Celluloid Heroes

I will not sacrifice the Enterprise. We’ve made too many compromises already; too many retreats. They invade our space and we fall back. They assimilate entire worlds and we fall back. Not again. The line must be drawn here! This far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they’ve done.

Star Trek: First Contact holds the distinction of the being the best, by a wide margin, of the “Next Generation” era of Star Trek movies. Not coincidentally, it is the only one of the four that doesn’t feel like a television episode that had been blown up for the big screen and needlessly stretched to two hours.

(more…)

At least when the Titanic went down, the lights were on.

The massive corporate malfeasance that led to the self-destruction of the Enron Corporation was stunning not just because of the bubble of unreality that surrounded the company for years as it bled cash like a hemopheliac while driving up its stock price like it was strapped to a Saturn booster. What was really like a kick to the head was the sheer number of corporate enablers they had. Had someone, anyone, called Enron on their practices, the company would have disintegrated years earlier than it did, presumably taking fewer pension plans and 401k’s down with it. The outrage that was the California energy crisis of 2000 might have been avoided as well.

(more…)