Cracking My Knuckles in Public

In honor of Civil Rights Day

2010-01-18T01:41:00.001-07:00

As posted last year, and as relevant now as it's ever been, Dr. King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail."

Sorry, Minitrue doesn't work when you have the internet...

2010-01-08T17:35:00.003-07:00

This short article somehow makes hypocrisy and untold atrocities funny. It's a more cathartic sort of laugh, but still.

List Shock

2010-01-05T01:08:00.004-07:00

Rolling Stone's 100 Best Albums of the Decade list intrigues me. I own 14 of the top picks, and I've heard 21 more and agree with most of them, though I'm strangely surprised to see such indie scene favorites as Arcade Fire and Cat Power sharing top billing along with more mainstream, "blah" (and here I editorialize) choices such as Coldplay and U2. This is the magazine that gives 4-star reviews to bands like Linkin Park while still recognizing rollicking, original stuff like TV on the Radio with similarly high scores. How can I reconcile that?

The publication's schizophrenia is reflected in the list of the voters for the feature. "Howlin" Pete Almqvist and Nicholaus Arson from The Hives along with Mary J. Blige, the Senior Vice President of VH1 and four members of Kings of Leon? Yoko Ono, The Black Eyed Peas' Will.i.am, Lil Wayne and two members of Fall Out Boy? I can't criticize the list of voters - it's as diverse as music itself - but it certainly reflects Rolling Stone's weird desire to (and possibly ability to) hit every base possible with their commentary. Rolling Stone eats up the sort of by-the-numbers rock U2 has been putting out for the last decade or more in almost the same breath that they praise Bjork. I have trouble wrapping my brain around it, or even interpreting what this means. Certainly I don't have a specific point in mind.

Legacy

2009-12-30T20:26:00.005-07:00

After eight years of denigrating human rights and weakening our country's principles when we ought to have been strong, Dick Cheney doesn't know when to leave well enough alone:

"He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won't be at war," Cheney said in the statement. "He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won't be at war. He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won't be at war."

None of this would be relevant - Cheney is plainly a despicable human being committed to atrocities and empire-building in the name of false freedom - were it not for White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer's comments on the matter, which solidify something that many of us have been thinking for some time:

"Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country," Pfeiffer said. "And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the president."

Pfeiffer also took issue with Cheney's contention that Obama was pretending no U.S. war with terrorists existed, saying the president and members of his administration have referred to being at war with al Qaeda several times.

"The difference is this: President Obama doesn't need to beat his chest to prove it, and -- unlike the last Administration -- we are not at war with a tactic ("terrorism"), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies," Pfeiffer wrote.

Cheney's comments represent nothing more than the last snarl of a dog fleeing a property with its tail between its legs, the final whimpering relics of an international philosophy of justified brutality that ought to have taken its last breath by now. Let's see that it stays that way, desperate justifications notwithstanding.

"Without racism, soldiers would realize that they have more in common with the Iraqi people, than they do with the billionaries who sent us to war."

2009-12-29T16:57:00.003-07:00

Two videos in a row, though this one consists of so much unfiltered truth and poetic appeals to brotherhood that it cut through the malaise of my currently flu-addled brain:

Drivers who cannot handle snow

2009-12-28T10:23:00.003-07:00

Speaking as somebody who lives in a fairly icy neighborhood, it does amuse me how people in less snowy areas totally lose their cool the moment the ice comes down. Schools and businesses close and everybody stays home, more to protect them from themselves than anything.

Take the drivers in the following video. You can hear the first one actually hitting the gas after the first collision.

A note on the ads

2009-12-25T00:45:00.004-07:00

For some time, I've used Adsense ("Google Ads" in some vernacular) primarily as a simple way of keeping track of the number of visitors to my page. My earnings for the last couple of years sparked sharply over a period of a few months, and then stayed shockingly even. This blog has had 44,932 visitors and made me $28.62, which I will never receive because Google doesn't pay you until you reach $100 in earnings.

Anyway, I've never cared to monetize this blog, and the labor/payoff ratio is low enough that I've decided to just remove the two ads on the side, leaving only the one at the bottom which should stay nicely out of the way while still fulfilling my tracking needs. My previous philosophy was that a couple of unobtrusive ads might make me a few bucks and wouldn't bother anybody else. Now that the first part of that seems like it's never going to happen I might as well bother nobody.

Avatar Impressions

2009-12-24T23:26:00.009-07:00

Avatar is not the shallow sludge of a movie that some negative reviews would lead you to believe. Nor is it the hyped "future of film" that, I'm convinced, nobody really fell for anyway. What it is is a mildly formulaic redemption story with more than its share of character, which uses its technology well and puts together some very coherent, enjoyable action that's as stylized as it is realistic.

What Avatar does well, most importantly, hasn't ever really been done before. This is the point, what people are saying when they call Cameron's latest epic the future of film. This movie's character comes primarily from its use of detail - the vast attention (and dinero) that went into the film is clearly apparent. For the first time, CGI creatures have quite literally the same personality and even charisma as human actors. I don't mean this lightly - in the massive scenes of congregated indigenous "aliens", you feel the same sense of organization and unity that you'd get from a crowd scene of dedicated extras, and the alien doppelgangers that the humans jack into Matrix-style mimic their facial expressions and demeanor with uncanny, blissful accuracy (the blue, CGI Sigourney Weaver in particular is incredible to watch).

It would be easy to dismiss Avatar as Pocahontas in space with a few technological gimmicks, but this would neglect the fact that all of the technology is being used in the service of the story. A somewhat predictable story in the hands of gifted cinematographers, animators who know what they're doing and some committed actors becomes as moving and involving an epic as any in recent memory. Even the actors playing sci-fi archetypes (the "bomb-'em-to-hell!" bulletheaded merc and the nerdy, ethical scientist) treat their roles with enough commitment that the movie is never shallow. This strong use of technology makes the film what it is, and the fact that none of this would have been possible even five years ago puts it firmly into the category of "modern" cinema. I fully understand why Roger Ebert cited the same feelings he felt watching the first Star Wars film in 1977 - this is an inventive, visually engrossing and, occasionally, moving film. The story is a couple of steps above mediocrity and the characterization more than a few.

The 3D effect, finally, is well-done, and never distracts from the story with flashy gimmicks (the kind that my oaf of a roommate insists upon). The main problems with cinema 3D, however, remain - a slightly blurry effect that makes focusing on quick motion or fine detail a little difficult - and your eyes may get tired for the first few minutes of the movie before you get used to using your muscles in that way.

In conclusion, I think that the film is well worth seeing, and since I'm not sure how well it will hold up on the small screen or second-run theater, I recommend seeing it now. It's nice to see a technological monstrosity employed for good rather than evil, and while the "plot" may be a little weak, the journey itself is handled very well, with action scenes that are not only fun to watch but actually matter.

[Note: Despite citing Ebert's review, I had not yet finished reading it when putting this together. Ebert makes his point regarding the film's action in a very similar way. The unintentional mirroring in my impressions review on that point is just that.]

On Bureaucracy (Exciting title, I know)

2009-12-24T01:32:00.005-07:00

From a Redditor's comments on why corporations are considered people when it's convenient, but people aren't eligible for the same tax breaks: "The corporate structure exists primarily to arrange for the transfer of wealth from most people to a few people. It is a cleverly arranged ruse. A sinister, but mundane plot."

Quite an interesting perspective, though it's really only the tip of the iceberg. It's pretty clear that the corporate structure (really, any bureaucratic, insulatory structure) "exists primarily" to aggregate prestige, power, respect and wealth to only a few people, while moving responsibility, accountability and vulnerability downward. Anybody who's seen the plainly contradictory and self-serving behavior of management can confirm this.

The emperor has no clothes, of course, though we've gotten so used to it that it's really nothing we think about. Managers often don't know how to measure their employees' performance, either because they're so insulated from the work being done that they have little knowledge of what it takes to do it well, or because they're so far from the work being done that they're left to form small bits of information into their confident minds and act, above all things act. Whatever they happen to view and the way they interpret it becomes their reality. The alternative - that their information is incomplete or that they're simply bad managers - is unthinkable. That's why lunatics and numbskulls get promoted, why managers can behave arbitrarily, ignoring rules or creating new ones when convenient. The responsibility for failure simply doesn't exist at that level, and the rewards (both social and monetary) are great.

Now, most of us would achieve this mindset easily given this level of power - the delusion is simply so convincing that it's really impossible not to subscribe to it. The problem is the structure itself, the way that we think of a corporation as an entity - important in and of itself - while neglecting those who make it run. And I mean really make it run, independent of the mostly manufactured power structure. I remember being amazed when I first learned that CEOs and directors can move from company to company without any real knowledge of the field they're moving to - when did we ever get used to that? Why do we tolerate VPs when they suggest courses of action in meetings that have already been tried and failed, but who couldn't bother to check the facts in their continuous quest for self-aggrandizement? Insulation, charisma and self-confidence, moreso than competence, often seems to be the order of the day. And we allow it.

It takes a lot of character to manage well. I'm now working at the first place in my life which seems blessedly free of most of this nonsense. It's a good feeling.

Bachmann Bailouts

2009-12-22T13:11:00.005-07:00

The most rabidly anti-gay representatives invariably turn out to be gay, and certain talk show hosts railing against drug use in the inner cities have proven themselves to be quite the pill-poppers themselves, so this is hardly a surprise - Michele Bachmann, long a raging critic of government bailout programs (and who famously insinuated that President Obama may have anti-American views and that Congress should be investigated for the same) received, over ten years, a quarter million dollars in federal subsidies to her family farm. As always, socialism is only socialism when it helps the poor.

It's well known that red states receive more federal funding, though read the article to find further that (ding ding ding ding!) "the top four districts receiving the largest ag[ricultural] payments are represented by conservative Republicans."

Further proving that, sigh, this recent outrage has more to do with making sure that the nation's wealth trickles upward than that Uncle Sam keeps his hands out of the private sector.

link

P.S. By the way, read up on Michele Bachmann - it's quite entertaining. She seems completely committed to saying the most shortsighted thing possible in any given situation.

Puppets really do improve everything

2009-12-18T15:58:00.001-07:00

Even the health care debate.

Epic 70-minute video explains why The Phantom Menace was flawed

2009-12-18T02:30:00.007-07:00

This guy does an excellent job of explaining the flaws in the Star Wars prequels. The highlight of Part One? "Describe the following Star Wars character without describing the way they look, or their profession in the films." Interesting characters abound in the original trilogy - Han Solo, for example. Now try it with Qui-Gon Jin or Amidala. Nope, "monotone" is not a character attribute.

Embedded above is part one. Follow this link for all seven parts. Oh, and yes, after part 2 in particular these videos get pretty hilarious. If you're not comfortable with serial killer jokes you may wish to move on, however.

EDIT: Language warning etc.

Incredible Calvin and Hobbes wallpaper

2009-12-12T01:05:00.005-07:00

Hoy So has put together an awe-inspiring collection of high-res Calvin and Hobbes wallpapers for your pleasure. Just click to scope the quality on this stuff:

link

Chomsky on understanding the Right

2009-12-10T17:17:00.002-07:00

Noted anarchist/socialist Noam Chomsky puts together a surprisingly good case for dealing with the Right in ways other than ridicule:

So take right now, for example, there is a right-wing populist uprising. It's very common, even on the left, to just ridicule them, but that's not the right reaction. If you look at those people and listen to them on talk radio, these are people with real grievances. I listen to talk radio a lot and it's kind of interesting. If you can sort of suspend your knowledge of the world and just enter into the world of the people who are calling in, you can understand them. I've never seen a study, but my sense is that these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think, "I've done everything right all my life, I'm a god-fearing Christian, I'm white, I'm male, I've worked hard, and I carry a gun. I do everything I'm supposed to do. And I'm getting shafted." And in fact they are getting shafted. For 30 years their wages have stagnated or declined, the social conditions have worsened, the children are going crazy, there are no schools, there's nothing, so somebody must be doing something to them, and they want to know who it is. Well Rush Limbaugh has answered - it's the rich liberals who own the banks and run the government, and of course run the media, and they don't care about you—they just want to give everything away to illegal immigrants and gays and communists and so on.

Well, you know, the reaction we should be having to them is not ridicule, but rather self-criticism. Why aren't we organizing them? I mean, we are the ones that ought to be organizing them, not Rush Limbaugh. There are historical analogs, which are not exact, of course, but are close enough to be worrisome. This is a whiff of early Nazi Germany. Hitler was appealing to groups with similar grievances, and giving them crazy answers, but at least they were answers; these groups weren't getting them anywhere else. It was the Jews and the Bolsheviks [that were the problem].

I mean, the liberal democrats aren't going to tell the average American, "Yeah, you're being shafted because of the policies that we've established over the years that we're maintaining now." That's not going to be an answer. And they're not getting answers from the left. So, there's an internal coherence and logic to what they get from Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest of these guys. And they sound very convincing, they're very self-confident, and they have an answer to everything—a crazy answer, but it's an answer. And it's our fault if that goes on. So one thing to be done is don't ridicule these people, join them, and talk about their real grievances and give them a sensible answer, like, "Take over your factories."

I find this an interesting, immediately appealing perspective. There was a time that I felt a very real sense of comfort in the simplistic worldview of neoconservatism - the idea that outsiders (both geographical outsiders and people proposing foreign ideas and points of view) were to blame for most of our problems, that authority figures need not be bound by petty codes of law in keeping us "safe," and that appeals to ambiguity and open-mindedness were left-wing tricks designed to cloud the truths I already believed in - truths that were immediately appealing, self-justifying, and, most importantly, simple.

