Stuff that's too good for the shoutbox but not enough for its own thread

[Zichao]

I think there's an aspect of confirmation bias in this. Parisians are notoriously unpleasant so every actual incidence of unpleasantness seems to reinforce the eternal truth. In real terms I don't think they're worse than in London or Beijing, though Americans and Japanese probably get a bit of culture shock.

[Francois Cellier]

It's the large city syndrome. People in New York City are also usually more hectic and unpleasant than people in a small township.

[Zichao]

I dunno, small towns can be pretty hostile too. They stare at you.

[Benjamin]

Is that pic taken with a special lens? I have to say I'm not especially taken with the roof in that context. I think you might be able to get away with it on something that had more classical proportions to start with, but it looks out of place to me. I like the close up, though.

Eyeballing the whole-building picture again, I do see the perspective is off--building is 'tipping over backwards.'

Would look better with a special lens, called a PC (perspective control) lens. Probably a CP lens in French I suppose....

See this page: Using the 35mm Nikon Perspective Control Lens
The unshifted shots of the Schmidt brewery show some of the same trouble.

[Zichao]

The thing you can extract from other people's problems is principles which are applicable to your own. Simulation is a powerful tool.

Trouble is, I think that the answer they're looking for is "establish truth and reconcilliation commissions as a precursor to transfering political sovereignty while distributing aid in such a way as to improve quality of life without undermining the developing state" rather than "set myself up as a warlord and live for the guns, the girls and the drugs until the day I meet a bullet with my name on it".

[Benjamin]

Trouble is, I think that the answer they're looking for is "establish truth and reconcilliation commissions as a precursor to transfering political sovereignty while distributing aid in such a way as to improve quality of life without undermining the developing state" rather than "set myself up as a warlord and live for the guns, the girls and the drugs until the day I meet a bullet with my name on it".

I just watched a western movie, called "You Know My Name" in which Sam Elliot played the basic Sam Elliot character, the righteous, highly skilled, lawman-of-few-words. Ultimately, he's murdered by the villain of the piece, a corrupt Federal officer. What's curious is that the villain's career matches-up just about exactly (in a more petty way) the warlord career you outline above. He runs around the movie murdering, whoring, and getting ever-more-psychotic with the white powder.

It's based on truth--there really was such an agent, a alcohol-prohibition enforcer named Lynn Wiley, and Elliot's guy, Bill Tilghman, likewise was a well-know lawman, in Oklahoma anyway. Anyway, Wiley murders Tilghman, and that's pretty much the tragic end of the movie. Text coda at the end says Wiley 'got off on a technicality' for the murder. The wiki on him suggests the technicality was that he intimidated or disappeared the witnesses against him. But as you say, his career finally ended when he met a bullet with his name on it, some years later. He and another lawman had one of those close-range shootouts where each empty their gun into the other.

I have to say the lawmen come off kinda bad all the way around in this history. Like, first of all, the villain is a lawman too, and secondly, the others die a lot, which seems careless.

Anyway, you can watch the movie and enjoy rooting for the bad guy, as he meets your specs just about exactly!

[Zichao]

I don't usually follow the Phantom comic strip - for me it's eqsily as boring and inane as newspaper Spiderman - but the current storyline is brilliant.

In case you haven't been keeping up, the Phantom's wife has been captured and held prisoner in some dark, African political scheme that I don't really understand because, as I say, I don't follow the Phantom. Our hero thought that she was dead and grieved painfully and I expected this to continue interminably in the best Funky Winkerbean tradition until the end of time. In fact it lasted for about two strips, before the Phantom decided that it was an excellent opportunity to head off for flirty encounters with every woman who's ever made eyes at him ever. I hope that Diana returns to the marital cave at the precise moment when he kicks off his inevitable four-way with the Jungle Patrol.

[Benjamin]

Does the Phantom strip still explain "Mr. Walker" every time they use it?

[Zichao]

Although pretty soon they're going to have to change it to "Flirter"...

[Zichao]

Thank heavens for Dick Tracy, whose writer has been reassuringly off his face on shrooms for the past three years or so.

I'd explain the plot that has led up to this installment, but it would then make even less sense than it does in isolation. In any case its going to end up with some nauseating variation on death by violin while our hero looks on in a haze of sadistic serenity. And that's what we pay for.