Life in the Styx

Magnum Force

2012-02-03T10:40:00.003-05:00

I purchased recently (for cheap!) "Magnum Force" [Wiki, IMDB, TCM] and I want to add it to the list of sequels that are better than their originals.

It's not only much more watchable (it has the awesome plane hijack scene) but the politics are better than the original. Most people didn't get Dirty Harry - most notably Pauline Kael, who I've learned since my youth to completely distrust - she was not only wrong most of the time, but disastrously so - I actually think I've lost friends because I recommended movies on her suggestion, I've definitely lost some sanity following her advice on such stinkers like "The Warriors," "Deliverance" and "The Killer Elite" - she had a tin ear for action films, and I suffered.

Kael labeled the film "fascist" but she did not understand the deconstruction of Harry in the film itself. He's meant to be an unlikable character, he's called "Dirty" because he'll do the things others are too ashamed to do. Kael's criticism could be against those who didn't understand that Harry was to be questioned not lauded, but alas she was in the benighted category herself.

In any case, the writer of Magnum Force - the cro-magnon John Milius - says explicitly that he wrote the sequel as a response to the critics. He wanted to explain what real fascism would look like. And as a result the full character of Harry comes out - instead of being a fascist response to the Miranda ruling of the early 70s, Harry was just another cowboy. Which interpretation would be more interesting? Well, the full fascist would be the Stallone characters of the 80s - really stupid expressions of a man being above the law. In Harry, as seen in Magnum Force, we have a person who believes in the Constitution, just not how it was being interpreted at that time. Fascism believes that liberty should be sacrificed for unity of the people, while the American cowboy ethic is libertarian - have as much liberty as possible. Both seem to agree that when a person violates the code, they should be killed. But libertarians believe the only things which violate the code are extreme crimes, while fascists reduce all action against the Polity as crimes.

Also, it had the best main theme - although nothing beats Lalo Schifrin's music for Dirty Harry's school bus scene.

P.S. The latter Dirty Harry films don't get put into the mix; while "Sudden Impact" was decent (it was a rehash of Magnum Force's anti-vigilantism) the "Enforcer" was absolutely ridiculous. And I can't even muster enough memory to recall "The Dead Pool."

Israel: Iran is Bluffing

2012-01-27T11:26:00.002-05:00

So, evidently Israel is claiming that Iran's threats for heavy retaliation are a "bluff" (NYTimes or Yahoo News). This is the best indication I've seen that Israel is ready to strike Iran. If I were a shul rabbi right now, I would be making a deal with my local police to have extra protection. Because Israel at war means that the local US crazies start attacking Jews.

Must Read: Bill Clinton Esquire Interview 2012

2012-01-18T20:02:00.000-05:00

Drop everything and read this: Bill Clinton Esquire Interview 2012. Clinton is just so smart and creative... I do wish he could be president again.

The Post-Season

2012-01-09T13:34:00.004-05:00

I used to play Quake 3 back when I owned a Macintosh and my favorite move was to use the gauntlet - the worst, most difficult to score with - weapon on opponents. Why? Because you get a special award by doing so - the "Humiliation" patch. When you 'frag' a rival with the gauntlet you get the award and the deep announcer voice proclaims "Humiliation!" (See first clip)

This is how I feel about last night's Steelers' loss to the Broncos. (See second clip)

To be beaten by Tim "More Christ Loving than George W Bush" Tebow? Not as bad as the 4 second overtime emasculation.

I've been following my beloved Steelers quite closely this year in an attempt to finally have a sport to be a fanatic about (it makes sense in the long term scheme of things). And I knew that we were not going to the Superbowl. We were too injured to make it - especially Big Ben, who was crippled by the Cleveland Browns. I knew we'd lose badly in the end because every game since the crippling was depressing. The irony of course is that we lost to Denver because of our defense, not Big Ben. It helped that we lost about 1/3 of our starters to injuries.

Now what can I do in these playoffs? Can I root for the AFC to win? My feeling, now, is that I'd prefer to see a Ravens-Saints superbowl. Mainly because both teams have not gone to the show very often and that keeps the Steelers' SB record safe. And, it goes without saying that I cannot hope for the Texans to make it. The cowboys are bad enough but to have The Texas Texans, owned by Tex "Tex" McTexas, have any success? It'd be Gore v. Bush all over again.

If absolutely necessary, I'd accept the 49ers in the Superbowl just as long as they lose. That way they'd mess up their perfect record.

In any case, I can't read any stories about last night's game yet. Way way way too painful.

How Obama Can Cement a Win in '12

2011-12-14T12:41:00.001-05:00

Drop Biden from the ticket and take on Hillary as his VP.

Gay Marriage and Judaism

2011-12-07T10:21:00.003-05:00

The issue of Orthodox Judaism and gay marriage was brought up recently when the only openly gay YU musmakh married two men the other day (see: here for the reaction from the Orthodox establishments.)

After spending a few years now studying American Jewish history, I can say that there are times when the non-Orthodox denominations are on the side of history and times when they are not. I can say that it's hard to defend a full anti-feminism in halakhah; this is one of those topics where halakhah has really seemed to mimic the cultural mores of the surrounding society.

What about gay marriage? Is this the future of American society? Maybe. But for while there are some moves by the Jewish reformers that were prescient move - e.g. introducing vernacular into the service - and some that are accepted by American society - e.g. jettisoning Sabbath observance and Kashrut - there are others that show a too slavish attachment to trends.

The best example is the attempt to move the Jewish sabbath to Sundays. Another was the virulent anti-Zionism of the 19th and early 20th Century Reform movement. The latter is actually coming back into vogue - and for the same reasons as a century ago: the rejection of Jewish choseness and nationality, coupled with a dire attachment to a Diaspora identity.

The Sunday thing? Maybe that will come back as well.

Presidential Candidates Explained Through Dungeons and Dragons Character Sheets

2011-11-10T10:35:00.002-05:00

You got to be my type of person, I guess, to find this as awesome as it truly is. But this is so good:Presidential Candidates Explained Through Dungeons and Dragons Character Sheets from Funny Or Die and Nick Wiger

h.t. TNC

Cain's Race Card

2011-11-03T12:19:00.004-04:00

Herman Cain as a good presidential name going for him. Single syllable names are great, see Gore v Bush, and Biblical last names even better, no matter the images evoked of a powerful man killing his weaker brother - which is a perfect description for the Republican Party in 2011, and for Cain's attitudes towards American Blacks as well.

However, he plays the race card like he was in Vegas. Most recently, he has needed to double-down (note my gambling metaphors!*) because he has been accused of sexually harrassing a bunch of employees. People have referenced Clarence Thomas. The implicit point of Cain is that black men will be accused of this if they are Right Wing. I don't assume he harassed the women because he was black. I assume he did it because (a) he's a rich businessman born between 1940-1960, (b) he's a patriarchal fool who treats everyone as an object. These are blanket assumptions for anyone of his ilk.

Anyway, Cain and his cronies are trying to portray him as the victim, which I just love in a gallows humor way. In this interview

you can see that he blames the liberal establishment for leading the charge against him. Basically, punishing him and his Black Republican Brethren for their maverickyness.

Aside from the fact that there's no proof for his assertion, and that it's a classic Strawman Defense for someone guilty as Cain, I'd like to use my trusty tools of (1) logic, and (2) precedent to understand the situation.

This is currently a Republican primary. Unlike 2000 and 2008, there's an incumbent and therefore only one primary. And as history will show that primaries are when the real knock-down attacks occur. Scandals are brought up by their own party-mates - and this is logical because once a person gets the nomination, then the process of election changes.

Biden's plagarism, Hart and Clinton's philandering**, McCain's black*** babies, Obama and Rev. Wright - all examples of devestating attacks that occured by their own party during the primaries.

There is no incentive, truly none, for the other party to being opposition research during the primaries. Why should the Democrats attack Cain 14 months before election day? It's illogical and has no precedent. The only people who care about Cain right now, and have the money to do oppo research, are Perry and Romney. I'd bet Romney did this.

Footnotes:
*Gambling metaphors are steeped in US politics. The "New Deal" itself is a poker reference. So is "The Buck Stops Here" (Truman).
** Not with each other.
*** Black to a Republican means something totally different than what you think.

Low-Cost Bus Fatalities High

2011-11-01T08:34:00.002-04:00

So, guess what, according to the Transportation Safety Board, the Low Cost Buses (e.g. Fung Wah, or as I call it, Fung Ow My Femur) are really dangerous. My reaction:

If you pay $15 for something that ordinarily costs 10 times as much, you should wonder where the money is saved. Evidently your life is worth about 80 bucks in savings.

Prominent Jewish Athletes

2011-10-31T17:05:00.002-04:00

This is a very nice photo spread of a number of famous, and not so famous (to me) Prominent Jewish Athletes by Sports Illustrated in honor of Rosh Hashanah.

Shalit Free

2011-10-18T08:39:00.002-04:00

We're very emotional about this in the Styx house. It's a hard price to pay, releasing vicious scum to save one Israeli, but it does send an important Torah message: that it's very easy to kill a terrorist, but very hard to save a life. And Israel, and Jews, value life over death. Unlike our enemies... and those Americans and Jews who support our enemies.

Still No Power

2011-08-30T10:12:00.003-04:00

We live in Newton Center and we've been without power since 11am on Sunday, May 28th. Let me know if you hear somebody say that the pre-Irene warnings were all "hype" - I will track them down and throw them into the prison that is my house. Not only have we lost a certain amount of food, feeding a family of 5 is tough in this semi-kosher accessed place. I'm writing this in a "Panera" and I'm surrounded by other families without power, but they can bring their kids here to eat, we can't.

We're naturally out of hot water as well, and since I have a Motorola Droid phone - known by cognoscenti as a hunk of crap in a plastic case - my phone batteries have been burnt out. This was already after the phone became impossible to directly recharge because the silly little prongs in the recharge port became slightly bent. When that happens, a few cents of breakage, renders the hundreds of dollars phone useless.

