Island Passage

Cheat Codes

2011-09-06T15:46:00.000-07:00

Almost everyone who was born after the Ford Administration knows what "cheat codes" are. But for my fellow boomers I'll explain that cheat codes are (generally undocumented) special inputs to video games that allow the player to gain an advantage. They usually consist of pressing controller keys in a very exact sequence. They reward the game player with a variety of goodies: special powers and strength for their game avatar, or in "shooter" games, new and more powerful weapons or unlimited amunition.

You can search the internet for game walkthroughs and cheat codes. Whenever a new game comes out, dedicated players try out different obscure combinations of a game controllers keys, trying to find the combination that will give them an advantage in the game.

Game creators are aware of this interest and will make sure that cheat codes are "accidentally" leaked to their most loyal fans. These loyal fans then pass this along to their friends. There is even a market for books detailing the cheat codes of various video games.

My favorite nephew passed this tweet along to me this morning:

I was knocked back on my heels by this bit off tossed-off wisdom.

Proverbs do encode shortcuts to wisdom gathered through hard experience. Proverbs don't substitute for actually thinking the problem through.

Note the many proverbs that seem to contradict each other: "Many hands make light work," vs. "Too many cooks spoil the soup." or : "All things come to him who waits," vs. "Strike while the iron is hot."

But I do love the word image of the tweet, "I think proverbs may actually be cheat codes."

I love the idea that these nuggets of wisdom give us access to advantages put into our lives by the designer; and that if I take advantage of this wisdom I will find myself boosted with new strength, longer life, and unlimited spiritual amunition.

Heh.

Ischemic Attack!

2011-01-29T14:18:00.000-08:00

The word is out on the digital street that I was in the E.R. last night, standing in for George Clooney. That's not entirely accurate.

Last Tuesday I felt a tingling sensation in my right leg, as though my leg were asleep. After a couple of hours the feeling passed. Thursday the sensation returned and covered the entire right side of my body. Friday night I checked my blood pressure and it was high. So Mrs. Islander drove me down to the Island Emergency Room.

Checking into the ER when you don't have a broken limb or gaping wound seems a bit false, as though you are malingering. At those prices, though, it's no joke. I could feel the money flying out of my wallet.

Because the issues involved are your own health and life, yet you spend so much time alone in a strange room, time spent in the ER swings from boring to fascinating. Lying in a bed, connected to different monitors, I couldn't get up and walk around, so I had to devise my own entertainment.

The monitors to which the nurses hooked me up are set to sound an alarm if the patient's bpm drop below 50. I have a normally low resting heart rate (49 beats per minute). After responding to the third alarm, the nurse reset the monitor alarm to 45 bpm.

I laid back, relaxed, and slowed my breathing, timing it to my heartbeats. I dropped my heart rate to 44 bpm and triggered the alarm again.

Good times, good times.

I was given a diagnosis of TIA Transient Ischemic Attack (mini-stroke). A CT scan could see no lesions (brain damage), so I'm doing well so far. (No snide remarks from my siblings--I have doctor's proof of no brain damage. Do you?)

Monday morning I report into my own doctor's office and get an ultrasound of my neck and schedule an MRI.

I'll post more as events warrant. You are free to go about your daily lives.

Avatar (No, not that one)

2010-05-11T13:59:00.001-07:00

I keep trying out avatars for web use. This was generated by the Mad Men website.

Outgeeked

2009-12-25T22:38:00.000-08:00

This Christmastide we had as guests my wife's sister and her husband, Jim. As guys do, we sniffed around a couple of topics to see if we were from the same tribe.

He mentioned that he liked classic Sci-Fi, and I asked him to name a couple of favorite authors. (Think of that scene in The Commitments: "Who are your influences?"

Jim allowed that he used to be a big Piers Anthony fan. I asked him if he liked my favorite Anthony novel, Omnivore.

Without a word he rolled up his shirt sleeve to reveal a tattoo of the fungal carnivore.

I was completely outgeeked.

Dept. of Duh

2009-09-29T15:25:00.000-07:00

ABC News: Shoe Style Linked to Foot Pain

Why I'm Rereading: Island in the Sea of Time

2009-09-24T13:34:00.000-07:00

I have known several people in my life who never re-read a book. Once they have closed the cover on the last page, they are onto the next thing--book, task, whatever. I also know of people that have a favorite re-read. My friend Alex would re-read Dune every summer. It kind of defined summer to read it, I guess. My former boss Bill would re-read The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever every couple of years.

I am a person that rereads. I do so for several reasons. First of all, I reread for pure pleasure, re-experiencing the best of what I have read. Secondly, I re-read because books don't change, but I have changed since the last time I read a book. Thirdly, I re-read becuase The book was so challenging the first time that I want to get more from it on subsequent readings.

I am currently re-reading S.M. Stirling's alternate-history Island in the Sea of Time, which I first read back in the late 1990s.

Why?

I recently finished Sword of the Lady, the 6th book in his "Emberverse" series which is loosely connected to the "Island" series and I wanted to refresh my memory of the first events in the series before I arrive at the conclusion, "High King in Montival," next year.

My Sweety recently read the book at the urging of my Daughter and enjoyed it very much. (She's not much of an SF reader.)

And I have changed in the last 15 years. I have spent several years studying Japanese sword (Kenjutsu) and I am ranked Shodan-ni in Seiki-ryu Kentutsu/Jodo. So now reading the weapon-work of Captain Marion Alston is accompanied by better-informed mental images of what she is doing.

What would Milton Friedman do?

2009-09-21T12:54:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of people exercised over the fear of government intervention into the US economy and I am one of them.

So why did I support (writing to my congresspeople) the TARP I bailout?

Thankfully, Kevin Williamson answers that question for me:

There are those conservatives who ask themselves, “What would Jesus do?” There are those who ask, “What would Ronald Reagan do?” There are even a few who ask, “What would Russell Kirk do, other than pour himself a scotch and shake his head sadly before writing another 1,000 pages?” I ask myself, “What would Milton Friedman do?”

Milton Friedman would have supported a bank bailout.

Or it seems he would have, given that a bank bailout is more or less what he prescribed for the last great financial crisis, the one leading up to the Great Depression, which he dwells upon at some length in his Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. The vulgarized version of Friedman: The Federal Reserve helped turn a routine if severe recession into the Great Depression by tightening the supply of money and credit. But as economists as different as Paul Krugman and Tyler Cowen have pointed out, the more accurate version is this: The Fed helped cause the Great Depression by allowing the supply of money and credit to tighten. The distinction is important. How did they allow it? By declining to bail out the failing banks...

Free-marketeers tend to think of our orientation not only as an economic position but also as a virtue. (It is.) But there is a danger in letting that belief congeal into dogma and, in consequence, allowing abstractions to obscure realities. It is true that the root evil here was government intervention in the economy: The Fed’s over-loose money after Dot-Bomb and 9/11, combined with tax incentives and the market-distorting actions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, helped create the housing bubble; various government policies then helped turn that bubble into a global disaster. The subprime meltdown was not a failure of what is so often mischaracterized as “unbridled capitalism.” It was as much a failure of regulatory excess as of Scrooge McDuck, literally-rolling-in-it excess.

But it is not necessarily wise to start practicing austerities at the moment of crisis. Those who opposed the bailouts were, I think, seeking to restore the virtues of the free market — at precisely the wrong time. It is as though we had been diagnosed with lung cancer and responded merely by swearing off cigarettes. What about radiation therapy? What, are you crazy? Radiation gives you cancer! And people get sick in hospitals! ....

I suspect that many of us who opposed the bailouts did so based on unjustified optimism. Surely, we thought, the citizens of this commercial republic will have learned their lesson and will hasten to enact reforms that are consistent with their experience and liberal values. Those of us who believed that must somehow have missed the contemporaneous ascent of Barack Obama, whose election as president does not suggest that the nation is ready for a heaping helping of Adam Smith. Professor Cowen demands:

If you are a libertarian, is not our current course more favorable for liberty than would have been a repeat of 1929–1931? If not, I would be curious to hear your counterfactual version of how matters would have proceeded, without the financial bailouts. Is it that you think the regional banks would have raised the financing to pick up the entire bag and keep the banking system afloat? Or is it that natural market forces would have somehow avoided a wrenching surprise deflation? Or do you think the authorities for some reason would have not nationalized the major banks? . . . If we had not done the bailouts we did, we would, within a few months’ or weeks’ time, have received a much worse and costlier bailout run by Congress and Nancy Pelosi. How does that sound?

Sounds like hell on earth, professor.

The Religious urge for Multiverse

2009-06-05T14:21:00.000-07:00

The Constant Reader may remember that I have problems with the current craze for resolving every ambiguity of physics with the concept of "multiverse."

Now, Lee Smolin, a founding member and research physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, has challenged other physicists to work out the implications of a single universe:

Smolin explains how theories describing a myriad of possible universes, with less or more dimensions and different kinds of particles and forces, have become increasingly popular in the last few years. However, through his work with the Brazilian philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Smolin believes that, despite there being good reasons for the conclusion that we live in a timeless multiverse, those theories, and the concomitant assumption that time is not a fundamental concept, are "profoundly mistaken".

Smolin points out why a timeless multiverse means that our laws of physics are no longer determinable from experiment and how the connection between fundamental laws, which are unique and applicable universally from first principles, and effective laws, which hold based on what we can actually observe, becomes unclear.

Smolin suggests a new set of principles that he hopes will begin a fresh adventure in science where we have to reconceive the notion of law to apply to a single universe that happens just once. These principles begin with the assertion that there is only one universe; that all that is real is real in a moment, as part of a succession of moments; and that everything that is real in a moment is a process of change leading to the next or future moments. As he explains, "If there is just one universe, there is no reason for a separation into laws and initial conditions, as we want a law to explain just one history of the one universe."

If we embrace the idea that there is only one universe and that time is a fundamental property of nature, then this opens up the possibility that the laws of physics evolve with time. As Smolin writes, "The notion of transcending our time-bound experiences in order to discover truths that hold timelessly is an unrealizable fantasy. When science succeeds, we do nothing of the sort; what we physicists really do is discover laws that hold in the universe we experience
within time. This, I would claim, should be enough; anything beyond that is more
a religious urge for transcendence than science."

And it is this final sentence that looses the arrow: "...anything beyond that is more a religious urge for transcendence than science."

Precisely!

"Shut up," He explained.

2009-05-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

Lanny Davis: Hey, we'll only have show trials for people with the temerity to fight back!

He reminds me of the little boy caught fighting by his mother, "It all started when Timmy hit me back!"

Randism

2009-05-15T18:03:00.000-07:00

The wonderfully named Scott Galupo writes that conservatives should get over their fascination with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Best line:

"Indeed, Miss Rand's writings are catnip for those who seek to deflect any and all blame for the current economic crisis away from the private sector. Like the airtight religious belief system that it essentially is, Randian capitalism can never stumble or fail — it can only be betrayed."

Heh.

I first read The Fountainhead, then Atlas Shrugged when I was in my late 20s with a wife and two children to support. I found them an odd mix of stilted didactic text mixed with heaving-bosom "woman's fiction." I was entertained by how she walked her characters through their set pieces, but not swept up by thier wooden speechifying.

I guess you have to read Rand while in your teens to really be ruined by her books.

A Rogue Agency

2009-05-14T16:18:00.000-07:00

Just sent:

The Honorable Rick Larsen

Sir;

I am very troubled about the statements by the House Speaker, the Honorable Nancy Pelosi, about whether or not the CIA mislead her during briefings about enhanced interrogation techniques. The issue is much deeper and more dangerous than any particular interrogation techniques by agents of the CIA, it is a claim that the CIA has slipped from the reigns of congressional oversight, that we have that most frightening of spectres: a rogue secret intelligence agency.

These claims must be investigated to clear either the CIA or Speaker Pelosi. Secret agencies are a regrettable necessity, so we allow them to operate only under the oversight of our elected representatives. I ask you to call for an investigation of these claims, and to join with other representatives in calling for this investigation.

I will watch in the next few months to see that the American people and their freedoms and safety are guarded.

Big Trek Theory

2009-05-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

I can't remember which musician in Nirvana said it, but the quote went something like: "How do you know that you have made it in the music business? When Al Yankovic writes a parody of one of your songs."

So the meta-narrative validates the narrative.

The new Star Trek reboot seems to be taking off, but I wonder: how is it going to be handled on Big Bang Theory? Ripe grounds for nerd contraversy!

Five Reasons the GOP Will Rebound

2009-05-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

Over at CNN, John Feehery lists five reasons that the GOP will rebound. Numbers one and two of these reasons have been pretty well discussed, but three through five are (to me) fresher:

The party in power tends to overreach.

People want checks on power.

Crisis breeds renewal.

Talent senses opportunity.

The Republican Party is now the de facto Libertarian Party.

I think a lot of people on the left don't get number five and don't see how it is linked to number one.

Gripes

2009-05-05T16:19:00.000-07:00

Todd posted this:

see more Funny Graphs

This makes me rant a bit about remembering when the A&E channel stood for "Arts & Entertainment." I remember getting basic cable and really enjoying a presentation of The Mikado in which the Lord High Executioner's song had an encore wherein he listed all of the modern annoyances that would call for his sword's work (people that talked loudly on cell phones in public places, etc..).

Or when MTV was about music...or when Discovery was about science...or...

Back in the 1990s, one of the big arguments against funding of PBS was that these new cable channels would provide diversity of programming and fill the econiche of public TV.

How I wish it were true. The only channel that has kept true to that kind of charter is CSPAN.

Twitter

2009-05-05T16:04:00.000-07:00

A year after I was prodded by one of my sons-in-law, I signed up on Twitter.

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world! That has such people in't!

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film

2009-05-05T14:50:00.000-07:00

It's not quite that bad. Not quite.

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'

Science in Its Rightful Place

2009-04-16T15:20:00.000-07:00

President Obama has stated in his inaugural address, "We will restore science to its rightful place." I guess that I am less that sure about where that place is.

What is science's place? If it has been displaced, what has usurped it?

