Seems I’m fighting a lot of it these days. This time I’m trying to avoid reading the Sin City graphic novels, of which I have received 6 of 7, before the movie comes out this Friday. I am likely to enjoy both immensely, but I think it’s best not to read the books before I watch the movie. To be scrupulously honest, I did give in a bit with the first book, The Hard Goodbye, but read only to the last point that I already knew about (for those of you who’ve seen the trailer, up to where Marv goes: “I’ll be right out”). The movie looks promising, from what I can discern from the trailer; a number of the scenes look just as they’ve been drawn in the books. Good stuff. I can hardly wait until Friday.

JAKARTA (Reuters) – A massive 8.2 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra Monday close to where a quake triggered a tsunami that left nearly 300,000 people dead or missing across Asia, residents and officials said.

The latest quake had the potential to cause a “widely destructive tsunami” and authorities should take “immediate action,” including evacuating coastlines within 600 miles of the epicenter, the Pacific tsunami warning center said.

Full text of article here.

hands-on reviews of the PSP. I gotta tell you, if the console didn’t cost so much ($259 MSRP), I’d get it and Wipeout Pure in a heartbeat.

the domino effect in the Middle East aside, here‘s an interesting (and these days, increasingly common) take on the historical perspective by The Functional Ambivalent:

So, as a Democrat, I’m wondering: What do we do if President Bush was right?  What do we do if the Mideastern dominoes start falling and President Bush goes down in history as Winston Churchill, while we go down as Neville Chamberlain, howling weakly that diplomacy works and military force is no longer necessary?  What if our most conservative President goes down in history as a great contributor to the liberal ideals of freedom and tolerance, while we Democrats — we liberals — go down as cold-hearted and fearful, unconcerned about the suffering of our fellows while we sit contentedly in our affluence?

If that happens, are we even liberals any more?

Read the whole thing. (Via VodkaPundit)

As Stephen Green puts it, “Coolest. Project. Ever.”:

As US coast-to-coast crimewaves go, it is not in the league of Bonnie and Clyde. It lacks both violence and avarice and is further hindered by an overabundance of pre-publicity.

Undeterred, a couple of students from Cornwall are intent on making American criminal history by spending their summer breaking as many US laws as possible.

Starting in the liberal state of California, they hope to evade the attention of local police officers when they ride a bike in a swimming pool and curse on a crazy-golf course.

In the far more conservative – and landlocked – state of Utah, they will risk the penitentiary when they hire a boat and attempt to go whale-hunting.

If they manage to outwit state troopers in Utah, and perhaps federal agents on their trail, they will be able to take a deserved, but nevertheless illegal, rest when they have a nap in a cheese factory in South Dakota.

“There are thousands of stupid laws in the United States, but we are limiting ourselves to breaking about 45 of them,” said Richard Smith, from Portreath, Cornwall.

Original article here.

writes an interesting essay on the similarities between the war in Iraq and the battle for Iwo Jima¹ during WWII:

Today’s atom bomb is democracy in the Middle East – and it’s been dropped on Iraq. The fallout has spread far and wide, to Saudi Arabia, to Egypt, to Palestine, and perhaps even to Syria and Iran. Its effects could well bring an early conclusion to today global war, sparing thousands of lives on each side.

Read the whole thing.

¹ “Iwo Jima” is the common romanized spelling of the island’s name. Taken exactly from the Japanese, it is actually one word: “ioujima” (long “o” sounds are commonly romanized as “ou”) or 硫黄島, which means sulfur island. FYI.

Power Line has more. The evidence on both sides is mostly circumstantial and inconclusive, but keep watching. (Via InstaPundit)

UPDATE: More here.

here’s an interesting article about the Times of India‘s shutdown of a media criticism blog through legal threats. (Via InstaPundit)

but this is pretty scary:

At 35 000 feet above the Caribbean, Air Transat flight 961 was heading home to Quebec with 270 passengers and crew. At 3.45pm last Sunday, the pilot noticed something very unusual. His Airbus A310′s rudder — a structure over 8m high — had fallen off and tumbled into the sea. In the world of aviation, the shock waves have yet to subside.

Mercifully, the crew was able to turn the plane around, and by steering it with their wing and tail flaps managed to land at their point of departure in Varadero, Cuba, without loss of life. But as Canadian investigators try to discover what caused this near catastrophe, the specialist internet bulletin boards used by pilots, accident investigators and engineers are buzzing.

One former Airbus pilot, who now flies Boeings for a major United States airline, told The Observer: “This just isn’t supposed to happen. No one I know has ever seen an airliner’s rudder disintegrate like that. It raises worrying questions about the materials and build of the aircraft, and about its maintenance and inspection regime. We have to ask as things stand, would evidence of this type of deterioration ever be noticed before an incident like this in the air?”

(Via InstaPundit)

on Big Journalism and its ever-increasing loss of credibility.