Write no evil

Yes it's true, we're moving and more

2008-03-09T22:06:00.000-07:00

As has been announced again and again, WNE is moving. Well, there's more to it than that. A rival blog has bought ours and gobbling it up like the disgusting establishment consumer driven corporate monster it is. Part of the mission of this blog is to stick it to the Man but the Man has stuck it to us. This isn't actually a huge travesty. Lots of media outlets are being taken over or closed down.
Sad it is. Especially when it's Rupert Murdoch doing the grabbing. And while our new owner (me) is not completely a greedy tyrant, he isn't a saint either. There are changes going on. WNE's editor (also me) has been meeting with our new owner at his posh skyscraper offices on the bustling business street of 57th Street in Hyde Park and I've got to say, it's pretty nice. I'll have my own editor's office with a beautiful view of Lake Michigan and the rest of the current senior staff will as well. We also have a lovely gourmet cafeteria and the new owner brings in world-renowned chefs weekly. I honestly fought hard to retain the status quo but with all the new bells and whistles involved in this change, I couldn't resist. Please forgive me.
We're moving to wordpress because WNE is really not the blog it once was. It's bigger, more demanding in the quality of writing, and really it requires more organization and space. We need an area for our musings and crap. We need a little separation and order. All this wordpress can provide and blogger cannot.
I originally started the blog (which had a different name and went through a series of name changes before we were blessed with the Write No Evil title) because...well...I don't exactly remember why but since then I've yearned to own a blog similar to Elm Rock City's. Well that's not going to happen. A dog can't become a cat. WNE needs to be the best it can and so part of this move is so that we continue to strive for excellence in that mode.
Now here's the announcement I've been dreading most. The Write No Evil name won't come with us. The company that bought us, The 57th Street Company will take the title. Here's why:

www.writenoevil.wordpress.com was already taken
I've gotten tired of it. It means nothing. Its tone no longer matches the blog's. As I said, we're a bit more serious now.
Most important, the new name is also the name of a real (like seriously real) business venture we're starting. We're moving into the freelance journalism business. There's going to be more serious journalistic writing and reporting on the blog and we're also offering our services as writers.

So here it is, WNE is evolving into The 57th Street Company! The new name is based on a street where Ben and I grew up. On 57th Street of Hyde Park are numerous quality bookstores and also restaurants but those eateries vary in tastiness. There are also a lot of memories on that street. Some of them are good, some of them are bad but all of them are worth commemorating. So, being the sentimental sap who needs everything to have meaning that I am, the blog's name is changing. The "Company" meaning is intended in both ways, as an actual group of people and a business. It's an entirely new entity.
One other thing about our move. We now have tabs! These tabs are important. Most of our serious writing will happen in the main newsroom of our new offices but the various farts and dumb ideas that each of our senior staff produces goes to a personal tab, not the front page. I must confess though, this is news to everyone, including the staff. I haven't told them yet. I can already feel the many objections but this is a deal breaker for me.
Let's end on a good note! I am also happy to announce we are promoting our very own Little Max to Chief Comic Correspondent. He's going to head our Comic Unit and will do an excellent job. Congratulations. The URL is below. Please forgive us once again for the various kinks that will be going on in the first few weeks as we get used to everything. But rest assured, we're still here and we're only getting better.

Check out the new place!

Sincerely,

Daniel
Write No Evil Editor

Poll Results: Everyone Is A Liar

2008-03-09T21:13:00.001-07:00

I popped into the WNE offices today to pick up my banjo and the yogurt culture that I had left on top of the radiator. On my way out, I peeked into Daniel's office and was surprised to see that his desk had been replaced with some kind of large device shrouded in a thick velvet curtain. I could see Mos Daniel's two-tone shoes underneath and asked what the hell was going on. He called back that he was very busy, something about moving our operations up-town, and would I write the poll results, thank you very much.

Our most recent poll confirms what I have known since birth, which is that 50% of humanity are cowardly liars unable to acknowledge their own failings. So, it's not really "all" of you, but it worked better than anything else.

When we asked you, the readers, what you were happiest about having back now that the TeeVee Writer's Strike was over you answered:

16% (1 vote) were happiest about having Jon Stewart back in their lives
16% (1 vote) were overjoyed at the possibility of watching Jack Bower explode something
16% (1 vote) just wanted to watch Grey's Anatomy, which I assume is an educational program for Med Students
50% (3 votes) said that they didn't care about Television, or the state of anyone's strikebeard because they claimed they read books.

All you people you claimed to read books, you should be ashamed of yourselves. I don't need to know what kind of sick habits you have, but if you have to cover them up by claiming that you read books, then honestly I don't want to know.

Perverts.

Comic Strip "Perry Bible Fellowship" Becomes Semi-Retired

2008-03-05T18:10:00.001-08:00

In my continuing bid to claim the title of "Official WNE Comic Correspondent," I write to you all with sincere sadness at the news that Nicholas Gurewtich is moving his excellent comic strip Perry Bible Fellowship to the back burner. Gurewitch made the announcement fresh on the heels of releasing a book of selected strips, and appearing on Fox News (of all things).

PBF, as it is often abbreviated, is an off-beat comic strip that appears both in print and on the web. An award winning strip, two Ignatz awards among others, it's known for its varying artistic styles and often dark sense of humor.

What a first time reader of PBF will realize is that PBF can be scary, gross, or even down-right disturbing but always funny. Gurewitch has a profound skill for the unexpected, and creating truly uncanny situations that surprise even the most ardent reader. It's the kind of comic that sometimes makes you cringe a little bit -- just a little -- after you finish a strip. Decapitations, cat drowning, death, evangelism, and questionable parenting never felt this good.

Common in Gurewitch's comics is putting the reader in a truly unique environment in every strip. The kind of place where dinosaurs have telepathic discussions with each other, or where an unrequited lover can attempt to prove himself in the worst possible way. It's not just Gurewitch's punchlines, the set-ups of PBF are golden, and shine with a genuine wit and intelligence not often seen in modern humor (let alone comics). For instance, in his strip titled "Preserves," Gurewitch explores a world inhabited by human-like beings who have peanut butter or jelly jars for heads. It works so well that the first panel could stand on it's own, but of course it doesn't and ends brilliantly.

What the artistically minded tend to celebrate most, and what is obvious to even a layman such as myself, is that Gurewitch commands more artistic styles than most comic artists. Equally comfortable with Chinese brush styles, gothic Gorey-eque work, or a heavily detailed style, to name but a few, Gurewitch is a true renaissance artist. These styles aren't just for show, either. Instead they inform and enhance whatever place Gurewitch takes us. Unlike many strips which are often constrained in their styles, PBF explored whole new visual worlds.

PBF's reputation as a horrifically funny and ingenious strip will not be taken anytime soon, and though it will be missed by its readers (this author included) it has offered a funnier, more complex counter to an industry often filled with mediocrity.

Poll results

2008-03-02T16:39:00.000-08:00

First, an apology from the editor about the lack of posts lately. We're here. Most of the staff was on vacation though. Worry not! The r&r is over and we're pontificating again!
Now for the poll results:
So this week we went on the external a little bit and explored what the most important event has been nationally and internationally and it was a tie.

40% of polltakers (2 votes) said that Fidel Castro stepping down was the biggest event of the week.
40% (2 votes again) said that Kosovo declaring its independence was the most important news.
20% (1 vote) said that Barack Obama getting the upperhand in the democratic election was what deserved the most attention.
0% said Hillary Clinton accusing Obama of plagiarism was important, which is good for Obama...I guess...

And here we see that people recognize what's going on in Europe and Cuba has a direct impact on life in the States. I wonder if that's because of the never ending Iraq War?
I'm a little surprised at the Cuba thing. As The New Yorker put it, "And so it should end so ingloriously! No fighting to the last man at the battlements, no martyr's surrender to an assassin's bullet, only a creaking, shuffling exit through the ward's doors, hospital gown flapping."
With many more changes going on elsewhere in the world, I would have thought Cuba was only a faint thought in the back of everyone's minds, written off as a docile pariah. I guess not.

Good news for and at The Washington Times

2008-02-27T11:01:00.000-08:00

As I predicted, the new editor of The Washington Times, John Soloman, is making some good changes. He starts tomorrow but today he's already begun changing the ridiculous style rules at the Times. Now they can acknowledge that there's gay marriage! From The Washington City Paper:

John Solomon took over the Washington Times on Jan. 28.
But he arrived today, via a message from the paper’s copy operation.

The news, in short: No more scare quotes.

Longtime Washington Times readers know well what this is all about: Under the regime of Wesley Pruden, the Times, unwilling to acknowledge anything so radical and immoral as gay marriage, treated the term in its pages as gay “marriage.”

Likewise other terms. In the old Washington Times, there were no illegal immigrants, just “illegal aliens”; no gays, just “homosexuals.”

Now comes the following memo from the Solomon regime, wiping out this legacy in one flick of the wrist:

All:

Here are some recent updates to TWT style.

1) Clinton will be the headline word for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

2) Gay is approved for copy and preferred over homosexual, except in clinical references or references to sexual activity.

3) The quotation marks will come off gay marriage (preferred over homosexual marriage).

4) Moderate is approved, but centrist is still allowed.

5) We will use illegal immigrants, not illegal aliens.

FDR, Lincoln and Bush

2008-02-26T03:04:00.000-08:00

Reading The Prince again for a class, I came upon the famous discussion of cruelty. Machiavelli draws the distinction between cruelty well used and badly used. Cruelty well used is performed "at a stroke," ruthlessly but cleanly. Cruelty badly used is prolonged and gradually undermines a prince's hold on his subjects' loyalty. Machiavelli concludes by saying that a prince who uses cruelty well will find favor with both God and men.

In other words, the ends justify the means. Thoughts of Machiavelli naturally led me to the current administration's flaunting of both the Constitution and international rules in its treatment of prisoners, suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, etc.

Bush hasn't succeeded at attaining his ends; he leaves a disastrous war, bloated government, deficit, and economic recession behind him. But what of other presidents? Did the ends justify the means?

Franklin Roosevelt flagrantly violated the constitution when he gave the order to detain 120,000 Japanese-Americans, most of them citizens. Yet no one would consider his presidency a failure, even though the Internment is now common knowledge.

Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and declared martial law at the start of the American Civil War.

All profoundly illiberal and unconstitutional measures, even though they were mitigated, to a certain extent, by the fact that these presidents, while scrapping civil liberties in this specific case, still upheld the legal and political system in general. Moreover, both presidencies are viewed as successes because Lincoln and FDR saw the nation through two great crises.

I don't think it's enough to say that the two former presidents were justified by the fact that the threat to the country was greater in their cases. This isn't even true. Terrorists hit Manhattan on 2001; the Japanese never made it further than Pearl Harbor and the Aleutians. Which enemy posed a greater existential threat?

So I think Machiavelli may be right. The difference between FDR and Bush is not the degree to which they threw aside civil liberties in times of national crisis; FDR was far more illiberal than Bush has been, anyway. The difference is that FDR shepherded the country through the dark years of war and into an era of prosperity. The same, or similar, could be said of Abraham Lincoln.

In times of war, our democracy congeals around the executive branch. Our judgment of a war president is not based upon his regard for civil liberties. It is all just a question of cruelty well used or badly used.

Poll results

2008-02-22T21:10:00.001-08:00

So this week the WNE poll posed a scenario that actually happened. On Derek Kravitz's blog, he notes that an ATM at the University of Missouri generously gave $20 bills but charged $10 to bank accounts. Word got out quickly and students (mostly) lined up around the block to get some cash. I see two sides to this:

It's really immoral and qualifies as stealing
Look, yes it's wrong but I'm a poor college student here. It's the system's fault for making everything so expensive that I have to override any ethical apprehensions I have.

75% (6 votes) of WNE poll takers voted on #2
25% (2 votes) went the other way and voted on #1, adhering to principals.

I'm actually not surprised by these results. Desperation really does seem to trump principles.

Continuing The Conspiracy Chit-Chat

2008-02-21T11:37:00.001-08:00

Within a week of Febuary 7, five undersea cables that connect the Middle East to the wide, wide world of the internet were severed. It started slow, with a single break being blamed on a ship dropping anchor further from port than normal. People didn't really get nervous until the next four broke in rapid succession. Only one of these could be explained -- it wasn't a break, but a disruption of service caused by a power outtage.

So, that leaves two unexplained breaks and one shifty sounding anchor accident. While the technology blog Gizmodo is inclined to blame Godzilla, rumors were starting boil and tin foil suddenly found itself being shaped into hats all across the internet. But a recent announcement in various news agencies that sabotage has not been ruled out as a possibility, and is actually quite likely (one article with the title "Sea Cable Snappage Was Sabotage: Middle eastern cables destroyed deliberately") has reinvigorated the conspiracy discussion.

It's important to note that no one has drawn any conclusions yet, and the investigation continues.

Could this be the new face of warfare? Cut off a country's access to the internet to prevent news of the attack from getting out? In the past few years, movies shot form cell phones and posted to YouTube helped to cause quite a stir and directed public attention where it might never have been before. (Tasers, anyone?)

But who knows. It's probably just a giant squid pissed at seeing his wife's oviducts on the internet.

[Inquirer, Sydney Morning Herald]

Gail Collins skeptical about big overly dramatic satellite shooting

2008-02-20T21:53:00.000-08:00

In a rare pause from the usual political analysis (especially because there's a great deal of meaningless political gossip going on) insightful columnist Gail Collins ponders the shooting down of a military satellite that's gotten so much attention in the media lately. The column is particularly humorous as Collins reveals that she, like me and others, are manic paranoids.
Back to the subject though. I've been rather amused by the whole topic. It all seemed really ludicrous to me. I mean really? The government has to launch a missile to destroy a piece of its own equipment? With all this sophisticated technology and resources in the U.S. we have to blow up something we made recently and sent into space? Is shooting down a dysfunctional spy satellite really worthy of so much time on CNN and so many graphs in the Times, Washington Post, and LA Times?
Collins reveals why it is: Because something here isn't right. As she says, the military warns that not only is the satellite dangerous because it's the size of a school bus and is speeding to Earth, but also it contains noxious gases that can be life threatening if inhaled in large quantities. The government is worried that the satellite will land in, perhaps, a schoolyard and kids will all stand around it and just breath in the fumes for a while. Nobody else will notice or point or anything. The Fire Department won't come and quarantine the area.
Yeah, right.
Plus the statistical probability of being hit by something like this satellite are slim.
Something, besides the gas, stinks here. The excuse itself is like one from a bad ABC movie; as if viewers were meant to see right through it. That's another mistake for the government. I forsee a scandal ahead. One's been overdue anyway, it's been like...a month! Far too long these days.
Collins goes on to suggest some actual reasons to destroy the satellite:

"Other conspiracy theories include:

— The Pentagon is afraid the supersecret satellite will fall into the hands of our enemies, revealing the sophisticated new technology that conked out shortly after leaving Earth and utterly failed to accomplish its mission. [Because we can't let them have our defective technology.]

— Pentagon is hoping to bolster support for the missile defense system by demonstrating that it has many other side benefits, such as the ability to shoot down rogue satellites full of poisonous gas that could force victims to endure inconvenient waits at the doctor’s office.

— Pentagon wants something to think about besides sectarian religious feuds in the Middle East."

Well whatever it is, Collins now has bragging rights when the real reason comes out. And it will.
I highly recommend reading Collins' column, not only because she's my favorite columnist, but also because I can only think of one other time where something was published by her not on politics since the twentieth century. It's really a celestial event.

This post also published on my personal blog.

J.M. Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year

2008-02-20T19:21:00.000-08:00

J.M. Coetzee's new novel came out in June of last year, was reviewed about two issues ago in the New York Review of Books, and fell into my grubby hands a little after winter break. I've never been a big Coetzee fan, but after reading this book I think I'll withhold judgment until I can dig a little deeper into his corpus. "Diary of a Bad Year" is an intellectually stimulating and moving work of fiction.

The novel follows a senescent writer, known variously as Senor C or Juan, as he compiles a collection of short diatribes on culture, politics, and philosophy for a book called "Strong Opinions". He meets a gorgeous young woman named Anya who lives above him in in his Sydney apartment building and offers her a job as his typist. Her husband Alan, motivated by a mixture of avarice and jealousy, conspires to defraud Senor C of his money.

This is the bare outline of the plot. Yet the novel tells this simple story in an unconventional way. Not content with showing us a few isolated snippets of Senor C's opinions, nor to present only one perspective at a time, Coetzee divides the page into three separate rows of text, each narrating a distinct strand of the story from different viewpoints. At the top are the opinions themselves, written in the old scribe's elegant, formal locution. In the center, the writer narrates his own real-time experiences. And, after a time, a third row appears, narrated from the perspective of Anya.

The novel begins with C's opinion on the state; underneath, in spare strokes, C tells of his first encounter with Anya:

My first glimpse of her was in the laundry room. It was a mid-morning on a quiet spring day and I was sitting, watching the washing go around, when this quite startling young woman walked in. Startling because the last thing I was expecting was such an apparition; also because the tomato-red shift she wore was so startling in its brevity.

Next page, the discourse on the state continues. Underneath:

The spectacle of me may have given her a start too: a crumpled old fellow in a corner who at first glance might have been a tramp off the street.

So far, so "Grumpy Old Men 3". The sense of creepy old man lust only intensifies when C describes Anya's ass as "so near to perfect as to be angelic." What are we to make of C's claim that Anya's beauty elicits in him a "metaphysical" or "post-physical" ache? Is this just an academic gloss on a pretty mundane sexual urge?

Coetzee delights in dashing our expectations. Instead of having Anya be unaware of Senor C's lasciviousness, she actually goads him on. Instead of giving us Anya only through C's idealizing eyes, she is given her own autonomous voice and reveals herself to be an intelligent, sensitive, and sympathetic character.

Senor C's (this is the name Anya gives him, mistaking his South African for South American origins) strong opinions range from insightful to glib, but the arguments themselves, at least for most of the book, are not of prime importance. What's being explored here is the connection between the mind and the body, the private and the public. C's opinions reveal a vibrant intellect; his life is shabby and his body decrepit. What happens between the two selves?

Conventions of discourse require that the writer's existential situation, which like everyone else's is a perilous one, and at every moment too, be bracketed off from what he writes. But why should we always bow to convention?

Anya's boyfriend turns out to be of some interest, as well. He opines on many of Senor C's arguments, roundly criticizing them and revealing himself to be a philosophical materialist and political realist; thus a counterweight to C's philosophical idealism and political liberalism. When Anya takes him to C's place and he begins to criticize C on having a naive conception of human nature and having only accomplished anything in the realm of the fanciful, we expect an epic battle between the two philosophical viewpoints. Yet again, Coetzee doesn't deliver on the expected; Senor C says not a word in response.

Ultimately, accepting the uncertainess of his "strong opinions" in the face of his "existential situation" is C's greatest challenge. Here the warmth of human contact serves where the intellect falls down, and Anya becomes his soft, soothing escort to the other world. "Diary of a Bad Year" may not be perfect. It wasn't totally necessary to show every one of C's strong opinions and thus break up the narrative to such a degree. Still, it's a touching and intriguing novel, full of dark humor and insight.

Jason In The Funny Pages

2008-02-20T12:47:00.000-08:00

This past Sunday saw a welcome addition to the New York Times Funny Pages from the amazing Norwegian cartoonist "Jason."

It's called Low Moon, and I don't know why you're not reading it right now.

Much of Jason's work relies on timing rather than dialog to tell his stories. It's not unusual for whole pages to pass without a word spoken between any of Jason's anthropomorphic characters. Jason's strong lines, and fiercely regular panel work underline an overall feeling of disconnection and silence between his characters. In our modern world, filled with denizens increasingly detached from those around them it sometimes seems a little too real to be comfortable. For many mainstream comic readers, this might feel slow and draggy -- verging on the boring.

But Jason is making a new kind of comic. A wittier and more subdued experience instead of the bombastic explosions of extravagance which has long been the staple of the medium. Instead, Jason's comics carry a quiet weight, and can feel cripplingly lonely at times, and incredibly funny the next.

