Saturday, December 31, 2011

Christmas is about family, not going to church!

Wait, what?

No, seriously, apparently that's where we are now. My mind boggles that people would decided that because Christmas falls on a Sunday, they shouldn't go to church. If that's where we are, not just as a culture, but as Christians, then we've really lost touch with the whole point. Even worse to me is the startling number of churches that cancelled services pre-emptively. I mean to say, really.

A certain subset of my in-laws even said this to me earlier today. Surprise was expressed that church where I attend was not cancelled and they commented that it makes sense to cancel church so you can spend time with your family. Not only is this misguided in a general way about what the meaning of Christmas is, but I think this also bespeaks a distance and lack of closeness between people who are supposed to be our family. The Bible speaks over and over about how our fellow Christians are our brothers, and to shun them because we're going to be with family in the strictly biological and legal sense seems short-sighted to me.

Link from FT.

The naïveté of libertarians

Some interesting thoughts on Ron Paul over at First Things, but the part that struck me particularly was the pointing out that libertarians take a remarkably Panglossian view of the individual outside of government and a rather Hobbesian view of the individual in government.
Non-pseudo-Nietzschean libertarians  have always struck me as somewhat Pollyannaish in their assumptions regarding the power—more precisely, the lack of power—of human sinfulness.  They see sinfulness in government, but somehow assume that the rest of us will be “good enough” with only the most minimal restraints.  What’s more, they seem to assume that a “merely individualist” public philosophy won’t have untoward consequences for our common lives together.

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Slow December

I apologize for the dearth of content, but Christmas preparations have occupied my time and I've come down with a cold on top of it all. I hope everyone has gotten everything done on time.

In honour of the season, I have a link to a long article, but one that repays your attention, I think. John C. Wright considers the reason for the season, and I'm willing to bet that regardless of what you think that means, he doesn't exactly mean the same thing.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Peter Jackson strikes again!

Not content to ruin the story of The Lord of the Rings with his monstrous film adaptation, he has now set his sights on another cherished portion of my childhood and prepares to mangle Tintin almost out of all recognition.

Jackson, is there no depth you will not plumb, fiend?

Friday, December 2, 2011

ST: Halloween episode

Tonight's episode is The Return of the Archons, and, judging from the teaser appended to the end of the previous episode, it looks like the Halloween episode. More mysticism than science and investigations of strange doings on a weird planet. Okay, to start, Sulu and "O'Neill" are being chased through an old town set by Grim Reaper lookalikes. Sulu is touched and his mind altered and the extra runs off. So we're already off to a good mysterious start.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

ST: Law and Order

Next up, Court Martial. It's like Law and Order and NCIS, but in space! I guess. I'm not sure about this episode either. Nifty, we open with several starships orbiting Earth? But they're on Starbase 11. Turns out the captain is going to have a court martial because one of his crewmen died. Spock turns up with the computer log and seems concerned. The dead man's kid then comes in and accuses him of hating her dad and murdering him and *shock* the computer log shows that Kirk jettisoned a pod (?) before the red alert. I was right, it will be Law and Order/NCIS... but in space!

ST: I have no concept of time

This episode is Tomorrow is Yesterday, and in fact I have no concept of time. No, what I mean to say is I have no idea what this one is about. So off we go, into the unknown together then. Ah, we open with a "modern" US Air Force plan taxiing for take-off. I've seen clips of this before in special features. Apparently our heroes have gone back in time somehow and have to deal with us backward 20th century folk. Just to start with, the Enterprise is about the most unconvincing model ever when they put it in the "blue sky".

Monday, November 28, 2011

Dick Cheney Eats Kittens

Someone in my apartment complex has that bumper sticker on their car. It's almost as good as the shirt that says:

Palin
Guns
Babies
Jesus

Which is, of course, brilliant because you can wear the shirt if you love her or hate her. The Cheney sticker is almost as good and sounds similar to the stuff IMAO comes up with regarding Cheney. What he actually titled his memoir was In My Time, which, while less punchy, probably helped with people continuing to take him seriously. On the whole, it was a pretty good book, though I'm not usually one to read political memoirs.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

ST: The Famous Alien

This is the episode with the famous green alien that Kirk fights. You know, the one with the ridiculous rock-throwing imitation bit? No? Not sure what I'm talking about? This bit, here. Yeah, this one. It's called Arena. We'll see if the rest of it was as ridiculous as that bit, after the jump.

ST: Gettin' medieval

Possibly, anyway. This episode is known to its friends and relations as The Squire of Gothos and I have no idea yet what it's going to be about. But what I am reminded of by the word "squire" is this interchange from the under-appreciated Soderbergh film The Limey.

Enough palaver, onto the episode!

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving

A very happy Thanksgiving to anyone who happens to read this blog. And to my co-author and brother, C, I hope you have a sufficiency of pie on this day. I'll be feasting with a few family and friends and look forward to good times, good company and good food. I hope all of you can say the same.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

A re-post of a Facebook "note" on social identity


I was pretty burnt out on news on PSU (and that without much consumption of it: I get news burnout pretty fast, especially with horrible things that don't affect my life or the lives of anyone I know), so it's pretty odd that I listened to an entire hour of PSU on NPR the other day. But the show was different from the typical investigative journalism focused on discovering and broadcasting the lurid details of something that titillates us by horrifying us. It was bookended by rebroadcasts of a PSU story from 2009. As someone who is baffled and intrigued by the profound depths of sports fanaticism, I was engrossed.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Wizard!

I finished the second, and final, book in Gene Wolfe's Wizard Knight series a few days ago. Oddly enough, the first book was called The Knight and the second was called The Wizard.

I find that I had not yet mentioned the first book here on the blog yet even though I thought I had. So! Thoughts on both, two-for-one.

Other than thinking that the latter volume ended up being a bit rushed, particularly at the end, I enjoyed both books quite a lot. I read a little bit about why Wolfe wrote these books before I read them, so I had something of an understanding coming in what they would be like. He was disappointed about the lack of modern heroic fantasy. That is to say, where the protagonist is actually heroic rather than a dirty grey, conflicted character who doesn't see the world in terms of right and wrong. So he set out to write a story of a knight who was a heroic knight as of old.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Christmas photos

I'm off with the wife and children to have the family Christmas photos taken. Perhaps another post today if I survive the ordeal. If I don't, know I bravely went down ruing the eclipse of Thanksgiving by Christmas, but was o'erwhelmed by the rest of my family who would start Christmasy things on All Saints Day if I would but relent.

ST: Emotionalism

No sign of McCoy's love interest from the last episode. She was getting all possessive there at the end, but apparently McCoy is like Jay-Z, gonna love 'em and leave 'em. Ever wonder where he got that hook that's so freakin' catchy? Right here.

In this episode, 7 crew members get stranded in a shuttlecraft and because of some sort of ionic radiation the Enterprise can't find them. Who's in this crew? Well, we have 4 random extras and Spock, McCoy and Scotty. Yes, that's right, they sent the first officer, the chief doctor and the chief engineer off on a dangerous mission into space together. 'Cause that makes sense.

Okay, you know the drill. Jump, fun, etc.

The limitations of loyalty

An excellent post on First Things about how loyalty changes from a virtue to a vice if not kept under proper regulation. More accurately, I think one could say that it isn't truly a virtue, but an aid to other virtues. At any rate, I've thought similar things, but I've never been so articulate.

ST: Worst. Episode. Ever.

You think I'm joking? You remember that ST:TNG episode where Data is playing Sherlock Holmes in the holodeck with LaForge as his Watson? Where they ask the computer for an opponent who is smarter than Data? And the computer actually creates ex nihilo an entity that is smarter than Data? Why don't they just ask the computer to solve all their problems? Apparently it could do that.

Anyway, this episode is worse. The hard truth is after the jump.

Friday, November 18, 2011

What did people do before chairs?