All of this changed once I began to appreciate subtlety, ambiguity, and the sort of relativism that comes from understanding others. It seems appropriate that the intellectual Left, long a proponent of this sort of thinking, ought to consider Right-wingers on their own terms and work to understand and benefit them rather than dismissing them as a caricature of selfish ignorance. Obviously I've been guilty of this behavior in the past (and the powerful who manipulate the unenlightened masses really do deserve condemnation), though it seems beneficial to strive for an ideal of mutual understanding rather than thoughtless denunciation.

link

Thoughts on Fantastic Mr. Fox

2009-12-10T03:06:00.002-07:00

The film is charmingly ragged, both in design and writing, to the point that neither I nor my date could figure out if the consistently uneven picture focus was intentional or a projector error. The deadpan dialogue is subtle, humorous and breezy, with witty lines that don't spell out the jokes behind them. Scenes play out in unexpectedly creative ways due to the confident production, full of manic details and wonderful surrealism.

The movie almost seems symbolic, the specifics of the plot being mostly unimportant, at times like a sustained short film in its retro creativity. The aforementioned surreal elements add much to the film's effect (incendiary pinecones, wunderkind Kristofferson immediately grasping the rules of the incoherent game whackbat and the odd concentric eye circles gag). I've never seen a Wes Anderson before but this film makes a compelling case - it's subtle, full of thought and art, and comes straight out of left-field in intentionally awkward stop-motion glory. I really can't recommend this enough for anybody tired of cookie-cutter CGI romps and formulaic animated buddy films. It isn't Dahl's book in essence, but uses the book as a playground for something else entirely, something wonderful.

The Tetris God

2009-12-07T17:22:00.002-07:00

College humor has gotten less and less awkward - they've aged nicely. Here's the best clip I've seen so far - The Tetris God.

A thought on "playing God"

2009-12-03T09:42:00.003-07:00

Whether you believe in it or not, deciding whether or not to keep somebody on life support, perform stem cell research, wage war or use birth control is not "playing God." These things fall squarely within our limited abilities as human beings. Just because God may be able to do something doesn't mean we're encroaching on any divine territory by doing it too. "Playing God" would have to involve moving beyond our natural abilities. It's inherently impossible.

That is all.

Beatles 3000

2009-11-28T14:09:00.004-07:00

This is genius - ostensibly a look back at The Beatles from a thousand years in the future, it basically becomes a loving critique of historical specials and unverifiable "experts":

The Authoritarian Mindset

2009-11-24T21:07:00.006-07:00

Bob Altemeyer puts together a free and fantastic critique and analysis of authoritarian behavior and thought, identifying just what causes this mindset which is driven so insistently by principles but ends up ultimately as corrupt and self-serving as any philosophy.

As somebody who has dealt with the authoritarian mindset (and has finally been spurred by this book to label his political mindset as "anti-authoritarian"), I've asked many of the questions identified in the book's introduction:

The last reason why you might be interested in the hereafter is that you might want more than just facts about authoritarians, but understanding and insight into why they act the way they do. Which is often mind-boggling. How can they revere those who gave their lives defending freedom and then support moves to take that freedom away? How can they go on believing things that have been disproved over and over again, and disbelieve things that are well established? How can they think they are the best people in the world, when so much of what they do ought to show them they are not? Why do their leaders so often turn out to be crooks and hypocrites? Why are both the followers and the leaders so aggressive that hostility is practically their trademark?

This book ought to appeal to anybody who has struggled with an abusive and irrational boss, or marveled at the disgusting behavior of crooked politicians who pay lip service to high ideals while working against those same ideals, fully supported all the way by their constituents.

I'll be frank - I think that this personality is damaging as well as illogical, and that people with highly authority-minded personalities, however illogical, tend to be more successful than people who aren't willing to play a broken game. This book seems to be the cure to this type of behavior - to identify authoritarianism as a whole, if not as a mental illness, as negative behavior, outlining its characteristics. Just identifying the fallacies behind these people's behavior is enough, I feel, to de-legitimize much of their behavior. This is pretty much why I'm going into sociology as a field.

Read the book
(also, link to Altemeyer's site)

Adopted man searches for birth father, who turnes out to be CHARLES MANSON

2009-11-23T12:49:00.001-07:00

"Daddy!"

"You call me daddy. You call me whatever you like! We call each other daddy but it's all in our MINDS!"

I find this story strangely delicious despite the trauma involved.

link

Important things need to be rhymed for children to remember

2009-11-21T22:21:00.002-07:00

"If the monkey's in a rage, hands out of the cage."

Two presidents' accomplishments

2009-11-19T12:02:00.003-07:00

I found the following two lists fascinating - two lists from very friendly sources of "President Bush's Accomplishments" (1994, Free Republic) and "90 Accomplishments of Pres. Obama Which The Media Fails to Report" (2009, Daily Kos).

Obviously the Bush list is fairly old, meaning that entries praising Iraq and Afghanistan as resounding successes now have quite a bit more history tainting them. An President Obama's term is still fairly new, meaning that much of his list has to do with things in progress - "announcing," "ordering" and "beginning" things.

Now, Free Republic is infamous for its far Right stance, while calling Daily Kos card-carryingly liberal wouldn't quite sell just how left-wing they are, so keep in mind that most sources will be biased in their selections. I find most of the Free Republic list pretty alien. However, the Obama list, albeit referencing fairly new events, has quite a bit to feel good about - protecting American troops, some commitment to governmental openness, and some commitment to common sense over ignorant posturing (removing some of the restrictions on travel to Cuba to allow people to visit their families). Some entries lack context and the writer obviously struggled to hit that "90" mark, though both lists give a good impression of the accomplishments of two presidents as told by those who support them.

One Announcement

2009-11-18T19:48:00.004-07:00

For my sanity, the sanity of any readers I may have and because these stories are irrelevant, I will not be posting any more about Sarah Palin (that is, she will not be the primary subject of a blog post). Note that she continues to do and say monumentally stupid things, make torrents of excuses for her behavior and earn quite a bit more attention than she has ever deserved. That has not changed and will never change, and she is no being added to my Blood Pressure Ignore List (BPIL).

One caveat: Unless she runs for president. The stupid is still flowing fast and frequently every time she speaks, something I can ignore for now.

The hawk fallacy - how "protecting" America could lead to its downfall

2009-11-18T18:33:00.009-07:00

Glenn Greenwald is soon becoming one of my favorite civil libertarians. In today's Salon he does a fantastic job of summing up the malady affecting neoconservatives in our modern era - the stunning hypocrisy of purporting to be the unabashed saviors of democracy and freedom while in fact working against those ends in both domestic and international policy.

Using a Weekly Standard rant on the ACLU's well-known support of due process for U.S. prisoners he poses the question:

Between (a) an organization that works tirelessly for basic due process and Constitutional liberties for everyone and (b) a political movement which demands their rejection, does it really take any effort to see which side is vigorously defending core American principles and which side is waging war on them? And given how due-process-free imprisonment is one of the most potent recruiting tools for Islamic extremists (as reported by David Rohde, Johann Hari, Gen. McChyrstal, and even the Pentagon's own 2004 Task Force) -- to say nothing of the endless aggressive wars cheered on by The Weekly Standard's play-acting warriors -- does it take any effort to see who Al Qaeda's "useful idiots" and stalwart allies truly are?

Hawks on national defense who treat human rights loosely have proven time and time again that protecting the United States from "terrorism" in the name of "freedom" results mainly in the continued application of terror in our name against freedom, human rights and Constitutional government. Every time The United States proves itself willing to resort to illegal and inhumane practices, it weakens our nation and its laws in very real ways and leads to a perpetuation of external terrorism around the globe.

The recent conservative outrage against Obama's bow to the Japanese emperor - an action which does not demean the one bowing but shows respect - seems to remove any question: much of the modern Right sees U.S. courtesy and diplomacy as a weakness, somehow damaging in and of itself, while excusing blatant assaults against liberty under the guise of pragmatism. The pillars of modern hawkishness - illegal, indefinite detention of prisoners without charges, torture and inhumane treatment and frequent, half-justifiable action against foreign nations in these circles is seen as strength, while the rule of law, respect for human rights and diplomacy is seen almost as treason, actions taking to weaken the nation rather than bolster its image and shake the message of anti-American terrorists around the globe.

Rather than see "terrorists" as human beings recruited to a misguided, foolish cause, this type of policy sees them as a force of nature, one that cannot be reasoned with or made to see the benefits of freedom by its actual application. No, by treating insurgents (even ones who have perpetuated terror attacks) as less than human and unworthy of the treatment we give even our worst citizens, we reinforce our image around the globe as the enemy of Islam in the minds of those misguided enough to see this as a holy war. By waging endless wars without end we become what we purport to fight against, and the noble goals of our nation's founding serve no purpose unless they are actually lived up to.

No, a hawkish, violent and arrogant foreign policy appeals mainly to those without the subtlety to appreciate virtue, relish ideals and respect the founding U.S. principles of populism, human rights and liberty. As Greenwald states powerfully in his closing paragraph (which I won't summarize here because this powerful article is powerful reading), the very people who have championed themselves the saviors of America are, through their hubris, leading quite directly both to its moral and physical destruction.

Read the article

My feelings on the modern equivocation of socialism and communism...

2009-11-16T23:27:00.003-07:00

In response to an individual's feelings that perceived encroaching U.S. "socialism" (with a small 'c') is merely communism with a small 'c', my feelings:

I don’t think Marx even thought that true Communism would be possible without a violent revolution. The whole point was that the exploited proletariat would eventually realize that they were being exploited and rise up against their salmon eatin’ managers. Marx and other classical Communists wouldn’t agree with income redistribution, social programs and the like, because it neglects the formal thesis of Marxism. Which was that the workers ought to control the means of production as well as doing the actual, y’know, producing.

“Fabian” socialism would never lead to actual Communism, the classless society that true adherents to the philosophy wished for. From this perspective, giving a couple of bucks to beggars outside of the supermarket is one of the most selfish things I can do – it assuages my conscience a little without dealing with the social structure that created beggars and college students with flat screen TVs in the first place while people are starving in Sierra Leone.

All of this is just to say that whatever “socialism” we have in the United States is merely weighted capitalism. There is little common ground between attempting to compensate for privilege in a market-based society and “common ownership.” Whether or not compensating for perceived economic, racial, or other injustices does anything to fix social problems and inequality, “small ‘c’ communism” and socialism are two different philosophies. They’re no more similar than capitalism is to authoritarianism, though radical leftists often see them as one and the same. Orwell was a stalwart socialist and a rabid anticommunist – it’s only in modern times that many of us have begun to think of them as one and the same.

Veep on the Brink

2009-11-15T03:20:00.008-07:00

The Barnes and Noble special edition cover of a certain former Alaskan governor's masterwork has finally made it into my office. Frankly I prefer it to the standard cover. Anybody who endures hundreds of pages of misguided victimhood, historical reinvention and self-aggrandizement oughta at least get a funny cover out of it.

EDIT: Here's what I said awhile back on Palin's book:

In other news, Sarah Palin is going on Oprah to promote her printy-book Going Rogue: An American Life. Get ready for the book to contain embarrassing selections and Palin to sputter in interviews before blaming her ghostwriter and finally swearing off liberal interviewers who insist on context.

Palin three weeks later: "Boo! People researching my mistakes is exactly what killed me in the campaign! Why should the AP employ 2.5% of their researchers fact-checking my book, one of the major news stories of this week, when they could be investigating Nancy Pelosi!"

You understand this is only going to get more fun, right? Like, in that you-feel-dirty-but-you-laugh voyeuristic reality show TV way, right? People like Sarah Palin, who inflate reality and demonize others with invented bias, would do great in a world without memories or Google. Unfortunately for Sarah Palin, we have memories and Google.

EDIT CODE RED: This gets better. In a segment where Rush Limbaugh calls the best questions he gets asked "the ones I ask myself," he calls Palin's book "One of the most substantive policy books I've read." Frankly book-reading doesn't really mesh too well with that whole "The first thing I come up with on an issue is the unvarnished, immalleable truth" thing that opinion leaders have going, which frankly calls into question the extent of Rush's home library, but what the hey. If Rush calls your marathon the "best he's ever run" or your space shuttle the "best he's ever piloted," who are you to argue with the endorsement?

I guess I'll have to keep an open mind. The Limbaugh Book Club hasn't failed me before. I've almost finished "Hop on Pop: How to Defeat Tyrrrny and Trrrism" and I'm glad I picked it up.

On Motives and Masking

2009-11-10T18:28:00.007-07:00

After reading Orson Scott Card's treatise on Where the Wild Things Are, which basically branched into another critique of art cinema, I'm prompted to ask:

Can depth exist in a film beyond that which is spelled out and apparent? Are the only motives that a story is allowed to include the ones that are opened in front of you? Card's quibbles on the film are pretty clear:

[I]t's an art film -- which means that it is deliberately strange and unexplained. Things happen, but the writers and director go to some pains to conceal motive and reaction.
Oddly enough, the decision not to explain what's happening is usually regarded as a way to make a film "deep," but the opposite is the truth. When we are given no clue to the real motivations and intentions of characters, we have no choice but to settle for the most obvious -- the cultural cliches.

Orson Scott Card has made a highly successful, respectful career out of writing stories with very human characters who constantly explain (either through internal monologue or conversations with other characters) what they are feeling, exactly why everything is happening the way that it is and why they are doing what they are doing. And he's done this for the most part without sacrificing depth or meaning. But this is by no means the only way to create.

