Watch it now. That is all.

Via Hot Air.

Instapundit writes up Honda’s new Advanced Light Jet for Popular Mechanics and mentions the likelihood of a new “air taxi” model to replace the airlines:

Although other efforts to build an on-demand air-taxi market at low cost have stalled with the current economic downturn, those efforts faced financial and technological problems that Honda expects to avoid, and by the time the HondaJets are rolling off the line at full speed, there’s a good chance that the economy will have recovered. So the air-taxi model—where you got to a website, enter your destination, and have a small jet swoop down to pick you up, possibly at a small business airport rather than a big one where parking and security hassles are greater—may well have a chance.

The food pantry at my church, named Casey’s Corner for the autistic boy who every week helps his father unload a truck full of food and supplies into the pantry, is a finalist for a $25,000 grant from Pepsi. If the pantry wins the grant, we will use it to install a walk-in cooler/freezer to store meat and other perishables and open the food pantry one more day per week, thus serving up to 1500 more people each year. Bonus: A walk-in will be significantly more energy-efficient than the consumer refrigerators we have in there now, thus saving the church overhead money that can then go directly to the food pantry or similar service ministries.

You could really help us by voting once a day between now and the end of March. There are at least a couple hundred finalists, so it’s not like we’re down to the top five or something, and we need every vote. Pepsi is doing a good thing–help us make it worth their while so that they will keep on. Please vote!

Update: Pepsi has a registration process attached to the means of voting, but it’s fairly painless and it looks like they won’t force emails on you. Hey, they have to get something out of it or they wouldn’t be doing it, right?

Update: If you don’t want to register with Pepsi and you have a Facebook account, you can vote through the Facebook account. Easy! Also, Casey’s Corner has already jumped from 169th in the running to 91st, which is awesome, but we need sustained voting over the month to put us in the top ten–the top ten will get the grants. Please do vote as often as it occurs to you. Thanks!

How many can fit in the Nerd Herder?

Pre-prefrontal-cortex Billy Joel, by the description:

Yes, that is Billy Joel, wearing fur pelts and posing with Small in a meat locker. And while such packaging might seem at best laughable, you ain’t experienced nuthin’ ’til you’ve heard the thing.

“Wonder Woman” kicks off the record, and we should be able to tell we’re in trouble, right from the get-go. A swirl of amplified wah-wah noise greets us, like a haze of pot smoke from an open van door. Out come the fur pelt-wearin’ Long Island Huns—Jon Small flailing around, beating anything he can find with his manly drum-clubs, and Joel coaxing noises from his organ rig, just like Jimi Hendrix, only without the sexiness or melodic intent. “Wonder Woman with your skin so fair!” Joel shouts. “Wonder Woman with your long, red hair! You have the velvet touch! You have what I want so much! My love is burnin’ fire! My need is my desire!”

It gets a lot worse from there. The prefrontal cortex, by the way, is “implicated in planning complex cognitive behaviors, personality expression, decision making and moderating correct social behavior.[citation needed] The basic activity of this brain region is considered to be orchestration of thoughts and actions in accordance with internal goals.” Goals such as creating a hit record and correct social behavior such as … none of what’s described in that album. The prosecution rests.

I also didn’t know that Billy Joel’s first wife was poached from his bandmate. Apparently he never really was any more normal than other Hollyweirds. Sigh.

H/t Daddyman.

Ever play this game? Seven Wonders of the Internet World–go:

1. Amazon
2. IMDb
3. Google
4. Facebook
5. Fark
6. Wikipedia
7. Youtube

Got different ones?

Handheld cell phone bans do not affect crash rates.

Next up: They will try to ban phones while driving altogether, handheld or hands-free.

Via The Daily Caller.

…and mandated them all to low-flow, and I said nothing because I didn’t care. I just flushed a few more times … although others took a different approach. At some point they mandated the wine bottles, and I said nothing, because as long as they still have a hole in the top it doesn’t affect me.

Now they’re coming for the light bulbs, and most people seem completely insensible to the danger.

Yet about 75 percent said they are not aware of the impending federal requirement for greater energy efficiency that will lead to the phaseout of less efficient lighting.

“Less efficient” by a standard of raw energy consumed, perhaps. “Less efficient” by a standard of, you know, actually lighting things to a visible spectrum and being safe to handle around your toddler, not so much: Incandescents are far more efficient than flourescents on both counts. And there’s this ill-considered boilerplate from GE:

“We’re not sensing a rush by consumers to comply with the looming federal standards,” Kathy Sterio, GE Lighting’s general manager of consumer marketing said in a prepared statement.

“There’s a major shift to CFLs but it’s clearly is a matter of educated consumers choosing CFLs for their strengths,” she said. “Our marketing, advertising and packaging have espoused the value of energy-efficient CFLs for over a decade.”

Such a charming implication, that those of us who still prefer incandescents are uneducated yokels.

H/t J.

Joel Silver says “the studio” wants him and Guy Ritchie to focus on a new Sherlock Holmes movie instead of something called Lobo, which, judging by the picture at the link, is a comic-book adaptation that I, personally, will not bemoan the lack of. IMDb lists “Untitled Sherlock Holmes Sequel” as in development, in content not available to those of us as yet unwilling to pay for IMDb Pro.