More off beat artists and writers like Jason have come into the comic market in recent years, and have started to make a mark on the industry. A lot of attention is being given to these so-called "indie" or "indie-style" comics, and it may just revolutionize the industry.

Guns Don't Kill People, CounterStrike Kills People

2008-02-19T21:19:00.001-08:00

The Entertainment Consumer Association has stated the obvious, but it seems to have been necessary.

We’d like to extend our condolences to the families, friends and classmates of those who were affected in the school shooting at Northern Illinois University.

Separately, we are disgusted, but no longer shocked, to find that anti-game activists are again rushing to conclusions about what drove Stephen Kazmierczak, the clearly disturbed 27-year-old who police say was responsible for this tragedy, to commit such an act.

Blaming video games for the behavior of the mentally-challenged is vile on many levels. And, as Generations X and Y mature, it is extremely likely that just about all of us have played at least one video game at some point in our lives.

Drawing a parallel between games and violence without any substantive proof is sensationalism for its own sake. This is a sad event, made worse by the irresponsible actions of attention-seekers and the media that has given them a platform for their reckless venom.

[Game Politics]

I'm not quite sure what I can add to this statement, except to say that while it saddens me that these things apparently need to be said, at least someone did.

I am oft concerned that people are quite willing to blame art and entertainment, and are more than willing to ban them then they are to ban firearms. I would remind them which amendment comes first in the bill of rights.

Wikileaks Taken Offline

2008-02-19T15:10:00.000-08:00

The New York Times just came out with an article on a judicial decision that has sent ripples of consternation through the blogging community this weekend. On Friday, a California court ordered Wikileaks, a website devoted to disclosing sensitive information about governments and corporations, to be taken offline. The injunction to disable the site's domain name was the outcome of a suit by a Cayman Islands Bank implicated in money laundering by documents posted on the site. But, haha, it seems like neither the judge nor the bank understand that shutting down the domain name doesn't keep people from seeing mirror sites and the like.

Stanley Fish on Identity Politics

2008-02-18T17:59:00.000-08:00

Distinguished academic Stanley Fish came out last night with another thought-provoking post on his New York Times blog, Think Again, about the use and abuse of identity politics. As both the Clinton and Obama camps sling mud at each other for playing the gender and race cards, the topic seems particularly relevant to the current state of political discourse.

Fish, typically, uses some slippery logic to make his argument that voting according to the race, religion or gender of the candidate is not very much different from voting for a candidate based on a particular interest such as the candidate's stance on abortion. This "interest" conception of identity politics is, to quote Fish, "based on the assumption (itself resting on history and observation) that because of his or her race or ethnicity or gender a candidate might pursue an agenda that would advance the interests a voter is committed to." Well, okay, but why assume this if it's not the stated policy of the candidate? As almost everyone knows, there are stronger forces at work shaping a candidate's policy than his ethnicity, race or creed. And what are these special identity-dependent interests? He gives the example of American Jews supporting a candidate who wants to maintain strong ties with Israel. Of course, this has nothing to do with the ethnicity of the candidate and in fact most Republicans and Democrats support Israel to varying degrees without being Jewish. Jewish votes for a pro-Israel candidate are policy votes for what amounts to a special interest group; this isn't identity politics as Fish defines it or as it is commonly understood. Finally, is it acceptable that people vote solely on issues that affect their group? What about the common interest?

But that's just my opinion.

Raison d'etre

2008-02-17T20:00:00.000-08:00

It's been a stressful weekend for me and I suppose WNE. We've articulated my role as the editor and are deciding where to go next. As I was telling Max, and Ben was telling me, WNE is going in a new direction. This realization, when I saw it, made me panic at first. And then wonder as to what we should do with the blog. In the last month there have been more entries by WNE staff than I've seen on any blog in a single month (although the Goings On About Town blog may contradict that statement) and I at least am finally starting to feel tired. Thankfully, I have overly eager colleagues to write in my stead. But I'm not vacationing. We concluded this weekend that my job is to tinker with the site and be aware of what's being posted (and potentially take something down if I disagree with it passionately). So while I rejuvenate I will still be reading the blog and commenting and all that jazz. I will continue to post also -although at the moment my inspiration well is bone dry.
Another frightening realization I had this weekend is that I long for a solo blog where I don't have to polish stuff as we do here before it's posted. I want a blog where I can just throw something up and be done with it. So look out in the coming days for my personal blog . WNE has served me that way in the past but now it's shifting to more an online magazine project which we here are embracing. In the coming days we're going to be experimenting with it a bit and probably move it to a different site, thanks to some cleverness on Max's part. So look out.

The State of Nature On Stage

2008-02-17T17:28:00.001-08:00

Last night was opening night for the new improvisational University Theater production, "State of Nature." It was one of the most memorable opening nights on record. Rarely in theater does a show have such an immediate and profound affect on its audience.

"State of Nature" is an ensemble piece developed over the past two months by five seniors, three juniors, two sophomores and three freshmen. The cast's preparation didn't put as much emphasis on acting as one might expect. In January they read Hobbes' "Leviathan" all the way through in one sitting and went home. This was the sum total of their group rehearsing. To prepare mentally each actor deprived him or herself of all food save some watery gruel specially provided by our dining hall. They also pledged to deprive themselves of all but two hours of sleep a night, but this didn't deviate significantly from their sleeping habits before rehearsals began.

Last night, forty-give minutes before the show started, UT crew placed various items of food on the stage, as well as thin blankets, some animal hides and canteens of water. The theater was cooled to about forty-five degrees. Five minutes before showtime, I caught a glimpse of a uniformed policeman leading a blindfolded troop of naked actors onto the stage from the side entrance. The program assured us, however, that for the sake of realism the police had been told to stand down no matter what transpired on stage.

As the curtain went up, the audience was hushed and still with anticipation. There on the stage were the naked actors, standing as if in a daze. "Must be the diet and sleep regimen," I thought. For a minute they just stood there, looking around and shivering. Then senior Joel Fisherbak made the first move. Freshman Tanya Gelding was standing over a glistening ham, as if to instinctively guard it from the others; I could see Joel's eyes flash as he lunged for it, elbowing Tanya in the solar plexus and kicking her in the teeth when she hit the ground. Bits of dental matter flew everywhere. The audience clapped. "What realism!" I heard someone say. "It's just like in the 'Leviathan'!" The other actors quickly claimed their bits of property, but, in true Hobbesian form, no one kept it for very long. The state of war was on. The stench of blood filled the room.

Surprisingly, it was another senior, Emily Smatterson, who was the first to die. Joel had claimed her by knocking her out with a joint of mutton and dragging her off to upstage right. Unfortunately this made him momentarily forget his water canteen, which was snatched up by sophomore Amadeus Walker. Joel left Emily to fight him off, and freshman John Cho used the opportunity to quietly ravish her. In fact, John was the cause of all but one of the many on-stage rapes last night. I asked afterwards what kind of a guy John was, and I learned from his friends that he was a physics major who was "quiet," "polite," and "unobtrusive." Given his performance, John clearly had amazing potential, if he hadn't been brained by Joel in the second act. Joel, apparently in a rage, killed Emily just after discovering her with John, who ran away laughing.

Then something unexpected happened. Junior Ben Garadin, it seems, was the first to remember the audience. Walking slowly over to the edge of the stage and peering into the gallery, Ben Garadin appeared thoughtful for a moment. People in the front row, who had brought other tasty morsels (the food on the stage was almost completely devoured), shook them in his face. He stepped back a few paces and then sprinted off the stage and into the first rows, tearing at everyone he could find with his fingernails and stealing all he could get. Audience members seemed somewhat concerned, but their fears were allayed when a UT crew-member came on stage in riot gear and announced through a mega phone that this was all part of the show. A few minutes later, Ben appeared back on the stage, wearing a woman's fur coat stained with blood and carrying three chairs, with which he began to construct a primitive fortification upstage left. Other actors, following his lead, began to systematically attack the audience, bringing back on stage with them women, clothes, and food. Joel brought back three rings and a lovely necklace, which he wore for the rest of the production. He also apparently painted his face using a woman's lipstick.

As the uninjured audience members left the theater for intermission (the actors were put into cages), the general consensus was that Joel would establish some sort of stable dominance over the others and thereby create a kind of hierarchical tribal organization. As for the robberies, rapes, and bleeding wounds, no one seemed too upset about them. When I asked a man if he was angry that his wife had been carried on stage by Ben Garadin and then accidentally dropped, causing instant paralysis, he replied, "Well, it's the state of nature, isn't it? It was Ben [Garadin's] right of nature to do that. Actually, I've never been so invigorated in my life, and I've seen a lot of theater."

Hopes that Joel would establish dominance were dashed, however, when midway through the second act, exhausted by the constant fighting required to keep his possessions, he fell asleep and was killed. Tanya Gelding and freshman Bridget Blunker, fashioning crude knives out of sharpened stiletto heels, gouged Joel's eyes out and then strangled him with a strip of torn curtain. Audience members rose to their feet in spontaneous ovation. Tanya and Bridget bowed, defecated on Joel's corpse (a surprisingly common occurrence), took his possessions and walked offstage holding hands. They had formed, at least for now, a kind of defensive alliance.

Only a few actors remained. But at the very end of the show, they appeared to realize the futility of their situation and gingerly approached each other. They left their possessions behind, unguarded. After talking briefly, they shook hands, and a number of armed UT techies came on stage. Everything appeared to be sorting out as the coercive power of the sovereign took its effect, but apparently sophomore Sui Chin hadn't heard about the contract. Appearing from a trap door with a brick, he knocked Ben Garadin unconscious and stole his food. The stage was thrown into pandemonium as UT crew shot into the air, breaking all the stage lights. The theater was plunged into darkness. The audience went berserk.

Bizzaro World Found

2008-02-17T08:32:00.001-08:00

The New York Times is reporting on the discovery of "a miniature version of our own solar system 5,000 light years across the galaxy." WNE Labs astronomers have confirmed this report, but have made a shocking discovery. It appears that this lilliputian variant of our celestial neighborhood is located right smack in the "Bizarro Quadrant," according to lead WNE Labs Scientist Franklin R. Zarathustra.

Though we currently have no means of contacting anyone on "Bizarro Earth," top Bizzarologists have speculated as to what life on their humble maroon planet would be like. For instance, on Bizarro Earth nearly all the cars are small, fuel-efficient, well-designed, affordable, and all made domestically in Bizarro America. A Bizarro-Chevy would typically last a family of 4 (Bizarro families tend to be small in order to stay within the means of the family and to keep the population at a reasonable number) 135 years, usually becoming an heirloom.

Bizarro America is believed to be a mid-sized country which prides itself on a history of vicious authoritarianism. Blurry Hubble images suggest the existence of a large statue of a man dressed in a suit, with eyes of fire, standing off the coast of Bizarro Manhattan. Radio spectrometry on the statue suggests the existence of an inscription which reads, "Stay the hell away from us, you dirty freaks. I'll hit you with my big stick. And let that be a lesson to the rest of you!" Ironically, Bizarro America has a small, effective, democratic government which has delivered a balanced budget for the past 298 years. Most of it's tax money is spent on schools, as well as artistic and scientific endeavors. Bizarro NASA, for instance, is believed to have a space program 235x cooler than our own, and for half the money.

Some terrestrial analysts worry that Bizarro Earth could lay conquest to our home planet, but top brass in the pentagon disagree. Recently declassified reports indicate that the ubiquitous weapon of Bizarro world is the hug, and that wars usually fought in the form of strenuous negotiation or make-out sessions. Images from the Bizarro Middle East show hundreds of violent rioters being pacified by police forces with milk and cookies.

If anything, it would appear that the denizens of Bizarro world have much to fear from us. Highly opinionated, but very civil, the entire planet has excellent taste in art and entertainment. Because of these discrimination standards, it appears that our own entertainment industry is lethal to most Bizarro People. Recently, a misfired transmission from a television satalite accidentally beamed 4000 hours of TV programs directly at the planet. Advanced telemetry hints that this may have killed millions of Bizarros, whose heads exploded when "Friends" and "CSI" interrupted regularly scheduled Bizarro programs.

Scientists fear that our reality television may soon be reaching the planet, as well as our commercial radio, 24-Hour News stations and the FOX network. Widespread hysteria and mass suicide is expected to follow in its wake.

Are Comedies Unsatisfying By Nature?

2008-02-16T22:53:00.001-08:00

I don't know how many times I've walked out of the theater after watching the latest comedy, whether it be glittery Will Ferrell flagship or intimate indie cockel-warmer, and thought, "That was bullshit!"

I don't mean by this that the movie wasn't funny. Nor even that it wasn't satisfying, in a way. Nor that it has no relation to reality, because what kind of preposterous grumbler would I be if I required all movies (or plays) to wear reality's grim clothes? What I mean is that no matter how good the movie is, the ending will always be unsatisfying. In fact, in most cases it will border on illogical. And the question becomes for me: Do comedies, in seeking a clean resolution, always have to compromise whatever has come before in terms of character development and plot?

Not that what we would consider "tragedies," which in a classical sense there are very few of at the multiplex or at theaters today, always meet strict criteria of logic in their endings. Just that it seems like in comedies there is a systematic problem enfolded in the nature of a comedy that makes it impossible to have a logical, and thus, for me, a satisfying ending. This problem is the requirement of a clean resolution.

I'd have to get into particular instances, of course, to truly explore my theme. I don't have enough space to do that. But consider this: Even Shakespeare's comedies suffer from this problem. Many times it feels as if Shakespeare uses fifth acts to quickly tie up any loose ends remaining in the plot and marry off all the sonzabitches before the curtain closes. This is particularly true of "The Taming of the Shrew" and "Much Ado About Nothing" but it's true of all the comedies, more or less. Meanwhile, modern commentators busily chip away at the notion that Shakespeare wanted to have a clean resolution at all. But that's only because the endings are never satisfying, not necessarily because Shakespeare wanted us to take it another way.

Comedy is suffering, just like tragedy. But comedy is also tragedy averted. So it seems comedy by its very nature wants to have its cake and eat it too: Give me the suffering, but avert the tragedy that usually follows from suffering so I can laugh at it. Do so at any cost: Make the woman who hates her lover fly back into his arms for some reason, etc. Yet as we all know, suffering isn't always mutable; second chances aren't always given.

Then again, most of us probably wouldn't be happy going to the movies to watch unrelieved suffering. So maybe I am just that irrelevant crank again, raving about the reality principle. But it seems interesting to point out that comedies are delicate houses of cards; let one bit of suffering go unrewarded, one bit of love go unrequited, and the whole thing will collapse. We'll all go home with a bitter taste in our mouths. Some playwrights, screenwriters and directors deliberately let this happen, but don't tell me you'd rather watch their work than the traditional, pure comedies.

Insomniac dignity

2008-02-16T22:50:00.000-08:00

So I go in with some friends to a cafe called Rendez Vous and decide to order cake. I'm attracted to the two chocolate cakes: The Triple Chocolate Cake and the Dark Forest Cake.

me: What's the difference between the Triple Chocolate and Dark Forest?
Server breaks out laughing: Are you serious?
me: What?
Server: They're two totally different cakes.
me: They look similar
Server: No they don't
I point to the labels both of which are in front of the rows of Triple Chocolates
Server: Oh, well, forget it. You win, I lose. You 21, me nothing.

What happened here exactly?

End Of DVD Format War: I Don't Care

2008-02-16T13:41:00.001-08:00

The whole HD-TV craze caught me off guard. I hadn't heard anything about HD-TV since a zinger in the Simpsons about seven years ago. All of a sudden everyone is going out and deciding, "Zounds! I need a TV with more definition!"

And like a flock of seagulls following a garbage scow, the next-gen DVD war began. Would Sony's Blu-Ray take the day? Or would Toshiba's HD-DVD win handily?

Word is that Blu-Ray has come out on top. Seems that Walmart, BestBuy, and all those other soulless, wallet-emptying barn stores were at least part of the deciding factor. That, and apparently Sony paid off some major Hollywood studios.

But who cares? Change is inevitable. This only affects the rabidly rich early adopter crowd that plonked down serious benjamins to ride the wave of the future. Honestly, I find these kind of discussions about which is better, the advantages of HD in general, or if video is really 1080i (or whatever) incredibly vexing.

The only joy I take from this news is that the format "war" is over (how are those other wars going?) is that it won't be generating news anymore. That, and I wrote this while taking a tremendous dump.

[Reuters, Gizmodo, Post-Gazette}

Changes in the newspaper world

2008-02-16T09:14:00.000-08:00

'Transformative' is the optimistic word for the newspaper industry this week. The New York Times finally joined everyone else in having to cut jobs from the newsroom. Not wanting to get muscled out of the spotlight, Tribune Co. announced hundreds of job cuts.
On the brighter side, new editors were finally announced at The Washington Times and The Los Angeles Times. First there's John Soloman, a former Washington Post reporter who was leading the multimedia investigative unit at The Associated Press before The Washington Times picked him up. At the L.A. Times, Russ Stanton, the paper's website editor, got the job. There's obviously a theme to this.
I'm actually optimistic of Soloman in particular. He's got a lot of experience at respectable publications and hopefully will make the Times more competitive against The Washington Post which improves journalism in Washington and in general. It may be really good for all.
Coincidentally, I was reading up on the Talk to The Newsroom's Q&A with Jim Roberts, editor of digital news this week. It's probably not a coincidence that they featured him for readers to ask questions. What I (and likely anyone else) take from these events is that newspaper companies are giving in and admitting that online is the way to go. Sadly, I'm starting to waiver from my print-or-die loyalty and agree with the internet fans. I predict that Jim Roberts may be in the running when the current editor of The New York Times, Bill Keller, steps down. Don't know when that will be though. Here's why:

The New York Times is a highly WASPy organization and Roberts fits the criteria there
Even if newspapers continue to be around in print form, advertising and revenue departments can sleep better at night with an internet expert at the helm
Roberts also has experience in the important sections like political editing posts and the national desk

On the other hand, most New York Times editors have a Pulitzer under the belt (which Roberts does not) so maybe he needs more time in the oven. I have no idea what he's going to be like though, his responses to the Q&A are somewhat vague at times. Roberts can't help that, given the industry.

post Playmate Interview

2008-02-15T22:53:00.000-08:00

I had my interview Dr. Victoria Zdrok. As a reminder, she's the Playmate of the Year and Penthouse Pet who wrote a how-to guide to love. The interview was definitely a balancing act; on one side, I wanted to hear about her years in front of the camera, on the other side, Zdrok wanted to talk about her research methods in writing the book -some sociological approaches were involved. We went dutch and split the difference, in my opinion. A few new ideas about love according to Zdrok:

Girls care less about hair than guys think.
Teeth matter, clean them!
Gait is important. The way one walks makes a difference. This last one was confirmed by a female friend later on in the same day.

But wait for the next issue of The Gargoyle for a full transcript!
The book sounds kind of interesting actually.

Another Unwanted Pregnancy Movie

2008-02-15T18:09:00.000-08:00

I forgot in my post "Abortion in the Movies" to include "Waitress," a movie about a waitress (Keri Russell) impregnated by her repugnant husband somewhere in the deep south. She carries her baby to term, all the while baking brilliant pies and struggling to escape her suffocating marriage. "Waitress" is probably the most mature of the comedies I mentioned in its treatment of the pregnancy itself, with Keri Russell's character alternating between hostility and love for her little burden. What finally enables her to take control of her life is not, as in "Juno," finding true love, but rather finding profound joy in motherhood. Of course, she gets the cute northern gyno in the bargain. Unlike "Knocked Up," I thought the movie did a good job of conveying particular reasons why Keri Russell's character wouldn't have an abortion.