Movies don't have the benefit of pages of internal monologue, and real life has ambiguity. You can't always read somebody's emotions, and people often behave in odd, unpredictable ways that even they don't fully understand. Art cinema is clearly influenced by much of modern thought - that which recognizes and even relishes some ambiguity in daily life. It's also been the only modern "genre" to really incorporate ambience successfully, something that we've lost as a society in our slam-bang thrillers and blah dramas. In his musical and literary tastes Card definitely leans toward traditional forms - traditional singers and stories - over later, more postmodern stuff that learned to incorporate the dissonance and ambiguity we see in real life to great effect.

Is writing a film with deliberate structural engineering designed to underscore something really that bad? Surely there's room for films with subtle elements you can't grasp immediately, and the existence of such is not necessarily a blaring klaxon designed to alert us to pretension or hackery. Even as a lover of straightforward stories some of my favorite films have been exceedingly dry affairs with a lot of subtext, with things both intended and unintended to think about after the film ends and catch on subsequent viewings. (It took me ages to realize the irony of No Country For Old Men's Anton Chigurh getting into a sudden car accident, and it blew my mind. It was a deliberately contradictory element and I loved the implications.)

I've always defined "art" as that resonant feeling you get when you appreciate something but can't necessarily verbalize exactly why. I love that feeling, as I also love straightforward stories. I kind of wish that more people could learn to appreciate well-engineered experiences without impugning the motives of those who created them.

Stewart on Beck

2009-11-06T12:38:00.004-07:00

www.thedailyshow.com

A week ago I overhyped a Daily Show clip on Fox News. I may have gone overboard in my endorsement, though despite the proximity to the last post failing to highlight this spot-on parody of Glenn Beck would be unfair. This is clearly just The Daily Show having fun, not juxtaposing clips of hypocrisy but merely doing a parody of both the mannerisms and analysis of an individual who is himself beyond parody.

Mstoc site announcement - music reviews, bacon, free happiness for life and more!

2009-11-02T22:42:00.004-07:00

This is just a brief announcement that I've become a contributor to music reviews/interviews site Mstoc, a joint project with a good friend of mine that's still more-or-less in its infancy. We're still working out the list of contributors and building a body of content, though I'm actually pretty stoked and I like the initial look of the site (though we'll certainly be making improvements as soon as we have enough work to really showcase). I've completed three reviews so far under my name [Dustin Steinacker] - check it out if you wish, keeping in mind the whole "the site is still in its infancy" thing.

Regular readers may know that I'm something of a music fan. For some time I was a regular contributor to Sputnikmusic.com, an uneven writer who contributed dozens of reviews and was delighted to see them gain hundreds of thousands of hits, often dwarfing the reviews of the staff writers who, I presume, actually got paid for what they did. I even had a lower-key weekly album retrospective on this site which took too much time from my studies and was hence discarded.

I'm pretty excited for this opportunity to work as part of a larger community, doing basically the same thing I was doing but for something quite a bit snazzier, polished and more consistent than throwing music-related blog posts into my usual stream of non sequiturs and populist political ramblings.

Link

Stewart on Fox News Bias and Bloviation

2009-10-31T21:37:00.003-06:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

For Fox Sake!

www.thedailyshow.com

It would be pretty difficult for me to argue that this clip from The Daily Show isn't one of the smartest, funniest and most prescient clips from the show's recent history - or certainly its history regarding Fox. Once again The Daily Show is one of the most populist, intelligent programs, an "opinion" program easily surpassing more serious programs on other networks. Blah blah - watch it.

So I don't have to be self-righteous ALL the time...

2009-10-28T20:20:00.000-06:00

This makes me laugh. So I'm posting it.

EA Rickrolls Yahtzee Croshaw

2009-10-28T18:41:00.002-06:00

Fans of Yahtzee Croshaw (Zero Punctuation) may enjoy this story. The rest may move on.

Torture, hypocrisy and self-denial

2009-10-28T18:33:00.004-06:00

Boingboing links to an awesome Science Daily article on the psychological effects of torture on onlookers:

The rationale behind torture is that pain will make the guilty confess, but a new study by researchers at Harvard University finds that the pain of torture can make even the innocent seem guilty.

Participants in the study met a woman suspected of cheating to win money. The woman was then "tortured" by having her hand immersed in ice water while study participants listened to the session over an intercom. She never confessed to anything, but the more she suffered during the torture, the guiltier she was perceived to be.

The research, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, was conducted by Kurt Gray, graduate student in psychology, and Daniel M. Wegner, professor of psychology, both in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
...
"Our research suggests that torture may not uncover guilt so much as lead to its perception," says Gray. "It is as though people who know of the victim's pain must somehow convince themselves that it was a good idea -- and so come to believe that the person who was tortured deserved it."

Not all torture victims appear guilty, however. When participants in the study only listened to a recording of a previous torture session -- rather than taking part as witnesses of ongoing torture -- they saw the victim who expressed more pain as less guilty. Gray explains the different results as arising from different levels of complicity.

This study is essential, though of course it's merely an offshoot of what people who have any idea of human nature already suspect - people create the reality that is most comfortable to them. We demonize people we need to demonize, as the alternative is to confront ourselves for misbehavior, callous treatment or shortsightedness. The use of strong torture methods in dictatorial, brutal regimes, and even in justifying more recent U.S. mistakes were strongly tied to a belief in the infallible nature of the torturer to presume guilt or innocence.

link

What happens if net neutrality fails?

2009-10-28T11:52:00.002-06:00

Reddit user quink offers this startling glimpse of what would likely happen should net neutrality fail. Click on the image to enlarge:

I love the little honest touches in this one - the way the company compartmentalizes the internet as if certain functions can be experienced separately, rather than thinking of the internet as a massive, interrelated organic unit as most of us do, or tries to rely on the ignorance of the consumer to sell stupid services they shouldn't need in the first place. A classic case of "break it, then fix it for a price."

link

R.I.P. Hulu

2009-10-22T18:11:00.003-06:00

Maybe the headline is a little dramatic, but it seems that Hulu's transition to a paid subscription model in 2010 is going to lead us back from the age of watching TV online into the glorious new well-charted realms of downloading TV online and then watching it. It's an extra step for most people, but it doesn't play the same blasted car ad again and again.

Hulu's advertising flexibility aside, for the record I feel Hulu will probably survive online as a subscription service - the video quality is nice enough and the speed speedy enough that I doubt everybody is going to abandon our old friend when it gets too big for its britches. Still, anybody who knows their way around a torrent pretty much has no excuse for paying for broadcast television shows that you can't even download (unless Hulu makes some significant changes). We'll see. Well, those of us who don't forget about the site entirely in six months will see.

Intellectual Property destroyed as shop worker allowed to sing in store without performance license, artists suffer

2009-10-21T11:15:00.011-06:00

In an unfortunate turn of events, the PRS for Music society of the UK (not really like the RIAA as they're non-profit and aren't a trade group but still comparable in their attitude) has decided to let a supermarket worker off the hook for singing in the store where she works without a performance license, after initially (and rightly) threatening her with a fine.

The organization has done good work in the past according to Wikipedia:

In 2008 the PRS expanded their legal battle to require licensing to include 61 year old mechanic, Paul Wilson, who plays his radio when he works by himself, a bakery that plays a radio in a private room at the back of the shop, a woman who plays classical radio to calm her horses, and community centres that allow children to sing carols in public.

Shaking down schoolchildren and horses is a good start, and this group's shown a tireless dedication in the past to removing music videos from the internet, a step closer toward every good citizen's ultimate goal of making listening to new music little more than a theoretical possibility. Those of us who love the feeling of surprise upon listening to purchased records for the first time (bought at random according to the cover art the way God intended) need to work harder to remove music, and possibly other sounds as well, from the public arena.

Singing in a store may not seem the same as boarding a merchant ship and killing

its occupants, but it's the exact same thing. In fact, "piracy" doesn't even begin
to describe the effect on artists, producers and, most especially, our precious,
precious music industry executives. Stay informed. Stay Jesusamericafreedom.

In a flagrant disregard for the rights of artists, performers and our precious, precious music industry executives, the organization elected to send this unrepentant copyright criminal a bouquet of flowers and an apology rather than stand up for the rights of those who write music and then let others hear it only over their cold, dead bodies. How much is a performance license anyway? Shouldn't we all keep ours in our wallets? "I'm sorry - I can't sing with you. I didn't renew my I'm Walking on Sunshine license."

The village store where Mrs Burt works was contacted by the PRS earlier this year to warn them that a licence was needed to play a radio within earshot of customers.
When the shop owner decided to get rid of the radio as a result, Mrs Burt said she began singing as she worked.
. . .

"When I heard that the PRS said I would be prosecuted for not having a performance licence, I thought it was a joke and started laughing.
"I was then told I could be fined thousands of pounds. But I couldn't stop myself singing.
"They would need to put a plaster over my mouth to get me to stop, I can't help it."

Making her get rid of her radio, which is a device that pulls music from the air that everybody can listen to for free, was certainly a good start. But I don't think I need to inform you of the gravity of this situation. Here's hoping that the people who initially made the decision to threaten this woman remain in their positions and then create a climate where artists can have the freedom they need to create the works of art that enrich our lives in the palm-scanned, soundproofed single-occupancy rooms in which we're permitted to listen to them.

link

Tidbits and Pictures

2009-10-20T18:45:00.003-06:00

I'm not sure it's really possible to take a good photo of Nancy Pelosi, and Drudge certainly has no shortage of unflattering portrayals. Everybody make a Star Wars joke.

In other news, Sarah Palin is going on Oprah to promote her printy-book Going Rogue: An American Life. Get ready for the book to contain embarrassing selections and Palin to sputter in interviews before blaming her ghostwriter and finally swearing off liberal interviewers who insist on context.

Finally, Barbara Ehrenreich had a really good interview with Jon Stewart on the danger of "positive thinking" as a philosophy - view it here.

Senior Citizens comment on MGMT to hilarious effect

2009-10-20T18:22:00.006-06:00

This is genius. Old people watching, and commenting on, one of the most effed up (and, I believe, subtle and evocative, albeit horrific) music videos in recent memory. One of the video's commentors noted the distance between the preceding generations and ours - most young people, raised on irony, symbolism and meta-meanings to things (after all, that kid is really scared) wouldn't bat an eye at this stuff. The sustained look of horror in that woman's eyes at 2:20 is priceless and unnerving.

I laughed harder than I think I have in weeks, though there's that odd idea hanging in the rafters - what if they're all right, and we're sick for producing and watching this stuff? After all, it's not really a matter of being old and out of touch; the folks in the video were literally raised on a different diet of conceptions.

(Oh, and yes - the "mom" is Joanna Newsom, supposedly doing a spot-on send-off of Britney Spears.)

Morons With Signs

2009-10-18T20:45:00.004-06:00

The glorious tradition of modern uninformed process: Morons With Signs. The dumb leading the dumber has never been funnier.

More evidence that Glenn Beck's show is an elaborate, brainy farce

2009-10-18T12:28:00.006-06:00

This woman's lab coat says "Richard." (Jump to 7:40 or see the pic below.)

Is she a doctor? Did she kill Richard and supplant his role on the show? See this screenshot for a better, albeit grainy, look:

It wouldn't be fair to read too much into this unintentionally hilarious image, but we are dealing with the master of tenuous connections, so I think for humorous effect I'll interpret this is evidence of faux-libertarian treachery backed by ACORN, the RIAA, Hagar the Horrible and the bass player from Styx.

Next week on Glenn Beck: horses with human masks arguing against stem cell research.

EDIT: To really ride with this as a serious point would be as dumb as attacking Obama for ordering spicy mustard. Read the comments below for some more context - I don't like Mr. Beck but this isn't one of the foundations of my argument.

Source: I'm not saying Glenn Beck [planted] fake doctors in his panel, I'm just saying this woman's lab coat says her name is "Richard"

Dealing With Stuff #2

2009-10-14T21:26:00.009-06:00

The point of dealing with stuff is acceptance, not internal combat and turmoil. I think a message such as this can provide an incomparable amount of comfort and provide a beneficial push toward internal security. Some might call it Mad Pride - I call it healthy (in both senses) common sense.

(This video is an episode of the Maria Bamford Show. You need to check out Maria Bamford - she's a fantastic, very human comic, easily my favorite.)

Dealing With Stuff #1

2009-10-14T19:40:00.003-06:00

This is a repeat, but I feel an important one. Words of the illustrious Ze Frank:

"This is how I feel today. This is my baseline.

That's a trick. I learned that from an actor. I had asked her how she grounded herself, how she got rid of anxiety before she walked on stage. She said that there were certain things that were very difficult to control, and that how she felt at that moment was one of them. For her it was less about getting rid of that anxiety - less about subtraction - and more about recalibration.

She would pause for a moment to take what seemed to be her emotional temperature - a pause to feel the anxiety, the excitement, the sadness, whatever it was that day. She would try to do this without judgment, without separating out the bad things from the good things with an eye to change them, but rather taking them at face value.

Instead, she would recalibrate. The total of what she found would become her normal, the new baseline from which she would experience the world. Certain emotions can feed on themselves. It's easy to become anxious about being anxious, become more depressed about being depressed. The goal of the recalibration was to normalize these feelings, to make them things that you didn't have to apologize to yourself for, or worse beat yourself up about.

I like this idea, this idea I stole from the actor. It's the idea that you're constantly in flux.

This is how I feel today. This is my baseline."

Bring your neighborhood into unnerving context...

2009-10-13T02:19:00.002-06:00

Well, this is creepy - check out a map of all recently-reported crimes in your (or any) neighborhood at CrimeReports.com. You can sort by the distance from your home, type of crime and how recent it was reported. Bonus creepy points for using the site to view the addresses and photos of registered sex offenders in your area. Eerie!

link

Some Pretentious Thoughts on Hip-Hop

2009-10-12T20:34:00.002-06:00

People that willfully overlook hip-hop culture and music are generally uninterested in the same things that they claim the music lacks - subtlety, wit, meticulous construction and originality. Hip-hop may be artificial in some superficial ways - its use of samples, unified, particular slang and occasional braggadocio step on some nerves - though at its best, rap's social awareness, attention to meter and lyricial attention is unparalleled. Rap's voice came almost by definition from the marginalized of society, acolytes of the music who usually arrived at their standing through their hard work and attention to detail - a fact which lent the genre a weight and honesty lacking in the overproduced music of the time of its inception.