I am sure to those (such as myself) who still hold a Modernist viewpoint, science is pretty much authoritative. And for questions that it was created to answer, science does pretty well. I am a big advocate of Western allopathic medicine, physics, information theory, and most of the rest of the Dead European White Man package. Given the choice between antibiotics and accupuncture and herbal cures, I say, "Pass the pills, please."

But physical science was created to answer one category of questions, not every category. One of the big lessons of the 20th century is that while science is good at answering questions of "how," (as in, "How do I build a bridge that spans the Golden Gate?"), it pretty much fails when asked the questions of "why," (as in, "Why should I not take everything away from people who are ethnically different from me?")

If science has been displaced, I think that it has been displaced by clearer thinking about "why" we should (or should not) attempt some actions. We should ask questions about the value of human life before we use science to design weapons of mass destruction. We should ask those same questions before we use science to justify subordinating human lives to those of animals.

During the High Middle Ages, theology was "The Queen of the Sciences," and served as the capstone to the Trivium and Quadrivium that young men were expected to study. This meant that the other subjects (including Philosophy) existed primarily to help with theological thought.

Science had better watch out. Nothing stays the same.

Good Friday Posting--Crucifixion

2009-04-10T13:04:00.001-07:00

An admirable article at Slate about the significance of Jesus' crucifixion in the first century:

A central statement in traditional Christian creeds is that Jesus was crucified "under Pontius Pilate." But the majority of Christians have only the vaguest sense what the phrase represents, and most non-Christians probably can't imagine why it's such an integral part of Christian faith. "Crucified under Pontius Pilate" provides the Jesus story with its most obvious link to larger human history.
Pilate was a historical figure, the Roman procurator of Judea; he was referred to in other sources of the time and even mentioned in an inscription found at the site of ancient Caesarea in Israel. Linking Jesus' death with Pilate represents the insistence that Jesus was a real person, not merely a figure of myth or legend. More than this, the phrase also communicates concisely some pretty important specifics of that historical event...

...It's rather clear what St. Paul meant by saying that "the preaching of the cross is foolishness" to most people of his day. As Martin Hengel showed in Crucifixion in the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross, Roman-era writers deemed crucifixion the worst imaginable fate, a punishment of unspeakable shamefulness. Celsus, a Roman critic of Christianity, ridiculed Christians for treating as divine someone who had been crucified. A second-century anti-Christian graffito from Rome, well-known among historians who study the time period, depicts a crudely drawn crucified man with a donkey's head; under it stands a human figure, and beneath this is a derisive scrawl: "Alexamenos worships his god."

A good reminder this Good Friday.

Oh, the Humanity!

2009-03-21T17:28:00.000-07:00

You walked to school in the snow? Well, not so much...

My 4 GB SanDisk MP3 player took a high-dive from my shirt pocket to swim in the toilet last week. So, I am back to my 256 MB Creative MuVo.

Kinda sad, but with the economy the way it is, I don't think I'll be upgrading for a while.

These are the stories that I'll tell my great-grandkids when they ask how hard things were in the Great Crash of 2009.

My Other Blog

2009-03-20T15:23:00.000-07:00

Which phrase sounds slightly pretentious.

It's not that I have so many words bubbling up inside me that I need two blogs to capture them all. It's that I wanted a blog dedicated to the technical writing business that I can frankly use to promote myself.

So occasional politics- and social commentary-free postings can be found on: http://berylwrites.blogspot.com/

Best Neologism of the Month

2009-03-17T15:56:00.000-07:00

"hypovehiculation" From the political phrase that describes abandoning a former ally as, "throwing them under a bus."

First cite: Best of the Web for March 17, 2009

Morally Unserious in the Extreme

2009-03-13T11:37:00.000-07:00

Charles Krauthammer zeroes in to what is so troubling (to me) about the Obama Administration. Not that I disagree with Obama's conclusions (which I do), but that he pretends that his conclusions are neutral and without agenda. All the while condemning the Bush administration for its "lack of integrity."

He says that his decisions are grounded in "science." But "science" can only tell us what we can do, not what we ought to do. He is outsourcing his moral judgements to a method that by definition precludes moral judgements.

All this posturing was foreshadowed during the "Saddleback Debate" when Rick Warren asked the carefully worded question:

"...Forty million abortions, at what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?"

Obama's reply:

"Well, you know, I think that whether you’re looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade."

The question asked was not a theological question, nor a scientific question, but legal question, "When does a baby get human rights?" A question that a Harvard Law School Grad aspiring to the office of President should have seen fell right into his "pay grade." I was dismayed that Obama's answer was either a "canned" response to the word "abortion," or that he was finessing the question by pretending it was.

But what I see now is that he is outsourcing the responsibility for his moral judgements to others.

Bush had restricted federal funding for embryonic stem cell research to cells derived from embryos that had already been destroyed (as of his speech of Aug. 9, 2001). While I favor moving that moral line to additionally permit the use of spare fertility clinic embryos, Obama replaced it with no line at all. He pointedly left open the creation of cloned -- and noncloned sperm-and-egg-derived -- human embryos solely for the purpose of dismemberment and use for parts.

I am not religious. I do not believe that personhood is conferred upon conception. But I also do not believe that a human embryo is the moral equivalent of a hangnail and deserves no more respect than an appendix. Moreover, given the protean power of embryonic manipulation, the temptation it presents to science, and the well-recorded human propensity for evil even in the pursuit of good, lines must be drawn. I suggested the bright line prohibiting the deliberate creation of human embryos solely for the instrumental purpose of research -- a clear violation of the categorical imperative not to make a human life (even if only a potential human life) a means rather than an end.

On this, Obama has nothing to say. He leaves it entirely to the scientists. This is more than moral abdication. It is acquiescence to the mystique of "science" and its inherent moral benevolence. How anyone as sophisticated as Obama can believe this within living memory of Mengele and Tuskegee and the fake (and coercive) South Korean stem cell research is hard to fathom.

That part of the ceremony, watched from the safe distance of my office, made me uneasy. The other part -- the ostentatious issuance of a memorandum on "restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making" -- would have made me walk out. Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics.

What an outrage. George Bush's nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.

Obama's address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the "false choice between sound science and moral values." Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the "use of cloning for human reproduction."

Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.

Is he so obtuse not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike President Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not.

This is not just intellectual laziness. It is the moral arrogance of a man who continuously dismisses his critics as ideological while he is guided exclusively by pragmatism (in economics, social policy, foreign policy) and science in medical ethics.

Science has everything to say about what is possible. Science has nothing to say about what is permissible. Obama's pretense that he will "restore science to its rightful place" and make science, not ideology, dispositive in moral debates is yet more rhetorical sleight of hand -- this time to abdicate decision-making and color his own ideological preferences as authentically "scientific."

Dr. James Thomson, the discoverer of embryonic stem cells, said "if human embryonic stem cell research does not make you at least a little bit uncomfortable, you have not thought about it enough." Obama clearly has not.

Dr. Krauthammer, well spoken

Fail Better

2009-03-12T13:51:00.000-07:00

I recently participated in a survey of independent Technical Writers. The survey was for an article (to be published in the STC organ) focusing on responses to the recent economic downturn. The author, Elizabeth (Bette) Frick, Ph.D., was kind enough to send along a draft copy of the article from which I will now shamelessly copy (emphasis mine):

I have two quotes over my desk:

1) “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” (Alan Kay)
2) “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” (Samuel Beckett)

...An anonymous responder summed up this discussion: “The essential law of economics as well as nature is that we must adapt to conditions as opposed to standing still and hoping that conditions change to make our present situation relevant....”

Bring Back "Firing Line"

2009-03-05T15:25:00.000-08:00

Jonah Goldberg voices our mutual impatience with the current Democratic bashing of Rush Limbaugh.

Regardless, the war on Limbaugh from the left is a tired rehash. In 1995, Bill Clinton tried to blame the Oklahoma City bombing on Rush. In 2002, then-senator Tom Daschle, the leader of the Democratic opposition, claimed that Limbaugh’s listeners weren’t “satisfied just to listen.” They were a violent threat to decent public servants like him.

In just the last month, Obama suggested that Republicans were in thrall to Rush. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has anointed him the GOP’s leader. Rep. Barney Frank complained that Republicans didn’t give Obama enough standing ovations during his address to Congress because they are afraid of Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

Does anyone think that Republicans, absent fear of Limbaugh’s lash, would be throwing flower petals at Obama’s feet as he sells the Great Society II? If that’s true, I say thank goodness for Limbaugh’s lash.

More than just complaining, Mr. Goldberg offers a suggestion:

Bring back Firing Line. William F. Buckley Jr., who died almost exactly a year ago, hosted the program for PBS for 33 years. He performed an incalculable service at a time when conservatives were more associated with yahoos than they are today. He demonstrated that intellectual fluency and good manners weren’t uniquely liberal qualities. More important, the Firing Line debates (models of decorum) demonstrated that conservatives were unafraid to examine their own assumptions or to battle liberal ones.

As Democrats try to ram through the “remaking of America” (Obama’s words) by exploiting a financial crisis, we need those debates. PBS could actually live up to its mandate to educate and inform the public. It would be the kind of entrepreneurial government innovation even right-wingers could get behind.

As a reminder of what a wonderful program Firing Line was, here is a portion of one of William F. Buckley' interviews with Malcom Muggeridge

My Fair Lady?

2009-03-03T16:10:00.000-08:00

Here was news to send a shiver up my spine:

Columbia Pictures has entered into an agreement with CBS Films to create a new motion picture of the Lerner and Loewe classic musical "My Fair Lady," to be produced by Duncan Kenworthy and Cameron Mackintosh, it was announced today by Doug Belgrad and Matt Tolmach, presidents of Columbia Pictures. CBS Films will be actively involved in the development of the new film. Keira Knightley is reportedly in talks to star.

I really enjoy My Fair Lady. So what will distinguish this remake. (In other words, "For the love of God, WHY?")

The new film will use the original songs of the much-loved Broadway show, and will not alter its 1912 setting, but Kenworthy and Mackintosh intend where possible to shoot the film on location in the original London settings of Covent Garden, Drury Lane, Tottenham Court Road, Wimpole Street, and Ascot racecourse. The filmmaking team will also look to adapt Alan Jay Lerner's book more fully for the screen by drawing additional material from Pygmalion - - George Bernard Shaw's play that served as the source material for the musical -- in order to dramatize as believably as possible for present-day audiences the emotional highs and lows of Eliza Doolittle as she undergoes the ultimate makeover, transforming under the tutelage of Professor Henry Higgins from a Cockney flower girl to a lady.

Kenworthy said, "When George Cukor shot his wonderful film entirely on sets inside Warner's Burbank soundstages, Lerner and Loewe's smash hit musical had been running on Broadway for seven years, and the film was appropriately reverential and inevitably theatrical. With forty years of hindsight, we're confident that by setting these wonderful characters and brilliant songs in a more realistic context, and by exploring Eliza's emotional journey more fully, we will honor both Shaw and Lerner at the same time as engaging and entertaining contemporary audiences the world over. The casting of Eliza is crucial, and we are currently in discussion with a major international star to play the role."

Some thoughts:

So they are keeping the wonderful music and setting.
They are changing the show's book.
Bringing a more realistic viewpoint to the story isn't a negative.
Bringing more of the Shavian sensibility, more of a Pygmalion take on the musical's book is welcome.*
While I have nothing against Ms Knightley, I am unaware of her singing ability.
What I hear on the soundtrack album for The Edge of Love, does nothing to reassure me.
Then again, Audry Hepburn's singing was overdubbed by Marni Nixon.

While I look forward to this production with mixed feelings, I'll most likely pay full price to see this movie.

In the words of Erika Olson: "If Never Let Me Go also ends up being a dismal failure, Knightley should be just fine as she's already working on a return to form, of sorts. She's the frontrunner for the lead in the remake of My Fair Lady. And you know what that means... more corsets!"

* Shaw wrote an epilogue to the play in which he left no doubt that Liza wisely married the penniless Freddy, not Henry. She has no romantic notions left by the end of her tenure at the Higgens residence.

Plus ça Change

2009-02-27T15:58:00.000-08:00

Britons are on the verge of redicovering some old wisdom:

Caning pupils 'can be effective behaviour control'
Government research showed some mothers and fathers believed corporal punishment was an "effective method of control" when they were at school.

They said the decision to outlaw physical chastisement contributed to a decline in discipline.

The comments - in a study backed by the Department for Children, Schools and Families - come just months after a fifth of teachers called for the cane to be reintroduced to restore order in the classroom...

A survey of more than 6,000 teachers last year found more than a fifth believed the cane should be brought back.

One supply teacher told researchers: "Children's behaviour is now absolutely outrageous in the majority of schools. I am a supply teacher, so I see very many schools and there are no sanctions. There are too many anger management people and their ilk who give children the idea that it is their right to flounce out of lessons for time out because they have problems with their temper. They should be caned instead."

This sounded so familiar that I immediately turned to my copy of Three Men in a Boat, where J. remembers his boyhood:

In the present instance, going back to the liver-pill circular, I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being "a general disinclination to work of any kind."

What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness.

"Why, you skulking little devil, you," they would say, "get up and do something for your living, can't you?" - not knowing, of course, that I was ill.

And they didn't give me pills; they gave me clumps on the side of the head. And, strange as it may appear, those clumps on the head often cured me - for the time being. I have known one clump on the head have more effect upon my liver, and make me feel more anxious to go straight away then and there, and do what was wanted to be done, without further loss of time, than a whole box of pills does now.

You know, it often is so - those simple, old-fashioned remedies are sometimes more efficacious than all the dispensary stuff.

