinematic meatloaf that crumbles on forkfall.

Dropped storylines.

• Javier Bardem's gay! He makes a pass at Bond. Bond graciously declines. Never mentioned again. 
• Stolen NOC list. The movie opens in Istanbul with Bond and Moneypenny trying to retrieve a solid-state hard drive containing the encrypted names & cover IDs of every single NATO agent working within terror organizations worldwide. Later, the thieves partly decrypt the drive and release 5 names onto the internet. Some spies are killed. This entire storyline is dropped by the end of Act 2, never to be heard from again.
• Magic Bullet. Patrice, the hard drive stealer, shoots Bond once in the shoulder during the initial chase scene. Months later (!), Bond extracts the bullet fragments and finds that they're DU rounds. Neverminding the wisdom of using highly traceable munitions, it's important to remember that Moneypenny *also* shoots Bond, while aiming for Patrice. Bond falls into the water, then spends 3 months recuperating on some Aegean island. But where's the second bullethole? When we next find him, he's got a nasty scar on his right shoulder...where Patrice shot him. Did Moneypenny shoot him through the same bullet hole? 
• Temporary Alcoholism. After blowing that operation, Bond spends months shacking up with some Greek floozy, boozing away the hours Bond-style (drinking games with scorpions). Is he...mad at M for getting him shot? Mad at Moneypenny? Is this how he always unwinds from an operation, or just the blown ones? Bond's drinking problem disappears as if it never happened at the beginning of Act 2.
• Unbelievably Lucky Badguy. Silva's (Javier Bardem) entire plan, in every last detail, relies on highly improbable, totally unpredictable chains of coincidence in order to come off without a hitch:

1) Patrice has to die at the hands of MI6
2) With his Macao casino chip in his coat for Bond to find
3) Assume Bond will find the chip and decide to follow that long-shot, desperate lead to Macao
4) Assume Bond won't get killed by the body guards & komodo dragons in the casino
5) Assume Bond will have shower sex with the casino boss and convince her to betray Javier (yes, she gets killed the moment her betrayal serves its purpose)
6) Assume Bond will bring a full MI6 black ops team to arrest Javier
7) Assume that, once in custody, super scientific genius Q will go ahead and hook his virus-rigged laptop directly into the MI6 mainframe
9) All of this to get Silva into MI6 custody exactly when M is testifying before the PM and Parliament. Question: why not simply slip into Parliament and shoot her? It's a public building, albeit high security...but why break out of MI6 only to break in to a Parliamentary hearing? Is there a symbolic message here I'm not picking up on, or is the bad guy making his own job 10x harder than it needs to be for no discernible reason?

In short, the film works like a second rate magic trick. You buy it in the moment (it's really well made), but the minute you leave the theater and start playing things back over in your head or talking with your hipster friends, you realize the entire plot only works in one direction. Everything that happens seems sorta plausible in a James Bond-y kinda way while you're watching. But take a look back and ask yourself how on earth the main villain could have possibly planned it all out in advance, and the entire premise falls apart like a five year old's cover story.

The statute further requires the state Office of Homeland Security (OHS) to “publicize the findings of the General Assembly stressing the dependence on Almighty God” by including the quote above in agency training and educational materials and on a plaque at Kentucky’s Emergency Operations Center. Anyone who violates the statute is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail

The law applies to bureaucrats and tries to get the state of  Kentucky in the business of broad based Christian proselytizing.   

There is a building that the agency is housed in, the plaque business would apply to that building.  But no one has gone to jail for non-compliance.

The statute is far more enforceable than some statute that stress that; "Since there are no more ice giants, the GA of Kentucky has been dependent on Thor and his mighty hammer.  And requiring the agency to celebrate Thor every 3rd Thursday in months starting on an even date."

Blasphemy laws aren't good, but it's not like they dropped 2,000 pound guided bombs on civilian housing </snark>.

Lose whatever influence and access is provided by that money, to spite a symbolic sentence that will result in the death, or incarceration, of nobody.

But he's been around for quite a lot of things. To put a finer point on it--he called Dodger games during Jackie Robinson's fourth season in MLB, and before either Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle reached the majors. When he started with the Dodgers there were no major league teams west of St. Louis (where Bill Veeck would not hire Eddie Gaedel for his notorious plate appearance until the next year).

. . .something that I don't seem to remember reading before that I just saw in the wiki: if history had gone slightly differently, Vin Scully might have left the Dodgers in 1970 and taken the play by play position in the original Monday Night Football team (he later called a number of NFL games between 1975 and 1982 for CBS). Assuming he could have held the job for all or most of the time from then until now, it is amusing to think that Scully might be less legendary now if he had been on MNF for the last four decades than he has actually become working for the Dodgers all that time.

"With thanks to those who believe I would be a good fit for the position of Secretary of State, I am stating today that I intend to continue to serve my important role as a member of a majority Democratic United States Senate--I wish good fortune to whoever President Obama selects for that important position and will fight for the nominee when the matter comes up for consideration in the Senate."

.

..here on Vemo:

http://vimeo.com/45784191

Hot.

Ahem.

Best Wishes, Traveller