A stoner, or in academia, a habitual user of cannabis, can be funny. Dumb people can be funny. Dysfunctional families can be funny. People being hurt, or naked, or both, can be funny. "Our Idiot Brother" has all of these situations, but "Our Idiot Brother" is not funny. It has its moments, and certain characters work better than others, but ultimately, it's a big disappointment.
Paul Rudd...
Monday, August 29, 2011
Power Trip
Electricity is connected to hope. No electricity leads to insecurity, humiliation and vulnerability. These are some of the main sentiments in Paul Devlin's documentary "Power Trip," detailing the struggles of the company AES providing electricity to the Republic of Georgia in the post-Soviet Union era.
But for many Americans, perhaps this is a bit difficult to understand. Historian Robert...
Saturday, August 27, 2011
A Summer of Movies
After being on a schedule of more or less a movie a day, I was, due primarily to the painfully slow internet speed of the Republic of Georgia, only able to watch three movies ("Ajosshi/The Man From Nowhere," "Waltz with Bashir," and "Amadeus") in the months of March through mid June. I was volunteering in a program similar to the Peace Corps, living with a wonderful family and teaching English to...
Monday, August 22, 2011
No, Harry Truman Would Not Be a Republican
I am only 24 years old, but I have heard a lot of stupid things in my lifetime. Perhaps none of them is as stupid as when I was told that "Harry Truman would be a Republican if he were alive today."
Most Americans would recognize Truman to be the president who succeeded his predecessor Franklin...
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Charles Darwin told us that life is a "descent with modification." Bernard Haubold of the Max Planck Institute of Chemical Ecology simplified the expression by comparing biological evolution to a family tree. Even though humans and chimpanzees share about ninety percent of the same genes, the last common ancestor between the two lived five million years ago. Since then, it can be argued that...
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