Our power-company, NStar, is ignoring their customers, as far as I can tell. We're not even told when we will be scheduled to be visited by a friendly crew. I'd switch companies, but as far as I know they have a government mandated monopoly of my neighborhood.

My kids are doing a decent job in handling this stuff, but there's just so much three kids under 7 can understand.

The only silver lining in this lovely episode is that I can use the experience to convince my family, or anyone I know, to never ever go camping. Because everything I'm suffering through right now is what 'camping' people endure on purpose.

Life on Mars (US TV Series) - Wow

2011-08-16T16:31:00.004-04:00

I just saw the whole run of Life on Mars - an absolutely awesome, yet doomed, sci-fi TV series. They canceled it after 17 episodes, but with enough time to allow a real finale. So, unlike it's kindred brother "Firefly," the story actually ends.

It's probable that you, no matter who you are, won't be affected in the same way that I am by the awesomeness of this TV show. You need to be equally obsessed with (a) 70s music, (b) 1973, (c) New York City, (d) red-headed boys who look like me (and my sons), (e) and time-travel stories that are also 70s cop shows.

The premise is that our hero is a cop in 2008 who after an accident wakes up as the same person in 1973. He meets his father and mother and other mentors when they are the same age as he was in '08. While the show depicts the drama of his home life, and his attempts to help out his mother and young self, the main greatness of the show comes from the depiction of policing, and NYC, in the early 70s - when cops were sexist, racist, and brutal. And so was the city.

The reason why cop shows were much better in the 70s is because the crime in NYC was insanely high. When Law & Order has a murder a week, they are inflating the crime statistics by like 800% - not so in 1973. Also, the music was so much better. When you see a leather jacketed, mustachioed, long haired cop striding around with a long rifle and snub-nosed pistol, there MUST be a funky bassline with a wa-wa pedal. See here for the visuals.

There's also the struggle the hero has in dealing with communications from the future, and what is possibly an attempt to remove him from life-support and other mysteries. Which makes the drama multi-leveled.

It's written very well and has an amazing cast of some of the best in Hollywood: Gretchen Mol, Michael Imperioli and the incomparable Harvey Keitel.

Naturally, it was canceled. Maybe it's for the best - the quality stayed great for the entire, short, run. Wow.

GOP Nominee Predictions

2011-08-14T10:52:00.003-04:00

According to the Times Pawlenty Drops Out of Republican Race. With Pawlenty gone, that means there's only one sane candidate in the race: Huntsman. However, the GOP is currently more insane than I've ever seen them. This is the crazy of Hoover + Nixon + McCarthy all rolled into one. Which means that the nominee is going to be Perry, Governor of Texas.

If you see the list of nominees, there's only 3 who had any chance: Romney, Perry and Huntsman. Bachmann is nuttier than peanut-brittle and while she's much smarter, and more articulate, than her alter-ego in dangerous psychosis - Sarah Palin - Bachmann is also a member of the House of Representatives. It's almost as laughable as being a mayor. And let's just forget Ron Paul for the rest of history, please? At best, he'll be another Perot (Texas breeds funny looking, creepy third party cranks).

So, this leaves the three governors, 2 of whom are Mormons - and both of those are tainted by rationality and good politics. Which leaves the mouth-breathing Perry. Here's a good primer about the presumptive nominee.

The Good, the Bad and the Greedo

2011-05-20T12:07:00.000-04:00

I stumbled across this amazing art site, Arethemost.com, here's a fun example:

Upside Down House

2011-05-20T11:41:00.003-04:00

What follows is a long, personal, shaggy dog story:

We've been having a few days of craziness in the house. It started two weeks ago when I smelled an acrid burning smell around midnight; I left my office and found that the smell was through the house; when I came upstairs I saw that there was smoke in the house. After evacuating my wife and three kids, all under 7, we entertained the fire department for an hour (my family went to stay in our minivan and watch DVDs until 1am when the all-clear was established). The FD was stumped as to the cause except that they found (using a cool heat/temp gun) that some ceiling lights were running very hot - nearly double the temp they were supposed to.

We were told to shut off the circuit-breaker for that part of the house, which in turn shut of my wife's office, our basement lights, downstairs bathroom, and electric stove. Since this was Thurs night, I couldn't get an electrician to come to the house until Monday. He arrived and said that he could see nothing amiss with our electricals. Which meant that we would need to follow the advice of the FD and tear the ceiling down to see why there was "heat buildup in the strapping."

Meanwhile, we noticed the smell persisted even with the electricity out. Moreover, we were told by our condo association that our drier's exhaust had been declared unsafe. So we simultaneously needed to get a contractor to demolish part of our ceiling, and get a dude to fix the drier hose. We were also due for a furnace checkup - and I suspected that the smell was from there anyway - so we needed all three done at once.

The furnace people claimed they couldn't come to see us for over a week. We did get the drier hose fixed but it didn't chance the problem of the smell that triggered this whole episode. We did tear the ceiling down - which rendered most of the first floor of the house inaccessible - and the electrician didn't find any reason for the smell-smoke-heat. I asked him to change all the wires and fixtures anyway - once we have the ceiling open - and he recommended we keep those new lights burning for a few days to see if there's any recurrence of the problem.

Meanwhile the furnace guy came and said - guess what - the furnace was busted. That's why we smelled the burning plastic and wires and - this is the best - why we saw the smoke! Because these punks didn't come to our house for 10 days after our calling them, we needed to pursue the electrician/contractor/ceiling route because until it was fixed we couldn't use our oven or basement.

Naturally the furnace guy said it would take most of the week to fix the furnace - he came Tuesday and the furnace is still not fixed... which is bad because Boston is freakin' cold in May.

In the midst of all this our drier - remember it, the one with the new hoses - broke. Just busted. And we managed to convince the contractor that he needed to put our ceiling up before the weekened (which I managed to do, and he did too, except it needs to be painted, so we still have no use of half of the first floor). But we do have electricity... and the drier and heat are to be fixed today...

All this happened at once. I do thank Hashem that we didn't lose all of the electricity, nor the hot-water heater (which, by dint of the pattern, should have gone belly-up).

And my daughter's second birthday is on Lag B'Omer and I'm leaving that day for a conference. Shabbas!

Obama's Speech

2011-05-20T10:20:00.003-04:00

There's much to be said about Obama's speech (transcript) and I've been using Jeffrey Goldberg's blog as a center for my reading. While he and I disagree about the means of the Peace Process and about our ideas of Zionism, I respect his knowledge and his commitment to Israel (he served in IDF, I did not).

Some key points:

The concept of using the '67 lines is not new at all. That it's considered a pro-Palestinain action by Obama is part of the media spin. In fact, according to some analysis, it was started by a distorted AP piece and then picked up by the anti-Obama forces (e.g. Fox News). See this Little Green Footballs piece to follow the trail: LGF: Instantaneous Outrageous Outrage: 'Obama Sides with Palestinians!' What I learn from the AP bias is that the media WANTS Obama to side with the Palestinians. So does the GOP. And many Jewish racists who hate Obama more than they love Israel.
Obama did not call for a return to the '67 borders. He said (bold mine): "We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states." What did people expect, that Obama would call for Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates? Or the fanatasy, that I shared before Oslo, that maybe we could keep until the River Jordan? He said there's be land swaps. Cool.
No mention of: the Golan Heights (especially in the same week that we put sanctions on Assad/Syria).
He also tabled the issues of Jerusalem and the Palestinian false claim of a 'right of return': "I am aware that these steps alone will not resolve the conflict, because two wrenching and emotional issues will remain: the future of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees."
Most importantly, Obama smashed down two dangerous threats to Israel: the Hamas-Fatah coalition: "In particular, the recent announcement of an agreement between Fatah and Hamas raises profound and legitimate questions for Israel: How can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognize your right to exist?"
and the looming credible threat of a unilateral declaration of Hamas statehood: "For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won't create an independent state. Palestinian leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection. And Palestinians will never realize their independence by denying the right of Israel to exist."

People need to get over their hatred of Obama - or the GOP's twisted path to destroy the Democrats by destroying America and Israel.

Bin Laden is Dead

2011-05-02T08:18:00.003-04:00

I have strong emotions about the news, which I read last night and woke up my wife to tell her. Three quick thoughts:

1. This is a real victory. He was shot to death, identified by experts, and buried at sea. He was being protected by Pakistan, and killed not on a battlefield but in his Wisteria Lane hidey-house. It's crucial to remember that for megalomaniac murderers, the most important goal is to be alive and in power. When Saddam and Bin-Laden are captured and killed it sends the message to other freak-show killers that their chosen path has a definite and predictable end. Moreover, as I learned in my studies of the Holocaust, the loss of a single charismatic leader is devastating. He was a symbol to terrorists that you can beat the Americans, he was a symbol to America that we could be beaten. No more. We caught him like a mad dog and put him down.

2. For that reason, I am hoping that this will have a long-term effect in raising American morale about our perceived feelings of decline. Bin-Laden's continued existence showed that we were weak. It also kept the 9/11 siege mentality alive; it was an unclosed grave. Now we've killed him - it can feel, and feelings are important here, that we can move on. And we really need to move on.

3. Lastly, I hope this will change the perception of Obama and of Democrats. The Press has been a disgusting promulgator of nonsense and dissent in our country. Obama released the long form of his birth certificate (the POTUS equivalent of a poll-tax) not because of Trump but because of the media's fascination with this complete nonsense. Because the Press is fickle and stupid, they can now have flashy evidence of what has been happening since January 21, 2009 - that Obama has been systematically and effectively cleaning up Bush's messes.

This is why it took 10 years to get bin Laden - because 8 of those years were under the complete schmucktard Bush.

