The Puppy Would Have Worked In Reality

SPOILER ALERT: I do not believe in spoiler alerts.

"The Interview" is not exactly "Stripes" without Bill Murray, nor is it quite "Spies like Us" with Chevy Chase, however it is certainly in that set.  Either way it is a cute movie and worth the $5.99 online fee.  The short version: Two bumbling goofs take down a regime.

Don't let the strange descriptions floating around out there scare you.  Some radio show called the scene of Kim Jong-un's demise horrific, or gruesome, or some such.  It is more like the scene where all the Nazis died in "Raiders of the Lost Ark."  Kim's face flaps, melts and his body burns in slow motion.

Gawker

"The Interview" certainly is not borrowed from the true story of any celebrity visiting a brutal dictator, like a Jack Nicholson/Chevy Chase/Oliver Stone/Harry Belafonte/Kevin Costner/Steven Spielberg visit to Fidel Castro, with Kim as a proxy.  Perhaps it is one of those Hollywood twists where it would be nice if what happened in the movie would work in reality.

In reality, the dictators schmooze their celebrity visitors ("honeydicking" in "The Interview"), it works, and the celebrities become animatronic marketing tools for the Hitlers, Stalins, and Maos of the 21st century.

In "The Interview," Kim (Randall Park) gives Dave Skylark (James Franco) a puppy (played by Seth Rogen's dog Zelda) right before they are to go on live television around the world.  It does not work and Skylark's line of questioning leads Kim to cry and poop his pants on international TV.

Apparently the puppy works in reality.

Zelda Miller Rogen

Ⓐ Steve Ⓐ

Human Action: My latest at The Foundation for Economic Education

ANYTHING PEACEFUL Human Action Is More Than an Idea

SEPTEMBER 23, 2013 by STEVE ESPOSITO

I've been watching this documentary about Napster called Downloaded. I am reminded of the most important thing in making a great idea work: work. 

It is not enough to just come up with a good idea, even a brilliant idea—even the best idea in the history of the world. You have to do something with that idea.

I know a little something about failing step two. 

In 1995, just about a year or so before the Napster wizards started creating their system, I had an idea as a captain at the U.S. Total Army Personnel Command (U.S. Army Human Resources). I was called to active duty for a few months to build a database application to keep track of all the reserve components soldiers going to and from the Bosnia theater of operations. You may be thinking the same thing I was at the time: "Aren't we already keeping track of that?" Well, technically, we were, but in a very inefficient manner. I was not called in because I had any stellar reputation as a database builder; I was called in because I was the one person in the command who had demonstrated during his Reserve duty that he knew something about building a database and knew something about Army human resources.

Read the rest: http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/human-action-is-more-than-an-idea#ixzz2fqWRVNjg

Ⓐ Steve Ⓐ