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A generous person would regard it as a positive trait of mine—forgiveness, the ability to grant the benefit of the doubt—that I can tell everyone who will listen that a movie looks like it'll suck harder than a $10 whore but then I'll go tosee it anyway. As it turns out, 21 sucked a lot less than I expected. It's based on the book, Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich, which I read and really quite enjoyed some years ago.

The movie diverges significantly from the book, which itself is a true(ish) story, but this turns out to its advantage in my view. The movie introduces an antagonist in the form of Laurence Fishbourne's Vegas security consultant, and wedges in the mandatory love interest too, neither of which I remember from the book. These changes ultimately make the story a better fit for the movie medium, though they're a little more on the formulaic side than any of us would have wanted.

In fact the whole movies looks like it came off the end of a production line, with fewer surprises than a transparent Kinder egg, but if it doesn't stand out as fantastic it also doesn't stand out as terrible. The gambling and maths angle appealed to me, and made it that much more enjoyable. In the end I wouldn't be confident in recommending it to someone who didn't share those interests.

Maybe sit it out and go play the slots instead.

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From the prelude to Tim Ferriss's short interview with former Al Gore speech-writer Dan Pink, the trailer for Pink's new book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko. It's a business book in Manga format.

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I'm not Derren Brown, but it doesn't take a mind-reader to predict that I'm not the only person excited by the news that Peter Jackson will produce two movies based on The Hobbit (error corrections are mine, because Ain't It Cool News's illiteracy dismays me):

One will be an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. The second project is believed to be a bridge between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy - culled from the titanic amount of periphery/ancillary/notated material found in Tolkien's works. Such material can already be seen in the existing films.

I'm not shocked by this news. I don't think I ever really lost the feeling that this was ultimately inevitable. I'm happy to hear it's finally going to happen though. Most importantly, before some of the significant players become too old.

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My attention has been drawn to the Bibliochaise, a chair with convenient enclaves capable of holding (I would guess) hundreds of books. Build in a mini fridge and a commode and I'd never have to leave it.

Now to figure out a complicated sorting system that keeps my favourite books as accessible as possible but separated enough that My arms don't collide while reaching for them.

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When you're asked to "keep things cheerful" by someone who's brought as much joy to your life as Terry Pratchett has to mine, you damn well keep things cheerful. So there will be no solemn post here lamenting his recent diagnosis with early onset Alzheimer's. Instead, a celebration of the fact that "there's time for at least a few more books yet."

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Via Back Off, Man; I'm a Scientist comes the news that Stephen Fry will be following in the large footsteps of Douglas Adams in making a 20 years on follow-up to Last Chance to See.

I also find it interesting that Fry and Richard Dawkins are apparently in at least occasional contact on the subject of rationalism. Face it, folks: we have all the best people on our side.

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You could, if you felt the urge to, divide all of the books I've ever read into those that at some point describe a behavioural experiment conducted on pigeons, and those that don't. In terms of my enjoyment, the books in the former category almost universally rate higher than those in the latter category. Stumbling on Happiness bears this hypothesis out.

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It appears that Hughes and Hughes in the Stephen's Green Shopping Centre has a strange definition of the word new that I wasn't previously aware of.

This "new fiction" section contains a selection of works including Oliver Twist, Gulliver's Travels and Crime and Punishment. I can't wait to see what exciting works are produced next by today's wonderfully inventive authors.

Worryingly, it also seems that the person on the front of one of the other, unidentified books is playing the circle game.

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Bang! The Complete History of the Universe is a new popular science book about the origins and development of the universe for a lay audience. So far, so, "I've read it all before." What's interesting is the list of authors, which includes legendary glam rock guitar god Brian May—sorry, Dr Brian May—of Queen.

Alternative headlines for this post were: "Prince of the Universe"; "A Kind of Science"; "Radio Telescope Ga-Ga"; and "Brian May Has a Sodding Doctorate in Astrophysics"

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I'm using the new headline writing technique of writing something ridiculous and controversial and then putting a question mark in so I can get away with it. No Stephen Hawking isn't and idiot. But he's doing something that I disagree with, so I'm going to call him one. That's how the Internet works.

Hawking intends to jump back in the popular science book arena in early 2008 with a new book on his favourite subject: the origin of the universe. Hawking is certainly qualified to write such a book, and his previous successes lead me to expect that it will do quite well. So why is he an idiot?

He's only gone and called his new book "The Grand Design"! Let me be clear here. Stephen Hawking is clearly and evidently not a theist in any meaningful sense. Yes, he uses God as a convenient metaphor throughout his writing for a popular audience (at least; I haven't read any of his academic writings so I can't comment on them). But it should be clear to anyone familiar with his work that he is, at worst (or best, if that's your perspective) a deist and most probably an atheist.

So why muddy people's thoughts by using as a metaphor an idea that many people take to be literal truth? Even moderate religious people will no doubt interpret this title to mean that Hawking literally believes that the universe was consciously designed by some self-aware entity. Which will of course fuel the popular perception that there are a great many educated and influential scientists who hold such parochial views. They don't.

Albert Einstein is often trotted out as a key figure in such an appeal to authority. While the argument from authority, familiar as it is to many believers, is fallacious, in this case it's based on a faulty premise to boot. Like Hawking, Einstein used the metaphor of God extensively. But in his case it's even clearer what his true views were. Citations and quotes abound that demonstrate beyond all doubt that Einstein did not believe in a personal god. But, like Hawking after him, he failed to realise the damaging effect of facilitating this misconception.

Metaphor is a powerful literary tool. And it is often based on myth. But surely it is prudent to wait for a myth to die before resurrecting it to spruce up book titles?

Finally, on a slight aside inspired by comments I have read about this story, when is someone going to write a book addressing the really difficult question: why do people have such trouble with Hawking's name? It is Hawking, with a G. Not Hawkins. This has been a public service digression.

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