That the killing of Bin-Laden happened 8 years to the day after Bush landed on the aircraft carrier, dressed up in a costume and acting like a blowhard punk, is icing on the cake.

Obama's ability to clean up for Bush helps with #2 above. As a social scientist, I can tell you that perception is very important for how a society will advance or decline. Killing bin Laden, I am hoping, will show America and the World that we have also cleaned up from Bush. Just last week, Obama's reaction to the tornadoes of Alabama was praised for it's swiftness and effectiveness. So he cleaned up Katrina and 9/11 in one week.

We'll see if the Press takes this ball and runs it in the right direction. We could be now getting out of our decade long malaise. Obama could announce we're drawing down in Afganistan, that we can wear shoes on airplanes, that we can be sane again!

Grading Papers vs. Pulpit Rabbinate

2011-05-01T18:12:00.003-04:00

I'm in the midst of grading papers as a TA (teaching assistant) and I remarked to my wife that I'm feeling the same tension that I had answering shylas while a pulpit rabbi. Often, knowing the standard halakha wasn't an issue: the tension came in when congregants would present a terrible scenario, where the clear result was forbidden, and I was tasked with finding out how there could be a possible leniency.

Note, this was a different process in NY than New Haven. While in NY, it was often a demand to find a loophole or wiggle room in the law, and I took up the challenge because (a) I was the assistant rabbi and that's my job, and (b) because I found it important to interpret Jewish law with kindness for people who could just run down the block and become Conservative and follow even less halakha. Most of the time I endeavored to explain the wisdom behind prohibitions, but the power-differential made this a loss-leader

In New Haven it was often the opposite - I had people who wanted to have prohibitions and I would seek legitamate leniencies because people were poor and it was my job as posek to help them halakhically and meta-halakhically.

In both cases, I couldn't just unload my halakha guns and say what the clear answer was. Truth, if it could be called that, was tempered with bent-backwards 'shalom.'

This is what I face while grading student papers. I'm an assistant again, so I can't exert my own will (which, for my personality, is a MAJOR struggle)... and I'm spending hours and hours on papers that the students will only react to for 30 seconds (a peek at the grade)... and I need to find some possible way not to give every one of these people a much more lenient result than the clear halakha would allow.

Steven Fry on Language Pedants

2011-04-24T15:49:00.002-04:00

I agree with Steve Fry here, quite a bit. Ah, if I were able to simulate a British accent!

h.t. TNC

Farfel

2011-04-24T13:47:00.002-04:00

There's just been one normal day this whole chag (i.e. that wasn't Shabbas/Yuntif or erev thereof) so we're going ga-ga. As such, I'd just like to say how much I like the word Farfel. Farfel farfel farfel.

The Pre-Pesach Matzah Ban

2011-04-14T09:08:00.004-04:00

According to custom, we're not allowed to eat Matzah 30 days before Seder night. The stated rationale for the minhag is that we're to abstain from Matzah so we can eat it at the Seder with gusto. I used to think that this was Rabbinically enjoined cognitive dissonance - i.e. everyone knows that Matzah is terrible, so by telling us we can't 'spoil our appetite' we're to think that Matzah is actually decent food.

Then I got to thinking about what makes transitioning to a Hametz-Free house ("making Pesach" as I now call it) so hard. And, at least for me, it's the delicate balance of eating Hametz while the whole house has to be cleaned for Pesach - and that it would be so much easier to prepare for Pesach if I could just eat Matzah for the few days beforehand...

Then I realized with a bolt outa the blue why my Rabbinic brothers invented this minhag! If we were allowed to eat Matzah before Pesach then my wife, and doubtless every homemaker since Eishet Rashi, would have converted the whole house to Pesadik a week ago! Why not? It's almost logical in a humra sense - two weeks of Pesach instead of one.

This minhag allows me to eat my pop-tarts today. Thank you unnamed rabbis!

Pic from here.

Scalia and Thomas: The Pure GOP

2011-04-04T20:37:00.000-04:00

Whenever I want to describe the true face of the Republican party, and what voting for them will bring, just remember this case: Connick v. Thompson: Clarence Thomas writes one of the cruelest Supreme Court decisions ever. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine, and specifically this line: "Both parties to this case have long agreed that an injustice had been done. Connick himself conceded that there had been a Brady violation, yet Scalia finds none. Everyone else concedes that egregious mistakes were made. Scalia struggles to rehabilitate them all."

A vote for a Republican, any Federal office but especially the presidency, will yield more evil like this case.

Late Purim Torah

2011-03-27T11:18:00.003-04:00

I know this is making the rounds, and it's far after Purim, but this was a great video (h.t. my brother, BATman):

[Later Emendation]: You should really see the original (itself a self-parody) of what the Shtark Like Me guy is making fun of:

Now enjoy

NYTimes to Go Back Behind the Firewall

2011-03-27T10:04:00.001-04:00

So the New York Times has decided to go back behind a paid firewall. I remember when they first did this (back in '05? it feels like yesterday)... And I got through it easily back then. The only person I cared about reading at the time was Krugman, mainly because he was the only sane voice during the terrible two years of 2005-2006 (when the GOP was unstoppable in their evil). Sadly the Times could have taken a leadership role and dubiously decided that they needed to make more money.

I'm on record saying that when the News acts as a for-profit business, everyone suffers. The news-agencies turn into lowest-common-denominator gutter entertainment organs (because that's where the money is), creating and perpetuating scandals, and - worst of all - distorting the news in order to sell sell sell. The best example (outside of the "Feeding Frenzies") was the very existence of Sarah Palin. In the modern for-profit journalist world, every election needs to be a 'horse race' and even when a violently unacceptable candidate for VP is chosen, the media needs to keep the sides even.

The Times, arrogant as ever, believes that they have survived the newspaper crunches and can demand that people will pay for their product. Were they accurate - i.e. were they truly a good news source - then maybe it would be a smart plan. But, pardon my French, the Times' sucks. Their news quality is poorly written (I remember when the Times was written at a 12th Grade level), ignorant and thus biased in the worst way, and not nearly as useful as a good blog collection will be.

They have no idea how badly they will get burned by this - because five lines of computer code will be able to collect news from around the web better than the Times. Competition in the infinite cyberspace makes one specific news source obsolete.

The only thing the Times could boast would be their columnists - and two have just bolted. Frank Rich, who was the best thing in the paper, and now Bob Herbert (who I couldn't care less about). They must be the smartest people there because they're getting out. Columnists are pundits, which makes them nickel academics. In the idea profession, it's far more important to have influence than shiny metal coins: an academic would gladly give academic books/papers out for free if that meant more people would read 'em.

What to Read Instead?

There are a few options. The best news agency out there is actually the old Knight-Ridder, now known as the unpronounceable McClatchy. Their main site is here and it's worth reading instead.

The other options are Yahoo News - which is the AP Wire, a very good option. AP is still biased, but by dint of necessity - they try to sell to as many papers as possible - they are as comprehensive as possible. It's business model is most likely to survive the internet.

And of course I'll just go to Jpost and Haaretz more.

My Old Shteller on the Daily Show

2011-03-24T22:02:00.001-04:00

Not a bad segment about my old stomping grounds (I was a summer intern back in the late 90s in Westhampton) and the opposition to an eruv by the Daily Show

The Daily Show - The Thin Jew Line
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Purim Roundup

2011-03-21T14:46:00.005-04:00

A few thoughts on the after-eve of Purim:

Recall last year's point about Quentin Tarantino's Purim-Shpiel. This year both my wife and I couldn't get the idea out of our heads while listening to the Megillah - and that's how the text should be read. I will write this up to a greater extent but it's a subtle razor's edge.
We had the whole family over for the Seudah in our home (i.e. my parents + my brother and his kids) for the first time (we were together at shul seudahs before) and that's the way I like it. Wow, it's so much better. In future years, I look forward to the kids putting on skits.
Sam Adams' Beer, even their Light Beer (which I drank this year) is really durn good!
A sign of creeping assimilation, even amongst Orthodox Jews, is the identification of "Shlach-Manos" (the Yiddish form of Mishloach Manot... you can't really say "shlach-manot") as goyishe-style gift giving. It ain't. It's food. Two people I know gave me a note saying that they have given a donation in my honor to their favorite charity instead of giving me ShM. This may work for Xmas, Chanukah, or Festivus, but it's a totally ignorant way to deal with ShM. For two reasons.
1. First of all, as my man Seinfeld also understood, giving to your own favorite charity is not a "gift" for another person. I guess it's striking out against materialism... but is it so bad to give people a plastic bag with some almonds and Hershey's Kisses? Moralists and Anthropologists have been through this: giving gifts are meant to be a sacrifice of yourself to bind yourself with another (cf. the korban olah). That's the meaning of generosity. If you invite someone to your home for dinner and say (with self-righteousness) that you have no food for them because, instead, the value of the food and entertainment was given to your favorite charity, Save the Spotted Sea Slug, then you have not been hospitable. You may have done a totally different mitzvah - charity - but you have simultaneously NOT done (in fact probably violated) the mitzvah of hospitality. It's unseemly, and actually not very generous, to commit an aveira on someone else's terms.
2. What's really ignorant is that there's a whole other mitzvah to do on Purim which can fit this anti-materialistic/self-righteous impulse: it's called matanot l'evyonim. It's actually way more important mitzvah, and pretty hard to do, than ShM. If these people sent me the same card but saying that they gave MLE in my name then I'd feel much better about it.

There's an odd phenomenon, noticed by my wife about Israelis in the US (parents of our kids' friends) who don't seem to celebrate Purim. I've noticed secular Jews ignore the holiday as well. My first reaction was: how could anyone not like Purim?! It's the day to legally/religiously eat junk food, get drunk, have fun at parties, dress in costume, mock your leaders, and learn Tanakh! It's the best day ever. So, yeah, after expressing that, I realized that all that greatness applies mainly to those who are religiously repressed for most of the year (it's one reason why people have applied Purim to Simchat Torah, because unlike other chagim, we have only 1 day of Purim - or as my rebbe in Hamivtar said, "you know Israel is better than Golus because in America you have two days of Pesach and one day of Purim and in Israel there's two days of Purim and one day of Pesach.")

