response 153 of 278:

May 23 20:02 UTC 2004

"The actor portraying Achilles"?! Are you telling us you never heard of Brad
Pitt?!

response 155 of 278:

May 24 05:45 UTC 2004

Wasn't Pitt the actor portraying Achilles?

response 161 of 278:

May 26 13:54 UTC 2004

Supersize Me - In case you aren't familiar with the premise of the
movie, here's how it works:  A guy decides to eat nothing but McDonalds
food for a month.  The rules are he can only eat things that are sold at
McDonalds, he has to eat three meals a day, he has to try everything on
the menu at least once, and if they ask him if he wants to supersize it,
he has to say yes.  The effects on his health are dramatic -- he gains
about 20 pounds, much of it in the first two weeks; his cholesterol
skyrockets; his liver starts to shut down; he suffers mood swings and
depression that are only relieved by eating more food.

Now, to get the main criticism of the movie out of the way, no, there's
nothing particularly unique about McDonalds food.  If he'd eaten 5,000
calories a day somewhere else, he probably would have gotten pretty much
the same results.  But there's more to the movie than that -- he talks
about how fast-food advertising is targeted at children, how the
advertising we see favors unhealthy foods over healthy ones, how portion
sizes have expanded over the years, and how school hot lunches are now
mostly reheated convenience foods instead of healthier food cooked at
the school.

It's a funny and thought-provoking movie, and it'll make you wonder
about your own diet.  Even the doctors he consults with are astounded at
how dramatic the effects on his body are in just 30 days.

response 163 of 278:

May 27 03:33 UTC 2004

At the screening of "Supersize Me" that I saw here in nyc, the director
spoke afterwards.  He made it clear that one reason the effects of all
that eating McD's were so dramatic in his case, is that he did not and
does not regularly eat junk or high fat foods.  His girlfriend is a vegan
chef.  So his body was not in any way conditioned to that kind of diet.
It is like if you have two guys who decide to go on a booze binge, and one
of the guys is a habitual regular drinker and the other guy is normally a
teetotaler.  Who is the binge drinking going to affect more?  Answer-- the
guy who doesn't drink normally because his body isn't used to it.  So
naturally, a guy who is mostly a vegetarian and never eats fried food, to
all of a sudden eat nothing but fried food for a solid month, is going to
have tolerance issues.  As he said, once his body adapted to the high fat
fried food diet, the physical problems would be reduced.  He was less sick
at the end of the month than he was seventeen days in.  His body was
adapting.

response 165 of 278:

May 28 17:29 UTC 2004

resp:126 through resp:128, on the immortal James Bond:  The creators of
 series fiction set in the present day have to make a decision:  either the
characters move through time at a normal human pace, which means they grow old
and die, or else they become "decoupled" from  the flow of events.

To pick two contrasting examples from the comic strips:  the Peanuts
characters are immune to the changes of time.  In "For Better or Worse,"
however, the characters are moving through life; characters who were 
introduced as young children are now young adults.
 
Two good examples from mystery/spy fiction:  John Le Carre's agent &
spymaster George Smiley is clearly moving through time, aging, 
coming to the end of his career.  Which means, no more George Smiley
books!   On the other hand, the detective team of Nero Wolfe and 
Archie Godwin (author Rex Stout) settled into their "eternal now" 
sometime in the late 1930's; the world marched forward around them, 
and stories changed from the murder of movie stars to the murder of 
radio stars and onto the murder of TV stars.  But Wolfe remained around 
55-60 years old, and Archie maybe in his early 30s, for about 40 years
of books.

If I remember the novel CASINO ROYALE correctly, the literary James Bond
began as a British officer in World War II; but clearly the movie 
character of the same name can no longer have any sort of datable 
origins.

response 167 of 278:

May 28 19:11 UTC 2004

Re #165: I haven't read any Le Carre books lately, but as I recall Smiley
was already retired in "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold", in 1963.  So if
he's still kicking, I'm not sure he's aging with the times.

response 169 of 278:

May 29 04:39 UTC 2004

(I don't remember Mr. Smiley in "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold."
I guess I need to read more of Mr. Le Carre's work.  I'd also like to read
all of the James Bond series.  I made progress, back in '73, I think it
was, but I guess I missed a few.  And I know that I wasn't reading them
in order.)

response 171 of 278:

May 29 20:31 UTC 2004

Sounds like a movie made by someone tryning ot make a point, not necessarily
about Global Warming, either.

response 173 of 278:

May 29 23:38 UTC 2004

Re: #172:  From #170: " Mexico closes its borders and we see U.S.
 citizens trying to break INTO Mexico, desperately trying to swim across
 the rio grande."

Maybe that nothign lasts forever?

response 175 of 278:

May 30 02:56 UTC 2004

I go like how NPR made huge fun out of The Day After Tomorrow.