{"id":93,"date":"2002-05-16T21:25:57","date_gmt":"2002-05-17T01:25:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/prodigy_whine"},"modified":"2002-05-16T21:25:57","modified_gmt":"2002-05-17T01:25:57","slug":"prodigy_whine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2002\/05\/prodigy_whine.html","title":{"rendered":"Prodigy Whine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We had ourselves a wee little earthquake earlier this week.  It started out as a 5.2, but it&#8217;s since been downgraded to a 4.9.  Either way it was about two magnitudes too small to relieve any significant fault stress and make &#8220;the Big One&#8221; less likely&#8230; but it was kind of <em>cute<\/em>, as quakes go.<\/p>\n<p>So at 11:30pm last night, I found myself waiting in line for a midnight showing of Star Wars, Episode II.  I had not been very enthusiastic about the <cite><a href=\"http:\/\/us.imdb.com\/Title?0121765\" title=\"imdb.com profile\">Attack of the Clones<\/a><\/cite> in the first place, but Nancy was <em>very insistent<\/em> that we see it.  So there we all were:  Me, her, Pat, Sam, Sue, and Nancy&#8217;s dad.  Nancy&#8217;s <em>mom<\/em>, however, was missing.  I do not want to shirk my duty in pointing out that Nancy <em>lost her disabled and elderly mother in the crowd<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>But I digress. Here&#8217;s a quick take on the movie, with only one very indirect spoiler:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Special effects and scenery:  superb<\/li>\n<li>Dialogue:  adequate to wretched<\/li>\n<li>Future Dark Lord of the Sith Anakin Skywalker:  pouty and whiny<\/li>\n<li>Interesing hint of moral ambiguity regarding the bad guy: raised, and then casually thrown away<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Lucas has always been a prodigy with technology&#8230; and the few interviews I&#8217;ve seen with him make him seem like an awfully nice, sincere guy&#8230; but why oh why can&#8217;t he <em>write<\/em>?  Or trust others to do it for him?  Very frustrating.<\/p>\n<p>In Other News:  Shari, a friend from my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.motwm.com\/\" title=\"The Making of the Western Mind\">MOTWM<\/a> class, set me a note about Jonathan Safran Foer, a young Jewish writer whose last name differs from mine by only one consonant.  Foer has just published his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0618173870\/\" title=\"amazon link\">debut novel<\/a>, he&#8217;s three years younger than me, he&#8217;s getting rave reviews from the likes of Joyce Carol Oates and <cite>Kirkus Reviews<\/cite>, and he can apparently get away with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bordersstores.com\/ib\/200204\/ib_ov_foer.jsp\" title=\"essay by Foer on... himself\">referring to Nietzche multiple times<\/a> when talking about his own writing.<\/p>\n<p>But heck, forget Foer &#8212; at 24, he&#8217;s all washed up, isn&#8217;t he?  If you want a <em>real<\/em> prodigy, there&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aaronsw.com\/\" title=\"Aaron Swartz's website and weblog\">Aaron Swartz<\/a>.  Aaron is the member of several web standards committees, he co-authored <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.yahoo.com\/group\/rss-dev\/files\/namespace.html\" title=\"XML syndication format\">RSS1.0<\/a>, and he writes clearly and concisely (with a wicked sense of humor).  And he&#8217;s fifteen years old.  <\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, things are going quite well for <em>me<\/em> these days.  For example, at Tuesday Night Poker, this old man won <em>ten dollars<\/em> this week.  I even got a natural Royal Flush in a seven-card stud hand.  Unfortunately, as Page points out, I&#8217;m still seventy dollars in the hole, lifetime.  <\/p>\n<p>Well, that which does not kill you makes you stronger&#8230; or something like that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Aaron is the member of several web standards committees, co-authored RSS1.0, and writes clearly and concisely (with a wicked sense of humor).  And he&#8217;s fifteen years old.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}