IANAL
Al asks a question about the Constitiution, and how it applies to these horrible bills that the RIAA would like passed. My answer is this: The Bill of Rights only applies to government actions, not those of private individuals or corporations. Under the 4th Amendment, the government can't search your home without probable cause, but it doesn't say anything about me searching your home. Of course, you can charge me with trespassing, but I haven't violated your constitutional rights. The bill would only be exempting the companies from cyber-trespassing lawsuits, but it's still an abomination and a miscarriage of democracy if the bill passes.

And, of course, I am not a lawyer, but I am working on a degree in Political Science, and already hold a minor in Criminal Justice from ISU.
- posted by Seth @ 6:13 PM    

 
Crude Croutons?
Wow, I'm impressed. Liz makes her own croutons. I'm not really sure how that's done, do you just put the bread in a food dehydrator? In any case, I think I'd just use the store-bought ones, some things just aren't worth the effort.
- posted by Seth @ 5:18 PM    

 
See the Signs.
We went to see M. Night Shyamalan's new movie, Signs, last night. Wow, what a ride that was. This is definitely the best movie I've seen all summer, and probably all year. I saw it with my fiance Holly, and her friend Rachel, and both of the girls were positively quivering in suspense during the movie. I'll even admit that I almost dropped my popcorn at the first "gotcha" in the film, though I wasn't nearly as frightened as I was when I saw The Sixth Sense, but I was definitely creeped out. There is also a surprising amount of humor in the movie, and we saw it with a good audience who laughed, gasped, and jumped in all the right places.

Signs is an absolute thrill ride, and you don't realize until the end just how clever it has been, when all of the things that you thought were corny or odd at the beginning of the movie start to make sense, and you realize what a genius the filmmaker is. Like Shyamalan's other two movies, The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, there is a big twist at the end of the movie, which I will not reveal, of course, but I will say that it is much harder to anticipate than his other two movies, and much more profound. The movie doesn't end when the credits roll, either, it'll take you at least another half hour to process everything that happened. You also will never want to enter a cornfield at night again.

It's hard to talk about the movie without giving much away, though Roger Ebert's review, which I just read today, does an excellent job, and he loved the movie too.

At the risk of sounding like a cheesy movie ad, let me say this: If you see only one movie this summer, go see Signs. This is also a movie which demands to be seen in a theatre, not on home video. The manipulation of the music and the sound effects are at least 60% of the suspsense, for, like Jaws, this is a movie in which you're much more afraid of what you can't see than what you do see.
- posted by Seth @ 3:31 PM