Socially-conscious rappers are keenly aware of their flaws, unafraid to be gleefully silly or fatalistically repentant as the situation requires. Most rap incorporates both a reverence for the musical game and a recognition of the evils therein. As AZ said on Nas' "Illmatic":

"We were beginners in the hood as five percenters / But somethin must of got in us cause all of us turned to sinners."

But what the concerned parents and commercial establishment usually overlook is that rap can be some of the most relevant, genuinely artistic music available. Like much that is controversial or worth experiencing, rap flirts between commentary, irony and experimentation, often moving uncomfortably into new territory as soon as you think you have it pegged down. MC Dälek may have put it best in describing his group's jagged, unsettling sound:

"If you listen to what hip-hop has historically been, it was all about digging in different crates and finding different sounds, and finding different influences to create."

Yes, much of rap has lost its roots and turned into yet another arm of the corporate game, as dozens of samey videos straightforwardly extolling the party lifestyle seem to attest. Still, despite its occasional flaws rap still has a role in our society and its musical landscape. As with any genre, it's the consumer's job to poke and prod at different faces of the music rather than blindly discarding an entire genre to knee-jerk reasoning. As popular as rap remains, and as terrible as most of it is (rap's quality ratio is no different than any other genre), this seems important to remember.

Google Games

2009-10-03T22:30:00.006-06:00

Google has a feature which automatically fills in search results based on the recent searches of Google users. This leads to some truly non-sequitur results:

First, some of the great questions of history. . .

Some of the political results are particularly odd:

And my apologies to Japanese girls but Google's three-for-three on this one:

1:14 of genius

2009-10-03T15:30:00.001-06:00

Gotta love that recontextualization.

Night Music

2009-09-30T02:19:00.005-06:00

Last night before going to sleep, I put my iPod on shuffle and lay on my bed in the dark. The thing has an uncanny ability to pick stuff that's invariably fitting to the situation and last night was no disappointment.

Here's what it played last night, soothing stuff I'd almost forgotten I had. You can click the middle mouse wheel to open these up in the background:

The Hardest Walk - The Jesus and Mary Chain
Scenic World - Beirut
Green Gloves - The National
Weird Divide - The Shins
Messiah Ward - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Let's Go Away For Awhile - The Beach Boys
Holland, 1945 - Neutral Milk Hotel
Lawn Boy - Phish (Sorry for the live version)
Mr. Ambulance Driver - The Flaming Lips
As You Are Now - Suzanne Vega
7/4 (Shoreline) - Broken Social Scene
Moth - Burial & Four Tet (9 minutes long and I could listen to it every day)

One Man Band

2009-09-29T23:40:00.002-06:00

I can't get over how good this guy is at what he does. I'm posting the link because you really should watch it in higher-definition: link.

Telling information about "indefinite detention"

2009-09-27T12:52:00.002-06:00

This comment from Constitutional lawyer Wells Dixon sheds a little light on the process of "indefinite preventative detention," or lifelong imprisonment without charges or proof of people the government deems may be a danger to the U.S.:

“When the government does something to [an individual] that they say is classified, they have disclosed to him classified information. But since he doesn’t have a security clearance, there is nothing that prevents him, unlike me, from saying to the outside world: ‘This is what they did to me.’ Nothing prevents that — except for the fact that he is physically in custody.”’

The “logical conclusion,” Dixon says, is that [this person] “must be detained for the rest of his life — regardless of whether he is ever charged with a crime — because if he was ever released, nothing would prevent him from disclosing this information.

Government using incarceration as a political tool rather than a way of dealing with criminals? Why, what a novel idea for a democracy!

link

Al Franken reads the Fourth Amendment to Assistant Attorney General

2009-09-25T13:17:00.002-06:00

Holding federal officials accountable to Constitutional language is apparently a strange thing to do, as Al Franken seems to have indicated earlier this week by reading from his senatorial copy of the Constitution:

he proceeded to read it to Kris, emphasizing this part: “no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
“That’s pretty explicit language,” noted Franken, asking Kris how the “roving wiretap” provision of the Patriot Act can meet that requirement if it doesn’t require the government to name its target.

Kris looked flustered and mumbled that “this is surreal,” apparently referring to having to respond to Franken’s question. “I would defer to the other branch of government,” he said, referring to the courts, prompting Franken to interject: “I know what that is.”

It's kind of sad that a commitment to civil liberties is so rare in elected officials - this is one of the single greatest instances of representation I've seen in months. Right-wingers who've been pretending to care so much lately about the Constitution will hate him regardless, though he's doing a remarkable job so far of being open and respectful to his constituents.

Locked Door

2009-09-25T02:45:00.000-06:00

Going quite well with my "scripted events" article from earlier this week, a short, personal cry of anguish from Alec Meer: "Locked Door":

...

Locked door, I hate you.

I hate the way you are resistant to knives, to guns, to sledgehammers, to rocket-propelled grenades, to weapons that rewrite the very laws of physics, to dark unearthly magic, to punches that can knock a man’s head clean off.

I hate the way I could kick or smash you down in real life, with this puny human body of mine. But I cannot in the grand, escapist fantasy of a videogame.

I hate the way you are so often an easy shortcut for developers unable or unwilling to devise more satisfying obstacles and challenges.

I hate the way you so often lead to nowhere, how you are nothing more than decoration for a wall.

I hate the way I’m expected to give up trying to open you when I see the words “this door has been locked from the other side” or “this door opens elsewhere”, as though they’re a command from God himself.

...

link

Patriot Act Abuses: Then and now (and tomorrow, and. . .)

2009-09-24T23:29:00.006-06:00

More indication that, if a law can be abused, it will - the Assistant Attorney General reports that, out of the 763 unwarranted investigations undergone under the new governmental powers awarded by the Patriot Act, only three involved terrorism cases.

The vast majority were drug cases. What were the rest? Does it really matter? The freedoms granted by the Bill of Rights are still granted by suspected criminals, who are after all guilty until proven innocent. Given the abuses this "terrorism"-spurred act was immediately turned toward, do we really want the government following our ATM transactions, library book checkouts and travel paths, looking for patterns?

The practices of the Bush Administration consistently amounted to a bait-and-switch; get us nervous about one thing, and then do quite another. Under the manufactured urgency of the war on terror, Bush expanded the powers of government, invaded two nations (one of which had nothing to do with any terrorist attacks on U.S. soil), opened secret prisons, enlisted private corporations to spy on U.S. citizens and aided and abetted political criminals up to the highest levels of government.

Obama has proven less than satisfactory on ending these abuses, so the fact that he's proven far less self-righteous than Bush and hasn't yet caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands seems almost immaterial. Where is the attitude of respect for the American people that our representatives ought to have? The Republicans protest Obama's actions, but only for the support of the corrupt and avaricious in business. Unless our representatives turn off their desire to do anything - anything to look good and feel productive, enacting laws that threaten the liberty of American citizens in the name of some elusive physical protection, I can't imagine that anything is going to change.

NOTE: This is explicit analysis, based on what I feel to be the core of our nation's principles and unmotivated by any political leanings unless subconscious. The type of vague, unexplained "fear" and unapplied responsibility-free values people like Glenn Beck attempt to force on us don't lead to any concerted action or improvement, just people lashing out. If you can't quantify your statements, they aren't real opinions, and they're purely selfish, which is worse than merely being misguided.

A Proposal

2009-09-24T18:41:00.001-06:00

For the same reason that companies whose product names fall into general usage often lose their trademarks (for example, Xerox or frisbee), if a historical event occurs in a copyrighted performance (such as an SNL stage), the company should no longer have any exclusive claim over the clip. Preserving personal copyright and restricting the legitimate flow of information should never be at odds.

Yellow journalism and FNC

2009-09-22T12:26:00.004-06:00

Fox has ridden the coattails of the Tea Party protests since their inception - anchors promoted the events on their shows, attended the events, and the network discussed them with an ideological singularity that could only have come from higher edict. In short, the Tea Parties became an ideological bulwark for Fox - both a justification of and a continuation of the newfound protest spirit of the conservative wing of the Republican party. The network even put out a full-page ad falsely accusing its competitors of not covering the events, hardly a desperate move when the network's diehard viewers wouldn't be caught dead watching CNN long enough to watch them refute the claim:

News networks attempting to influence the news for their own benefit is nothing new, though it's something we like to imagine has ended in modern journalism. Fox finds itself in a unique situation - its cavalcade of cartoon commentators allows it to indirectly (and directly) promote events while maintaining the illusion that these protests are entirely the spontaneous actions of Americans. The network is able to attend the events and attempt to influence public perception of them further through coaching and slanted reporting, and finally actively insinuate bias against networks who don't report the story they way they do. All of our networks are run by megacorporations, indicating that certain stories will not be told and certain angles not covered, though Fox's explicit promotion and direction of the corporate agenda (in this and other stories) is more directly alarming and transparent.

Scripted events are killing gaming

2009-09-22T00:44:00.008-06:00

Somebody needed to say it. A decade ago, looking forward to the future of gaming, we could see it - dynamic, highly-interactive adventures, ambitious as Hollywood blockbusters or as moving and subtle as art flicks to be played out on our TV screens, never the same way twice. We anticipated, expected a fusion of story and player choice that would become possible with the new technology we saw on the horizon. What we got in all too many cases was something else entirely.

In retrospect, it's easier to understand the proliferation of scripted events, or moments planned by a title's developers to be triggered at a particular point in a story or upon certain character actions. When used sparingly, some of these moments can be thrilling - for example, triggering the lights to dim at a particularly tense point in a horror game or scripting an ambush of Axis tanks and soldiers as your squad attempts to cross a river. Certainly some of the most memorable moments in all of gaming were written in by the developers, and nothing's going to change that.

But all too often these events become the easy way out, a way of limiting interactivity and diverting attention (and all-important budget) from the difficult parts of game design and toward sheer polish. Too much scripting turns a game into a Universal Studios ride - it makes the experience inherently artificial and kills immersion, the mental bond a user feels with a title when it creates a dynamic, fulfilling experience.

We need look no further than the venerated gods of the medium. 1998's Half-Life used scripted events early and often - for example, a headcrab would burst out of a ventilation shaft with a loud shriek or an impromptu alarm would send a squad of government soldiers running into a room with guns and explosives. Such scripting pushed the player into new and unexpected situations and often forced them to react quickly to avoid a restart.

But some of the moments were a little. . . off. Hours into the adventure, a soldier is attacked behind bulletproof glass, the player unable to save them. A scientist is snatched from a dock and dragged into the water by an enormous sea creature. Wait - they survived this long only to die at a moment calculated for maximum impact? Why aren't there bodies everywhere? How much influence can a player carry by their mere presence before it feels inescapably artificial?

Six years later, in Half-Life 2, we were still doing the same thing: Waves and waves of troops would throw themselves at you as you attempted to escort survivors across a battlefield, only to stop the moment you crossed through a door. Enemies would attack you at regular intervals as you struggled to set up security turrets to save yourself, only to stop attacking you when an ally finally managed to open a nearby door.

Did you just flip a switch? Get ready for a half-dozen wailing zombies to pop out of the murky water around you. Did you just learn something important over the radio? Here comes a tank and some soldiers! Did you just pick up the key you needed? Get ready for the ground to collapse around you and drop you into an electrified lake you have moments to escape from!

In short, it's difficult to place the logical link between picking up a new gun and summoning a missile-bearing helicopter.

When pulled to the extreme, these types of games make the hero an absurd catalyst for trouble. If every action of the hero, no matter how minor, results in attacks, story events from out of nowhere and doom to random nearby characters whose sole reason for existence is apparently to demonstrate the method of attack of a new monster, gaming isn't happening. Story isn't happening. It's an "experience" only in the clinical sense: A bunch of things happen and then you go home. Roll credits.

A little game called Deus Ex came out in 2000. While it wasn't as flashy or as popular as Half-Life, it did something a little different - it gave you choice. From the beginning you had a choice of taking out enemy troops discreetly or flamboyantly, and it would matter. You could run into a facility guns blazing, or hack the building's security from afar, and it would matter. Sometimes these decisions had no direct effect on the gameplay, but they still mattered because they allowed you to be creative or barbaric, play around or take things seriously. In short, and at the risk of sounding sarcastic, you were playing a game.

Characters lived or died based on your decisions, not just while you were there. Unlike Half-Life's roller coaster of arbitrary and inexplicable events, Deus Ex gave you some control over your character's role in the story. Though the game's plot proceeded more or less the same regardless of your actions, the game's best story elements weren't scripted, but were emergent from the player's personality. Whether you were a pacifist who preferred to lurk in the shadows and secret passageways and resorted to guns only when necessary (like me) or a soldier who devastated entire installations, you felt like more than a bystander. You felt like a participant. When you broke into your old facility for information and had to make the choice of either killing the security guard you'd known for the whole game or trying to outrun his weapons, the decision felt real and genuine though it wouldn't matter to the overall story. Choices like that made the game more than just a series of events and explosions.

