On Bureaucracy (Exciting title, I know)

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.

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

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.

Chomsky on understanding the Right

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.

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Thoughts on Fantastic Mr. Fox

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.

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

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.

Stewart on Fox News Bias and Bloviation

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.

Some Pretentious Thoughts on Hip-Hop

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.

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

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.

Scripted events are killing gaming

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

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.

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

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)

Choose Your Own Adventure

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. . .

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.)

Clumpy Sort of Reviews: "Star Trek"

The new Star Trek film should have been pretty terrible. Certainly the film's trailer didn't win me over a few months ago by featuring a rebellious preteen Kirk driving a car over a cliff and getting arrested by some kind of floating stormtrooper space cop. I heckled the trailer with my roommates and prepared for a noisy, incoherent film with little respect for the source material (particularly that aspect of the source material most important to me - the characterization and entertaining interplay between the franchise's leads).

But Star Trek does not suck. In fact, it's the best, and certainly one of the most compelling new films that I've seen all year. (It's also the first new film that I've seen this year, but who's counting?) Director J. J. Abrams' last film, Cloverfield, was a visually snazzy, jittery flick with little resonance, but Star Trek's appeal lingers long after you leave the theater. I won't say that the movie is necessarily thought-provoking, per se (not that the others were), but it achieves the impossible: Star Trek remains true to the spirit of the original films while updating the style and narrative for new audiences.

One of the things that I found most impressive about the film is the way that it takes elements of Star Trek that we're more than tired of and makes them appealing again. For example, remember the hundredth time that you heard somebody say that shields were at 35%, sparks shot around the cabin and an officer went flying across the bridge? Get ready for that to be exciting again. The whole film swaggers forward with so much sleek celluloid energy and drive that you won't even be reaching for the light button on your watch or making sarcastic comments about the cinematography (there'd be nothing to say - it's uniformly compelling).

And man, is the casting good. Say what you will about the charisma of the original Star Trek cast (speaking more particularly of the later few of the original films), but they nearly always looked like exactly what they were: aging, campy character actors filling well-known roles. In contrast, the new actors take the best quirks and mannerisms of the original cast and ground them into more realistic roles. Who would have thought that Simon Pegg would be the spiritual successor to James Doohan/Scotty, or that Karl Urban could take the cranky cynicism that DeForest Kelley brought to Dr. McCoy and make him seem like an actual doctor? Uhura's great, Spock is turmoiled and flawed (and the symbolic passing of the torch provided by Leonard Nimoy frankly gives the film a huge share of its dignity) and the film's villain is actually played as something other than a cold, calculating alien captain for once. He's a good villain - powerful and deadly, yet emotionally unstable and prone to rash decisions.

Only Anton Yelchin's portrayal of Pavel Chekhov is close enough to approach parody, but I found the near-direct tribute to Walter Koenig charming (my roommate, who doesn't like IV and VI as much as I do, wanted to kill him for his accent). John Cho's portrayal of Sulu is quite different from George Takei's (and honestly not much varied from some of his previous roles), but strong in different ways. Not a single major character is neglected in the screenplay, yet everything's so organic that the action rarely feels forced. Even the sequence I mentioned earlier - the car-stealing young Kirk one - makes sense in the updated storyline.

Everything's there - the humor, the emotional hooks, the relationships between the characters and some of the best sci-fi action in recent memory. If the film has any weaknesses, it's that having to bring together so many characters so quickly leads to some ridiculous coincidences, at times even making the flick feel like a road trip movie ("Oh, hi, Scotty! Spock, what are you doing in that cave? Climb aboard, both of you!"). Oh, and one sequence with computer-generated monsters is completely clichéd and unnecessary. Notwithstanding those minor gripes (which really don't impact the film much at all), complaining about Star Trek would require a level of nitpickery I'm not sure that I'm capable of. The film makes no pretensions to be anything other than a solid, straightforward adventure flick, and unlike most films in this genre, it actually gets it right.

Not sure that I understood the ending, though.

