Here's a good summary of reviews of Serenity, on all the different levels you can enjoy the film.
Just got back from watching Serenity. It was excellent: go see it if you haven't. It helps if you've watched Firefly, as the movie can't possibly give you the depth of the characters like the TV show. But it's not necessary. Just watch it for a great story, wonderfull, funny dialog, and good action.
David Robinson sued by Major League Baseball Is there a more idiotic publicity move than this? A logo that hasn't been used in nine years, and the only commonality is that it has an interlocking C & A. Not the same colors, not the same font, and, of course, the Carver Academy has no halo over the "A". I'm no lawyer, but I'm not even sure that qualifies as potential trademark infringement.
Defense Department Briefing on Ongoing National Guard Response to Hurricane Katrina
Q: One quick follow-up. Is it fair to say, using the convention center as an example, that one reason it took until Friday to get aid in is the National Guard needed time to build up a response team with military police to ensure law and order because the New Orleans Police Department had degraded so much?
GEN. BLUM: That is not only fair, it is accurate. You've concisely stated exactly what was needed, and I told you why. We took the time to build the right force. The outcome was superb. No lives hurt, nobody injured. It was done almost invisibly.
Q: And you estimate there's about a third of the New Orleans Police Department left. Do you remember about how many are in the New Orleans Police Department?
GEN. BLUM: On a normal day they should have 1,500 paid officers in New Orleans, give or take. Some people have said it's 1,650. It's in the rough order of 1,500-man police force, and I think the mayor told me they're down to less than 500.
Jason at COUNTERCOLUMN is a National Guardsman from Florida, with experience in hurricane relief. He has made several posts about logistics. Check out his blog for a dose of rationality compared to some of the criticism of the handling of the relief effort so far.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin in this radio interview (transcript) about one cause of the looting:
And one of the things people -- nobody's talked about this. Drugs flowed in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me, and that's why we were having the escalation in murders. People don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to talk about it.
You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix, and that's the reason why they were breaking in hospitals and drugstores. They're looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will.
And right now, they don't have anything to take the edge off. And they've probably found guns. So what you're seeing is drug-starving crazy addicts, drug addicts, that are wrecking havoc. And we don't have the manpower to adequately deal with it. We can only target certain sections of the city and form a perimeter around them and hope to God that we're not overrun.