Kahran Ramsus

Global warming doesn't affect the highs, because those are usually a result of direct sunlight. As such it has very little influence on summer temperatures at all (or equatorial temperatures for that matter). It is the winter temperatures that the greenhouse effect has its major influence on. As for whether global warming exists, it depends on the scale. If you look at the past 10 years, it is about the same or slightly warmer. If you look at the past 100 years, it is quite a bit warmer. If you look at the past 5000 years, the temperature has a downward trend with some spikes like now or during the Medieval Warm. If you look at the past 100 million years than it is substantially cooler, we are in an Ice Age afterall and the earth is going to cool in time anyways because the core is getting cooler. It is all a matter of perspective. If you look at the decade of the 1970s the temperature was dropping pretty quickly, but it is in complete contrast to the rest of the century. The only constant about climate change is that it changes. It either gets warmer or colder, but doesn't stay the same. The 19th Century was unusually cold (it was actually pretty cold overall going all the way back to the 1320s, with a few warm periods here and there such as the mid-18th Century). It is not beyond belief that things would get warmer eventually. Right now for the Holocene we are at about average or slightly above average for global temperatures. I disagree. I think the big problem is that we are dealing with a lot chemists and biologists who are used to studying something at a smaller scale and then blowing it up to be applicable for something much larger. Like how you take a small section of an ecosystem and study it, and you have a pretty good idea of how the whole ecosystem works. The problem that we are dealing with here is the concept of time. Many scientists in those fields simply have no concept of how big the earth is and how long it takes for things to happen. You can't just take 100 years of history and try to get a grasp of the whole history of the earth. This planet is 4.6 billion years old and the modern alignment of the earth started with the breakup of Pangaea in the Triassic. While studying our current climate we need to go back at least 10000 years to when the last Ice Age ended and we reached our current global climate. Since there are no written records back then and certainly no temperature records, you need a good concept of geology and paleobiology to be able to properly study the geologic record. And it is something that many of the pro-Global Warming scientists have little understanding about. A background in history is pretty helpful too for the historical era. Climate change on a global scale is simply too big and takes place over such a large scale that many scientists have trouble comprehending it. The other problem is that for a long time (for like 15 years) computers weren't powerful enough to run the really complex climate models and so most of the numbers were faulty. This is why in the 1980s there were predictions that the temperature would rise about 10C by 2100, but that has since been dropped to a more realistic and much less significant 1.5-2C. BTW, there isn't much worth arguing about here anyways. It is almost universally accepted that we will be in another Ice Age soon, maybe as soon as the year 3000 (with the most conservative going at an age of about 10000 years from now), so whatever is happening now is going to be a very minor episode in Earth's history. Whatever climate situation we have now is going to be completely obliterated and we will come out of it with something completely different (during the last interglacial of the Pleistocene England had a climate similar to Kenya today).

Also GFBE was over a year after the Wrestlemania match. Angle/Shawn I only happened in March.

Not interested. Batista has already beaten this guy twice and it is obvious he is going to win here too. I also expect the match to pale in comparison to the brawl JBL & Cena had last month. The company's biggest star and two JTTS. Cena vs. Christian would have had me interested if they were given more time to work a feud, but even there, the match wouldn't be the great. Jericho will probably improve the match, but he really doesn't belong here. I just hope this is better than that terrible RVD/Christian/Jericho triple threat from a couple of years ago. Good match, but this is too soon and we all know Shawn will get his job back. 10 years from now nobody will remember this match. They should have waited until about Survivor Series at the earliest to do a rematch, but ideally it would have been during NEXT summer. Like I said, it is too soon to do this rematch, unlike Orton/Taker which makes sense to do it right away. They had an awful match on PPV last year and an awful match to end the Gold Rush Tournament. Edge was red hot 6 months ago, but Lita is dragging him down. No interest. No way they end an 8 month reign just to give it back to Shelton a week later. Carlito retains, Shelton hopefully heads to Smackdown. Ordinarily the wrestler would be the face against the useless diva, but since this is WWE, it is the other way around. Therefore unless they really surprise me, like at Mania, the woman the fans want to win will be jobbing to the one that Vince wants to win. The matches won't be bad, but this looks on paper to be the most boring PPV since Unforgiven last year.

Nice to see some Casablanca love with 6 quotes taken. If they only had to pick one Star Wars quote they picked the correct one. "May the Force be with you" is the line that sums up the fascination with the series for that generation and every one since.