While it's possible that the secular Jews who scorn/ignore Purim are actually reacting to the messages of Purim - which is pretty anti-Zionist, anti-Diaspora, and anti-Secular - I don't think it's that deep. I think that secular Jews already celebrate Halloween, Mardi Gras, Saint Patricks, and - especially in free countries without state-sanctioned antisemitism - feel no need to have a Bakhtinian carnival. As such, I can make a dictum that the more secular the Jew, the more distant they are from Purim.

And, true to the genius of the Megillah, is precisely the message of the book.

First pic from here of the Esther fresco from the Dura Europos Synagogue. Second pic from here.

Bracket Nonensense

2011-03-20T21:30:00.003-04:00

I basically don't follow professional basketball, which I consider urban Nascar (i.e. both sports are about endurance and seem to only require the last 5 minutes to be even interesting) and I care even less about college sports. Considering that most of America considers college students valuable only when they are hitting each other with balls and sticks, and that I am a dedicated Academic type, you can see why I don't care a whit for college basketball.

That said, I do have some favorite teams. Now that Princeton has briefly flashed across the NCAA screen, so young so bright, The Styx loyalties are firmly with UNC. My father is an alum and as a family we've strongly supported public universities and the UNC-Duke rivalry is one of my favorite iconic battles of good and evil.

UNC is likely not to lose tonight and if Nate's right, UNC will next be against Ohio - which should actually be the best game of the whole Schmracket. Go 'Heels!

Two Pieces of Good News

2011-03-12T21:26:00.004-05:00

OK, so in the search for some balance, I recall these pieces of decent news. Nothing to offset today's horror, but whatever works:

(1) Patrick and Israeli officials sign trade development agreement: "Governor Deval Patrick and his Israeli hosts today signed an agreement that will strengthen research and development links between the Bay State’s research consortiums and Israeli companies." This is nice.

and even better:

(2) Princeton Beats Harvard at Buzzer - according to the story:

Princeton's Douglas Davis hit a leaning jump shot at the buzzer to give the Tigers a trip to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2004 with a wild 63-62 win over Harvard. ... The league played the game on Yale's campus, about 130 miles from each school. Before the game, Harvard and Princeton students chanted "Yale sucks!"

Ah, unity even in the face of conflict.

Update Here's the video of the winning shot. Warning, Orange Alert (that specific alert here means there's a full on tush shot of a weird guy in skin-tight orange jumpsuit).

Terrible Day

2011-03-12T20:19:00.003-05:00

So, going into Shabbas, there's the North Japanese Tsunami, but after Shabbas I find out that (1) the 'quake/tsunami damaged a nuclear reactor and they need to act quick to prevent a meltdown. Like one Godzilla wasn't enough!

Then, a small header on the Times front page, I read about (2) an absolute horror in Israel where terrorist slaughter a family - including a months old baby. I'm mute with rage over this. It's been a while since we've had this kind of attack and that's enough time for me to again be stupefied at the world's silence and/or complicity over the crimes of the (so-called) Palestinians and the cheapness of Jewish blood.

Then I read, in the same Times, in a minute's reading, about the terrible bus accident in the Bronx confirming most of my fears about these cheap Chinatown buses.

I need some good news quick.

Just in Time for Purim!

2011-03-03T14:19:00.001-05:00

From Kashrut.com Alerts: The following Tootsie Roll Industries, Inc. products are newly certified as kosher: Junior Mints, Blow Pops, Tootsie Roll Pops, Caramel Apple Pops, Charms, Sugar Daddy and Sugar Babies. These products must bear the OU symbol to be kosher and new packaging bearing the "OU" symbol will be distributed nationwide beginning in the next few months. Tootsie Rolls, Tootsie Fruit Rolls, Frooties and are kosher DAIRY even without the OU-D symbol. Dots are Kosher Pareve even without the OU symbol.

h.t. my local Orthodox Rabbi.

Degrees of Bigotry

2011-03-01T11:56:00.004-05:00

The front page of the times had the arresting photo (see left) of some freak, John Gallano, who I assume is either an artist or a professional clown. It appears that the clown has emitted an anti-Semitic slur. Charlie Sheen, aka Carlos Estevez, has also been fired recently for making anti-Semitic comments. While I applaud any action that destroys bigots and scumbags, I do want to draw a distinction between 2 acts of bigotry.

Sheen, according to the Times, went on a radio show and railed against his boss, Chuck Lorre, all the while calling the boss "Hayim Levine." Yeah, it's odd that someone whose name was changed is mocking another ethnic name changer, but it also evinces anti-Semitism (so I'm told) and so he has been fired. Or something - to be honest, I never wanted to watch his show so I don't follow this too closely.

I'd like to point out, though, that as anti-Semitism goes, this is as mild as you can get. Consider that Sheen already has screamed anti-Black epithets in public, and that wasn't a firing offense. Why should anti-Semitism trump that?

Well, I don't think it did and I'm annoyed that it's being depicted that way. My presumption is that Sheen was fired because he was meant to clean up in rehab and instead he walked out of the 'hab and into a radio booth to insult his boss. Is it his bigotry or his aggressive stupidity at fault? I'd prefer to say it's the latter.

Especially in light of the Galliano clown. Here's what the Times says:

The video, posted on the Web site of the British tabloid The Sun, appears to show Mr. Galliano taunting other patrons at the bar, La Perle, declaring in a slurred voice that “I love Hitler” and that “people like you would be dead,” and “your mothers, your forefathers” would all be “gassed.” It was unclear when the video was recorded.

Do you see the difference? Sheen wasn't as much a bigot as a raving jackass. Galliano actually hates Jews. Because nobody but a true hater would even *think* of calling on Jews to be murdered by Hitler again. Seriously, folks.

This was the same case I made about Michael "Kramer" Richards who didn't *just* say the n-word, but actually talked wistfully about the bygone days when you could lynch blacks. Again, the difference is that using the n-word can be put in the category of using angry-talk (like the f-word, or any other word-words), but actively talking about committing specific murder is another category altogether.

Even though I am happy to continue exposing bigots and penalizing people who use racist slurs (which I have no urge to do myself, so I can comfortably condemn that class of scum), I do want to make a distinction between rage-words and actual bigots.

No Oscar Predictions This Year

2011-02-27T18:08:00.005-05:00

I decided that I won't make Oscar Predictions this year - the first time in Styx history. I've been heading this way for years but what put me over the edge was an article in Entertainment Weekly which described how Supporting Actress nominee Melissa Leo for The Fighter (2010), was hurting her Oscar chances because of self-paid ads she put in Variety. Get that? Not only was I predicting movies even though I had not seen them all, I felt that I could predict based on analyzing the buzz and yearly voting patterns. Yet, as I've complained before, we're not told (a) who the electorate is (who is in the academy? who voted? do they have the same turnout problems as the off-year national elections?) but also how the freakin' voting process even works. Yet I was willing to act the fool and predict my 'winners' despite my massive ignorance.

But along comes EW to say that despite Leo's performance, or the performances of her colleagues, she could lose an artistic award because people don't like how she campaigned.

Not only does this mean that to predict the awards, I would need to know the inside politics of cockamamie 'campaigns,' but that the Academy voters seem to actively admit that the awards have nothing to do with a particular performance or movie. It's insular politics that - quite honestly - insult art.

Yeah, there have been naysayers claiming this in the past, but they seem to base this assertion on the results of the Oscars - that crappy movies and people win over more deserving candidates. But *I'm* basing my nay on the fact that the Academy is de-facto admitting that their decisions are not based on quality whatsoever.

That there are idiot voters in the US electing reprobate Tea-baggers is a problem within the Democratic system. That there are idiot voters who claim to be artists judging aesthetic quality belies the nature of their so-called Academy.

I'll still track the winners, but I wash my hands of the predictions.

Comic: Ben Bailey on New York Smells

2011-02-10T11:17:00.004-05:00

This could only be a male comedy thing - but I found this specific routine deeply hilarious. I needed to remove my chewing gum lest I choke from laughter. Yet, my wife did not even crack a smile. It's possibly because I lived in New York and had the exact same reactions he describes.

After watching this dude on Netflix I hoped that he would have been picked up by movies and TV and I see that he has (even winning an Emmy for Cash Cab). Good for him. As a big man comic, he's taken the Patrick Warburton route in his voice and pacing. It works.

Jokes.com

Ben Bailey - Different Smells

comedians.comedycentral.com

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Video of the Decade: Oklahoooooooma!

2010-12-31T16:13:00.002-05:00

Since everything will be 'of the decade,' and since that arbitrary (and arguably erroneous) milestone is soon passing, I want to share a discovery: somebody FINALLY put on youtube one of my favorite all-time SNL skits: Wedgie Fever.

Every time someone mentions the word "Oklahoma" I think of this skit. Warning: this is a pure example of male type humor

Kosher Tooth Fairy

2010-12-15T16:27:00.003-05:00

My oldest child lost his first tooth yesterday. This was eagerly awaited; all his friends had lost a tooth already and this is a prepubescent milestone. Considering that I lost a tooth a few weeks ago, his event was much more celebratory.

In any case, he had heard about the tooth fairy but I had planned for this eventuality: how to eliminate the Anglo-Saxon superstitions that our culture is saddled with. It's bad enough that Xmas and other Notzrei Chazarai is in the air for one quarter of the year, but there's Disney and others talking about fairies and wishing upon stars.

My solution is that in every case where there's some intercessory minor divinity required, I bring out Eliyahu Ha-Navi (Elijah). Normally, I'm loath to adduce miracle making whoozits into my religious pantheon - so I eschew sephirot, malachim, Rebbe Meir Baal Ha-Nes, and the sundry Kabbalah Masters who sadly have found locale in contemporary Orthodoxy. Fie on all this avoda zara.

