The Red Turtle (2016)

IMDB

The Red Turtle (2016): Shipwrecked on tropical island, just a man and a red turtle. Animation. No dialog. Simple, lovely, elegant fable. B+

OTBR: Rock Lake, Minnesota

Latitude: N 46° 10.482
Longitude: W 093° 53.832

A child on a road trip with his family asks, "Where are we?" and the father answers, "Let's check the map. We're off the blue roads [the Interstate Highways marked in blue on the road atlas]. We're off the red roads [the US and state highways]. We're off the black roads [the county highways]. I think we're off the map altogether." It was always my dream to be off the map altogether.

After the jump, a few of the random places (and I mean random literally) that I visited vicariously (not actually) last month that are "off the blue roads".

Restaurant Ratings - The Good and the Bad

I've long urged the City of Richardson to improve the usability of the work done by its Health Department in inspecting restaurants. They can get back in the kitchen. The public usually can't.

Things I'd like to see:

• The health department rating displayed in each restaurant's front window. To its credit, the city has worked with Yelp to display a city health department rating for each restaurant along with other info such as address, map, and contact info. Kudos for this, but I'd like to see the rating when I walk in the door.
• Inspection ratings incorporated in all promotional material the city provides for restaurants (e.g., its "Dine Smart, Dine Local" advertising)
• A better presentation of the health inspection ratings on the city's own website

Recently, the city made some efforts on the third item. I took a look.

Battle of the Sexes (2017)

IMDB

Battle of the Sexes (2017): Feminist icon for more than a tennis match. My admiration grows seeing the back story. #EqualPay #Equality A-

Repeat Tweets: San Francisco Hits 104°

Repeat tweets from September, 2017:

• Sep 1 2017: "San Francisco hits 104°, breaking the city's all-time heat record, NWS says."
  Just throwing this out there, but maybe we ought to again consider the possibility that burning fossil fuels is changing the climate.
• Sep 1 2017: RT @WalkableDFW: "car dependence makes our regional economy incredibly fragile."
  So does corn, the power grid, and our supply chains for just about everything. We are one disaster away from, well, disaster.
• Sep 1 2017: RT @WalkableDFW: "which is why localized food and power production is mission critical."
  Choices. Localized food brings its own costs. 200 years of reducing cost thru comparative advantage and the globe is in precarious balance.
• Sep 1 2017: Infinite Jest: 20-yr-old classic that takes 20 years to read. Great book...for literature majors. I'm too hard; there are hidden gems. C-

After the jump, more repeat tweets.

POTD: An Angel in Hell

From 2017 01 29 Caribbean Cruise

Today's photo-of-the-day is from the Devils Hangout Gift Shop in Hell, Cayman Islands. The name comes from cooled lava flows visible from the parking lot of the gift shop that must have reminded some early tourism promoter of burnt-out hellfire. That's an angel posing in front of the gift shop. Awww.

Bonus photo after the jump.

A Hologram for the King (2016)

IMDB

Hologram for the King (2016): US IT salesman has midlife crisis in Saudi Arabia. Starts exotic, ends preposterous. No reason to care. C+

One of those rare movies based on a book (reviewed here) that matches it in quality — in this case, mediocre.

POTD: Little Boxes

From 2017 01 29 Caribbean Cruise

Today's photo-of-the-day is from the cruise ship pier at Cozumel, Mexico. I'd name the ship, but they all look just the same.

Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes all the same
There's a pink one and a green one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same

Source: Malvina Reynolds.

Tanna (2015)

IMDB

Tanna (2015): Tribal conflict on South Pacific island. Arranged marriage vs forbidden love. Universal tale based on true story. Lovely. A-

Regionalism and Sprawl

I am constantly adding to my collection of dirty words. These are the motherhood and apple pie virtues that I used to think were non-controversial. Virtues like tolerance and compromise and civility all have come under attack from conservatives. What I thought made American democracy great is being dismantled virtuous brick by virtuous brick. Liberals can play this game, too. Self-described "libtard" Jim Schutze of the Dallas Observer adds "regionalism" to the list of dirty words. Schutze equates regionalism with sprawl. Sprawl is bad, so regionalism must be too.

the leadership of [Dallas] is so evenly divided between the old-school champions of sprawl, which they call regionalism, and the new-school champions of cityhood.
...
During the old establishment's 20-year war for [the Trinity Tollroad], the main justification for it was that it would promote regionalism. By offering regionalism as a selling point, the old guard betrayed its utter unawareness that people on the other side of the paradigm think regionalism is the problem. And there you have it.

Source: Jim Schutze.