John & Belle Have A Blog

Becky Sharp

I am glad to read that Mira Nair has made a new movie of Thackeray's Vanity Fair in which Becky Sharp is treated sympathetically. Reese Witherspoon has no equal in portraying bull-headed willfulness; her eyes narrow and her perky face becomes a mask of pure determination. But, on behalf of dark-haired girls everywhere, I maintain that she should have had to dye her hair for the part. Casting a peaches and cream blonde in the role of Becky Sharp is just wrong. WRONG! That, my friends, is what the wretched, insipid Amelia looks like.

Has the beloved reader, in his experience of society, never heard similar remarks by good-natured female friends; who always wonder what you can see in Miss Smith that is so fascinating; or what could induce Major Jones to propose for that silly insignificant simpering Miss Thompson, who has nothing but her wax-doll face to recommend her? What is there in a pair of pink cheeks and blue eyes forsooth? these dear Moralists ask, and hint wisely that the gifts of genius, the accomplishments of the mind, the mastery of Mangnall’s Questions, and a ladylike knowledge of botany and geology, the knack of making poetry, the power of rattling sonatas in the Herz-manner, and so forth, are far more valuable endowments for a female, than those fugitive charms which a few years will inevitably tarnish. It is quite edifying to hear women speculate upon the worthlessness and the duration of beauty.

But though virtue is a much finer thing, and those hapless creatures who suffer under the misfortune of good looks ought to be continually put in mind of the fate which awaits them; and though, very likely, the heroic female character which ladies admire is a more glorious and beautiful object than the kind, fresh, smiling, artless, tender little domestic goddess, whom men are inclined to worship—yet the latter and inferior sort of women must have this consolation—that the men do admire them after all; and that, in spite of all our kind friends’ warnings and protests, we go on in our desperate error and folly, and shall to the end of the chapter. Indeed, for my own part, though I have been repeatedly told by persons for whom I have the greatest respect, that Miss Brown is an insignificant chit, and Mrs. White has nothing but her petit minois chiffonnè, and Mrs. Black has not a word to say for herself; yet I know that I have had the most delightful conversations with Mrs. Black (of course, my dear Madam, they are inviolable): I see all the men in a cluster round Mrs. White’s chair: all the young fellows battling to dance with Miss Brown; and so I am tempted to think that to be despised by her sex is a very great compliment to a woman.

NRO: Bush is a Flip-Flopper

I often wonder, what does Ramesh Ponnuru think about his fellow NRO writers? Does he cringe with shame when he reads the Derbsterino's musings? Does he flip past the National Review's startlingly mendacious economics coverage? From Ramesh

BUSH ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE

A brief history: 1) I'm against it, and you should vote for me over John McCain on this basis. 2) Some campaign-finance reforms amount to a restriction on free speech, and I'll veto them on that basis. 3) I'll sign the bill, let the judges sort it out. 4) The bill I just signed bans all those George Soros ads. 5) I'm going to sue to get those ads all banned. 6) I'm going to support legislation to ban those ads that I already banned, even though they used to be free speech. I think (5) and (6) are new this week.

He forgot 4.1, "I was originally opposed to any bill that would restrict 527's, just as I also opposed the other retrictions in the bill, such that the fact that the bill didn't ban 527's was a mitigating factor, but/and I signed it anyway," and 4.2, "I completely misunderstood the bill I signed, because I thought it would ban 527's."

OK, OK, I know I said I wasn't going to look at right-wing websites. I fell off the wagon. Relapses happen, OK? I'm just taking this one day at a time. Maybe I can trade in my one hour chip from CBA (Conservative Bullshit Anonymous) for a column at Tech Central Station. Mmmm, sweet disregard for the truth.

