It looks like James Cameron's Avatar will have some major staying power with positive word-of-mouth as the box office hit earned another $16.4 million on Monday to bring its domestic total to $93.4 million after just four days in release.
Columbia Pictures has revealed the trailer for The Karate Kid which you can watch using the player below. Directed by Harald Zwart, the remake of the 1984 film stars Jackie Chan, Jaden Smith and Taraji P. Henson. It is scheduled to hit theaters on June 11.
ComingSoon.net's The Weekend Warrior offers a preview of the new releases opening on Christmas Day, December 25, including Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros.), the return of Alvin, Theodore and Simon in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel (20th Century Fox), Meryl Streep, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin create a love triangle in Nancy Meyers' It's Complicated , plus Jason Reitman's Up in the Air (Paramount) starring George Clooney and Rob Marshall's Nine (The Weinstein Co.) starring every other actor not mentioned above expand nationwide. This week's "The Chosen One" is Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus while next week's is Michale Haneke's The White Ribbon , both from Sony Classics.
Well, this is preposterously frustrating. I'm due to fly back to Maryland today, to spend the holidays with my parents and sister. I went to check in for my flight last night per usual — especially since I'm flying on Southwest, which means no reserved seating, which means early check-in is a must if you don't want to be in the middle of the back row — and the website said (cutely and unhelpfully) "Oops! Your itinerary is not eligible for online check-in."
I'd never seen that message before, so I called Southwest, and they said that as part of the new Secure Flight Resolution (or some such), I had been "randomly selected to check in at the airport." Meaning, randomly selected to get on the plane dead last and sit in the middle of the back row. WTF? They told me it was an internal system thing, and there was nothing they could do about it except advise me to call the TSA.
So I called the TSA, and they told me it's probably because my middle name isn't on the itinerary, and I probably have the same name as someone on their no-fly list. So I basically have to show up at the airport and prove my identity. And if I want to make sure this doesn't happen again, SOP is for me to request they do a background security check on me to make sure I'm not a flight hazard. That involves filling out a bunch of forms and waiting 30 to 45 days. Though she thinks probably just adding my middle name to future airline tickets will solve the problem.
As much as I hate bureaucratic bullshit and resent the petty inconvenience, this whole thing actually kinda makes sense to me; my dad bought these plane tickets for me back in September, and if someone else with my name has gotten in trouble in the interim, it's no big surprise that I can't get a boarding pass remotely without showing any form of ID. I can't fault them on that. And "You have the same name as a criminal" is still less apoplexy-inducing than "Our computer has randomly selected you to be screwed out of using our standard system." I'm just anxious and frustrated, because it's snowing in Chicago, and I'm flying into a city that was just buried under two feet of snow and is still reeling from days of flight delays, and it's the holidays and in my experience, the check-in line at Midway right now will snake through the airport and take an hour to get through, and that's already three forms of uncertainty about whether this flight will actually happen. So I don't need one more, particularly in the form of "Wait an hour in line to be told you can't fly."
And I hate sitting in the middle of the back row. And given all the other problems, if I can't make my flight, who knows when I'll make it home.
So basically I'm just a sullen ball of vibrating anxiety right now. The problem with being singled out for faceless bureaucracy inconvenience is that you never know how far it's going to go, you just know that you're doomed to hear a lot of "Well, there's nothing I can do about that, sorry."
The TSA lady I talked to sounded like she was about 16 years old, and not very experienced; she sounded like she was reading from a script, but she stumbled over it a lot, and kept repeating herself. And once she'd convinced me that I had no recourse, and I was about to hang up, she added "Oh! Make sure to mention that this is happening because of our new Secure Flight Initiative, which makes everyone's flights safer."
I honestly couldn't get any words out. Mention that… where? Did she just assume, in this day and age, that everyone blogs or tweets or journals everything, and that I'd necessarily be telling this story to someone? Or am I supposed to pass that on when I complain to… my senator? The local paper? In this strange TSA-mandated script, why would I make a point of passing on, to whomever I bitch to about this, that it's happening entirely for my convenience and security?
Oh wait, I did. The system works!
I'd never seen that message before, so I called Southwest, and they said that as part of the new Secure Flight Resolution (or some such), I had been "randomly selected to check in at the airport." Meaning, randomly selected to get on the plane dead last and sit in the middle of the back row. WTF? They told me it was an internal system thing, and there was nothing they could do about it except advise me to call the TSA.