What was more interesting to me about "Waitress" was how heavily it relies on the North's stereotypical understanding of the South, particularly of southern men. What wouldn't seem credible if set anywhere else, such as all males being grubby and misogynistic, northern audiences can accept without reservation if it's in the South. And Keri Russell's character's knight in shining armor is a New England doctor who saves her from the trailer trash that all southern men are. To me, the southern setting was just an excuse to have northern actors drawl extravagantly and act sassier than would seem believable up North. Not that the South isn't sassy, however.

Campus Shootings

2008-02-15T17:11:00.001-08:00

The NIU shooting was the big story today and yesterday. A 27-year-old former student opened fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, killing 5 before taking his own life. But this incident is by no means the only recent shooting reported by the national media. Last week, on Friday the 8th, Latina Williams, 23, gunned down two students at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge during an emergency medical technology class. Yet this event passed under the media radar, save for a brief mention in the major news outlets. Why? I can think of a few reasons. What do you think?

Here's an AP list of recent campus shootings.

Destroy All Wiki Editors

2008-02-15T07:52:00.000-08:00

Ever wanted to have that asshat who flagrantly removed your totally brilliant thoughts from the Iron Man entry on Wikipedia blown off the face of the Earth?

Well, now you can!

Thanks to László Kozma, you can watch in (more or less) real-time as changes are made to the giant brain which is Wikipedia. With enough time and patience you'll snag those pesky eFactcheckers.

LINK

[via if:book]

Abortion in the Movies

2008-02-14T22:04:00.001-08:00

It's really interesting: Within the year, three critically acclaimed movies have arrived in theaters, all of them directly dealing with unwanted pregnancies. These three are "Juno," "Knocked Up," and "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 days," a Romanian film set in Cold War Romania. Of course, the theme of unwanted pregnancy logically leads to the abortion question, and all three films have something to say about this, too.

"Knocked Up," the summer comedy smash, is probably the most squeamish in its treatment of abortion. In a movie about unwanted pregnancy it's strange that abortion receives mention only a few times and mostly in a disguised form (Shmashmortion). For Katherine Heigl's character, abortion is simply not an option, even when her mother (a representative, perhaps, of the old guard women's lib type) discreetly suggests it. Some will say, "If there were an abortion, there would be no movie." Yes, that's true, but a young career gal accidentally impregnated during a night of carousing needs to have a solid reason for not wanting one. By "solid reason" I mean no more than a strong desire to have children, religious or moral scruple, etc., none of which appear in the movie. My objection, in short, is not that Heigl's character ultimately doesn't get an abortion; it is that she never even considers getting one, and we are left with no answers as to why she wouldn't. This constitutes a weakness in the film in the sense that it shows her character lacks motivation for a decision crucial to the plot. But there's something more: Since no motives particular to her character are given for her not getting an abortion, we can only conclude that for women of her age and class abortion is simply indefensible, or at least not a possibility, in the movie's opinion.

"Juno" addresses abortion more directly. Juno actually goes to an abortion clinic immediately after discovering she is pregnant. There she encounters two obstacles: A classmate picketing outside and a rather nonchalant receptionist within. The first makes her pause, but does not break her determination to go through with the procedure. I believe the viewer is supposed to see that the second obstacle finally dissuades her from it. The choice of making the staff of the clinic callously off-the-cuff was an interesting one. And her picketing friend doesn't fail to move her: Juno repeats throughout the movie what she told her, that the baby already has fingernails. Some people I know also questioned whether it was credible that Juno could feel no strong attachment to her baby; she seems to have no problem handing it over to Jennifer Garner's character. This, with the gooey love story involving Bleeker and Juno on top, makes for a somewhat disingenuous view of teen pregnancy, I would say. In the end, Juno grows emotionally, gets the guy, we're all happy.

"4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days" presents by far the bleakest picture of unwanted pregnancy; it is many light years removed from either "Juno" or "Knocked Up." Of course, the movie begins with a different premise than the first two. In "Juno" and "Knocked Up," the kind of lifestyle change pregnancy implies is a possibility for the two women. Their lives are sufficiently comfortable: They have a lot of support from family and friends and their communities can support and even nurture such a change. Even though in "Juno" keeping the baby is not considered for long, Juno has no trouble finding others who will care for it. In "4 Months" this kind of community is absent. Our protagonists (the pregnant woman and her friend) can't rely on family support. They are poor students. There are no free clinics and no one wants to take care of a child. Everything, from food to a hotel room, is a struggle to obtain. Every male seems aware of their helplessness and seeks to exploit it. It goes without saying that this is the sort of community in which unwanted pregnancies most frequently occur. As a result of these conditions, the girls are forced to break the law (abortion was illegal in Ceausescu's Romania) and find an abortionist. They find a monstrous man who is aware of their desperation and takes advantage of it to the hilt.

All in all, "4 Months" is a movie willing to explore both sides of the abortion issue. On the one hand, there's everything I've said about the failure of the community. On the other hand, the aborted fetus appears on camera, quite recognizably and terrifyingly human, and the horror of the fetus's back-alley burial isn't whitewashed. But I think we are supposed to ask: Is this the failure of the individuals involved, or of the community? I would say the movie comes down on the latter side.

Three movies, three distinct viewpoints. I'm interested in what "Juno" and "Knocked Up" say about our culture. Both seem to have tapped into the zeitgeist in a certain sense, judging by their extreme popularity and the moutains of commentary they've generated (including this). "4 Months" is just an artistic triumph and a welcome counterweight to the sunniness of the first two, at least for me.

Movie poll results

2008-02-14T20:45:00.001-08:00

According to an WNE poll, either Juno or I Am Legend were the most overrated movies of the season. I agree with the Juno people but disagree with the Legend haters. What's wrong with Will Smith?

The tally for most overrated movie:
Sweeney Todd: 12% one vote
Juno: 37% three votes
I Am Legend: 37% three votes
No Country for Old Men: 12% one vote

Who says chivalry's dead?

2008-02-14T11:22:00.000-08:00

I was with my friend shopping for a Valentine's Day card today when I came across this gem:
How romantic.
Happy Valentines Day!

The Curious Interview

2008-02-13T18:14:00.001-08:00

Today I had a practice interview. I'm applying for a number of internships and the university offers one-on-one interview tutorials. Sounds pretty good.

So I arrived and quickly realized that I was a little underdressed. Staggering in fresh from a lukewarm shower after running a mile for my phys ed class, in my ragged jeans and loose-fitting shirt, I saw before me students robed in their "I am desperately serious" suits. This was a bad sign. The receptionist gave me the old up-down, then chided me on my shambolic appearance. Great. Dressed down, literally, by the receptionist. Good start.

So I sat, twiddling my thumbs for about twenty minutes. Then my interviewer appeared. He was a young, thin, dark haired man, probably in his mid twenties. I apologized for my attire, and he seemed unconcerned by it. Finally, a sympathetic soul.

He asked me if I had had any classes this morning, and I told him about my phys ed class. Then he told me: "Yeah, in my college we had a required swim test. This happened just when they started letting in African-Americans, and one of them couldn't swim. But he didn't tell anyone, jumped into the pool, and drowned."

This was the beginning of my practice interview. I was dumbstruck, unable to think about anything except this incident he had just related to me. It was like a hallway full of closed doors, each door a question I couldn't answer. Behind door A: This is this guy's generic response to someone who tells him "I just had my phys ed class?" Door B: What school is this? Clearly it was a long time ago. Door C: What relationship does his being African American have with his drowning, or his not being able to swim? Was he too ashamed to admit it? Door D: Why didn't anyone help him? Door E: What was he trying to say by telling me this, if it's not (and God forbid it is) part of his normal conversational repertoire? Is it something like: Sink or swim? Does this have anything to do with my interview?

This was not the only off-putting part of the interview. He asked me to describe a negative review of a play I had recently written. I started off by giving him a quick plot summary. The play was about Robert Peary's conquest of the North Pole. But instead of Robert Peary I said Matthew Peary, because Matthew Henson was Robert Peary's African American (connection to my interviewer's story, is it coincidental?) companion in real life and I got the first names confused. My interviewer looked very puzzled when I corrected myself, and said, "I thought you meant Matthew Perry of 'Friends,'" ie, the TV show. Then when he was debriefing me he mentioned that he was confused about Matthew Perry once again. Was he asking himself, "Did Matthew Perry of 'Friends' conquer the North Pole in 1909? I mean, he was great in the show, but that's just impressive." I don't understand why that, in the midst of all my meandering and pontification, was the confusing bit. Oh well.

On the plus side, he gave me some useful advice. Go CAPS!

MAXimizing efficiency

2008-02-12T23:05:00.001-08:00

Write No Evil welcomes our latest WNE staffer: Max a.k.a. Little Max or as we say in Hyde Park: Lil' Max. Because we do say that...in Hyde Park...Hyde Park, Chicago...
Anyway, Max is editor of Michigan's top humor publication, The Gargoyle. He's also full of nerdiness successfully hidden by a charming, rugged exterior, so be prepared!
Max blogs as well. His main personal blog is here.
I'm praying to the writing gods that he'll post some of the insightful jabber that I've heard him spew in our conversations.
Because both Max and I are editors for each other, (I'm part of The Gargoyle and editor of this blog) we can refer to each other in experimental forms. Sadly, while I provide only painfully corny (and most likely recycled) ones for Max, The Gargoyle endowed me with a call-sign I actually like: Mos Def. This is the first pseudonym I've eagerly consented to. Rejected ones include: Stress, Eor, and Dr.Zhivago.
See the resemblance?

All things in common with the rapper/actor end there though. I lack all ability to sing, act, or be cool.

*Apologies to Max for the slightly embarrassing post and including my new nickname -which I'm really excited about- in an entry dedicated to you.

The NeverEnding Analysis

2008-02-12T20:32:00.000-08:00

My friend suggested a capitalist interpretation of Wolfgang Petersen's seminal 1984 fantasy film, "The NeverEnding Story" ( "Die Unendliche Geschichte"). I don't remember exactly how it went but it got me thinking about old-time Disney films: Do they all have a political subtext?

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) Released at the height of the Spanish Civil War, Snow White is an incisive rendering of social struggle masked as a bucolic fairytale. The film is principally concerned with the tension between the seven dwarfs' paradisaical syndicalist commune and the eroding institutions of feudal domination, embodied in the person of the horrid Queen. This tension is dramatized by Snow White's forced transition from one society to another: Snow White becomes an explorer of antipodal worlds. She has been psychologically conditioned for this transition, of course, by her service as a scullery maid. Her ethic of noble work for man is perfectly in accord with the dwarfs' ethos. In the end, the Queen is chased to her death by the dwarfs; however, she is not killed by them, but by a bolt of lightning. This is significant, as it shows Disney's basic alignment with then in vogue world-historical theories. The lightning represents not nature but inevitable progress; the movie seems to be saying that the destruction of feudal institutions is as ineluctable as lightning in a rain storm. Those who object to this interpretation by pointing out that lightning strikes are freak accidents would do well to remember that nature, in Disney films, is never random.

Song of the South (1946). Just embarassing. Even during the film's production, Disney publicist Vern Caldwell wrote to producer Perce Pearce that "The negro situation is a dangerous one. Between the negro haters and the negro lovers there are many chances to run afoul of situations that could run the gamut all the way from the nasty to the controversial." The NAACP diplomatically praised it for its artistic merits. Oh, youthful representatives of white patriarchy, what would old Uncle Remus do without you?

The Three Caballeros (1944) Actually, no shit, commissioned by the US government to be released in Latin America as part of a propaganda campaign to help establish cordial relations with our southern neighbors. So there isn't a "subtext." More of an outright "shill." Simply unfathomable how Disney thought the definitive assortment of Latin American stereotypes (cigar chomping parrot representing Brazil, pistol-packing rooster representing Mexico, Carmen Miranda's sister) could possibly woo Latin American audiences.

Finally, the all encompassing, never-fail interpretation of any Disney movie's message?

"Damn the Jews. Damn them all to hell."

Revenge is sweet

2008-02-12T19:03:00.000-08:00

I've become a double-agent of sorts. I've joined Michigan's humor magazine, The Gargoyle and soon I'll enjoy the fruits of my wisdom: I get to interview a former Playboy Playmate and Pet of the Year (I'm unfamiliar with this second honorific but I'm sure it's prestigious). Earlier this year I was passed up on covering Playboy magazine coming to Ann Arbor in search of fresh meat because, as a heterosexual male, I could be biased.
Well hah! Instead of girls from the University trying to get a little photo time I get a one-on-one with someone who's had a lot of time in front of the camera.
A.
Lot.
And then wrote a book!

Post Script:
I wouldn't mention this for any reason other than the fact that it's insanely bizarre: Recently a girl said she thought -in complete seriousness- that Mahmoud Ahmedinejad was cute. I'd think that any attractive qualities would dissolve when you publicly deny the existence of homosexuals in your country and argue that the Holocaust didn't happen. Racially and ethnically diverse Ann Arbor may be, just don't forget tastes!

Good Will hunting

2008-02-11T23:59:00.000-08:00

A new collection of movies are about to hit the screen. In my opinion there are certain attributes a good movie has. This does not include a compelling trailer. Some of the best movies had mediocre or horrible trailers. The explanation is that a film's essence is hard to capture in two minutes or less. Actors also are an indication of a movie's fineness. Has the star acted in good movies in the past? Are the supporting actors good at what they do? Do either the star or supporting cast act in a range of movies?
Both these rules have exceptions, sometimes. First is Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins which follows my statements to the letter. Two minutes and thirty seconds of this movie is two minutes and thirty seconds too much:

And then there's Hancock, with Will Smith -one of the few mainstream actors I respect. Even though I Am Legend was good but not great, I thought his acting was phenomenal and displayed a range which had, until that movie, gone untapped.

Both trailers may be wrong but I doubt it, especially for Roscoe Jenkins. One question bugs me about this movie though. Why is the honorable James Earl Jones acting along side the rest of the halfwit cast of that movie? Ben suggested that someone is holding his family and loved ones hostage, which is the only plausible explanation I can think of.

Moor is more

2008-02-11T17:38:00.001-08:00

Saw Chicago Shakespeare's Othello a few nights ago. I should have waited to go for the Maroon so I wouldn't have to shell out 70 bucks for a little Bard, but whatever. It was an admirable rendition, quite conservative, with the costumes given a Victorian update but otherwise little tampering with the language or scene cutting. Othello was unquestionably the center of the show, striding hugely across the stage and setting every scene aflame. I wish I had the program so I can properly praise the actor, but he was wonderful. So was the actress who played Desdemona and the actress who gave an incredibly compelling turn as Emilia, Iago's wife.

But then there was Iago. With the most lines, Iago displays his astounding verbal dexterity and, moreover, drives the plot. In many productions he, and not Othello, is the focal point. Yet in this Othello his presence was slight, and his soliloquies dragged. Iago was a bit of a showboat, a swaggerer, charming in a distasteful sort of way; but I could never believe his evil. When he said, a number of times, "I hate the moor," it was in the petulant tones of a spoiled child, not the demonic voice of an unfathomable hatred. Indeed, Iago's motivations are unfathomable. Given the abundance of religious imagery in the text, including endless descriptions of the infernal zone, it is clear that Iago is a devil, a man who approaches evil as others would "sport." Sport is another word that Iago frequently utters, and it conveys something of the pleasure he takes in simply wreaking havoc, regardless of his objective. Jealousy just doesn't explain his actions. And I didn't get this from the production.

On the other side, Emilia's defiance was vividly brought to the fore, and indeed Emilia was one of the most interesting characters. This Othello turned Emilia into a proto-feminist, as one could argue she is in the text. Very good.

I Go A'Googling

2008-02-11T14:33:00.000-08:00

Write No Evil shows up on the second page of query hits for a google search of the keywords, "Write no Evil." I've never been much interested in what else is dredged up from the oozy deeps, what else is vomited up from the infinite belly of the electronic leviathan. But today seems like as good a day as any to list all the sites that show up before ours.

1. Jac Zagoory: Write no Evil Pen Holder
"See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil -- and the fourth monkey is here to warn: write no evil. This witty pen holder offers protection and easy access to your pen on a cluttered desk. Finely crafted of pewter in the USA. (Pen not included.)" It's a 100 dollar pen holder offered by the New York Public Library's gift store so that idiots can spend money in a library. A second, related hit from the same site offers the pen for 65 bucks. Both were designed by Jac Zagoory, a New York City artist.

2. This is the bastard who has our true address, "writenoevil.com" And guess what? "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage." Thanks for wasting my time, putz.

3. Third hit is an article in "The Walrus," a Canadian magazine covering current events with an "international outlook". A lot like the "New Yorker" or "Atlantic Monthly," except for Canadians who don't know their ass from their elbow.

4. Again Jac Zagoory! Except this time his inimitable decorated roller-ball pen, with the phrase "write no evil" embossed all over it, is offered on an online marketplace called "UncommonGoods." By "uncommon" I assume they mean "tacky." Ah, but here's the rub: This pen goes for 60 bucks, not 65 as at the NYPL's site! Ho ho ho! Caveat emptor, indeed!

5. Jac Zagoory, you haunt my nightmares. A stationary company called Crane & Co. offers his pewter penholder. Yet again, the New York Public Library commits highway robbery: at Crane it's 85 bucks, not 100.

6. Zounds! Jac Zagoory! Write No Evil Pewter Pen Holders!

7. Quoth the Raven: "Jac Zagoory."

8. An article from the August 22, 1999 issue of the Sunday Herald by Rennie McOwan, who argues that internal conflicts between British Catholics are the Church's gravest threat in England. Say what?

9. UncommonGoods again.

10. A pen retailer called Passion4Pens.com sells Jac Zagoory's pen for 65 bucks. Jac Zagoory: the name is taking on a mythological quality. Is that a person or a brand name? How can anyone survive childhood with such an appellation?

11. Finally, the site just above ours is a blog called "The Little Professor," with the descriptive subtitle: "Things Victorian and academic." His or her November 18, 2004 post, entitled "Write No Evil," is concerned with "words, phrases, sentences that I desperately wish my students to eliminate from their minds." A long list of taboos follows. Am I by some cosmic joke just behind my 8th grade home room teacher on Google?

What have we learned? One important thing: Jac Zagoory is sweeping the nation with his one-of-a-kind, witty yet elegant novelty pens. A possible business deal between Write No Evil and Jac Zagoory is in consideration. With a creative artist like Jac Zagoory churning out ball point pens to sell to our fans, we are bound to nothing but glory. Jac Zagoory.

Jac Zagoory.

Write No Evil 2.0

2008-02-11T02:09:00.000-08:00

WNE has changed a bit and will continue to. I had been planning on acknowledging it in a post but couldn't figure out quite the right time or what to say until I read an article in The New York Review of Books about blogging. I just finished it in fact.
Sarah Boxer writes about her findings for a new book chronicling blogs -think something like The Best American Blog Writing. She has a lot to say including what works on blogs and what doesn't, and an accurate description of the meaninglessness of it. In particular I sensed a strong disdain for the linking feature of blogs. There are also some constructive nuggets of wisdom here, including the fact that blogging is both tough and unique. I also learned that the movie Juno which is the subject of the current WNE poll, was written by a stripper with a trivial blog. That explains so much about that movie. My vote in the poll went to Juno.
Blogs can be very powerful in breaking news and uncovering scandal, or in some cases, creating them, Boxer notes.
Also, most blogs will not become rockstars. Depressing yes, but also something we at WNE came to terms with pretty much at the moment of the site's conception. The most popular blogs, according to Boxer, are the ones that are crude, vulgar, angry, sexual, partisan, and outrageous in every way imaginable. That's not us though. WNE is meant to be more like The New York Review of Books in that we read, see, think, or do something that's seems interesting and share it. The writing in the Review of Books is inspired by books. The idea is that books are an essential part of life and a source of everything creative and constructive. WNE will of course never be as successful as the Review of Books but that's what we're trying to achieve here: a home for what interests us.
I want to model Write No Evil after three intellectual entities:
The New York Review of Books for its genuine passion in the topics it examines and respect for literature.
The New Yorker because I love The New Yorker, along with, unusually, a large portion of the student body at Michigan.
And finally, a now deceased blog called Elm Rock City.
I feel an explanation is necessary for this last one. I discovered the blog a little less than a year ago while searching for a piece in The New Yorker on a pair of philosophers (the Churchlands). The blog is a mix of the highly intellectual -specifically post-modernism, the humorous -anything funny that happens in the author's -who refers to herself as Elm Rock City or ERC for short- life, the personal, and of course the responsive to aspects of culture that interests her. This last attribute is an ingredient in every college blog in existence so nothing new there. Nobody said ERC wasn't a cliche.
But it is charming and an exception to Boxer's laws of a successful blog. ERC writes about the Virginia Quarterly, and her classes, and pop culture, and psychological post-modernism and literary post-modernism. I could go on. Over the blog's lifespan it gained notoriety around the Yale campus, although not as much as the simply annoying Johnny Quest here. (I'm not jealous, I just would like to think that my classmates are interested in things other than what sorority was ranked the highest this year) As Boxer writes, part of being a blogger, like being a writer, includes a desire for a large audience. The more attention, the better. That would be nice but it's probably not going to happen. I want WNE to please the friends of those who post on it and maybe spark a discussion or two. I also want to write for WNE because it's fun.

