Sin City

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I saw Sin City on Friday, and it's a work of art. Visually, the movie is simply stunning. It's worth seeing in the theatre just for the visuals. Be forewarned, the movie is pretty violent, with enough violent acts done to people's genitals to keep your legs crossed throughout the film. In any case, Mickey Rourke is outstanding in the film, though Clive Owen and Bruce Willis aren't bad either. Check out Roger Ebert's review, and if you're still interested, go watch it, you won't be disappointed.

Kinsey

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I watched Kinsey last night, and was really surprised by what a good movie it is.  While it glosses over the fact that Kinsey had some serious sampling errors in his methodology, which makes some of his statistics invalid, it rightly focuses on his determination to expose the truth about human sexual behavior.  What was important about his research was not whether 50% or 20% of people engaged in an activity, he was exposing the fact that any percentage engaged in them, and that none of the side-effects that the “moral” pseudo-medical information warned of actually took place.

Contrasted with the increasing absurdity of the Abstinence-Only sex education that the “Family Values” crowd wants to instill in our youth these days, it’s easy to see the same forces of denial at work.  I’m not a fan of bullshit in any form, and neither was Kinsey, for as a scientist, he couldn’t rely on hearsay and superstition when attempting to provide real answers about sex. 

Give the movie a rental when it comes out on video, both Liam Neeson and Laura Linney are great in it.

Value of Various TiVo Rewards

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I was feeling bored while I installed a server today, so I took the opportunity to calculate the various values of the new TiVo Rewards structure. You get 5,000 points for referring someone to TiVo, but the actual “value” you get from that referral depends greatly on what you spend your points on. Unless noted otherwise, all prices came from Amazon.com:

 

Item Points Price $/100 Points $/Referral
20GB iPod 25000 $299.99    $1.20 $60.00
Bose QuietComfort 2 (Crutchfield) 25000 $299.00    $1.20 $59.80
Creative Zen 20GB Portable Media Center 45000 $471.99    $1.05 $52.44
Nikon Coolpix 5200 35000 $349.99    $1.00 $50.00
140 hour tivo - Rebate 25000 $229.99    $0.92 $46.00
Humax DRT800 - Rebate 35000 $319.99    $0.91 $45.71
iPod Mini 4GB 20000 $179.99    $0.90 $45.00
Colored TiVo remote (TiVo.com) 4000 $34.99    $0.87 $43.74
Pro Installation (TiVo.com) 15000 $129.99    $0.87 $43.33
Delphi MyFi 35000 $299.99    $0.86 $42.86
Phonex PX-441 7000 $49.99    $0.71 $35.71
iPod Shuffle 512 15000 $99.99    $0.67 $33.33
DWL-122 (Buy.com) 7500 $41.76    $0.56 $27.84
40 Hour TiVo - Rebate 20000 $79.94    $0.40 $19.99
Linksys USB200M 7500 $24.99    $0.33 $16.66

IACON

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My co-worker Aaron and I spoke today at the annual conference of the Iowa Distance Learning Association and the Iowa Association for Communication Technology. We gae a presentation about wireless security, why it's important, and an overview of the various technologies involved in it. Supposedly, we were a hit, but I'll wait until I see the evaluation forms to believe it. I did only see one person sleeping during our talk, but there was another one nodding off...