EDIT (5/22): A few additional insights I've gained after stewing things over for a few days (spoilers will be pretty bad here):

- I really can't overstate how good Karl Urban in particular is as McCoy. The performances in this film are so organic in part because no single character steals the limelight in this film. Even the most minor of characters - Captain Pike, for example - are well-casted and have a great deal of moral authority. And somehow making this film without Leonard Nimoy on hand would have left it feeling slightly empty for me - he is Spock, after all, in my mind - so his inclusion in the movie is pretty special.

- The spaceships are really fun to watch. There's a primal appeal to the surreal feel of watching Nero's Romulan/Borg mash-up ship loom into view or the gleaming bridge of the Enterprise. Klingon ships really only show up during the Kobayashi Maru simulation bit - I'd be interested in seeing what they do with the Klingons in the next film (coming in 2011!).

- The alternate timeline allows them to have a lot of fun with the universe and take chances without succumbing to "prequel" syndrome. In a sense they're able to revisit old characters and settings, but with the understanding that things might not necessarily occur in the same way. I can't help but hope that the ballsy destruction of Vulcan [!!!] isn't the first major change to come. I have faith that this production team can pull off Khan again, for example, in some capacity, and that we can skip the fairly boring terraforming/Marcus family subplots that dragged down some of the earlier Trek flicks in my opinion. Every variation teased in the story (like Pike's alternate but similar fate or the Uhura/Spock dynamic) holds extra interest for people like me with a cursory understanding of the movies.

Much like last year's The Dark Knight, this movie's aura sticks with you for quite a while thereafter and leaves you feeling giddy and excited about the source material again. There's a lot of stuff to think about - masterfully-executed characters, situations and scenes that give the movie far more value than something that merely distracts you for a couple of hours. I can't imagine this movie failing to hold up under multiple showings or failing to please anybody other than orthodox Trekkies/Trekkers who've already made up their mind.

Related posts:
7-11 clerk attacked at bet'lethpoint (with smart-aleck analysis)
See Spock Run (My Webcomic)

Book Review: "Garfield Minus Garfield"

From the outset, Garfield Minus Garfield seems like an odd choice for a book. The year-old webcomic based around the concept of the complete removal of Garfield from Jon Arbuckle's life represents some of the most creative extremes of independent online thought. In fact, the practice dates back to message board collaboration (such as this) started years before Dan Walsh created a site around it and started getting famous.

In fact, I created this one long before Walsh's site debuted, during the "remove Garfield's dialogue" phase of the idea:


The concept of removing Garfield and his dialogue from the strip is, in a way, a sublime criticism of a fairly bland, obvious comic strip. "Garfield" has the makings of a fine comic within it, but all-too-often overdoes the punchline by giving Garfield some vapid one-liner. Removing him altogether improves the humor immeasurably, making it relevant and surreal, and drawing attention to Jon's neurosis and misery:


So one would wonder: what could be the appeal of a book based on a webcomic created by somebody who appropriated a great idea from a bunch of nobodies, a book which is published by the same group which publishes Garfield books and even gives Jim Davis a chance to participate in what should be a condemnation of his own work? Yes, one would wonder that.

But now I have the book, and it is glorious.

Whatever the genesis of the underlying idea, the one behind Garfield Minus Garfield is a great one, and having so many of these comics reproduced in book form is extremely satisfying. It's easy enough to ignore the original Garfield comics printed alongside the minus versions above (smaller and sans color) that they don't become distracting. I would have liked to see two columns of Garfield-free comics instead, as they're funnier without their context, but the book's appeal remains untainted.

And allowing Jim Davis twenty pages near the end to try his own minus comics serves as a wonderful condemnation of his own strip, even better than if he had rejected the idea and tried to have the site shut down. Because he completely misunderstands the point, ignoring the wonderous non sequiturs and darker punchlines the format provides by selecting strips that already have a fully-formed Jon joke. Jim Davis appears fully convinced that removing Garfield merely underscores Jon's loneliness, rather than improving the pacing and subtlety of the comic. Poor guy. But I recommend the book.

