The books in the Binding of the Blade series get better with each installment.  Each book in the series starts right where there previous left off as if this was one, long, five volume book.  In this book we start to see all of the plans coming together (but things won't be resolved until the fifth book).  Even when all the plans that Aljeron and the others had been making have been falling apart, in Father of Dragons there is some hope.

New York City recently passed a new law requiring that all chain restaurants display the calories for each menu item along with the price of the item.  This is having quite an impact on NYC establishments.  The low calorie items are quick to go while the high calorie items are being left on the shelf.  Personally I think this is a good thing.  I'm not sure I like the government being involved because it is restricting freedom for the restaurant owners.  I would rather that they did it themselves.  But that's not going to happen.  And that's not the point of this blog entry.  So, politics aside, I think it is a great idea that restaurants show the calories for every menu item.  People are starting to realize just how many calories they are eating.  That "healthy" cranberry bran muffin doesn't look so good at 650 calories!

Despite the subtitle, I'm afraid that this book didn't actually solve the mysteries of evolution.  In fact, it didn't a fairly poor job of even trying to.  Most of the book revolved around a history of Darwinism from the middle of the 19th century till the late 20th century and an interesting narrative of how the fields of genetics and cellular biology arose.  At best the book, tried to show how some evidence can be interpreted with an evolutionary explanation.  While that's interesting, it certainly doesn't "solve the mystery" of evolution.  The book also suffered severely from a bad case of strawmanitis in that it characterized all who didn't "believe" in evolution to be mindless religious zealots who ignore scientific fact because it conflicts with their beliefs.  And finally, the book's coverage of australopithecenes did much more harm than good to the cause of evolution.

They did it right with this Hulk.  The first movie version just wasn't very good.  With this one the story picked up sometime after the other movie but otherwise there was nothing the same.  This time the Hulk was a believable character and the rest of the movie avoided most of the blatent cheesiness that was so present in the first movie.

According to this book, Antony Flew, was one of the premier and influential atheist minds in the 20th century.  He pioneered many of the arguments and defenses supporting atheism.  Maybe of his papers and books are considered staples in the modern atheists philosophical arsenal.  Yet, in 2004, Flew announced that his lifelong philosophy of "following the evidence" had led him to the believe now that there is a God.

This movie was a huge disappointment.  We generally enjoy Angelina Jolie in movies but this was just not good at all. If you like a huge amount of profanity and senseless violence then this movie is perfect for you.  The story centers around a boring and dull accountant who suddenly finds he has talent to be a world class assassin.  He is violently inducted into a secret society who carries out covert assassinations at the orders of a tapestry that is magically woven at a huge loom. 

One of the books that most students have to read (or at least used to have to read) is The Odyssey.  I believe that in the past most students were required to read this in the original Greek but now we have several English translations available.  Somehow I managed to avoid reading any serious classic literature in my education.  I'm not sure that was such a good idea and so I'm now trying to rectify that situation.  The Fitzgerald translation is supposed to be quite good.  That's the one I read.

If anyone can reincarnate the great Maxwell Smart it is Steve Carell. Smart is a CONTROL analyst who dreams of one day becoming a field agent in the battle against KAOS.  Due to a series of unlucky circumstances he is given his chance.  The hilarity begins almost immediately with Smart's almost use of the cone of silence.  The cone of silence is a ridiculous contraption that is meant to allow participants in the cone to speak without any danger of outsiders hearing what they say.  Unfortunately it doesn't work well.  Instead of isolating the particpants' conversation from the outside, it isolates the participants from each other.  Invariably the cone session ends with the conversants yelling at each other and ending the conversation in futility.  Somehow Smart is oblivious to the cone's quirks.