Pictured: (top photo) Robert B. Silvers, editor of The New York Review of Books, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. (bottom photo) Elm Rock City.

Extinction is visible for Sun-Times Media

2008-02-10T21:02:00.000-08:00

It's delayed but I just got word that the SouthtownStar canned their two publishers. I cannot articulate my disappointment and increasing resentment for the Sun-Times Media Group right now. Frank, one of the publishers, pictured, (with me, who was rather snockered at the time -it was New Year's eve) had worked at the SouthtownStar for nearly 20 years. He also got me my first professional internship. I have only fond memories of working for him at the then Star in Tinley Park. Frank is also a skilled journalist and hopefully some fine journalism institution has the sharp instinct to hire him. It's a major loss for his former employers. I do take solace in the fact that the business world is much like the biological: The most capable survive. Sun-Times Media doesn't stand a chance now.

A Chicago Lens

2008-02-10T10:43:00.001-08:00

Check out this blog by architecture critic, photographer and former Chicago Deputy Chief of Staff for Planning and Design Lee Bey. It's a beautiful photographic record of architectural Chicago and the city's working-class denizens.

Stormy weather, Febrary 7, 2008

Could a Frenchman be elected in the U.S.?

2008-02-09T22:19:00.000-08:00

I hadn't realized until the other day what a smoking hottie Carla Bruni is. I first heard about her in Adam Gopnik's New Yorker piece but I usually go elsewhere when seeking choice celebrities to drool over so I didn't pay much attention. When Carla Bruni came up recently I was stunned both by Bruni and the sheer pimpage of her new husband, French President Nicolas Sarkozy who flaunts Bruni like a rich old man would his new gold digging trophy wife. Make no mistake though, Sarkozy is a strict follower of separation of heart and state. In the most recent issue of The Economist, a piece about the newlyweds concludes:

"When it comes to affairs of state, it is hard to imagine even Mr Sarkozy letting affairs of the heart triumph over his Gaullist style deference of French business."

He's definitely not lovey-dovey all over the place: Sarkozy has passed a huge tax break which did little to fix the economy, he's also ignoring working class citizens who helped to elect him. Okay well maybe he's paying more attention to his supermodel wife. In the U.S. one might think that a president whose nickname is Bling-Bling and prances around with genuine international eye candy would collect a large amount of praise from his constituents. Not so. The same article in The Economist says:

"To many, "President bling-bling", as Libération has dubbed him, seems altogether too busy looking after himself when he should be looking after them."

And Gopnik's earlier piece isn't much better:

"The French press, by contrast, has seen in the story something so obviously second-rate and vulgar that it must be in some way American. The tone in the upper reaches of the French press has been not “We have a right to know!” but “Do we really have to cover this crap?”"

How Sarkozy would fair in the White House and how Bush would in the Élysée Palace? I must admit, during Sarkozy's run for office, I rooted for his chief rival, Ségolène Royale. I didn't know anything about her other than her gender. I'm ashamed of my political shallowness. Thankfully (...I guess), I'm not alone. According to the textbook for my African American Politics class, African American Politics and the African American Question, the very fact that a black person is running for office

"increases black turnout by 2.3 percent (the presense of a black Republican has no effect on black turnout), while the presence of a black of either party increases white turnout by 2.2 percent."

In the U.S., voters are highly likely to disregard ignorance when it comes to policy as long as appearances are good. I've noticed this first hand from a number of classmates who support Obama: they like him but have no idea what his policies are.
A scary example of this is the success of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. Nagin is largely regarded as one of the key figures in the failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina. Despite this he's won reelection comfortably. African American Politics continues:

"While there are many explanations for his victory, the most basic one appears to be race. In the final analysis, for both blacks and whites racial loyalties appear to have trumped both ideology and competence."

Frightening.
Gail Collins has suggested Hillary Clinton's victory in the New Hampshire primary was because of sympathetic women voters. Could that have possibly been because of Hillary's gender?

Back in France, Sarkozy wants his country to adopt the work-a-ridiculous-amount attitude of the West. While he's looking at us for guidance, perhaps voters over here should look at French politics, at least when it comes to voting.

An Israeli and a Palestinian walk into a...

2008-02-08T21:07:00.000-08:00

An Israeli, a Palestinian plus two come to Ann Arbor. It sounds like a joke but it's actually happening on Wednesday. The Israeli-Palestinian Comedy tour, made up of Yisrael Campbell, Ray Hanania, Aaron Freeman (a veteran of Second City), and Charley Warady, will be performing at the Michigan League. The event is being advertised as one of "Pointing fingers at each other and instead of blaming...laughing. And pointing fingers in indiscriminate directions...and laughing." Despite some shrugs and unenthusiastic sighs from people around me, I think it sounds hilarious and since Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan are actually highly ethnically and racially tense, this could also prove progressive.

Good news and bad at The Washington Post

2008-02-08T12:57:00.000-08:00

The good news: The Washington Post named Katharine Weymouth Publisher and CEO of Washington Post Media She's of the Graham family one of the most highly respected journalism guardian families in the country. The paper is in good hands.
The bad news: In the same article, the Post announced job cuts that include the newsroom.

I for one fantasized that the newspaper woes of our era couldn't reach the prime newspapers in the country. After all, a Michigan Daily alumn told me that while every other newspaper is cutting costs, The New York Times is hiring. I guess that's over, at least for the Post.

Evuuul

2008-02-07T19:47:00.000-08:00

According to an WNE poll, the evilest presidential candidate just dropped out! Voters said Mitt "America is a business" Romney is by far the darkest man out there. But now he's given up, leaving Hillary (who took second place) as the evilest. On the opposite side of the spectrum, poll takers said Obama practically has a halo on him -he got zero percent of the evil vote.
The specifics:

Romney: 63% seven votes
Hillary: 27% three votes
McCain: 9% one vote
Obama: 0% no votes

China's censors have built a new Great Wall, but what it protects is unclear

2008-02-06T23:27:00.000-08:00

You know something's up when the Chinese government, quickly becoming renowned for its trigger-happy use of the censorship gun, is aiming at sites like Flickr and Youtube. Censorship in general is repressive to a country's success, a fact that most communist nations historically don't seem to understand. China clearly still doesn't. The walls barring Chinese from exploring these harmless sites have been collectively named "The Great Firewall" and the latest fad on the Chinese part of the information superhighway is finding ways around the roadblock. Bloggers are blogging about backdoors and secret loopholes to watch that really interesting clip on Youtube.
Okay, I'm being a bit harsh here. The real mystery, besides why China won't even acknowledge that this censorship is taking place, is what threat could Flickr possibly hold? Are people suddenly posting evil capitalist secrets alongside their pics of vacation in New Mexico? Even though more and more Chinese are getting into this internet war of free information, the Chinese government is also worrying about an equally increasing number of sites: online mulitplayer games and eBay. Some of us are curious at this point, not even surprised, just wondering what possible danger there could be?
The one service that Chinese censors mostly refuse to touch are the many ways to get pirated...everything. Which is good because I use tudou every once in a while to keep up with my stories.

Heath Ledger: In case of an emergency, listen carefully: Call an Olsen and only after call 911

2008-02-06T21:57:00.000-08:00

Alright, I'm almost ashamed to even acknowledge a Hollywood style death on WNE but really now, this is just bizarre. According to Associated Press coverage, Heath Ledger's masseuse didn't first call 911 when she found him lying on the floor, clearly overdosed:

"Ledger's masseuse found him unresponsive after she arrived for an appointment at his rented apartment. She called 911 after first repeatedly calling actress Mary Kate Olsen."

Do the Olsens have some kind of secret healing power? What is this?
If anyone finds me drugged up, here's a hint CALL AN AMBULANCE...and then Scarlett Johansson.

There Will Be More Blood

2008-02-05T07:05:00.000-08:00

I've seen Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" twice now, and both times I have to say I was both awed and frustrated by it. On the one hand, the oil-black darkness of its plot and themes is breathtakingly grim; the story's novelty is a virtue in itself. The dramatic peaks are stupendous: I hope the baptism scene will attain iconic status, as it is darkly funny, cathartic and deeply disturbing at the same time. The cinematography excels as Daniel has pointed out, with panoramic views of desolate landscape evoking dread and wonder. Most of all, Daniel Day Lewis's performance as oil prospector Daniel Plainview is of the very first order, more a demonic possession than a thespian feat.

Yet the film fails to say anything really exciting or interesting about its two main motifs, capitalism and religion. I was really anticipating something meaty about the latter especially, and I felt Anderson grasping for it during Eli Sunday's sermon; there was something there about religion as entertainment. But Eli Sunday is a charlatan through and through, and to explore religion would require some time devoted to the town of Little Boston. "Blood" is pretty much single-mindedly focused on Plainview, so that's not in the cards. Capitalism is a better-drawn theme; Anderson manages to convey the excitement and terror of America's driving force. But again, since Plainview looms so large, there is little time to explore the wider implications.

I also thought the film's last act doesn't support its dramatic weight; it's short and abrupt, yet we're supposed to get a lot out of it. There should be more about Plainview after he's struck it rich and settled in his mansion. Plainview's conversation with his son, which leads to their estrangement, could have been anticipated given earlier scenes, but Plainview's bitterness still feels a little disconnected from the rest of what we've seen of his feelings about his son. Plainview's confrontation with Eli Sunday, however, is another high point, something to which the whole film has been building. Which is basically how I feel about the film as a whole: There are a few great peaks, but the buildup is unnecessarily slow and disjointed.

"There Will Be Blood" is not a masterpiece. It is a thin garment drapped over Daniel Day Lewis's sinewy shoulders. But what shoulders! Lewis's performance is a once-in-a-decade event; it may even be one of the best turns in movie history. His dogged, monstrous and tender Plainview transcends the themes of the film; he's in that pantheon of tragic figures that includes Oedipus and King Lear.

So is it worth seeing "There Will Be Blood?" Without a fucking doubt. But it's better to see it as a superlative character study than a compelling allegory.

Chicago, a one horse town when horses are newspapers

2008-02-04T22:57:00.000-08:00

The Chicago Sun-Times has been having some trouble lately (and by lately I mean the last ten years at least) and its parent company, Sun-Times Media Group, which owns the Sun-Times, is now trying to figure out what to do. Should it sell to a new company? Should it close The Chicago Sun-Times?
'It's a tough time for newspapers' is a cliche nowadays but it's true and of the two dominating papers in Chicago, the Sun-Times is a pathetic second. But still some competition is better than no competition.
Actually, Chicago's media problem is kind of a strange occurrence. Despite harsh economic times in the U.S. Chicago has been doing pretty well, growing into a city of international notoriety. You'd think that such a city could support more than one major newspaper.
Michael Miner of the vastly under appreciated Chicago Reader has been following events at the Sun-Times. What one might not get from Miner's blog though is that once upon a time, the Sun-Times was a respectable publication.
But, perhaps like newspapers soon, that's a thing of the past.

Fun fact: Even though the Sun-Times is the flagship of Sun-Times Media Group, it also owns a number of excellent community papers like the SouthtownStar and Naperville Sun.

When You See There Will Be Blood there probably will be some thinking afterwards

2008-02-03T22:58:00.000-08:00

Last Friday I went to see There Will Be Blood with Emily. There's a lot in that movie and Daniel Day Lewis (whose other movies I couldn't name but as someone in the elevator said, his name in the credits sounds important) does an excellent performance. I'm sure reviews will analyze the darkness and complexity of the movie but it's a little too rich in both of those for me to write about currently. Hopefully Ben (JadedHack) will post a proper review. What I will say though is that besides Lewis's mastery of his craft, the movie really does reveal the intricacy of people. Nobody is completely, or even largely, good regardless of the situation. That's true in life of course but few films today really acknowledge that.
The other thing I really liked about the movie was the early twentieth century landscape. There's something really amazing about the flat western lands and new frontier aspect of industrial America It's romantic in a way.

Historical uses

2008-02-03T08:08:00.001-08:00

As I mentioned a while ago on a new deceased blog, I get a lot of questions about what I'll do with my undergrad degree. James McManus wrote a fun piece for The New Yorker's Talk of the Town section recognizing major historical figures who played poker —McManus is a poker player and writer.
Anyway, the piece is great, something a good writer/journalist and history expert could definitely write. So there you go. Perhaps I'll use my History degree to write Talk of the Town pieces about high profile poker games.

Just to restate, there have been plenty of successful people who didn't major in the "useful" undergraduate studies (i.e. something meant to go toward a law, business, or medicine degree):

Malcolm Gladwell majored in History
Noam Chomsky majored in Philosophy and Linguistics
Michael Bloomberg majored in Mechanical engineering -not very useful for running a company or being a politician
Steve Jobs didn't get a undergraduate degree

Perhaps the undergrad degree isn't prophetic of the course life will take...

In isolation

2008-02-02T21:03:00.001-08:00

I've got a thing about zombie movies. I saw both I Am Legend and 28 Weeks Later multiple times. Even I admit it was too many. Sometimes these movies have subtle, insightful messages and themes; other times the themes are boring and obvious. The premise of 28 Weeks Later was that an U.S. led NATO occupational force comes to zombie ravaged Britain to re-civilize the land. But then all hell breaks loose because the army can't keep control.
Subtle.
I Am Legend didn't get nearly as much credit for hidden meaning. Still, after the movie I really sympathized with our hero, Lt. Col/Dr.Robert Neville (Will Smith), a soldier and virologist and the last human in New York City. Neville lives a regimented day. He researches a cure, exercises, visits an abandoned video store to get out of the house, and scavenges. Neville's only sentient companion is his dog, Sam. She's a sweetheart but not much for conversation.
Neville's life isn't perfect of course. He's lonely. He's always alone. His core obsession has been finding a cure to the zombie virus. Neville is clearly frustrated but can't extinguish this frustration no matter what he does. The cure to everything is finding an anti-virus.
But Neville chose to live in diseased New York early on, at the risk of dying. He shut himself off from civilization.
These are all jumbled up themes of Barack Obama's first book Dreams from My Father. It's a funny relation to make: mediocre action-drama to brilliant politician's early autobiography, but that's the connection I made.
Obama writes about the anger he felt as a youth, the frustration and confusion about his mixed heritage. Obama writes:

"Following this maddening logic, the only thing you could choose as your own was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage, until being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness, of your own defeat. And the final irony: Should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger."

And concerning solitude, Obama recalls that much of his hermitage was self imposed:

"I enjoyed such moments—but only in brief. If the talk began to wander or cross the border into familiarity, I would soon find reason to excuse myself. I had grown too comfortable in my solitude, the safest place I knew."

The emotions that Obama describes may have shifted location a bit in I Am Legend but they're similar. For me, both book and movie depicted an important and familiar scenario; a feeling of loneliness, somewhat brought upon by me. And from that solitude, a suppressed anger at being alone, at feeling better alone. Seeing pale bodies all around you and knowing you're different.
In Dreams from My Father, Obama writes about kind white people and racist white people. He also writes about kind black people, and equally mean black people. In I Am Legend, all the zombies are rather ghostly in color. I think I Am Legend unintentionally set a scenario familiar to me and perhaps others: The loneliness and isolation about being different, the desire to interact with others but a preference to being alone because of the exhaustion other people, nice or mean, can make you feel.
Even acknowledging that doesn't get rid of the frustration or isolationism.

First kiss

2008-02-01T14:38:00.000-08:00

Tiger-man relations have had a bad rap lately after the death of the kids in San Francisco. But that doesn't mean we should turn our backs on them, thought German medical student Andreas Janine Bauer. Bauer, with her toddler, was walking by when she saw a baby tiger choking. Then Bauer went to action, saving the tiger with the kiss of life.
"Saved a baby tiger" will look pretty nice on any hospital application Bauer offers.
Does kissing an animal to save its life count as bestiality?

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

2008-01-31T18:48:00.001-08:00

Recently I've been getting into this hysterical British comedy, "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace," a spoof of trashy budget '80s dramas. It's sidesplitting, at least on the first view; although like most straight parodies it has little intrinsic appeal, its humor resting on irony. The laughs quickly fall off after repeated watchings.

The Non Fiction Roundup

2008-01-31T14:32:00.001-08:00

I just finished reading Hugh Brogan's new biography of Alexis de Tocqueville. Well written with sharply drawn characters and lively accounts of the France's political and social upheavals in the first half of the 19th century, it's worth reading for the student of history and the lay reader. A broad familiarity with French history is a plus, though (I wish I knew more about the July Monarchy).

A new book about Reconstruction by journalist and historian Stephen Budiansky, "The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox," was recently reviewed favorably by the Times. Budiansky is a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly and former foreign editor of U.S. News and World Report; he has written on topics ranging from dogs and horses to Elizabethan spies. In his latest work he charts the failure of Reconstruction in the face of Southern resistance and Northern apathy. Budiansky tells the story mostly through the correspondence and writings of several Northerners, some eye witnesses, some active participants. Definitely worth checking out, if only for these contemporary voices. Eric Foner's 1990 classic, "A Short History of Reconstruction," is still the word on the subject.

Ayesha Siddiqa's "Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy" has been making waves at home and abroad (it was banned in Pakistan) for its analysis of Pakistan's extralegal military economy. The implications for the "war on terror" and our alliance with this unstable country are far-reaching.

"The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court" is a superb account of today's court by Jeffrey Toobin. More a crackling character study than a conventional history of the court and its constituents' stances, Toobin's book manages to bring the shadowy priesthood of the highest court in the land to vivid life. This came out last year, but it's too good not to mention.

"The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World," by FT columnist Tim Hartford, tries to show that all human decisions are founded on logical choices. What exactly that means, I'd have to find out by actually reading the book's 255 pages. Although you can disagree with rational choice theory, as I do, it's still worth taking a look at this cogent defense of it.

Wireless world

2008-01-30T22:49:00.000-08:00

I'm a little biased about blogging this but I'm also proud (of the reporter) and interested (in the subject). My friend Kelsey did some freelancing for Silicon Alley Insider on San Francisco's wirelessness. A couple of cities have been trying to blanket the land in wireless with largely fruitless results. But a long shot company and volunteers did it in San Francisco.
Kudos to Kelsey on a superb story!

Blog props

2008-01-29T09:03:00.000-08:00

Ben Greenman posted an excellent entry on The New Yorker's Goings On About Town blog, so, like any self respecting blogger, I initially wanted to steal his idea for this blog. But I restrained myself (consider this entry an hommage). Still, it's a good one. He's shared a youtube video of the "most elaborate and beautiful twelve-foot-tall mechanical elephant in the known world," in recognition of the Florida primary and its importance to the GOP.