Have you ever heard anyone ask "How did we ever get along without computers?" It's a humorous thought, but with every new technological advance, we seem more and more reliant on the latest technology, and we "can't imagine how we ever got by without [whatever is being discussed]." As it happens, I'm writing a fictional story, in a fictional setting, meant to evoke the ancient near east, Mediterranean, and Europe. But as I write something about chairs, it strikes me: "I don't think there were chairs!" Of course, some people had chairs. But something didn't feel right.
       So I went to Wikipedia, and according to them, chairs were not common anywhere until the 16th century! My gut, once again, had steered me aright. For millennia before that, chairs were the birthright of kings. Commoners got by with.... well, what had they gotten by with? That was perplexing. In fact, I'm still in the process of sorting out how the innkeepers in the ancient world (either in the real one or in mine) might have gotten by without chairs. Have your customers sit on the floor? Maybe there was no public area in inns in those days, and you rented a room and sat on the floor there. I'm now trying to wrap my mind around whether, economically, there would have been public (pub-like) areas for people to go, have an ale, and relax with a bunch of strangers around. If you know the answer, don't tell me.
       ...At least, not until later this evening.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

There needs to be a different past tense for "cut"

It's just baffling reading some sentences and trying to figure out what the author means. Usually, this is due to poor grammar, clunky syntax: some imperfection that can be laid squarely at the feet of the author. However, sometimes, very rarely, the author does everything right, and the reader is nevertheless befuddled, due entirely to a failing of the English language itself. This is because "cutted" is not a word. Why not? I suppose someone thought he was being mighty clever. [Prepare for the jump into hyperblog...]

Saturday, November 12, 2011

More thoughts on reading and writing

An argument is made for writers needing to read in quantity for their writing to be of quality. A guest post by an editor at Tor books, Jim Frenkel, at the LJ of L. Jagi Lamplighter.

(Linked by John C. Wright.)

Want to really be subversive?

Here. I've obtained a copy of the most expensive photograph in the world. It cost $4.3 million at auction and now I'm going to let you copy it and keep it for free. What's that? It's incredibly dull and boring? It looks like something taken by a pretentious first-year photography student? And how does one sell a photograph anyway?

What are you, a philistine? Don't you know art when you see it?

I just flew in from [city redacted]

And, boy, are my arms tired. Perhaps I'll post something of substance tomorrow.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Here's what I've been watching

[Update: aaaaaand the Hulu embedding still doesn't seem to work.]

http://www.hulu.com/watch/245484/nova-making-stuff-smaller

That and Avatar: the Last Airbender. Also, I'm starting to read more again, and not just rants on the internet. Real stuff. Not much to report, though, because I have yet to finish anything.

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Ramblin' Man

I have to travel for work next week. Well, I don't have to in the sense that I will be unable to work unless I travel to my destination, but my employer thinks that it will be in some way beneficial for me to be there and it would be counter-productive to me personally to attempt to disabuse them of this notion.

I look forward to two aspects of this trip. I have never been to the city to which I travel and have only every passed through the state without really stopping to see anything. Despite the fact that I won't see much of it now (because of work), I enjoy being new places. Also, apparently there is some sort of local burger challenge. Perhaps I will return with a complimentary t-shirt or something.

Happy Birthday!

My co-author here marks another full year complete today. Many happy returns of the day, bro.

Friday, October 28, 2011

ST: Pointy eared monsters

Interesting. This episode seems to start with some sort of religious ceremony being set up. Not sure if it's church, a marriage or a funeral, but something's up and it's going to be broadcast all over the ship.

Ah. A marriage. The classic tune. Two random extras getting hitched by the captain. They wear their regular uniforms; the bride's only nod to the occasion is a small corsage. The marriage is interrupted by a "condition red" as an outpost reports attack by an unknown ship. Spoileration and happy-exciting-fun-times after the jump.

ST: Shakespeare

First up tonight: The Conscience of a King. A reference to Hamlet, of course. The episode opens on the Scottish play, however, instead of Hamlet. Neptune's ocean? Apparently, this episode is about a war criminal and whether or not he is still alive and can be brought to justice. Unfortunately, his name is Kodos. Yep, just like one of the silly aliens from The Simpsons. More ridiculousness after the jump!

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

A slice of neo-noir

I watched Layer Cake a while back and it's taken a few days for me to decide what I really thought about it. I'll get some of the basic things people like to know out of the way now.

It was somewhat violent. There was certainly a great deal of violence in the film, but a lot was implied and it didn't seem to me that the director ever went out of his way to try and make an impression with some gory twist or over-the-top moment. A great deal of it adhered to the dictum, most famously associated with Hitchcock, that what you let the audience imagine will be far more effective than anything you actually show them.

The language was profane. This was a British film, after all, and they have become a lot more coarse culturally than the US is. There are enough crudities to choke a moderately-sized horse.

There wasn't much sex. There are few brief scenes shown where the camera pans past things without lingering that are rather explicit. I found that I was able to fast forward through things with ease. There is one scene in a hotel room (you'll know what it is when you get there) where it is important to know what is said at the conclusion of it, but if you can still get audio at 2x speed the way I can, you can probably make it through without offending your eyes overmuch.

Okay, more detailed thoughts and some minor spoilers after the jump.

Are you tired of Gene Wolfe yet?

Because I'm not, and you're going to have to put with some more posts about him and his work. I finished reading On Blue's Waters the other day while walking back home from the bus stop. Wolfe really knows how to get a hook into the reader and drag him along with the story. This tale picks up a couple decades on from where Exodus from the Long Sun ended. The protagonist of this tale is the writer of the previous account. He writes this one in the first person about himself and his adventures in the past interspersed with accounts of what is happening to him at the time of his writing. It's an interesting device and allows for two plotlines to be set up in parallel and keep the reader intensely interested in both.

ST: And now, the exciting conclusion

On to part two, finishing up what started in the last post. I think, overall, this was a good choice for the series. It allowed for the development of the characters as much as for interesting stories and plots.

The "last time, on Star Trek" is not clips of the previous episodes as much as just a summary of what happened by Kirk for his official log. A solid choice as well, I think. Finishing after the jump.

ST: A Very Special Two-Part Episode

These are a couple episodes that I've seen before: Menagerie Parts I and II. We get our first glimpse of a starbase in this episode (Starbase 11) and meet the previous commander of the Enterprise, Captain Pike. He's been horribly disfigured and disabled in an accident while heroically saving the lives of others and we find that Spock served with him for years prior to Kirk taking command of the Enterprise. Which makes one wonder why they didn't just promote Spock to be captain. But we'll leave that aside.

Essentially, if I recall correctly, these episodes boiled down to a way to use the footage from the pilot so it didn't go to waste. The actor prior to Shatner was the captain in the pilot didn't end up being the regular captain, for whatever reason, and this was a way to include him, use the old footage in a flashback and make a two-part episode that turns a lot of our expectations on their heads. Fun times after the jump.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Arguing about water

Also from that same post that provided the previous link, is this rant by someone who wants you to know that H2O is not water. Here, I'll let him say it.
It is a straightforward fact, corrections to it are endlessly ignored, but it is simply false to say that water is H2O unless we are speaking very, very loosely.
...
A glass of water, pure as water can be, is better understood as containing H2O, OH–, H3O+ and other related but less common ions, and even this is a vast oversimplification (if we could get truly pure water, which we cannot). Our current best understanding of the electron transfers that give water the properties we observe is a statistical average of ever changing interactions so complex as to be quite literally unthinkable. Indeed, the problem is “not that we are unsure which (distribution of types of) microstructure is the correct one. The point is that there is no one correct microstructure, because the microstructure depends as much on the context and functions just as another nominal essence would” (van Brakel, 2000b, 80–81).
I think it's fair to say then, that water is H2O unless you're speaking very, very pedantically. To me, this is like those folks (though I did enjoy the topical pop culture reference at the end of the video) who get so worked up over the concept of "Π" and insist that we should use "Τ" instead. They'll tell you Π is wrong, but really they just find it less conducive to the way they think. Which is fine, but not the same thing by a long chalk.

NFL or Kenya?

Which would you rather have? Turns out, they're both worth about the same. At least by some measures.
(Via First Things.)

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Mobile assumptions

As I signed into Google to post on the blog, a screen came up after I typed my password that encouraged me to enter my mobile phone number so that if I became locked out and forgot my password, my cell could be used in some way to get me logged back in. I do not, in fact, have a cell phone. I find it interesting that they have become so ubiquitous in only 30 years or so that the common assumption is that everyone has one. What other technological inventions have similar rates of adoption, I wonder? MP3 players, perhaps?

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Fill-um

Okay, did the books, now for the movies and I'll be all caught up. Then I can procrastinate again with a clear conscience.

