Thanks to cable news, I know more about what is happening in Aruba, where one American teenage girl is missing and most likely dead, than I do about Iraq, where more than 1,700 American soldiers have died over the past 2 years and 3 months.

Today it was wicked hot. I went to the JCC to exercise, but there was almost no one there. In the evening I saw "Batman Begins" with Dan. It was a pretty good movie considering I usually don't enjoy such movies. Gotham sure looks a lot like Chicago, and in some shots you could clearly discern the Chicago River, the drawbridges and Marina City towers. I think he actually raced the Batmobile down State Street, and later down what might have been the Kennedy Expressway. At least the moviemakers were creative in coming up with a really dingy elevated monorail that's about twice or three times higher off the ground than the El, with tracks in different directions running on different levels. Gotham's slum at times appears like Wrigleyville and at other times like Kowloon. I personally would like to have seen Katie Holmes be a little more physical, but mostly all she did was talk or act all drugged-out. All in all, a fine piece of work, though part of the beginning, which appears to take place in Tibet, was pretty boring and reminded me too much of the Last Samurai, which I have already seen. And how could Schindler end up the bad guy?