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I almost passed on Intolerable Cruelty, but it’s been a long time since I missed a Coen Brothers flick and I figured I might as well watch George Clooney emanating suave for a couple of hours. The Coens didn’t write the movie, which means it’s not the pure hit of creative oddness I wanted, but it was still OK.

As Coen screwball comedies go, it’s no Hudsucker Proxy, and as Coen romantic comedies go, it’s no Raising Arizona. I don’t think it was trying to be a screwball comedy, really; there wasn’t any snappy dialogue in the classic screwball sense. It felt more like a casual exercise than anything else.

The acting was perfectly solid, Catherine Zeta-Jones was luscious, and Clooney was great. I didn’t dislike the movie. It just didn’t have the zing you expect from the Coens — no bite.

[Population: One] <A HREF="http://popone.innocence.com/ar

Jon Udell has a very good article about using Bayesian techniques to categorize blog postings. I think this is rather interesting, because I keep meaning to try Bayesian filtering on (alternately) Usenet and my mailing lists. The difference between me and Udell is that he went out and did it and got paid for writing about it.

Now that he’s pointed me at the right tools, I may try this on Usenet. Bwah hah ha.

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The North Korean crisis has been pretty quiet lately, at least until KEDO decided to halt the North Korean reactor project.

This is pressure on North Korea to come back to the negotiating table. We’re betting that North Korea won’t escalate as a result. The only levers we have are power, food, and military action. We’re not going to starve people, and even if we were so inclined, the UN is working on food aid. We’re not going to invade a nuclear power. That leaves cutting the nuclear power plant construction, which has the advantage of not making the North Korean situation any worse. It just blocks one method of making things better, so it’s about the most palatable pressure possible.

No telling how North Korea will react. That reaction will determine if applying pressure was in fact the best thing to do.