Hooray for more Downey-as-Holmes! Dear Mssrs. Silver & Ritchie: I loved Sherlock Holmes. Please get some wittier screenwriting this time around. Dear Mssrs. Downey & Law: Please carry on full speed ahead. Love, Anwyn

Imagine that.

“You guys … are not only not talking about a second stimulus, you’re talking about trying to cut … the budget,” Maddow said. “I have to tell you, it sounds completely, completely insane.”

["Top economic adviser to the president" Jared] Bernstein vowed “there`s going to be no stupid Hooverism around here, to use your, I think, very apt term.”

“Spending programs, in order to generate the kind of job growth that we need to offset this — the impact of what was the deepest recession since the Great Depression — generally will fall outside of this freeze,” he said.

But Michael Linden, associate director for tax and budget policy at the Center for American Progress, argued a week ago that this kind of a freeze would make only a dent in the country’s structural problems.

“The federal government spent a bit more than $625 billion on non-defense discretionary programs in 2009. The Congressional Budget Office projects that, in five years, the federal government will spend about $660 billion on the same programs,” he wrote.

“Freezing non-defense discretionary spending at current levels would therefore only produce a total savings of $35 billion in 2015. That year, the budget deficit is expected to be around $760 billion. Saving $35 billion would solve less than 5 percent of the problem. There may be some savings to be found in non-defense discretionary programs, but a spending freeze would accomplish extremely little in the way of measurable deficit reduction.”

Food stamp programs? Education programs? College loan programs? Even … spit … health care “reform” programs? No. Spending programs. Spending programs that will in no way be affected by a “spending freeze.”

Well, hell. Gotta admire a person who calls it what it is in defiance of his own political interest, right? Go ahead, keep stating your real goal out loud till everybody understands that spending was the real goal all along. Kthxbai.

Why did stars as big as Sandra Bullock and Mary Steenburgen do this movie? Heck, why did stars the size of Ryan Reynolds or Craig T. Nelson do it? Not even Betty White was able to perk it up. I don’t mind formulaic romantic comedies. I’m a girl. I mind formulaic romantic comedies that think they can get by on formula and star power while adding absolutely zero wit or character development.

Sandra Bullock’s character, Margaret Tate, is a bitch in four-inch heels who rules the office with an iron hand and her assistant (Reynolds’s Andrew Paxton) with a whip-hand. Though her manner is uncompromising and manipulative, interestingly–and it was almost the only interesting thing available in these characters–her actions, as demonstrated by the firing of a subordinate, are reasonable bordering on gracious. When she lets him go, she tells him exactly why, her reason makes sense, and she gives him “two months to find another job, and you can say you resigned.” Most people losing jobs nowadays should do so well.

The movie grinds through its “get married to avoid deportation” plot, takes Margaret home to Andrew’s Alaskan small-town mogul parents, runs through the usual physical and embarrassment comedy scenes, and winds up with Margaret leaving because she now likes Andrew too much to make him go through with the wedding. The only warm moment was The Kiss of True Love, and by that point I was thanking the Hollywood gods that they could get that much right, because they certainly didn’t show enough change in the thoughts, feelings, or manners of these characters to make us care otherwise. Andrew’s parents were ciphers with no depth, as was his Alaskan ex, and the movie followed the seemingly now-standard formula of “two endings”–the big, public denouement followed by the quieter “real” ending when the characters finally come together. But that routine has to be handled carefully to make it work; otherwise it just feels tacked on and deflated. And no part of this movie, including the ending, got very careful handling.

The direction was not altogether lacking; some interesting camera work tried hard to provide the depth that was missing from the script. And the idea certainly was solid–see also Green Card–but unlike Green Card, the comedy scenes were mainly mildly cringe-inducing and the characters just flat. They had chemistry, but it was all untapped. It could have been a good movie had it had a different script. Alas. But hey … Ryan and Sandy sure can kiss.

… was the cutest lame movie I’ve seen in a while.

Amy Adams and Matthew Goode are both absolutely charming, but their characters needed a lot of work. “Predictable” didn’t even make the running into a list of major problems with the film. “Predictable” is when a [snob, jerk, ass, obliviot, hateful cynic] of a [man, woman] and a [man, woman] who are nevertheless totally [hilarious, witty, insightful, devilishly charming, really soft and mushy inside if somebody would just SEE IT] eventually realize they are crazy about each other and live happily ever after, whatever other [men, women] might be in the picture to start with. While Amy Adams’s Anna at least has determination and with-it-ness to recommend her, Matthew Goode’s Declan pretty much has … his smile, beard, and Irish accent. There is very little indicator that either has much going on otherwise and very little development to go along with it. The dialogue is painfully lacking in wit and the physical comedy (which, I stipulate up front, is not my thing anyway) is just lacking.

More than anything, though, the whole thing, typified by the main characters, just lacks depth. But, as I say–still cute.

When I first moved out on my own, once upon a time in the mists of antiquity, I ordered a Domino’s pizza. I never did so again.

Apparently enough people did the same that they finally noticed.