Najaf

I have to echo Chris Bertram and Matthew Yglesias here and say, what is going on in Najaf, and why the comparative silence about it? I keep opening Tacitus, expecting to see a long denunciation of the current state of affairs from Tacitus himself, and instead we learn that Sistani saved the day. Well, yes, sort of. But if you thought the capture or death of Moqtada al-Sadr and the destruction of his militia was a goal worth losing American soldiers for, worth killing many Iraqis (both militants aplenty and innocents caught in the crossfire), worth turning central Najaf into something resembling Grozhny (with the happy exception of the Imam Ali shrine itself), and worth risking the destruction of the shrine, sure to be blamed on us no matter what and sure to enflame the Muslim world -- then how can you be pleased with this outcome?

Before Bremer cracked down on al-Sadr's paper and we tried to arrest him on a murder charge, the state of affairs was as follows: al-Sadr was a popular rabble-rouser with armed sympathizers, he didn't have control of the shrine in Najaf, and he was going to be allowed to participate in Iraqi politics.

The new state of affairs: al-Sadr is an immensely more popular rabble-rouser, who can claim to have stood up to the mighty US armed forces, with armed sympathizers. Some of these are now battle-hardened militants, many of whom have lost family members in the fighting. From the NYT:

As the Mahdi Army fighters did not surrender themselves, neither did they give up their guns. Instead, they took the assault rifles and rocket launchers with which they had commandeered the shrine and loaded them onto donkey carts, covering them with blankets and grain sacks and television sets and sending them away.

He doesn't have control of the shrine in Najaf. The area of central Najaf around the shrine has literally been reduced to rubble.

Pinpoint fire and tight restrictions on munitions ensure that the gold-domed Imam Ali shrine remained all but unscathed. But the core of the city around it, a destination of longing for millions of Shiite Muslims, is so mauled that American commanders debate which famously ruined wartime cityscape Najaf now resembles most. "It's like Stalingrad," a senior 5th Cavalry officer said. "Sarajevo," Rainey maintained. "Beirut," a Marine commander said. "Not Dresden," an Army field officer said while standing watch at a panorama of blackened, half-destroyed buildings a few dozen yards north of the glittering shrine. "Not enough fire."

Shiite popular opinion in Iraq is totally against the US. Worshippers gathering in Kufa to march to Najaf were struck by a mortar round and 75 or so killed; naturally the US and the militants each blame the other. I can't help but think of the Serbian conspiracy-theories about the bombing of the Sarajevo market: they were corpses from the morgue, with ice in their ears! The Muslims bombed themselves to create sympathy and stir up anti-Serbian feeling with a self-inflicted atrocity!

The Allawi government has shot its credibility by ramping up attacks on al-Sadr and then totally backing down, and by firing into a crowd of demonstrators (follow previous link). The US's credibility, likewise. al-Sadr is going to be allowed to participate in Iraqi politics.

What has been gained?

Jello-Wrestling's Right Out, Then?

It's generally better not to wander off into definitional thickets by trying to determine what things are games and what sports. (I seem to recall some bloggers such as Matthew Yglesias and Will Baude were musing on this recently, perhaps on the old chestnut, is chess a game? Or a sort of mathematico-logical puzzle to which we have not found the solution? But I'm too lazy to look it up.) It's much more advisable to gesture broadly in some late-Wittgenstein, vague hand-waving way at some disjunct class of things. This will protect you from ever getting yourself into the position Dan Drezner has here, in which he commits himself to the claim that a hot-dog eating contest is a sport, while boxing is not. You see, the former has an undisputed winner, based on solid, numerical facts about hot dogs consumed. The latter is tainted by an unacceptably large admixture of judging. I judge this result an unpromising advertisement for a theory of sports.

Setting the Woods on Fire

I went out and bought some new CD's today, so I could listen to the following great songs:

Merle Haggard: Silver Wings
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Every Mother's Son
George Jones: Ragged But Right
Johnny Cash: Tennessee Flat-Top Box
Hank Williams: I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive

You guys should listen to them too. But what's the deal with Sweet Home Alabama, now that I think about it. That they don't like Neil Young, I can believe. That the boys from Skynyrd don't give a shit about Watergate, likewise. But that they think the government of Alabama could ever be accurately characterized as "true"? Are we talking about the same Alabama here? Squarish state, near Mississippi? Alabama has some good qualities, no doubt: tasty food, country blues, home, families, er, crippling racism fertile soil, etc.* Good government, though is not one of those things. Nonetheless, the song rocks, obviously.

