cdymek's Blog!

I saw X-Men 2 with a few friends last night, and it lived up to expectations. It was probably as good as the first one, though there was nothing particularly new about the special effects. The moralistic nature of the story was actually both stronger than expected, and definately a lot less subtle than expected. You were basically hit over the head with it. And it served as an excellent appetizer to the main course on May 15.

It was great seeing Nathan, Ram, JT and Pete last night. I hadn’t seen them since Morimoto’s back in April or March. I can’t recall now whether it was before or after Vancouver. In any case, I bailed out of the evening early in order to catch some shut-eye before I took my car to get serviced. Which, upsettingly, didn’t happen because the Service Center didn’t have any appointments so they didn’t open. Excuse me? I called three or four weeks ago and I was told to bring it by any time between 8 and 11 today.

Oh, Thursday night I had the pleasure of catching up with a friend from my high school days that I hadn’t seen in five years or thereabouts. We decided to have a spot of tea at Cafe 52 and just hang out and talk. It was a fairly nice, definately tame conversation (neither of us are exactly the world’s greatest conversationalists. Well, I’m DEFINATELY not, and she might be, but just played it down for my sake. 🙂 ). Although I did embarass her a little bit I think.

Tonight I’m catching up with Austin, who’s coming down from Boston with Mark to see the Rutgers Glee Club concert tonight. Any minute now they should be calling, and I’ll be heading out…

God, I love this weather…

It’s a rare occurrence indeed when a sequel actually receives reviews that it is nearly as good as, if not sometimes called better than the original, especially when we’re talking about a big-budget summer action movie. Yet, I’m surprised to find that the new X-Men sequel has actually done just that.

CNN: It’s a rare occurrence indeed for a sequel to be anywhere near as good as the original film. But that’s the case with “X2: X-Men United.” In fact, the new film may be better than the original.

NY Times: “X2” has more of these [troubled, impossibly muscled characters] than its precursor, and it succeeds pretty well in rising to the challenge that most sequels face: how to give the audience more of what it responded to the first time while feeding its appetite for novelty.

MSNBC: The movie’s multitude of visual effects, exotic makeup, stunts and miniatures blends smoothly together to create a comic book world that feels real. A big plus this outing is John Ottman’s rousing, full-throttle score, which really drives the movie.

Star Ledger: “X2: X-Men United” hums with the dynamism of America at the top of her game. It’s a marvel of entertainment engineering.

Only a few reviewers disagree, including the Washington Times, which says warns that “‘X2,’ the second in what could become an X-tensive movie franchise for Marvel Comics’ X- Men superheroes, fails to guard against creeping tedium, absurdity and overcompensation.” And from the UK’s Independent, reviewer Charlotte O’Sullivan seems less than imperssed, hawking on the lack of pandering to viewers who missed the original: “Have I lost you yet? X-Men 2 is a snobby creature, geared to fans who know X-Men backwards and are already dizzy with excitement about X-Men 3.”

Seems to me like this might actually be a better-than-expected movie. I was just going to see the effects, and from the reviews, there might even be a story involved. I can’t wait!

The Daily Yomiuri is reporting that the Japanese Health ministry is final urging some caution over SARS to travelers from Hong Kong and China…

Ok, ok, first the House GOP speculates about scaling back the Senate bill on deductions for charitable giving by non-itemizers (aka, my friends, you and I). Now, in order to support the FOLLY of a dividend tax cut, they’re talking about ridding the exclusion on income tax for overseas workers?

Ok, so here’s the deal. You live in the US. You get the benefits of the US medical system. You get the benefits of the school system (of which, though limited, federal funding does play a part). You have the benefit of a fine transportation grid, emergency services, social services, and many, many other government programs. And, you pay income taxes for them.

You live overseas. You don’t enjoy the transportation network, the schools, the benefit of massive agricultural subsidies that keep farmers in business when there’s no true demand for their product, the police services, and all those other services and programs the government provides. Right now, the first $80,000 of your income is excluded from taxes. You don’t benefit, you don’t pay. This, somehow, seems fair to me. After all, you’re already paying income tax in the country you’re living in. Why should you also have to pay tax to a government whose services you aren’t taking advantage of?

