Fan Letter

In the Shameless Misuse of Server Logs department, I'd like to take this opportunity to say hello to all the folks at Pixar who are checking out the blog today. Love your stuff, guys, and if you really have to make sequels, I bet Brad Bird could come up with one heck of a new Incredibles movie one of these days.

Oh, and tell Steve to get well soon. Thanks...

UPDATE: I suspect this story, which I stumbled upon basically at random, explains why I was getting hits from Pixar. To the surprise of pretty much nobody, Pixar turns out to be quite a class outfit.

Overjoyed

My wife works at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta on the AFLAC Cancer Center. One of her patients is Leo, an 18-year-old kid with terminal cancer, and his dad told her early on that Leo is a huge Stevie Wonder fan.

Beth (the wife) works with Rock Against Cancer, and through their local volunteer and the Atlanta NBC station, she got in touch with Stevie's management ahead of the concert he played here last night. Leo and his family got to meet with Stevie before the show, and not only did Stevie walk out and dedicate the show to Leo, he brought the kid out onstage, sat him down on the piano bench next to him, and kept him there the entire show. We were up on the lawn (the Ampitheater at Encore Park in Alpharetta), and you could literally see the grin on the kid's face from way back there. They also had dinner together after the show.

After the concert Leo's family invited Beth to the after-show party backstage (I tagged along shamelessly), where Stevie played keyboards and harmonica for a good hour, but spent most of his time hanging around with Leo, who by then was walking about six feet off the ground (and on an entirely personal note, watching Stevie Wonder play "Overjoyed" to a small room from a yard away pretty much pegs the cool meter).

There aren't ten big stars in the world who'd do all that. Hell, there might not even be two.

So, to reiterate: Stevie Wonder = Good Guy.

There should be a story about it on the Atlanta NBC affiliate ("11Alive") either tonight or tomorrow.

Life After Format Death

This one won't go over very well at Sony Headquarters. According to Harris Interactive, via Slashdot:

Currently, 11% of Americans own an HD-DVD player, while just 7% own a Blu-ray player. Crazy, right? More Americans own HD-DVD right now than the "winning" format, Blu-ray. To be totally honest, we aren't so shocked by the news. When HD-DVD was around, it was far and away the "budget" format for high-def. The players were cheaper, the films were cheaper. In other words, it was a format more ready to thrive in a down economy. Blu-ray was always viewed as a niche format for those absorbed in A/V, not the common man's format.

Blu-ray fans will note that this is a bit of a cheat, since the Blu number apparently doesn't include Blu-ray-equipped Playstation 3's, but then again, the HD-DVD number also doesn't include XBox 360 add-on HD drives.

Full disclosure: thanks to landing an LG BH-200 HD/Blu combo player for dirt cheap, I'm a truly bipartisan dual-format guy... but if it weren't for the "Red2Blu" replacement deal from a couple of months back, I'd only own a handful of Blu-ray discs. Movie pricing on Blu-rays is still way too high in general.

You Read It Here First

National Review editor in chief Rich Lowry, in his syndicated column today:

[F]allout from the stimulus and auto bailouts are stoking a distaste for deficit spending and government activism that is remarkable in what is touted as a statist golden age on par with 1933 or 1965. In a Wall Street Journal poll last week, 58 percent of people said the government should keep the deficit down, even if it slows economic growth. Fifty-five percent opposed the bailout of General Motors, and nearly seven in ten expressed worry about the government’s interventions in the economy.
...
Compared to health care, both the stimulus and the auto bailout are great diversions, for which Democrats are now paying the price. They strain mightily to find a way to keep their legislation under $1 trillion and to actually pay for it, because they already had one enormously expensive freebie this year. With a more measured approach, Obama would have asked for a smaller stimulus and steered clear of the wreckage of the auto companies, saving his strength for the most important policy battle of his presidency.

Advantage: Me.

