Juno is one of those movies I thought I would love.  It’s an indie story written by a Hollywood outsider.  In fact it was built up so much as the indie quirky movie that made it to the Oscars, that I thought for sure I would like it.  Maybe this was its undoing for me, too high of an expectation, but in the end I found the story mediocre and the soundtrack completely irritating.  It bordered on a 2 star film and really should get only 2 and a half stars but I don’t have the image for that, so 3 it is.  Yes, I’m lazy to create a new image…but this film just might make me do it.

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There is a stink being raised down in Florida over their proposal to offer a specialty license plate that includes a picture of a cross in front of a stained glass window with the words “I believe”.  The concern being raised is that the specialty plate implies that Florida is endorsing a specific religion.

This is a tough call.  Certainly the cross is a specific symbol for the Christians, but as long as the state allowed any group to create and sponsor their own specific plate, I don’t really see an issue with it, but that’s the rub.  Would this then open the gate for fringe groups to create their own plates?  For example, what if the Scientolgists wanted a plate of their own?  or how about hate groups?

I guess this is why God created bumper stickers.  That’s the medium for getting your personal views displayed to the driver behind you in traffic, because we all know, they really want to know your feeling about world peace or who you’re going to vote for.  But if you’re going to go for a religious one, I would suggest this one.

I get really tired of the “God Bless America” or “God Bless Texas” crap out there.  Why should God bless America?  Why not ask him to bless someplace that really needs it.  We’re doing pretty good, so let’s give God a break and let him work on the rest of the world for a while.

In case you were wondering, Texas already has plates that are generic observances of faith.

Along with these are about a couple hundred other specialty plates.  If you really want to see them all head on over.

Texas Specialty Plates Website

As for me, I’ll leave my plates clean along with my bumpers and make my feelings known here instead.

In the wake of the recent release of the religious propaganda movie Expelled, I decided to rent something from a different point of view regarding religion and bible interpretation and watch it instead.  As with all recent “documentaries”, this one has a message it wants to get across.  It’s a message of tolerance and acceptance for those who are willing to listen, told through the lives of 5 families of faith who struggled to accept their gay or lesbian child.  It’s a compelling group of stories that is definitely worth the time to watch.

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The DVD for this film gives the viewer the choice of the Theatrical version or the Extended version which includes 18 minutes of extra footage.  When given the choice I almost always go for the extended version thinking the director was constrained by market forces to cut down the movie for theaters.  Theater owners like shorter films so they can cycle viewers in and out more often and therefore generate more revenue per screen.  That’s why most movies today are 90 minutes long instead of the nearly 3 hours this film runs.  But in this case, the extended version adds only 18 minutes, so it was a long movie to start with and I can guess which scenes were added as there was definitely some extraneous content.

But more about that later, on to the movie review…

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This goes under the “duh” file, but when I saw this headline I thought I was on The Onion site and not msnbc.com.  Are you ready for it? Ok, here you go.

‘Just terrible,’ killer says of execution ruling

In case you don’t know, the supreme court ruled today that execution by lethal injection does not inflict undue pain and suffering so a seven month moratorium on executions can now end.  Given that ruling what else would you expect a convicted killer to say.

This ruling also means that the assembly line here in Texas will rev up again and we’ll continue our place as the number one executioner of prisoners in the country.  After all, the pro-lifer’s here only worry about a life if it’s in the womb.  Once you’re born, you’re on your own.

In honor of the Pope coming to the US, I thought of course of a Monty Python skit that includes the Pope…I don’t think it’s Benedict XVI, but hey, it’s a Pope none the less, I had to share.

The movie Expelled is set to open this Friday.  But it seems like the war over this movie has been waging for months.  Along the way there have been many caustic reviews of the film from the scientific community and a few film critics and probably rightly so.  But I came across another review that I found much more enlightening.  That would be Michael Shermer’s talk with the podcast Skepticality on April 1st and it was no April fools.

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Let me start off by saying I rented this movie based on the name of John Turturro.  I’ve enjoyed his work in many films over the years and when I heard he decided to write and direct his own movie, I thought, wow, this could be good.  But after seeing it, I decided I needed to make a Public Service Announcement.  I’ve watched this film so you won’t have to.  This is the type of movie where you will see review comments like “I wish I could get the 2 hours of my life back” and the movie isn’t even 2 hours long.  It had such possibilities too…

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So I finally decided to upgrade my 5 year old Creative Zen 20GB hard-drive based MP3 player with something new.  I wanted one with flash memory so I won’t have to worry about jostling it around and I really wanted it more for audiobooks and such, so it didn’t need to have a gazillion gigabytes of memory.

Given this, I ended up going with a silver 8GB iPod Nano…I settled for silver since any other color would have cost $10 more.  Those who know me, know I’m not one for style, so silver will suit me just fine thank you very much.  I seriously considered the iPod Touch, but decided it was too big for my needs even though the wi-fi capability would have been cool.  Also, I was a bit reticent about buying an iPod…I really do think they are a bit overpriced and over-hyped, but I must say, once I got it, I am quite impressed with the little gadget, and it is little.  I tried to find a good picture of the nano, but it’s really hard to find a picture of one without Nelly Furtado on it, so no media for this post.

I loaded up the iTunes software and off I went looking for content.  I have no plans to buy music through the apple store, I’m still a CD guy…yup, old school all the way, but I did find an entire world to explore in the PodCast arena.  Although, most are pretty much worthless crap, there are a few out there that seem worth the while.  Below is a list of a few I’ve found so far that I feel subscribing to is worth it.

Point of Inquiry

NPR’s Fresh Air

Onion News Network, both audio and video

TED Talks

Scientific American Science Talk Podcast

If I get off my butt, I’ll update my links page with these as well.  It really needs some updating.  In the meantime, if anyone has some good podcasts to listen to let me know.  I’m always open to try them out at least once to see if it’s worth the time to listen.  The problem now is finding the time to listen to them all.

I also signed up with Audible.com for audiobooks.  I chose the one credit a month plan which basically gives me enough to get one book a month.  That’s probably enough for now.  Besides, it might be difficult to find a book a month on their site I want to listen to.  The first one I got was “The Coming Economic Collapse: How you can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel“.  Nice huh.  Seems appropriate given that it was written in 2006 when oil was about $50 a barrel and now it’s over $100.  Makes $200 seem almost reasonable and with gas prices and the economy the way it is, these guys seem almost prophetic, but that’s a post for another day.

So, like I said, if you have any good podcasts or audiobooks let me know.

I’ve not posted about this topic on purpose…I’ve been trying to ignore it and hope it will just go away, but I can’t hold it back anymore.  This is about the new creationist propaganda film called “Expelled“.  If you really want to you can go to Youtube and watch some of the trailers.  They’re not pretty.  Now I haven’t seen the full film, but that’s because it hasn’t really been released yet and the producers are only showing it in certain cities and you have to register before you can see it.  This way they can screen people out, like some of the scientists who they cajoled into appearing in the film by telling them it was about something else.  If you want to get up to speed on this, you can head over to ExpelledExposed.com as they are trying to keep up with it all.

But that’s not why I’m writing this….

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