Yet, I am stuck with Eliyahu Ha-Navi as an immortal, ever-present visitor: it's in Tanakh, and all over liturgy. So I might as well use it. If Eliyahu comes to every Havdalah, Bris, and Seder, he can give my kids money for their teeth.

Pic is Gustav Dore's depiction of Eliyahu going up to Heaven.

Sperber Leaves Orthodoxy?

2010-12-15T14:31:00.006-05:00

The JTA reports today that Rabbi Dr. Daniel Sperber is the chancellor of a new rabbinical school - the aptly named Canadian Yeshiva and Rabbinical School - which is to be the "middle ground between Conservative Judaism and what they describe as an increasingly rigid Orthodox movement."

So check out the leadership: all but Sperber are Conservative rabbis; faculty? All conservative rabbis, including Joel Roth and Wayne Allen, two of the brightest and most halakhically knowledgeable of Conservative rabbis.

Going through the entire faculty list yields only one non-JTS rabbi, Aaron Levy who's a musmakh of Chovevei... which seriously doesn't help matters for both schools.

So finally finally finally Sperber outs himself for what he really is: a conservative rabbi. Yeah, Dan, we Orthodox are so rigid and have 'moved to the right' - either that or you and your cronies have been pushing the goalposts so far to the left that all I had to do was stand still.

But, you may say, the JTA article does state:

Sperber, who is on the advisory board of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, a liberal Orthodox rabbinical school in New York founded by Rabbi Avi Weiss, says the major hurdle will be attracting more Orthodox faculty. If the new school becomes identified as a Conservative institution -- a possibility, given that most of its leadership is Conservative -- Sperber said he will withdraw.

How seriously should I take that? Well, a hallmark of conservative halakha has been a remarkable short-sightedness; they advocate rapid, jerky change and then wonder why nobody follows D'orytas anymore. In the same vein, Sperber has jumped ship without bothering for the consequences (just as he did by advocating for the so-called partnership minyans).

Bottom line is that he has been a conservative rabbi for a while now. And the crazy part is that people will interpret that statement, and he will react to that statement, by thinking it's a slur. It's only a slur if you are a bigot. I'm not: it's perfectly OK to be a conservative Jew... just don't hide what you're doing behind the veneer of Orthodoxy, that's assur.

Yet for Sperber to believe that the yeshiva is good enough to join as chancellor, but only if it's not 'conservative' means that he's a bigot. Look, Dan, do you agree with your faculty? So what if they're "conservative" in name - you agree with them in what they do. So join them in name. Do everyone a favor and stop being a meisit.

P.S. I love how all the faculty with "s'mikha" are called "Rav." I believe this is in reaction to Rav Moshe Feinstein's practice of phonetically spelling out the English word "rabbi" in Hebrew when referring to non-Orthodox rabbis. Either that or it's the standard 'through the looking glass' way that conservative rabbis take standard halakhic terms and infuse them with their new denomination specific meanings.

Pic is of Sperber from his new yeshiva's website

The Holocaust and Guns

2010-12-15T11:20:00.004-05:00

I just finished a stint as a teaching assistant for a Holocaust history class this semester. It was a fascinating class with a brilliant professor but, naturally, it was horrible. I've purposefully kept away from the topic all my life, not because I'm trying to ignore or hide the facts, but because a little bit of emotional dread goes a long way with me (and my family). I lost many relatives; I'm named after two brothers of my grandfather who were murdered; but I have tried to avoid the soul-crushing intensity that a dive into the holocaust waters would bring.

Well, there went that plan out the window. The class met for an hour three times a week, which meant I was depressed for most of the time. True story: I got the last word in class - the last day we have a class-wide discussion and I explained to the mass of undergraduates, many of whom were born the year when I was a college freshman, that studying the Holocaust is different when you're a able-bodied single adult than when you're a married parent. As a 20 year old, you can imagine being in the resistance, escaping a ghetto, hiding out in the woods etc. As a parent, all you imagine is your children being murdered. Again, it was horrible.

One natural response of a study of the Holocaust is Zionism, but it's a bit more complicated than that. One disturbing realization of the history is that while the mass murder started in Western Europe, aided by a culture of anti-semitism that reacted to the gains of liberal Jews in Weimar Germany, for the most part the assimilated Jews of the Western countries managed to escape. E.g. 50% of German Jews escaped, and many more would have survived if they had decided to identify as Jews (and thus flee) and not as loyal Germans (and thus stay, wearing their WWI uniforms).

Who were the overwhelming victims? Orthodox Jews who were estranged from their home countrymen (Poland, Lithuania, Belarus) - and the estrangement led to a mutual hatred. One way to see it is that the assimilated Jews of Germany angered the Western European murderers who took over the backward Slavic nations and slaughtered the unassimilated Jews. One lesson I take from this is another support for Modern Orthodoxy, but the whole subject is too dreary for clean lessons.

A question I do ask is why Jews in the diaspora don't own more guns. Zionism is a natural response to the Holocaust, but Zionism isn't limited to the land of Israel. This is a large topic - the debate between political vs. cultural Zionism - but you don't need to go as crazy as the JDL to wonder why Jews don't have a gun in the tool-shed for protection against our crazy neighbors.

My quick answer is that (a) Jews in the US are primarily urban and the anti-gun laws are severe in cities, and the response time of police is quick (especially since Jews, as prima-facie middle-class Caucasians, are preferred clients of law enforcement); (b) Jews are pro-natalist (i.e. we have many kids) and guns and kids don't mix; (c) Jewish law forbids hunting, and eating food shot to death, so it's not in the culture that way; (d) it's tough to be a Jew in the military and that's where gun familiarization occurs.

Those are at least most of the reasons why I haven't already purchased a load of weapons after a semester of being scared out of my mind with Holocaust horror.

Polygamy and Pilegesh

2010-11-10T15:19:00.005-05:00

I was at a conference on Monday at the HBI with the topic: "Polygamy, Polygyny, and Polyamory: Ethical and Legal Perspectives on Plural Marriage." Now I naturally went to the conference expecting that a massively feminist organization like the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute would *oppose* polygyny (multiple wives), polyandry (multiple husbands) maybe, but definitely not polygyny. I based this on my own knowledge of the practice which basically treats women as property and was eliminated from Western and Jewish tradition through the combined force of the otherwise disenfranchised women. It's in fact the best proof that women had 'unofficial' power over the past few centuries.

Well, was *I* in for a surprise. I was only able to go to the first and third sessions (see the above link for the schedule) but that first session was the weirdest, most disturbing, academic panel I'd ever heard. It was filled with pro-polygamy weirdos and the audience, filled with feminists, didn't grab pitchforks and torches - rather they seemed to find the whole thing awesome.

How?! Well, in the airy academic world of anti-empiricism, all that's necessary is to have a compelling *idea* plus one or two anecdotes, and you're all set with a policy proposal! These doofi don't seem to bother with thinking about what the future would look like once the plans are implemented; I guess that's why communism is alive and well in the academy even though it's dead in every country it's been attempted.

There were some sane people in the crew. Prof. Elimelech Westreich, gave a detailed talk on polygamy in halakha, and the best stuff was from Prof. Alean Al-Krenawi who has published studies on the psychological impact of polygamy. His work shows that there's severe unhappiness and anomie in polygamous families. His was the last talk and I could see that he was nearly quivering with frustration and how all these progressives were seriously accepting what he knows to be a retrograde, and even evil, practice.

Yet, the biggest repudiation needs to be given to Prof. Zvi Zohar who spoke about his advocacy for pilagshut, a.k.a. Biblical concubinage (see above for "weird and disturbing"). His article, and a bunch of other wickedness, is found here.

Zohar's point is that there are many current social problems - a singles crisis, an agunah crisis, and his main focus: the crisis of liberal Orthodox Jews who wait until their 30s to get married but want to have sex in their 20s - that can be solved by re-instating 'pilegesh.'

To put it simply, Zohar's idea is both pernicious and ignorant. Pernicious because it will cause many more social problems than it would possibly solve, and of those it cares about, the only thing that will be helped is guiltless sleeping around. It will actually prolong the singles crisis, it won't help agunahs because he acknowledges that people will eventually get married anyway. So all he wants to do is allow nominally-frum Jews to sleep around. Yipee. It's basically the equivalent of saying "people are driving to shul, so let's just make driving OK on Shabbat!" And boy did that work out.

It's ignorant because he actually read the "Pilegesh at Giva" story as somehow advocating pilagshut instead of it being a CLEARLY OBVIOUS ATTACK ON PILAGSHUT. Its kinda like reading the golden calf episode as a support for golden idols.

Anyway, I will end my trashing of his idea with one of my favorite Onion stories: "Desperate Vegetarians Declare Cows Plants"

Weird Thought of the Day: The 90s vs 00s

2010-11-10T15:14:00.003-05:00

My brother and I have light-hearted kerfuffles over the value of 70s music (me) versus 80s music (me). We both agree, as guys in their late 30s will do, that all music in recent years doesn't match up. However, it got us thinking about the nostalgia recreation of those two decades and whether there's an actual taste/feel of the 90s versus the 00s? Is there any difference? Probably there is, given that my taste has been blunted by the fact that I can't remember much about those two decades as I was busy living life, but it's something that I'm going to investigate further. As far as I can tell, the two decades feel indistinguishable in terms of fashion, music, and taste. Sure, one decade was filled with peace, prosperity and joy (Clinton Years) and the other was war, hatred and death (Bush years) but did that effect movies and music?

