I finally got around to watching Kill Bill (Volume One) the other day, and, just for the record, it’s freaking awful. The Chinese rope-powered martial air-ballet is one of the most awful concepts in movie history, along with the butt-kicking babe. Kill Bill, of course, relies heavily on both.

Imagine a contemporary remake of “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”: After a seven second long staredown (can’t bore those MTV kids!) The Woman Without A Name (played by Jennifer Gardner) suddenly soars through the air and knocks out both antagonists with incredibly powerful kicks. That’s pretty much the level of artistry brought to us by Kill Bill type movies.

IKEA’s new store in Stoughton is now hiring and surely you don’t mind if I put on my Old Country* hat for a second to enthuse about the company’s culture and management practices. Swedish companies haven’t always covered themselves in glory around here. Think “The Astra Way.” Think Metro. IKEA is nothing like that. IKEA is what a company should be. I have never worked at IKEA myself, but I have relative who’s currently working there, and I have friends who’ve worked there and they’ve all had very positive experiences.

In other words, if you’re looking for work, take a look at IKEA.

On a different note, it’s great that companies like IKEA are expanding in our state, but check out this reality-check paragraph:

Jobs like the ones IKEA is offering will provide at least temporary employment for people who have trained as engineers and information technology experts, but who can find no jobs in those areas. ”We have a lot of people willing to take these jobs because the original job they were looking for that would meet their skill set is not there now,” [Anne Whooley at the Employment and Training Resources office in Norwood] said. ”Now, they are looking for a job that takes into account some of their skill sets or maybe it is a hobby for them, like painting.”

In spite of some small pockets of critical-skills shortages, Massachusetts’ labor market is a very employer-friendly one right now.

*Strictly speaking, IKEA is really from Småland, a province in southeastern Sweden whose people has distinct accents, and a culture and history that is somewhat different from that of the rest of Sweden. No part of Sweden resisted centralization in the 16th century as violently as Småland did, for example. Much of that Swedish crystal is from Småland. IKEA’s legendary frugality is sterotypical Smålandish. A LOT of Swedes who emigrated to America in the 19th Century were from Småland. The world’s most famous Smålänning is probably Astrid Lindgren, author of Pippi Longstocking (and a lot of other, and way better, books).

Hailing from other tribes than Småland’s, I’ve never really had much love for Småland and its über-dense forests, so don’t think I’m some kind of Smålandish nationalist. Tribally speaking, I’m mostly Goth**-turned-centralist/nationalist Swede. I’m just giving credit where credit is due.

** No, NOT that kind of goth.

Wellesley High has decided to cut back on that whole school thing so that its seniors can devote more time to non-competetive basketball and Tsunami relief efforts. The move is applauded by the Dean of admissions at MIT:

In April, Marilee Jones, dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, addressed Wellesley parents and students about the poor emotional and physical health she sees in many college applicants. Jones has spoken nationally on the issue and has even reduced the number of lines on MIT’s application for listing extracurricular activities.

”College admissions are a huge offender here. We really don’t always realize we’re offenders because we’re just trying to admit the best people,” Jones said. ”It’s very insidious how this creeps up on us.”

She applauded Wellesley’s approach. ”It’s an act of faith toward the students, but it’s just the beginning,” she said. ”We need to think about, ‘What do they need every day to be healthy?’ “

Put bluntly: Colleges want more non-Asian non-whites, but since non-Asian non-whites are reliably bad at SAT and other exam or enterance tests colleges have decided that such test aren’t reliable, instead opting for more “holistic” approaches, that is, they value accomplishments (or just plain circumstances) that have nothing to do with school or academics. Unsurprisingly, students have reacted by engaging in more non-academic activities. I’m sure it’s very painful for the marxists who run American academia to admit, but it’s a supply and demand thing.

Blah blah blah Department of Justice blah blah blah Boston blah blah blah elections blah blah blah Spanish blah blah blah “undocumented translations” blah blah blah.

For an inexpensive, intense, full-body workout, why not go out in the woods with some friends and beat the crap out of some people you don’t like?

Ranking Swedish Open Border Lunatic Johan Norberg likes Thomas Friedman’s “The World Is Flat” (I’m saddened by the way Creationist-type thinking is spreading), but with some reservations:

Granted, sometimes he is a bit too shallow, you get exhausted by reading about all his “friends” in important places and with his way of substituting slogans and alliteration for deep thought

Friedman? Shallow? Shocking. I freely admit to not having read Friedman’s book, but based on the columns he churns out, I’d say this still seems like a reasonable take.