*Offended Alabamans: please note that I would say the same about my beloved home state of South Carolina. Sure, and lotsa northern cities, too. It's easy for Vermonters to be all superior about this kind of thing; they've got, what, three black people there? And how do European people act when any ethnic minorities actually show up? Piss-poor. I'm not picking on Alabama. This reminds me of when my college boyfriend (from South Deerfield, MA) first came to stay with me at my grandma's place in Savannah. I was showing him the upstairs balcony, which looked out on a little park/street divider on Oglethorpe Ave, dominated by a flag, mainly stars and bars. He was like, "what the hell is that?" And I was like, "It's the state flag. It's not just the rebel flag; it has a blue field with the state seal at the left, see? And then the rest is the rebel battle flag. Um." And did you know that my sister is a direct descendant of the last Confederate General to surrender during the Civil War, Edmund Kirby-Smith? (He was out west, possibly absconding to Mexico with the soldiers' pay.) Her dad (my step-dad) is also named Edmund Kirby-Smith. When I was a kid, we subscribed to Southern Partisan magazine. You can really learn a lot about the War of Northern Agression in that magazine.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall weighs in on this issue.

Gramps and Grannies, Kids in Their Jeans/Junkyard Dogs and Campus Queens/Everybody Likes Butterbeans!

Here is an article about how you only think you're getting old-timey Silver Queen corn from that roadside stand, when it's really some new super-sweet hybrid. OK with me. I really wish I could go to East Hampton this weekend and eat corn and lobster salad. Mmm, the smell of mown grass and the bitter smell of cut privet and the clean blue sky and the cold, cold ocean. It's so hot and muggy here, and the sky looks like the dull side of tin foil.

Blade Runner and Postmodernism

I'm back. Sorry to make Belle do all the work for so long. After this post I'm going to dive back down into teaching and projects for at least another week, then I hope I'll be posting more steadily. Damn those Swift Boat Liars!

I have to spend a lot of time watching science fiction movies for my philosophy and film class these days. But maybe I don't have your sympathy for my rough life. If you want to see what my module blog looks like, feel free to drop by - but don't leave comments or anything, if you please. You can leave them to this post, by all means.

Here's my vaguely SF and philosophy of film-related bleg for the night. Most everyone who writes about Blade Runner philosophically says it is a 'postmodern' film. I guess I don't deny it. On Thursday I shall have to say something about it. But I persist in not finding that anyone has managed to say anything interesting along these lines. Take this page, just because it happens to be online and its tone and content are not unrepresentative of the type of thing I've been dutifully plowing through for a week now. I could make fun of it - oh, could I. But the trouble is really that to the relatively small extent to which it is discernably about the movie, it's dead obvious: Blade Runner is dark; it's set in the future but there are retro elements, so it's a kind of a pastiche. There are space and time. (Reminds me of an old Steven Wright joke.) There is post-industrialism. Capitalism isn't working out for everyone. There is the Third World. Everyone feels their very identities under threat.

Analysis of films like Blade Runner as 'postmodern' takes us up to a point we could have arrived at without it, then stops. Can anyone point me to a discussion of postmodernism and Blade Runner, or postmodernism and cyberpunk, that is better than dead obviousness retrofitted to look fancy and cutting edge? (There is always dead wrong, I know. But I don't want that either.) Otherwise I'm left with 'postmodern' as a tolerably familiar label I believe I can afix competently - like 'cyberpunk'. One of those you sorta kinda know what it means-type labels. Like 'modern rock'.

I guess I could just say that the trouble is that 'postmodern' is a loose term for a genre of works, but it's also supposed to indicate a set of critical tools. But, on closer examination, it is really only the former.

Fuck Off, Hitch

Fuck a bunch of Christopher Hitchens. Seriously. If he's George Orwell I'm the hidden imam.