Playing catch-up

Every time I fall behind in posting about the books and movies I enjoy, I tend to continue procrastinating because the job of work catching up keeps becoming more daunting the more time passes. So I'm going to get that out of the way now. If you don't care, don't jump.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

I have of late--

but wherefore I know not-- lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
~Hamlet, Act II, scene ii

Monday, October 10, 2011

End the occupation: bring the muppets home

The text here may or may not be worth your literacy, but I thought the pictures were worth your time, if you haven't already seen them.

http://www.tauntr.com/blog/occupy-sesame-street-gets-violent

ST: Condition Alert

Tonight's exciting episode is The Corbomite Maneuver. I thought about titling this post "The Made-Up Words" episode, but before I got logged in all the way the Enterprise encountered an interstellar Rubik's Cube that someone had already helpfully solved and gone to "Condition Alert". Apparently they don't have the red and yellow alerts that I remember from TNG. I'll try to remember when those first appear. Now! On to the silliness!

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Literacy that isn't

I've been reading a lot of Gene Wolfe lately. In one of his essays (or perhaps it was a transcribed speech) Wolfe talks about the dangers of modern illiteracy. He views the standard understanding of illiteracy as an unwelcome eventuation; that people should learn to read he assumes as a good thing. (I am not so sanguine.) But he notes that he fears even more that people are learning to read and then refusing to do so. They have the knowledge but refuse to use it.

I think that's an interesting point of view. I don't agree that not learning to read and write at all is a bad thing, so it is easy for me to agree that learning to do so and failing to use those skills is worse, but I'm not sure I had considered that previous to this. At least, not in such words. He takes the view that it is more dangerous to give people the ability to read great literature and have them not do so than to have them be unable to do so at all. And I'm not sure he's not right. Too many people are able to read great works of literature, but scorn to do so. It's not that they just don't have time or interest, but that they actively despise doing so and make a virtue of the fact that they spend their time watching Dancing with the Stars or Jersey Shore instead. This active contempt for the finer parts of our civilisation is more of a threat to it than having a multitude that would like to be able to do so and is unable. At least then the great works are valued even if they cannot be fully appreciated.

Sporty things

An interesting question raised at Baseball Reference about a play in the Cards-Phillies game. It's things like this that are the most fun because they are out of the ordinary and provide fodder for discussion. I like it when players are alert enough to try for an extra base and even more when fielders are alert to their attempts to do so. People talk a lot about home runs, but I think the run down is one of the most exciting plays in baseball. They tend to last a lot longer too.

Also! Linked from the sister site Pro Football Reference, if you scroll down here there is a discussion of the fact that the Patriots have the greatest offense in football history over a four-game span so far this year. They're only 3-1, however, because their defense is so bad that the second-greatest offense in football history could be made by combining the stats of their opponents over those same four games. I think that's awesome.

100 posts?

We scoff at that milestone. Thus we take no note of passing it by. (Does this still count as paralipsis?)

The beginning of the end for "you and me"

A lot of grammarians are shocked to hear people nowadays say something like "The president is giving a speech, and it is important for you and I to listen," or "It's like he's talking to you and I!" or "Between you and I, this speech is not his best." People have forgotten that the word "me" can be used after the words "you and" - and it seems like we had just gotten people to stop using "you and me" in the subjective case! So where did this come from? House of Pain's 1992 hit song will now play in your head to give you instructions on how to find out.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

ST: Pointy pointy

Final episode on this disc is Dagger of the Mind. We start out with an convict escaping from a penal colony and getting loose on the Enterprise. No time is wasted, he clocks a red-shirted crewman in less than 5 minutes. Another couple minutes, another redshirt down and he's got a phaser. Plot twists after we move to hyperspace.

ST: Tom Cruise's kid

This episode is Miri, which I could have sworn was Tom Cruise's kid's name. Oh, looked it up, it's Suri. So, close. Anyway, this episode is one of those "parallel world" episodes, only they didn't bother with another universe, they just happened to find another planet out there that looked just like Earth Prime. And there was a distress signal, so they beam on down. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Rand and two expendables (in red shirts!). Yada, yada, yada, jump.

ST: Nursery Rhyme Edition

Tonight's episode is What Are Little Girls Made Of? My guess is that it won't be sugar and spice and everything nice. We start out in a promising fashion. Once again the Enterprise is looking for a lost scientist who has made startling discoveries but seems to have been lost for years. Spoilers, blah, blah, jump.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Rick Roll at Yahoo! Finance?

Ok, I saw a link at Y!F (what all the cool kids are calling it these days) with a very interesting title, so I clicked on it. The article to which it linked had less information on the subject than the link's tag. Even the headline was different. I feel Rick Rolled. I still don't know why the Dow is up and the Nasdaq is down.

Digital Video Disc Round Up

Gee whillikers! Has it really been since I watched I Know Where I'm Going that I've said anything about the movies I've been enjoying? This must be remedied. I guess I've been talking about the Star Trek episodes I've been watching, but there have been a bunch of movies in there too. Eight of them, in fact. Summaries and judgements after the jump.

Sunseed

Okay, that title was mostly an excuse to link to this. But it's also a bit of a play on words since I'm going to talk about the Long Sun series by Gene Wolfe. You need to read Wolfe's books. Read them!

I read the first two books in a single volume, Litany of the Long Sun, but the library only has individual volumes for the last two books. I finished Caldé of the Long Sun a couple days ago and it's fantastic stuff. It's a slow realization (at least it was for me, since I don't try to puzzle books out as I read them, preferring to be pulled along by the story if it's conducive to that) that the series ties in with the same universe as that of the New Sun series.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Emperor Radiohead has no clothes

Watch this, from Saturday Night Live.

<object width="512" height="288"><param name="movie" value="http://www.hulu.com/embed/mle6OogH8mEZ5ublqPUDtw"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.hulu.com/embed/mle6OogH8mEZ5ublqPUDtw" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"  width="512" height="288" allowFullScreen="true"></embed></object>

Scathing criticism after the hop.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

No beer and no TV make Homer *mumble, mumble*....

I suppose the relative anonymity of this blog means I can speak about drinking beer without fear of the disapprobation of my relations and friends. My religious convictions are such that I worship with Christians who tend to look on any alcohol consumption with a very jaundiced eye. After being very bold and drinking a beer in front of my parents on their last visit, my mother thought it necessary to speak to me about the dangerous precedent I was setting for my children and her fear that they would take up drinking secretly when I was not about and end up alcoholics and ruining their lives. Thus my hesitancy. Why antagonize unnecessarily? More detail about drinking generally than you are probably interested in follows the jump.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

I like porters and stouts

I can understand (and even drink) ales, lagers, etc., but they just don't stand up to the rich fullness of the flavor of a good stout or porter. On the other hand, the appeal of mass-market beer is inexplicable to me - why would anyone want to drink something like Budweiser, Coors, or Michelob, or any brand with more CO2 than flavor? I'm not into fancy Belgian fruity beers, but I understand the point, and someday I might get into them. I don't care if you judge me. Assuming one of the countless drinkers of flavorless American beer (or foreign beer that emulates American insipidness) happens to be reading this, would you mind telling me why you buy something like Miller Light? At least, if it's for anything other than a drinking game, why? If the point is to get drunk, liquor can do that faster and, I think, cheaper. Of course, that has flavor. I suppose the idea is to get drunk without having to taste anything at all.

ST: Interstellar bordello?

Tonight's offering is Mudd's Women. Apparently this is a famous episode, but I know little to nothing about it coming in. So far it looks like he's an intergalactic pimp. Fun times and ruinings of the ending after the jump.

Ironclad

Ironclad is a medieval action movie. It is probably the goriest, most violent movie not directed by Eli Roth. I liked it.

Paul Giamatti delivers an excellent performance as the unflinchingly self-confident King John, especially in his rant on Divine Right. By popular request (one ambivalent sounding sentence from one person), more after the J. (Spoiler warning and descriptions of disturbing imagery warning)

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

ST: Evil twins... in space!

Tonight's episode is The Enemy Within. Featuring Kirk's evil twin from a transporter accident. Episode begins on a standard alien planet with a lot of Styrofoam rocks. We also get to see a dog wearing a shag carpet costume. And that's in the first 30 seconds. More fun times after the jump including spoilerz.

Friday, September 16, 2011

ST: Yellow is the new red

Next episode is The Naked Time. A red-shirt (wearing blue) comes back from a planet with Spock where everyone has died mysteriously. No one thinks about a quarantine when they return and the mysterious death of the nameless crewman doesn't seem to spark any suspicion about what happened.  The complete lack of any sensible protocols is laughable. Just like last episode, Kirk refuses to credit the warnings of his crew. More fun times after the jump. Turns out the disease is one that causes all the actors to chew the scenery.