Playing through Dead Space last week, I was surprised by how transparent and lazy the scripted elements were. The thirtieth time an enemy ran around a corner, out of sight, as you opened a door, or a character interaction with the environment caused something "unexpected" to happen, the impact just wasn't there. Despite Dead Space's virtues (and there were many), I felt as if the game couldn't have cared less about my participation in the story, and was perfectly happy to go on without me. The only thing that really mattered was whether I had enough health and ammo to get to Deck 19 and recalibrate the main whatchamajigger until the next crisis came up and I had to do something else. While fun, this unfortunate tendency to disrespect the player's ability to do anything other than accumulate items and shoot baddies left the experience oddly bland and unmoving.

Heavy scripting is easy, but it's a thematic dead end which creates unfulfilling experiences. Gaming's greatest strengths involve the ability of an individual to influence and interact. Let's not forget that.

Scott Adams on the healthcare debate

2009-09-21T15:34:00.002-06:00

Scott Adams offers a refreshing perspective on the healthcare debate:

A confusopoly - a term I concocted several years ago - is any industry that intentionally makes its products and services too complicated for comparison shopping. The best examples of confusopolies are cell phone carriers and insurance companies. And health insurance companies might be the most confusing confusopoly of all. I suspect that no individual has the knowledge, time, and information necessary to effectively compare two health insurance plans. And in that environment the free market doesn't operate efficiently.

Some people support the so-called Public Option for healthcare, where the government would offer health care in competition with the free market. The idea is that private companies would eventually lower prices to compete with the government's low cost option. That sounds good on paper, but the reality is that the private industry folks would use the uncertainty of the confusopoly to convince people that the government option would somehow end up killing its subscribers, e.g. "Sure, it looks inexpensive until your kidney starts hurting."

I think a better role for government would be shining a light on the existing private healthcare plans in a way that would help consumers choose the most economical option. The government did this successfully with the bank loan industry when it required all loans to have an APR, which is a single number that allows consumers to compare one loan to another. Healthcare can't be boiled down to a single number, but I suspect you could come up with a report card and some sort of average cost per subscriber. That way, consumers could shop wisely, and the free market might work the way it is meant to work.

Adams has proven himself at times remarkably analytical and unconstrained by ideology, and this argument post seems to respect both viewpoints while remaining charmingly aloof.

link

Apple Lied, People Died (Well, maybe not)

2009-09-19T15:32:00.003-06:00

To confirm my editorial spin on a story from a few weeks back, Google has released documents essentially confirming that Apple's weasel words are just that - they're lying about not rejecting Google Voice.

"The Metalocalypse Has Begun. . ."

2009-09-17T20:15:00.009-06:00

As a huge fan of Cartoon Network's Metalocalypse (and an even bigger fan of the show's fictional band Dethklok and their output), 2007's The Dethalbum was a breath of fresh air. In a world of überserious metal and bland, selfish introspection, Dethklok's pounding, soaring and goofy anthems touched a nerve most groups don't even try for. Once again, a novelty band beat the big names at their own act - The Dethalbum was hilarious, well-written and heavier than it had any right to be.

The songs could be appreciated without any knowledge of the source material, but in context served as a perfect companion piece to the show. Was it necessary to know that "Go Into the Water" was written for fish, or that the band was attacked by missile-bearing jets and a trained assassin during their first ever performance of the song for humans? Or that the lyrics for "Awaken" were taken from a Finnish book of necronamic spells and unintentionally summoned an enormous lake troll when performed (and all during an apology for destroying half of Finland on their previous tour to boot)? No, but knowledge of the episodes lend the songs much of their context and humor. And associating the sarcastic graduation theme "Go Forth and Die" with the accompanying: "Didn't you have anything to fall back on after your band was killed by blackbirds?" seems to make it doubly rewarding.

From a band whose morbid image and unintentional barbarity comes less from personal unpleasantness than a slavish devotion to metal culture, song titles like "Bloodrocuted", "Hatredcopter" and "Murmaider" (also written for fish) are doubly hilarious. Though it seems unlikely that the second Dethalbum (due to be released in less than two weeks) will live up to the first (from the cuts I've heard so far the songs seem far too homogeneous and unmelodic), it's nice to see the show's creators continuing to take the band seriously as real musicians, albeit cartoon ones.

Gotta love that cover art though.

The Top Ten Worst Excuses For Journalism Ever

2009-09-16T02:28:00.004-06:00

10) Top ten lists
9) Top ten lists
8) Top ten lists
7) Top ten lists
6) Top ten lists
5) Top ten lists
4) Top ten lists
3) Top ten lists
2) Top ten lists
1) Top ten lists

Why we have some of the problems that we do

2009-09-13T02:35:00.002-06:00

Think of the people that we idolize, and then think that almost nobody knows this man's name.

Give-and-take on health care reform

2009-09-04T00:43:00.005-06:00

This is more of what we need. Ignore the specific points being made here and notice the evenhanded discussion taking place here when cooler heads prevail. This could be a libertarian arguing against the public option with a mob of frustrated left-leaning college students and I like to think I'd feel the same way about it.

EDIT: And he can draw the United States from memory, apparently.

Msueum of Animal Perspectives provides just that

2009-08-31T11:09:00.003-06:00

I'm enchanted by this set of videos from the Museum of Animal Perspectives, most particularly this video of an armadillo foraging and a wolf quite deliberately hunting a squirrel. Though animal rights-conscious individuals may balk at the prospect of fixing animals great and small with cameras and setting them loose, I'd like to think that such a treatment actually drives their point home more carefully and completely than any awareness campaign - that animals are real individuals with real lives.

I wish these videos were longer.

Link

The Doomsday Horse

2009-08-30T21:53:00.001-06:00

Actual headline on Drudge: "Inferno May Take Out Los Angeles Media Towers"

My preferred headline: "Demented Doomsday Horse Begins the Final Cleansing"

Highlights from the Big Book o' Pretentiousness

2009-08-26T01:29:00.003-06:00

Some silly art from my 2005 Big Book o' Pretentiousness (click images to enlarge).

This one's "Epoxy Lateralus".

And this little fellow's "Hemogoblin Mounts the Borealis".

I was going to do more, but the Big Book o' Pretentiousness didn't write itself, unfortunately.

Chumbawamba covers The Beatles' "Her Majesty"

2009-08-26T01:14:00.005-06:00

I was charmed silly at this expanded version of The Beatles' Her Majesty, performed by Chumbawamba. Yes, that Chumbawamba.

One of the best-kept secrets in music is that Chumbawamba, the anarchist punk band best known for the misunderstood "party anthem" Tubthumping (you know the song) is actually really good. It's sad that they got pigeonholed so thoroughly by a massive hit, but there are worse fates. Here's another good one.

Apple explains why AT&T had nothing to do with (everything to do with) Apple's rejection (non-rejection) of Google Voice for the iPhone

2009-08-25T21:43:00.002-06:00

Those looking to read a nice duplicitous release could do worse than "Apple Answers the FCC's Questions", in which Apple trips all over itself attempting to explain how its rejection (though Apple denies the term, saying the App has not been rejected, just not approved, and that Apple "continue to study" it) of Google's communication service Google Voice meets the needs of its consumers and, not coincidentally, the telecommunications giant which has the exclusive deal to provide service to the iPhone. Naturally, they then begin to explain exactly what AT&T had to do with the rejection (uh. . . everything):

Answering the question "Did Apple act alone, or in consultation with AT&T, in deciding to reject the Google Voice application and related applications?"

Apple is acting alone and has not consulted with AT&T about whether or not to approve the Google Voice application. No contractual conditions or non-contractual understandings with AT&T have been a factor in Apple’s decision-making process in this matter.

...

Then answering the question: "Does AT&T have any role in the approval of iPhone applications generally (or in certain cases)?"

There is a provision in Apple’s agreement with AT&T that obligates Apple not to include functionality in any Apple phone that enables a customer to use AT&T’s cellular network service to originate or terminate a VoIP session without obtaining AT&T’s permission. Apple honors this obligation, in addition to respecting AT&T’s customer Terms of Service, which, for example, prohibit an AT&T customer from using AT&T’s cellular service to redirect a TV signal to an iPhone. From time to time, AT&T has expressed concerns regarding network efficiency and potential network congestion associated with certain applications, and Apple takes such concerns into consideration.

Slick, Apple - slick.

Link

Relevant editorial: Apple's Animal Farm

Indefensible - Lowlights from the Inspector General Report

2009-08-25T00:33:00.004-06:00

After writing and rewriting this introduction dozens of times, I realized that I've already opined on torture at length so it may be best to let this reading speak for itself.

Those who defend the use of torture as "enhanced interrogation" should read the selections posted by Salon's Glenn Greenwald of actual methods used by CIA interrogators.

The entire article reads like a sort of twisted set of Mad-Libs. Remember, "terrorists" (really just a blanket term for Arabs in many circles) couldn't destroy our freedom or our values no matter how much they supposedly hate them. Still, we've done a pretty good job of making the whole war moot by trying to beat them to it.

Further readings:

Judge Andrew Napolitano: Five Things You Should Know About the ‘Torture’ Memos

Musicians to press Obama on end to "sonic torture"

Gitmo detainees released with sneaky, infuriating language

Stewart schools McCaughey on the health care bill (Resulting in her resignation)

2009-08-22T16:20:00.003-06:00

The following Jon Stewart interview with an increasingly-hysterical Betsy McCaughey is one of the best treatments of the healthcare debate that I've ever seen. Her alien logic and nervous laughter gets uncomfortable after a few minutes, though Stewart's "fake" news show as usual does a better job of providing context and evenhandedness than any of the major networks. Maybe when this stupid line of argument falls by the wayside we can actually consider the bill on its own terms.

And yes, she did resign her post the next day.

Enjoy:

www.thedailyshow.com

We don't support the private option, just high rates and bad care

2009-08-22T12:11:00.003-06:00

Let's see who's really for individual freedom and private sector choice: The New York State Insurance Department is twisting the law to force an NYC doctor offering affordable health care to raise his rates. When will we accept that these bureaucracies aren't even in the business of health?

And when have trade groups or bureaucracies ever looked out for consumers?

"I want everybody to remember WHY THEY NEED US!"

2009-08-20T20:06:00.004-06:00

(No, my frame of reference for tyrants does not end at this movie, but the visual appeal is undeniable.)

So yes, now it's pretty much official that the Bush Administration pressured Tom Ridge to raise the terror alert for Bush's reelection. If the potential for this sort of thing to happen (and the fact that it did happen) isn't Exhibit A in the case for the uselessness of this manipulative system, nothing oughta change your mind. Bush already capitalized on American fear of the foreigner and perceived weakness to bust pretty much anybody he wanted to connect with trrrism, but there's never been clearer evidence that manipulation was so conspicuously hard-coded into his policies.

No matter how angry we get at Obama for trying to insure the uninsured, remember this.

Dahyumn

2009-08-17T12:18:00.004-06:00

Synopsis: "After seeing Geppetto die at the hands of vampires, Pinocchio swears revenge in this darkly funny graphic novel. As the vampires plot the enslavement of mankind, only a one-puppet army stands in their way. But will a wooden boy and his endless supply of stakes—courtesy of plenty of lies and his elongating nose—be enough to save the day?"

The comic series is published by Slave Labor Graphics, who also released the incredible Hsu and Chan. Even if the execution doesn't match up to the idea, that's one doozy of an idea. Now we just need the Shrek crew to film an Army of Darkness sequel.

Link

Thoughts on movies from an erstwhile movie snob

2009-08-16T13:39:00.003-06:00

Why do we have so few movie sequels that really continue a narrative? We're far more likely to see a new group of characters, maybe with a couple of return parts for novelty, go through the motions of the first movie in a series rather than continue the evolution of a character.

The best we can usually hope for is something like Harry Potter, where characters and their interrelationships are developed by being consistently thrust into similar situations over a long period, with enough variation and cinematography flashiness to keep from getting stale. Building up the mythos of a world is what passes for storytelling in a world of focus groups and demographics, and I'll usually stand for it.

But imagine if sequels really took their characters seriously as characters and not props for a plot, for example if Stallone's Rocky Balboa had been permitted to develop the way an individual might rather than getting roped into a series of increasingly unlikely fights for every sequel that rolled around. After all, the story was really about "Hey Adrian!" and the disconnect between being a nice guy and not really knowing what to do (or often being forced to do the wrong thing, for example muscling debtors for a loan shark). Why not pursue what fame adds to the mix rather than ending every flick with a setpiece fight? I mean, other than the fact that even the creators of the film feel that Rocky was a boxing movie.

What happens if James Bond gets fired, loses his access to awesome technology and has to work out a budget? Characters don't really grow unless you change the dynamic under which they're tested, and this doesn't happen if they keep meeting and besting the same challenges over and over.

I don't mean to say that movies don't do this. The Dark Knight took the invulnerable superhero mystique of the first film and destroyed it by making Batman essentially powerless, and, from what I've heard, Babe 2 subverted audiences and market expectations to deliver a truly thought-provoking story (bad move - the movie tanked). And, despite the gaudy horror of the cloying, unwatchable Toy Story 3 trailer, the crew seems genuinely dedicated to closing the "dramatic arc" of sorts of a toy who had been in denial of, and finally comes to grips with, his own mortality (though to be fair they'll probably just introduce a couple of new characters and have another adventure with a few calculatedly somber moments, which is pretty much what we're looking for anyway).

I'm not a snob, and I like most quality sequels even if they don't blaze much new territory (read: the stylish, fun, but mostly unmoving Hellboy II), though I'd like to see some major league sequels really shake up the dynamic of the story and not leave recontextualization to parody comedy shows and webcomics. The whole "reboot" thing (read: a sequel in practice but without the work of having to come up with a completely new plot) is getting old, and sequels that exist only to rehash the plot of the first movie (National Treasure 2: Blah of Blahcrets) are still safely ignorable, so we have plenty of time to turn Hollywood around before the novelty of CGI explosions even comes close to wearing out.