Nobody is debating the actual quality of the film. I haven't seen it yet, but plan to this week. But before its release it was expected to do Harry Potter, Spider-Man, Star Wars or Lord of the Rings money, and it clearly isn't. Now we come to the big question, why did Spider-Man do so much better? And like I said, I just think that based on Batman & Robin and Catwoman that WB has a big image problem right now and that it will take a lot of time to overcome that. We know because we get updates on the Net, and we can tell that things are heading in the right direction (finally) for things like this and Superman, but Joe Moviegoer doesn't know these things. It will take word of mouth to get him in the theatre because of WB's terrible track record. Meanwhile X3 will probably do better even though it is looking terrible because the previous X-Men films were good. As for Fantastic Four, I've said all along that it will be a fantastic flop, and I've seen nothing yet to indicate it won't be. Batman Begins didn't have great trailers, but Fantastic Four has bad ones. Going by the trailers it looks more like LXG than X-Men. It might end up being good, but the marketing sure isn't unless they have absolutely nothing to work with, which is what I fear.

That's the point. Edward Nygma is this reclusive nerd who's initial goal is to create a way to escape reality and live out your fantasies through television. When he becomes Riddler he completely goes into the opposite direction as a result, which is a complete over-the-top stereotypical gameshow host persona. It may not be the Riddler in the comics, but it absolutely fits with the character. He's actually one of the best handled villains in the series. I would put him second behind Joker. Two-Face, on the other hand, I have no explanation for. He's supposed to be dark and gloomy, and seems to be written that way given his backstory and the split personality, but somewhere in the script process they completely messed up by ignoring his Dent personality. Two-Face's initial speech is perfect, and then afterwards he is just his gangster personality for the rest of the film.

The only way anybody will be interested in HIAC is if Batista gets drafted THIS week, and they run the storyline at the PPV of whether he will win and take the belt to Smackdown or not. Sort of like what they did with Jericho & Benoit at KOTR 2001. It does make the match outcome insanely predictable, but it is the outcome that I think most fans want and the storyline would be much better than whatever crap they are running with now. I don't care about Vengeance at all right now (Shawn gets his job back, Shelton jobs, Cena wins easily against two nothing challengers, boring HIAC) so it would at least be something different, and the fact that it would air Thursday with the PPV Sunday might create some last minute interest in the show and certainly in the HIAC match which has nothing going for it right now at all.

There have been more than 38 movies released. Sure, 35 movies beat it, but think of the thousands of movies that weren't even on the list. $73 million is NOT a small amount of money for movie to make in 5 days. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> When a movie that gets the hype that Batman Begins got does worse than Jurassic Park III and the Hulk, it underperformed. Yes, Pirates of the Caribbean was an enormous success and is directly beneath Begins, but it wasn't nearly as anticipated as Begins and it retained a large portion of its audience throughout the rest of the summer until about Labour Day. Whether Batman will do the same is still to be determined.

I loved Adventures of Batman & Robin back in the day, especially the fact that each level centered around one villain and they each had their own unique style (ex. an action-packed roller coaster ride against Joker, a search and rescue mission in the Gotham Museum for Penguin). I never had that much trouble with the Two-Face level, but the Scarecrow level drove me insane specifically that section where you had to drop down and rappel along the bottom of the blimp. I never really did get the hang of it where I could do it consistantly. If I got by that level it was just dumb luck.

That bugged me too, but that was just the conclusion, whereas the Penguin thing was most of the movie. Knox is an idiot. The bigger question is why Vicky doesn't know.

They do? It comes up in the first film that he pretty much wants revenge on criminals for the murder of his parents (his "I'm going to kill you" line to Joker). Character-wise it isn't terrible, but its not Batman. I have no problem with making creative decisions to differ from the comics, but if you bring it up that this version is like what Batman is supposed to be in the comics I'm going to bring this up. The first film is my favourite of the four, and I am not too concerned that they don't go into a lot of depth with the Batman character in the film because it is basically an introduction piece. But we learn absolutely nothing more about the character in Returns. He is simply there. Chip Shreck gets more character development than Bruce Wayne does in that movie. Batman is simply a set-piece in Returns. The other characters do things and he reacts accordingly and that's it. He also makes decisions that go against his character, like showing his face to two of the villains at the end. The whole Penguin plot is just rediculous. I can believe that he was abandoned by his parents and grew up in the sewers. The being raised by penguins stuff is pushing it. But what I really can't believe is how a guy who spent the last 40 years in a sewer ends up running for mayor of a large metropolis two days after leaving the sewers. That whole section of the film is just awful, not to mention that it is in complete contradiction to everything else that Penguin does in the film. His later plot about wanting to kill the children of Gotham certainly isn't tasteful, but at least makes more sense. Catwoman is terribly written and is more of a minor nuisance than a real villain, and it is only Pfeiffer's energetic performance that saves the character. Shreck doesn't have the best evil plot or anything, but his character is the only one in the movie that has a clear motivation and defined goals. Everything else is just chaotic and one scene flows into the next with no rythm at all. It is only in Forever that we get an explanation of Wayne's past and why he does what he does. Yes, Returns looks good. I actually like the Gothic style and set design of that film the best of the four. Everything from the Downtown Square to the zoo looks really good. But behind that coat of glossy paint the drywall is rotted.

I don't have any doubt now that Shelton is headed to Smackdown. I just thought it would be Hassan that took the belt from him.