Do the Chinese Understand

2010-11-05T09:11:00.002-04:00

That this makes the Nobel people look like they made the perfect choice?: "China Urges Europeans to Snub Nobel Ceremony":

China is pressing European governments to boycott the ceremony awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, warning that the award interferes in China’s internal affairs and that Mr. Liu is a criminal

That's one reason why I'm not entirely afraid of China, because they are terrible members of the international community, and that stuff does matter. Just like in ordinary micro-economics, you may have the best product, but if people don't respect you, they will choose every excuse not to deal with you.

Reaction to Tuesday's Midterms

2010-11-04T14:40:00.004-04:00

Some quick reactions from Tuesday's Midterm Elections. Note, when I say "we" that refers to "Democrats" and/or "(Normal) Jews" and/or "(Normal) Americans". This is because, as I said Monday, the current Republican party is bizarrely more evil in intention than the ideas backing the Bush Years:

This could have been much much worse. As the dust settles, the Democrats lost only 1 House. Many of the lost seats in the Senate should have been quite safe (PA, Ill-a-freakin'-Noise) and that's a depressing sign. But considering that Teabaggers were defeated in many places, that California stayed Blue, and that Harry Reid's Faustian deal is still under warranty, means that it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

The irony about Reid is that if anyone is responsible for the current failure of the Democrats, it's Reid. As I said in the intro, it's a given that the current GOP is freakishly evil (see below), but the only places where their evil could reign was SCOTUS (which is a lost cause until Scalia and Thomas get incapacitated by their own hatred of humanity), and the Senate. Despite the Dems having a historically high 60 seats, Reid allowed the Senate Republicans to destroy most attempts to repair the economy and help America. It's that bad. And because of the deadlock in congress, more people are out of work than should be, the health care plan is flaccid, and Obama's appointees are stalled in committee. All this evil was hated by the American people who returned their ire on... House Democrats. Who were by and large heroes these past 2 years. If there was any justice, Reid should have lost, the Dems should have kept the Senate - and House.

Which leads to the most infuriating result of Tuesday. While it's bad enough that the disturbing and malevolent John Boehner will be the new speaker, and that the Teabaggers have renewed vigor, what I'm especially angry about is that the GOP tactic of legislative anarchy worked for their benefit. The GOP is better at "playing the ref" than the Dems, mainly because the GOP is ideologically anti-government! Even when the Dems were trying to stop Bush's evil, in general their party is in favor of legislation. GOPers can take it or leave it. They may have claimed that they were trying to stop laws that hurt the American people, but only morons or fanatics actually believe that was true. Seriously. The proof is that the GOP supported everything they claim Obama stands for when Bush was the president. Every (non-alcoholic/moron) in Congress knew that we needed economic stimulus, health care, and bank reform - the GOP just didn't want those vitally important things to happen under a Democratic president. Which makes them a special type of evil.

Note, this proof is the same one behind the Teabaggers: (1) if you don't like deficit spending, then why did you support Bush's epic/disgusting ballooning of the deficit? Because you want tax cuts and crazy wars? OK, yeah, you do. But it's because they're bigoted fiends; (2) if you hate health care reform, why did you support the Medicare Prescription Drug Boondoggle? I could go on but the pattern is obvious.

It's possible that Obama should be blamed for not strongly broadcasting the GOP evil before Nov 2. It is my biggest cavil with the president: that I want him to fight more. Yeah, it's nice to be 'non-partisan' but evil is evil and must be stopped. However, in retrospect, I have to blame the House/Senate democrats - and thus the DNC - for the responsibility of carrying out that message. It was their gooses about to be cooked and their legislature to be explained, and thus I blame their loss on themselves.
The big silver lining about the election is that - based on the GOP Evil Analysis above - that the hidden enemy of Republican Obstructionism now has a face. Ya see, as I've experienced in my own life, it's part of the American psyche to dismiss the excuses behind loss and failure. Bush lied, stole 2000, so what - he crossed the finish line and now we can move on to the next horse race. So too in Congress - so what if the GOP committed legislative fraud and grand evil over 2 years - it's not visible therefore its not provable. Yet now Bone-nert/Bay-nert/Boonert is the orange face of Congress. And we have a clear, easily spotted - even at night - enemy of Democracy.
Other good news - Massachusetts stayed Blue. The Scott "Nudie Model" Brown debacle of 2009 did not repeat.
On the unknown/bad news front: one piece of info I was looking for in the news organs is probably the most crucial factor of the Midterms - the makeup of State legislatures in those states that will gain/lose Congressional seats because of the new census. As Obama said on the Daily Show, the two biggest anti-Constitutional enemies to the Republic are (1) the filibuster, especially in the hands of the anarcho-nihilistic burglars of the GOP, and (2) gerrymandering of House districts. The GOP has succeeded in the former and may now succeed in the latter.
The last reaction for now has to do with newspapers. I sought out a (free) New York Times on Tuesday morning because I felt that I needed to have a good analysis and breakdown of the effects of the Midterms. Yet, I didn't get one. Not only was the newspaper frozen in time while reporting on a constantly shifting fact landscape, what information they did contain was fluffy and pedestrian. I wanted numbers! I wanted facts about losses and wins and causes and effects. Instead the paper was filled with reaction pieces about mood and feelings. It was useless. The internet wins again - not only because its up-to-the-second in news, but because the possible info is BETTER.

Tea Party Republicans

2010-11-01T13:49:00.006-04:00

Frank Rich yesterday claimed, correctly, that: "What made the Tea Party most useful was that its loud populist message gave the G.O.P. just the cover it needed both to camouflage its corporate patrons and to rebrand itself as a party miraculously antithetical to the despised G.O.P. that gave us George W. Bush and record deficits only yesterday."

Very true. The Teabaggers, aka The Fort Sumpterists, are the latest in the group of dupes who fall for the cynical robber-barons of the current GOP. The tea-partiers who have genuine grievances should seriously be directing their energy against the GOP, and their perpetuation of the Bush years of disgrace and plunder. They won't because, bottom line, they are bigots. It's funny how this simple fact should still be in dispute. Why is their ire creepily directed against the Black President and the Lady Speaker?

Is it relevant that the Teabaggers are bigots? So what, you may ask. Well it's crucial because:

The GOP has embraced these sick fools, and that shows that the GOP is happy fellow-traveling with the scum of America. One sad lesson I get from this semester's study of the Holocaust is that the conservatives in Europe in the 1930s felt they could control the wacko radical right in their countries and while they succeeded in Italy, Romania, Hungary etc this gambit failed in Germany. And Germany was able to then take over all the conservative governments, ain't that funny. Radical Rightists are bad news no matter the era or nationalist-bugbear. And the Teabaggers are the radical right.
The teabaggers will come after the Jews with the same fervor they reserve for their Nigerian Presidential delusions. Another lesson I learn from the Holocaust is that the crazies actually mean what they say. Listen to their rhetoric.
There can be no Jewish Tea Party as a result, and I'd claim there should be no Jewish support for a political party that embraces Tea Partiers. Then again, the fact that a Republican candidate for Congress in Ohio happily dresses up like an SS officer should cement this conviction. Yet there are Jewish Republicans still because Obama is perceived as not a friend to Israel. Look, his state department has definitely screwed up, but as I've said many times before, there has not been one single 'fact on the ground' as a result of this - as opposed to the Bush years which gave us a Shiite Iraq, a Hamas controlled Gaza, and two failed Mideast wars - greatly reducing the American ability to contain Iran.

Jewish republicans: don't get blinded by racism or greed! - the GOP is not our friend!
One last lesson from the Holocaust for now: that in every country where the Jews felt they were safe because they were rich, or part of the ruling class, we were quickly tossed to the wolves when the Nazis came knocking. Just being Jewish is a death sentence to the radical rightists of the world. You may think this is hyperbole, or a generalization, or even a cliche, but I've been going through the historical record in detail and it's nauseating how often it happened.

Pic from here of the GOP scumball in his SS uniform. Note, according to the Wiki: "He supports Israel's right to self defense and the American obligation to support it; he opposes a Palestinian state formed by taking land from Israel, a divided Jerusalem, and believes that the UN has become irrelevant." A lesson for you holdout GOP Jews: Actions speak louder than words. Dressing as a Nazi is a red line, no? Or does it matter when your hatred of blacks and/or greed for low taxes come into play?

Video: Oy Lei!

2010-10-25T20:28:00.002-04:00

Tonight I saw the below song from Phineas and Ferb - the only really good kids show I've seen in decades. I actually look forward to watching it with my kids. They have at least one song every show and the following is an expansion of the character Vivian Garcia-Shapiro, a Jewish Mexican. My mom will love this.

The lyrics are from the dude who put the clip up:

Lyrics:
It's a Mexican-Jewish cultural festival!
Mexican-Jewish cultural festival!
Oy-lei!
There is kreplach on tostada,
'Cept for picking a piñata.
We kibitz when we lambada.
How are things in Ensenada?
We put bottles on cabezas
We do mitzvahs up on mesas
And we're coming to your places
With big smiles upon our faces.

(Both parts repeat at the same time.)

Robert Reich about the 2010 Midterms

2010-10-25T14:37:00.002-04:00

This is a great essay from from Robert Reich (at Salon) about how to understand the upcoming midterm election. The key points he makes, under the rubric of advising Obama not to move to the "center":

1. There is no "center" to American politics. The "center" is merely what most people tell pollsters they think or want at any given time. Trying to move to the center by following polls means giving up on leadership because you can’t lead people to where they already are.

2. By the first midterm the public is almost always grouchy because the president wasn’t a messiah and didn’t change the world. No single president has that kind of power. The higher the expectations for change at the start of an administration, the greater the disillusionment.

3. Presidents’ parties always lose the first midterm elections because the president isn’t on the ticket, and the opposing party has had time to regroup and refuel. It’s always easier for the party on the outs to attack -- and to mass troops for the assault -- than for the party inside to defend.

4. The economy trumps everything else, even though presidents aren’t really responsible for it. So when it’s bad -- as it was during the first midterms of Carter, Reagan and Clinton -- voters penalize the president’s party even more than usual. When it’s very bad, the electoral penalty is likely to be that much larger.