A final caveat: My apology if my points of reference seem to be mainly sci-fi, fantasy and superhero movies. Granted, they comprise the majority of what I watch, but not a controlling one.

Day [X] of the Healthcare Smokescreen

2009-08-13T22:08:00.009-06:00

Yesterday Sarah Palin mounted a surprisingly coherent defense of her "death panels" comment, taking a step back and arguing that doctors with an incentive to counsel patients about "advance directives" (read: decisions made during periods of incapacity such as stroke or prolonged unconsciousness) will have more of an incentive to pressure senior citizens into accepting "pull the plug" plans that they may not be prepared for:

Now put this in context. These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is “to reduce the growth in health care spending.” Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care?

Now, calling Palin's defense "coherent" is merely an acknowledgment that all of the words in her article, when strung together, make a form of sense. This is truly phenomenal for Palin, and I wish her only the best in her newfound pursuit of lucidity. Unfortunately the ideas are a little murkier. Here's Palin's original statement:

". . . who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Oh. Palin's original comments have nothing to do with her more recent regrouping. Now we see the problem; for even if allowing elderly people the option of discussing with their doctor what to do if they become vegetative can be somehow compared with images of death squads and grandmamas and papas on the chopping block, Palin's poor little baby is quite safe from Obama's Stethoscope Stormtroopers unless the bill takes a dramatic turn.

Unfortunately it's clear that this is just another volley of Palin hypocrisy and an exploitation not only of her child but impressionable faux-conservatives everywhere on this particular issue - Palin supported "advance directives" as early as last year.

Is this a surprise? No. Should we feign Olbermann-style outrage or think Palin a grandma-killer? No. But this isn't a debate, nor is it a group of principled Americans standing up against a behemoth-in-the making. The "ideas" and principles these people purport to stand by are the result of lies, corporate posturing and the exploitation of the well-intentioned and hungrily patriotic by the cold gears of cynical posturing of the political machine.

It's politics - mere words and soundbytes divorced of context or principle, celebrity clashes of ego where sensational statements are reported as if they form a valid rebuttal to unpleasant facts. If you really believed what you purport to belief, outraged Right-wingers, you'd have better reasons. And if we're going to debate this, let's do it honestly.

UPDATE: Context comes back to kick us all in the back, including, not unexpectedly Glenn Beck. Funny how "the nightmare that is our healthcare system" turns into a chocolate gurney and licorice defibrillator utopia in just a year's time. . .

Of course, cable commentators and politicians are from a world where context and consistency are mere afterthoughts, where moment-by-moment indignance (whatever the target!) carry the day. So, in a way, it's perfectly understandable for these weasels to slag off our healthcare system when playing off of working class distrust for authority, then turn around and praise it literally months later when the Tide of Outrage moves in that direction. Provided you're a goldfish whose memory reboots every three seconds, that is.

UPDATE UPDATE: And this type of doubletalk leads to some awkward moments.

Copying your own DVDs is a personal right, but also illegal. Wait - what?

2009-08-12T17:53:00.007-06:00

In Chapter 573 (or maybe not, I lose count) of the gradual erosion of consumer rights in the name of corporate profits and control, judge Marilyn Hall Patel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has ruled that DVD-copying software is illegal.

As making personal copies of your own software, music and DVDs is completely legal, you'd expect that software intended to fulfill that purpose should also be legal. Not so. Patel's justification:

"While it may well be fair use for an individual consumer to store a backup copy of a personally-owned DVD on that individual's computer, a federal law has nonetheless made it illegal to manufacture or traffic in a device or tool that permits a consumer to make such copies."

The law in question is a tenet of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which prohibits the circumvention of copy-protection (such as that found on DVDs), regardless of whether or not any copyright infringement has actually taken place.

Judge Patel is a good judge. She's not rewriting law to suit her own opinions (whatever those may be). I personally like a little activism in my judiciary, but she's in her 70s and I'll cut her a little slack.

The law itself is the real matter. It's clear that we've moved in a bad direction as a society. When media conglomerates actively move toward restricting the legal right of consumers to copy their own media, and actively seek to rewrite law to make it illegal to bypass these restrictions, these corporations are actively working by definition as oppressors, seeking to restrict the freedoms and legal rights of individuals in the singleminded pursuit of profits. As the passage of laws like the DMCA shows, the United States has proven particularly susceptible to the arm-twist of these megacorporations and trade groups who work hand-in-hand with our elected leaders to restrict consumer freedom. When copyright law is viewed as a two-way agreement, it's tough not to argue that these corporations are themselves infringing copyright, and ought to be kept in check for the public good.

The RIAA and MPAA already control much of the discourse on this issue, and for all of their sanctimonious prattle about "artist's rights" it's clear that they couldn't care less about the actual talent behind the industry.

Labels are already becoming (but haven't quite become) irrelevant as new technology allows consumers to learn about and share media more efficiently than ever and artists to take a higher and higher share of the profits reaped from the music they produce. But as it becomes clear how rabidly anticonsumer these labels have become, pushing for stricter and stricter controls and punishing legal applications of their product without any recourse for citizens, it's difficult to pity them.

They're a reactive organization, not a proactive one, and new media and channels of information will quickly bypass them and leave them in the dust, unless they find a way to shackle every device we own. Can you imagine a world in which media giants had successfully blocked the release of the VCR due to copyright concerns? (They tried.) What about MP3 players, or recordable CDs, or independent music and movie players for computers? These corporations aren't fighting for artist's rights, or intellectual property, or anything quite so noble. They might think they're fighting for their bottom line, but all they're doing is killing the proverbial golden goose and sealing their own demise. Let's make sure that they don't seal our own with it.

Today's dose of irony. . .

2009-08-10T23:18:00.003-06:00

Disrupting town hall activist's injuries not covered by insurance, seeking donations for medical expenses.

This spur-of-the-moment image of mine seems appropriate:

Next up, your retarded babies.

Is it a crime to be poor?

2009-08-09T13:03:00.003-06:00

When Jim Crow laws in the United States segregated whites and "coloreds," many on the supporting side of the issue argued that the laws were not inherently damaging to any one group. The fallacy of "separate but equal" allowed states to create policy with the expressed intent of separating blacks from white society, which had the effect of limiting blacks' access to well-funded education, connection-building with the white power structure and limited blacks' ability to get decent jobs. In effect these laws perpetuated slavery in essence, keeping a large number of U.S. citizens separate, but certainly not equal.

Is the same thing happening now to the poor? In a Times article dated yesterday, Barbara Ehrenreich makes the compelling case that our current legal system creates a similar dynamic for the poor, with misdemeanors that target the destitute and are intended to separate them from the rest of society:

A grizzled 62-year-old, [Al Szekely] inhabits a wheelchair and is often found on G Street in Washington — the city that is ultimately responsible for the bullet he took in the spine in Fu Bai, Vietnam, in 1972. He had been enjoying the luxury of an indoor bed until last December, when the police swept through the shelter in the middle of the night looking for men with outstanding warrants. It turned out that Mr. Szekely, who is an ordained minister and does not drink, do drugs or curse in front of ladies, did indeed have a warrant — for not appearing in court to face a charge of “criminal trespassing” (for sleeping on a sidewalk in a Washington suburb). So he was dragged out of the shelter and put in jail. “Can you imagine?” asked Eric Sheptock, the homeless advocate (himself a shelter resident) who introduced me to Mr. Szekely. “They arrested a homeless man in a shelter for being homeless.”

As recent events have shown, there is more than a little ambiguity about what is and is not appropriate to say and do in front of a police officer. For people who deal with the police in a more antagonistic capacity, often spurred by laws that target the poor (particularly poor minorities) in greater numbers, the chance of a misunderstanding or police power trip shoots through the roof:

Flick a cigarette in a heavily patrolled community of color and you’re littering; wear the wrong color T-shirt and you’re displaying gang allegiance. Just strolling around in a dodgy neighborhood can mark you as a potential suspect . . . If you seem at all evasive, which I suppose is like looking “overly anxious” in an airport, [Author Paul] Butler writes, the police 'can force you to stop just to investigate why you don’t want to talk to them.” And don’t get grumpy about it or you could be 'resisting arrest.' '"

While laws against "loitering" and "public trespassing" and no-nonsense law enforcement policies allow elected officials to talk tough against crime and gain support among their citizenry, these policies in essence begin to criminalize poverty and homelessness in a society that still prefers to see both as a personal failing, and those forced to live in such situations as a societal sickness or matter of local color rather than struggling people with real concerns. By criminalizing or harshly punishing “crimes that are not a risk to public safety," we have turned some of our grittiest cities into social battlegrounds, enforcing the class order and punishing the poorest among us in a society ostensibly committed to propping up the downtrodden.

Link

Further reading:

NYPD Officer Suspended After Refusing to Arrest Homeless Man

Dozens protest homeless sweeps with City Hall camp-out

Stop the Sweeps

Roger Ebert Reviews "G.I. Joe"

2009-08-08T00:11:00.006-06:00

Have fun at G.I. Joe, Middle America.

"G. I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" is a 118-minute animated film with sequences involving the faces and other body parts of human beings. It is sure to be enjoyed by those whose movie appreciation is defined by the ability to discern that moving pictures and sound are being employed to depict violence. Nevertheless, it is better than 'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.' " - Roger Ebert

Link

Much of the context for this amazing quote can be taken from Paramount's marketing strategy for the movie:

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" opens Friday, but Paramount Pictures isn't screening the blockbuster for critics beforehand. . . Instead, the studio says it's intentionally aiming the movie at the heartland, at cities and audiences outside the entertainment vortexes of New York and Los Angeles. . . While appealing to a sense of patriotism nationwide, the plan also is inspired by the disparity that existed between the critical trashing "Transformers: Rise of the Fallen" received and the massive crowds it drew at the box office.
"`G.I. Joe' is a big, fun, summer event movie — one that we've seen audiences enjoy everywhere from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to Phoenix, Ariz.," said Rob Moore, vice chairman of Paramount Pictures. "After the chasm we experienced with `Transformers 2' between the response of audiences and critics, we chose to forgo opening-day print and broadcast reviews as a strategy to promote `G.I. Joe.' We want audiences to define this film."

Translation: Paramount knows you're shallow but they'd love a shot at your wallet.

This final quote from Ebert's review was too previous to pass up:

There is never any clear sense in the action of where anything is in relation to anything else. You get more of a binary action strategy. You see something, it fires. You see something else, it gets hit. Using the power of logic, you deduce that the first thing was aiming at the second thing.

Thesis and Evidence

2009-08-02T23:33:00.007-06:00

Thesis: Megacorporations censor the news and restrict reporting on their shady dealings, effectively keeping Americans in the dark about policies that affect them and the world while walking hand in hand with Washington.

Exhibit 1: Fox News and MSNBC coming to an agreement to mutually censor both Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann in order to protect the megacorporations that run these networks.

Watch this incredible now-banned SNL sketch for the more general gist of what's going on. (On a related note, NBC is particularly diligent about keeping this sketch out of circulation, citing their own copyright.) When a few major corporations seek to control our nation's flow of information, it's particularly easy to make the independent media look like alarmist nuts for reporting stories and taking perspectives the more mainstream media will never touch.

EDIT: I'm very glad to be wrong, barring a continuation of the conspiracy theory. Let's hope Bill follows suit on the paltry bit of good reporting he was doing.

Mama, get the rah-fle

2009-08-01T01:36:00.003-06:00

Poor American South. They try so hard. At least they mostly stay out of the way.

(From the Washington Monthly)

Dirtbag power company to charge solar panel users an extra fee

2009-07-26T15:20:00.003-06:00

Those looking for a primer in convoluted, selfish deceit could do worse than a recent policy from Minnesota-based Xcel Energy, which plans to begin charging users of solar panels an extra fee. Why?

[I]mplementing the fee would level the playing field for electricity users who are currently subsidizing connectivity fees for solar users, who sometimes use no electricity in a given month and therefore, pay no electrical fees.

Does that reasoning confuse you?

But when pressed, [Xcel spokeman] Henley admitted that currently, no Xcel electric customers pay extra to fund solar connectivity fees. In reality, Xcel absorbs those fees. The money from the proposed fee would not go into the pockets of electric customers, but would go back to Xcel. Henley said the fee is a preventative measure to ensure that, down the road, solar customers do not get free rides.

The game so far:

#1 Lie
#2 Admission of Lie
#3 Reiteration of Lie

But don't worry: Energy-efficient customers won't be punished as long as they compensate by being extra-wasteful in other ways:

Henley disputed that, saying some solar customers who used a sufficient amount of electrical energy each month would never have to pay the connectivity fee.

It's nice to know that we still have corporations around who aren't afraid to reject the traditional "provide a service, receive a reward" model of capitalism, instead policing their consumers and punishing those who are doing their best to save the planet and be responsible but might interfere with their future profits.

Xtort Power and Their Fees

Ouch

2009-07-23T00:42:00.002-06:00

Google's Senior Copyright Counsel, William F. Patry, does a smash-up job of summarizing the current state of copyright (particularly in the United States):

While one hears, constantly, corporate chieftains claiming that they're out there fighting for the creators, we all know that is b.s.: the creators are merely an expense item on a balance sheet, to be reduced as much as possible. We also hear politicians make similar paeans to creators, yet when was the last piece of legislation that was passed that benefited creators at the expense of corporations? When was the last time you heard a government official suggest such a thing?

William F. Patry via BoingBoing

Yoo've got it coming (Sorry)

2009-07-22T18:50:00.004-06:00

This isn't really comedy, of course, but it is a form of activism, and making John Yoo mildly uncomfortable for a few minutes seems appropriately ironic in light of the material in question.

EDIT: And yes, I'm fully aware the embedded video makes my page look all kinds of ugly.