And Surely the Age of Great Speeches Isn't Over

2009-01-20T15:42:00.000-08:00

Tony Woodlief comments on Sunday's Inaugural concert:

Sunday's inauguration concert was designed to evoke strong emotion. It was certainly held in a dramatic setting, cast at the feet of Lincoln, in the place where Reverend King gave his nation-changing speech. The danger of standing where giants have tread, of course, is that doing so invites comparison. There was certainly little to be compared, this day, between the transformative words of these great men and the canned lines of the very small playactors selected to give speeches between the concert's musical acts...
...It was revealing that one of the speeches most worthy of note, from the incomparable Forest Whitaker, was essentially a selection from William Faulkner's Nobel acceptance speech, an uplifting affirmation of art and truth that is at the same time a denunciation of the worst of post-modernism and relativism. What we have forgotten, as unwittingly attested by the voices at this concert (excepting Mr. Obama, of course, who is a first-rate speaker), is that actors are not, in a classical Aristotelian sense, artists. They are skilled, to be sure, but they are empty vessels, to be fitted to parts as suits the real artists, the writers and photographers, the costumers and make-up specialists. This is not to deny the accidental beauty of Marisa Tomei or Jamie Foxx, or the emotive skill of Denzel Washington. But something is strangely out of whack when speeches are to be delivered at the foot of Lincoln, on ground hallowed by King, and the deliverers we choose are none of them thinkers or writers...
The reality, of course, is that most actors today are nothing without smoldering looks and other people's words, and so each in turn took the stage to read the words of their intellectual betters. Perhaps this is the way of art in a highly specialized economy—if even Christian rock stars these days have to be sexually appealing, then surely we can't cast stones at average Americans who prefer their speeches to be given by beautiful people.

Yet there was a time when scientists and thinkers were among the household list that today is entitled: Celebrities. There was a time when speeches were given by people who could write them, and further, could deliver them with greater force than the pale, this-is-how-we-talk-on-the-Academy-Awards-stage style of Judd, Jackson, et al. And surely the age of great speeches isn't over, as witnessed by the performance of the most gifted speaker on Sunday's stage, Mr. Obama himself. Might there not have been room, then, amidst all the glamour, for an Irving, a Goia, and perhaps—God forbid, given sensitivities about speakers who affirm the validity of the entire Bible—the booming voice of a pastor?
In President Obama we clearly have star power, and one hopes thoughtfulness and moral courage as well. Perhaps the modern American bargain is that we can no longer have the latter two in our public officials without a healthy dose of the former. The danger, of course, is that too few of us seem able to discern the difference.

Inauguration Haiku

2009-01-20T10:52:00.000-08:00

Ace offers three haiku for the inauguration:

Po-TUS Obama
America the best
Bush goes to jail now

Trust in Obama
All your worries gone forever
Bush goes to jail now

Barack is dreamy
Sorry Iraq we leave soon
Bush goes to jail now

I'm going to have to think to meet that challenge.

Stick to What You Know

2009-01-20T10:45:00.000-08:00

In Inaugural News, Bishop T.D. Jakes, senior pastor from Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, spoke at an inaugural morning service. Bishop Jakes taught from the book of Daniel and shared this thought:

“The problems are mighty and the solutions are not simple,” Jakes said, “and everywhere you turn there will be a critic waiting to attack every decision that you make. But you are all fired up, Sir, and you are ready to go. And this nation goes with you. God goes with you.

“I say to you as my son who is here today, my 14-year-old son – he probably would not quote scripture. He probably would use Star Trek instead, and so I say, ‘May the force be with you.”

Ahem. It's not enough that the good bishop uses some sketchy, Hollywood, faux-Tao saying, but he can't get the series attribution right.

Ah, well. As Admiral Adama used to say: "Beam me outta here!"

Notes to Myself

2009-01-05T14:42:00.000-08:00

I spent some of the last two weeks snowed in, going through stuff in boxes in the basement. One of the things I found was an old memoranda book with just a few pages filled with notes.

I offer two of these entries without comment:

"Forgiveness sounds like a lovely idea--until we have something to forgive."

And

"Some people reject Einstein's Special and General Relativity on an emotional basis, saying that those theories remove fixed standards, which leads to complete relativism. In fact, what Einstein did was to move absolutes from frames of reference to the laws that describe the relationships between frames of reference."

That's all.

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem

2008-12-26T20:21:00.000-08:00

An eye-opening article from the Times of London about the necessity of Christianinty--from an atheist. Some snipettes:

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good...

...Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock. This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

...Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-23T21:57:00.000-08:00

The Pacific Northwest is having a white Christmas this year. To commemorate it, here are a couple of photos I took while going about the day.

On a dog walk:

A trip to the grocery store:

Down a quite road:

If Music be the Food of Love...

2008-12-19T10:55:00.000-08:00

...play on, give me excess of it.

A fascinating article in The Economist about the speculative evolutionary roots of music.

Some comments:

Today, people are so surrounded by other people’s music that they take it for granted, but as little as 100 years ago singsongs at home, the choir in the church and fiddlers in the pub were all that most people heard.

My father's family was very musical. Old tintypes of them show them at family reunions looking like a small orchestra. Occasionally, when he was disgusted at popular culture, he would talk about how the entire town of Roff, Oklahoma would meet and everybody was expected to to have something, such as a song or recitation, to entertain the others.

Of course, I find that the hypothosis fails in this regard:

Another reason to believe the food-of-love [evolutionary] hypothesis is that music fulfils the main criterion of a sexually selected feature: it is an honest signal of underlying fitness. Just as unfit peacocks cannot grow splendid tails, so unfit people cannot sing well, dance well (for singing and dancing go together, as it were, like a horse and carriage) or play music well. All of these activities require physical fitness and dexterity. Composing music requires creativity and mental agility. Put all of these things together and you have a desirable mate.

I offer this in rebuttal:

Wonder Woman--The Animated Movie

2008-12-04T16:43:00.000-08:00

You're doing it rather well, actually...

All the Cool Franchises are Re-Booting

2008-11-24T14:15:00.001-08:00

'Race to Witch Mountain' Theatrical Trailer @ Yahoo! Video

The Ten Hidden Gift-Giving Rules

2008-11-23T18:45:00.000-08:00

This week marks the kickoff of the Holiday shopping season, so from the wonderful Unplug the Christmas Machine:

The Ten Hidden Gift-Giving Rules:

Give a gift to everyone you expect to get a gift from.
If someone gives you a gift unexpectedly, reciprocate that year. (Some people have pre-wrapped generic gifts for just this event.)
When you add a name to your gift list, give that person a gift every year thereafter.
The amount of money you spend on a gift determines how much you care about the recipient.
Gifts exchanged between adults should be roughly equal in value.
The presents that you give someone should be fairly consistent in value over the years.
If you give a gift to a person in a certain category (for example, a co-worker or neighbor), give a gift of roughly equal value to everyone in that category.
Women should give gifts to their close women friends.
Men should not give gifts to their close men friends—unless those gifts are alcoholic.
Whenever the above rules cause you any difficulty, solve the problem by buying more gifts.

Articulate

2008-11-21T16:24:00.000-08:00

Now that the Republican Party is looking for it's next standard bearer, we all have been compiling lists of what qualities the ideal candidate will have, and what priority we should impose on those qualities.

Let me state that whoever leads the party and whoever becomes the candidate in 2012 must be, in the words of Joe Biden, "...articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking."

She aces "bright," "clean," and "nice-looking;" but much as I love Governor Palin, she did not demonstrate "articulate" during the recent campaign.

Why is this so important? I think that while we have seen that George W. Bush has been an effective administrator in protecting the country for the last 8 years, his inability to communicate his plans and directions ceded to his opponents the marketplace of ideas and opinions. So his accomplishments (no attacks on the order of 9/11, forstalling a depression in 2002, etc.) became not victories, but clubs used by the left to beat him.

James Pethokoukis points out that if the Democratic plans for US health care policy proceed unopposed, Conservatives may never recover the ground. He makes this observation:

3) Republicans better learn to competently talk healthcare.
John McCain's healthcare plan was perhaps the most provocative policy proposal of the entire 2008 campaign. Too bad he could neither fully explain how it worked nor persuasively argue why it was better than Barack Obama's plan. Also too bad since his plan would have smartly reduced healthcare costs by getting companies out of the healthcare benefits business and empowering individuals to buy insurance on their own. This would have helped fix what economist Arnold Kling calls the insurance vs. insulation problem: "Insulation relieves the patient of the stress of making decisions about treatment. The patient also does not have to worry about shopping around for the best price. The problem with insulation is that it is not a sustainable form of healthcare finance."

Mr. Pethokoukis ends with this:

Another interesting healthcare reform option is highlighted by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam in the book Grand New Party. Uncle Sam would require individuals and families to put 15 percent of their income into health savings accounts. If you run out of money before year-end, the government steps in. If you don't, you get the money back or it rolls over into a retirement account. Of course, any conservative alternative would be easier to implement if it doesn't first have to kill an existing nationalized health plan. But thanks to Tom Daschle, that is just what might have to happen.

The Constant Reader will remember that I endorsed this idea when it was proposed by Megan McCardle.

If the Government Built Cars

2008-11-21T15:05:00.000-08:00

Michael Moore told Larry King this:

In an interview Wednesday with CNN's Larry King, Moore criticized the automakers for ignoring the desires of consumers, building instead bigger, more profitable cars as foreign automakers pursued both SUVs and more fuel-efficient sedans and compacts.

Moore suggested that Congress demand change in exchange for the money, including a call to help rebuild mass transit in the country.

"President-Elect Obama has to say to them, yes, we're going to use this money to save these jobs, but we're not going to build these gas-guzzling, unsafe vehicles any longer," Moore said. "We're going to put the companies into some sort of receivership and we, the government, are going to hold the reins on these companies. They're to build mass transit. They're to build hybrid cars. They're to build cars that use little or no gasoline."

What would such a Congress-mandated car look like? Why, the Pelosi GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition!

So take the bus to your local CM dealer today and find out why the Pelosi GTxi SS/Rt Sport Edition is the only car endorsed by President Barack Obama. One test drive will convince you that you'd choose it over the import brands. Even if they were still legal.

Merry Christmas. Get ready for Mad Max

2008-11-20T13:50:00.000-08:00

Daniel Henninger writes in his November 20th "Wonder Land" column about the link between Christmas (or the lack of it) and the current economic meltdown:

What really went missing through the subprime mortgage years were the three Rs: responsibility, restraint and remorse. They are the ballast that stabilizes two better-known Rs from the world of free markets: risk and reward.

Responsibility and restraint are moral sentiments. Remorse is a product of conscience. None of these grow on trees. Each must be learned, taught, passed down. And so we come back to the disappearance of "Merry Christmas."

It has been my view that the steady secularizing and insistent effort at dereligioning America has been dangerous. That danger flashed red in the fall into subprime personal behavior by borrowers and bankers, who after all are just people. Northerners and atheists who vilify Southern evangelicals are throwing out nurturers of useful virtue with the bathwater of obnoxious political opinions.

The point for a healthy society of commerce and politics is not that religion saves, but that it keeps most of the players inside the chalk lines. We are erasing the chalk lines.

Hmmm...

No Ogoodey-Boogedy?

Oogedy-Boogedy

2008-11-19T17:56:00.000-08:00

I love the sound of it.

Oogedy-Boogedy!

Oogedy-Boogedy!

Oogedy-Boogedy!

Oogedy-Boogedy!

UPDATE: Oogedy-Boogedy!!

MORE UPDATE: I was amused by the controversy over the idea that Christians should vote like we are told and drop the "Oogedy-Boogedy" stuff.

As I pointed out last month:

Many critics stand ready to mock Palin’s Christianity. Fair enough. Will they also mock Obama’s and Biden’s?
Christianity is a miracle religion. Absent belief in the miraculous, there is nothing left of Christianity worth the name.

I don't ask that my political allies believe in the miraculous, I just don't what them to expect me to deny it.

Kiss a Wookie, Kick a Droid

2008-11-17T23:53:00.000-08:00

If you want a big, overbearing, orchestral movie score, John Williams is the man.

I kid! I kid because I love his work.

But not as much as this:

UPDATE: Just to be clear, the video is of a chap lip-synching to an acappella quartet. The quartet is called "Moosebutter," they approved of this video. For more Moosebutter, check out www.moosebutter.com.

Crazy Pills

2008-11-17T21:50:00.000-08:00

Back in mid-October, Ben Smith published an email that really shocked me. It was about focus group results from a test of a McCain ad:

Yes, they believed the charges against Obama. Yes, they actually think he's too liberal, consorts with bad people and WON'T BE A GOOD PRESIDENT...but they STILL don't give a f***. They said right out, "He won't do anything better than McCain" but they're STILL voting for Obama.

The two most unreal moments of my professional life of watching focus groups:

54 year-old white male, voted Kerry '04, Bush '00, Dole '96, hunter, NASCAR fan...hard for Obama said: "I'm gonna hate him the minute I vote for him. He's gonna be a bad president. But I won't ever vote for another god-damn Republican. I want the government to take over all of Wall Street and bankers and the car companies and Wal-Mart run this county like we used to when Reagan was President."

The next was a woman, late 50s, Democrat but strongly pro-life. Loved B. and H. Clinton, loved Bush in 2000. "Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."

I felt like I was taking crazy pills. I sat on the other side of the glass and realized...this really is the Apocalypse. The Seventh Seal is broken and its time for eight years of pure, delicious crazy....

When I read that I knew that a) Republicans had "lost the brand," and b) many of the people voting for Obama were doing so for non-rational reasons.

Now there is this video. It consists of excerpts from Obama voters fresh from the polling booth. After viewing this I know that a) Republicans have to quit whining about the "media bias." This isn't the result of just "media bias," it's the result of cultivated stone ignorance.

I so much love the part where they ask people where they get their news. And the woman who declares, "NPR, PBS, & The New York Times" was as pig-ignorant as the people who got their news from the Comedy Channel.

Huck-a-POW

2008-11-17T09:57:00.000-08:00

I have, in the last few weeks, enjoyed watching several of the Republicans who were in the Presidential campaign. Some have retreated to their tents to sulk, some to their caves to lick their wounds, and some have started laying foundation for future campaigns.

The king of this last group is that Energizer Bunny of Conservative Ideas, Newt Gingrich. Newt writes books, founds think tanks, and turns up on the news talkers as frequently as most candidates inhale.