Don’t impose a double taxation on expats all for a scheme to ensure tax-free largess for the already rich!

What does the House GOP have against the non-rich deducting charitable contributions? BusinessWeek says, on a new bill passed by the Senate, that “House Republicans will try to slice the earmarked $13 billion, which includes $1.3 billion in block grants to states for social services.”

They can support a bill around $400 billion what would give tax-free dividends, which would flow primarily to those such as CEO Sandy Weill of Citigroup (who, according to my rought estimate based on the most recent SEC filings would reap $9 million a year), but can’t give the average non-itemizing individual the ability to deduct a few hundred dollars in charitable giving? And $1.3 billion to states for social services? Considering the budget deficits at the state level, they’d be better off giving 20 times that!

My new blog site generated its first phone call today… 🙂

Bonjour!

I’m back from a pleasant weekend in Quebec (actually, I was back yesterday), where I was re-awakened to some of le francais that I used to know back from my school days. It was a wonderful time reading signs en francais and listening to people talk, even if I could barely string together a sentence. And, perhaps the best part about Quebec is how many of the residents are able to switch to anglais if necessary. In fact, that was a common question among many of the interactions, francais ou anglais?

The single most interesting moment of the trip was at la musee de la civilisations, where, during the skin exhibit, I had an opportunity to view an open Egyptian sarcophagus, with the body undwrapped. The viewing actually satisified a morbid kind of curiosity I have had for years; whenever I have visited a museum that’s featured them, I’ve always wondered what it would look like inside. It did live up to expecations, I would say.

Unfortunately, the weather didn’t co-operate on le Samedi, where it rained. All day. Incessantly. And it was cold. But what can you do? So, I trekked on, with a giant red and white maple-leaf parapluie that I bought at a tourist shop since I forgot my own umbrella. On the plus side, I was asked if I was British, which both surprised and amused me. Maybe one day yet I’ll be a British gentleman.

I’ll post the photos sometime this weekend. And it’s likely I’ll post less frequently as well, as my thoughts are otherwise occupied this week.

Well, I’m all set for my trip Quebec this weekend! Have a good weekend!

One additional item cut from the budget completely was the OSRP (Outstanding Scholars Recruitment Program) scholarship, which provided a varying amount of money to NJ high school seniors based upon certain academic credentials from high school. This program influenced my decision to Rutgers, as I had not originally intended to go to Rutgers at all. Now, I have both a degree and I have emerged from college loan-free, which I have found provides a strong advantage when compared with other recent college graduates. Word of this cut left me extremely disappointed…

Two interesting points (I thought so, anyway) I would like to raise from tonight’s RAA Board of Directors meeting I attended tonight.

1. Instead of applying to Rutgers College, Livingston, or several of the other schools, they will now apply to the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences. They will then be placed in to the “appropriate” school as defined by admissions. I assume that students interested in Pharmacy, Engineering, and other speciality schools will still have to indicate that they would like to apply to such schools. I also will go out on a limb and assume you must still have an “F” under gender on your driver’s license to get in to Douglass.

2. The second point is the emphasis placed surrounding the state budget cuts. The allocation to Rutgers will be cut 12% from the prior year, which was already cut mid-year last year. A 4.5% tuitition hike has been proposed to cover some of the cuts as well as the overall increase in expenses, but that won’t cover the whole shortfall.

From the state’s point of view, I can understand. They’re facing an incredible shortfall, in part as a result of the fiscal policy of the prior administration, which cut taxes and increased spending at a time of record government revenues that unsurprisingly turned out to be unsustainable.

In truth, the part that I find frustrating is the fiscal policy at the federal level. While the states have a certain responsibility to cover their own shortfalls, in place of a “silly” (in my opinion) dividend tax cut that will benefit relatively few, the money would be much better spent aiding the states. I have read in several places (and will seek out sources in the near future) that the amount of money from the federal government sent to public higher education institutions has fallen over the past several years/decades. So, it would not be out of character for the federal government to renew their assistance to important social goods such as education. After all, which serves as a better future investment, a dividend tax cut that does little for many, or ensuring that the next generation of Americans is better educated than the previous?