"The FBI has long worried about military tactics seeping into general culture. . ."

2009-07-14T19:06:00.005-06:00

Last week, criminals with military training murdered a "wealthy Florida couple known for their charity toward children." Disturbed law enforcement officials are commenting on the pervasiveness of military culture throughout our society. As usual the case is either an isolated incident or a societal critique depending on how you look at it:

Military strategy has become "normalized" in American culture through video games, movies, and the common use of police SWAT teams for even low-level drug raids, says Peter Kraska, an Eastern Kentucky University criminologist who studies SWAT tactics.

"For criminals to take the same kind of approach shouldn't surprise anyone," Professor Kraska says. "You would not only see certain police types attracted to it, but ordinary folks – if they're seduced by it in popular video, they might be seduced by it in real life, as well."

Okay, here's the societal critique bit:

Our government trains hundreds of thousands of people in military disciplines, sculpting them to become one of a group at the expense of their individual personalities, to value the priorities and orders of their superiors without question. This may be necessary in the military but it's a fact.

Certain political stripes of our society talk up the benefit of a strong military and enable this system, encouraging us to unconditionally respect those in the military. Even as civilians we are thus brought into the military system through the constant encouragement to equate the wars of politicians with the inherent good of "soldiers," who deserve the type of respect that requires them to fight and die whenever those who command them give the signal. Simultaneously the military often lets discipline fail at the lowest levels, making excuses for those who commit atrocities.

These selfish double standards unconsciously teach us to value military action for its sake alone, ostensibly as the arm of justice or freedom but in practice as another symbol of the authority of our leaders. In essence we have an inherent respect for the military but nothing to do with it. "Our" soldiers are inherently good, while people who feel they are fighting for their freedom elsewhere are considered "insurgents," to be hated and arrested forever. Thus we are taught to value only our own goals and priorities, to demonize others because of their origin and perspective, and that individual inhuman behavior is all right as long as you're a part of a disciplined, cohesive group.

Finally, we release scads of military folk back into normal society, some small percentage of whom will act like monsters, while arresting those who dare to undergo nongovernmental weapons and tactics training in other countries on evidence we refuse to release. Surprised?

While it's tempting to be even more bold in drawing a connection between this individual incident and these larger musings on society (and some of you will feel I have gone quite far indeed), I'm not qualified. But you have to admit that it's tempting to make certain connections.

Military precision of Florida slaying is worrisome, analysts say (Christian Science Monitor)

Marred

2009-07-14T18:31:00.002-06:00

I recently ordered a book from an Amazon.com retailer. The book arrived with a black marker streak across the bottom - the actual bottom edge, where the pages are. (It also arrived with moderate water damage, but we won't get into that right now.)

After leaving a slightly negative review I noticed this page folded into the packing sheet, lovingly titled:

About the black marking............

You may find a black permanent marker line on the bottom or top of your book, commonly referred to as a "Remainder Mark."

This is not somebody being careless.

And it does not mean that your book is not new - it is brand new.

This is placed on the book by the publisher. The publisher puts this here to ensure that the book, once sold to you, at a significant price discount, is not then taken back to a store for credit or exchange. The mark protects the publisher and the retailer, so it is very important.

Books with these marks are generally either overstocked books, or books that have been returned to the publisher, or distributor, by a store for credit.

You will find that nearly all new books sold on Amazon by marketplace sellers have a black line, or a remainder mark. (sometimes, it can be a red or a black dot, a yellow line, you get the point.........).

We used to state this clearly in the listing description, but Amazon recently changed their listing policy.

Yes! The publisher intentionally reduces the value of their own books so that bookstores dumb enough to accept returns without receipts don't get scammed! Furthermore, Amazon has changed their policy so that bookstores aren't allowed to tell people about this stupid practice until the book actually arrives! That makes perfect sense! I'm inclined to think that somebody is being dishonest here.

The practice is bull, of course. I ordered another book from the same author, and it arrived in a protective plastic case, in pristine condition and with no ugly marker swipe across the spine.

Invisibility (how to do it and solving as many related problems as possible)

2009-07-12T16:06:00.008-06:00

I've been thinking a great deal about how to accomplish true invisibility. I read a book when I was about twelve years old that clued me into the greatest problem with accomplishing invisibility - in order for you to be able to see, your eyes must be able to absorb and reflect light, hence the areas of your eyes involved in sight must remain visible. It turns out this isn't strictly true. My original idea - to render the whole body except the eyes invisible was kind of stupid - it's clearly better to use pinhole cameras as even floating corneas would be pretty conspicuous. As long as the type of invisibility we're talking about involves bending light around your person or sensing it and broadcasting it at the exact opposite side, you could have light inside (or at least enough to view a camera through some sort of electronic goggles) and it would be fine.

Angles provoke myriad problems. If we could count on observers only viewing us from one direction the problem would be simpler. Even paint works pretty well from ONE angle, as you can see (link):

Now, first we need to go through what I feel is the best way to accomplish invisibility - a suit or other exoskeleton-like mechanism that takes light pointed at the body and passes it through the exact opposite side with as close to the same hue and intensity as possible. One of the greatest problems we have here is that the reflection mechanism must be incredibly variable - it must be able to accommodate every angle, both vertical and horizontal, that the light source broadcasts, in every possible spectrum including the ultraviolet. I am not technically inclined enough to venture a workable solution here, other than to say that we're getting into pretty detailed nanotechnology here, and must build an incredibly receptive device capable of simultaneously sensing and broadcasting in multiple angles. Neither the broadcast nor the absorption qualities of the material must interfere with each other:

Here's a simple 2D representation of a three-dimensional shape capable of sensing and broadcasting in five directions. Obviously you'd need millions (or billions) of these across a single suit (though it wouldn't be "invisibility" by any stretch of the word - even if it worked to some extent it would only work from five angles). Now, moving to a bulbous design capable of hundreds of degrees of sensitivity seems like a good solution. The more sensitive the design (and the quicker the latency and faster the "framerate"), the less "shimmering" we see, like the Elites in Halo. Something that's "pretty" invisible would do OK against human reaction time but not much against devices programmed to notice the effect.

Still, a bulbous design doesn't solve the myriad problems that crop up:

- The gaps between each of our receptors/broadcasters would create shadows. This is such a complex, small design that I can't tell exactly what this would mean. Obviously the more invisible you are, the more the microscopic bulbs must protrude from your body in order to accommodate more angles, and the bigger the shadow problems created. Maybe making the edges completely transparent going in but not out would solve this problem, and maybe it wouldn't. It's also possible that allowing one receptor/broadcaster in this situation to pass light through to its immediate neighbors which would then broadcast to the other side of the suit would work.

- Invisibility would be near-useless without movement, so the suit must have a very keen idea of where every piece of it is at all times and be able to coordinate hundreds of angles from every single reception point which would require a horrendous amount of processing power.

We see here three angles that a single receptor must be capable of, and the coordination with other sensors required. The pink line, for example, must reflect to the upper thigh, the lower torso and the wrist. Not to do so would create shadows and dark spots. Now this is only three angles of a single receptor. These three angles have seven reflect points. Imagine the difficulty of coordinating only three angles with the entire body while it's constantly moving and I think you'll see the work ahead of us here. Millions (or billions) of receptors/broadcasters would each have to reflect thousands of angles, and most of them would have to communicate with at least two other points for broadcast purposes. And damned if you don't also have to be able to get into the suit, so any fasteners and overlaps would also have to be a part of the invisibility mechanism. And Heaven help you if you want to have access to weapons or other external sensing devices, though I suppose that once we've solved the problem of making a functional suit, integrating other devices into the invisibility mechanism would be comparatively simple.

I'm glad that I'm not actually working on this.

Imagine that we've solved all of these problems. Well, now we have some more:

The Thermal Spectrum - Something like a jet with fewer moving parts and a hard design doesn't have the movement problem discussed above (or at least has it in a smaller measure) but serves as a good demonstration of the problem of hiding yourself in the thermal spectrum, an issue that still exists for human bodies but is more workable there. With the advent of invisibility it is a simple affair to program a turret to shoot at anything that broadcasts in the thermal spectrum but not the visible one. So our device must be built out of a material that can reach and maintain absolute room temperature very quickly and thoroughly to almost the same sensitivity that it reflects light. And there'd still be some thermal "shimmering" due to latency and the fact that each node has to absorb and produce light, so your device wouldn't only have to maintain room temperature, but it would have to maintain the difference between room temperature and whatever heat is emitted by its operation. Which means (you guessed it) it would have to have some mechanism for both producing and absorbing ludicrously precise amounts of heat all over the unit.

Any heat produced inside (and there would be much, both from the device and other devices being used, as well as the human body) would need to be sinked off for wearer comfort into some sort of storage unit that could be cooled down whenever it's safe to do so.

And jets pretty much by definition have to expend heat behind them in order to frickin move. Good luck avoiding any missile guidance systems or sensing devices that rely on heat.

Sound - It isn't a stretch to imagine that sensitive areas, particularly governmental and corporate ones, would begin to incorporate sound surveillance into their surveillance rigmarole, particularly looking out for sound-producing bodies with no apparent visual source. We already have devices that can cancel sound to some extent by broadcasting an opposite but equal wave at the same time, nullifying the vibration. I can't think of anything else that would solve this problem.

Other Reflections - The presence of invisibility technology would essentially create a technology war between invisibility and sensing capabilities. I think that the first wave of invisibility devices would be primarily visual, then begin to incorporate some of the other capabilities discussed above. The final step is to determine every last blasted thing the human body can reflect or absorb and to do whatever you can to make the human body behave like empty air. Some of these would require modeling lag and latency to ludicrously precise degrees in order to represent the amount of time a wave takes to travel through the air but not more concentrated matter - any suspicious quickness would be noticed. I can't even imagine the myriad ways people could develop to find an invisible person or object, and we'd have to think of all of them.

Durability - Oh - and it would have to be strong material. Even if only a tiny portion of the suit were damaged it would essentially nullify our invisibility due to the angle problem discussed above. The device would have to be both incredibly sensitive and incredibly durable.

So it turns out that true "invisibility" is more than just not being seen. It's an incredibly complex problem with hundreds of applications that requires an infinite level of adaptivity across a single surface. We need something that can measure its precise location relative to itself at all times while moving, absorb and emit light in all spectrums and precise amounts of heat, nullify sound and, hopefully, still be fairly light and mobile. Do I have any gargantuan flaws in my reasoning or is this really as hellish a problem as I'm imagining? I'm one to think that being able to discuss how something could work theoretically is a bigger leap than actually working it out, so I'm more alarmed by the fact that we can even discuss the issue in these terms. Also note that I stupidly developed this blueprint without reading anything on current invisibility applications, so much better models probably can and do exist.

Asians Doing Christopher Walken Impressions

2009-07-11T01:40:00.000-06:00

And they're good impressions.

The Lies of Sarah Palin (Andrew Sullivan)

2009-07-09T18:04:00.003-06:00

Naturally, I'll be spreading this again in 2012 if we hear a word about a possible Palin nomination (GOP suicide, naturally), but now it seems helpful to document the gross lies, incompetence and excuse-making of a shifty governor who couldn't be cute and personable enough to cover her inability to govern in a world of Wikis and fact-checking (I hesitate to say "bloggers" since I am, after all, merely linking to and summarizing The Atlantic).

Palin lied when she denied having said that humans do not contribute to climate change; in fact, she had previously proclaimed that human activity was not to blame.
Palin lied when she claimed that Alaska produces 20 percent of the country's domestic energy supply; in fact, the actual figures, based on any interpretation of her words, are much, much lower.
Palin lied when she told voters she improvised her convention speech when her teleprompter stopped working properly; in fact, all reports showed that the machine had functioned perfectly and that her speech had closely followed the script.

The Lies of Sarah Palin

EDIT: Uh, I should note that this type of behavior isn't particularly uncommon among politicians, and that I'm biased in that Palin's over-the-top self-righteousness and belief in self-fulfilling airs of competence puts me on edge with her.

Big

2009-07-08T19:09:00.002-06:00

This has already been big on Digg for some time, but I feel obligated to post it here. It's very humbling to read and reminiscent of a certain XKCD strip which earns kudos for being drawn.

The Utter Bigly Hugosity of Space (This gets the "frightening" tag because I'm not creating a "sobering" one)

Today's "Family Circus" is alarming. . .

2009-07-05T20:38:00.000-06:00

. . . if only because I worry these Gargantu-ants won't get their "DEVOUR DEVOUR DEVOUR" pheromones keyed up quickly enough.

"Oh, Palin!" Alaska governor resigns, possibly to star in a sitcom about a bungleheaded former politician

2009-07-03T17:48:00.005-06:00

Sarah Palin was for the wasteful "Bridge to Nowhere" before she was against it, and proudly defended Alaskans' sharing of local resources and profits before attacking Obama's "socialism." Her campaign behavior was a confounding mix of confused, cautiously generic statements and self-righteous attacks. She seemed taken aback and offended when forced to explain herself, and has always seemed most comfortable with sympathetic interviewers who wear hypocrisy blinders.

Here is a woman who frequently looks as if she has no idea what she is doing at any given moment, but everybody else seems obliged to go along for the ride. And now she's resigning her governorship for a multitude of confusing, possibly conflicting reasons. There's talk that she might be considering a run for president, but it's a given that she's resigning in disgrace. I'm betting on both.

She seems like a nice person going through a hard time, so I'm willing to forgive all unless she gives any hint that she'll be making a presidential run, in which case I'll be wearing the following T-shirt every day:

Palin resigns ("I reject the conventional lame duck status!"

