Salon: The movie of the year
“The Fellowship of the Ring” could have gone wrong in so many ways. As it is, though, I see it as nearly perfect: It’s one of the best fantasy pictures ever made. And it’s a lovely example of how, with care and thought and not all that much money (Jackson will have made all three “Rings” movies for less than $300 million), a director can successfully capture the mood and feel of a book on the big screen. (I read and enjoyed the books more than 25 years ago, but the details of them had gone hazy. Jackson brought them back more vividly than I could have hoped.)
Most of us are happy enough these days to go to the movies and not get screwed, so rarely does a movie even keep its promises, much less surpass them. That’s why “The Fellowship of the Ring” is something of a miracle. It makes the great potentialities of movies seem realistic and achievable. Inventive, magical and relatively inexpensive, it proves that throwing money at a movie doesn’t necessarily make it good — an idea that should be much easier for Hollywood to grasp than it actually is.

NYT: In Japan, a Lack of Political Will to Act Decisively on Economy
Weak political leadership, weak control over government finances and huge corporate debts, problems that have plagued Italy, are modern Japan’s main challenges as the rest of the world wonders whether the country, home of the second-largest economy in the world, will be a help or hindrance in confronting a global recession.
I don’t really have anything to add to an article like this….
Still on the Asian vibe…
Segway Type R
This reminds me of Brian’s Rice Boy page….
Origami shuriken
Too funny…maybe real ninjas could kill people with just some paper?

Newsbytes: Asian-Americans Are Most Avid Net Users – Pew Survey
Asian-Americans, more than any other U.S. ethnic group, are likely to spend part of their day online, and are more likely to catch up on the news, buy stock quotes or seek out health information while they are there.
Such is the conclusion of a study released by the nonprofit Pew Internet and American Life Project, which surveyed 340 Internet-using Asian-Americans between March 1, 2000, and Dec. 22, 2000.
This makes sense to me. I know I’m spending a lot less time online in the past few months because of the job and the SO.
One area of Net usage where Asian-Americans lag slightly is in listening to music over the Web. Pew indicates that 56 percent of black men, and 54 percent of black women say they have listened to music online, while 51 percent of Asian-American men and 39 percent of Asian-American women have listened to music on the Internet.
Yep. This makes sense too. Music just isn’t as important…it’s all about the stock quotes and health info