Damn, That Does Sound Like Fun

Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the makers of South Park, have a new film coming out in which all acting is done by puppets. Many have noted that it contains "surprisingly graphic scenes of puppet sex." This was the best part of the article, though:

"It's very Sam Peckinpah," explained Joe Viskocil, the production's special effects coordinator, preparing the Sphinx for a collision. "The challenge is to make it look cool. Like it's a real movie." He added: "It's a heck of a lot of fun."

To him, maybe. But not to the directors, who at that moment were scrutinizing the monitor on the set of the Egyptian desert. They were waiting for a hair stylist to finish fussing with Lisa's blonde hairdo.

Not fun. Fun, they recalled, was back in 2000, when they dropped acid and dressed up as Jennifer Lopez and Gwyneth Paltrow to attend the Academy Awards. That was, Mr. Parker said, awesome.

"I'm so glad we did that," said Mr. Stone.

Mr. Parker: "I remember about 30 seconds when I actually believed I was Jennifer Lopez."

Wow. I'm impressed. I think I would be too freaked out to do that. Kudos, Matt and Trey!

Updated to add link to Gary Farber. Amygdala, where you can read tomorrow's Belle and John Have a Blog Posts, today! (Actually, I posted first, on account of the international date line. Sniff.)

Random Love Potpourri

Just in case you think I don't tell you enough about likker, you should read this fine booze-themed blog. Here is a nice review of some junipero gin. They have a more sober weblog, too (note: they still might be posting drunk. You can never usually not tell with bloggers.)

What about little doodles drawn by presidents? This is need-to-know stuff, here. LBJ is the best (he apparently thought about demons a lot.)

Chocolate and Zucchini is a very nice food blog which is getting some media play.

UPDATE: wait, did I say I wasn't telling you enough about booze? How ya like this: an alcohol inhaling machine. Yes, you breathe in vaporized alcohol mixed with oxygen, allegedly getting "the effect of alcohol without the drunkenness, or hangover." Um, but isn't drunkenness itself 'the effect of alcohol'? Have I been missing something, like how sobriety, or perhaps tepid piety, is the effect of alcohol? Hm. But, I remember when I was just a lass, my dad explained to me that pure oxygen was a surefire hangover cure, and Pops was right. "Belle", he said, "if you've ever got a terrible hangover, but you're in a situation where you have access to one of those oxygen tents, you're golden." You can always trust your dad on things like that. Well, or my dad anyway.

The Love

OK, Russell Arben Fox. You got a point there.

Belle, please, turn off the computer. Take your children to the park. Breath fresh Singaporean air. Look at the sky for a while. Then, when you come back in, tell John that you want him to change your password, and delete all your bookmarks to lame conservative websites as well. This is for your own good.

I really do go outside and stuff. For realz. I have a giant double stroller and I dress the girls up matching and then we go out to charm various aunties at such thrilling locations as Bukit Merah, and the Alexandra village hawker center. There's just selection bias, because you all see the evidence of my looking at lame conservative websites, but you never see all the paper crocodiles I cut out for Zoë yesterday or eat any of the kuehs I buy. (Mmmm, black sesame kueh.)

Even John is all "where's the love?" on our blog. "What is this, Atrios?" he asked yesterday*. Of course he's hard to please. Blah blah, stop posting about oral sex** and expired morphine floaters all the time, blah. So here's the love. The safe-for-work love.

Arthur Lee isn't in jail anymore! He can spread the Love!

Everybody, everybody loves the Homestarrunner! But what's Strong Bad up to? Why, he's checking his e-mail!

And I love mad Canadian Guy Maddin, the second gayest man in show business (Tom Cruise is #1, obvs). Careful, Tolzbad! Careful!

I love that my friend Sacha is coming to visit me, and maybe we'll go here?

And I love ambrosia. Not traditional ambrosia with mini marshmallows. No, this is nu-school, tropical ambrosia.