David Mamet is a mensch

David Mamet is another of my favourite writers. Certainly my favourite writer for stage and screen who is yet living. (I confess, I haven't seen one of his plays on stage, but a number of them have been made into movies I have seen, so I think it's fair to include stage.)

He recently wrote a book called The Secret Knowledge about his move from the left end of the political spectrum to the right. It wasn't quite that simple, though. Mamet talks about how he discovered over a period of time that while he thought of himself as a liberal or man of the left, he slowly discovered that he didn't believe or adhere to a lot of the positions that went along with that and discovered that, if he were to be honest about what his beliefs and positions entailed, he was actually a pretty conservative guy.

The book won't be earth-shattering for anyone who is conservative, nor will it be terribly persuasive for someone who is still a liberal, but it does do a good job of explaining one man's journey and there is a bit of red meat for those of us on the right. Mamet has never been one to pull punches and he doesn't start here. His flair for punchy, memorable dialogue comes through loud and clear on every page.

If you enjoy a good conservative polemic, are interested in how one man's political thought can evolve or just are a fan of David Mamet, it's probably worth a read.

Because no one likes you monkey boy.

I breezed through John Miller's Our Oldest Enemy about, obviously, the French. It wasn't a bad read, certainly a quick and easy read. It was published not too long after the whole "Freedom Fries" nonsense and serves as a good primer to the actual history of our relationship with the French. It helps do away with the nonsense that the French assistance during the Revolutionary War was anything more than a temporary matter during a time when our interests ran parallel briefly.

It's not the hit piece that I've seen it made out to be, but it's not more than a quick, popular history of one very limited aspect of American foreign policy and involvement, so don't expect too much if you pick it up.

This also affords me the opportunity to tell my favourite joke about the French. Why are there trees planted along the Champs Élysées? Because Germans prefer to march in the shade.

Wolfe the man

No, not Nero, but that's not a bad guess. I've been reading a lot of books by Gene Wolfe lately and finding them very enjoyable. I'm not sure I can easily state why I find them thus, but I do. The stories all seem to be peopled with real people, not flat characters. That is, the characters act differently, have different motivations and interact with each other in ways that seem and feel realistic to me.

Also, each book seems to have a moral protagonist; at least, insofar as any imperfect being can be called "moral". None of the heroes is perfect, each makes mistakes and often people die, but at heart each is struggling and striving to do right in their quest. More details about the books after the jump.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

No, it's not about the hazards of deep sea diving

When one states in such environs as these that one likes a children's television show, one is tempted to try to excuse it, or explain a higher, sophisticated reason for liking it, but I think such a tendency is backwards. I like Avatar: The Last Airbender. I think when someone likes something characterized by graphic violence or "adult themes" (i.e. people sinning), or even a G-rated, defiantly intellectual work, conscientious explanation should be forthcoming. It should be taken for granted that we like innocent adventure as made for children - where there may seem to be danger, but everything is under the control of an omnipotent guide (a team of writers who will not let the main characters die), strange, fantastical places and creatures abound, and the good guys have supernatural power and always win in the end. I chastise myself for feeling the need to explain it, but further explanation follows after the jump.

Monday, September 12, 2011

ST: I sense a theme

Third Star Trek episode and once again our heroes have to battle an enemy from within with unimaginable powers who has been corrupted by them. Which is a lot like the last episode. And it was kinda like the one before, though they're taking it to further extremes each time. Looks like the lesson this time is that love will conquer. Sort of. Fun times after the jump.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

ST: Charles, no!

Still Trekking. Charlie X is the next episode up. It's painful to watch. The eponymous character is so completely devoid of any social ability that it's difficult to keep your eyes on the screen. The episode also has the song styles of Uhura to Spock's badly pantomimed playing of some sort of lyre.

As always, I'm gonna spoil things after the jump.

ST: Boldly going

So, I don't know if I mentioned it, but I've got Netflix now. I've got a dual queue going; one for movies and one for television. I've been running the movie queue for a month or so now, but just started the TV queue. First up: Star Trek.

The first episode is The Man Trap. The introduction starts with the familiar split infinitive and talks of the "five year mission". Spoileration to follow!

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Shrive

I like the word "shrive". Even better is the past tense "shriven". And there is always "shrove" and "shrift". I like the sound of the "r" after the initial "sh". There aren't so many words that begin that way.

Perhaps that's why I've never liked "shroom". It's an imposter, an interloper, a fraud. The definition of "shrive" after the jump.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

To quote Mr. Plant

...it's been a long time. I feel a little overwhelmed by my brother's relentless pace of new posts (well, technically, it relents for a day or two here and there, but always comes back with a vengeance). As our reader(s) may have noticed, my mien is more the obsessive lingering on a single subject until it has long since lost its interest to everyone else.

I've been trying to figure out what exactly I've been doing with the bulk of my time, since I don't watch as many movies as K, or read as many books (though that difference alone is probably entirely or very nearly in the pace at which I read, not in the number of hours dedicated to it), nor do I work as many hours at traditional salaried work. In fact, I'm pretty sure I do only one thing significantly more hours than K (if we lump all web browsing together instead of demarcating discrete topics), and that is writing fiction.

As I've linked my writing to my secret identity, but my anonymity on this blog is important to me, I cannot really link to it from here or promote it. In fact, I don't know that I have much interesting to say on this blog at all, though perhaps I'll link to something strange I stumble upon (in the original figurative sense) on the web.

Monday, September 5, 2011

These are some big grapes

Tasty as well, which is not always the case with out-sized produce.

British cinema

If I recall correctly, using England technically only refers to that part of the British Isles which is the historical country of England, though it is used (and has been used in the past) to refer to the entire collections of unified countries in a casual way. Great Britain is England, Wales and Scotland and the United Kingdom is the aforementioned along with Northern Ireland. Or maybe I have those two backwards? Hum.

At least it's not May Day

Welcome to a holiday celebrating the trade and labour unions. I'm not sorry to have a day off work, but the day of unions has come and gone in the US, at the least, and the sooner they disappear the better off we'll all be.

New Blogger Interface

I'm giving it another try now that it's out of beta. I didn't like it before and I'm not terribly keen on it again at the moment. The interface is a bit cleaner and more streamlined, but it's a bit too 30's-art-deco clean for my taste. It feels like they dumped a lot of decorative detail in order to get rid of them rather than because it actually helped in any way. The functionality all seems to be there and they've added a couple new touches to the dashboard, so I'll see how long I can stand it.

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Compare and contrast

The other feature film I watched in the recent past was Shizukanaru ketto. Or, in English, The Quiet Duel. It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a comedy. But I couldn't help but compare it to Stranger Than Fiction. Mostly because of the different ways in which the movies resolved themselves; this one followed through in a better manner consistent with the plot and characters even though that meant a film that was probably not as commercially appealing. Jump into the details. (Minor spoilers ahead.)

Is Will Ferrell a comedic genius?

I'm not convinced. Sure, he has his moments where's very funny, but he misses with regularity as well. I'll just say that I think he's quite talented. Part of my difficulty probably stems from the fact that a lot of his movies are not really geared towards me as an audience. That is to say, his humour seems directed (in large part) at audience that is one step up from the Jackass audience. He does, however, have his moments where he takes a step or two up from that and Stranger Than Fiction was one of those moments. More thoughts after the jump.

Thanks for the memories

I won't spend a lot of time describing the plot since I don't want to give too much away and since I've already done it once, but I do have to note that I finished reading Latro in the Mist and it was spectacular.

Part of my enjoyment may derive from the fact that I have a bit of knowledge about Greeks from the time of Herodotus. I'm no expert, by any means, but having read Herodotus and Thucydides (in translation, of course) and a couple books about the wars of that time much that I read was familiar including some of the characters that Latro runs across in the course of his adventures.

Even without any familiarity with the time and place, I can't recommend the book highly enough. I don't think I've enjoyed a story this much since I read the Aubry-Maturin series for the first time. The book ends without a great deal of plot resolution, but in a manner consistent with the tale. Not to fear, however, since there is another book that was written later that picks up our hero's tale again. I'm reading Soldier of Sidon now and, while it doesn't grip quite as much as the first book, I'm enjoying it; I'll post a brief review of it when I finish in another day or two.

Go get and read Latro in the Mist. Do it now. You won't regret it.