But read the whole thing.

Don't Pay the Ferryman, Part 2

2010-10-17T19:58:00.002-04:00

As I posted earlier today, I enjoy the song "Don't Pay the Ferryman" and as part of the celebration for this song, I played it for my middle child. He likes the song and was boogying around to it in our living room. When we put him in for a nap, he was still grooving to it and was singing the lyrics (which he made up) at the top of his lungs. Below is a small clip, recorded off the child-monitor audio, of his 20+ minute rendition of "Don't Pay the Ferryman" (lyrics by Chris de Burgh and Jota Minuscula Styx)

Song of the Day: Don't Pay the Ferryman (1982)

2010-10-17T14:22:00.003-04:00

The current song of the day is "Don't Pay the Ferryman" (1982) by Chris de Burgh. This song is great because it's part of a good 1970s rock tradition of gothic storytelling, along the lines of Hotel California.

The song is cheesy, but it does what good rock should do: get caught in your head, tell a good story, and allow you to scream out the lyrics in a culturally significant way.

Lyrics (from here):

It was late at night on the open road,
Speeding like a man on the run,
A lifetime spent preparing for the journey;

He is closer now and the search is on,
Reading from a map in the mind,
Yes there's the ragged hill,
And there's the boat on the river. And when the rain came down,
He heard a wild dog howl,
There were voices in the night - "Don't do it!"
Voices out of sight - "Don't do it!
Too many men have failed before,
Whatever you do,

Don't pay the ferryman,
Don't even fix a price,
Don't pay the ferryman,
Until he gets you to the other side;

In the rolling mist, then he gets on board,
Now there'll be no turning back,
Beware that hooded old man at the rudder,
And then the lightning flashed, and the thunder roared,
And people calling out his name,
And dancing bones that jabbered and a-moaned
On the water. And then the ferryman said,
"There is trouble ahead,
So you must pay me now," - "Don't do it!"
"You must pay me now," - "Don't do it!"
And still that voice came from beyond,
"Whatever you do,

Don't pay the ferryman,
Don't even fix a price,
Don't pay the ferryman,
Until he gets you to the other side;

Don't pay - the ferryman!

While I know the song from listening to 'greatest hits of the 80s' albums, others know it because of a priceless scene from MST3K:

One My Favorite Comics

2010-10-17T13:32:00.005-04:00

Short Post: the attached comic is one that cracks me up every time. It's gross, but funny.

Long Post: It's a too-cool-for-school trait for people to bash Garfield. There's a now infamous product of the 21st Century, Garfield Minus Garfield, which capitalizes on the hatred, attempting to show the strip is funnier without the title character. Yet I, he who takes comic strips way too seriously, find Garfield a reliable read. Why the dissonance from the screaming masses (a.k.a. why am I right and they wrong)?

I believe there's two main reasons for the cultural opprobrium: (1) it's an old strip and people who feel they are out of comic-page reading can attack it as a symbol of the youth they've left behind, and/or to attack the child they used to be and hate.

(2) More likely, it's because of the crass commercialism of Jim Davis, head of Garfield Inc. He's unabashed in his desire to create Garfield for mercenary purposes, and the comic is exploited in nearly every possible way. Note, this exploitation was also performed by Charles Schultz of Peanuts, but he was given a pass because his strip is so deep (it was rarely *funny* but it was solid - almost literary in its resonance and application; Dickens was commercial too, but he's still assigned in English class - Schultz is the Dickens of comics, and you can quote me).

Garfield is very rarely deep, it's commercialism runs through its core. And while Schultz was drawing the strip until days before his death, Davis (early on) outsourced the strip to others (as far as I know Davis just picks up checks). So the main opprobrium comes from cultural doyens, like me to be honest, who resent a guy being so successful in art by intentionally abusing the form.

Two caveats: (1) Some people may actually not find Garfield funny at all - hey, there's no accounting for taste. You may be excused. I'm dealing with people who attack it while not actually reading it (see below). (2) However, the Garfield-bashers, the subconsciously honest ones, don't attack it for being without merit, mainly because they know they can't. It's sorta like attacking Dane Cook - whose success is resented and hated, but whose act can only be considered mean/evil/crass/mercenary and not just straight out inexplicable.

This example, Garfield as Dane Cook, is to distinguish these artists from those who achieve opprobrium for being straight out insults to existence - i.e. they are so unfunny/untalented that it's insane they are still being published/paid. So, in comics, the go to example is often Marmaduke. Which I'm fine with, but it's not so exclusive - the comics page is clogged with strips who have the equivalent of tenure: creative thinkers who may have been productive once, but who have been ossified into obsolescence by the passage of time: Hagar, B.C., Broom Hilda, Hi and Lois, Beetle Bailey, etc.

Who's the stand-up comic equivalent of Marmaduke? Maybe Jay Leno? It's harder to find a comparison, because standup is the most brutal art form there is and has no tolerance for coasters. Maybe Robin Williams has become Marmaduke - except that when Robin was young (and, sad to say, coked out the wazoo) he was the funniest on stage. Wow was he good. I can't imagine Marmaduke was ever good.

This brings up another fascinating point, alluded to above: most of those who attack Garfield don't read the current strip. People just *know* that it's an acceptable bashing-body. How do we know this type of thing. I'm sure, as a half-sociologist, I should know the phrases/reasons, oops.

But it's sort of how I just know that I, as a late-30s male, am supposed to (a) be preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse, (b) hate clowns, and (c) mock Twitter and Facebook. So too, people know that you're supposed to mock Garfield. I probably would too, if I didn't actually read comics.

The Mandelbrot dies, 85

2010-10-17T13:18:00.003-04:00

The Benoît B. Mandelbrot has passed away, at age 85, from cancer. From the Times: "[he] was born on Nov. 20, 1924, to a Lithuanian Jewish family in Warsaw. In 1936 his family fled the Nazis, first to Paris and then to the south of France, where he tended horses and fixed tools." Pretty tough dude, Litvak Shoah survivor, mathematical genius. Sigh, I'm now imagining the 6 million of people like him who were murdered (a terrible after-effect of my being a teaching assistant for a class on the Holocaust).

My brother knows his son. And, no, I don't think Benoit invented the paisley tie, let's not sully his name.

Oren: "An End to Israel's Invisibility"

2010-10-14T08:57:00.001-04:00

I guess one of the only reasons to read the Times is for Michael Oren's occasional op-ed. Thank God for Oren - he's really the only competent member of the current Israeli government. Op-Ed Contributor - An End to Israel’s Invisibility - NYTimes.com

Friendly Note of Bile

2010-10-13T09:27:00.003-04:00

A piece of cynicism I created a bunch of years ago came up in conversation this morning so I felt I should put it out on the tubes. There was a hippie slogan from the 60s: "What if they gave a war, and nobody came." This is in line with John Lennon's doofus song "Imagine" (great song, moronic context).

The bile is: Well if nobody came, then the hippies win. If only one side comes, then that's called conquest.

Pic from here.

It's 10-10-10

2010-10-10T17:11:00.000-04:00

It's an arbitrarily significant day!

10-4: Talk Like a Trucker Day

2010-10-04T14:41:00.004-04:00

It took these guys (which had a picture of the greatest trucker who ever lived, Jack Burton) to inform me that today is Talk Like a Trucker Day (get it, 10-4?).

Here's a set of phrases to help ya'll out. Go here for my nostalgia for "Convoy" to get yo'self in the mood.

Back out from Bean-Town. Bah-bah.

Erev Rosh Hashanah Prize

2010-09-08T10:13:00.003-04:00

Most of the shomrei Shabbat teachers, including professors, that I know have a subtextual contest with each other about who has a worse holiday teaching season. Because Labor Day was Monday, and Erev Rosh Hashanah is today, most schools started this week and the schedules have forced tzorris, schpilkis, and agita among the whole profession. I was present at a one-upsmanship session where I was able to present the winner of the worst teaching schedule prize, won by me by proxy for my wife:

My wife's first day of teaching is *today* and she's teaching until 5:00 pm.

Please, please, hold your applause. But send help.

Pic from here.

Top 5 Reasons to Make Aliyah

2010-09-06T21:30:00.005-04:00

5. The dream of 2000 years has finally been fulfilled

4. Married to a Gush guy

3. Pesky Cossaks

2. Am a Jew born in any country besides Israel or U.S.

1. Want to avoid three-day yuntif

Why We are Americans

2010-09-05T11:45:00.004-04:00

I've heard of Canadians, Mexicans, and others who associate themselves with this hemisphere of the Americas protest why the residents of the United States refer to themselves as "Americans." The argument is that USAers shouldn't hog the name "American" - because everyone in North America and Central America and South America are also "Americans." (See the lyrics to the above song to hear the full set of whines).

So two reactions to this, and one answer:

Reaction 1: The impetus to this complaint seems to be envy badly disguised as pique.* Why else would anyone want to claim the title of 'American' if it weren't so cool/important to be from the United States? The whiners could claim that since they are also in the Americas, they are tarred with the same opprobrium of we in the U.S.

Answer: What is the country of Canadians? Canada. What is the country of Mexicans? Mexico. I could go on, but if you look at a list of the countries of the world, you'll see that there is only one place that has the word "America" in its name: the U.S.A.

Reaction 2: Given that logic states we should be called "Americans," and that the only reason to protest the name is pique or terminal whinging, I do need to ask what these fragile freaks suggest we call ourselves? Uniteds? Meh.

* L'havdil, it's akin to every aggrieved group claiming their particular tragedy is a 'holocaust.'

Birthday-Anniversary Season

2010-08-20T00:04:00.002-04:00

The mid-summer has many happy occasions for my immediate family; in a 4 week period it's the birthday of: my brother, father, and myself and the anniversary of: me and my parents. So, a little late, but the official celebration videos:

For all the birthdays:

and, of course, for the Anniversaries.