New Jack Ambrosia

1/2 small papaya, seeded, peeled and cut in cubes
1/2 canteloupe, likewise
2 oranges, cut into sections with pith and membranes removed
20 longan or 15 litchees, peeled and halved, seeds removed
1/4 c confectioners sugar
juice of four kalamansi limes (or 2 Persian limes)
1/4 c rosewater
1 c flaked coconut (not shredded)

directions: mix it up.

* N.B.: John actually likes Atrios plenty.
** To be fair, this may have been one of those "let us not talk of love" things.

I Would Have Used Both Hands, Myself

Have you ever wondered how a bunch of undocumented workers waiting around in suburban L.I. for short-term construction employment might respond if John Derbyshire started peering at them and taking pictures through the window of his car? Now you know.

Oh, Crumbles.

I'm feeling guilty right now. Last night we let Zoë scream without going to comfort her for the second time ever (the first time was a failed let-her-cry-herself-to-sleep attempt at 9 months.) The door to her room was open, so she could have come to get us, I figured. So, of course, she was actually sick and barfing in the bed. I woke up when it was still dark, thinking "something is not right!", a la Miss Clavel, and went into her room. There she was, all curled up at the bottom of the bed, away from the barfy part. Now she has a high fever and is saying delirious stuff about Sheeta from the movie Laputa. All very sad. I'm sitting on her bed with the iBook.

So, (switching gears grindingly) I'm going to tell you how to make my latest creation: Tropical Plum Crumble! Yes, I got tired of not making any desserts (a strategy which has been particularly disappointing as I haven't lost any weight, either), and so decided to make a slightly less buttery and sugary dessert. It turned out great, but I didn't measure anything, so do as you will (but harm none.)

Secret Ninja Assasin Street Fighters For Freedom!

Dude, why is the interweb being so mean to me? I'm always nice to it! Come on, the interweb, stop --- ow, oog:

Dear Friend,

I am very concerned about the future of our country. Although I desperately want to only think about positive things, the truth of the matter is that I deeply fear that our country is going to be attacked again. And if it is, I want to be prepared. What about you?

I'm sure you remember where you were and what you were doing during the World Trade Center bombing on 9-11. It was a horror show - that we know.

Immediately afterward karate schools across America began doing record numbers in terms of newly enrolled adults. And many martial arts masters began teaching their most treasured secrets because they didn't want to see another American tragedy.

In God We Trust

I'm sorry to keep inflicting you guys with the products of my masochistic forays into the right-wing blogosphere. I realize it's like David Gest's plastic head, turned up to 11. But this shit is really creeping me out:

Ghostly bare-headed Lincoln and Washington laying on hands? WTF? And the whole site is creepy, but this is the best part:

ADDITIONAL LEADERS TO PRAY FOR THIS WEEK

Secretary of Energy—Spencer Abraham

Secretary of Labor—Elaine Chao

Head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation—Robert S. Mueller, III

Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Acting Director of FEMA—Michael D. Brown

I'm trying to get my head around praying to God on behalf of the Undersecretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response. What, like, after you've already prayed for the president, and Dick Cheney, and lotsa other officials, but you've got some prayers left over, why not pray for Elaine Chao? Are there specific saints we should be invoking here? Is there a patron saint of Undersecretaries? (Yes, yes, I realize these are nutball Protestants, but no doubt they hope to appeal to nutball Catholics as well.) Looks like St. Thomas More, patron Saint of Civil Servants (and Lawyers). (Oh, hey, St. Sebastian is patron Saint of Cranky Children? I gotta remember that. Get that saint some candles, yo! We need all manner of intercession up in here!)

Special Olympics

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, well, there's that Virgin Ben guy, and Greatest Jeneration, but probably young conservatives aren't unusually stupid. Think of all the dumbass, no-blood-for-oil Ohgr fans out there (Majik is a powerful song, dude). Think again, people. I give you Ryan Thompson:

While doing some shopping for college over the last month, I have noticed some disturbing trends in fashion along with the usual attempts to erode morality from our culture. I am not a believer in conspiracy theories, but it’s clear as crystal that the social issues of the day are being driven by fashion designers and the decadence of Hollywood. So what are examples the attempts to morally erode our society? The yearly decline of fabric on female garments and the feminization of male clothing are a pair of examples to fit my determination.

