The two-word review of: “Definitely, Maybe”

Posted on Wednesday, June 25, 2008 by Ryan Olson

The romantic comedy “Definitely, Maybe” was released on DVD Tuesday. Instead of going on and on about the film’s pros and cons, I thought I would try to ape an Internet classic — the five-word movie review.

However, in the grand tradition of “Name that Tune,” I’m going to review this movie in two words. So, without further ado:

“Definitely, Maybe” — Sorta OK

Two-word reviews copyright 2008 by RTOmedia.com. All rights reserved. I will actively prosecute any one who blatantly steals my work for their own. It’s great when the copyright notice is 16 times longer than the review, ain’t it?

Posted in TV, Film and Radio | 1 Comment

Dumb reasons to watch a movie

Posted on Monday, June 23, 2008 by Ryan Olson

There were a couple of big comedy movies coming out last weekend — “Get Smart” and “The Love Guru.” Neither movie really received very good reviews from critics.

While the films were being lambasted by critics. I was thinking of reasons to watch these films. Some of them I thought were pretty well reasoned — I like the actors in “Get Smart,” including Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway. I also thought the original TV series “Get Smart” was pretty funny.

My desire to see “The Love Guru” made less sense. The TV commercial featured Stephen Colbert and another actor in front of the “Hockey Night in Canada” set.

I guess I’m a sucker because my desire to watch the film increased dramatically. It would be like if the “Monday Night Football” team was in a film.

Good news — the fact the Toronto Maple Leafs are the featured team in the film didn’t pique my interest at all. I do hope they play better fictionally than in real life.

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Outrage! The Gay Marriage Edition

Posted on Tuesday, June 17, 2008 by Ryan Olson

Every once in a while there are topics and items in the news that I get “outraged” about. I don’t really feel any ire about the topic, but they are items that seem like they would tee off someone somewhere. For example, I successfully predicted that a “family” TV group would be upset that people posed as nude Greek statues during the 2004 Olympics … in Greece.

Anyway, this doesn’t have much to do with the introduction of same-sex marriages. That, after all, is a politically charged territory that I will responsibly refrain from commenting on.

No, I’m up in arms about these new marriage forms. Instead of referring to the individuals getting married as “bride” and “groom,” the new forms identify these future spouses as “Party A” and “Party B.” This nomenclature is clearly discriminatory — it forces one spouse to be subordinate to the other.

Party B is clearly slighted in this new form. By clearly being identified as the second party on the form, they’re almost an afterthought to the primary party — A. While having one partner be subordinate to the other is apparently all right for certain groups of people (for various religious and secular reasons), I don’t feel it’s right.

I think the best approach is the one taken by the characters of the TV series, “Futurama.” Forced to name multiple copies of the same characters (when they came across a parallel universe), they named one place “Universe A” and the other “Universe 1.”

I think the forms should be redone to include “Party A” and “Party 1.” I hope someone somewhere will file an injunction to prevent further discrimination.

Posted in La vida Chico | Comments Off on Outrage! The Gay Marriage Edition

Random thoughts

Posted on Monday, April 28, 2008 by Ryan Olson

Blog stuff:

If people are teed off about hearing “Press ‘1’ for English,” imagine the fervor if it was “Press ‘2’ for English.”

There’s no title for “The Office” spin-off. May I humbly suggest that the show be titled, “That’s What She Said.”

Posted in TV, Film and Radio | 2 Comments

Holidays and me

Posted on Wednesday, March 19, 2008 by Ryan Olson

Recently I haven’t done too well with holidays. March 17 was just the latest chapter.

Instead of doing it up big for St. Patrick’s Day, my allergies got the best of me. So instead of hefting a fine brew, I lifted my fork for some corned beef hash. It was tasty but didn’t seem as grand as it could’ve been.

Posted in La vida Chico | 1 Comment

Will padding help prevent texting injuries?

Posted on Thursday, March 6, 2008 by Ryan Olson

I’ve seen the dumbest thing on the Internet this week. According to the UK’s ITN (via Yahoo!), two groups are adding padding to light poles to see if they will reduce injuries.

Injuries from what, you may ask. From inattentive people too focused on sending text messages from their cell phones to bother looking up. One of the groups, directory-assistance provider 118 118, claims a survey showed 1 in 10 people have hurt themselves whilst gazing into their cell phones.

That’s not the dumbest thing. To me, the dumbest thing is the photo that accompanied the story. The photo appears to be posed as the camera just happens to snap the gentleman walking kerplunk into the padded lamp post. However, I might be willing to give the benefit of the doubt — if the man was unaware that a photographer was snapping pictures, he may have not noticed the post.

This whole thing has to be an elaborate hoax, an early April’s Fools Day prank or perhaps an article from The Onion‘s UK bureau. The two groups mentioned in the article seem legitimate (although there’s no mention of this initiative on their respective homepages).

Their cause seems obscure. Because, really? Ten percent of people have injured themselves while texting? Really?

Not only that, but their solution seems like total overkill. Let’s take all these lamp posts and wrap completely ludicrous and gaudy amounts of padding on them. However, let’s only put the padding on one side of the post. I guess the people on the other side of the lamp post will have to fare for themselves.

