Eh, I wouldn't really say that they did. It followed the book's plot pretty religiously. In my view the first movie added new elements to the story by emphasizing the media aspect of the Games, whereas this one was more by-the-numbers.

I'm pretty sure like 97% of Argentines are of European descent. Along with Uruguay, it's the whitest country in the Americas.

I liked it a lot. (Spoilers)

Yeah , it's a classic "divide and conquer" strategy. The "career" districts and the crappier districts hate each other, so that distracts them from hating the Capitol. Combine that with compliant local elites within the various districts and a lack of any outside nations to stir shit up, and it's pretty stable.

So, I guess RSS is broken now? I'm not seeing anything from Monday on it, and I thought for a moment "pop culture weekend" was discontinued. I mostly used RSS for navigation anyways, since it was the best way to never miss anything.

It was actually at 1 and 6, but yeah I suppose.

Nobody speaks in a French accent. She spoke in a lower-class English accent, rather than an upper-class English accent. That's a pretty common convention in historical dramas.

Yeah, he should definitely watch out for spoilers in the comments sections. That burned me on Veronica Mars a bit.

I spent most of the weekend at drill, but I did see the latest episode of Reign, which is developing nicely. I like how they can create real drama without people being having horrible character, just conflicting, equally legitimate priorities and values.

I'm sorry I missed this. It wasn't on "What's On Tonight," so I forgot about it. :(

Rome could have literally gone on for a thousand seasons.

Yeah, I recently finished Justified season 1 and it was damn fine television.

The Daily Show has newsworthy interviews all the time, and they're never on newswire. But upon further reflection I do appreciate more that the article isn't so much "Daily Show highlights political idiocy," but rather is more about the fairness of the interview process and so forth.

Sorry to be "that guy," but if we wanted snarky politics, we'd be reading Wonkette, right? This is hardly pop culture related. I'm all about this sort of thing, but seeing it here leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Surely crypto-Pagans in France about 1,000 years too late is a bigger anachronism than anything in the wardrobe?

I liked how he included a little drawing with his response.

Neutral or "clean" districts can be drawn by nonpartisan commissions based on natural geographic lines and so forth. It's doable, but as you say, it still produces a heck of a lot of uncompetitive seats. (Although slightly fewer than we have today.)

It's not all thanks to gerrymandering. That plays a role certainly in making the seats safer, but a lot of House seats would be safe even if they were drawn neutrally.

Seeing Tatiana Maslany in Parks & Rec made me want to revisit her earlier work in The Nativity. It still isn't great, with the stuff with Herod and the Magi going nowhere really. But the core of the story with Mary and Joseph is solid. I used to think Maslany's performance as Mary was just whatever, but I appreciate…

Eh, that doesn't really hold up. Gold is a commodity. It goes up and down. Mutual funds or whatever should in theory go up and up forever, on balance, because brokers are always trading out stocks. If you're stockpiling gold, rather than trying to buy low and sell high, then you can't really get rich on it.