But now Newt is being joined in his Long March by Huck. Mike Huckabee now has an interview show of Fox and had released a new book: Do The Right Thing: Inside the Movement That's Bringing Common Sense Back to America. Time magazine reviews the book:

Many conservative Christian leaders, who never backed Huckabee despite their holding very similar stances on social issues, are spared neither the rod nor the lash. Huckabee writes of Gary Bauer, the conservative Christian leader and former presidential candidate, as having an "ever-changing reason to deny me his support." Of one private meeting with Bauer, Huckabee says, "it was like playing Whac-a-Mole at the arcade — whatever issue I addressed, another one surfaced as a 'problem' that made my candidacy unacceptable..."

...Huckabee describes other elders of the social conservative movement, many of whom meet in private as part of an organization called the Arlington Group, as "more enamored with the process, the political strategies, and the party hierarchy than with the simple principles that had originally motivated the Founders." Later Huckabee writes, "I lamented that so many people of faith had moved from being prophetic voices — like Naaman, confronting King David in his sin and saying, 'Though art the man!'— to being voices of patronage, and saying to those in power, 'You da' man!' "

He calls out Pat Robertson, the Virginia-based televangelist, and Dr. Bob Jones III, chancellor of Bob Jones University in South Carolina, for endorsing Rudy Giuliani and Romney, respectively. He also has words for the Texas-based Rev. John Hagee, who endorsed the more moderate John McCain in the primaries, as someone who was drawn to the eventual Republican nominee because of the lure of power. Huckabee speaks to Hagee by phone before the McCain endorsement, while the former Arkansas governor is preparing for a spot on Saturday Night Live. "I asked if he had prayed about this and believed this was what the Lord wanted him to do," Huckabee writes of his conversation with Hagee. "I didn't get a straight answer." Months later, McCain rejected Hagee's endorsement because of controversial remarks the pastor had made about biblical interpretations.

UPDATE: Allah Says: <

A desperately needed fix of campaign drama during this post-election interregnum detox. Just give me a little hit of score-settling to get me through the day, bro. Just one hit.
Ah, that’s the stuff

The Look of Blog

2008-11-14T13:23:00.000-08:00

So I am fooling around with the look of the blog.

So far: meh.

If anyone wants to point me to a cool template (minimalist, lots of white space, focusing on the posts rather than the graphic of Ratatouille in the heading), post the link in the comments.

Veteran's Day 2008

2008-11-11T13:41:00.000-08:00

HERE DEAD WE LIE

Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.

Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.

A E Housman

The Sunshine Patriot

2008-11-07T10:40:00.000-08:00

From Ace, this link to an article in the Seattle PI documenting the sudden fashionability of American flags in Seattle:

With newfound patriotism, Seattleites want to wave the flag, hang it from their homes and stick it on their cars.

"The thing that's kind of astounding to me is I never ever would have cared to own a flag," said Rosemary Garner, 42. "This is the first day in my life I actually feel this funny sense of pride about my country. It's a very foreign feeling, but it's a good one."

"It's just a rare feeling to feel that type of, I don't know, national connection," said Noah Kriegsmann, a 33-year-old builder from West Seattle. He feels that Obama's win will help America's standing in the world, and he bought a flag to fly on his truck, though he admitted it felt strange to see the flag in his hand.

"I have just historically felt shame for what the symbol of this country is internationally. Being in someplace like Morocco, and Canadians have their flag on their backpacks -- I would never ever do that," he said.

Well.

I'm glad that these people are finally able to love their own country. That's a positive. (I wonder how they would react to a traditional Northwest flag-burning by ski-masked anarchists. Hmmm?)

But the essence of love is that the beloved is worth love regardless of whether or not your expectations are being met. You can love someone even while you are being embarrassed by them, as the parents of small children and the children of aging parents know.

Part of love is sticking with the one you love through rough times. That's what distinguishes love from lust.

So to my newly-proud Americans I say, welcome back to the country that bore you, protected you, and whom you tore down with your childish behaviour. I hope that this time you can stick around.

The Poet and Novelist Becomes the Political Analyst

2008-11-04T09:43:00.000-08:00

A eye-opening, jaw-dropping, election-day article that atriculates a lot of what I've been thinking and feeling:

On Polling:

With polling, the collective delusion is the belief that the product of polling is the data. Remember, polls are a product that is sold like any other product. That stupid little chart that appears in the corner of every USA Today was not made for the purpose of 'research' and 'data'. It was made just to show a stupid little graph on the paper because USA Today knows that little graphs and charts 'sell' the paper more. Just because information is displayed in a chart or a graph does not make it 'scientific' or a real 'analysis'. But the product was to make the reader FEEL like it was and to sell more papers. The product of polls can and often are the readers. This became much more popular ever since polls became 'news items' themselves (before, polls were only supplements to news tories)....

One thing that is very different about this election is the omnipresence of polls and how polls are the axis around all political analysis is conducted. This has never been the case in previous elections. Real political analysts (meaning not hacks or unprofessional pundits), use historical trends, demagraphical data, and other 'truths' of past elections. Much of this cannot be translated into a chart or graph. It is a myth that analysis is done via math or graphs or computer models. The original economists, for example, used only words and essays. Political analysis is not about math. Political analysis is about people. To analyze politics, you must be able to analyze people. In other words, the poet and novelist becomes the political analyst, not the mathematician and software engineer. Politics is all about people.

It seems no one is interested in studying 'people' anymore. Look at the political analysis currently. There is very little analysis of the current 'liberal' or 'conservative', for example, or the person from Pennslyvania or person from Iowa. In fact, there are no people. There are only numbers. Stark, lifeless, numbers. The problem with leveling political analysis to nothing more than a soup of numbers is that it cannot measure intensity. What does intensity have to do with politics? Well, everything. Intense people are those who vote.

Palin and Obama

2008-10-31T12:50:00.001-07:00

That's the story of this election cycle--who will be the standard bearers for thier parties in 2009 and beyond. And it all comes down to this...

Getting a Job in a Growth Industry During an Obama Administration

2008-10-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

"In Lower Manhattan, the line for an Internal Revenue Service open house began forming an hour before the event and would eventually wrap around the block. "

The I.R.S. dangled the possibilities when it held an open house at the federal office building at 290 Broadway in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday. An hour before the fair was scheduled to begin, the crowd began lining up — recently laid-off Wall Street types in charcoal-gray pinstripe suits and trench coats; less formally dressed people; a woman with a new accounting degree on her résumé and a 14-month-old baby in a stroller...
...
Some job-seekers said they were casualties of the financial meltdown. Jean Delice had already been laid off as a computer engineering specialist at Lehman Brothers when the firm, as he put it, “hit the rocks.” He said that the firm’s demise had cost him “everything,” including his severance package, and that the long-term prospects of a government agency looked pretty good.

“You could get a lucrative job in the financial market right now, but how long can you keep it?” he asked. “Everywhere I look, I see layoffs. If I take a $10,000 or $20,000 pay cut, in the long run, I’m ahead. The government is not in the trading business. It will be around.”

Now's Not the Time to Raise Taxes

2008-10-28T14:00:00.000-07:00

"Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam today!"

Britan's Biden

2008-10-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

According to Michael Kinsley, a "gaffe" is "when a politician [inadvertantly] tells the truth."

Not so much telling some objective truth, but revealing said politician's thoughts. In the United States, the preemminant practitioner of the gaffe is Senator Joseph Biden.

In Britan, now, he has a serious contender: Prince Phillip.

Savor his latest venting:

Prince Philip has branded tourism ‘national prostitution’ in his latest unfortunate gaffe.
He made the shocking comment to a professor during his State visit with the Queen to Slovenia last week.
Dr Maja Uran revealed that the 87-year-old Duke told her: ‘Tourism is just national prostitution.’
He went on: ‘We don’t need any more tourists. They ruin cities.’
His comments come despite royal aides regularly stressing the importance of tourists to Britain’s economy – with one million visiting Buckingham Palace and Windsor
Castle each year.
It follows other infamous faux pas by the Prince – including telling a British student in China he would get ‘slitty eyes’ and asking Aborigines in Australia: ‘Do you still throw spears at each other?’
Dr Uran, associate professor of tourism at the University of Primorska, was among
four groups of experts who met Philip last Tuesday at the Hotel Union in the
Slovenian capital of Ljubljana.
She told Philip she wanted to organise a network of people with local knowledge to help tourists. But she said: ‘He laughed and said, “Tourism is just national prostitution.”
‘I couldn’t quite believe he used that word and we all collapsed in embarrassment.’

All those sweaty tourists, clogging up the roads so that the Rolls is often stuck in traffic. And the well-to-do ones fill up often fill up one's favorite reasturant during The Season.

As bad as I disagree with the viewpoints of American elites, they have nothing on European elites.

"Spreading the Wealth" -- A Timely Reminder

2008-10-24T13:42:00.000-07:00

Gene Fama reminds us:

First of all, “the wealth” is a Marxist fiction. There isn’t some large, limited pile of communal wealth that just happened to get allocated disproportionately to “the rich.” Wealth is created. The best economic systems encourage the creation of wealth, they don’t redistribute it—and make no mistake, at the extremes the two are mutually exclusive goals.

Do You Have Any Standards at All?

2008-10-24T13:32:00.000-07:00

Orson Scott Card, Democrat and newspaper columnist, takes local newspapers to task for being in the tank for the Democrats:

...These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.

Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!

What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?
...
If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish, and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.

If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.
...
If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth — even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.

Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means . That's how trust is earned.

Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time — and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.

Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards's own adultery for many months.

So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?

Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?

Is that gonna leave a mark? Unfortunately, no. The only thing that will change the media in this country is the ongoing, slow-motion collapse of the newspaper industry.

Be Extra Careful Wrapping Presents this Christmas

2008-10-23T14:31:00.000-07:00

X-rays emitted from ordinary Scotch tape

By Malcolm Ritter

updated 10:23 a.m. PT, Wed., Oct. 22, 2008

NEW YORK - Just two weeks after a Nobel Prize highlighted theoretical work on subatomic particles, physicists are announcing a startling discovery about a much more familiar form of matter: Scotch tape.

It turns out that if you peel the popular adhesive tape off its roll in a vacuum chamber, it emits X-rays. The researchers even made an X-ray image of one of their fingers.

Who knew? Actually, more than 50 years ago, some Russian scientists reported evidence of X-rays from peeling sticky tape off glass. But the new work demonstrates that you can get a lot of X-rays, a study co-author says.

"We were very surprised," said Juan Escobar. "The power you could get from just peeling tape was enormous."

A Very Powerful, Very Disciplined, Incredibly Gracious Woman

2008-10-23T10:09:00.000-07:00

For the Democratic party, the era after 1968 was filled with a continual tinkering with its primary rules. At first these re-writes (at the direction of the McGovern-Fraser Commission) sought to restrict and then eliminate candidate selections made by party bosses (in "smoke-filled rooms.") After the candidacies of George McGovern and Jimmy Carter, this drive towards more and more direct democracy in the primaries was countered by the Hunt Commission. The Hunt Commission gave the Democrats the "Superdelegates" that were all the talk of the 2008 Democratic primaries.

The Republicans have been influenced by the Dem's drift, but not so much.

Daniel Henninger describes what has happened to political parties in the U.S.:

The established political pros let the selection process come to this. Presidential candidates such as John McCain and Barack Obama have become untethered from the discipline of party institutions, largely because the parties have lost coherence. So we get celebrity candidates made famous, fundable and electable by dint of their access to the Beltway media. For voters, this election is a national Hail Mary.

For nearly two years, all the major candidates have rotated through our lives as solitary personalities attended by careerist campaign professionals. Barack, Hillary, Rudy, Mitt, Mike, McCain. When the moment arrived to pick a running mate, input from the parties was minimal. That famous party boss, Caroline Kennedy, advised Barack Obama. They picked a three-decade denizen of the Senate. John McCain's obligation was himself and his endless slog to this big chance.

Out of this process we have the current candidates. And rather than critiquing the candidate's positions and policies, the U.S. press has degenerated into name-calling and obsessing over how much money the RNC has spent on Sarah Palin's wardrobe.

Henninger ends his piece with a quote from someone who has recently worked with Sarah Palin.

Lorne Michaels, the executive producer of "Saturday Night Live," lives on the forward wave of American life. This week he gave his view of Sarah Palin to EW.com: "I think Palin will continue to be underestimated for a while. I watched the way she connected with people, and she's powerful. Her politics aren't my politics. But you can see that she's a very powerful, very disciplined, incredibly gracious woman. This was her first time out and she's had a huge impact. People connect to her."

Sarah in 2012?

The Next Republican Party

2008-10-22T11:21:00.001-07:00

Having voted, my thoughts turn to what is ahead for the Republicans. The Party seems to be fracturing along social, and even geographic lines.

Tony Blankley throws a log on the fire:

...Miss Noonan's unconscious fear may be that it will be precisely Mrs. Palin (and others like her) who will be among the leaders of the about to be re-born conservative movement. I suspect that the conservative movement we start re-building on the ashes of November 4th (even if Mr. McCain wins) will have little use for over-written, over-delicate commentary.

The new movement will be plain spoken and social networked up from the internetted streets, suburbs and small towns of America. It certainly will not listen very attentively to those conservatives who idolatrize Mr. Obama and collaborate in heralding his arrival. They may call their commentary "honesty." I would call it - at the minimum - blindness.

Grandpa, You're so Old!

2008-10-21T16:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, kids, I loved these songs when they first came out.

These are "The Seekers" in their farewell concert in London, July 12, 1968. Listen to the crowd's reactions!

Why is it OK to Make Fun of Sarah Palin's Christianity?

2008-10-20T10:03:00.000-07:00

Carnal Reason discusses why there is so much animosity towards Sarah Palin's faith:

Many critics stand ready to mock Palin’s Christianity. Fair enough. Will they also mock Obama’s and Biden’s?

Christianity is a miracle religion. Absent belief in the miraculous, there is nothing left of Christianity worth the name.
Obama has gone on record as stating that Christ is his Lord, that he prays to Jesus. I see three possibilities:

Obama was lying: he believes no such thing, but finds it politically expedient to claim he does.
Obama accepts as fact the Resurrection of Christ.
Obama is an idiot.
Obama is no idiot. So does he believe that a corpse dead on Friday came back to life on Sunday? And if so, does he accept as facts the rest of Christ’s miracles? Prior to his death, Christ is said to have resurrected a corpse, made the blind see, walked on water, and turned water into wine. I can’t see why anyone would believe in the Resurrection, and deny the rest. Why strain at gnats?
The theory that the earth is only 6000 years old appears to be pre-scientific nonsense. It contradicts known facts about the rates at which radioactive materials decay. By the same token, a corpse coming back to life violates the laws of thermodynamics, and walking on water violates the laws of gravity.

