Unsought Input

Spider-Man 3 seems like a shoo-in to join Spider-Man 1 and 2 in the top ten highest-grossing films of all time, but reviews have been mixed. Right now it’s running about 60% positive at Metacritic and 61% positive at Rotten Tomatoes.

So is it any good? I thought so, but this isn’t a movie review. As an internationally-recognized expert in Spidey Studies, I thought it would be important to point out where Spider-Man 3 gets it right, and where it get things wrong. I’ll start with the bad news first, with the good news to follow in the next day or two.

Please note: this is not a series of gripes over deviations from the “cannon” of the original Amazing Spider-Man comic books or anything like that. Spider-Man, like many of his his comic book and other literary brethren, has been written by many different people over the years in many different media. Instead, I hope to point out where Sam Raimi deviated from the crux of the characters or missed opportunities that presented themselves.

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Lee A. Iacocca’s recent book, Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, has received a good amount of press this past week, all centered around one specific passage:

Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, “Stay the course.”

Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!

You might think I’m getting senile, that I’ve gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don’t need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we’re fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That’s not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I’ve had enough. How about you?

I’ll go a step further. You can’t call yourself a patriot if you’re not outraged. This is a fight I’m ready and willing to have.

Makes me want to read the book.

Though, of course, all the blogs I’ve read covering said passage have just left it at that. They might make some sort of comment about Iacocca’s personality, or what he said about the current crop of domestic auto executives, but they don’t really go in and dissect what he said.

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Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite authors, died a few days ago on April 11th. You may or may not have heard by now. The New York Times wrote a nice piece on his life and a large number of blogs and forums have filled with discussions of his books, essays, and politics.

If you haven’t heard by now, I guess I’m not too surprised. Ablogistan took a look and found that there were more twice as many mentions of Anna Nicole Smith in the news than Vonnegut.

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I ran across a great post at Technocrat titled If We Taught English the Way We Teach Mathematics.

“Suppose that those classes, from elementary school right through to high school, amounted to nothing more than reading dictionaries, getting drilled in spelling and formal grammatical construction, and memorizing vast vocabulary lists — you never read a novel, nor a poem; never had contact with anything beyond the pedantic complexity of English spelling and formal grammar, and precise definitions for an endless array of words. You would probably hate the subject.”

This is a great point, and the post goes on to talk about why it’s not just a lack of “real world” examples that makes math and science such boring, intimidating subjects.  Here’s the perfect example of how a real world example definitely did not help one student with physics:

So if memorizing facts and formulas is no use, and contrived, often bizarre examples are no help, how should we teach math and science?

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Hiya, I know how much you enjoy taking quizzes and you all know how much I enjoy writing quizzes, so here are two really quick quizzes I made over at www.buzzdash.com. Take them!

Which is the best super hero movie series?

Which is the best science fiction series of all time?