Most of the people who know me have heard my positions on why females are “special” in a moral sense. I always like to make the comparison between females and their angelic existence in the eyes of God. Of course not all females act angelic; if they all did we would not have to discuss this issue. Part of understanding their “special” traits is having knowledge the sacredness of the female body. Overexposing the female body undermines the “special” factor and most fashions today do this without a second thought....

Males should not wear pink. In modern history, the color pink has been reserved for females, and it has fit nicely with their angelic existence. Males did not wear the color pink because of this. If you walk into clothing store today, around half the clothes in the male section are pink. The traditionalist that I am is deeply bothered by this trend for two reasons. First, I think that there is a movement afoot to undermine the idea masculinity. Second, more disturbingly, it is a sign of the pop culture’s attempt to erase the “equal but different” philosophy. These movements are united the dream of having a society where the sexes lack distinct responsibilities. Once the idea of distinct responsibilities is plundered, the objective of the feminists and militant gays will be achieved. Their movements cannot exist in their true form in a society that recognizes “equal but different” in regards to the roles of males and females.

These are the two clearest methods of the fashion world trying to corrupt our culture. Their attempt may not be obvious to the untrained eye, but for those who observe these trends it is pretty clear what’s going on. Eliminating the “special” status of females, emasculating male traits, and blurring the role of the sexes are their goals. Remember tradition and stand firm in its defense even when buying clothes. Most importantly, respect yourself and the others around you.

I know it's not funny to mock retarded people. I just couldn't help myself. I blame The Dark Window for making me read this. (He does ask for forgiveness, though: "if I really respected myself and those around me I wouldn't be reading articles at the Rant and then sharing them. Please forgive me.") You can also learn about Ryan's foreign-policy idea here at Sadly, No! (Hint: it involves uniting the Anglosphere.) The sad thing is, now that I know about The Rant ("a common-sense news issues magazine with an admittedly conservative slant": current headline: Will History Repeat Itself--Again?), I'm going to go there all the time, just like with the accursed Corner. Yes, yes, I have talked to my therapist about self-destructive behavior

Fear The Reaper

Oh. my. god. This is just the greatest thing ever on the interweb since the last amazing thing: the top ten black metal pics of all time. Dimmu Borgir here only make #5:

The bald guy makes this picture #5, hands down. This is some serioulsy shoddy corpse-paint on everybody, especially for a photo shoot. Look at the bald guy. Just look at him! Is that supposed to be intimidating? He looks like a fucking alien! As with Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir's pics have gotten more ridiculous with time, i.e., the presence of top- hats, vampire teeth, capes, etc. Terrible!

Seriously, read the whole thing. (via Defamer.)

Take a Bite Out Of Crime!

The Business Software Alliance has created a new cartoon mascot to "educate" kids about not violating copyright: it's a weasel with his pants hanging down around his ass. OK, it's a ferret. Really. Like, "let's ferret out P2P copyright abuses, kids!"

The "Play It Safe in Cyber Space" campaign will culminate with a four-page comic book, distributed in conjunction with tot journal the Weekly Reader, meant to impress kids with the idea that it's not OK to freely swap software, games, music and other copyrighted content.

Between this and the Homeland Security dog, the competition for "gayest thing ever shown to schoolchildren" is getting pretty stiff. (via Hit and Run)

Featuring Al Pacino as Gottlob Frege

This sounds like a thrill-ride: a 3+ hour-long movie based on a Heidegger lecture about the poet Hoderlin. In keeping with the theme of Hoderlin's most famous poem "The Ister", the film meanders down the Danube river. And it's based on a PhD thesis! Now, if only John and I could get funding for our epic based on John's PhD thesis, which elucidated the connections between the early Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation. I've been working on the screenplay in my spare time. It's basically a popcorn, summer-movie type thing. I'm thinking maybe Matt Damon as the young Wittgenstein, facing death in the trenches of WWI by day, and taking cryptic notes on Schopenhauer by night. I think Dennis Hopper could be a great Schopenhauer in the flash-back scenes. Stir a beautiful, doomed German lad (Tobey Maguire), a headstrong English duke/infantry captain (Jude Law), and an Austrian sniper with sick killing skills (Jennifer Garner) into the mix, and you've got the four-fold route to summer adventure! At the end, Ludwig is going to be all wrapped up in bandages, so we can get a different actor to play "late Wittgentein" in the sequel. Maybe Vin Diesel?

