First: The NY Times has an article about turning garbage into fuel. It's a strange article, focusing mostly on the venture capital aspects of the story--can these startups make the process feasible? Which is a legit angle, but I'd like to see them factor in other considerations, like "mining" landfill and reclaiming trash dumps.
And wasn't there a city in the midwest that was drawing power from sewage treatment? Akron, maybe? I'd like to hear how that's turning out.
Second: The NY Yankees confiscate all sunblock from fans to protect against terrorist attacks. But don't worry! If you need protection from the sun on a 98-degree July day, you can buy 1 oz of SPF15 sunblock inside the stadium--for five bucks.
Security theater=Good business.
Third: A.O. Scott hopes superhero movies begin to bust. Frankly, I think he's missing the point. It's not the fact that they're big-budget superhero movies that make them thematically simple. It's that they're big-budget movies, period. Yeah, I know that there have been big-budget films that would meet his criteria for "lofty, serious themes," but blockbuster superhero films have only become successful as a genre in the last few years. Give it time to mature, dude. And learn to accept the compromises that big financial risks require.
