"Yes, eyes are for seeing, but these and all the other purposes in the natural world can be generated by processes that are themselves without purposes and without intelligence. This is hard to understand, but so is the idea that colored objects in the world are composed of atoms that are not themselves colored, and that heat is not made of tiny hot things." -- I think Dan Dennett, behemoth intellect and my first philosophy professor, not only smites the Intelligent Design goons once and for all here, he came up with a great new Bright Eyes album name!

Bookcrossing -- how have I not heard of this before? "The practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise." It's like intellectual littering-slash-resource management. Brilliant!

40-Year-Old Virgin Alert -- just a quick Ticket Stub blurb today, a glowing review of this sweet, sometimes stupid, and overwhelmingly hilarious Steve Carrell vehicle. I want to go back in time and not laugh so hard at Wedding Crashers after seeing this movie -- had their release dates been reversed, I would've seen W.C. as the far more puerile, generic film it is, Vince Vaughn notwithstanding. A simple premise ("Men are dogs -- hijinks ensue") and a witty, thoughtful script elevate this far beyond what it could've been: an extended SNL sketch, with dirty vocab. Carrell manages to make Andy, the titular neophyte, sympathetic rather than pitiful, a tall order. Extra points for Paul Rudd's ass and a Doug Henning poster, both prominently featured, plus the awesome dance number. Dare I say it: this is what a Male Chick Flick should be! (A) for laughs, (B) overall.

"Soon our collections will be all ones and zeroes stored deep in hard drives, instantly transferable and completely unsatisfying as possessions." -- The death of the Rock Snob is upon us, now that any fool can carry 10,000 totally obscure songs in his pocket. Boo hoo, Rock Snob, boo hoo.

"Too many Hollywood movies these days, they say, just are not good enough." -- Earth to Tinseltown: DUHHH! A NYTimes reporter is present for the dawning of reality among the studio heads. Check out the last few lines, where the Universal chief admits some of his summer movies "should never have been made." No kidding, dude. As NKW would say, it's like no human was involved in making this junk, it just gets extruded from a tube. Take a lesson from the audience favorites this summer: smaller is better, and just plain BETTER is better.