Blinding Flash of the Obvious

From today's NYT: Report Finds Tax Cuts Heavily Favor the Wealthy. In related news, earth continues to orbit the sun. No, but really, this is pretty striking:

Fully one-third of President Bush's tax cuts in the last three years have gone to people with the top 1 percent of income, who have earned an average of $1.2 million annually, according to a report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to be published Friday.

The report calculated that households with incomes in that top 1 percent were receiving an average tax cut of $78,460 this year, while households in the middle 20 percent of earnings - averaging about $57,000 a year - were getting an average cut of only $1,090.

The article has a disappointing, "we're just balancing competing claims" tone, as usual, but it does at least mention Kerry's plan to repeal tax breaks on those making more than $200,000 per year and use the money to fund health services.

Where Exactly Is the L.A. Underground, Again?

Let justice roll down like waters, people. The A-Team has been cleared at last:

After more than 30 years spent hiding in the Los Angeles underground as wanted criminals, the members of the crack commando unit Alpha Team, commonly known as the A-Team, were cleared of all charges brought against them by the U.S. military, an army official announced Monday.

If only Hannibal were here to see this day. As the Faceman points out, he loved it when a plan came together

Burnt Up All The Fog And Let The Sun Through To The Snow

My favorite Neil Young song is "Barstool Blues." I just thought I'd share that with everyone.

Flea Rules!

I think One Good Thing is the funniest diary-style blog on the intwerweb. It's not made-up stuff, a la Fafblog, but real, really weird things that happen to the thoughtful, suburban mom, proprietor of a sex-toy shop. As an aside, I should warn her that just spelling out "F-U-C-K" in front of her toddler is a short-term strategy which should be abandoned soon if she doesn't want a good speller of embarassing words on her hands.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Talk about pulling up the ladder behind you: Bush assails legacy admissions. "I think colleges ought to use merit in order for people to get in," Bush said. Well, it would have been better if they had started about 35 years ago, but, OK.

Crisis on Infinite Canadian Earths

I checked out a sociology anthology from the library, Conflict, Order & Action, because the back-to-back Weber and Marx selections looked handy-dandy for purposes of my philosophy and sci-fi film needs. Weber on "Science and the Disenchantment of the World"; Marx on "Alienated Labour". The Weber is going to work on a whole bunch of stuff, and I won't even insult your intelligence by connecting the dots. The real question is how far I can push the pun on 'alien', in discussing Ridley Scott's classic film, without getting the giggles. Ahem:

"The worker puts his life into the object; then it no longer belongs to him but to the object. The greater this activity, the poorer is the worker. What the product of his work is, he is not. The greater this product is, the smaller he is himself. The externalization of the worker in his product means not only that his work becomes an object, an external existence, but also that it exists outside him, independently, alien, an autonomous power, opposed to him. The life he has given the object confronts him as hostile and alien."

And then I notice that later in the volume there is an essay with the singularly inauspicious title: "'Voyage through the multiverse': Contested Canadian Identities", by some Wolcott guy.

The title turns out to be from a Dream Warriors rap. Ahem:

"Here, I want to look at the ways in which Canadian rap and dub poetry make and reconfigure the boundaries of Canada and Canadianness - those contested spaces that often lose their intelligibility outside of state managerial apparatus. But I am interested in how both dub poetry and rap music are often positioned as not constituting "Canadianness" given how rap and dub poetry disrupt and contest the category "Canadian." I am also interested in how state administrative practices aid in positioning blackness as both part of and outside of the state's various forms of management and containment. Blackness is then understood as having a diploctical relation to nation in its resistance and complicity; and its performances are also regarded as something otherwise."