Andrew Malcolm, in the LA Times today:

Here's the scary thing for the new White House: the terrifying words "Jimmy Carter" have started appearing in print and on the air, recalling the ex-Georgia governor's ineptness and apparent powerlessness in handling his Iranian (hostage) issues in the late 1970s. That impression lead to 12 years of Reagan-Bush Republican White Houses.

Over the weekend Democratic stalwart Sen. Dianne Feinstein was also suggesting on TV that even with 60 seats in the Senate, the president might not have enough support to pass his beloved massive healthcare reforms. Not to mention some modest slippage in Obama's poll numbers.

Advantage: Me, again.

Moving away momentarily from the gratuitous self-back-patting, I ought to point out James Taranto's catch of a better (if still on the weak side) Obama statement on Iran, which was inexplicably cut out of the actual CBS broadcast from last Friday. Like Taranto (and Allahpundit, who uncovered the quotes in the online transcript), I have to wonder just why CBS buried the actual story they had literally in their hands. Were they that clueless? Did the White House ask for those lines to be cut in the name of "not meddling?" Either way, whomever left out Obama's tenative statements of support for the protestors looked pretty dumb when the White House released that (still-milquetoast) press release after the Iranian goon squads did their thing on Sunday.

No matter what the actual reasons were, it was quite a fumble by CBS.

That Figures

Sorry for the light blogging, life intrudes. I did have to note this Drudge-linked story, about the unusually high number of security camera's in the wife's old hometown. The following lines at the very end made me laugh right out loud:

But Jack Bauer, owner of the city's largest beer and soft drink distributor, calls the network "a great thing." His store hasn't been robbed, he said, since four cameras went up nearby.

"There's nothing wrong with instilling fear," he said.

The LA Times failed to mention how many times Mr. Bauer told their reporter to "DROP YOUR WEAPON!" during the interview.

Pro-Ahmadinejad Thugs Attack College Student In Ohio

Via Slashdot and Kos, a college student in Ohio has been attacked for assisting Iranian protestors with their Twitter access:

For those who do not know him he has been essential in providing security for Twitterers in Iran, setting up private networks to provide secure proxies to them, calling for media networks to remove the Iranians Twiterers information from their broadcast, and providing counter-intelligence services (including Basiji and Army Locations) within the Twitter community.
...

ProtesterHelp confirmed to me that he was attacked by a group of men that seemed to be either Iranian or Lebanese, while walking to class in Ohio. They drove up besides him and threw rocks at him while shouting, "Mousavi Fraud."

He further informed me that his personal information was leaked, and is currently being spread both online and inside of Iran amongst the government. The former most likely lead to this attack. God only knows what the latter will lead too.

The student reports that the local police "seemed uninterested" when he filed a report. I'm sorry to say that I expect the FBI to be just as uninterested, but I would certainly be happy to be proven wrong in that regard.

The Shame Of Silence

Even the Walter Duranty of Iran's mullocracy is saying it:

I still believe there is no alternative to engagement. But it is not the time for Obama to talk about talks. He should be talking about his outrage at the violence.

This is the city of whispers. Its people crave to know that their hushed voices are being heard. Obama, lover of words, is the message man. “Message received” is what he must convey.

Unfortunately, The One seems mostly miffed that he's not able to meet with Ahmadinejad for a rousing chorus of "Kumbaya."

And in the meantime, well, read this:

Yesterday I heard a friend’s cousin in Shiraz was wounded and taken to hospital. He was taken to the operating theatre for emergency operation. The savage thugs that you see in the media and on the internet who are attacking our people, went to the operating theatre and dragged him away and left him for dead outside the hospital.
A family in Shahrake Gharb who were holding a wake for their son killed in the protests were attacked by the riot guards in their home. Their home was set ablaze and all present in the wake were beaten up. Their crime was that they held a mourning ceremony for their son.

The repression is beyond belief. Not even the war veterans and their families are left alone. Yesterday the wife of the former assassinated prime minister, Rajaii, and other relatives of the war martyrs who had backed candidates other than Ahmadienjad were also arrested.

And the most the "leader of the free world" can manage is to look irritated when he's asked to express something more than "deep concern." Pathetic.