What an age we live in

2008-01-28T18:05:00.000-08:00

Ann Marie Rockford wanted someone killed. So what did she do? Why, look on Craig's List of course.
From The Sacramento Bee:

Federal charges have been filed against a Michigan woman that claim she tried to use the Internet to find someone to kill her lover's wife in Oroville.
A criminal complaint against 48-year-old Ann Marie of Rockford, Mich., was filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento against the woman, who is accused of using the free classified advertising Web site craigslist to hire an assassin.
Court papers say three people responded to the ad and that Marie told them the job paid $5,000. Marie also allegedly told at least one of them the killer's expenses would be paid, and added, "This IS a serious proposition," court documents state.
FBI agents went to Marie's home Thursday, and later she was charged with using interstate commerce facilities intending "that a murder be committed."
Marie, who sometimes uses the name Ann Marie Linscott, is in custody in Michigan and will be afforded a detention hearing next week.
The alleged target is a 56-year-old Oroville woman who is the wife of a man Marie had been romantically involved with, court papers say.

Think Again, Stanley Fish

2008-01-08T10:48:00.000-08:00

Stanley Fish's Jan. 6 blog post on his New York Times blog Think Again is a kicker; so far it has generated 425 comments, about four times as many as his typical posts. Entitled "Will the Humanities Save Us?", the post mostly concerns itself with a description and critique of the argument for a humanities education laid out by former dean of Yale Law School Anthony Kronman in his new book, "Education's End: Why Out Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life."

In the book, according to Fish, Kronman sees careerism, science and technology as obstacles to a meaningful life, and the study of the humanities as the solution to a "crisis of spirit" in American universities. Essentially, the humanities give students a number of competing answers to fundamental ethical questions, allowing them to achieve an Archimedean point whereby they can evaluate their own values and ideals and perhaps gear their lives toward the realization of new rationally conceived goals. This is precisely the argument I gave for a Great Books education in my first post on this blog, so Kronman is very close to heart on this issue. Indeed, Kronman seems to have a conservative canon in mind as the core of the humanities education. The ethical value of humanities study, even of unorthodox texts, is, I think, of paramount importance. As Fish himself concedes, this justification is neither "crassly careerist" nor straining to be utilitarian.

Fish identifies the premise of this "secular humanism" as the idea that "the examples of action and thought portrayed in the enduring works of literature, philosophy and history can create in readers the desire to emulate them." If you read Kant's "Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals," you will want to use the categorical imperative in making ethical choices. This, I think, is a simplification of the argument Kronman is committed to. However, at base he's right: conscious study can affect conscious actions. In other words, the ideas that we glean from texts of philosophy, literature and history can be translated into beliefs that guide our interactions with the world. I don't think, even after Freud and the emotivists, that you can say that conscious thought does not affect action in a fundamental way.

But Fish rejects the argument for two reasons. First, in his experience the study of the great works does not make finer people in philosophy and literature departments. Second, to justify the humanities by referring to some other good is somehow to debase them.

The first argument is poppycock: not all scientists are good scientists, not all musicians are good musicians, etc. Anyway, the study of humanities doesn't ensure any fruitful result; the only point is that it has the potential for being of great value. Perhaps because there is too little emphasis on the application of ethical notions in academia, the full potential of humanities study isn't realized. Also, no one is saying this sort of study is sufficient to be an ethically grounded person, only that it is an extremely valuable instrument towards that end. It is extremely surprising (and depressing) to find a distinguished professor of the humanities writing, "The texts Kronman recommends are, as he says, concerned with the meaning of life; those who study them, however, come away not with a life made newly meaningful, but with a disciplinary knowledge newly enlarged." Even scientists talk about the meaning the practice of science gives to their lives. Why does Fish love the humanities? Apparently, for the same reason he loves, say, a Porsche: It gives him pleasure.

This brings me to the next argument. Fish says that people study the humanities because it gives them pleasure, not because it has any effect on their lives or anyone else's. What kind of pleasure is this? The pleasure of intellectual stimulation, perhaps, but how does this differ from the enjoyment of hobbies like chess-playing? Why dedicate your life, in other words, to the study of the humanities if your own pleasure is the only result? Fish goes even further by saying that to justify the humanities by relating it to the larger ethical good is to dishonor the humanities, that the humanities are their own good. The thought never occurred to him that the humanities may be an instrumental good and a good in themselves, just as the practice of science may be pleasurable to the practitioner but also have utilitarian value. I think it's actually, ironically, a bit of humanities elitism to elevate the humanities to a good in themselves while implicitly knocking science as only an instrumental good. The practice of science is both; the study of the humanities is both. Nothing wrong or dishonorable about that. That being said, Fish is being the provocateur he's always been, and the question of why we love literature, arts, and philosophy is an interesting one.

You Little Beasts

2008-01-06T18:03:00.001-08:00

I had a good, quiet winter break nestling in the warmth of my 40 inch plasma hearth. Apparently my father now wants to switch to blu-ray, which necessitates the purchase of blu-ray movies to replace the DVDs. In other words, we're single handedly staving off the recession for the time being.

I did get out, though, and with my family saw a production of The Turn of the Screw at the Writer's Theatre in Glencoe. The production, severely economized to two actors playing about five roles, was all in all a great success. However, the few devices developed by writer Jeffrey Hatcher, such as a lockett discovered by the governess that almost conclusively rules out the possibility of actual ghosts, felt cheap and unnecessary. These quibbles notwithstanding, the great question of the work was vividly brought to life: What are children, morally speaking? The governess's great fault is that she has an overly romanticized and unreflective notion of the nature of children; either they are beautiful, good, and pure, or evil, possessed by spirits, etc. The possibility that they are neither good nor evil, but simply ignorant of the full meaning of their actions, never occurs to her. The Writer Theatre's rendition seems to suggest this. But I think James left the question open whether children are capable of evil, or to what extent they should be held accountable for their actions. I'm not sure where I stand.

Rousseau said that to reason with a child about moral matters was fruitless, that all you can do is strictly forbid something and you shouldn't bother to try to make them understand the grounds of this prohibition. Morality only comes with reason. Rousseau wouldn't say this, but if children are incapable of moral reasoning, is something like corporeal punishment the only way to teach them right from wrong? What do people think about corporeal punishment for children? I'm not sure what I think. Children will remain a moral mystery, I think.

These are a few of my favorite things

2007-12-22T20:07:00.000-08:00

I don't expect people to listen to me. I babble a lot, I'm just a reporter at The Michigan Daily, I'm just a history major. Nothing special. I'm an insignificant little speck. No biggie.
I also don't expect people to share my interests (certain television shows that are really good if you give them a chance, The Bad Plus, The New Yorker, journalism in general, politics, quirkiness, food). They're not the traditional kind of hip thing most people like; they won't show up on Mtv. But within my little world when parts come together it adds a personal sweetness. In this case, David Remnick writes about The Bad Plus, a fantastic contemporary jazz band. I highly recommend them. Remnick praises some of their edgier songs: renditions of other famous songs like a techno-jazz version of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Those are okay, but at the first concert I went to my fellow fans and I agreed their original stuff is the best, like the wonderfully chaotic And Here We Test Our Abilities. Songs like that are a union of so many wonderful sounds into this fusion that's pleasurable to the ear, much like when things you like pat each other on the back.
Below is Our Abilities:

Modest Mouse

2007-12-02T21:27:00.000-08:00

Just got back from a Modest Mouse concert in Chicago. A few impressions and thoughts:

1. Concerts are entirely couples events. Me and my friend couldn't find a place that didn't have a couple hugging more than four feet away.
2. Talk about Narcs! Security regularly "ejected" (which is I think too kind a word) anyone smoking pot. It looked more like the guy in Florida during the John Kerry Q&A. The Mary Jane lover is cringing and struggling and the security people are wrestling -that's if they resist. Non-resisters are made to walk a sort of walk of shame with their hands over their heads while one of the guards flashes a light to make way. How humiliating.
3. Some songs are hard to play in concert fashion. Take Tiny Cities Made of Ashes, a highly technical song that just can't be performed well without extensive musical equipment.
4. Talk about extortion! I paid $5 for a bottle of sprite! And an even more embarrassingly insulting price for a hoodie...I definitely didn't need to buy the hoodie though...

The highlight of the night was either when they played Dashboard off of their latest album, We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank or 3rd Planet from The Moon and Antarctica. The band also played Float On which I hate but in concert didn't sound so bad.

Stem Cells and the fine print

2007-11-25T23:59:00.000-08:00

During another agonizingly monotonous Thanksgiving dinner I asked my grandfather, a geneticist and professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, about the recent Stem Cell breakthrough. The story is that a couple of scientists at the University of Wisconsin and Kyoto University have found a way to turn regular cells in mice into a stem cell equivalent. Stories have spanned major media outlets in the last week or so on this. In perfect character, my grandfather skipped all the exciting and beneficial aspects of the new discovery and went straight to the problem, fortunately for him it's a rather big problem. He went over to his study and came back with a manila folder. Inside the folder was a collection of stories in different publications. He pointed to a few of the articles about the finding which mentioned ever so briefly that "the new method includes potentially risky steps, like introducing a cancer gene," according to one article in The New York Times. Some other articles didn't even mention this rather large caveat. The discovery is being spun as a complete era-changing breakthrough. I doubt everyone would receive this stem cell news so warmly if the headline read "New Stem Cell Breakthrough May Also Cause Cancer."

The Star Goes South

2007-11-12T22:34:00.000-08:00

Of interest to that curmudgeonly old guy who lives alone and scowls at all the kids who walk by but loves his community newspaper:

Come Sunday, the Daily Southtown and Star Newspapers will be no more. For those who don't know (which is almost everyone), these are two small, excellent, Chicago newspapers. The Daily Southtown is the more renowned of the two. It has a reputation for strong reporting, clever columnists, and general activism in the kind of public service role newspapers are meant to have. It's won a number of major awards, such as Newspaper of the Year by a suburban newspaper judging committee, the George Polk Award, and the Studs Terkel Award. Pulitzer Prize winners have worked there.
The Southtown also keeps an bureau at Chicago's city hall. Perhaps if the newspaper industry was in a better state, the Southtown could and definitely would surpass the Sun-Times and rival the Chicago Tribune.
The Star is a different kind of beast. It's a twice a week paper tending to a number of suburban middle class and blue collar regions of the Chicagoland area. Like the Southtown, the Star carries excellent journalists, and awards, who are familiar with the area -most have lived in Chicago or Illinois their entire lives. The Star's greatest success as a newspaper is its clear contribution to uniting the outlying suburban communities into one larger one.
Both the Southtown and the Star are historic newspapers that have seen major events in Chicago of the twentieth century. To save money, the two papers will unite into one this Sunday to be named the SouthtownStar. The reasoning is money and nothing else. The name change is to keep aspects of both brands alive and therefore avoid detracting complete change with people familiar with either newspaper. Part of its merging also means newsroom job cuts on both sides, a not so unusual event in the newspaper business these days.
Budget constraints are the worst part, no question about it. To a much lesser extent so is the death of both papers. So now two papers must die but did they have to merge? Could the Southtown have not kept its more prominent name and simply "acquired" -as it's called in the business- its sister paper? That might at least keep an appearance of strength. This is all secondary in importance to the real problem behind the merger though. The papers' parent company, the Sun-Times Media Group, would definitely rather just cut as many costs in its minor papers than keep entities that are going through tough times but clearly uphold the honorable jobs that newspapers were always meant for. Well, for the moment at least, it's good that some kind of south suburban community newspaper is around. The longer it lasts, the better.

Crystal Castles

2007-11-10T14:50:00.000-08:00

Of interest to the electronica/noise-lover and retro video game fanatic:

Suburban parents everywhere fear that their precious pipsqueaks' corruption by video games will lead them to discover the bullets aisle at the local Wal-Mart. Crystal Castles, whose members are known only as Ethin and Alice, is the 8-bit sound track to their love affair with violence and technology. In songs with titles such as "Crimewave", this duo matches innocently bloopy electronic loops with eerie, often nonsensical lyrics.

In "Alice Practice," so named because it was recorded accidentally while lead singer Alice was practicing, their professed influences such as murder and knives are a bit more evident. Rough ripples and harsh, not-quite-screaming vocals add a layer of distress.

The track "xxzxczx me" (pronounced "Excuse Me"), while not my favorite track, is in my opinion their best. Its pace is faster than their usual dreamy adventures, reminiscent of a slightly coked-up version of the last level on your old favorite game, or the time the strobe lights and booze lowered your seizure threshold a little too far during that rave at the anime convention.

The sound flips to the other end of the spectrum on "Magic Spells", an empty lullaby. Lack of direction or content makes this lazy near-melody one repetitive, though not otherwise offensive, never-ending loop. Magic Spells is certainly a weak point for Crystal Castles, showcasing one of their biggest flaws: their lack of structure and movement. They create wonderful, hypnotizing beats and add adorably bizarre flourishes to a foundation of dark yet gentle noise, but their foundation isn't very firm. They need content. Drive. Their songs need a thesis, a raison d'etre. The tradition of hiding their faces in official photos mirrors the facelessness of their music. It's a delightful distraction that's at it's best in their skillful remixes, in which their 8-bit tweaks transform the originals into entirely new characters. Perhaps Crystal Castles can be best thought of as skillful future producers. That would certainly be an interesting role for them. But for the time being, they are an interesting sound that's different enough to justify its existence, even if it is still in its amateur stages.

Downloads (from Pitchfork Media):
Goodbooks - Leni (Crystal Castles Remix)
Crystal Castles - Air War
Crystal Castles vs. The Little Ones - Lovers Who Uncover
Crystal Castles - xxzxczx me
DJ Howlemonkey: "Crystal Castles Omnibus Mix"

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/crystalcastles

Jews seeking spiritual renewal bowled over by sixth grader seeking ice cream

2007-11-10T14:02:00.000-08:00

On a personal note:

I’ve been working for two weeks washing dishes at a Jewish retreat center and farm in Connecticut. We host a variety of programs throughout the year–this autumn an ecology-focused camp for Jewish 6th-graders called "Teva." The Teva counselors live onsite from September to December, and a new group of 6th graders comes every Monday and stays for a week, during which time they learn about the synthesis of Jewish and environmental values.

These campers are 11 or 12 years old, which means that in about a year each will have a "Bar Mitzvah," the Jewish rite of passage. In the ancient era (when the tradition was founded) this would have meant leaving their parents’ homes and becoming apprenticed to a master of a trade. In the 21st century, it means a big party and then return to life as normal.

This dichotomy is reflected intimately in my interactions with the campers. Talking individually to one of these young men is like talking to a small, inexperienced adult–but an adult nonetheless. We can chat back and forth about school, religion, vocation, girls, you name it. I have to remind myself not to offer him a beer. But put them in a group and a setting that reminds them of their status as children (as most activities at camp do) and they revert to animals, screaming and howling as they ricochet off me, each other, and my laboriously stacked dishes.

As they lay waste to the freshly mopped dining hall, I think to myself: "Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to put a hundred and fifty of these energetic, impressionable creatures in one room with only a dozen adults?" With that kind of ratio, the only means of supervision is crude crowd control: systems of shouting and singing that we normally reserve for groups of dogs. Back when kids this age were learning to be blacksmiths and bankers and scribes, there would have been two or three experienced workers for every apprentice, and the dominant culture would have been one of mutual maturity–not herd and herder. "That’s how these kids could really learn something," I think, "working in small groups under close supervision, doing essentially adult activities."

But hold time–we have a program exactly like that, going right now! It’s called "Adamah" (Hebrew for "the land") and runs quietly in the background of the more dynamic Teva. Fifteen "Adamahniks" live onsite, rotating in small groups between kitchen, housekeeping, maintenance, and farming tasks, always under the supervision of a professional. They get room and board in exchange for their work: a modern apprenticeship model.

So what’s the catch? The Adamahniks aren’t sixth graders–they’re mostly in their mid- to late-twenties, the same age as the Teva counselors. They come from wealthy families and hyper-successful university backgrounds, and aren’t sure what they want out of life or where they’re going next. So they’re here, learning the life of a socialist Jewish farmer crossed not-so-smoothly with the life of a capitalist Jewish retreat center (capitalist enough to charge almost $200 a night for guests not associated with a specific program).

So while we’re treating our twelve-year-olds like animals, we’re treating our twenty-somethings the way we used to treat twelve-year-olds. The phase of odyssey and search for vocation has been pushed back more than a decade, and the personal anachronisms are bizarre to witness: a biological adult bowling over his peers to get first dibs on ice cream, or a 28-year-old with a master’s degree reflecting that when this program ends he’ll probably go back and live with his parents. Even as children in the inner city learn to grow up faster, the larval stage of the upper middle intellectual class is getting longer...and longer...and longer.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: in biology successful organisms often have longer childhood phases (and even the most politically correct among us can’t deny the upper middle class intellectual is a successful organism). But it’s a strange thing, a little unprecedented, and I wonder what it bodes for upcoming generations. Will these post-adolescent wanderers settle down to careers in business and law sometime in their thirties, have children in their forties, and achieve full bourgeois-dom by the time they’re fifty? Or will they form networks of utopian spiritual communities that raise their children on campfire songs and compost bins? Or will the entire system implode with all the grandeur of Rome burning?

Needless to say: only time will tell.

The Darjeeling isn't so Limited

2007-11-07T21:44:00.000-08:00

Of interest to the Wes Anderson fanatic:

Wes Anderson is all about consistency. His movies are always masterfully filmed, draped in cheerful scenery and bright props, heavy on the sarcasm, and partially about death. His latest film, The Darjeeling Limited doesn't miss any of these elements. And it goes further. There's a glorious montage epitomizing Anderson's skill as a director on the train where the camera compartmentalizes minor characters in locomotive cars. The film also allows for major visible character development, a rare trait among his movies. A major theme of the film is growth, which Anderson may have experienced since his last work.
It starts out...well, actually it starts out with a welcome cameo of Bill Murray chasing a train. Murray misses the train but a lankier and faster Adrian Brody catches it and reunites with his two brothers who haven't spoken in years. The eldest is Francis Whitman (Owen Wilson) who's head is bandaged like those old leather football player helmets. Francis has organized a "spiritual" journey through India. He's organized it so well that every morning each brother receives a laminated itinerary detailing what at each minute the brothers will be doing. Francis has commissioned an assistant to shadow the brothers and plan the next day's events. It's clear early on that Francis feels a sense of responsibility to care for his younger brothers, who are both grown. Peter (Adrian Brody), the middle child, of course must rebel against authority, while the youngest Jack (Jason Schwartzman) tries to stay out of the quarreling brothers way. Jack's efforts prove fruitless as at one point he has to mace his siblings with a gigantic can he bought at a break-stop early on. There's a lot of pent up emotion among the three brothers, in addition to the jarring recent death of their father. The two oldest brothers are coping with their father's death in different ways. Francis it turns out, is micromanaging in the same way that his mother and probably his father did. Peter has begun wearing his father's glasses and shaving with his razor, and probably more. Jack may have taken on another symbolic trait but none is clearly revealed. His character is somewhat underdeveloped, ironically because he helped write the script along with Anderson. We know that Jack is at the very end of a disastrous relationship (with the ever annoyingly googlie eyed Natalie Portman) and is a writer whose stories are obviously just recounts of actual events. "The characters are all fictional," he presses, pathetically. Even Jack knows that Jack's writing is about Jack.
For the planned India trip, mostly bickering occurs between Francis and Peter as Francis struggles to keep to his unbearably strict schedule in the darkly humorous world of Anderson. Life's curve balls triumph in the end and the adventure really kicks into gear. As the Whitman brother's train goes further and further off the track (by then, the train they were actually riding on abandons the trio) we learn more about each sibling. It turns out Peter is going to be a father and has no idea what to do, Jack is really continuing his relationship of meaningless sex with Portman's character while trying to find love elsewhere, and Francis was more torn up -literally- about his father's death than it seemed. Perhaps the coming together of the three brothers combined with the various potholes in the road pushes them to come to terms with mortality and each other's unique problems. Whatever it is, by the end of the movie they mature and realize adulthood has finally arrived, and been there for some time.
You can't live life in chaos though so after confronting what each brother had worked hard to suppress they regain a semblance of control. Francis grew the most, even though he's the oldest, and the maturing shows in his contributions in the world. Thanks to his change, the trip is a bit more comfortable. It's a welcome advance, a lot like the progression of maturity in Anderson's movies, maybe he did some growing also. Maybe.
He meant for the characters to be fictional.