Diploctical, eh? Well, I'm gonna be winning any 'nigritude utramarine' prizes for that starting next week.

Sigh. When I read stuff as stilted and academically mannered as this, it makes me feel good to be an analytic philosopher. (Well, less bad anyway.) Like I'm keepin it real, refusing to allow my presentation of obvious - or, alternatively, obviously false - ideas to be unnecessarily cramped by "a certain quality of conformist excellence within the heuristic constraints of what is considered appropriate disciplinarity" (to quote Timothy Burke from some comment box or other.) Except this is more like conformist mediocrity. But still. It was sort of funny.

There oughta be a cultural studies drinking game. I think the word 'contested' alone would be enough to have everyone feeling good at the end of many a seminar.

I like the idea that the Canadian border - the longest unguarded border in the world - is being 'contested' by rap and dub. Such a Musiko-grenzalogisch 'event' hasn't been heard tell of since the whole Oregon territory piano-tuning dispute of 1818: A440 or Fight! (Historians should feel free to correct me by citing equally catastrophic recent events. I mean there has been Brian Adams and stuff since.)

Koko Krunch

Like Will Baude, I am often irritated by Jane "I was a perfect mother and my children grew up to be thin and hate junk food" Brody (the NYT Health columnist). And I agree that her recent anti-TV rant was confused; the correlation between excessive TV-watching and early smoking is obviously because they are both caused by something else, such as lack of parental oversight. I think that non-parent Will is wrong about one thing, though: "the amount of power that Brody seems to ascribe to mindless junk food commercials is bizarre." Now that I am the parent of a small TV-watching person, I can tell you that junk food advertising aimed at children is incredibly effective. Zoë mainly watches cable (i.e. ad-free) TV, but she sometimes watches the local broadcast kid's channel. On it they have ads for Koko Krunch featuring Dora the Explorer. Zoë really thinks Dora is her friend, and she understands that this cereal tastes like chocolate. She really wants me to buy this for her. She mentions it a lot, and if she's just seen the ad she'll go on about it for a little while. Now, the solution here is obviously that I just don't buy it, and she's not able to go shopping. I've explained to her that we don't buy that kind of cereal because it's not very good for you, because it's made of sugar instead of wheat and things, like good cereal is. So, in one sense, no problem. But in the sense that she isn't able to fully distinguish between ads and shows when the feature the same character, Zoë is a very malleable would-be consumer indeed.

Wertham had a point

Stumbled on this page today (while looking for something quite innocent and non-comics related, I assure you.) Seduction of the innocent, indeed!

Ways of Worldbreaking

Of interest to few: I just finished a draft of a journal article, "Ways of World Breaking - the Limits of Poetic License" (PDF). It's too long. About 10,000 words. (The child does not look badly overweight to its fond parent. But I fear it has mild ADD.) I'm not going to bother trying to trim another 2,000 words until I get some feedback. (But the preposterous epigraph could go; and the final section - which is really a post-script, could go.)

It's analytic philosophy stuff. Just warning you that it has, of necessity, a certain scholastic character. Sort of a sequel to some of my blog posts - all that old imaginative resistance stuff. But it's not about that. It's also supposed to coordinate with my philosophical dialogue, which starts with the same Nabokov passage. And it's supposed to coordinate with my more recent chess dialogue piece. But I won't bother trying to explain all that. Comments and criticism welcome.

Oh, and I've gotta go back and reread the David Lewis stuff to make sure I got it right.

Gee, Ya Think?

From a Sunday Times article about digital re-creations of now-dead actors (an upcoming film features a new 'performance' by Olivier ('Olivier'?):

The situation will only grow more complex, Mr. Beard said, if virtual actors gain artificial intelligence and become autonomous.

Indeed. Also noteworthy:

"I haven't seen that many movies with Olivier recently," the movie's producer, Jon Avnet, explained in an interview, "which is part of the reason why I thought this was pretty cool casting - that, and the fact that he's a great actor."