Forever DC won't be fantastic by any stretch of the imagination, because many of the problems will still be there. But it should be a better film than the theatrical version. which I think is underrated to begin with.

The 60s show was never supposed to be serious, and it worked quite well for what it was. A lot of Batman fans hate it because of the impact it had to the character in the minds of the general populace, but it is a very underrated show these days. If it was some generic character in that show instead of Batman, it would be thought of more highly. Even today I consider Adam West to be the one and only Batman, just like Sean Connery is James Bond and Chris Reeves is Superman. I still like Forever as well, in large part because I though Kilmer was the best of the new Batmen (Keaton played Batman as borderline psychotic and Clooney was just a buffoon) and also because Jim Carrey's Riddler is easily the best villain in the series after Joker. It is also the only film of the four where a large part of the narrative is about who Batman is and why does he do what he does. Batman is actually a hero in this one and doesn't kill baddies for no reason like in the Burton films. In the Burton films Batman himself doesn't evolve as a character at all. There are of course flaws in Forever (Two-Face, neon, O'Donnell), but there are some good moments as well. It is possible that a director's cut with all the edited stuff from the diary storyline could make this a better film than the original, but for now I would put it at #2. People really tend to overrate Returns just because it is dark and because Catwoman is pretty cool, but in terms of plot it is a mess and the Penguin is a terrible villain. The best thing about that movie is Christopher Walken. They should have just ditched Penguin and made him the main villain. B&R is just hopeless. I can't think of a single redeeming feature in it. Easily one of the worst movies ever. Even Street Fighter was better (at least Raul Julia & Wes Studi were entertaining).

You are absolutely right. I didn't see anything special from the advertising campaign at all, certainly not at the level of Spider-Man or even X-Men. But I am hyped up for the film (I will probably see it early this week) and it is soley based on the backs of the reviews which are extremely favourable. It wasn't until Ebert & Roeper reviewed the film a couple of weeks ago and both said that it was easily the best of the Batmans that I really got the feeling that I had to see this film in theatres.

I could see it being Big Show, since they might have blown off the feud with Morgan on Smackdown (although it continues if he stays). If Shelton goes there is no reason for me to watch RAW at all.

Catwoman in particular is still fresh in people's minds. I think it really made an impact on the gross you see here.

Bradshaw also had a complete character makeover and worked to improve tenfold, both as a wrestler and as a talker. I don't see that happening with Jericho. Jericho is the same wrestler as he was in 1998. Bradshaw is completely different from what he was even 18 months ago. Even then it took JBL about 6 months or so to truly get over, and this by that point he had proven himself as a main eventer and gone over every big contender on Smackdown save Angle & Show (which he would do shortly).

When people are giving a comedy character like Christian a better shot in the WWE Title match coming up than Jericho, it speaks volumes about how credible he is. Now I know Rudo will disagree with me on this, but Benoit hasn't been treated as badly as people think. No, he's not booked to be at the level of HHH or Taker, but who is? Even Cena is taking a back seat to HHH at this point, and he's the only true star that the company has. But Benoit is booked as being credible in the ring, which is a huge advantage over someone like Jericho and it is why he's not seen as the jobber that Jericho is. Benoit has held his own against HHH, Angle, HBK, Austin, Rock and even Taker since coming into the company in 2000. He's not booked as a loser so much as he just gets screwed over a lot. He's had some bad periods (like spring 2003), but fans still buy him as a legitimate threat. He's not at perma-main event level, but he's the top wrestler in the next tier. People believe that Benoit can beat JBL, whereas nobody would give Jericho a chance against him. He's done well all things considered. Look at what happened to Dean Malenko.

That's the best chain burger joint, but you are right that many of the local restaurants are the best places to get burgers. As for what I order, I don't have any favourites. I just order what I feel like at the time.

Dibiase/Savage was the only match in the tournament that was actually for the title, so only Dibiase should count.

Plus Roddy Piper & Ted Dibiase.

On the bright side JBL had one of the coolest entrances in Wrestlemania history, and he and Cena got a proper blowoff at Judgment Day. However I still maintain, like I did at the time, that the I Quit match should have been the title change, not the Mania match.

Brock Lesnar. Physically, he could do pretty much anything and even the NFL scouts acknowledged this. He was just out of football so long that he didn't really know how to play at that level, which is why they wanted him to go to NFL Europe. He probably lacks the mental discipline of somebody like Kurt Angle, but in terms of raw ability Lesnar can do pretty much anything. I still find it amazing that someone powerful enough to F5 Big Show is agile enough to do a Shooting Star Press. I consider him more of a great fighter than a great athlete. Kind of like Steven Regal or Dave Finlay.

Trish winning. I thought for sure she was jobbing in one of the greatest tragedies in Wrestlemania history. Especially after she started treating Christy like a joke for the entire thing, and still won clean, despite interference from Lita. Other than that, Angle winning & Carlito showing up to interrupt Piper's Pit were the main surprises.