Exactly. If you are a Christian, you have already, through the scandal of the Incarnation, accepted accepted as fact the biggest, most overwhelming supernatural event of all time. So don't choke on gnats.

People that are offended by Palin's faith have, to me, been very unserious about their objections. If you are offended by Governor Palin believing that dinosaurs and humans were contemporaries (I don't), then realize that she holds that belief because of a greater belief that she shares with Senator Obama.

I AM JOE

2008-10-18T10:48:00.000-07:00

Dave Burge declares that whoever attacks Joe 'the Plumber' Wurzelbacher is attacking us all.

What Jim Treacher Wants

2008-10-18T10:42:00.000-07:00

If were going to have socialism, says Jim Treacher, why start with plumbers?

If "it's the economy, stupid," aren't higher taxes part of the discussion? I'm no economist, but I do know that every dollar I give to the government is a dollar I can't put into the economy. One campaign is saying they want to lower my taxes, and the other campaign is questioning my patriotism if I complain about higher taxes. And millionaires like Diane Sawyer and Katie Couric are backing up the latter. I would suggest that they find the nearest large body of water and hurl themselves in.

And don't give me that "95%" crap. Why doesn't Obama just go all-out and promise that 110% of Americans will get a tax cut? (Oddly enough, that's the same percentage of Americans who've registered to vote.)

If we're going to plunge headlong into outright socialism, then I want some of what George Clooney's got. You're a big Obama backer, right, George? Well then, put your money where your wagging, chiseled chin is. It's not fair that you've got so much more than I do. I'll take one of your houses and one of your cast-off girlfriends. Doesn't have to be one of the good ones in either category. Whatever you can spare, genius.

Just in Time for Hallowe'en

2008-10-17T15:57:00.000-07:00

(And how many times do you see the contraction apostrophe in Hallowe'en these days?)

Anyway, via Rand Simberg, James Whale is alive and well and working in the fashion industry:

More Bailout Thoughts

2008-10-17T14:48:00.000-07:00

A few posts back, I said this about the impending government bailout of the financial industry:

So the government (via its new version of the RTC) becomes the mortgage holder for hundreds of thousands of Americans. Already the cry from Democrats is "People before profit."

Will the US be able to resolve the most clear out the very worst of these loans in an fiscally responsible manner?

If there is any possibility of making money on these loans, won't that cause an outcry on the Left?

Jonah Goldberg points out:

Democrats in Congress had great fun using Fannie and Freddie as public policy piggy banks, rewarding constituencies, funding pet projects, forcing the private sector to dance to their tune. What’s to stop them from renegotiating this week’s deal after the election and using Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and the others as Fannie Mae 2.0?

Please don’t say that the terms of the deal are set and the government can’t revise them. If there’s one thing the last month has hammered home, it’s that nothing is written in stone. Besides, the banks may grow to like the security of partial nationalization and even lobby to Congress to stay on as less-than-fully-silent partners.

Heck, that way they wouldn’t have to pay back the loans.

I never thought of that.

Banks might tout the participation of the government as a way to sell their stock, "Hey, the government won't let us fail!"

Kiss Me, Ladies, I've Voted!

2008-10-16T16:44:00.000-07:00

Washington has become a vote-by-mail state, so I have just sent off my ballot. I object to vote-by-mail. I think that taking a few minutes out of your day to carry out a civic duty is a small price to pay.

Of course, maybe I'm old-fashioned, but this tidbit on this Washington voter information page made me chuckle:

Voter Drop Box and Service Center Locations

Alley behind the Court House
24 Hour Drop Box
625 West 4th Street
Newport, WA 99156

(Pssst! Tell `em Joe (Biden) sent yah!)

I Just Have To Point Out...

2008-10-09T15:33:00.001-07:00

...That Jim Treacher has revived his moribund blog and is on a tear.

Now, While You Still Have the Money

2008-10-06T18:02:00.000-07:00

Thank you, Megan.

This is not "The America I Knew"

2008-09-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

James Taranto has spotted this reactionary meme at the first Presidential Debate, in Barak Obama's closing statement:

You know, my father came from Kenya. That's where I get my name.

And in the '60s, he wrote letter after letter to come to college here in the United States because the notion was that there was no other country on Earth where you could make it if you tried. The ideals and the values of the United States inspired the entire world.

I don't think any of us can say that our standing in the world now, the way children around the world look at the United States, is the same.

And part of what we need to do, what the next president has to do--and this is part of our judgment, this is part of how we're going to keep America safe--is to--to send a message to the world that we are going to invest in issues like education, we are going to invest in issues that--that relate to how ordinary people are able to live out their dreams.

And that is something that I'm going to be committed to as president of the United States.

Taranto points out:

Barack Obama may be the world's leading expert on Barack Obama, but he managed to misstate a crucial fact in his father's life story. Obama père came to the U.S. in September 1959, the Washington Post reported in March--which would mean that the letter-writing campaign Obama fils describes would have taken place in the 1950s, not the 1960s.

Why is this important? Because it is weird to hear a left-liberal politician wax nostalgic for the "moral authority" the U.S. supposedly enjoyed in the 1950s--before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the War on Poverty, America's defeat in the Vietnam War, women's liberation, gay liberation, Roe v. Wade, Nixon's resignation--all the liberal triumphs of the 1960s and '70s. It is conservatives who usually argue, rightly or not, that the era since the 1950s has been one of moral decay.

Presumably it was to divert attention from this contradiction that Obama misstated the decade in which his father attempted to come to America. Liberals, at least those who weren't there, remember the 1960s fondly. But however one evaluates the legacy of the 1960s and early '70s, is there really any substance to Obama's claim that "our standing in the world now, the way children around the world look at the United States," has deteriorated? (Obama's father, by the way, was a "child" of 22 or 23 when he arrived in the U.S.)

Our sense is that there is not, that Obama is painting a rosy picture of the past in order to disparage contemporary America. It's nothing more than feel-bad rhetoric.

In fact, we'd say the most salient contrast between America in 2008 and America in 1959 is this: In 2008, Obama fils has an excellent chance of becoming the next president. In 1959, there were large portions of the country where Obama père would have been treated as a second-class citizen. Obama père seems to have seen past America's imperfections and focused on its greatness. If Obama fils is to be the next president, one hopes he will learn to do the same thing.

Bailout Thoughts

2008-09-25T13:22:00.001-07:00

So there is a lot of back-and-forth about whether the Paulson Bailout will cost the U.S. trillions of dollars; or whether it will in the end reap a windfall of trillions of dollars.

The question that I have for those that think this may actually make money is this:

Are you nuts?

(Note that I generally applaud buying up distressed assets a fire-sale prices, then making a killing once everybody starts to realize how stupidly they have acted. I am, after all, a heartless capitalist.)

Andy Kessler makes this point in his Wall Street Journal article:

In 1992, hedge-fund manager George Soros made $1 billion betting against the British pound. In 2007, John Paulson's Credit Opportunities fund correctly bet against subprime mortgages, clearing $15 billion for the year and $3.7 billion for him. Warren Buffett is now hoping to make big money on Goldman Sachs.

Chad Crowe

But these are small-time deals. My analysis suggests that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (a former investment banker, no less, not a trader) may pull off the mother of all trades, which could net a trillion dollars and maybe as much as $2.2 trillion -- yes, with a "t" -- for the United States Treasury...
Firms will haggle, but eventually cave -- they need the cash. I am figuring Mr. Paulson could wind up buying more than $2 trillion in notional value loans and home equity and CDOs for his $700 billion.

So the U.S. will be stuck with a portfolio in the trillions of dollars in bad loans and last-to-be-paid derivatives. Where is the trade in that?

Well, unlike Mr. Buffett or any hedge fund, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve get to cheat. It's not without risk, but the Feds, with lots of levers, can and will pump capital into the U.S. economy to get it moving again. Future heads of Treasury and the Federal Reserve will be growth advocates -- in effect, "talking their book." While normally this creates a threat of inflation and a run on the dollar, and we may see dollar exchange rates turn south near term, don't expect it to last.

First, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley now operating as low-leverage bank holding companies, a dollar injected into the economy will most likely turn into $10 in capital (instead of $30 when they were investment banks). This is a huge change. Plus, a stronger U.S. economy, with its financial players having clean balance sheets, will become a safe haven for capital.

So where is the downside?

L. Willaim Seidman and David C. Cooke list some of the lessons they learned from the Resolution Trust Corporation in the Savings & Loan bailout of the 1985:

Here are the most important lessons we learned from our experiences in the late '80s and early '90s:

- Acquired assets require active management. Assets tend to lose value while in government hands, as the government seldom can duplicate a private owner's interest in enhancing value. The RTC employed over 10,000 people in the first year of operation.

- Holding large inventories of assets will lead to depressed prices. No one wants to buy when the market has a large overhang of assets just waiting to be dumped when prices improve.

- To get the market started, assets have to be sold at very low prices. Such sales will attract buyers, with a resulting increase in prices. At the same time, selling at low prices could trigger accusations that the agency is "depressing the market."

- Every government sale or purchase creates winners and losers. This results in intense political and economic pressures to influence the actions of the agency. The RTC's independent governance and operations protected against fraud and political influence.

So the government (via its new version of the RTC) becomes the mortgage holder for hundreds of thousands of Americans. Already the cry from Democrats is "People before profit."

Will the US be able to resolve the most clear out the very worst of these loans in an fiscally responsible manner?

If there is any possibility of making money on these loans, won't that cause an outcry on the Left?

William Ayres

2008-09-15T22:34:00.000-07:00

This is all very inside baseball. If you haven't been following the presidential campaign since 2006, it may seem as though it is an argument in progress. It is. Feel free to skip.

Just a few posts ago I was wondering about Barack Obama, "Who Does He Owe?"

It seems as though one of the people he owes is William Ayres. As pointed out by Hillary Clinton, Obama used the position that he had in Ayres operation as a bullet point on his resume.

This is the absolute sticking point for me. My family calls me McCarthyite and say that I'm attempting to smear Obama with guilt by association.

And yet.

"I don't regret setting bombs" and "I feel we didn't do enough", and, when asked if he would "do it all again" as saying "I don't want to discount the possibility."

"We weren't terrorists," Ayers told an interviewer for the Chicago Tribune in 2001. "The reason we weren't terrorists is because we did not commit random acts of terror against people. Terrorism was what was being practiced in the countryside of Vietnam by the United States."

Oh, God. Do we think that the Red Brigade were random? Bader-Meinhof Group? Were all the pain and horror and death in the end for nothing?

Calling me McCarthyite isn't the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

George Putnam has Died

2008-09-15T17:01:00.000-07:00

Things I didn't know about George Putnam:

"I detest labels," he once told the Los Angeles Times. "I've been called many things in my career: right-wing extremist, super-patriot, goose-stepping nationalist, jingoistic SOB. And those are some of the nice things.

"But those people have never bothered to determine my background: Farmer-Labor Party, Socialist Party, lifelong member of the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People], member of the Urban League. I went through the Depression, and my father was reduced to selling peanuts door-to-door . . . I fell in love with Franklin D. Roosevelt. I've been a lifelong Democrat. I'm a conservative Democrat."

Sorry. My head will stop spinning in just a minute.

Belly Laugh

2008-09-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

I saw the video of Senator McCain being besieged by the harpies of "The View," and it caused me to reflect.

What I wanted McCain to do, what I wanted Sarah Palin to do when confronted by Charlie Gibson, was to laugh. I wanted John McCain to toss back his head, hold his stomach and laugh at the silly improbability of it all until tears rolled down his cheeks.

When you think about it, "Do I have to be worried about the return of slavery," seems to require one of two responses. The first is outrage that your viewpoint could be so distorted by a sadly un-funny comedienne. I have no doubt that Senator McCain could rise to heights of outrage should he so desire. The second response is to look at these Lilliputian scold-hens and see how ludicrous their jabber really is. I don't want to hear a mean snarly laugh, nor yet a derisive snort, but a belly laugh that reflects his amusement that these people, these people, contend that they speak for the American people.

Have you noticed how Senator McCain smiles these days when he is standing in the vortex of all the cheers directed at him and Governor Palin? That's how I knew that she was the right choice. America wants a happy warrior, not glum eat-your-Brussels-sprouts policy wonks.

Anyway, the election season is here. At dinner parties I attend, the hostesses hush any talk of November when I am present. My brothers and sisters are, I am sure, discussing having me committed for the insanity of disagreement with them.

Barack Obama = Steve Jobs?

2008-09-12T10:16:00.000-07:00

Other than Jobs helped create a multi-billion-dollar industry where there was none?

I am anticipating the return of Saturday Night Live this weekend with the election in full swing. In an article about the comedians who will do impersonations of the candidates, Fred Armisen talks about "doing" Barack Obama:

Obama might at first seem almost too straight of a character for Armisen. While Hammond is a somewhat traditional standup (he performs frequently and has recently begun appearing on Broadway, notably in "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee"), Armisen is closer to absurdist, Andy Kaufman territory...

But he says Obama reminds him of another character of his: Steve Jobs.

"There was something about Senator Obama that I felt they had some similarities — in their presentation, in their love for what they do," says Armisen. "Steve Jobs really makes moments happen."

So the similarity is that Barak Obama has his own Reality Distortion Field?

From Wikipedia:

Reality distortion field is a term coined by Bud Tribble at Apple Inc. in 1981, to describe company co-founder Steve Jobs' charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Mac project. Later the term has also been used to refer to perceptions of his keynote (or Stevenote) by observers and devoted users of Apple computers and products.

Bud Tribble claimed that the term came from Star Trek.

