Hunter S. Thompson

I've wondered if Hunter S. Thompson is accurately represented in the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Here are some youtube videos of Johnny Depp reading letters from his correspondence with Hunter S. Thompson: 1, 2, 3. In particular, Mr. Depp admits,

If I do a remotely decent job of portraying you, you know there’s a very good chance you’ll hate me for the rest of your life.

Here is an interview that youtube suggested I watch after these videos: Hunter S. Thompson and David Letterman (1988).

I am astonished at the degree of faithfulness that Johnny Depp achieved with his performance. And I hope that Hunter S. Thompson does not hate it.

Brüno

I saw Brüno this week. It was as offensive as one might expect, with the bonus of being an appalling presentation of Americans as greedy, baby-exploiting, homophobic idiots. I'm surprised that Sacha Baron Cohen hasn't been hurt doing one of these stunts yet. (Tank Riot wondered the same thing.) At times it was uncomfortable merely to watch, so I can't imagine how horrifically uncomfortable the unknowing rubes he tricked into the scenarios felt.

My advice? Go re-watch The Matrix instead.

Harry Potter VI Preview

I just got out of a preview showing of the sixth Harry Potter film. I have but a few words.

Spoiler alert: Snape kills Dumbledore.

Robotic sheep-shearing

No longer the realm of fiction (a la Wallace and Gromit's A Close Shave), there is now a frightening mechanized sheep-shearing robot/torture device. You can see a full, and unsettling, video of the process after the jump.

Office robots do "Fight Club"

Not. But didn't the title hook you?J. once told me that some kids at her high school tried to start a fight club, in imitation of the movie. This was conveyed in a tone of incredulity. Come to think of it, who would recreationally try to get beaten up? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And this is coming from a devoted rugby player. But at least rugby has points, and teams, and rules. (Well, fight club does have rules; the first one is, you don't talk about... oh. You are a moron.)

The Smallest Integer

A quick summary of The Incredible Hulk:

You wouldn't like me when I'm... hungry. Don't make me hungry... Do you remember when we were at Harvard and we participated in those induced hallucination experiments? It was like that, only a thousand times more intense... I want to get rid of it, not control it... They want to make it a weapon... You don't understand, something very bad is going to happen... If I am off by even the smallest integer, this could go drastically wrong...

Things that can happen if you are off by even the smallest integer:

1. Nothing. By absolute value, zero is the smallest integer. Additive identities have a habit of not doing much... under addition!
2. Immediate death. It just sometimes happens. A doctor said so. Reference.
3. Partial credit.
4. Off-by-one errors. (If you are not convinced that zero is smaller than one.)
5. Wouldn't 'The Smallest Integer' be a great name for a rock band?
6. Bad dialogue (cf. 2, above).
7. One is the loneliest number that you ever knew...
8. The other integers feel slighted. You won't get invited to their parties any more. Good job. Working in unary sucks, doesn't it?