Month: April 2010

Lincoln by Ford

A fictionalized event in the life of Abe Lincoln is the subject of a restored 1913 movie, starring Francis Ford, the brother of legendary director John Ford, as a rather short version of the 16th President. The Boston Globe has this item about the discovery of the film, and you can hear more about it on New Hampshire public radio.

Was Francis Ford Coppola named after the actor? I’ll let you look that up for yourself. For a lot more on Francis Ford, see this well-researched article in senses of cinema.

Iron Man 2’s in the can

The Iron Man 2 blitz is on, and Dr. Pepper has a fun commercial tie-in. Hey, there’s shameless Stan Lee, making one of his cameos. Note: the first appearance of Iron Man (Tales of Suspense #39, 1963) was scripted by Stan’s brother, Larry Lieber.

P.S. Disney has this ultra-cute 4 GB Iron Man USB flash drive (I discourage use of the terms “jump” or “thumb” drive).

Hasta la Vista RTM

Today was it for (all three or four of) you Windows Vista lovers who can’t bear to update your original RTM (release to manufacturer) installation with the broken Control Panel. After today support ends you’ll get no more security updates unless you update to Service Pack 1 or 2. And you XP SP2 diehards (you know who you are — or maybe you don’t!) have until July 13 to embrace SP3.

Welcome to Pair-o-dice

The push to allow casino gambling is a hot topic here in Massachusetts. Gambling is economically regressive. Much of the money comes from those who can least afford to spend it — day laborers, people on Social Security, etc. The only valid argument that I see favoring Massachusetts casinos is keeping the state’s gamblers from spending their money at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. WGBH radio in Boston, which recently retooled to compete with FM news leader WBUR, has been doing a series on casino gambling.

http://www.wgbh.org/news/lastresort.cfm

I was surprised to hear that Mohegan Sun wants to develop a casino in Massachusetts.Their chosen site is Palmer, which is one of the many failed mill towns in the region. Apparently Mohegan Sun executives feel Palmer is far enough away from Uncasville, Connecticut that they won’t be competing with themselves.

The decline of communities like Palmer has been going on for a very long time. Over 30 years ago, I spent a day with Nixon-Watergate attorney John Dean, who was speaking at my college, and while we were driving through Western Massachusetts we talked about how many of the once-thriving textile mill towns were in trouble. Is casino gambling a way out of financial desperation? I don’t think so. I think it causes more desperation than it prevents, but if it happens my feeling is very simple: NIMBY.