Links/Reading:

Garfield Minus Garfield
A full explanation of the concept with links
Dilbert mashups bring in the fun

Fundamentalist nutjob cartoonist Jack Chick explains the error of fictional holiday figures in a gripping tale of murder and spiraling insanity

Most Jack Chick tracts exhibit a slow-burning incivility, a quiet offensiveness and absurd overstatement that makes them unsuitable as a subject of anger. The parsing of small, out-of-context snippets of Biblical verse into the text to emphasize whatever evangelical talking point Jack had in mind at the moment - coupled with text added to the verses whenever the Bible didn't make the same point Jack wanted - absurd consequences for sin ("Charlie smoked marijuana against his parents' wishes and was run over by a car!") and outlandish, subtlety-free writing hardly elevate it above, say, Mary Worth as a subject of religious education or parody.

Nevertheless I've been reading a couple of his online tracts this afternoon with the cynicism I reserve for irony-free douchebaggery, neither offended nor particularly amused. Until on the third strike I ran into his tract "Fairy Tales," which hit comedy gold. For those without the desire to read the story I'll summarize the gripping tale of self-destruction below:


We witness a veritable mural of emotion, a group of protesters - murderous, obese trolls on the left side (including the rather amusing goblin near the edge of the panel mumbling "Kill, Kill!"), bespectacled religious conservatives on the right. Harry's parents insist that this can't be happening!; their son was always a "sweet little boy." The answers are simpler than reasonable people would imagine, and only require a brief trip into Harry's past:


Harry's parents unfortunately fall into the trap of other well-meaning, but ultimately Satanic and hellbound parents - they begin to indoctrinate Harry with the lies of secular society, teaching him about the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny (and, no doubt, about the moon landing and flouridated water). Obviously deeply disturbed, Harry gathers these fictional creatures up until they form the core of his very identity, until one fateful day. Oh, let's watch:


This is when things start to get awesome. Just so you know, the wide-eyed little Edward Scissorhands in the story really does kill a kid in the schoolyard. And this kid's murdering spree isn't over, you'll be happy to know:


Keen observers will notice that this story is a little devoid of warm-hearted religious significance at this point, so this is when Jack ramps up the story; Harry's cellmate learns about and accepts Jesus. Harry, uh, doesn't:


After all of this carefully-constructed buildup Harry's end seems almost a little too abrupt:


Other ironic fans of Jack Chick may enjoy the thrilling twist at the end of "Oops!" or the story where Satan kills a bunch of teenagers with a chainsaw.

Other tales of the kookiest side of religion:

Why Santa Claus is the Devil
The Philippines' [Voluntary] Good Friday Crucifixions
A Jack Chick parody with quotes from the Necronomicon (PDF)

Mastodon's "Crack the Skye" - A plot to write home about

Mastodon's fans already know that the metal group is a little pretentious, in a Dungeons and Dragons sort of way. The band's concept albums have grown increasingly ambitious, though 2004's Moby Dick-themed Leviathan is still my favorite for its mad, raving Captain Ahab (Oh, and the song titles are terrific: "Blood and Thunder", "Iron Tusk" and "Aqua Dementia" all have very growlable names). And it goes without saying that Mastodon's cover art has always been part of the experience:

Awesome, or super awesome?

Leviathan also had the most coherent story; the band's first album, Remission, was about "fire," Blood Mountain was about "earth" and running around from place to place disoriented and confused, and their just-released Crack the Skye (incidentally the "aether"-themed album, proving they've run out of real elements) sees them taking a page from the The Mars Volta school of epic incoherence. In the words of the band's drummer:

"There is a paraplegic and the only way that he can go anywhere is if he astral travels. He goes out of his body, into outer space and a bit like Icarus, he goes too close to the sun, burning off the golden umbilical cord that is attached to his solar plexus. So he is in outer space and he is lost, he gets sucked into a wormhole, he ends up in the spirit realm and he talks to spirits telling them that he is not really dead. So they send him to the Russian cult, they use him in a divination and they find out his problem. They decide they are going to help him. They put his soul inside Rasputin's body. Rasputin goes to usurp the czar and he is murdered. The two souls fly out of Rasputin's body through the crack in the sky and Rasputin is the wise man that is trying to lead the child home to his body because his parents have discovered him by now and think that he is dead. Rasputin needs to get him back into his body before it's too late. But they end up running into the Devil along the way and the Devil tries to steal their souls and bring them down…there are some obstacles along the way."