Update: Some loser insists that the world is round and that history is driven by more factors than just technological advances, like religion and nationalism. What a fogey. But, he makes…sense:

There is no systematic connection between globalization and the free market. It is no more essentially friendly to liberal capitalism than to central planning or East Asian dirigisme. Driven by technological changes that occur in many regimes, the process of globalization is more powerful than any of them. This is a truth that Friedman—as an avowed technological determinist—should accept readily enough. If he does not, it is because it shows how baseless are the utopian hopes he attaches to a process that abounds in conflicts and contradictions. Globalization makes the world smaller. It may also make it—or sections of it—richer. It does not make it more peaceful, or more liberal. Least of all does it make it flat.

MySpace, whose juvenile users frequently lift material from other websites without asking for permission or even sending courtesy links in return, has been bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for a shocking $580 million. The price-tag reminds me of that hapless German publishing company - Snookered + Dumb - who bought Fast Company for a cool half billion bucks, or Yahoo’s $5 billion acquistion of Broadcast.com, the deal that turned the world into Mark Cuban’s personal playground.

In less than two years, MySpace has emerged as one of the hottest sites on the Web. It has more page views than Google (GOOG ). And with 22 million members, and a growth rate of 2 million a month, it stands to rival MSN (MSFT ), Yahoo! (YHOO ) and AOL (TWX ) as one of the major destinations on the Web.

With a heavy focus on music, it has become a part of daily life for teenagers and young adults nationwide. Members create highly personalized home pages loaded with message boards, blogs, photos, and streaming music and video. People use it to stay in touch with friends and meet other people. Driven by the expressiveness of its members, the social-networking site has emerged as an important channel for online advertising. TV shows and new music are often debuted on MySpace.

As much as I hate MySpace and its bandwith-stealing, barely literate, as-cool-as-MTV-tells-them-to-be members, it’s a great place to watch teenagers express themselves. It’s like a gigantic, disorganized focus group. An unfocus group (TM, R, C).

Roland Poirer Martinsson gillar inte den här artikeln i Aftonbladet som enligt honom “är så belamrad med fel och fördomar att jag inte ens ska börja kommentera den. Läs den själva som ett exempel på tidningens nästan osannolika ryggmärgspropaganda och dess galaktiska brist på professionalitet.”

Jag håller inte med honom. På tabloidsvenska är det fullt rimligt att hävda att utnämningen av John Roberts till HD-domare “kan hota” aborträtten i USA så tillvida att Roberts kanske kommer att rösta för att häva det groteska Roe v. Wade, där HD 1973 upptäckte vad alla missat i två sekel, nämligen att författningen garanterar fri abort.

Men tillsättningen av Roberts kommer inte i sig själv att stjälpa Roe, ty i dagsläget finns det bara tre domare i HD som vill göra det: Scalia, Thomas och Rehnquist. Nästa domare att gå i pension blir antagligen Rehnquist och då kommer det bli nödvändigt att utnämna en Roe-motståndare enbart för att upprätthålla rådande styrkeförhållande. Efter Rehnquist blir det antagligen den likaledes skröplige domaren Stevens som kastar in handduken. Om det vid det laget finns fyra Roe-motståndare bland domstolens nio domare så blir utnämningen av hans ersättare riktigt intressant. Men vi vet i dagsläget inte ens om Roberts tillhör anti-Roe gänget.

Även om Roe upphävs så innebär inte det att aborter förbjuds eller ens inskränks i USA. I stället förskjutas abortfrågan till kongressen och delstaterna. Ett antal delstater skulle i det läget sannolikt mer eller mindre totalförbjuda aborter, ett större antal skulle på olika sätt inskränka aborträtten men långt ifrån avskaffa den, medan ett antal delstater skulle bevara dagens fria aborter.

Själv är jag i stora drag för rätten till abort, även om jag anser att abort är moraliskt förkastlig och samhällsskadande, men Roe är ett riktigt uselt domslut som förhoppningsvis kommer att sopas bort inom 5-10 år, om än mera troligt aldrig.

President George W. Bush pretty much did an end-around on all the speculation on whom he’d nominate for the Supreme Court when he picked supposedly-conservative judge John Roberts to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. Roberts is touted by right-wingers as a judge in Scalia’s mold. One can only hope that turns out to be the case.

German weekly Der Spiegel reports on the race-religious wars in southern Mexico, where whites, mestizos, indians, catholics, protestants, and, increasingly, muslims are vying for power.