In other words

I started thinking about how nice it would be to have one's writing cited in the OED. So, at a whim, I decided to see how many words used Raymond Chandler quotations to illustrate. Turns out there's a lot; 435 citations in fact. So I also checked to see how many words for which Raymond Chandler was the first quotation. Not so many, but still a respectable figure: eight. Of course, this doesn't mean these are the absolute earliest usages or that he coined them, merely that it was the earliest found when looking for examples.

hot rod
itty-bitty
ju-ju
mesc
prettied
private eye
stooge
torcher

After the jump are the first page of words from the OED. It was 100, but apparently there was another R. Chandler in the 18th century who wrote travel books.

Happy word fun times

I've been reading several Gene Wolfe novels lately and he's not a man to mince words. He used one that was new to me throughout The Book of the New Sun: lictor. An excellent word. A noun,

Etymology:  Latin; perhaps agent-n. < lig-, root of ligāre to bind.
Roman Hist.

 a. An officer whose functions were to attend upon a magistrate, bearing the fasces before him, and to execute sentence of judgement upon offenders. A dictator had twenty-four lictors, a consul twelve.

1382—1843
 

 b. transf.

1638—1883
 

Derivatives

licˈtorian adj. Obs. pertaining to a lictor.

1656—1656

And that got me thinking about other words I like.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Cinema notes

I've been too busy with work to post a lot and I've fallen a bit behind in mentioning books and movies and things. I hadn't realized how far behind it was until I sat down and compiled a list of what it was I've watched and read that I haven't posted about.

Turns out I've watched fully five films and finished four books. I'll sum up a few of each after the jump and only dedicate full posts to a couple of each.

Break on through!

Friday, August 26, 2011

Carter Done Been Got

I watched both the Get Carter movies over a couple days. This one and then this one. The first one was a better film, the second one actually had a moral core. Stallone probably wasn't the right guy for the role.

Spoilers ahead!

It is... forbidden.

I watched Forbidden Planet a couple nights ago. Turns out I'd seen a big chunk of it before on TV or something without realizing it. It was an odd B-class sci-fi flick. On that list I linked to about the best Shakespeare films it's on the list as version of The Tempest. I'm not familiar enough with that play to know if it's at all a faithful adaptation, but it was still a fun movie even if the ending was rather obvious.

Don't be a one-trick pony

This is my final response to my brother's post about Intellectual Property laws and his subsequent comments in the thread here. If you're not interested, just move on and don't bother to make the jump below.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

The cultural contributions of the U.S.S.R

We've mentioned in passing in the comments on another post the cultural contributions of the U.S.S.R. and I wanted to bring one to the fore:


Trololo!

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Was it really green?

The problem with black and white movies is that you can't tell what colour things are supposed to be. For example, though I have learned that Harpo Marx was known for wearing a red wig, I watched Marx Bros. movies too many times before I found that out. I can't conceive of the wig as being anything other than blond, though I know it is not.

I watched Green for Danger the other night which was a British film; a murder mystery set in a hospital during the Second World War. Now, because I couldn't see the colours of anything with distinction, I assumed that the "green" from the title referred to the colour of the scrubs since the important murders took place in the operating room. Had I been able to see the colours of the other objects I might have been able to piece together the mystery more effectively.

The movie as a whole was pretty well done. I enjoyed the character of the detective immensely. I like detectives to be competent and I have a weakness for witty dialogue. (See Marlowe, Philip.) There was a twist at the end which was necessary for a bit of misdirection to work, but I still didn't like it. On the whole, as I said however, it was a good film. Short too, only 90 minutes or so. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys mysteries.

English is easy

Or so this article argues. I've often thought some similar things. I find the gendered nouns of other languages confusing and they have too many verb tenses. Plus, no other language is as euphonious as English used properly. Others have a surface beauty, but only English can be made to serve a detailed purpose and take you aback with its beauty as well. I suppose you could say that English is the only language with beauty and brains.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Mists of memory

I'm not even all the way through it, but I have to note here that I'm reading Latro in the Mist by Gene Wolfe and it is fantastic! The plot seems a bit like Memento in which the protagonist has no real short-term memory to speak of. In this case, the main character Latro can remember the events of the day, but after about 12 or 14 hours (judging by the clues in the book) things start to fade away.

All the jokes can't be good

And in Four Weddings and a Funeral most of them weren't. I don't really enjoy comedies where the humour is supposed to derive from uncomfortable social situations. That is, I don't like to watch other people being embarrassed.

More than this, the whole stupid movie was a propaganda vehicle for the idea that marriage is completely irrelevant to romantic love. And, of course, the most stable and dedicated couple was the homosexual one. Everyone else was pretty much torn and conflicted about their relationships. A horrid film. Skip it.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Known Unknown

No, I haven't been reading Donald Rumsfeld's memoirs. I watched a movie the other night called Unknown. (Not to be confused with Unknown. Frankly, this one sounds like a better plot, but with twist endings...) I don't keep up with movie releases much, but it seemed to me that this one didn't make much of an impact when it was in theaters. There was one big reason I didn't like this film and find it odd that it would rate a 7 over at IMDB. But it's a spoiler, so meet me after the jump if you can't successfully ward off your curiosity.

Saturday, August 13, 2011

This book is broken.

Jane McGonigal (yeah, I'd never heard of her either) wrote a book called Reality is Broken. Her thesis is, as best I understand it, that reality would be a lot better if it were more like games. Or maybe it's that if everyone played more games (by which she mostly means computer games) our world would be a better place and we could whip it into utopia in no time.

Leaving aside the ridiculous overstatements and assumptions she makes regarding the benefits of computer games, to me the most damning critique of her book is that she takes no account of griefers. That is to say, there is nothing in her book that talks about the tendency of a not insignificant portion of gamers to spend their time playing what one could call a meta-game. That game is simple and can be played in almost any multi-player game. It simply involves doing everything you can to ruin the game for everyone else. In all her talk about how wonderful games are will do everything eventually, from stopping tooth decay to saving our immortal souls (I exaggerate for effect), she has no thought for the breakers, the saboteurs, the people who only want to watch the world burn. Don't waste your time.

Thursday, August 11, 2011

What are the best Shakespeare movies?

An interesting post from First Things takes note of a new Shakespeare adaptation that's coming and posts the Rotten Tomatoes list of the best 30 Shakespeare movies. I haven't seen them all, but it seems a reasonable list. Of their list of 30, I've seen the top 5 as well as 8, 11, 18, 29 and 30. I wouldn't put West Side Story on the list at all (hated it), and I'd re-order the other four (Branagh's Hamlet is my fav), but overall I'm impressed.

Of course, now that I have Netflix, I'll put the rest on the list and watch them eventually.

EDIT: I forgot to note that I won't watch 16, since I avoid movies made by people who rape children.

Don't cry for me, Salamanca.

The book I was reading during my commute was called Salamanca, 1812. I enjoy military history, but my knowledge of the Napoleonic wars is culpably small and insignificant. Salamanca was the most significant battle and allied victory during the Peninsular campaigns.

The book is kind of a two-track book; it is a straightforward account of the battle as well as a look behind the curtain of military history. Each chapter describes a portion of the battle and then is followed by a delving into the sources and their accuracy (or lack thereof) and the choices and weighing that an historian has to do in order to write a coherent narrative that is probably not too far off from the truth.

The narrative of the battle was well done and easy to read. It was clear and I learned a good deal about it even just reading one book once. The other portion I could have done without, for the most part. I think it would have been better to spend less time debating the evidence and what debating was done should have been integrated into the text. On the other hand, that may be so because I have a bit more background (though nothing like a professional historian) in military history than the average person.

The short summary is that it's a good book about the topic and for anyone at all interested it would be well worth the read.

Just keep telling yourself that

I read a fascinating book called I Told Me So by a guy with a funny name. Gregg Ten Elshof is who he claims to be, though how one would pronounce that name I do not know. The book is about the nature of self-deception, the perils and even what Mr Ten Elshof considers the benefits of the way we fool ourselves.

I found it to be an excellent book that helped me notice the ways in which I deceive myself about my flaws and sins as well as about more mundane matters. I'll probably talk about it more later; I mentioned it to the education guy at church and now I'm teaching a class using the book starting next quarter. We'll see how that goes. At any rate, I recommend the book highly.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Ah, poetry

The article itself has a serious point and is worth a read, but what I wanted to make sure you didn't miss was this part:
I stuck to the poets of previous centuries for the most part, although I was vaguely aware that poets were not an extinct species, that dark corners of the planet still held strange specimens who wrote without meter or rhyme about The Orgasm and the joys of life as a Maoist rebel in Punjab, but I gave them a wide berth for fear that I might catch something and lose my ability to write with capital letters. 
Ah, the sweet smell of win.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

The first thing we do...