Speaking of how the padding would supposedly be deployed, take a closer look at the photo. I counted several potentially lethal objects:

  1. Exposed lamp post – As previously mentioned, it’s a visible menace.
  2. The rubbish bin – The rubbish bin (English for “trash can”) is just hanging out there at waist level, waiting to prey on some hapless traveler.
  3. Vehicles – There’s an entire street running alongside this sidewalk. Won’t someone think of the cars? Unless the cars come padded on the outside, I don’t know if people should walk the street.
  4. The sidewalk – Sure, it’s a stretch. Since we’re padding everything else, why take chances?
  5. The pedestrian – Unless this man is wrapped in comparable padding, he may be a risk to himself and others.

I thought of a way of implicating the cell phone in this sordid affair, but I really couldn’t. After all, it’s just a piece of technology not capable of making decisions. After seeing this story, I may start to doubt the ability of humans to make decisions at all, much less wise ones.

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Join the fight … for kids’ sake

Posted on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 by Ryan Olson

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I don’t exactly know what we’re fighting against, but I’m going to take part in the Bowl for Kids Sake 2008 this weekend. The theme of the event to help Big Brothers Big Sisters is “Superheroes” and I guess that means I’m fighting for kids, apple pie and the American way.

My colleague, Leland Gordon, is captaining this year’s team. He writes far more eloquently about the fundraiser.

I know it’s a little late in the game, but if you would like to make a tax-deductible pledge before the event — Please click here.

I’ll do my best to post an update after the event Saturday.

Posted in Sports and rec | Comments Off on Join the fight … for kids’ sake

Puzzled

Posted on Friday, February 29, 2008 by Ryan Olson

The Internet has many unique qualities. One is the extreme difficulty in trying to undo something that has already been published online. In many cases, there are no “take backs.”

Recently, a Swiss management firm tried to have the Web site Wikileaks taken down because the site allegedly hosted sensitive information from the bank. Although a U.S. judge ordered one of Wikileaks’ Web addresses to be removed, the move appears to have backfired. As Ars Technica reports, Wikileaks is still accessible and the matter has drawn a ton of publicity.

Looking locally, the Chico News & Review recently removed a name from one of its stories online — the subject of a Feb. 7 article looking into possible plagiarism at The Orion, the student newspaper at Chico State University.

The move left me wondering why. This student isn’t anonymous — her name remains on the story she filed for The Orion. Also, her name remains in the print version of the News & Review, which has a stated circulation of 42,000. I’m fairly sure I can dig through Google’s cache of the original N&R article to find the name as well.

According to an update posted on the N&R’s article, the newspaper removed her name at the request of the Orion author and the Chico State journalism department. The note does not offer further details, but I wish the N&R would have given us more. It is very rare for newspapers to remove information like this, especially at the request of a story’s subjects.

At issue is an Orion story published exclusively online on Dec. 22, which appears to contain sentences and phrases that are extremely similar to those in an earlier article published in The Sacramento Bee. The Orion article doesn’t attribute the Bee, although an editor’s note has acknowledged the similarities.

The N&R published a sidebar pairing the similar opening paragraphs from each story.

Was it plagiarism? I can’t say, but a dictionary definition of plagiarizing (from m-w.com) is “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own.”

The Orion editors and Chico State faculty have strenuously denounced the plagiarism allegations in the N&R article and in subsequent letters to the N&R. However, the print edition of The Orion has remained utterly silent on the matter (although there’s that note on the online article).

For the sake of completeness, here are the articles (in chronological order):

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Common sense prevails for government Web site

Posted on Thursday, February 28, 2008 by Ryan Olson

Back when the Web was young, the United States government set up a clearinghouse Web site. This site was geared to tie all of the various services and institutions to one address so people wouldn’t have to search the FTC or the DoD for an IRS tax form.

It sounded good and still does. What didn’t sound good was the site’s Web address — firstgov.gov.

It was a silly name — “gov” is in the address twice, for crying out loud. I could barely remember the name tonight when I was trying to find some financial information on a company.

Thankfully, the U.S. government has eventually wised up and changed the name to a much-simpler one. All those services are now available at USA.gov.

I originally thought the address should’ve been America.gov. It seems the U.S. State Department is now using that as a news and information site.

Similarly, our friends up north have both canada.ca and gc.ca go to the same place. Apparently “GC” stands for “government of Canada” (or “gouvernement du Canada”), but who’s going to remember that?

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Everything’s back to “Normal”

Posted on Friday, February 15, 2008 by Ryan Olson

Things are hopping downtown. The fences are down on the new Transit Center (which will apparently open after some tests and evaluations).

Crews recently also corrected the signs on Normal Avenue. As I detailed earlier, in a NorCal Blogs exclusive post, someone had goofed and put up the wrong signs.

The signs appear to have been changed recently. After a couple of months of waiting, I was wondering when the change would be done. But there are at least two things I can think of that might explain the delay — including recovering from January’s storms and actually ordering the new signs.

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