Dave's Verse

By now you've probably heard the news from Comic Con that Man of Steel will be getting a sequel and that Batman will appear in the movie. Head over to Modern Myth Media for the official press release and to Batman of Film for Bill's thoughts on the news from the perspective of one of the biggest Batman fans out there. When I heard this news yesterday my immediate reaction was a lot of excitement. I enjoyed Man of Steel and I thought it showed a lot of potential for what could become a great Superman franchise. And obviously I love Batman. So the prospect of getting more of that character is always welcome news. Having slept on the news I'm still mostly excited about it. I have my concerns about how they will portray Batman within Superman's world given the obvious difference that Batman has no superpowers. You can't make Batman look overwhelmed by every other hero or villain or else you risk making him insignificant. And you can't invent too unrealistic things...

I was going to write this post about how Sonya from FX's new show The Bridge is very introverted and how I can identify with her. But I checked wikipedia to see how to spell her name correctly and I found out that she isn't so much really introverted as she has Asperger's syndrome. Though that's kind of like a heightened form of introversion. So I wasn't too far off. In fact, just a quick skim of some articles suggests that we don't know a lot about introversion and Asperger's. There seem to be some overlapping traits ; isn't comfortable around people, quiet, reflective (why Sonya is probably a good detective). But there don't seem to be many agreed upon definitions as to what introversion is and how far away it is from being autistic or having Asperger's. That link I posted right above suggests that maybe these things exist on a scale where different people have varying degrees of one characteristic or another. I identify a lot with Sonya be...

Charles Pierce posts a quote from James Madison every night because James Madison is pretty awesome and should be read every day. So thanks to the also awesome Charles Pierce for that. The post from last night from Federalist 46 discussing concerns about federal and state power was interesting: The federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers, and designed for different purposes. The adversaries of the Constitution seem to have lost sight of the people altogether in their reasonings on this subject; and to have viewed these different establishments, not only as mutual rivals and enemies, but as uncontrolled by any common superior in their efforts to usurp the authorities of each other. These gentlemen must here be reminded of their error. They must be told that the ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it will not depend merely on the comparative ...

The Memphis city council passed a budget a few weeks ago. The city isn't in great financial shape, thus it was difficult for the council to figure out where to cut or how much to raise taxes. Likewise, Shelby County (which is where Memphis resides) is in a similar financial situation. They have recently been debating whether they should raise property taxes in order to pass a fairly modest budget. One way to generate more revenue without raising rates would be to get more people to start paying property taxes. That would entail changing zoning codes around the county to allow more construction and get more densely populated areas, making that housing cheaper and therefore open to new taxpayers. But that's going to be limited by the state of the housing market and the demand associated with it. Another way to generate revenue would be to start charging property taxes on already existing entities that don't pay anything. I've written about this before . Matt Yglesias ha...

They can't make any more clear who they are as a party than what they did with the Farm bill : House Republicans successfully passed a Farm Bill Thursday by splitting apart funding for food stamps from federal agricultural policy, a move that infuriated the White House and congressional Democrats who spent most of the day trying to delay a final vote. ....The vote made clear that Republicans intend to make significant reductions in food stamp money and handed Republican leaders a much-needed victory three weeks after conservative lawmakers and rural state Democrats revolted and blocked the original version of the bill that included food stamp money. ....The White House said late Wednesday that President Obama would veto any Farm Bill that fails to comprehensively address federal farm and food aid policy. In a statement, White House officials said they had insufficient time to review the bill. To recap, they just voted to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for farm subsidi...

I've mentioned that I'm rewatching Chuck. I'm at the end of the series where Sarah loses her memory of Chuck because of the intersect. If you're unfamiliar with the show, Chuck was a computer geek who worked at the show's equivalent of the Geek Squad. He was implanted with a dataset (the intersect) of all the government's intel and secrets by an old friend as a way to keep the intersect out of the wrong hands. Sarah, a CIA agent, was sent to watch over Chuck. Long story short, they had chemistry right away and after a few seasons of well-handled will they, won't they stuff, they fell in love and got married. Stuff happens in the final season that brings Sarah to the moment that she has to install the intersect (this version equips the person with combat skills and intel) in her mind so that she can save Chuck. But this version of the intersect is faulty and it causes Sarah to lose the memories of the last five years. She has no idea what happened or who Ch...

It's time for one of my favorite internet traditions, the 7th Annual Pajiba 10 . Get all of the details and see who is already in the Pajiba 10 Hall of Fame at the link. In short, you pick the five people you would cheat with if you had immunity. All the votes are tallied and the 5 people from each sex with the most votes make up the Pajiba 10. Here are my votes from last year . I went with Alyson Hannigan, Alison Brie, Krysten Ritter, Aubrey Plaza, and Anne Hathaway. As I explained last year, I take into account whether someone is already in the Pajiba Hall of Fame (Alison Brie made it last year) and I weight their current or recent work more than their earlier work. I also don't include anyone who is in my Hall of Fame, which I'll post at the end. So here's my 5 freebies for 2013: Krysten Ritter Anna Kendrick Jenna-Louise Coleman Yvonne Strahovski Amy Acker Ritter is the only holdover from last year. Don't Trust the B in Apt 23 was canceled. But she will...