Knock knock. Who's there? Walt Mossberg? Come back later

2007-11-03T20:38:00.001-07:00

On a personal note:

So I'm reading Walter Mossberg's always engaging Personal Technology Column the other day. This time he's comparing the latest Gateway PC to the latest iMac. Because I have the attention span of a gnat I'm almost always multitasking and so I sat down at an iMac in an attempt to sign on to AIM while reading the column. As I futilely pressed the AIM icon over and over again I read this line

The iMac has been a success, however, partly because it combines beauty and power.

Now, I understand that he was writing about an entirely different model of iMac. I also must stress that Mossberg is both an excellent writer and insightful voice; but really, as I struggled to run a simple program on an iMac, I had my doubts about Mossberg's "solution". After all, I have never been an Apple guy. Sure, I love my iPod and am starting to dream about an iPhone rather than my overrated Razr but when it comes to computers, what I really need is a sturdy workhorse (read Dell), not some chesty-blonde-show-her-off-to-the-guys kind of computer (gee, that was an odd analogy). In my experience iMacs are really just for show, so this week Walt, I won't take your advice. Don't misunderstand, I won't go near a Gateway computer! But I will stay with PCs for that much longer.
I'm sure he'll spend many a sleepless night wondering how this could have been avoided...

Stephen Colbert's Op-Ed Column

2007-11-01T01:12:00.000-07:00

Of Interest to the Colbert Nation:

Stephen Colbert struck again with his October 14 Op-Ed piece in the New York Times entitled I Am An Op-Ed Columnist! (And So Can You!). As usual, there are some great passages that arrive at sharp criticism through Bill O'Reilly's looking glass:

Well, suddenly an option is looming on the horizon. And I don’t mean Al Gore (though he’s a world-class loomer). First of all, I don’t think Nobel Prizes should go to people I was seated next to at the Emmys. Second, winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace.

And of course there's plenty of Colbert's signature comic word-play; he pushes his metaphors, like his conservative punditry, to their extreme but logical conclusions:

Our nation is at a Fork in the Road. Some say we should go Left; some say go Right. I say, “Doesn’t this thing have a reverse gear?” Let’s back this country up to a time before there were forks in the road — or even roads. Or forks, for that matter. I want to return to a simpler America where we ate our meat off the end of a sharpened stick.
Let me regurgitate: I know why you want me to run, and I hear your clamor. I share Americans’ nostalgia for an era when you not only could tell a man by the cut of his jib, but the jib industry hadn’t yet fled to Guangdong. And I don’t intend to tease you for weeks the way Newt Gingrich did, saying that if his supporters raised $30 million, he would run for president. I would run for 15 million. Cash.

All this comes as a telephone poll conducted by Rassmussen Reports shows that 13 percent of Americans would support Colbert if he were a third party candidate pitted against Hillary and Giuliani. A facebook group called "1,000,000 Strong For Colbert" has more than 1,000,000 members, while an equivalent Obama group has some 390,000.
All harmless fun, except for a bit of a snafu about campaign finance laws that may have had some bearing on Fred Thompson's campaign had it not been discovered that he is actually a toaster oven.
Still, what does this show about the electorate? Isn't 2008 supposed to be the year the Dems strike back, take the presidency and right our capsized ship of state? Aren't we liberals supposed to be angry and determined to find a political solution to horrendous political problems? Yet in the first poll that included Colbert 2.3 percent of Democrats said they would vote for the comedian in the primaries--more than for Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gavel.
You could say the polled Dems are just being ironic in that effete urban elitist way that conservative pundits, real and fake, love to hate. Or they just don't care that much about polls. But do you think that anyone in the 1968 election would have had enough time to be ironic when it was widely felt that the nation was off course? Actually, there was a comedian write-in candidate: Pat Paulsen, who ran in five presidential elections between 1968 and 1996 and actually got 200,000 votes in the 1968 election. It therefore can't be the seriousness of the times that deters people from voting for throwaways.
What can be the meaning of Paulsen and Colbert's numbers? People who voted for Paulsen and declare their support for Colbert can't be wholly joking. I think they are rather venting their frustration about the critical lack of choices in politics. And I tend to agree with them. It's way past time to seriously consider third party options. I simply don't think either party will deliver exactly what many people want.
On the upside, I'm pretty confident that we'll at least have a Democrat in the oval office, since the Christian Right appears splintered. With the loss of that major voting bloc, I don't think a Republican candidate has a serious chance. Any thoughts?

Say goodbye to a city's essence

2007-10-31T19:57:00.000-07:00

Of interest to the nostalgic:

Chalk another one up for the computer war against city character traits. On Monday The New York Times ran an excellent story on the probable dissipation of the trading floor at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Chicago's Mercantile Exchange and also the former Chicago Board of Trade were landmarks of the city. Indeed, they were distinctive positive aspects of Chicago's renown. But with the merger of the Merc and Board of Trade and relocation

in May to a new trading floor at the board’s Art Deco headquarters. With the consolidation of the two exchanges, the pork belly pit, formerly emblematic of Chicago’s open-outcry commodity trading, will close and begin operating only by computer.

It's better for business, that's for sure; and crucial for the Merc to survive. Still, a major historical locale of the Windy City is being gobbled up by technological efficiency. Chicago is a city in transition. A lot is going on, being built, moved, changed, renewed, remodeled. Now there's Millennium Park with its gaudy Bean, both of which will probably become famous as a symbol of Chicago, unfortunately.
Everywhere the technological computer juggernaut is improving operations. In the journalism world not only have computers and the internet helped minimize spelling errors but also hasten the exchange of information for literal up-to-the-minute and up-to-the-second reporting. Updates are faster than they ever could be by phone. The other day a Michigan student explained how although there is a pleasure in reading newspapers, "I want to know that what I'm reading is the latest news." That limits the appeal of newspapers though and exposes where its capabilities fall short. Like so many other areas of society, newspapers and the traditional trading floor just can't keep the pace with faster computers.
The offices of these institutions are converging in similarity as well: the same desks, same computers, same white collar workers staring at them. That's the trade off, an infamous economic scene of Chicago for a set of computers.
It's more efficient.

Save This Movie

2007-10-25T16:36:00.000-07:00

Of Interest to the Movie-Goer:

I title this entry "Save This Movie" because I'm really afraid that "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" will fall into the dustbin of movie history; perhaps it'll be picked up and replayed by a desultory college student or two, but that's it. I want to say that the film has so much to recommend it that it would be a travesty for it to fade into obscurity. Yes, it sports Fellini-sized self-indulgence, not terribly kosher for a sophomore director. Yes, it unashamedly exhibits time-lapse clouds...at multiple points in the film's 2 hour and 40 minute duration. But this isn't a Malickian fancy, though there is something that conjures that eccentric cousin of American cinema in the juxtaposition of brutality and natural beauty. "Assassination" features one strong (Pitt) and one brilliant (Affleck) performance. As a psychological study it is incredibly sharp and revealing. Its portrayal of the American West is unique and strange. And while it doesn't ultimately develop its main theme--the interaction between myth and reality, or language and its object ("You can hide things in vocabulary," one character says early in the story)--to any sort of satisfactory conclusion, it's a rare sort of movie these days that tries to fit its head around these ideas at all.

I am a massive cockblock

2007-10-25T09:03:00.000-07:00

Fuck-A-Doodle-Do!

I was walking through my dorm on a 4 a.m. ramble when I decided to take a look-see down in the basement. I had never actually visited our kitchen, for the use of which I had to contribute a hefty sum (a double sawbuck, or twenty dollars for you people who don't use Civil War slang in a pompous and self-conscious manner), so I decided now was as good a time as ever. I walked downstairs into the basement, through the hall and past the entranceway adorned with a sign pronouncing the kitchen's impending cameo in the sordid farce of my existence. The corridor between the entranceway and the kitchen was long, and the cooking area was darkened. I could barely make out the huge stainless steel refrigerator and island. I had just entered the kitchen proper when I simultaneously wheeled and heard from the direction to which I was turning a boy's voice say quickly and brusquely, "Hey dude." He walked past me and through the corridor; I noticed only his yellow tee shirt and the fact that he was holding his arm above his head, as if it were a periscope. To tell you the truth, I was pretty startled to see him there, and could barely manage a hello. For some reason, the image came into my head of some grizzled hillbilly reaching his hand out to a cornered, cowering wolf-cub as his (the hillbilly's) dirt-smeared little children watch in ecstatic terror. "Hell, he's scareder of us than we are 'a' him," the wise old Alvah Dunning says. But back to the story. As the international dude was walking by me, my sensitive eye caught something behind him, a flash, a flutter, a flit, no more than a brush stroke at the corner of the canvas, which disappeared behind the other doorway to the kitchen. It took me a second to figure out what was going on, and then I bounded after it like a happy hound. Of course, the female, for that was what the darting blot of brown ink was, had disappeared. I was a cockblock! Now I knew the shame. The shame and ignominy of the cockblocker.

"Kafka on the Shore": A Surrealist Fairy Tale

2007-10-25T06:56:00.000-07:00

An old man talks to cats and makes fish fall from the sky, Johnnie Walker kills cats and eats their hearts, Colonel Sanders is a back-alley pimp with a knack for the supernatural, and a 15-year-old runaway finds shelter from a cross-gender hemophiliac while fulfilling an Oedipus prophecy. No, this isn’t a bad joke, and you’re not having the weirdest trip ever. You’re reading the latest Haruki Murakami novel, Kafka on the Shore.

Murakami’s “insistently metaphysical mind-bender” (John Updike’s observation) follows two distantly interwoven plotlines. In the first, 15-year-old “Kafka” Tamura (he has taken this pseudonym to avoid detection by the police) flees his sinister sculptor father in Tokyo and travels by bus to the relatively provincial Takamatsu. He wanders to the Komura Memorial Library, where he meets Oshima, a hyper-educated woman who identifies as a homosexual man, and Miss Saeki, an enigmatic older woman who hasn’t truly lived since her lover died when she was twenty. This bizarre cast of characters gives Kafka room and board at the library, ostensibly for his help as an assistant but mostly because they are interested in his spiritual journey.

Meanwhile, Satoru Nakata, an old man whose childhood trauma deprived him of his memory and conventional intelligence but allows him to talk to cats, follows a trail of clues in a metaphysical scavenger’s hunt that leads him ever closer to Kafka, Oshima, and Miss Saeki. Along the way he picks up Hoshino, a truck driver and ex-soldier, who is sufficiently intrigued by Nakata that he ditches his job and his truck and becomes the old man’s disciple and sidekick (and a devotee of Beethoven’s Archduke Trio).

But for all Murakami’s postmodern surrealism, his narrative structure hearkens back to traditional themes. Besides the overt references to Greek drama (bits and pieces of an Oedipus retelling, and a near fatal backwards-glance into the spirit world), Murakami plays off the most fundamental aspect of Greek tragedy: fate. None of the characters in Kafka on the Shore is as powerful as the forces of fate that drive them, and none even try to resist. They accept the bizarre developments of their world with the resignation of a Greek chorus.

But unlike a Greek chorus, characters in Kafka react to the supernatural events that direct their lives with stoicism and some good humor. And that’s where Murakami’s wit really comes to light: by blending the inevitability of a Greek tragedy with a healthy dose of lighthearted surrealism, he balances the monotony of both genres. The fate that dogs his characters is neither moralistic nor predictable, yet its fantastic manifestations never fade into the languid dreaminess that plagues some surrealist literature. In short: fate provides the momentum and surrealism gives us something to look at along the way.

However, Murakami’s elaborate juxtaposition comes at a price. Like in Greek drama, none of the characters are quite flesh-and-blood—I wouldn’t fancy driving across the country with any of them (except maybe Hoshino the truck driver, who despite a supporting role enjoys the most compelling character development in the book). And the plot drags at times, taking us down false leads or going nowhere at all. Nakata and Hoshino spend the second half of the book trying to speak to a stone, while Kafka Tamura is falling in love with a painting. Something tells me Murakami won’t be getting many movie deals.

But that’s okay, because he probably didn’t want them anyway. He wanted to create a fairy tale steeped in our profoundest narrative and philosophical traditions, and in that he succeeded charmingly. The characters don’t trouble themselves with expectations or analysis, and neither should we. Just take it in and accept it for what it is—always weird and introspective, sometimes funny, and occasionally moving—and you may enjoy this metaphysical romp.

Curiosity killed the chat

2007-10-24T13:11:00.000-07:00

Of interest to the online talker:

AOL Instant Messager is dead, long live Google Chat. This didn't happen out of technological natural selection. There was nothing Darwinian here. It's just as more people use Gmail, more people use the instant messager that comes with it. That's not to say that there's nothing appealing about chatting on your email account. In line with everything else that is Google, Gchat archives every conversation so at any time you can look back and see how pompous you sound, furthering self consciousness and paranoia. It also emails messages if one of the talkers signs off.
Remember the days though? Remember the days when we all signed onto AIM. The days when people creatively -or crudely- thought of screen names, and then thought of new ones and then newer ones. Yeah, those days are over.
Then they "improved" AIM by adding the feature that tells you that the other person is typing. Today AIM has evolved to AIM Titan which seems to just be a smooth looking (but not actually) version of the instant messaging program. There's also no more uniqueness to choosing a screenname. Your identity is your email address, which these days tends to be incredibly boring (example: jsmith321@gmail.com). There was something wonderfully expressive about coming up with a nom de guerre with little aspects of your interests or personality. I can remember being Astralmage, silvertiger317, Odysseus03, ATimeforwolves, BeyondtheOceans and many more. There are also people I know with dozens of different names. It was just this fun way of choosing a persona.
But no more. Internet talk has "matured" to this ultra-casual medium where any slight silliness is immature and awkward. Then again, now there's a record of what's said, and that's kind of fun.

Chicago has everything!

2007-10-23T15:52:00.001-07:00

Of interest to the Chicago farmer:

Did you know Chicago had a pumpkin patch? I sure didn't. Above is a picture of the beautiful and talented Terra in Chicago at one such jack-o-lantern garden. I've lived in that city for 19 years and I still don't know...most of it.

UChicago Conversation

2007-10-18T16:21:00.000-07:00

Listen to this:

Start of Ancient Philosophy Class, Thursday, 1:27 p.m.
A student is doodling in his notebook. Another student, dressed in the "international dude" style, approaches him and speaks.
Student 1: What up, bro? What's happening? It's fuckin' hot out!
Student 2: Please do not call me 'bro'.

[End of Conversation]

The Stranger

2007-10-17T18:38:00.001-07:00

Of Interest to the Hidden Maniacs Among Us:

I was walking home, carrying a plastic bag that contained a can of soup, a tub of yogurt, and juice, and, as is my wont, I began to talk to myself. The night was my confidant; it seduced me into believing no one was there. I was tired and trusting. Events of the day had angered me, and so my murmurs and hushed exclamations were vitriolic. Perhaps my face was a little contorted. In short, I was a night-walking, self-talking lunatic with a shopping bag.

I was walking through an alley separated from a playground by a chain-link fence. It's the same old alley I've walked down since I was a child. I began to rehearse an apology I was to deliver to a friend. I had quietly resolved the angry dispute in my mind. Here, in the dark, I could do such things in peace and freedom. But just as I had reached some sort of tranquility of mind in the anonymity of the darkened street, I heard a voice come from the night. "Ben." I looked around. No one. I scanned the obscure playground through the fence. Nothing. The wooshing trees could imitate a voice. The rain-soaked streets echoed every sound. But I looked back, and saw, on top of the monkey bars, two people. I didn't recognize them, but one of them lifted its (her?) arm and waved widely. I stumbled for a greeting, but managed only, "Shit." Then another nail: "I didn't...uh...yeah." I walked away. Night had betrayed me. I had been found out, caught looking like a maniac, and I felt everything close in on me a little bit more. The name I heard in the street, my own, was a prison. I wondered if I looked the same to whomever those people were, whether my clothes fit the same. I was reminded of an Edward Hopper painting called "New York Office" that shows a woman frozen behind a huge window in an office building. The illusion of privacy, the illusion of a separation between private and public beings.

iPods and optimism

2007-10-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

On a personal note:

I had what anyone would call a shitty day. I lost my iPod. That was one of the "high" (read low) points of the day. Besides the aggravating fact that I remember putting it in a safe place and thinking how wonderfully safe that place is, I realized it was lost in one of the most populated parts of Michigan's campus. Additionally, I'm a little stunned that I didn't notice this two-pound bar missing from my pocket.
My friends and acquaintances all have comforted me with "maybe it will turn up." If you found an iPod lying around would you spend an afternoon working to return it?

The Sam Zell prescription

2007-10-13T22:34:00.001-07:00

Of interest to the curious media freak:

Sam Zell, native Chicagoan, Real Estate god, philanthropist, may be exactly what Chicago media and media in general need, or he may be Rupert Murdoch for the Windy City.
Even in Chicago people are unfamiliar with the wealthy founder of Equity Group Investments. Indeed, unlike the ostentatious Murdoch, Zell's takeover of one of the largest newspaper companies in the United States has been relatively quiet. He's really only a tiny blip on the radar for anyone outside the real estate business (of which he is a major player) but he does have a record of generous donations to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and Michigan's Ross School of Business. Make no mistake though, he's serious, and determined. About six months ago I heard him speak at the University of Missouri. Once Zell got the stage he scooped up all the attention in the room, going right into his theories, and opinions on the Real Estate market and the state of Real Estate. I didn't understand all of it but I could see that when cut-throat tactics were necessary, Zell didn't flinch. This is unremarkable for successful businessmen today. The unusual part of Zell is his purchase of Tribune Company in a time when the newspaper business isn't exactly a gold mine. Especially because he has no newspaper or media experience.
Zell's initial approach to Tribune Co., the owner of the L.A. Times and the Chicago Tribune, among others, was met with the usual hostility and hesitant attention. The Chandler family, the owners of Tribune, and one of the four great newspaper steward families would really only give Zell their time if he offered something good, but they were receptive. After a great deal of negotiating, Zell won the family over and completed a buyout deal of Tribune Co. for $8.2 billion (Murdoch's takeover of Dow Jones was $6 billion). Despite a considerable drop in Tribune Company's stock value, Zell hasn't paused once in his decision to buy Tribune.
"I believe Tribune Company is reasserting itself as a national leader in news generation and distribution," Zell said in a statement.
To journalists and journalism critics (including Write No Evil) Zell's sudden media interest has been met with rolled eyes. Another bored billionaire who thinks it might be fun to own a newspaper? This won't end well.
Well, maybe. Actually, the Tribune and the Times haven't exactly been in excellent hands pre-Zell. Tribune and all its newspaper and media holdings have been governed by the Chandler family, which has been itching to escape difficult times in the journalism world and highly business oriented governing shareholders. Ken Auletta's article on the L.A. Times largely revealed the paper's problems coming from demands from Tribune Co. to turn a profit, whatever the cost. The costs have been pretty high, including a considerable portion of the Times' excellent newsroom -including magnificent editor Dean Baquet's- jobs. The paper has also reduced its foreign bureaus and minimized its distribution of the California area. All this thinning is partially from Tribune's demand to turn a profit, and a higher one than the last year. It's also a pride thing though. Corporate leadership at Tribune also feels that anything the Times can do, the Tribune should be able to do, and better. Thus the stripping of the Times' resources.
Zell's coming is actually reminiscent of another time of journalism. A time when the wealthy felt a calling to give back and serve the public. Katharine Graham, of the Graham family which owns The Washington Post Company wrote in her book Personal History about her father's calling to give back to the public:

In line with my father's "map of life," the time was right for him to turn his attention to public service...Even in the announcement about his ownership, there were several key statements that proved to be the underpinnings of Eugene Meyer's Post. It was his aim to improve the paper, and he would do so by making it an independent voice.

