Information Overload

My Adventure Book

Thought it would be fun to save the theater ticket for Up in a commercialized replica of the scrapbook from the film. The more adventurous can probably put together a scrapbook for less than $20, which seems a bit steep given that the Talking Dug Plush is the same price.

Talking Dug Plush

The Disney Up Talking Dug Plush - 11" was an instant buy having seen Up. (The Scrooges selling Dug for twice the price on Amazon should be ashamed of themselves.) Suppose "Squirrel!" was too obscure for the toy, which appears to need surgery should its battery ever die. Wonder why they didn't just put the voice box in Dug's collar like the movie version?

Up Opens Today!

I ♥ Up!

Free Back to School iPods Are Back!

Buy a Mac for college, and get a free iPod touch in the form of a $229 rebate. iPods of equal or lesser price also qualify (PDF) including the 120GB classic, 16GB nano, and 4GB shuffle. Tip: Choose the touch!

Judge Sonia Sotomayor

President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor yesterday to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Hopefully, all parties will give her a fair review given that she was appointed to the federal trial court in Manhattan by President H.W. Bush, appointed to the 2nd Circuit by President Clinton, and confirmed by the Senate (which is still occupied by some of the same Senators today). Also, contrary to claims made by extreme right activists, it's not clear how the Catholic judge would rule on Strauss v. Horton. One hopes her judicial opinion is as wise as President Kennedy on the matter.

Strauss v. Horton

The California Supreme Court's ruling in Strauss v. Horton (PDF) today is an interesting read regardless of whether one agrees with the majority opinion, which allows Proposition 8 to amend our state's Constitution so that "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." The court explains why more than 500 amendments to the California Constitution have been adopted since 1879, whereas only 27 amendments to the United States Constitution have been adopted since 1788. In short, the federal Constitution is more Miss USA runner up proof than our state Constitution. The latter can be changed at the whim of a statewide, simple majority vote on a proposition added to the ballot by any special interest group that can collect enough voter signatures.

It's pretty easy to make changes to our state Constitution to do whatever we want, as long as it's allowed by our federal Constitution. That same ease of change should make for an exciting election year come 2010. Yet it's unfortunate that our state Constitution is being revised to promote a particular set of religious beliefs in the first place. A large majority of Prop 8 supporters who are bigoted because of their faith should appreciate the fact that the U.S. Constitution guarantees them the freedom to exercise their religions. Now the U.S. Supreme Court may get the opportunity to opine on whether or not withholding the privilege of marriage from same sex couples deprives them of equal protection under the laws of our great nation.

Today is Memorial Day

On Memorial Day we remember that freedom is not free.

Kindle Edition

Kindle readers can now subscribe to this blog for 99¢ a month, the minimum price point determined by Amazon. Kindle for iPhone readers should stick with the web, RSS, or mobile version. Kindle is smart enough not to sell subscriptions on Apple's devices armed with unlimited data connections. It's weird that Amazon doesn't equip their own hardware with Wi-Fi, or even offer an unlimited data plan through Sprint.

Terminator Salvation

Terminator Salvation is apparently all that could be salvaged from T4, which is unfortunately less enjoyable than the prior model. In the T4 universe, it's hard to believe that Skynet can invent time travel, but can't figure out how to wipe out the human resistance. Use more nukes? Nanite plague? Strategic air strikes of apparently wide open resistance bases? Skynet seems pretty ineffective for an AI system that was designed by the military to wage war. The stewards of the Terminator franchise should throttle back its exposure before it crashes, and needs a reboot.

Twitter T-Shirts

In a similar vein as CNN Shirt, Airbag Industries' Twitshirt service prints tweets on-demand onto t-shirts. Not to be outdone, Threadless features Twitter Tees that have style albeit are limited to those tweets deemed worthy by the Threadless community. Twitterers who are Tweeting Too Hard might actually wear the @me shirt though they'll probably scoff—on Twitter, of course—that they're not printed on American Apparel.