In essence, RDF is the idea that Steve Jobs is able to convince people to believe almost anything with a mix of charm, charisma, bluster, exaggeration, and marketing. RDF is said to distort an audience's sense of proportion or scale. Small advances are applauded as breakthroughs. Interesting developments become turning points, or huge leaps forward. Those who use the term RDF contend that it is not an example of outright deception but more a case warping the powers of judgment. The term "audience" may refer to an individual whose attitudes Steve is intending to affect.

Often the term is used as a derogatory remark to criticize Apple's products and its more enthusiastic fans.

The term has extended in industry to other managers and leaders, who try to convince their employees to become passionately committed to projects, sometimes without regard to the overall product or to competitive forces in the marketplace. It also has been used with regard to hype for products that are not necessarily connected with any one person .

Who Does He Owe?

2008-09-09T14:11:00.000-07:00

I have avoided posting about the Sarah Palin Veep situation. I, like almost everyone else, was caught near flatfooted. I had considered Palin, but had filed her in my mind in along with Bobby Jindal in a box marked: "Rising Stars, check back in 2 years." I have been revolted at the toxic waste dump of hate that has been spilled by her political opponents.

But the Obama campaign's featherweight response to Palin was telling in its ineptness. It's like that they felt that had to throw something out there, rather than let the announcement dominate the next six news cycles while they did opposition research. But the response was pathetic. Calling Palin a "former mayor," rather than a "sitting governor?" Getting trapped in comparing the top of the Democratic ticket with the bottom of the Republican ticket?

This ineptness in choosing Joe Biden, blowing the Palin announcement, and the daily gaff-o-matic tone of the Obama/Biden ticket has me puzzled. How did they get this far?

Joe Biden owes Barak Obama big time. Biden couldn't get more than 1% of the Iowa vote.

So who does Obama owe? Step back a minute and contemplate just how unlikely it is for Obama to be where he is. Here is a freshman senator defeating the Clinton Machine on his first national campaign. What's up with that?

No big conspiracy theory needed. I don't need to imagine a left-wing cabal. Just the usual big-money people.

First on the list is Oprah Winfrey. I have heard that Oprah Winfrey was a big factor in convincing him after she heard his speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention. (Of course she was measuring him against John "Reporting for Duty!" Kerry, so he looked positively presidential.) She was a fellow member of Wright's church. She opened her Rolodex to him, giving him entree to the necessary early big-money donors.

So yeah, he owes Oprah. If he gets elected, she gets to swank it and go to State dinners and lay a proprietary hand on his arm and say, "Yeah, I gave him his start." That's an easy payoff.

But beating the Clintons? One of the most feared political machines in modern politics? A machine that has members so loyal that they will pull free-lance black-bag operations at the National Archives? I mean, this real life, not National Treasure.

And this fresh young man from the sticks steps in and beats The Clinton Machine?

Yeah, right.

Quite frankly that's the most impressive item on his rather slim resume'.

But in politics, everybody owes somebody.

So who does Obama owe?

MooveAlong.org

2008-09-02T10:54:00.000-07:00

This is completely brilliant. MooveAlong.org

It's a goof site promoting the movie An American Carol.

The Music Man

2008-08-28T14:29:00.000-07:00

A fascinating article by John McWhorter in The New Republic on the changes in oratorical styles in the last century.

If Abraham Lincoln were brought back to life, one thing that would throw him, other than electric power and the Internet, would be that audiences disrupted his speeches by clapping after every three or four lines. As ordinary as this seems now, this kind of applause is actually a custom of our times: Wesleyan political scientist Elvin Lim has documented that, in records of presidential addresses since Franklin D. Roosevelt, 97 percent of the applause lines appear in speeches by Richard Nixon and his successors. To speakers in Lincoln's day, a public address was typically a lecture. In our time, it is more often a love-in, more about the speaker "connecting" with the audience than teaching it anything new; hence the constant interruptions for clapping....

Given the standard assumption that our political culture would be better off if everyone would just "stick to the issues," the heavy performative streak in modern political speechmaking could be seen as counterintuitive. Wouldn't we expect the average person, when behind the podium, to simply talk? Why do so many find it natural to slide into a dramatic speaking style alien to their everyday selves when speaking to audiences--and why do they say so little when they do?

(Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan refers to this impulse as "reaching for the marble," that is, the hope of every presidential wanna-be and might-have-been to hope that their rhetoric will be so high-flown and compelling that it will be carved on the walls of their national monuments some day. -ed)

Interestingly, modern speakers have discovered they can play down to their audiences without seeming to. The intonations of casual speech are a kind of music; and, when wielded effectively, they can satisfy in the same way as a good song. Steven Mithen at Reading University has even proposed that language began as strings of musical syllables, gradually reinterpreted as nouns and verbs. Thus, euphonious intonation has a way of sounding like grammar--i.e., logic. In fact, researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig have discovered that the part of the brain that processes musical sequences is the same one that generates grammatical syntax.
If our expectation that a subject will be followed by a predicate is founded in the same process that leads us to hear the sequence of notes of "Twinkle, twinkle, little star / How I wonder what you are" as a proper tune, it's no wonder Obama can get so much out of the sheer melody of his delivery. With our brains configured in a way that makes melody feel like logic, the only question would be why Obama's savory intonations would not suggest leadership ability to his fans. In fact, intonation has arguably been as key to Obama's success as his heritage or intelligence. One senses that the women fainting during his speeches are overcome more by the way he talks than what he is saying: With his mastery of cadence and vocal texture, he could rouse an audience reading from a phone book.
However, we must be careful what we wish for. In our sound-bite culture, America not only does not, but perhaps cannot, process logos-based oratory the way it used to. Hillary Clinton's content-rich addresses during the primaries got her nowhere, and Obama's masterfully composed speech on race this spring left his detractors unmoved, many seemingly challenged in even following his lines of argument. For all the complaints from voters about Obama that they don't know "who he is," if he had stepped onto the national stage patiently explaining who he was, how many people would have even been able to listen?

H/T Allah

Life Imitates Iowahawk

2008-08-26T16:38:00.000-07:00

...In the latest issue of Tikkun, in an article titled “Election 2008: Why is it Close?” [Rabbi Michael] Lerner concludes “there is another factor operating that dares not speak its name: RACISM.”

His solution for helping Barack Obama put the election away? “Imagine the cultural impact if tens of thousands of Obama activists were to volunteer the month of October to go door to door in the contested states and ask people to discuss the issue of racism!” (Dear Barack Obama — Please heed Michael Lerner’s advice. — Sincerely, John McCain)

--Mark Hemingway in National Review Online

...With new polls showing Barack Obama's once-commanding lead over John McCain all but evaporated, the Obama campaign announced today it has begun deploying its vast volunteer army of downtown hipster douchebags to help reconnect the presumptive Democratic candidate with middle-American voters.

"Unlike Iraq, this is one surge that is actually going to work," said Obama campaign manager David Axlerod...

According to Lorenz, winning back fence sitters to the Obama column takes a disciplined three-pronged attack of sarcasm, irony and condescension, which he demonstrates on a diner at a Fond du Lac IHOP.

"Excuse me, who are you voting for?" Lorenz asks the elderly man.

"Oh, I don't know, McCain I suppose," the man answers.

"Yeah, I guess you senile old f*cks need to stick together," says Lorenz. "That way you can stay safe from those scary Muslim nee-groos."

"See?" observes Lorenz. "Now that he's been properly shamed out of his racism, he'll think twice before pulling any lever for McBush."

--Iowahawk Obama Pix Hipster Prix to Reclick with Stix Hix

Misremembering Doctrine

2008-08-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been chided here before for her quoting of Bible passages that no one, not even (nor especially) those familiar with the Christian scripture recognizes.

Now she is lecturing the Catholic Church on it's doctrine and dogmas.

Once again, she's wrong. Oh, so wrong on so many points. First:

REP. PELOSI: I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time. And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition. And Senator–St. Augustine said at three months. We don’t know. The point is, is that it shouldn’t have an impact on the woman’s right to choose. Roe v. Wade talks about very clear definitions of when the child–first trimester, certain considerations; second trimester; not so third trimester. There’s very clear distinctions. This isn’t about abortion on demand, it’s about a careful, careful consideration of all factors and–to–that a woman has to make with her doctor and her god. And so I don’t think anybody can tell you when life begins, human life begins. As I say, the Catholic Church for centuries has been discussing this, and there are those who’ve decided…

Well, first of all, Ms. Pelosi, your party (and you party's standard bearer, Barack Obama) have not been supportive of any distinctions between the trimesters relating to the personhood of the child.

Second of all, Roe v. Wade was based upon viability of the unborn child. Breathtaking medical advances in the last 35 years have kicked that crutch out from underneath that argument. (A problem with pragmatic judgements--the circumstances change and you are left clinging to an argument that is no longer valid.)

But I am concerned here with your understanding of the doctrines of your own church:

MR. BROKAW: The Catholic Church at the moment feels very strongly that it…

REP. PELOSI: I understand that.

MR. BROKAW: …begins at the point of conception.

REP. PELOSI: I understand. And this is like maybe 50 years or something like that. So again, over the history of the church, this is an issue of controversy. But it is, it is also true that God has given us, each of us, a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And we want abortions to be safe, rare, and reduce the number of abortions. That’s why we have this fight in Congress over contraception. My Republican colleagues do not support contraception. If you want to reduce the number of abortions, and we all do, we must–it would behoove you to support family planning and, and contraception, you would think. But that is not the case. So we have to take–you know, we have to handle this as respectfully–this is sacred ground. We have to handle it very respectfully and not politicize it, as it has been–and I’m not saying Rick Warren did, because I don’t think he did, but others will try to.

Oooooh, that wascally Wick Warren! She's not saying Rick torpedoed her guy, but others will try to say he did!

Ed Morrisey over at Hot Air posts some historic Church documents:

“The second commandment of the teaching: You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not seduce boys. You shall not commit fornication. You shall not steal. You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions. You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child” (Didache 2:1–2 [A.D. 70]).

Tertullian wrote:

“In our case, a murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from the other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed” (Apology 9:8 [A.D. 197]).

“Among surgeons’ tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of all and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade, by means of which the limbs [of the child] within the womb are dissected with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook, wherewith the entire fetus is extracted by a violent delivery.

“There is also [another instrument in the shape of] a copper needle or spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of life: They give it, from its infanticide function, the name of embruosphaktes, [meaning] “the slayer of the infant,” which of course was alive. . . .

“[The doctors who performed abortions] all knew well enough that a living being had been conceived, and [they] pitied this most luckless infant state, which had first to be put to death, to escape being tortured alive” (The Soul 25 [A.D. 210]).

I'm not large-C Catholic, so I will leave the heavy lifting to The Anchoress.

But Nancy, you know those churchgoer's votes you wanted this fall? I wouldn't count on them.

Taking the Fifth, Part 2

2008-08-25T17:16:00.000-07:00

As a public service follow-on to my original Taking the Fifth posting, I present the following two videos. They are both from the law class of James Duane at Regent University. Professor Duane tells why he advises never to talk to the police. He then turns his class over to a police officer to give the other view of the Fifth Amendment. Hilarity ensues.

The videos are about 25 minutes apiece, but move very quickly.

FireFlew

2008-08-25T16:31:00.001-07:00

I am a big fan of the Television show Firefly. I own the DVD box set and have watched it again and again. I have loaned it to friends and relations causing a few to buy their own sets.

Now the word comes out that the series will be released in Blu-ray. Well, here is the news item:

Firefly: The Complete Series drops on Blu-ray high-definition disc on Nov. 11 from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment in a three-disc set that includes all 14 episodes, a new Firefly Reunion roundtable discussion and a new episode commentary from series creator Joss Whedon and select cast members; the set carries a suggested retail price of $89.98.

$89.98?!?!?!?

I'd love to see the roundtable discussion and hear the new commentary, but nearly $90 for a discs that I already own...

Recognizing Quality

2008-08-08T10:27:00.000-07:00

From an MSN Money article on knowing when to spend more on an item to save in the long run:

Americans in their 20s and 30s are now at least one generation removed from the era of homemade clothing and hand-crafted wood furniture, Underhill says. "In the 1950s, 90% of homes had sewing machines, which means women knew something about how clothes were put together. They could look at something in the store and tell if was of good construction or crappy construction," he says. "In my office, I don't know anyone who has bought a custom suit. They don't know the difference between off-the-rack and custom."

My mother had a Singer sewing machine, and, being a daughter of the depression, made lots of clothes for the family. Those she didn't make, she likely altered to fit the next-smallest child.

For one brief, shining moment I owned a wardrobe of hand-tailored clothing, including hand-made shoes. I was in Asia for a year and was buying clothes that weren't hand-me-downs. Alas, all my baggage was lost on the trip back to the United States!

The Return of "The America I Knew"

2008-08-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

Barak Obama is shown here using the "America I Knew" meme.

Let me plagiarize myself:

What I am annoyed about is that [this is] being intellectually and historically dishonest about where America is and where it used to be. [This is] attempting to appropriate a conservative, even reactionary, meme and use it to advance a point of view that is radically unconservative....

A few years ago John Stossel...played a couple of television commercials from the late 1950s and early 1960s for various products, laundry soap and canned coffee. I was aghast at their sexist bias and insensitivity. What was worse, I remember seeing the commercials when they first aired, and they were completely unremarkable in the cultural context of their day. Younger people who don't remember this time could fall into the "America I Knew" meme because they have no direct memory of those times. I do. Shame on those, conservative and liberal, who trot that old warhorse out.

America is a wonderful country. My favorite! And I have wonderful nostalgic memories of my boyhood. But I cannot generalize from the specific of my own experiences to say that America was better back then.

Look, if you are a progressive at least espouse a doctrine of progress. It is conservative to look back. It is silly, politically, for progressives to engage in nostalgia.

This is especially true if you are trying to sell a "post-racial" message!

Tony Snow

2008-07-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

I was a Tony Snow fan since the beginning of "Fox News Sunday." His closing comments were gems. His comments following September 11, 2001, when he lost his composure still define the times.