Shakespeare knew what o'clock it was. I read a book of a lawyer's reminiscences and it was just as arrogant, self-serving and smug as one would expect it to be. It was called Off the Record: Sidebars from a Lawyer's Life. Apparently the author was some sort of big wheel in the California trial lawyer circles and has all the fault that one would expect with such a profession in such a place in addition to the usual lawyerly amorality. Some of the stories are entertaining, but the book as a whole isn't worth mining through to find them.

He who would pun, would pick a pocket

As one who delights in puns, I dispute that strenuously, but I read a book on the differences and similarities of humour in different countries that was titled The Mirth of Nations. It was scholarly and pretty well put together, but I was hoping for more examples and less analysis of the reasons behind such humour. I wouldn't suggest it unless you're a student of psychology or sociology with an interest in humour specifically.

Get a grip

I read the next Parker novel The Handle and it was a bit of a disappointment. The first novels were pretty good in large part, I think, because they weren't too fanciful. They had some fairly ridiculous moments where Parker single-handedly fights the mob, but nothing too over the top. This novel however involves Parker making deals and alliances with the mob and the FBI and involves an amphibious raid on an off-shore gambling outpost and efforts to secure a Nazi war criminal. It just all seemed a bit much. We'll see how the next one goes; I've got The Rare Coin Score on hold at the library.

Sunday, July 31, 2011

What's your education worth?

This would really have put a dent in the Weasley's bank balance. I've only seen the movies, but didn't they have four children there at one time?

For my friend Ms Books

If anyone will appreciate it this, you will.

For my friend in Ecuador

Apropos of a discussion we had about Shane Claiborne's book The Irresistable Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, I think this would be a worthwhile read.

Via First Thoughts.

Test your vocabulary

Apparently I'm a bit above average? I credit the reading I do. Test yourself here.

Preaching to the choir

I read a short book titled A Reader's Manifesto that has seen an odd publishing life. It started as a small book called Gorgons in the Pool that was published as a vanity publication from Amazon; only 100 were printed. 20 were sent by the author around to various news outlets as review copies and no more were ever sold from Amazon except to the author himself. It was eventually noticed by The Atlantic Monthly and they ran a slimmed down and modified version of the book in their magazine, after which people began to sit up and take notice a bit more. This edition is the filled out original version with some edits and to include a section that responds to some of the criticism he received in response to the essay version in The Atlantic.

Oh, no... Looks like we're going to have to jump!

I wish it wasn't titled.

Because then I'd ask how many people recognized the song before the lyrics start.

Win.

Saturday, July 30, 2011

In lieu of an essay, a simple question

I've been wrestling with a vast response to K's last comment on the "Against IP rights" post, and I realized that it just comes down to a few questions. We'll start with just one.

Do you believe in freedom of association? (That is, that a person ought to be free to associate with whom one will?)

Thursday, July 28, 2011

S is for Space

No, it's not a Sesame Street vignette. It's an old collection of Ray Bradbury stories that I found on the shelf at my in-laws'. I'd read them all before in other collections, but they were worth re-reading, if you're into that sort of thing. I enjoy the way that Bradbury can evoke emotions with mundane settings, sci-fi or fantasy settings or any other, really. His work isn't written to be a part of a particular genre so much as it is to tell stories that are interesting, funny, sad, terrifying, or whatever. The art of the short story seems to be dying out if not already dead, at least in English. Do yourself a favour and pick up a book of his and appreciate a master at work.

Heretic!

I've been meaning to read some of Hilaire Belloc's work for years now and I finally got around to getting one of his books from the library. (No, I'm not talking about the magnificent book of children's poems, Cautionary Tales for Children. Though I read that too and I'll have a brief notice later.) The book I read was The Great Heresies, which was written in 1938. That's germane because I think his opinions on heresies may have undergone some revision had he lived to see the changes of Vatican II.

In his book Belloc names 5 great heresies. In his writing, Catholicism is synonymous with Christianity and anything other than Catholicism is not rightfully called Christianity. He deals with ideas he considers to be heretical to Christian belief. Those are, in chronological order, Arianism, Islam (which he calls "Mohammedanism"; and since I think it is a better term I will use it from here on as well), Albigensianism, the Reformation (Protestantism) and Modernism. This last he notes is not a specific or general heresy in the form of the other four, but a competing idea which seeks nothing less than the destruction of Christianity. (He differentiates this from Mohammedanism since he thinks Mohammedanism is fundamentally derivative of Christianity and is thus a corruption rather than something entirely other.)

Meet me on the flip side for more details and quotations!

My timing is awful

Since I've decided to quit one of my vices (World of Warcraft), I clearly need another vice with which to replace it. In a brilliant move I decided to join Netflix at the end of July a couple days before they announced their giant price-hike to get both DVDs and streaming.

So I've decided to start with the DVD only option and perhaps I can turn around the DVDs fast enough to make it worth my while. If I'm feeling particularly ambitious I might even post movie reviews. No promises though.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

I just flew in from the East Coast

And, boy, are my arms tired.

I'll resume posting in earnest tomorrow after I've recovered a bit.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Free will or determinism?

People argue over (or debate, if you prefer) whether we choose our actions (free will), or those actions are chosen for us by some combination of our genes, our environment, our limbic and other brain functions - what have you in the physical world - or even by God Himself (determinism). There are a lot of very sophisticated arguments on both sides, and I even thought of a game theory argument, not so much as to disproving determinism, but rather to prove that one should not hold it as a view - a sort of paraphrase of Pascal's wager. (Not well read, I am completely ignorant of whether Pascal himself dealt with free will.)

But really, I am a barbarian of a philosopher, and the way I see it is this: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, shoot it and fry it, Peking-style. If it looks like people are choosing what they do, and you feel like you made a choice between two or more options, they are and you did. Free will. If you try to tell me free will is an illusion, I may choose to hit you in the head. I warned you, I'm a bit of a barbarian.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Why bang my head against a wall?

...when a pretty girl is available to do it for me? This video is remarkably efficient in covering almost everything I tried to say in my first controversial post, with better explanations, and easier on the eyes.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

How can something so depressing be so good?

Yes, that's right, I'm reading Russian literature again. I finally got to the end of Anna Karenina.  Boy, howdy! That is a depressing story. I shouldn't have to put spoiler warnings out for a book that's about 150 years old or something, but here goes.

There be spoilers ahead!

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Speaking of Property Rights

I thought the edit at the bottom of this post had it about right. You wouldn't catch me giving back a ball like that.

Book Reviews

I've decided that I'm going to post at least a few short lines reviewing the books I read. This time around there isn't anything terribly fascinating, but I should have something more interesting soon.

I read The Outfit, which is the second graphic novel based on the Parker novels of Richard Stark. It was the first that tipped me off to the fact that there were any novels at all and not just a movie. The second is much like the first though it spans the happenings of a couple novels. It does a good job of capturing the feel of the novels, it skips right along at a nice pace and it doesn't make the error of adding material. In this book Parker is getting his revenge on the organized crime syndicate "The Outfit" when they won't leave him alone. The first book involves him getting his money back from them after he's double-crossed by a fellow crook.

If you like graphic novels, heist stories or both it's worth checking out.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Against "intellectual property" rights

(The following is copied from a response I made to a pro-IP libertarian on Facebook. I thought it may be interesting to raise the issue here.)

You are right that when you conceive of an idea, it is yours and yours alone. But when you share it with me, it is not something you can reclaim from me like a piece of tangible property lent or rented out. And if it is a good idea, beneficial to man’s welfare, it is no less profitable to you if a million other souls are making use of it while you are trying to use it, the way you would not be able to use your car or your house if a million others were trying to use that. And the economic and aesthetic benefits of everyone being able to build on one another’s ideas and inventions without fear of legal reprisal are hard to quantify or even imagine. Or they would be hard to imagine, if we did not have the advantage of seeing something like it firsthand on the Internet.