So I called the TSA, and they told me it's probably because my middle name isn't on the itinerary, and I probably have the same name as someone on their no-fly list. So I basically have to show up at the airport and prove my identity. And if I want to make sure this doesn't happen again, SOP is for me to request they do a background security check on me to make sure I'm not a flight hazard. That involves filling out a bunch of forms and waiting 30 to 45 days. Though she thinks probably just adding my middle name to future airline tickets will solve the problem.
As much as I hate bureaucratic bullshit and resent the petty inconvenience, this whole thing actually kinda makes sense to me; my dad bought these plane tickets for me back in September, and if someone else with my name has gotten in trouble in the interim, it's no big surprise that I can't get a boarding pass remotely without showing any form of ID. I can't fault them on that. And "You have the same name as a criminal" is still less apoplexy-inducing than "Our computer has randomly selected you to be screwed out of using our standard system." I'm just anxious and frustrated, because it's snowing in Chicago, and I'm flying into a city that was just buried under two feet of snow and is still reeling from days of flight delays, and it's the holidays and in my experience, the check-in line at Midway right now will snake through the airport and take an hour to get through, and that's already three forms of uncertainty about whether this flight will actually happen. So I don't need one more, particularly in the form of "Wait an hour in line to be told you can't fly."
And I hate sitting in the middle of the back row. And given all the other problems, if I can't make my flight, who knows when I'll make it home.
So basically I'm just a sullen ball of vibrating anxiety right now. The problem with being singled out for faceless bureaucracy inconvenience is that you never know how far it's going to go, you just know that you're doomed to hear a lot of "Well, there's nothing I can do about that, sorry."
The TSA lady I talked to sounded like she was about 16 years old, and not very experienced; she sounded like she was reading from a script, but she stumbled over it a lot, and kept repeating herself. And once she'd convinced me that I had no recourse, and I was about to hang up, she added "Oh! Make sure to mention that this is happening because of our new Secure Flight Initiative, which makes everyone's flights safer."
I honestly couldn't get any words out. Mention that… where? Did she just assume, in this day and age, that everyone blogs or tweets or journals everything, and that I'd necessarily be telling this story to someone? Or am I supposed to pass that on when I complain to… my senator? The local paper? In this strange TSA-mandated script, why would I make a point of passing on, to whomever I bitch to about this, that it's happening entirely for my convenience and security?
Oh wait, I did. The system works!
- Mood:
cranky
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<p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/12/sampling_from_the_st.html">http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/12/sampling_from_the_st.html</a></p><p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/escapist/730800562/"><img align="right" class="right" "photo=""Photo" by="by" flickr="Flickr" user="user" jasonescapist.="jasonEscapist." click="Click" for="for" source"="source"" src="http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/files/2009/12/thought_bubble.jpg" width="118" height="118" /></a><i>The New York Times</i> has a fascinating <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/health/22prof.html">article</a> revisiting a classic problem in psychology of whether our accounts of our individual 'streams of consciousness' have any useful role in the scientific understanding the mind.</p>
<p>Many of the early studies in psychology relied on people simply reporting 'what they thought' and got a bad reputation due to the rather haphazard ways in which studies were conducted.</p>
<p>In part, this led to a swing in the other direction, where the extremes of behaviourism suggested that not only were these methods useless but that the 'stream of consciousness' played no causal role in our behaviour - in effect, it was seen as uninteresting mental fluff.</p>
<p>Thankfully, mainstream psychology has moved on and now often tries to integrate conscious experience with objective observational data, but this isn't always the easiest of tasks either practically or theoretically (indeed, the difficulty is the basis of the '<a href="http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Hard_problem_of_consciousness">hard problem</a>' of consciousness).</p>
<p>Recently, psychologists have developed the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_sampling_method">experience sampling</a> method to try and make sample the stream of consciousness a little more systematic. It involves giving someone a device that beeps randomly and when it sounds, they have to record exactly what they were thinking about or have to rate a certain aspect of the current psychological state.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The resulting mental freeze-frames are remarkably diverse. </p>
<p>On the third day of Melanie’s experiment, as her boyfriend was asking her a question about insurance, she was trying to remember the word “periodontist.” On the fourth day, she was having a strong urge to go scuba diving. On the sixth day, she was picking flower petals from the sink while hearing echoes of the phrase “nice long time” in her head.</p>
<p>These dispatches from the front lines of consciousness might be useful to a novelist seeking authentic material. But can they contribute to a scientific understanding of the mind?</p>
<p>...<a href="http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/">Eric Schwitzgebel</a>, a philosopher at the University of California, Riverside, says after-the-fact interviews should be treated with caution: one cannot assume the subjects will be honest, or that they are not twisting their answers to conform with their own biases, or telling the experimenter what they think he wants to hear, or simply filling in details they forgot. <br />
</blockquote></p>
<p>The article is riffing on the recent <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11340">book</a> by Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel called <i>Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic</i> and a recent <a href="http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2009/00000016/F0030010/art00007">article</a> in the <i>Journal of Consciousness Studies</i> where the debate was opened out to a range of cognitive scientists for their views.</p>
<p><br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/health/22prof.html">Link</a> to <i>NYT</i> piece 'Taking Mental Snapshots to Plumb Our Inner Selves'.</p>
E! Online has posted the trailer for director James Mangold's action-comedy Knight and Day , starring Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Viola Davis, Olivier Martinez, Paul Dano, Maggie Grace and Mark Blucas.