Crack the Skye is about physics, history and that grand old standby: good versus evil. And, from what I've heard so far, it's also pretty awesome. It doesn't bludgeon you as much as Blood Mountain, and the longer track lengths give time for some really sprawling compositions. It might be their best record so far. [Edit: Scratch that. It's now officially my favorite.]

Sample tracks (just click the "play this track" near the top of the page. Wait until you see the little player bar on the bottom before you click):

The Czar (A little over the first six minutes)
Divinations

A thought on insurance

It's clear that the Western world enjoys the capitalistic financial system and its market economy, though the systemic inequality of pure capitalism often results in problems for people who are hit by sudden crises or emergencies and become financially ruined.

So, in the absence of socialism, we see a market demand for a system to fill some of the functions of socialism without replacing the current system. Thus with insurance people voluntarily buffer their successes and failures; they recognize that if they hit an unanticipated rock bottom they will receive assistance (i.e. receive more than they put into the system), with the understanding that it's far more likely they will put more money into insurance than they will take out.

We won't go into the bureaucracies and corruptions of privatized insurance here, but it's clear that insurance in a capitalist nation serves as a sort of market traded, limited socialism. "Market-traded" because it's something that citizens can choose from (although citizens are required to purchase certain types of insurance and don't always have the option to set up a private savings instead), and "limited" because each insurance corporation has influence over only its customers and various plans are available.

Maggie Simpson: The Overlooked, Crucial Simpson

The next time you watch The Simpsons, pay attention to Maggie. I've been watching the show through sequentially, and the more I watch, the more I appreciate the way that a character I had subconsciously assigned to the periphery has become the center of some truly wonderful gags and some real character.

Maggie crashes the family car into the prison.
The pose on the left is positively Shakespearean.

Maggie's greatest moments are well-documented; she's been the focus of some truly touching episodes, and the instigator of some unexpected gunplay. Frickin' Elizabeth Taylor even voiced her first word, in perhaps the show's strangest guest appearance.

But Maggie's best moments are quieter and briefer - the peripheral throwaway moments that show her demonstrating surprising intelligence with blocks or a baby xylophone (inevitably only to be rebuked or have her project destroyed), or being saved at the last moment from nearly doing something truly dangerous.

Maggie plays Tchaikovsky in "A Streetcar Named Marge."

There's something truly alien about Maggie, from her bugeyed disconnect from the rest of the Simpson family to the continuous sound emitted from the pacifier that she continuously sucks at that impossible angle (a sound effect toned down a few seasons into the show to avoid distracting viewers). Maggie is at once quite savvy and adorably naive; she is easily frightened and prone to falling down, but pulls off some truly epic moments.

Maggie and her baby cohorts plan a prison-themed
pacifier heist later in that same episode.

While some of the show's supporting characters are capable of some pretty immortal one-liners and enduring moments, let's not lose focus and forget the expressive eyes, single-minded wandering and constant source of character that is Maggie Simpson.

Awwwww. . .

"Here comes the gubmint for our guns!"

In a move that anybody with a working brain stem could have predicted, gun "enthusiasts" (note to self: please replace "enthusiasts" with "nuts" in all future posts on this topic) have been rushing out to buy weapons before the Obama shocktroopers come around the mountain to take everything that goes boom, pop and bang.

Though it's easy to bash gun nuts for their reactive hot-button issue ways, the economics behind this are undeniable: by and large, Democrats are seen as the party of gun control, and Obama's position on gun control has been somewhat inconsistent for those who really care about this sort of thing. This, coupled with the fact that Obama clearly has no problem getting the federal government involved in states' rights issues could get some people worried. (Though in all fairness it's clear that Obama at least understands that gun control can't be imposed at the federal level without an amendment, leaving it as a states' rights issue. It will be refreshing to have a president who can give answers on Constitutional issues. Google "Bush + Constitution" for more context.)

Anyway, how many reactionary gun nuts have really thought about the issue in these terms?