This is just one example of the good old days when not only was there a great profit in newspapers but also a greater respect of the role they played among the public. The same kind of calling that "Pinch" Sulzberger's ancestors and the Bancroft family's progenitors felt in owning the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Today newspapers aren't as profitable, some say they aren't at all -actually they are but shareholders demand a higher profit every year. So Zell's interest may not be in making money here. It may be a wonderful desire to support a historical newspaper in his native city.
Don't get too excited though. Word on the street is that when he visited the Times office he berated the paper for too much attention on foreign news. Zell is either no journalism saint or still new to the craft. Zell reportedly plans to sell the Chicago Cubs and a quarter of Tribune's ownership of Comcast SportsNet. He hasn't mentioned any plans to cut jobs. Zell's deal doesn't go into effect until later this year so it's yet to be seen what he does with the newspaper giant. It could be worse actually. Zell is a Chicagoan with no good fiscal reason for buying Tribune Co. He has a history of giving to excellent academic institutions and both the Republican and Democratic parties, which although it doesn't show strict objectivity, demonstrates a level of bipartisanship. He also hasn't mentioned any plans of putting pictures of naked women in the news section -a step above Murdoch.

What Generation Y does on the weekend

2007-10-13T14:10:00.000-07:00

Of interest to the weekender:

Schedule for your average college student at a big, state university:

Friday:

-Get out of class
-nap
-play whichever videogame platform has the best sports games
-pre-game, aka drink hard liqour until you can't your insecurities and actually like to stand around and play beer pong
-go to a party -preferably frat but house party will do, as long as there's plenty of booze and bad, loud rap music
-stumble home with your buddies, don't talk about that feel you took of your friend's package

Saturday:
-Get up with a hangover
-Put on every piece of college football gear you have
-heal your hangover with more booze
-go to the game and root for the team
-nap
-frat house/house party again. More booze, beer pong, and general debauchery

Sunday:
-wake up with a hangover
-go back to sleep
-wake up again
-go back to sleep
-crawl to the nearest dining hall with your friends
-do about 20 min. of homework while studying your facebook
-go to bed and right before sleeping, reflect how awesome the weekend was

Will Obama and Edwards ever learn? Doesn't look like it

2007-10-10T20:05:00.000-07:00

Of interest to the observant voter:

The New York Times, The Detroit Free Press, Reuters...ah hell, everyone, reported that four major democrats have decided not to campaign in Michigan. This does not include Clinton! Obama and Edwards and the rest (but who cares really about the others) better have a good reason other than principles. Principles and honor don't win elections these days, as Clinton has demonstrated repeatedly. It's conceivable that Obama and Edwards feel it's a lost cause and that Hillary has won Michigan or that winning Michigan really won't make a difference over all but if this ethical choice to boycott a state full of dissent and hunger for change is based on Michigan jumping over the February 5 voting day, then it's literally their loss.
Look, it's not really the time to demonstrate moral character, it's the time to win. Of course Hillary is going to take every opportunity she can to win. That's what she's been doing all along. There is no surprise on that end. The surprise is that Obama and Edwards may not have considered this. They may have thought that Hillary was above pettiness and greed. If that's the case, Hillary deserves to campaign in Michigan, rally unemployed workers in Detroit and college students to her side, and go on to win the Midwestern state's vote.
There is no more appropriate situation for the saying, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." We were all fooled into thinking that Hillary had a higher level of decency than she's shown. That was the first time. This is the second time.

The Playboy Beat

2007-10-09T05:08:00.000-07:00

On a personal note:

In today's Michigan Daily, there's a story about Playboy Magazine scouts coming to campus. Originally, I was assigned to write the story. I was more than a little willing to bear such a grim burden but the editors decided that a male reporter covering the event would probably bias him. On top of that I'm single, so arguably that would further work against my objectivity. In the end a female writer got the story. Was this sexist? Yes. Was this the correct journalistic call? I think so. Still though, it sounded like fun...

Hired Gun

2007-10-07T18:49:00.000-07:00

Of interest to the excessively aspiring privatizer:

As a former Navy SEAL, Erik Prince should know the difference between the U.S. military and the U.S. postal system. But apparently he doesn't.

"We're trying to do for the national security apparatus what Fed Ex did for the postal service," explained Prince, founder and CEO of the private military contractor Blackwater USA, in a congressional hearing Tuesday. "They did many of the same services that the postal service did--better, cheaper, smarter, and faster."

Prince was trying to justify his company's involvement in Iraq, which according to the International Herald Tribune now consists of about 850 security workers (also known as mercenaries) on the ground and over $1 billion in State Department contracts. Prince and his company have been under a steady stream of media fire since the September 16th incident in which eleven Iraqis were killed, and their record of aggressive incidents in Iraq dates back to 2004.

Such were the accusations (including the drunken murder of an Iraqi security guard Christmas Eve) against which Erik Prince defended himself for three hours on Tuesday. His consistent theme was Blackwater's status as a private company, and its excellent record of achieving objectives with maximum speed and minimum price.

But it's not Blackwater's efficiency that's on trial, it's their collateral damage. Prince's defense betrays his deepest misunderstanding: a complex military campaign can't run on privatized contracts, because its objectives do not exist in isolation. In the postal service, when the package is delivered the job is done, and no one worries what other effects have been set in motion in the course of delivery. But in the military--especially in a volatile and complex occupation like Iraq--immediate objectives are means to ultimate mission objectives. When short-term objectives are met at the expense of long-term ones, the military is failing.

That's why privatization has worked for the postal system but not for the military. In Prince's self-acclaimed "corporate mantra," you hire a contractor to do a specific job, and when the job is done he gets paid. It's not his business or his problem how that job fits into your ultimate goals. Thus Erik Prince can boast that no official under Blackwater protection has ever been killed, without considering the damage his mercenaries have done to the ultimate mission in Iraq--a mission stated very clearly in COBRA II (the original U.S. war plan) as "regime change."

It is true, as Prince asserts, that his company has met all the obligations of a private contractor--but Machiavelli didn't call mercenaries "useless and dangerous" because they're fast or cheap; he called them "disunited" and "without discipline." The money the State Department saves in short-term objectives by employing Blackwater is paid back in American lives when our failure to achieve long-term objectives--like a functioning, Western-friendly regime in Iraq--comes home to roost.

2500 years ago the great Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu instructed generals to "induce the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so that they will share death and share life." Do Blackwater mercenaries share life and death with the US. army? Probably not unless it's specified in their contract.

Bellowing in Chicago

2007-10-06T20:22:00.000-07:00

Of Interest to Activists Looking for a Nice Little Civic Cause:

Yesterday an article in the Chicago Tribune reported on the rejection of a request by former U of C english prof Richard Stern to the city of Chicago to name a street, a school, or a statue in honor of Saul Bellow. Stern and Bellow were friends when Bellow headed the Committee on Social Thought. Stern claims he received a letter from 4th Ward Alderman Toni Preckwinckle (requisitions of this kind must be made through the alderman in which the supplicant lives) that denied the request on the grounds that Saul Bellow had made some unseemly remarks about race in his works, particularly about the changing racial composition of Hyde Park and the Northwest side community he grew up in. This despite the fact that Balbo Drive is named after an Italian fascist.

"Who is the Proust of the Zulus? The Tolstoy of the Papuans? I'd be glad to read them."
-Saul Bellow, New York Times Magazine Interview

"I had read widely in the field, and immediately after the telephone interview I remembered that there was a Zulu novel after all: "Chaka" by Thomas Mofolo, published in the early 30's"
-Saul Bellow, in a New York Times Op-Ed apologia of the above comment. He works himself into a nice lather about the "Stalinist" "thought-police" and how "Righteousness and rage threaten the independence of our souls." Left: Italo Balbo.

Machiavelli on the Volga

2007-10-06T18:11:00.000-07:00

Of Interest to the Kremlin's Censor:

One of the issues on the table of tonight's "McLaughlin Group" was Putin's recent move to consolidate power by announcing that he will run for--let's face it, he will be--prime minister. Putin will probably have his faceless crony Zubkov have the presidency, then appropriate his powers, or, maybe, have him meet with a "little accident". The prime minister is next in line should the president be incapacitated.

McLaughlin framed the debate on Putin thus: "Is Putin good for Russia?" Chrystia Freedland put up a bit of defense for the negative position, but everyone else, even the supposedly liberal Eleanor Clift, sang the praises of proto-czar. Pat Buchanan and Tom Blankley spoke like good Kremlin officials, lauding Putin for preserving stability and fostering prosperity. An especially effective piece of rhetoric was the constant repetition of Putin's high approval ratings-"In the 70s!" McLaughlin intoned like Homer giving an encomium for Achilles. If the people support him, he must have democratic credibility. Putin's authoritarianism was brushed aside with sophistic moral equivalences: how can we censure him for setting up a one-man dynasty when Hillary might be our next president? This dubious statement was made by Eleanor Clift, who was so adamant a supporter of the Clintons in the 90s she was referred to as "Eleanor Rodham Clifton" by the other panelists. Buchanan followed his typical paleo-conservative line, questioning why we should have a hand in others' affairs, particularly as Russia could be a valuable ally in the war on Islamic fundamentalism.

Putin is held in favor by the Russian people, by and large. But you can understand that if you look at Russians. The country has the lowest male life expectancy in Europe, crushing poverty (usually exacerbated by poor infrastructure) and poverty-related disease, a secret but growing AIDS epidemic, alcoholism, depression, and rabid ethnic nationalism. You also have to understand the chaos and uncertainty that accompanied the breakup of the Soviet Union, the humiliation felt by Russians as a consequence of that event, and the incredible mismanagement of the transition from Communist rule to democracy.

In this context, even modest gains in prosperity and security are like manna from heaven for most Russians. And it's true that Putin has provided these. Putin has also, to some extent, made being Russian a source of pride again. Although we don't have a reliable membership count, it seems the state-sponsored nationalist youth groups that have emerged in the past few years are quite popular.

It's standard to rattle off the litany of anti-democratic measures for which Putin is responsible, so I won't. They are already well known. But will the relative prosperity Russia is enjoying now last? The key to Russia's growth has been its oil and gas industries, but with the energy supply now in the hands of party insiders, it's doubtful it will be competently managed. These men aren't businessmen, they're intelligence officers. The result of poor management in a resource-rich country can be seen in Myanmar.

Putin may have invoked the "war on terrorism" to legitimize Chechnya, but no one should be fooled. Chechnya is a festering sore of Russia's own creation. As Matthew Evangelista points out, the international media has reframed the conflict in terms of religious terrorism, but that is hardly all that is going on there. Islam was on no one's mind when Russia invaded in 1994. Pat Buchanan and George Bush are wrong to think Russia is really an ally in the war against Islamic terrorism.

America now has so little credibility as the embodiment of liberal values that even Putin can call us a "wolf" in foreign affairs. Conservatives rightly point out that there are few acceptable alternatives to Putin at this point. There's little we can do to promote democracy in Russia itself. Yet if we do not condemn Putin and support the fledgling democracies Putin seems to want to strong-arm back in line, Ukraine and Georgia, we are not only hypocrites but have simply given up on trying to be a principled country. We don't need to be Bushean conquistadors, holding out freedom at the end of a sword. Nor do we have to be indifferent isolationists. At some point Russia will become dissatisfied with Putin and his kleptocracy.

Journalists of note

2007-10-02T18:20:00.001-07:00

Of interest to the media hungry cynic lover:

Last night Jack Cafferty was the guest on Jon Stewart. To those who don't know, Cafferty is a crabby old man with a small window of time on CNN. He's a controversial figure, but allowed great leeway. Despite a long-living (and still alive) career of insolent and partisan remarks, Cafferty has only had to go back on the air and retract one statement.
He is everything a good columnist should be: Controversial, witty, cynical, energetic, and born in Chicago!

Jack Cafferty, Write No Evil salutes you!

I Feel Good

2007-09-30T18:33:00.000-07:00

Of interest to the readers of the last post:

The latest Newsweek poll shows that likely Democratic Caucus-goers would support Obama if they had to vote today, although Clinton had stronger support. The heat is on.

Check out this doozy about Hillary from Frank Rich.

Let's not forget Obama, especially when he's in Greenwich Village

2007-09-30T14:28:00.000-07:00

Of interest to the young and politically savvy:

Some said 4,000 college students, some said 30,000, some just said a shit load. Whatever the exact number, "a shit load" is as good a description as any for the number of people gathered in Greenwich Village for the Barack Obama rally -which is being called a mini political Woodstock. On top of that, the "shit load" was in Hillary's backyard. Moments like that make it hard to believe that she's so far ahead in the polls. One has to wonder, are the polls accounting for Generation Y?
Today's college student -Generation Y- is no different than any other age group of voters, at least on the Democratic side. There are Obama supporters, Hillary supporters, and Edwards supporters -even a few Kucinich fans. They're also similar in that a large amount of them feel a dead tortoise is better than Hillary (except the Hillary fans). But if that's the case, how is it that she's so far ahead in the polls? All three of the leading candidates have their appealing qualities. Edwards is the handsome populist, Obama the sparkling newcomer, and Hillary the wizened leader -or that's what she wants us to think. Gail Collins pointed out in her latest column that Hillary capitalizes on generalities. She waits to let everyone else declare a side and then just promises that what she has to offer is the best idea, even though her "idea" is commonly yet to be revealed -not always though. Hillary is sneaky like that. She's trying to gain the nomination not by her own opinions or merits -which can be perilous- but by denouncing the other candidates. According to the polls, hers is an effective strategy. Her appeal is experience and a "maturity" above those other flawed politicians who have "platforms" (snicker) and plans for what they'd do in the White House.
Well, Generation Y, at least, is visibly skeptical. That crafty defensive stance of advertising an opponent's failures works, as it did in the last election, but also says something about the candidate.To her credit, Hillary has shared her own policy plans but has spent less time on that compared to the hours she's put in candidate bashing. It's a good way to get to the White House, George will tell you. The polls indicate that a lot of Democrats either don't realize that Hillary's doing this or don't care. That may be true, but a few Greenwich Village goers will tell you that they aren't fooled twice.

Can't Tell Me Nothing

2007-09-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

Of interest to the learned scholar:

Today in my Greece to 201 B.C. class we spent the entire time watching the movie 300. Clearly I'm getting every penny's worth of my $40,000 a year tuition...

Reuters cuts loose

2007-09-27T18:25:00.001-07:00

Of interest to the honky who keeps a Playboy in his desk drawer:

Straight from Reuters (yes, Reuters PLC Group!). 1,010 girls attended a shoot on Sydney, Australia's Bondi beach during an attempt to break the record for the world's biggest swimsuit shoot. Only like 300 were expected to be there but plenty volunteered, according to the news service.

Who says the financial news wire is boring?

Chicago gets an upgrade!

2007-09-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

Of interest to the bourgeois:

It's always nice to hear that home is getting better in some way. It's even nicer when that's true. So Chicagoans (myelf included) may like that we're getting a whole bunch of expensive new toys.
For one, there's the Chicago spire being built by Santiago Calatrava which he hopes to be the tallest building in the nation. The Wall Street Journal also reported today that Michael Reschke is trying to build some super expensive hotel units and residences downtown. Lastly, under the name Xohm, Motorola is finally trying to blanket the city in a broadband wireless network so you can sign on to the internet -through paying for Xohm's wireless- anywhere in the city. Efforts to go wireless have been tried in a few cities but have mostly ended in failure. No surprise that the latest attempt is from the private sector instead of the city government. At least it's going to happen, hopefully.
The only real qualm with all these ventures is who in the world would pay for any or all of this?

"The Kingdom": Idiot Man-Child's "Syriana"

2007-09-26T19:32:00.000-07:00

“The Kingdom,” a Middle-Eastern flavored thriller starring Jamie Foxx, is a true testament to the magic of cinema. It transforms an appallingly complex, morally ambiguous political situation into a thrilling, verité-style, almost guilt-free tale of good versus evil. Although set in Saudi Arabia, “The Kingdom” is about a million miles away from what some have called the “problem” of the Middle East.

Jamie Foxx plays an FBI Special Agent who, along with a crack team (Jennifer Gardner, Chris Cooper, and Jason Bateman), negotiates a secret week-long investigation of a recent terrorist attack in Riyadh while Washington pussy-foots. They are quickly able, with the help of a sympathetic police colonel (Ashraf Barhom), to circumvent the restrictions placed on them by the Saudi prince and begin investigating in earnest. But the tables turn when one of their own is kidnapped. They must fight to free him and find the perpetrator of the attacks at the same time.

The film begins with a stylized history of Saudi Arabia’s relationship with American oil companies, as if to imply that it is firmly buried in real-world politics and the important issues of our day. But no one could be fooled. “The Kingdom” is “Dirty Harry” in desert camo, with a quasi-vigilante protagonist motivated as much by vengeance as by a genuine desire to solve the crime. Yet unlike Harry, Foxx’s no-nonsense, bureaucracy-spurning tough guy is squeaky clean, morally speaking. Despite the buckets of blood spilled, Foxx and his crew never have a drop on their hands. Maybe that’s because for FBI agents they are seriously thin-skinned, crying over dying victims and trembling when they watch a video of a suicide bombing. The audience is constantly reminded that because everyone has families, we can’t be all that different, as if it’s a surprise that Muslim parents love their offspring.

The opening scenes play out like what some Americans wanted September 11^th to have been like. Foxx is—you guessed it—entertaining a classroom full of toddlers when he receives the call that a horrific attack has occurred. He does not sit squirming in his chair helplessly, but jumps up, gives a touching farewell to his son, and heads out the door. In place of the blundering, politically compromised CIA Americans have come to know so well, the movie shows a supremely knowledgeable and alert FBI, ready to strike and frustrated by Washington’s reluctance to take action (!). Once on the ground, the mission is clear: solve the crime, kill the baddie and go home with all our guys alive. No mention of oil is ever made after the opening short history.

The acting is nothing to speak of, but that’s not what matters in a movie like this. Relative newcomer Peter Berg has directed a heart-thumping thriller which transposes a classic American trope, the vigilante cop and his pursuit of justice, onto the shimmering white cities of Arabia. The movie ends on a surprisingly sour note, which to me suggests an inkling that the problems in Saudi Arabia are way over its head. Too bad the film is so willing to exist in a state of ignorance.

Secular Humanist Paul Krugman on the Warpath

2007-09-25T07:33:00.001-07:00

Of Interest to the Grand Old Party:

Paul Krugman came out with an article yesterday connecting the Jena Six incident with Republican politics via Southern racists and their prominent position in the Republican "base." He points out the historical pandering to Southern racism among presidential candidates: Reagan making his speech about "state's rights" in Mississippi at the dawn of his 1980 campaign, Bush going to Bob Jones University in 2000, and now the Republican presidential candidates shunning a debate on minority issues at an historically black college that would have aired on PBS next week.
Krugman ends his article with this ominous prognostication: "...it looks as if the Republican Party is about to start paying a price for its history of exploiting racial antagonism. If that happens, it will be deeply ironic. But it will also be poetic justice."

Fuck him. The Republican Party will be politically viable for a thousand years. Heil Rudy.

Buddhist Monks Protest in Myanmar

2007-09-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

Of Interest to the Cynic:

Today saw the largest protest in two decades in Myanmar. Over 20,000 monks and 40,000 civilians (perhaps as many as 100,000 in all) marched through the streets of Yangon, formerly Rangoon, the country's capitol. This is the sixth day of protests in that country, triggered by the beating of monks in Pakokku on September 5, as well as a 500 percent rise in fuel prices. Buddhist monks are uniquely sensitive to the changing fortunes of the country, because they are fed, clothed, and sheltered by alms from the people. Some of the monks visited the house of quarantined democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi. Anxiety is mounting as the junta's options for dealing with these rapidly spreading, well organized, peaceful protests narrow. Will this be a repeat of the bloody repression of the 1988 protests, in which 3,000 civilians died? Or will the moral authority of the Buddhist monks prevent it? What the outcome of this movement will be no one can tell, but many, including the Financial Times and the Irrawaddy news are calling this pre-revolutionary or a "Yellow Revolution." A crucial question, too, is the extent of China's influence on the generals. China has invested heavily in Myanmar. So far, its comments have seemed to support this growing movement. It could be that even China can't prevent the generals from losing it.