Disney has provided us with a new photo from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time while Fantasy.fr has posted another photo. You can check them both out below.
Atari, Inc. and MMO developer Cryptic Studios announced today that Leonard Nimoy, the actor who originated the legendary and beloved "Star Trek" character of Spock more than 40 years ago, has joined the cast of "Star Trek Online," the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) ever set in the "Star Trek" universe.
The new Large Hadron Collider exists in a near-magical realm, a $9 billion cathedral of science that is in any practical sense quite useless... more
For Stewart Brand, the Green dream must now work toward a hi-tech future, rather than remain mired in the muddy paradise of Woodstock... more
The Taliban's demonic attitude toward women is merely an extreme form of grotesque misogyny fostered through history by religion, says Francine Prose... more
Very nearly completing the first volume, at Bleeding Cool:
(And there’s an error in there that should read: "…crossing the four hundred miles from Berlin to Metz")
vegas showgirl kitteh
shh… dont tell wut i didz in vegas.
Picture by: Emma Caption by: dunno source via Our LOL Builder
Superman in the pose of Rodin's statue The Thinker outside the headquarters of Bancolombia in Medellín.
I'm not quite sure about the intention of the statue as in the UK it would probably be considered an ironic take on the stereotype of the financial whiz kid and unfortunately I found it on the weekend so there was no-one around to ask.
However, popular culture is well represented in serious art here, in a large part due to the influence of Medellín's most famous artist, the painter and sculptor Fernando Botero.
Deutschfear of too many santa clauses
He felt a bout of santaclaustrophobia coming upon him as the holiday season approached.
ComingSoon.net talked exclusively to Christina Applegate, Amy Poehler and Zachary Levi about starring in Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel , opening in theaters on Wednesday, December 23.
New Zealand's The Dominion Post is reporting that Peter Jackson may be adapting Philip Reeve's fantasy novels "Mortal Engines" for the big screen.
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coming_soon : Avatar Adds $16.4 Million on Monday! [+0] - icanhaschzbrgr : HAMSTER PONG [+0]
- coming_soon : The Trailer for The Karate Kid Online [+0]
- coming_soon : The Weekend Warrior: Dec. 25 - 27 [+0]
- rollick : For your inconvenience [+4]
- mind_hacks : Sampling from the stream of consciousness [+0]
- coming_soon : The Trailer for Knight and Day [+0]
- coming_soon : Two New Prince of Persia Photos [+0]
- coming_soon : Nimoy Reprising Spock in Star Trek Online [+0]
- aldaily : Arts & Letters Daily (22 Dec 2009) [+0]
- warrenelliswire : DO ANYTHING 025 [+0]
- icanhaschzbrgr : vegas [+0]
- mind_hacks : Super thinker [+0]
- jengagne : Joyce [+3]
- icanhaschzbrgr : Video: Breakdance Kitteh [+2]
- realliferss : strip for December / 22 / 2009 [+0]
- urbanwordofday : santaclaustrophobia [+0]
- pvpcomic_rss : Elf Care System [+0]
- coming_soon : Exclusive: Applegate, Poehler and Levi on The Squeakuel [+0]
- coming_soon : Peter Jackson Adapting Mortal Engines ? [+0]