But the most important consideration in this debate is not economic, but moral. If a presumed right requires unjust acts to enforce, it is not a right at all, or at best unenforceable in a just society. IP rights are a violation of others’ real property rights, and even intellectual freedom. The most fundamental IP protections violate the 1st Amendment, stripping us of freedom of speech, if we dare to repeat what we have heard from the copyright holder. If I use a literal, actual printing press to disseminate a good idea other than my own, my freedom of press is violated, and you, the copyright holder, get to violate my tangible property rights for your IP rights. But if I can trace some hint of your idea back to something I once said in front of some witnesses somewhere, we can go at it round-robin in the courts until we die. Worse still, if I come up with a brilliant idea that is in some way based on your idea, you have the right to my idea, the fruit of my intellect, if I should dare try to share it with anyone. Without IP rights, there is no conflict, no paradox, only freedom. You come up with good ideas that benefit humanity, and I disseminate them, and humanity benefits from them.

There is some sense in which you can keep the recipe for your “secret sauce” secret from competitors for a competitive advantage, but when you fail to maintain the secrecy and use the force of government to make up for it, you’ve crossed the line into violating others’ property rights. The government cannot legitimately enforce IP rights, because it is a force of coercion and intimidation without any legitimate claim to its own property or mandate.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Words, Words, Words

I was thinking about words a while back and it seemed to me that there weren't a whole lot of words with the ending "-sp". (Turns out there are 16.) So I sat down and made a list of what I could think of:

Hello?

C'mon, bro. You haven't posted anything in over a month. Will you post something if I show you how to make your own "About" page?

Parker, Porter, Whatever

I've been reading the works of Richard Stark (a pseudonym for Donald Westlake) and I'm finding them mildly enjoyable. I'm not going to purchase the series, I don't think. The first couple novels were used as a basis for the Mel Gibson flick Payback that came out a decade or so ago.

They're kind of noir novels with a bit of a twist. As the tagline for the movie says, you're supposed to root for the bad guy. Parker (Porter in the film) is a professional armed robber who steals infrequently and very deliberately as his way of life. The novels do a fine job of bringing to life a very amoral man who lives his life in an extremely selfish way. He's very Nietzschean, I suppose.

In the movie they change things up so that you don't feel too badly about cheering for him. He did steal money at the beginning, but it was from the Chinese Triads. And then he's double-crossed and he's just trying to get back the money he's owed. In the books he's much more of a bad guy and is motivated by revenge and is not at all scrupulous about from whom he steals. I find that I enjoy the inherent morality of the detective story more, but I'll read through this series once.

Crazy

An image linked from Jonah Goldberg's G-File that shows something about the pace of change in China over the past 20 years.

I suppose we could use this to start an argument over whether it's truly representative or if the rate of change is sustainable or if it has anything to say about prospects for political and religious freedom. Or we could just think it's neat.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Mash-up Madness

I'm not often a fan of what are colloquially known as "mash-ups". Too often the result is less than the sum of its parts.

However! Somewhere in my daily trawl through the interwebz I ran across JamesHance.com. Fun times. I think this one and this one are my favourites.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

America's Lack of Kids

An interesting article that looks at the declining fertility rate in the US and in other countries around the world.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

For My Dad

I'm late posting this, which my dad would never have been. But I hope it can be overlooked.

I've never been able (within my memory) to call him "Daddy". It always seemed like kind of a wussy thing to say. (Note: My mom calls her father "Daddy" and since she is a woman who grew up in Texas that seems perfectly right and appropriate.) "Dad" works perfectly well for most things and he enjoys identifying himself as my "earthly father" when he calls.

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Too Much Funny

Okay, I have to say that while I wasn't going to say anything about the Weiner flap outing expose scandal, I can't pass up the deliciously funny observation that apparently none of the self-described lesbians on the internet are actually lesbians. In fact, it might be the case that none of them are even women. Let this be a lesson to all of you.

Monday, June 13, 2011

TOS and EULA

Heh.

Scroll to #22.

Statistical Biblical Evidences

Joe Carter of First Things links to a very interesting talk given by Dr Peter Williams. This kind of thing is fascinating to me. I tend to agree that one will never find a perfect, knock-down proof of God's existence, and so arguing likelihood seems to me the best route to take.

And in the course of getting those links and investigating around I ran across a blog called Targuman, which looks interesting as well.

Philosophy podcast!

Woo! How exciting!

Okay, seriously, the blog is pretty cool and Glenn Peoples seems reasonable enough that I'm going to plug the podcast even before I've listened to an episode. I'm gonna download a bunch at once and listen to them on my way to work for the next few days. I still haven't gotten all the way through my Alvin Plantinga reader, but I do enjoy reading someone who can combine theology with serious philosophical chops.

And if you like his podcast, throw some coin his way. As he says, being a philosophy PhD isn't terribly lucrative outside the walls of academe.

"'A was a man, take him for all in all,

I shall not look upon his like again."

Which about sums up the obit notice that David Pryce-Jones has on NRO for the passing of Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor. I wonder if this is common to all ages; that imagining that the great men of yesteryear are passing away and not being replaced by similarly great men of our own time? Surely this phenomenon at some point has some validity to it. All of history is not one extended climb into broad, sun-lit uplands.

At any rate, I've got some good leads on a bunch of new books.

Friday, June 10, 2011

About the Commerce Clause

[I apologize for the length of this post, or rather, for the lack of a "jump cut," as I believe it is called. I still haven't figured out how to do one.]

I love that clause of the Constitution. Incidentally, my favorite Stone Temple Pilots song is "Love Song." And when I drive across the country, to make the best time I take the.

Okay, so not everybody calls it "The Interstate Commerce Clause," but my brother seemed to be ignoring that that is a very important part of what the Framers wrote in the clause under moot.
[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;
It is a clause to allow the national congress to regulate interstate commerce (as well as international commerce and that with the tribes), not all commerce in the land. Not a moot point, especially in the matter of insurance, which in many states is confined to intrastate insurers by regulation. If Congress limited themselves to interstate commerce, we would not be having this discussion, and perhaps we would not have a $14 trillion+ debt, $70 trillion+ in unfunded liabilities, and calls to raise the debt ceiling still higher. "Congress shall make no law..." -my favorite words in the Constitution. Also on my Nice List: the 10th Amendment, which makes explicit what was to be understood about the enumeration of powers within the Constitution, to wit, that they are the only powers Congress and the President and the Federal Courts were to have, to the exclusion of all other powers or authority. In fact, hardly anyone in prison has so thoroughly or often broken the law as a junior senator or one-term president, let alone the life-long politicians. Should the penalty for breaking the highest law in the land be any less than the penalty for breaking a local marijuana possession law? If not, and I think not, Obama, almost everyone in congress, Bush, and most everyone who ever swore to uphold the Constitution should be in jail.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Economic Activity

So, my brother posits that all human activity is economic in nature and is verbose in defense of the idea. (Just scroll down if you don't believe me.) And it occurred to me today to wonder then what he makes of the Obama administration's defense of their health care legislation under the Commerce Clause based on their assertion that the purchase, or failure to purchase, health insurance is economic activity and thus a legal aspect for government regulation under the aforementioned clause.

Would my brother, in so many regards a libertarian, then think it licit for the government to regulate any and all activity since any and all activity is economic in nature?

I suspect that he'll argue that the Commerce Clause is over-interpreted to mean more than it ought, rather than back away from the contention that everything in the world is economic. In anticipation, let me ask as well whether the framers' intent with that phrase should over-ride the actual meaning of what was written? Commerce does have a broader application than "trade" or "exchange" such as was suggested by Bork.

Monday, June 6, 2011

67 Years Ago Today...

Today is the 67th anniversary of D-Day. Many major operations in World War II used the term "D-Day" to denote the day the operation would start, but only one of the operations was so large as to become the D-Day: Operation Overlord.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Lloyd Alexander Book Review Redux

I read another Lloyd Alexander book today and another couple thoughts about them struck me forcibly enough that I regret not mentioning them the first time around.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Sam Johnson got this one right.

Still have time here on the Left Coast where it's still Memorial Day.
"Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea."  ~ Samuel Johnson

Jump Cuts

Learn 'em. Love 'em. Live 'em.

Monday, May 30, 2011

While we are on the subject of Warren Buffett (sort of)

...I found it utterly bizarre that he was a guest star on The Office. I keep telling myself "Stop watching. They've jumped the shark. They've jumped Megashark." (Language warning for the link.) But I keep watching, probably because of what I like to call "The Soap Effect:" I've watched it enough that I actually have a desire to see what happens to the characters in each new episode. I guess I should be more economical with my time.

A wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel.

What is more materialistic, to say that the worth of human activity can be measured in dollars, or that there is more to life than dollars and the pursuit thereof?