The Irrawady News has the best coverage.

Also worth looking at is the New Mandala blog

This isn't the first time Buddhists have spearheaded political change. Read this article by Bruce Matthews to learn more about the tradition of protest within Buddhism.

Kanye West's "Can't Tell Me Nothing" Video with Zach Galifianakis

2007-09-23T21:52:00.000-07:00

Of interest to the hip:

Check out this bizarre, hilarious music video for Kanye West's "Can't Tell Me Nothing," conceived as a home video by North Carolina hillbillies. Then see the real video. Compare. Contrast. Write a 3 page essay on which has greater social significance. Michael Bliedan, the director behind The Claw Productions, also filmed Comedy Central's "Comedians of Comedy."

The Bad Plus Trade Fours at the Old Town School of Folk Music

2007-09-23T21:33:00.000-07:00

Of interest to the hipster:
Dan and I went to the The Bad Plus, a piano trio from New York hailed by some as the saviors of jazz and derided by jazz purists for their covers of rock songs, in particular Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." They've just released a new album, "Prog," with unapologetic covers of Bowie's "Life on Mars," among others.

The Old Town is a great, intimate venue, and the audience didn't need to be warmed up.

The Purpose of the Humanities

2007-09-19T17:34:00.001-07:00

Of Interest to the Academic:

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind," a book that electrified the debate about the extirpation of the so-called 'Great Books' canon in the American university in favor of a multi-cultural collocation of texts. The canon debate raged through the 90s, with some admirably self-righteous performances from politicians from both the right and left, like Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson who, on the Stanford campus in 1988, led a rally against a required Western civ course. The protest chant was, "Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture's got to go!"

A new essay on Bloom's fiery work and legacy by Rachel Donadio, editor of the New York Times Book Review, came out in the 9/16 issue. She traces the contours of the evolving debate over the liberal arts education, showing that it now has as much to do with a widespread concern over the decline in the number of liberal arts baccalaureates as about what a liberal arts major should be taught. I don't know if the numbers bear this out, but I will say that it seems obvious the perpetually increasing cost of higher education could discourage people from less lucrative majors.

But I think Donadio, like Bloom, does not separate two different subjects: the quality of the education of liberal arts majors, and the dissolution of the core curriculum offering survey courses for undergrads. She talks about the "invasion of politics" in the humanities, particularly the literature curriculum. But she also interviews Tony Judt, who speaks of undergrads fresh from high school who want broad survey courses that are not offered anymore. Louis Menand gives one of the more striking statements: "The big question for humanists is, How do we explain why what we do it important for people who aren't humanists? That's been really, really tough."

Bloom focused mainly on liberal arts majors, saying they no longer were intellectually curious; were being taught politically correct, but not enlightening texts; were the products of divorce, which made them cynical but less questioning; and were more interested in shallow but accessible cultural forms like movies and rock. Also, apparently the loosening of sexual mores deflated the desire to learn in some way (by apparently removing the 'erotic'--according to Plato, mind you--mystery of and longing for knowledge).

All of this may or may not be or have been true, but what is important, I think, is demanding a basic (Great Books) foundation for all students, not just liberal arts majors. This means reinstating the core curriculum. In order to back up this assertion, I need to 1) Prove the worth of the humanities in general and 2) Prove the worth of the Great Books as the best embodiment of the humanities.

I will allow Tolstoy to give us the reason why the humanities are important: "Science is meaningless because it has no answer to the only questions that matter to us: 'What should we do? How shall we live?'" In other words, science (and I may add business), is only good as a means to an end, as the tool of political and social action. But science cannot give us the reason for doing anything; it cannot tell us how to live as a nation or as individuals. Our political and social institutions, as well as our lives, must run smoothly, with as little disturbance from nature as possible. This is science's function. But we must know, as individuals, how to make decisions. This requires us to have an ethical framework for evaluating life. The richer, the more well-considered this framework, the better our decisions as individuals, and the better our political and social institutions, will be. For the ends of institutions are determined by individuals, and are ultimately moral ends. Some are content with living by the values of their parents, but for those who want to make up their own minds, the only way to attain an Archimedean point from which a person can examine his own values critically is education.

The humanities are the best source of this ethical framework of life. This is because, unlike religious sources, the humanities do not present one, immutable answer to all ethical problems. Reading the Great Books of history challenges you to consider critically many different moral systems. Similarly, in life we are presented with greatly varying alternatives when called upon to act, and must choose the one we consider the best. The power to critically examine alternatives, as well as the moral criteria for choosing a certain way to act, are provided by the humanities. And in a democracy, where everyone needs to make moral judgments not just for themselves but for the nation, these abilities are absolutely critical. I need hardly argue with those who claim that novels or histories do not, like books of moral philosophy, encourage people to weigh differing moral choices. Most fictional works, from Sense and Sensibility to The Little Engine That Could, hinge upon some moral crisis depicted with varying degrees of subtlety. And as Barbara Tuchman said, "To take no sides in history would be as false as to take no sides in life." Because all people, not just liberal arts majors, must be moral agents, it is only right that all students should be required to take a survey course in the humanities.

Now, as to the importance of the Great Books over more recent works by women or minorities, I make the bold claim that by and large the so called Great Texts--The Bible, Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Ethics, The Iliad, The Odyssey, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Kant's ethics, Jane Austen, the list goes on--address human questions on a far deeper level than many of the more recent writers, both black and white, both male and female. This is not necessarily because the writers of old were "better." They had a different goal when setting out to write; a grander vision of the purpose of literature. What I mean by this is that writers of today, especially those that address gender and racial issues but not exclusively these, strive to develop an original voice. They want to contribute to the plurality of distinct expressions. This is, by far, their greatest preoccupation. This is noble. But writers of old, and not just Western ones, wrote as if they were writing for mankind, or at least for a civilization. This may be an arrogant presumption, but its fruits cannot be denied. Dante knew he was writing the greatest poem in the Italian language. Shakespeare wanted to present the problems of mankind, conflicts of ideas and personalities with universal resonance. The great writers had not a more ambitious, but certainly a more panoramic approach to literature. Nevertheless, there are some modern writers who should be taught because they are great, and even some modern writers who are purely interesting for their ethnic or sex "identity" value. But this value should not be a criterion for deciding what books should be taught to all students in a core curriculum. And since by and large nothing can replace the older texts in their deep, rich illumination of the fundamental problems that plague all human beings, including poverty (look at the Bible, Aristotle's Ethics, Shakespeare...) and ethnicity (Merchant of Venice and Othello, anyone?), they cannot and should not be replaced.

Some may complain that my given reason for the value of the humanities is too utilitarian, that it vulgarizes the very books I'm defending. I couldn't disagree more. I'm not saying that these books are didactic (although the Bible, if not approached as a work of literature, is) or sententious or morally simplistic. In fact, they are valuable precisely because they are morally interrogative, not prescriptive. They make us think. This is not vulgar. But it is true that I don't need everyone to appreciate the beauty of Homer's verse or Plato's logical flights of fancy. I want them to derive from the books a framework for considering the problems of human life, and a suggestion of the answers.

I think my ethical argument applies for liberal arts majors as well as general survey courses, although to a lesser degree in some cases. I have neither the time nor the inclination to give a full argument about the value of every branch of humanities study.

As for Allan Bloom's analysis, I think his incisiveness was marred by the superfluous elements he was ideologically inclined to include. The loosening of sexual mores has nothing to do with the thirst for knowledge. Many of the great Greek thinkers were not exactly models of sobriety and abstemiousness. Judging from his sonnets, Shakespeare had a penchant for letting his cod out of his piece and had few scruples about it. Above all, Homer's world-view exalts pleasure and wealth. There are innumerable other examples of sexually active, even perverse intellectuals and artists who had few moral qualms about their own sex lives. Although the legacy of the Victorian era causes us to believe sexual mores were never so indulgent as in our own time, in fact in many parts of the world at many times sexuality has been as open as it is now.

That the divorce rate produces less inquisitive liberal arts students is also an entirely conjectural claim. I believe divorces, which indeed have increased over the years, have a variable affect on children, which can't be adequately summed up by pat generalizations, at least ones asserted without study of the subject. The same goes for all "alternative" family arrangements.

I believe that liberal arts majors should be free to pursue their interest in ethnic studies or gay literature or whatever, as long as the atmosphere of study is not politicized, as Allan Bloom lamented. I don't think the question is "Great Books or Race Books?" If liberal arts majors were required to take two years of core, introducing them to the Great Books, I have no problem with them moving on to more esoteric pursuits. In fact, American literature, which does not have a well-established canon, can only be improved by the inclusion of works by minorities and women. After all, African-Americans gave us our only uniquely American music, jazz, and most of what distinguishes our language from England's. It is only natural, with such an accomplished history despite everything, that they should turn out to give the most harrowing, insightful and original accounts of American life in literature as well.

But I'm not going to mince words. To be a better human being, a person has to read the Great Books. I have no problem adding Confucius or some other Eastern thinker (in fact I think a Hindu text would be very good). I'm not saying that you can't improve yourself by other means, but you must have recourse to something that engages you as a human being, and not as a black woman, a gay man, or whatever. I hope that we haven't reached the point where we cannot acknowledge that human beings all have similar ends, although we disagree about the means.

Microsoft gets scolded but Google is around so who cares?

2007-09-18T20:04:00.000-07:00

Of Interest to the businessman:

The European Courts ruled against Microsoft, claiming the company held a monopoly through its Windows Media player and that it withheld confidential computer code further restraining competitors from using Microsoft technology with their own. In an effort to avoid a ruling like this, Microsoft provided a line of computers in Europe without the new Vista operating system, so no trade-secrets were needed and computers could still be purchased. That didn't go so well. Nobody wanted second rate systems. So the hammer fell, and Microsoft is being punished. It must provide a Windows Media Player free version of Windows, disclose confidential computer code, and pay some 497 million euros or $689.4 million. The decision also makes it more difficult for Microsoft to put a mix of new features into products. If competitors complain, authorities will listen and enforce.
Ok, well, what's done is done. It's over. One interesting part is how the media approached this story. In the The New York Times, the story's angle focused on how this will affect other technology giants like Apple and Google:

"Software and legal experts said the European ruling might signal problems for companies like Apple, Intel and Qualcomm, whose market dominance in online music downloads, computer chips and mobile phone technology is also being scrutinized by the European Commission."

While in the Financial Times, the actual ruling and Microsoft's grievances felt more attention. An editorial in the FT read:

"Despite the Commission's ruling, Windows Media Player dominates its market, and though Microsoft was forced to provide a version of Windows without Media Player it had little effect because there was no price different between the two."

Basically the FT believes the ruling was a good start but not really the appropriate medicine. That may be true, but to stateside folk, it all seems slightly meaningless. Recently, Google bought a NASA landing strip that wasn't for sale. The search-engine juggernaut also has numerous other projects in virtually every area of innovation -it just announced a moon-landing competition. To those who share a home continent with Apple and Google, it's easy to see which ones are the new young hot shots on the scene and which are the old, impotent ones. The truth is Microsoft is fading away. More and more of its products are second rate compared to Apple and Google. Sure this may be the beginning of a general taming of super-companies but to Americans, it's a slow start. Microsoft has been fighting a losing battle with Apple. When penalties come down on Apple or Google or major telecommunications companies, then we'll talk.

Worried about Hillary's Health?

2007-09-18T10:01:00.000-07:00

Of Interest to the sickly:

Hillary Clinton recently proposed a health insurance plan based on the "individual mandate" idea, which requires individuals to get health care or face a penalty. Also, employers would be forced to give their employees health insurance. Lower income people would receive federal support to pay for the health premiums, and the most impoverished would pay virtually nothing. Edwards supports an individual mandate plan that is somewhat altered, Obama doesn't support the individual mandate idea, but the only politician with experience in this area is Republican Mitt Romney, who as governor of Massachusetts helped pass a bipartisan health insurance "individual mandate" bill in April, 2006. As of July, 2007 all residents of Massachusetts were required to have health insurance by law, a step beyond other universal coverage schemes in Hawaii or Maine. The system is complex and not fully worked out. It doesn't seem as if anyone knows exactly what will happen if this centrist policy were implemented. The attraction of the plan is that it appeals to both banks of the Seine: the left will like it because it uses subsidies to help poorer folk, and the right wingers like it because it relieves the state of the cost of "health care moochers" who make taxpayers foot the bill for their emergency room adventures. Of course the Cato Institute says it's a slippery slope to full government health care, but is that true? States require all residents to have auto insurance, but there is no state-run auto insurance provider. We have to wait for more data from Massachusetts, I think. One other question is whether it would raise health insurance premiums because poorer people don't have to pay the full amount. That might be true.

And it doesn't solve the problem of those who are insured but are denied adequate care.

Article on Massachusetts Health Care

Campus Police Harass Student

2007-09-18T08:55:00.000-07:00

Of Interest to the Patriot:

Some Fucked Up Shit

Word is spreading fast about the violation of free speech during a question and answer session at a campus forum with John Kerry. The incident was captured on camera by at least two observers, both of whose videos are now being bandied about the web. If you notice in the video, the cops grab Andrew Meyer, who is incidentally a student in Journalism and Communications (one wonders if this minor scrap won't make him consider plying his trade in some other, less repressive country) as he's just standing there, seconds after delivering his question about the skull and crossbones and his mic is cut. He does not become upset before the cops manhandle him, as UF spokesman Steve Orlando seems to imply in his statement to the press. Three disturbing, minor things: the audience actually applauds the assault on this guy's person, John Kerry seems completely befuddled (that's not a complete surprise, though), and I think I detect a smile on some of the faces of those nearest the police as they restrain Andrew Meyer and taser him. I don't really seriously think this is indicative of some larger trend of police brutality (we of course are tolerant of a certain constant, low level of it...) but what the fuck? Why are there police hovering around the mic in the first place? And why are the students cheering on this violent removal, even if it is warranted, even if he did become violent and unruly, which he clearly didn't?

The Renaissance Society

2007-09-18T02:09:00.000-07:00

Of interest to the critic:

The Renaissance Society, a gallery at the University of Chicago (in the interest of full disclosure, I work there) opened its new exhibition on Sunday. Entitled "Gravesend" after a town in Kent, England that is also the starting point of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," the visually wondrous 17 minute film by British artist Steve McQueen documents the process of turning raw coltan, a metallic ore mined in the Congo, Australia, Brazil, etc, into a component of capacitors in electronic devices. The mineral is in high demand thanks to the ever-growing market for cell phones and computers. It has fueled the civil war in Congo, which has claimed the lives of 3.8 million.

A subject like this conjures up in my mind the horrific images of Darwin's Nightmare, the documentary about Nile Perch that was nominated for an Oscar in 2005. But what immediately strikes you about the film is that it contains no humanizing elements, no commentary. It is just a series of images and short scenes, with a narrative of sorts following the coltan from the mines where it is extracted by pick-axe from rock faces to space-age refineries where machines eerily do their strange work without any human presence. There are beautiful shots of the jungle, of the geometric shapes in the refineries, of steel blades breaking rocks apart, of the play of light on water. There is a long shot of a sunset over an industrial landscape, and an animated sequence following the contours of the Congo River.

All very beautiful, yeah. But doesn't this subject require a moral stance? Doesn't Conrad, though in every sense a novelist's novelist, also allow his moral indignation to seep onto the pages of "Heart of Darkness"? I don't mean McQueen has to flash Marxist slogans across the screen, only that he depict for the human cost; that he show suffering or at least humanize the workers. The more I thought about it, though, the more I thought it possible that I simply missed some of the moral implications of McQueen's film.

For example, he made the deliberate decision of not showing the faces of any of the workers, leaving them indistinguishable, mere tools of an economy. He then juxtaposes the images of the workers with footage of real machines in refineries. Herein is the barbarism of the coltan trade: workers lose their individuality and become no more than machines. Without showing overt suffering of any kind, McQueen points out the essential cost of any brutal industrial process. The juxtaposition of what looks like a grave being dug out (or it may not be a grave) in the jungle with the setting sun over a factory also suggests the human toll of the process, while this last image's allusion to the first lines in Conrad's novel brings into relief the similarities between the 1890s exploitation of the Congo and modern corporate ventures.

On the other hand, the allusion to Conrad could have a different meaning. It's true that McQueen makes overt homages to the Heart of Darkness, but it does not follow that he is criticizing empire or neo-colonialism as such. He could be saying that like Conrad, he is using an historical example of immorality as a starting point, but not the focus, of his work of art. After all, Conrad's book does not primarily document the injustice of colonialism by focusing on the victims, as Sinclair's The Jungle did in its treatment of stockyard workers, but uses colonialism as an avenue to explore evil, passing quickly and perhaps heedlessly from the historical to the universal. McQueen could similarly be moving quickly beyond the social and political realities to the aesthetic value of the coltan trade.

McQueen, I think, struggles with how to make a film about something as morally loaded as the coltan trade without turning it into a documentary or a polemic. He wants to produce pure art, pure film, but his subjects require a moral stance. Can an artist extract a small bit of a subject (its visual beauty), like a miner working in the shafts, and not worry about the rest? What is art's place in a world where even nature is politicized? Are the demands of art and the demands of conscience in conflict? I guess Conrad had to think about these questions, too. McQueen has created a remarkable film, but it sits a little uneasily with me. Its images are too seductive. Brutality shouldn't be this beautiful. But that probably isn't McQueen's fault.

Supermassive Blackhole

2007-09-14T18:20:00.001-07:00

The show Californication had problems from the start. One, it was about a writer (how original, deemed one perspective fan). Two, besides semi-clever quips mainly from David Duchovny (X-Files) the dialog -which the show clings to for dear life- is pretty bland. And finally, three: It's pretty clear that the direction of the show is unclear. As deadline approached the writers probably said "what the hell, we're good-looking, interesting, funny, and sexually in-demand, let's go to the screen!" As sincere as they may have been in this hypothetical situation, none of this is true. But! The show's most endearing quality is that it's taking shape. Our hero, Hank, is overcoming his severe writer's block and scribbling down something onto a blog, in between sexual encounters with gorgeous women which he picks up like rocks at a quarry. It's obnoxious. We get it. He's sexy, charming, smart, and everything else every guy would like to know he is.
Back to Californication's endearing quality. The show has a stellar but under-appreciated cast: Natasha McElhone and Evan Handler among others.
In the latest episode Hank (Duchovny) rants on Public Radio about the degradation of the English lexicon after his girlfriend says "LOL" in real life (IRL). He takes his disgust and blogs about it and then explains how he feels on the radio:
"Just the fact that people seem to be getting dumber and dumber, you know? I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned us into four-finger wank machines. The internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us but all it's really given us is Howard Dean's aborted candidacy and 24 hour access to kiddy porn. People don't write anymore. They blog. Instead of talking, they text. No punctuation, no grammar. You know, it just seems to me that it's just a bunch of stupid people tsudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people instead of using the King's English."
Oh but Hank, what are we both doing? "Hence my self-loathing," he says. Hank Moody has just spoken the rationale for this blog.
Anyway, there are also other pluses. Besides a decidedly dull plot -mediocre at best, there are plenty of pop references and chuckle-worthy moments. And the show's irreverence for the corruption of all literary works through film and the internet is admirable. At least Californication's heart is in the right place.

Twist

2007-09-11T21:47:00.000-07:00

I'm swamped with school. I'm behind on my work and am overloaded at the Michigan Daily; still, I manage to squeeze in a little leisure time, which I spend reading. I'm thoroughly engaged in Jeffrey Frank's latest novel Trudy Hopedale. Want complexity, a sprinkling of humor, an engrossing story, and interesting, unique characters in a realistic environment? Then Frank's latest novel is your dream come true! I highly recommend it. Not going to spoil anything though.