Fun with Trolls (not!)

Some people may remember this post, in which I linked to a post by riverbend, discussing the bidding processes in place for reconstruction contracts in Iraq.

Yesterday, some enlightened soul decided to comment on that months-old post:

The $50,000,000 for the New Diyala Bridge contract of Riverbend's is a lie

So, in an attempt at fair-mindedness (or just being a sucker for trolls) I went out there looking for *any* further evidence or information whatsoever.

I didn't find any, either agreeing with riverbend or contradicting her. So, in the absence of any sort of official denial from anyone involved, I'll give riverbend the benefit of the doubt, notwithstanding the opinions of anonymous commenters.

However, I did find several near-identical flat-out contradictions, all on months-old blog posts linking the riverbend story, all posted yesterday by a "Ruth" (here, here, here, here and here) I suspect there would be more, if I were to keep looking.

The last couple of those also have comments from a "matt" who posted this:

The $50,000,000 for the New Diyala Bridge contract of Riverbend's looks more and more like a shabby lie.

on November 13th. Hmmm. I wonder if "ruth" and "matt" know each other?

Given my past experience on Usenet, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that there are people who have nothing better to do than go bumbling around the web posting anti-comments like that on anything they disagree with.

Catch-up reviews: Finding Nemo, Matrix Revolutions

After a long period where I didn't read or watch anything worth reviewing, I then entered a period where I did read/watch some stuff, but never got around to commenting on any of it. So, some catching up is in order. Films first:

Finding Nemo
Pixar, on form. Good natured and funny. I particularly enjoyed John Ratzenberger's bit-part as a helpful school of fish, which should really have been credited as "fun with flocking algorithms"

[aside: a few weeks back, slashdot was quoting reports that Disney is winding down on traditional cel animation in favour of CGI, saying "people want CGI", and citing Pixar's success as evidence. If true, this only confirms my opinion that Disney has lost the plot completely - it's the scripts, guys!]

The Matrix Revolutions
I enjoyed it, but it's nothing special. After the first half an hour, which feels like an even-more-disjointed version of Reloaded, Revolutions drops all the pseudo-philosophical claptrap and suddenly starts to function fairly well as a no-brain action movie. I'll just point to my comments on Reloaded and say: better as an action movie, less dodgy philosophizing, still a duff script. They even had the nerve to credit one actor's part as "Deus Ex Machina". Puh-lease.