I hope that this doesn't sound too self-centered, but you get to an age and notice that the people that obituaries are starting to be about people who are younger than you. Tony Snow faced the monster that was eating him a piece at a time, and he laughed with the joy of the life that remained:

Tony Snow in The Jewish World Review, 2005:

The art of being sick is not the same as the art of getting well. Some cancer patients recover; some don't. But the ordeal of facing your mortality and feeling your frailty sharpens your perspective about life. You appreciate little things more ferociously. You grasp the mystical power of love. You feel the gravitational pull of faith. And you realize you have received a unique gift – a field of vision others don't have about the power of hope and the limits of fear; a firm set of convictions about what really matters and what does not. You also feel obliged to share these insights – the most important of which is this: There are things far worse than illness – for instance, soullessness.

You keep using that word...

2008-06-24T16:48:00.000-07:00

"...I do not think it means what you think it means."

The Washington Post tells us how rich people spend their time:

People invariably believe that money can make them happy -- and rich people usually do report being happier than poor people do. But if this is the case, shouldn't wealthy people spend a lot more time doing enjoyable things than poor people?

Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman has found, however, that being wealthy is often a powerful predictor that people spend less time doing pleasurable things, and more time doing compulsory things and feeling stressed.

People who make less than $20,000 a year, for example, told Kahneman and his colleagues that they spend more than a third of their time in passive leisure -- watching television, for example. Those making more than $100,000 spent less than one-fifth of their time in this way -- putting their legs up and relaxing. Rich people spent much more time commuting and engaging in activities that were required as opposed to optional. The richest people spent nearly twice as much time as the poorest people in leisure activities that were active, structured and often stressful -- shopping, child care and exercise.

Kahneman and his colleagues argued that many people mistakenly allocate enormous amounts of their time and psychological focus to getting rich because of a mental illusion: When they think about what it would mean to be wealthy, they think about how enjoyable it would be to watch a flat-screen TV set, play lots of sports or get a lot of pampering -- our stereotypical beliefs of how the rich spend their time.

"In reality," Kahneman and his colleagues wrote in a paper they published in the journal Science, "they should think of spending a lot more time working and commuting and a lot less time engaged in passive leisure."

First of all:

People who must commute to work aren't rich. Rich people don't have to work.

Second of all:

And in the United States in the year 2008, $100,000 per annum isn't rich.

Thirdly:

People who make more money tend to be people who are doing what they want to do. Working 50 to 60 hours a week sounds grim to me, but I'm not making a six figure income.

Lastly:

The same driven, successful people may enjoy structured stressful leisure activities more than "passive leisure." White-water rafting, competitive team sports, sailing, tennis, adventure vacations, all take a lot of effort and planning, yet yield a lot of pleasure to the right kind of people.

If I won the lottery, I would take a few months to put my feet up and veg out, but I think that the lotus-eating would pall after a very short period.

It's Okay to Laugh at Him

2008-06-24T13:44:00.000-07:00

With the possibility of an Obama victory in the offing, John Stewart starts aiming at the Democratic candidate.

Two points:

1) Jim Treacher is funnier than me:

That’s my favorite part, the nervous, hesitant laughter. You can almost hear the audience thinking, “Is this okay? Will people think I’m a racist?”

2) Democrats are kicking up a dust cloud when they say, "Changing circumstances required Obama to change his mind."

Really?

When Obama made his pledge he knew that if he won the primary that he would face the winner of the Republican party. What changed there? Did he think that McCain is just a big meanie and that he would have kept his pledge if Fred Thompson was the Republican candidate? Mike Huckabee?

What has changed since then? Money. Lots and lots of money.

Like the old joke goes, "We've established what you are, my dear. We are now haggling price."

Awesome Awsomeness

2008-06-23T13:59:00.000-07:00

This is why I love the Internets. It's also why I read quality bloggers like James Lileks. Here is a show from the early 1970s that defines an era. And the cast! Burgess Merideth, Hugh O'Brian, Tony Franciosa, and Doug McClure!

Here's a link to Search in Jump the Shark.

All the way back to Jerusalem

2008-06-23T13:39:00.000-07:00

We hear so much these days about the cultural and demographic challenge to the West by Islam. An interesting article in the Asia Times points out that the challenge goes two ways:

For the first time, perhaps, since the time of Mohammed, large parts of the Islamic world are vulnerable to Christian efforts to convert them, for tens of millions of Muslims now dwell as minorities in predominantly Christian countries. The Muslim migration to Europe is a double-edged sword. Eventually this migration may lead to a Muslim Europe, but it also puts large numbers of Muslims within reach of Christian missionaries for the first time in history...

As Father Dall'Oglio warns darkly, Muslims are in dialogue with a pope who evidently does not merely want to exchange pleasantries about coexistence, but to convert them. This no doubt will offend Muslim sensibilities, but Muslim leaders are well-advised to remain on good terms with Benedict XVI. Worse things await them. There are 100 million new Chinese Christians, and some of them speak of marching to Jerusalem - from the East. A website entitled Back to Jerusalem proclaims, "From the Great Wall of China through Central Asia along the silk roads, the Chinese house churches are called to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ all the way back to Jerusalem."

Islam is in danger for the first time since its founding. The evangelical Christianity to which George W Bush adheres and the emerging Asian church are competitors with whom it never had to reckon in the past. The European Church may be weak, but no weaker, perhaps, than in the 8th century after the depopulation of Europe and the fall of Rome. An evangelizing European Church might yet repopulate Europe with new Christians as it did more than a millennium ago.

No Greater Honor

2008-06-03T14:16:00.000-07:00

In The Atlantic Robert D. Kaplan describes the process of awarding the U.S. military's highest honor, and reflects on the disconnection between those who serve and those who are served.

Over the decades, the Medal of Honor—the highest award for valor—has evolved into the U.S. military equivalent of sainthood. Only eight Medals of Honor have been awarded since the Vietnam War, all posthumously....

Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith was the ultimate iron grunt, the kind of relentless, professional, noncommissioned officer that the all-volunteer, expeditionary American military has been quietly producing for four decades. “The American people provide broad, brand-management approval of the U.S. military,” notes Colonel Smith, “about how great it is, and how much they support it, but the public truly has no idea how skilled and experienced many of these troops are.”
Sergeant Smith had fought and served in Desert Storm, Bosnia, and Kosovo prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom. To his men, he was an intense, “infuriating, by-the-book taskmaster,” in the words of Alex Leary of The St. Petersburg Times, Sergeant Smith’s hometown newspaper. Long after other platoons were let off duty, Sergeant Smith would be drilling his men late into the night, checking the cleanliness of their rifle barrels with the Q-tips he carried in his pocket. During one inspection, he found a small screw missing from a soldier’s helmet. He called the platoon back to drill until 10 p.m. “He wasn’t an in-your-face type,” Colonel Smith told me, “just a methodical, hard-ass professional who had been in combat in Desert Storm, and took it as his personal responsibility to prepare his men for it.”
Sergeant Smith’s mind-set epitomized the Western philosophy on war: War is not a way of life, an interminable series of hit-and-run raids for the sake of vendetta and tribal honor, in societies built on blood and discord. War is awful, to be waged only as a last resort, and with terrific intensity, to elicit a desired outcome in the shortest possible time. Because Sergeant Smith took war seriously, he never let up on his men, and never forgot about them...

The ceremony in the East Room of the White House two years to the day after Sergeant Smith was killed, where President George W. Bush awarded the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Smith’s 11-year-old son, David, was fitfully covered by the media. The Paul Ray Smith story elicited 96 media mentions for the eight week period after the medal was awarded, compared with 4,677 for the supposed abuse of the Koran at Guantánamo Bay and 5,159 for the disgraced Abu Ghraib prison guard Lynndie England, over a much longer time frame that went on for many months. In a society that obsesses over reality-TV shows, gangster and war movies, and NFL quarterbacks, an authentic hero like Sergeant Smith flickers momentarily before the public consciousness.

It may be that the public, which still can’t get enough of World War II heroics, even as it feels guilty about its treatment of Vietnam veterans, simply can’t deliver up the requisite passion for honoring heroes from unpopular wars like Korea and Iraq. It may also be that, encouraged by the media, the public is more comfortable seeing our troops in Iraq as victims of a failed administration rather than as heroes in their own right. Such indifference to valor is another factor that separates an all-volunteer military from the public it defends.

Read the short article. It is well worth your time.

Skills Every Man Should Master

2008-05-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

Robert A. Heinlein wrote: “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

There has been text written in the last year or so lamenting the loss of skills that were common just a generation ago. These laments range from the I Can't Do One-Quarter of the Things My Father Can, to Popular Mechanics 25 Skills Every Man Should Know.

Now Esquire Magazine publishes its list, The 75 Skills Every Man Should Master. I wonder at the purpose of some of the entries on the list, perhaps they were included just so everyone who reads it would have something to check off and say, "Got that one!"

5. Name a book that matters. The Catcher in the Rye does not matter. Not really. You gotta read.

[Yep. Got that one.]

13. Throw a punch. Close enough, but not too close. Swing with your shoulders, not your arm. Long punches rarely land squarely. So forget the roundhouse. You don't have a haymaker. Follow through; don't pop and pull back. The length you give the punch should come in the form of extension after the point of contact. Just remember, the bones in your hand are small and easy to break. You're better off striking hard with the heel of your palm. Or you could buy the guy a beer and talk it out.

[Nope. Years of Aikido to learn how to NOT throw a punch.]

16. Tie a bow tie.

[Nope. Don't own one. Afraid if I wore it I might look like George Will.]

29. Understand quantum physics well enough that he can accept that a quarter might, at some point, pass straight through the table when dropped. Sometimes the laws of physics aren't laws at all. Read The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone, by Kenneth W. Ford.

[Nope. "Nobody understands quantum physics." - Richard Feynman]

47. Recite one poem from memory. Here you go:

WHEN YOU ARE OLD

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

—William Butler Yeats

[Yes. When my youngest daughter was in elementary school she wrote a poem about apple blossoms. It so enchanted me, that it has stayed forever in my memory. Years later I recited it to a professor of English, who also was charmed. The professor said that it reminded her of A.E Housman's "Loveliest of Trees." Those two poems are now forever entwined in my rememberance.

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
—A.E. Housman

The 1750 Hit Parade

2008-05-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

A nifty review in the Wall Street Journal of The Great Transformation of Musical Taste by William Weber points out that our taste for great classics in concert hall music is rather modern. Up until the mid-1800s, concert programs were primarily composed of recent works by living composers:

Until the early 19th century, Mr. Weber says, no body of European music was viewed as innately superior to any other. Concerts displayed a variety of tastes and styles and rarely featured esteemed composers or particular genres. Having studied hundreds of concert programs spanning several decades, Mr. Weber tells us that the typical 18th-century public performance featured a miscellany of opera overtures, arias, concertos and ensemble numbers – all by living composers. "Variety is the soul of a concert," one pundit pronounced. Mozart's father advised him that success lay in keeping his compositions "short, easy and popular."

What happened to music?

Over the course of the 19th century, Mr. Weber shows, thinkers and commentators came to regard music not so much as a mode of entertainment as a source of truth. Their idealism was of a piece with the views of Shelley, Ruskin and Coleridge, who argued for the higher social purpose of art and literature. The Italian political leader Giuseppe Mazzini demanded that opera serve "art and Christian principle," not base commercialism.

Berlioz and Schumann put forth their own ideas of music as a form of moral responsibility, even suggesting that the world would be a better place if it were run by musicians...

I can think of nothing that would kill the pleasure of music faster than making it moral responsibility. Of course, modernist composers didn't help themselves:

The list of canonical works grew during the late 19th century and early 20th. Naturally, new works entered the repertory, but less frequently. The audience preference for the old intensified into an outright dislike of the new when craggy modernist dissonance started competing for public attention with lush, late-romantic harmonies. Think only of the howls of rage that greeted the works by Schönberg and Stravinsky in the 1910s and 1920s.

Thus the canon became a form of resistance to a turn in concert programming that, with some exceptions, never captured the public's affection. In a sense, we inhabit this world today. Mr. Weber is not a moralist and does not claim that, by preferring Tchaikovsky to, say, the current-day atonalist Charles Wuorinen, we are philistines or reactionaries. But he does show that the dead did not always reign supreme over our conception of the great and the good. And he leaves us to conclude that they need not do so now...

So all that 1950s uproar over Rock 'n Roll being the unworthy music was a middle-brow echo of the musical shifts in the 1800s.

Taking the Fifth

2008-05-07T13:17:00.000-07:00

Beethoven's 5th symphony in C minor is such a workhorse (or warhorse) that it has become a symbol of Western concert music and it has been been drafted into many uses. Most often it appears musically as a straw man with a sign hanging from it's neck that reads, "Dead White European Music."

But occasionally the genius of the composer calls forth some genius from the adapter. Two treatments come to mind. First is Peter Schickele's "New Horizons in Music Appreciation: Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony" to this: Sid Ceasar and Nanette Fabray having an argument to the Fifth Symphony's first movement.

Two points that strike me: They used the entire first movement of nearly six minutes. I don't think a television programmer today would let a skit develop that long. Though the movements seem to be repetitive, they develop the story with the music and let the music dictate the pace of the skit. This would be very daring whenever it was done.

The Prophetic Voice

2008-04-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

While the remarks of The Reverend Jeremiah Wright may seem discordant and troubling, isn't that the role of the prophet? Isn't it the prophet's duty to speak "truth to power?" Several observers have likened Wright to the Hebrew prophets Jeremiah and Amos, preachers who used violent imagery.

Richard Landes points out a large flaw in this line of thinking:

As someone who has read the prophetic texts, and thought a good deal about them in the context of the tradition of self-criticism, I think these characterizations of the “prophetic stream” represent a profound misunderstanding. The prophets are ferocious in their criticism of their own people; they have relatively little to say about the real oppressive forces in the world of their day in the 8-7th centuries BCE. When the people of Israel get smashed by the Assyrians and the Babylonians, the prophets don’t go into a rant about how evil these vicious imperialists are; they invoke them as God’s agents in punishing Israel for their sins. When, under more normative conditions, when they chastize rulers and aristocracy for their treatment of the poor, they do so again with vigorous, even violent rhetoric, but they do so in the hopes of changing their people. The prophets, however rough they may be, love the people they chastize, and rebuke them for the sake of their transformation.

Just so.