There is a problem in society of people of some learning contenting themselves to use their learning to try and make others look foolish when they make audacious-sounding statements or simply try to open dialogues or present new ideas. Wouldn't it be better if those with some education try to increase their learning?

Balking and mocking are better left to fools.

But since we are discussing the most brazen lines of my earlier post, I will happily defend them. When a person makes a decision, he makes a valuation. If I decide to buy $2.00 worth of apples instead of $2.00 worth of bananas, I have made a few decisions. Obviously, I have chosen apples over bananas. Only slightly less obviously, I have chosen apples over $2.00, which I could have kept in my possession. I have valued apples more than those two dollars.* Even more subtly, and fundamentally, I have chosen to think about produce. Instead of grabbing whatever fruit was nearest and taking it to the cashier and swiping my credit card thoughtlessly, I have chosen to think about my options and weigh them in my mind, before I ever contrasted apples with bananas in a contest of which fruit I should like better.

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Even so, the unexamined life results from choices that were based on valuation. A person values entertainment higher than self-examination or philosophy, and goes about his life doing what he needs to do to maximize his entertainment. That is choice based on valuation, even though, before long, such a choice leads to lazy, sloppy habit. He continues to value his intellectual laziness higher than thought, so he continues to choose not to think.

Contrast this with the philosopher who continually thinks about his surroundings, his life, and the creative spirit within him. If he chooses to value philosophy over a high income, and the creation of unappreciated art over the acquisition of luxuries, does that mean that he has eschewed value? Or that he does not create anything of value? Or are his choices just as much a process of valuation as weighing Harvard vs. Yale as part of a plan to acquire fabulous material wealth with a law degree? If one chooses to spend his weekends with his family instead of using them to pursue a promotion with a raise, is that any less an economic decision for not being materialistic?

When I say "every human action is based upon a choice," I am not talking about reflex behaviors, I am referring to the capacity of humans to choose what they do. Perhaps we could quibble about whether to call reflexes "actions," or we could just use "action" to refer to conscious choice because reflexes and animal movements are just as easily referred to as "behavior" as they are "actions." I should have defined the term "action," I suppose, but I never really know beforehand which blog posts to deck out for debate. I really am blind to the differences between my most incendiary writing and my most innocuous observations.

Regardless, the very act of debating implies that we choose what we do, apparently in contrast with animals, which simply behave according to the behavior of their kind, or according to their training. If we are debating one another, we are presuming that we choose our actions, else why debate? If we do not choose, our actions are no more under our control than is the rotation of the Earth. When we debate, we do so with the presumption that others can choose their actions differently on account of what we have said.

Since we are conscious actors, then, what do our actions represent, but choices? And if we choose, based on what, if not subjective, relative valuation of our various options? And what are we to call these subjective, relative valuations? "Values"? I think "values" is no less likely to foment misunderstanding in this case than "economics," but more importantly, if we include every subjective, relative valuation in one field of study, we have the advantage of seeing whatever is going on, regardless of whether or not it fits into a preconceived notion of what suits our topic. That is to say, if A, B, and C, affect my choice to take a particular action, it does not behoove us to examine only A and B as factors. If I am choosing between an entire alphabet of options, and A and B are considered economics, a more reasonable way to study economics would be to allow for the existence all twenty-six possible factors, to bear them in mind, rather than to compare and contrast A and B as if they are the only things that exist. Furthermore, if I am studying economics, and I come across those who have chosen C or Z or anything in between, am I any more materialistic for including that in my study of economics than if I study only the material component of subjective valuation? I believe those who focus only on the material world in economics are more materialistic than those who use "economics" as an umbrella term for all of the subjective valuations that humans make. In retrospect, perhaps I should not have spared my reader exposure to the term "praxeology."

Since all of human life (or all that is worth living), is based on choice, based in turn on subjective valuation, the study of which I referred to as "economics," every aspect of human life except reflexive behavior is economic. If a monk in a secret corner of a remote monastery does nothing but meditate on spiritual things and eat a few grains of rice, economics is no less relevant to his life than to Warren Buffett's. It is simply that he places a lower subjective value on the accumulation of wealth.

Perhaps Buddha would oppose me in comparing spiritual valuations to material ones (I don't know, as I have not studied Buddhism), but Christ Jesus would not. He explicitly states "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." He had so much to say about money, in fact, that it seems hasty and ill-thought out to imply that viewing everything as economic is somehow irreligious or unspiritual, or undervalues the immaterial. Valuing the immaterial requires assigning it value, that is, making an economic choice. Luke 16, and many other Scriptures, are very difficult to reconcile with the pro-economic ignorance stance.

In sum, economic methodology is too important to limit to material goods, and doing so leads inevitably to both bad economics and poor time stewardship. The study of economics is essential to understanding the human interaction in material world, yes, but is also greatly instructive for making subjective valuations in every aspect of our lives.

*I use the word "those" very consciously in this sentence, because I would not do this same transaction all day long, as my grocer would, happily. This suggests the idea of marginal utility, one of the most important and least understood concepts in economics. If I want some apples, and those apples are being sold for $0.40 apiece, I may very well want 5 apples more than I want $2. But if I have $100 in my pocket, it is unlikely that the entirety of my cash will be worth, altogether, less than 250 apples to me. What would I do with 250 apples? So the sixth apple is worth less to me than the first. The sixth apple is worth less than $0.40 to me, and the first five were worth more than $0.40 each to me (not exactly $0.40, or else I would not have troubled to carry them to the register to make the exchange). If this were a scenario where apples cost $0.50 apiece, perhaps I would have bought only two (for $1.00 total), and used the other dollar of those $2.00 (that would have been spent on apples at $0.40 apiece for apples) for something else, perhaps another kind of fruit that would have seemed too expensive by comparison if apples were only $0.40 apiece. In the $0.50 per apple scenario, only two apples were worth more than $0.50 to me, and third through fifth were worth more than $0.40 but less than $0.50. The sixth remains less valuable to me than $0.40. There is a curve then, whether I picture it or not, in the price I would be willing to pay for each subsequent item of identical (or nearly identical) quality. For any given item, the marginal utility of the hundredth, thousandth, or quadrillionth of that item approaches 0 in your scale of marginal utility, because once you have 999,999,999,999,999 of something, how much are you willing to give up to have one more? If there's a genie who gives you the Midas touch, and you eventually own a gold ranch the size of Texas, chances are that at some point you would want flowers (or beef cattle, or something) more than you want your next blade of gold grass. Everything material tends to diminish in our estimation the more abundant it becomes in our life (leaving aside, if we may, the issue of Midas-touch-induced starvation). It's the same when we buy groceries: the first few of each are worth more than what they cost us, but our valuation of variety drives up the value of some other fruit or vegetable in our scale of marginal utility, until we have our basket of groceries, and to buy more of anything costs more in dollars than our valuation of that excess produce.

The less a man makes declarative statements, the less apt he is to look foolish in retrospect.

I'm pretty sure I didn't pluck the most over the top statement from the first paragraph. You got a bit carried away. "Economics, then, could be said to be the essence of life on earth." If your point is the more limited "everyone should know something about economics", you might want to avoid language that would be better used to describe your religious beliefs.

I don't particularly care about the legitimacy of the empiricist (aka positivist) method of economics, why the average person should study economics and certainly I'm not interested in discussing the minutiae around the boundaries for proper economic applicability.

More limited claims would have been less obviously problematic.

And don't drive like my brother

I think my brother may have taken that last corner a little too fast. Rather than dismissing other approaches out of hand, I carefully (if briefly) compared and contrasted two different approaches. I would think that the subject of the post would merit closer examination, since the empiricist, or positivist, approach in the social sciences was pioneered by Auguste Comte, the father of sociology, which my brother has studied extensively. I wonder, though, if in his sociology studies the milieu was so thoroughly empiricist that what empiricism is might be indiscernible to him. I couldn't say for sure.

In any case, while human action is arguably not entirely economic, the point of the first paragraph is that all humans have an interest in understanding economics. If that is in dispute, the focus ought not be on the most audacious-sounding phrase, but on the overall premise presented in the paragraph. And to say that a discipline popularly associated with material possessions is broad enough to encompass all human action can be seen two ways, only one of which is to say that all human action revolves around material possessions.

So I wonder if I shall have a debate about the legitimacy of the empiricist (aka positivist) method of economics, or about the value of economic study to the layperson. Perhaps it behooves us, however, to explore just what the purview of economics is.