Beautiful 3D Image

2009-07-03T16:02:00.003-06:00

Click the preceding image, then cross your eyes to align the two images (you may need to move your chair back a couple of feet). The illusion is really quite striking, and has me looking for 3D animations, which I know exist but can't quite find the terms for.

EDIT: They're called "animated stereograms" and they vary in quality.

Absurd TSA disclaimer

2009-07-02T01:05:00.005-06:00

In response to recent events (and a few older ones) I began a brief correspondence with a senior regional TSA agent at one of our nation's larger airports in an attempt to get the Administration's side of the story. I'm used both to reading and writing incendiary assaults on government organizations when an infringement on basic freedoms is suspected or agents misbehave in the performance of their duties, yet I realized that the TSA side of the argument was likely a little more sophisticated than the "Security Through Slavery" zealots many of us are used to imagining.

As I'd hoped I found the man's comments good-spirited and even informative, though most of my original concerns as a Bill of Rights/civil liberties nerd remain. But I can't discuss any of what we discussed due to a backward, ridiculous disclaimer at the bottom of each of his e-mail messages:

WARNING: The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged. Access to this email by anyone other than the intended addressee is unauthorized. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, any review, disclosure, copying, distribution, retention, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you are not the intended recipient, please reply to or forward a copy of this message to the sender and delete the message, any attachments, and any copies thereof from your system.

So the part of his message that reveals him as a man concerned with security while remaining conscious of the problem of preserving individual liberty is "classified," while the ridiculous, restrictive disclaimer that ties my hands is fair game. I can't talk about what we discussed here, reproduce it or even show it to anybody without fearing some possible reprisal, but I can tell you that I can't.

I don't understand - the contents of his e-mail were transparent discussions of TSA policy, with nary a factoid that might jeopardize our nation's security - in fact, they served to humanize his organization significantly in my eyes. But they've decided that they have the authority to restrict each and every message they send, and I've never been one to create undue trouble for myself.

Too bad.

Artist detained for writecrime

2009-06-27T13:37:00.006-06:00

In another reminder of why individual suspicions can never be used to justify detention or arrest, artist Mark Sable was detained last week at LAX for a script to a comic found in his luggage. That's right - not a weapon, not pepper spray or an incendiary device, but a script.

Considering our First Amendment protections the content of the script is immaterial, but it involved terrorism and a burgeoning government police state. Regardless of whether the uncreative minds of the TSA agents thought this an appropriate subject for a script, or even subversive is also immaterial - printed words represent no threat to a plane or my nation, while using personal suspicions and biases as an excuse for oppression and harassment does incalculable damage to any civilized nation and to its values.

If you in opposition to the Fourth Amendment allow mere "suspicion" to be a suitable cause for a search or detention, it will be used inappropriately and it will result in further First Amendment violations as the subjective judgments of sometimes-corrupt, sometimes-stupid agents become law and trump any semblance of due process.

Comics artist Mark Sable detained for Unthinkable acts (SFScope)

The BBC Reviews "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen"

2009-06-25T13:32:00.004-06:00

I wish I had thought of this. The page makes it clear that this is actually a review of all of Michael Bay's work, a sort of appropriate retrospective. Had I not edited the inch-long footer out of existence you would have seen that without my telling you.

Choose Your Own Adventure

2009-06-23T12:54:00.005-06:00

To continue reading this post, continue below.
To read something a great deal more interesting, turn to page 177.

I remember reading the Choose Your Own Adventure series (and its spinoffs) ravenously as a kid, to the extent that I'm convinced they were the first paperback fiction I ever read. As a child unable to see the flaws and cracks in a system, they seemed to offer me the illusion of choice without the obligation of seeing a particular plot thread through to the end.

To the uninitiated (and you can see a more complete explanation here), the books were standard schlocky kid's comic book types of stories, with titles like You Are Microscopic (the first I ever read) and Prisoner of the Ant People, with the twist that the plot was comparatively fluid - after a few introductory pages, the story would begin to branch off and allow you to have a sort of control over your character's actions.

For example, after learning that your aged uncle is a mad scientist who has discovered the key to immortality, you may have the option of taking a swig of the serum or offering it to him first, with page numbers for each decision. You'd follow the appropriate page and continue reading, having made a limited choice of the plot's progression. Anyone familiar with these types of stories should recognize the inevitable events that follow depending on your choices (for example, you might take the serum, becoming immortal. Your uncle dies of a heart attack before being able to make any more, and you become a sort of filthy rich eternal celebrity, starring in films and endorsing whatever products immortal people still need, until the book closes in the year 3000).

Usually these books followed the ". . . with a HORRIBLE twist!" style of writing, however, so it's likely that about 80% of the endings would involve your being crushed or shrunk to nothing or left floating forever in space. It was fairly difficult to find the ending where your character is surrounded by a pool full of jewels and bikini babes, so most of us learned to save our places with our fingers when making a decision. In fact, the finger contortions involved in making a decision three or four levels deep (while trying to avoid having your character eaten by a spider or run over by a car) probably gave the young generation much of their motor control, directly leading to the computer age. (Hey, a quarter billion of those books were sold, let's not underestimate their impact.)

Anyway, these books offered only the illusion of choice, as I said above. Most of the choices fizzled out quickly, ending in your character's death or a similar unhappy ending. And most of the choices were fairly simple to accommodate the fact that it was really only possible to cram a few dozen into a 130-page book. Character development was more or less out of the question, so the illusion was precarious enough that most of us moved onto other things in middle school (Goosebumps! Animorphs! Boy Wizards!). Still, I admire the series for pushing the boundaries of fiction as we knew it, touching the video game receptors in kids' minds as they read books, and teaching us that free will was an arbitrary, impossible notion. Hooray!

The End
(Flip back a couple of decisions and leave that ancient skull alone.)

Eh, I'll get another fifteen minutes of fame in a couple of months. . .

2009-06-22T00:40:00.005-06:00

I posted a semi-sly bit of editorial imaging onto Reddit about five hours ago, and came back after some Father's Day stuff to find it the top link on Reddit and on the front page of Digg, submitted by another user. It took me about a day to think of asking Alan Schaaf, the creator of Imgur, to include a watermark with my blog address in the image. He was familiar with it and glad to help.

EDIT: It was, in fact, the #1 link on both Reddit and Digg for the day.

Direct link: http://imgur.com/gQouk.jpg

Or click the image to view in fullscreen below:

Funny how Photoshopped borders and twenty minutes can get this kind of response.

Oh, and the attentive among you may notice that I've edited the image here. Frankly that particular word, however hilarious, isn't in my normal vernacular. Imgur doesn't allow you to edit submitted images so I'm stuck with it. (Ignore my explanation here if you don't care in the slightest.)

More Jibjabbery (He's Barack Obama)

2009-06-21T17:39:00.002-06:00

JibJab can be hit or miss, but it's hard to argue that the production values on their political shorts have ever been less than stellar. The Spiridellis brothers have a grasp of Flash animation that's practically second to none, and their videos have gotten increasingly more epic, at least the ones that mattered.

The timing on this video seems odd, coming as it does a few months after the election, but I prefer to see it as a slightly sarcastic, still respectful take on our president. His sense of humor being what it is, I think he'd get a kick out of this.

Artist/Jailer Quandary

2009-06-18T11:43:00.002-06:00

Though I believe that opening up your work to a wider audience always results in higher profits, I'd like to pose the following decision for artists, struggling or otherwise:

If, by releasing your work with a copyright license that allowed copying, sharing and the adaptation of your work into other mediums, your profit levels remained the same but some form of your work reached twice as many people, would you make that choice?

For the purpose of this exercise, we'll assume that the choice is in your hands rather than the hands of a label or syndicate which controls distribution rights. Even in our modern artist-side, independent climate such groups have a role, though they control much of the debate regarding intellectual property and tend to neglect both artist and consumer rights. So we'll ignore them for now.

I guess the question is: Are you an artist or a jailer? The question isn't even "artist or businessman," as independent artists are rapidly proving that it's possible to make a profit without controlling access to your work. The model is changing and many of us are changing with it.

Drag Me To Hell, Please (for about an hour and a half)

2009-06-15T17:32:00.005-06:00

I've often thought that films should be able to get away with parenthetical afterthoughts much like our popular songs do. For example, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" by The Rolling Stones. How about "(We're Going) Up?" Or "Land of the Lost (Plot)?" At any rate, if "Drag Me To Hell" were to follow this pattern it wouldn't need much more than a simple "(Don't)" before the title. Certainly the phrase doesn't appear anywhere in the movie, the event described not being particularly desirable.

So I'm forced to conclude that the title must refer to a desire by the film's audience for a little hellraising. And in this respect "Drag Me To Hell" does not disappoint. It's more or less pure horror in a schlocky, outrageous sort of way - the type you might see in an old "Tales From the Crypt" comic or a Stephen King short story. The film isn't a comedy in the sense that some other reviews may lead you to believe - the humor comes mainly from how audacious the film is, how thrillingly tasteless and outrageous it manages to be without treading into sadistic terroritory.

The film is appropriately tense, essentially one scare moment after another, each topping the last in grotesque, often groan-inducing fun. There isn't a moment in this movie that's meant to be taken seriously, which is probably a good thing - the film's peripheral characters are about as goofy and one-dimensional as the ones we've seen in Spider-Man. Unlike the Spider-Man flicks, however, this is actually an asset to the film, because the simple archetypes (the assertive jerk co-worker, harsh old-worlder Gypsy woman, or knowledgeable Indian fortuneteller) fit the B-movie "Drag Me To Hell" labors to be. Sure, elements of characterization are there: the main character's slide into madness and desperation, a spiritual medium's desire to prove herself against the demons that defeated her years before, and a proud old woman who becomes demonic, spiteful and vicious when shamed. But these character-driven moments are usually (successfully) played for comedy and camp, chills, or all three.

I say "chills," but this doesn't seem appropriate. Because most of the running gags (an old woman and later a corpse tearing out chunks of our heroine's hair, or various questionable substances of every variety going out of their way to drench her) are more likely to elicit squirm-inducing laughs than the type of unsettling psychological moments that linger after a movie's credits. Even the abrupt "twist" ending is meant to be seen from a mile away, making it funny rather than unsettling, much like the end of a "Seinfeld" episode. The audience I was with kept laughing to and through the credits.

My advice: If you're any fan of old-fashioned horror without any dismemberment but chock-full of stuff that's arguably worse, go see "(Don't) Drag Me To Hell" with some like-minded friends. This is one for the theater. Oh, and "Sam Raimi's Return To Horror" might be a good name for a rock band or album (there go the last vestiges of my Dave Barry fixation).

Clumpy gives this movie: Three turkeys and half a douchebag

Cracking My Knuckles in Public

In honor of Civil Rights Day

Sorry, Minitrue doesn't work when you have the internet...

List Shock

Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010

Legacy

"Without racism, soldiers would realize that they have more in common with the Iraqi people, than they do with the billionaries who sent us to war."

Drivers who cannot handle snow

A note on the ads

Avatar Impressions

On Bureaucracy (Exciting title, I know)

Bachmann Bailouts

Puppets really do improve everything

Epic 70-minute video explains why The Phantom Menace was flawed

Incredible Calvin and Hobbes wallpaper

Chomsky on understanding the Right

Thoughts on Fantastic Mr. Fox

The Tetris God

A thought on "playing God"

Beatles 3000

The Authoritarian Mindset

Adopted man searches for birth father, who turnes out to be CHARLES MANSON

Important things need to be rhymed for children to remember

Two presidents' accomplishments

One Announcement

The hawk fallacy - how "protecting" America could lead to its downfall

My feelings on the modern equivocation of socialism and communism...

Veep on the Brink

On Motives and Masking

Stewart on Beck

Mstoc site announcement - music reviews, bacon, free happiness for life and more!

Stewart on Fox News Bias and Bloviation

So I don't have to be self-righteous ALL the time...

EA Rickrolls Yahtzee Croshaw

Torture, hypocrisy and self-denial

What happens if net neutrality fails?

R.I.P. Hulu

Intellectual Property destroyed as shop worker allowed to sing in store without performance license, artists suffer

Tidbits and Pictures

Senior Citizens comment on MGMT to hilarious effect

Morons With Signs

More evidence that Glenn Beck's show is an elaborate, brainy farce

Dealing With Stuff #2

Dealing With Stuff #1

Bring your neighborhood into unnerving context...

Some Pretentious Thoughts on Hip-Hop

Google Games

1:14 of genius

Night Music

One Man Band

Telling information about "indefinite detention"

Al Franken reads the Fourth Amendment to Assistant Attorney General

Locked Door

Patriot Act Abuses: Then and now (and tomorrow, and. . .)

A Proposal

Yellow journalism and FNC

Scripted events are killing gaming

Scott Adams on the healthcare debate

Apple Lied, People Died (Well, maybe not)

"The Metalocalypse Has Begun. . ."

The Top Ten Worst Excuses For Journalism Ever

Why we have some of the problems that we do

Give-and-take on health care reform

Msueum of Animal Perspectives provides just that

The Doomsday Horse

Highlights from the Big Book o' Pretentiousness

Chumbawamba covers The Beatles' "Her Majesty"

Apple explains why AT&T had nothing to do with (everything to do with) Apple's rejection (non-rejection) of Google Voice for the iPhone

Indefensible - Lowlights from the Inspector General Report

Stewart schools McCaughey on the health care bill (Resulting in her resignation)

We don't support the private option, just high rates and bad care

"I want everybody to remember WHY THEY NEED US!"

Dahyumn

Thoughts on movies from an erstwhile movie snob

Day [X] of the Healthcare Smokescreen

Copying your own DVDs is a personal right, but also illegal. Wait - what?

Today's dose of irony. . .

Is it a crime to be poor?

Roger Ebert Reviews "G.I. Joe"

Thesis and Evidence