Another thing that occurs to me as I watch the videos of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's sermons is the reaction of his congregation to these harsh words--they are delighted to the point of laughing, dancing, and high-five-ing. The proper response to a prophet's words is repentance. In the time of the Hebrew prophets Jeremiah and Amos, this meant weeping and wearing sackcloth and ashes.

Racial McCarthyism?

2008-04-28T17:12:00.000-07:00

Via Protein Wisdom:

The press, particularly ABC and Fox, have been very irresponsible regarding Reverend Wright. He has been used as a tool to smear Obama with the association; I think the apt label would be “Racial McCarthyism.”

In this formulation, that makes The Reverend Jeremiah Wright into Joseph Stalin.

Hmmmm...

The Future of American Power -- 1

2008-04-28T15:08:00.000-07:00

There is engrossing reading over at RealClearPolitics.com in an essay The Future of American Power, by the always provocative Fareed Zakaria.

One characteristic of this article's appeal is that the ideas that crop up every two or three paragraphs call out for attendant essays. I won't have the presumption to write those essays, but I'd like to point out some paragraphs for commentary. Emphasis in the quoted paragraphs is mine.

The first topic is the U.S. educational system:

The U.S. system may be too lax when it comes to rigor and memorization, but it is very good at developing the critical faculties of the mind. It is surely this quality that goes some way in explaining why the United States produces so many entrepreneurs, inventors, and risk takers. Tharman Shanmugaratnam, until recently Singapore's minister of education, explains the difference between his country's system and that of the United States: "We both have meritocracies," Shanmugaratnam says. "Yours is a talent meritocracy, ours is an exam meritocracy. We know how to train people to take exams. You know how to use people's talents to the fullest. Both are important, but there are some parts of the intellect that we are not able to test well -- like creativity, curiosity, a sense of adventure, ambition. Most of all, America has a culture of learning that challenges conventional wisdom, even if it means challenging authority." This is one reason that Singaporean officials recently visited U.S. schools to learn how to create a system that nurtures and rewards ingenuity, quick thinking, and problem solving. "Just by watching, you can see students are more engaged, instead of being spoon-fed all day," one Singaporean visitor told The Washington Post. While the United States marvels at Asia's test-taking skills, Asian governments come to the United States to figure out how to get their children to think.

So this gets me thinking about the current revolt against the current U.S. exam-based fashion. In Washington State, this exam regimen is WASL, and it is the bane of students and teachers alike.

The push towards standardized exams came when the current urban school culture proved unable to deal with the cultural demands placed on schools. Children were dumped on the school's doorstep every September; and teachers were expected to perform all of the socialization, disciplinary, and character-building tasks that used to be seen as the responsibility of the parents. It's tough to teach anything when kids can't read. It's tough to maintain classroom order when children haven't been taught self-discipline at home. And heaven help the teacher who disciplines some hysteric parent's little darling.

But apparently we are doing something right. A previous paragraph reads:

But the aggregate scores hide deep regional, racial, and socioeconomic variation. Poor and minority students score well below the U.S. average, while, as one study noted, "students in affluent suburban U.S. school districts score nearly as well as students in Singapore, the runaway leader on TIMSS math scores." The difference between the average science scores in poor and wealthy school districts within the United States, for instance, is four to five times as high as the difference between the U.S. and the Singaporean national average. In other words, the problem with U.S. education is a problem of inequality. This will, over time, translate into a competitiveness problem, because if the United States cannot educate and train a third of the working population to compete in a knowledge economy, this will drag down the country. But it does know what works.

And so we see that the problem isn't with our educational model, it's with a one-size-fits-all solution that attempts to apply a solution developed to monitor inner-city school performance to all schools everywhere.

Knork!

2008-04-25T12:51:00.000-07:00

Forget the Spork.

Embrace the Knork!

Misremembering Scripture--Updated!

2008-04-24T10:17:00.001-07:00

Nancy, Nancy, Nancy.

(Imagine me saying that in my best Cary Grant impersonation voice.)

I've tried to help you out with this Bible thing before. Back in December of 1995 I helpfully pointed out that the "Bible scripture" that you were quoting wasn't in the Bible at all! At least it wasn't in any of the translations to which I have access.

But you weren't listening. Not that I blame you, really. You are a big-shot Democrat, I'm a nobody Republican. You are from San Francisco, I'm from a small town in Puget Sound.

But you're still doing it; and you're still using the same oddball misquote. In your press release for 2008 Earth Day, you write:

“The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.’ On this Earth Day, and every day, let us honor the earth and our future generations with a commitment to fight climate change.”

I'm still scratching my head over this quote. I'm not the only one.

But, I'm a big man. Maybe you do know better than me. I read neither Hebrew, Koine Greek, nor Aramaic. So I am writing you via your big shot Congressional Speaker's website's "contact" page:

Speaker Pelosi;

In your press release "Celebrating Earth Day," you quote the Old Testament using the following scripture:

‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.’

Would you please tell me where in the Old Testament that this quote is found? I understand that there are many translations and that quote may not be word-for-word, but where can I find this quote's source?

Thank you for your time and attention.

-Whidbey Islander

I promise I will post your reply here.

UPDATE: No, not a reply from Ms Pelosi. But of course I'm not the only person trying to get to the bottom of this quote. CNSNews has tried for two days to get a reply from Speaker Pelosi's office to source the quote. They have also surveyed several Biblical scholars to see if they could provide a plausible (or even implausible) source for the quote:

John J. Collins, the Holmes professor of Old Testament criticism and interpretation at Yale Divinity School, said he is totally unfamiliar with Pelosi's quotation.

"(It's) not one that I recognize," Collins told Cybercast News Service. "I assume that she means this is a paraphrase. But it wouldn't be a close paraphrase to anything I know of."

Claude Mariottini, a professor of Old Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Cybercast News Service the passage not only doesn't exist - it's "fictional."

"It is not in the Bible," Mariottini said. "There is nothing that even approximates that."

Other scholars agree that nothing remotely resembling it can be found in any version of the Scriptures - Old Testament or New Testament.

"The quote does not exist in the Old Testament, neither in the New Testament," said the Rev. Andreas Hock, a doctor of Scripture who teaches in the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Denver's St. John Vianney Seminary.

"Even in pieces or bits, (it) cannot be found in the Old Testament," he added.

The problem with the "paraphrase" theory is that her press release enclosed the questionable text in quotation marks.

CNS also review the fact that Speaker Pelosi uses this quote more than an Evangelical uses John 3:16:

December 2005, in a Christmas message to the U.S. House of Representatives, Pelosi said: "And as the Bible teaches us, to minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship, to ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us. Let us vote no on this budget as an act of worship and for America's children."

Feb. 8, 2007, in remarks before the U.S. House Science and Technology Committee, when it held hearings on global warming, she used the same quote, verbatim, as in her Earth Day release.

April 6, 2007, in congressional remarks before the Easter recess: "In this Holy Week, we are reminded of these words in the Old Testament: 'To minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.' We must move quickly to honor God's creation by reducing greenhouse gas pollution in the United States and around the world."

April 25, 2007, in a speech to the League of Conservation Voters in Washington, D.C.: "We are now charging ahead to tackle one of humanity's greatest challenges yet - global warming. We will do this because we hold our children's future in our hands - not our grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, but our own children. "As it says in the Old Testament, 'To minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.'"

Oct. 22, 2007, in a television interview with PBS host Tavis Smiley, she used it in discussion of her roots, attributing the quote to the book of Isaiah: "I'm raised in a family in Baltimore, Maryland, my father was the mayor. He was in Congress when I was born. And we were devoutly Catholic, very patriotic. We love America. Devoutly Catholic, deeply patriotic, proud of our Italian American heritage, and in our case, staunchly Democratic.

"And that faith was related to our Democratic values. That is to say, the gospel of Matthew: 'When I was hungry, you gave me to eat.' You know, the least of our brethren. So that's an inspiration in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, Isaiah says, 'To minister to the needs of God's creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the god who made us.'"

So, until I hear from you, Nancy, I'm going with the explanation provided by Professor Mariottini:

"People try to use the Bible to give authority to what they are trying to say," he said. "(This) is one of those texts that you fabricate in order to support what you want to say."

Alien Nation

2008-04-15T17:44:00.000-07:00

The Alien Nation made-for-TV movies have been released to DVD.

I have said before that I have a soft spot for genre-bending science fiction television shows. Alien Nation was the best sci-fi cop-buddy-comedy-soap opera ever done. (And yes there have been several---if you stretch "sci-fi" to include the "supernatural horror" like they do in the island's video rental store.)

The series was canceled by Fox TV back in its early days, setting a pattern for disappointing everyone who didn't care for teen soap opera. I am going to order the one complete season on DVD and see if it stands up. If so, I may order the movies--that will give time for their price to fall.

...And am I the only one who gets the multi-layered pun in the title?

...Don't Amount to a Hill of Beans

2008-04-03T14:41:00.000-07:00

Rumors come and go, but this is a doozy.

But now Madonna has stunned the movie industry with plans to remake Casablanca – and this time set it in Iraq.

Go read the article while I speculate on this....

Does this mean that herself endorses Bush's entrance into the war? After all, the theme of Casablanca is the end of American isolationism, "I bet they're asleep now. I bet they're asleep all over America." And, "Welcome to the fight. Now I know our side will win."

Perhaps she treasures this line of Ilsa's: "I love you so much. I hate war so much. " But that comes from the mouth of a veteran of a resistance movement.

I don't doubt that hack writers will be hired to re-write the script and make up into down and wrong into right. And I don't doubt that if they do so, audiences will stay away in droves, making this yet another Madonna bomb.

P.S. Remember that Ingrid Bergman was 27 when the original Casablanca was made. Madonna is turning 50 in August 2008. She has been workin' the gym, but I think it would take a whole unit of ILM to make her look the ingenue.

Not just Anybody can Do This

2008-04-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

Joe Queenan reviews Paris Hilton in The Hottie and the Nottie.

Though it is a natural impulse to believe that the excruciating film one is watching today is on a par with the excruciating films of yesterday, this is a slight to those who have worked long and hard to make movies so moronic that the public will still be talking about them decades later. Anyone can make a bad movie; Kate Hudson and Adam Sandler make them by the fistful. Anyone can make a sickening movie; we are already up to Saw IV. Anyone can make an unwatchable movie; Jack Black and Martin Lawrence do it every week. And anyone can make a comedy that is not funny; Jack Black and Martin Lawrence do it every week. But to make a movie that destroys a studio, wrecks careers, bankrupts investors, and turns everyone connected with it into a laughing stock requires a level of moxie, self-involvement, lack of taste, obliviousness to reality and general contempt for mankind that the average director, producer and movie star can only dream of attaining.

Mr. Queenan reveals the what and why of his choice of Worst Movie Ever Made:

While it may disappoint those who welcome my occasionally unconventional opinions, I am firmly in the camp that believes that Heaven's Gate is the worst movie ever made. For my money, none of these other films can hold a candle to Michael Cimino's 1980 apocalyptic disaster. This is a movie that destroyed the director's career. This is a movie that lost so much money it literally drove a major American studio out of business. This is a movie about Harvard-educated gunslingers who face off against eastern European sodbusters in an epic struggle for the soul of America. This is a movie that stars Isabelle Huppert as a shotgun-toting cowgirl. This is a movie in which Jeff Bridges pukes while mounted on roller skates. This is a movie that has five minutes of uninterrupted fiddle-playing by a fiddler who is also mounted on roller skates. This is a movie that defies belief.
A friend of mine, now deceased, was working for the public relations company handling Heaven's Gate when it was released. He told me that when the 220-minute extravaganza debuted at the Toronto film festival, the reaction was so thermonuclear that the stars and the film-maker had to immediately be flown back to Hollywood, perhaps out of fear for their lives. No one at the studio wanted to go out and greet them upon their return; no one wanted to be seen in that particular hearse. My friend eventually agreed to man the limo that would meet the children of the damned on the airport tarmac and whisk them to safety, but only provided he was given free use of the vehicle for the next three days. After he dropped off the halt and the lame at suitable safe houses and hiding places, he went to Mexico for the weekend. Nothing like this ever happened when Showgirls or Gigli or Ishtar or Xanadu or Glitter or Cleopatra were released. Nothing like this happened when The Hottie and the Nottie dropped dead the day it was released. Heaven's Gate was so bad that people literally had to be bribed to go meet the survivors. Proving that, in living memory, giants of bad taste once ruled the earth. Giants. By comparison with the titans who brought you Heaven's Gate, Paris Hilton is a rank amateur.

Carry On, My Wayward Son

2008-03-31T11:48:00.000-07:00

So I have admitted I am a prog-rocker. I can do that, I'm strong.

But what is it about Japanese kids blasting out western music? Whether it's cute 5-year olds with ¾-size violins all over Mozart or sitting at small pianos laying down some Scott Joplin they are plain on it.

10 Most Prophetic Science Fiction Films

2008-03-29T09:38:00.000-07:00

Popular Mechanics has a fun countdown of the "10 Most Prophetic Sci-Fi Films Ever."

The writer, Erik Sofge, says:

They’re not necessarily the best movies—just the ones that got the science right, or will sometime soon.

In his list are the stand-bys of 2001, a Space Odyssey and Soylent Green. But also Short Circuit and Road Warrior.

And of the selection of Running Man, he says:

The movies that have the biggest cultural impact aren't necessarily the best ones. In fact, sometimes they're among the most embarrassing.

While I don't agree with all his choices (the purpose of '10 best' lists is to generate argument) he does make fairly good cases for his selections.

What's in a Name?

2008-03-28T15:30:00.000-07:00

This blog has a rather pedestrian name, and for that name I make no apologies. I am not writing a political blog, nor am I writing one devoted to popular culture.

Sometimes, however, I am struck with envy. Usually it's over the headline of a blog posting.

This time, though, I must admit that the a blog's name has impelled me to venal sin. Behold, Chris Matthew's Leg:

Chris Matthews’ Leg was talking to the lifeless shriveled husk of Keith Olbermann’s sense of shame the other day. They were both totally in awe of the way ex-conservative Andrew Sullivan can turn his histrionic self-righteousness on a dime.