A lightning strike in slow-motion.

Nevada picture of the week:

This New York Times Magazine article is nominally about Internet trolls, but it’s more of a high-level essay on morality and ethics on decentralized networks.

Why inflict anguish on a helpless stranger? It’s tempting to blame technology, which increases the range of our communications while dehumanizing the recipients… But while technology reduces the social barriers that keep us from bedeviling strangers, it does not explain the initial trolling impulse. This seems to spring from something ugly — a destructive human urge that many feel but few act upon, the ambient misanthropy that’s a frequent ingredient of art, politics and, most of all, jokes. There’s a lot of hate out there, and a lot to hate as well.

Remember the implosion of the historic Stardust Casino in Las Vegas that I blogged about in detail? It turns out that the construction in its place of the $5-billion dollar Echelon project has been halted due to weak economic conditions. So instead of the most beautiful neon sign in Vegas, the city gets several years of incomplete construction.

Lessig: what Ted Stevens did is wrong, but it isn’t that much different than the way campaign contributions work.

[W]hile it is a crime for VECO Corporation to pay to have Stevens’ house renovated, there’s no problem with VECO’s PAC and senior executives giving Stevens’ campaign many times more than that which Stevens’ is then free to use to fly to a resort in Montana, or entertain senior executives at DC’s most expensive restaurants.

Some videos of today’s 5.4 earthquake in L.A. as experienced by the cast of Big Brother and the audience at Judge Judy. (Plus a classic video of local news anchors hiding under their desks.)

Two sets of photographs of the acrobatic Chinese artist Li Wei.

Slate has an interesting video slide show of the evolution of the cinematic fight scene. I share much of the sentiments of the writer, who isn’t fond of the “drunken-camera” style that has emerged in the past decade or so, although I’ve grown tolerant of it out of necessity.

«< The acrobatic Li Wei    Earthquakes on TV »>

Darren Aronofsky’s post-_Fountain_ career has taken an interesting turn. First a wrestling movie, and now he’s attached to direct the third Robocop sequel.

Creative Screenwriting Magazine’s Jeff Goldsmith interviews Jonathan Nolan [mp3], co-writer of The Dark Knight with his brother (and director) Christopher Nolan. (They also wrote Memento and The Prestige together.) I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, and this interview further deepened my respect for the complexity of the themes and characters rooted in the screenplay.

Within two days, both Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper have announced that they are cutting all ties with At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper, because Disney-ABC wants to take the show in a new direction (which probably has something to do with the fact that Ebert is still incapable of speech). The TV show has been running in various forms since 1975, most of the time with Ebert and Gene Siskel.

I’ve never read any Dennis Lehane, although I’ve enjoyed his writing work on The Wire and Ben Affleck’s adaptation of his Gone Baby Gone. (Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River , however, was atrocious.) But he has a new novel coming out in September that intrigues me: The Given Day , a 700-page historical novel about the Boston police union strike in 1919. Right up my alley.

I’ve never read any Dennis Lehane, although I’ve enjoyed his writing work on The Wire and Ben Affleck’s adaptation of his Gone Baby Gone. (Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, however, was atrocious.) But he has a new novel coming out in September that intrigues me: The Given Day, a 700-page historical novel about the Boston police union strike in 1919. Right up my alley.

What happens when four black Baltimore drug dealers on trial for murder and conspiracy use an unusual legal defense manufactured by white supremacists decades ago? That’s what “Too Weird for The Wire “, a longish but fascinating article, is about.

In [2004], nearly twenty defendants in other Baltimore cases had begun adopting what lawyers in the federal courthouse came to call “the flesh-and-blood defense.” The defense, such as it is, boils down to this: As officers of the court, all defense lawyers are really on the government’s side, having sworn an oath to uphold a vast, century-old conspiracy to conceal the fact that most aspects of the federal government are illegitimate, including the courts, which have no constitutional authority to bring people to trial. The defendants also believed that a legal distinction could be drawn between their name as written on their indictment and their true identity as a “flesh and blood man.”

This one is quite obscure: David Foster Wallace motivational posters.

The trailer for Watchmen, the film adaptation of Alan Moore’s graphic novel masterpiece. The look is pitch-perfect, though I have some concerns about Zack Snyder’s (300) directorial style. Expectations are generally high.

What happens when four black Baltimore drug dealers on trial for murder and conspiracy use an unusual legal defense manufactured by white supremacists decades ago? That’s what “Too Weird for The Wire”, a longish but fascinating article, is about.

In [2004], nearly twenty defendants in other Baltimore cases had begun adopting what lawyers in the federal courthouse came to call “the flesh-and-blood defense.” The defense, such as it is, boils down to this: As officers of the court, all defense lawyers are really on the government’s side, having sworn an oath to uphold a vast, century-old conspiracy to conceal the fact that most aspects of the federal government are illegitimate, including the courts, which have no constitutional authority to bring people to trial. The defendants also believed that a legal distinction could be drawn between their name as written on their indictment and their true identity as a “flesh and blood man.”