Pun Salad

• Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and Bernie Sanders doesn't even come close to that accuracy. But let it be said he was right about this:

  Sen. Bernie Sanders said Monday that campus rape disputes should always be handled by the police, rather than university administrators, departing from conventional left-feminist thinking on student-on-student violence.

  For anyone not enraptured by ideology, this is utterly sensible. Rape is a crime; handling crimes is what we have a justice system for; QED. But poor Bernie is getting pilloried.

• And if you want to feel further sympathy for Bernie, read Jim "Indispensable" Geraghty's thoughts on "Chelsea Clinton, Shameless and Dishonest Attack Dog".

  The Clinton campaign keeps inventing innovative, groundbreaking new ways to be shameless. Now they’re using Chelsea Clinton as an attack dog, making one of those patented technically-true-but-epically-misleading-out-of-context accusations.

  RTWT, and you'll get bonus links to Jim's comments on Chelsea over the years. For all the Democrat outrage about a "riggged system" or a "stacked deck", they are remarkably complacent about one of their own waltzing into professional opportunities despite minimal qualifications and no demonstrable talent.

• what3words is very neat. Just go. My home: cosmic.gearbox.gazing. My workplace: latest.nights.myself

• Yeah, sure, he was Hans Gruber. And Severus Snape. But Alan Rickman's finest role was certainly Alexander Dane in Galaxy Quest. RIP, sir. By Grabthar's hammer, by the suns of Worvan, you shall be avenged!

• I've actually seen two of Oscar's Best Picture nominees. (This one and this one.) There were outrageous snubs, as Stephen Miller points out:

  Not sure how the Academy overlooked this guy. #Snub #OscarNoms pic.twitter.com/MuhAD1vuxy

  — Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) January 14, 2016

I've been a minor Sherlock Holmes fan for about a half-century now, and I'm kind of a sucker for various efforts to leech (heh) off his continuing popularity. For the record, I didn't much care for reinventing Holmes as an action hero; I watch Elementary, which is OK, but often doesn't play fair with the viewer; I like the mind-twisting Cumberbatchian Sherlock quite a bit.

In comparison, this movie deals with a near-canon Holmes, portrayed masterfully by Ian McKellan. It's set in a universe where the stories were written by Dr. Watson, not A.C. Doyle. It takes place mostly in 1947, when the great detective has long been retired (in Watson's words) "living the life of a hermit among your bees and your books in a small farm upon the South Downs." There are three intertwined plot threads: (1) Holmes' interaction with the young son of his current housekeeper (played by a near-unrecognizable Laura Linney); (2) flashbacks to his recent trip to Japan to retrieve "prickly ash", said to assist in maintaining mental acuity in the aging; (3) which he needs to try to untangle exactly what happened years ago in the case that led to his retirement: a wayward wife's inexplicable obsession with lessons on the armonica.

In the latter two, of course: Not All Is As It Seems. Holmes' efforts are complicated by his failing memory; he keeps track of really important stuff by making notes on his shirt cuffs.

No crimes. Still fun, though.