Moonraker (Two Thoughts)

2010-08-19T23:05:00.007-04:00

Moonraker is now on. OK, I promised not to live-blog this, but just two thoughts: (1) for those making lists of necessities for evil overlords, need to make room on their rosters for The Countdown Guy ("twenty seconds and counting...")
(2) The ending is fine, it has the "big battle in the enemy strong-hold" that we loved in other films, even if it's a crazy cheezy space battle. But the part of the movie where Bond needs to shoot down the death-gas capsules with the space-shuttle laser is one of the best scenes in all Bond-dom. I must admit this, in sheer honesty.

And, because I can't let it rest, I must explain why the ending is so damn good: because it's necessary within logic and the plot. Most of Moonraker involves absolutely idiotic, near suicidal, behavior. Nobody does anything that makes a lick of sense; even though numerous action sequences occur, false tension is created, but no logical person would feel emotion since everyone is a cartoonish gasbag. But the ending is necessary, plausible, and tense. Honor due.

The Spy Who Loved Me

2010-08-19T20:34:00.006-04:00

Many stupid Bond fans think this is a decent movie. It ain't. It's on TV now, and I want to comment via live-blogging.

"The Spy Who Loved Me" was made during the plot-rails Roger Moore era. His plots usually were driven by the external Hollywood need to have exciting action and not to follow earthly human reason. Basically, the series had gone on long enough that the writers/producers stopped making 'spy thrillers' and just made 'Bond films' (which meant: gadgets, exotic locations, and weird fights).

The movie's premise is stolen from You Only Live Twice - e.g. a third party terrorist kidnaps vehicles from the US and USSR in order to induce WWIII - and this includes the fun 'major army takes over kooky evil man base.' That's good, no question, but it's derivative. And YOLT was better because (a) it was first, and it had (b) Connery, (c) ninjas and (d) a volcanoo. Also, the plot point of a eugenicist billionaire was recycled for the next, and even worse, movie (Moonraker).

But a key problem of recycling from YOLT is that while that movie used a spaceship to swallow up other (US/USSR) spaceships, TSWLM has a big boat swallow up submarines. OK, so lets see how the premise doesn't carry. In 1965, spaceships were basically just non-maneuverable orbiting bricks and so there's some logic that they could be kidnapped by being swallowed from behind.

But submarines being swallowed by a surface ship? They are called submarines for a reason. They just need to go DOWN! And if thinking in 3-dimensions is too hard for Hollywood writers (I assure you, all mariners and aviators are trained to do so, but hack writers can't) then the submarine still has guns and torpedoes! Shoot the frickin' boat before it swallows you! It's what they sub does at the end of the movie when it needs to escape, so it's not like they didn't know about guns in their planet.

Also, each ship was kidnapped because the bad-guy wanted their nuclear weapons (which, unbeknownst to the crew, were to be launched against all major world cities - in a purposeful plan of world annihilation). That's a quite crazy plan, admittedly, but I believe that all nuclear sub crews would kill themselves willingly than let their subs be captured by a hostile - because even one rogue nuke is a world nightmare.

Logical, no? So when the submarine is swallowed by the supertanker - by sitting there on the surface, like Tanya Roberts being kidnapped by a blimp in "A View to a Kill" - and Stromberg threatens to kill the crew with cyanide, they all give up. Why?! Given, the dire nature of captured nukes, they should never had been there in the first place and should also fight to the last man.

Anyway, skipping to the end: after Bond succeeds in diverting the nuclear missiles, and enjoys some success, suddenly the ship starts exploding - forcing their escape. Why?! There's no actual cause for the explosion! Except, as they say on TV Tropes, it's made of explodium.

Hollywood Idiocy: The Showdown

At the end of the movie, Bond asks the Pentagon to hold off destroying Stromberg's base so he can save Anya. Bond builds a jet ski (seriously; even though the sub has to go the base anyway in order to shell it - this is a worthless action by Bond) and then sails to Stromberg. When he shows up, Stromberg tries to kill him with the elevator, but Bond outsmarts him (it's dumb). Then Bond, gun drawn, confronts Stromberg - asking him where Anya is. Stromberg doesn't say and instead he asks Bond to sit down... and Bond does! Why?!? He has only a few moments before the sub shells the station, and he sits down?!

Ah, it's because the plot requires it. Ya see, Stromberg has a clever device - a gun that is immobile and only can kill someone if you're sitting in JUST THAT CHAIR, and so Bond is forced to sit there. Oh, the gun has only one shot. So Bond sits down, Stromberg pulls the trigger, and Bond jumps up before the bullet - made of marmalade? - travels down the bullet tube. OK, so then at that point Bond gets angry and kills Stromberg by pointing the gun in the exact tube and firing - thus shooting Stromberg in the gonads.

Do you understand the logic in all this? Bond kills Stromberg - which he could have done when he came in, but waits to get some info - and after Stromberg is disarmed... Bond shoots him anyway. Stupid and pointless. It's only there to allow Bond to blast the bad guy in the nuts.

Anyway, earlier in the movie, Stromberg recognizes Bond as an enemy agent. Earlier in the film, Stromberg kills some scientists by dropping them through a false bottom in his elevator. He doesn't do this to Bond. Rather he lets Bond go and tells Jaws to kill him outside the ship. Why? Stromberg was already willing to kill people in his own ship before. The only reason to do this is to create a chase scene. Which hurts my brain!

And Jaws' plan for killing Bond? To send a motorcycle equipped with a rocket propelled bomb disguised a sidecar. Which of course misses. Then, when that fails, Jaws chases after Bond in a car - shooting at him with a pistol. Then when that doesn't work, he has the best looking Bond babe ever (seriously), named Naomi, shoot at Bond with a machine-gun toting helicopter.

Now, I'd like to explain how a person is supposed to write a fiction plot: there's supposed to be a correspondence to how people in the actual world think and act or otherwise people (like me) cannot suspend our disbelief - because logic is the food of consciousness. Without logic, my brain rebels.

OK, so according to the writers, Stromberg, the genius billionaire's, plan is to not kill Bond in the same secret untraceable way which worked before but instead to do so in public using a wildly untested method of unguided remote control sidecar explosives. Why? So it would look like an accident? And he said to himself "We'll use the sidecar bomb and even though it's foolproof, you Jaws should follow after him in a car and shoot at him with a pistol - even though shotguns are better at that range and for hitting moving targets, and we doubtless own shotguns if we can purchase or manufacture a custom made motorcycle bomb.... Oh, and above all, surveillance will be from a highly effective helicopter, used the world over to destroy tanks, and it will only be used if my idiotic stuff fails."

Nope, nobody but an idiot - or a Hollwywood writer - would use their resources in this manner. It's only there to create a chase scene modeled after a video game; that's all. and it hurts my brain. The fact that people like this movie is as explicable as people liking the latter Lucas films - most movie-goers, even the nerds of TVTropes - do not possess logic sensors in their heads.

Note, every single problem I've just elucidated, is present from the very first minute in Moonraker, which starts with Jaws surviving a free fall from thousands of feet because he lands on a circus tent... and goes downhill from there. A similar live-blogging of that movie would burn up my keyboard.

Second pic from here.

The Expendables (2010 film)

2010-08-10T22:14:00.002-04:00

I really so much want this movie not to suck. True, it's written and directed by Sylvester Stallone, so that's two strikes against, but I really really want it to work, since it contains nearly every single decent action hero over the past 30 years: Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, Mickey Rourke, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, and Steve Austin. The only ones missing are Jean Claude (who refused a role, sayeth the Wiki, which shows his choice in roles is as sharp as ever) and Steven Seagal, who also refused. Idiots.

So what are the odds that this will actually be decent? Low. And maybe low expectations will save it.

Triceratops

2010-08-10T18:52:00.005-04:00

No thank you, I don't like Ceratops.

That joke comes courtesy of the first Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode my brother and I watched back in the 90s; a joke of such quality that we felt this show would go places.

Anyway, I was told recently that "scientists" had discovered that the Triceratops isn't; that it's just an immature stage of another dino (the Moogooraptor or whatever). I surmised that since everyone in the Western world grew up, and has loved, the Triceratops, and no layman has heard of the Doofusatops, that "they" would just allow the old standby to win. Right? Well, hard earned bitter experience reminds me that the popular will of American 8 year-olds didn't save the Brontosaurus from being renamed the dippy "Apantsasaurus" or whatever. This is the same case? Will the 'tops go the way of Bronto?

Well it looks like sanity, taste, and the combined might of our inner 8 year old has prevailed 'Triceratops' name will stay: "'Triceratops' name will stay" say the newspeople.

This triumph of art and taste over scientific tin-ears gives me hope that maybe we can now save Pluto!

Pic from here.

Today's Backposts (Citizen Dog)

2010-08-10T11:30:00.008-04:00

Citizen Dog Series:

December 02, 2009 - Belly Button Trivia
December 08, 2009 - The THX Menace
December 11, 2009 - Crosswalk Button Morality
December 11, 2009 - Bert and Ernie
December 11, 2009 - Which is the Most Goyish Holiday?
December 12, 2009 - Last Citizen Dog
December 12, 2009 - A Glimpse into My Cleaning Method
December 13, 2009 -No Snowflakes Alike?
December 13, 2009 - Another Person's Invisible Pain
December 13, 2009 - Ikea

Dave Barry and Bob Graham

2010-08-10T11:03:00.000-04:00

As you know, my man Dave Barry has stopped writing a weekly column and has spent the past few years writing children's novels of unknown worth and following his wife to sports events. But, like with Calvin & Hobbes in newspapers, the powers that be have been reprinting old Dave columns. Most I've read already but sometimes we get lucky and there's a 'new' (meaning so old that it wasn't published in any of his books) column. So it was a week ago when I was able to read a 1983 interview between Dave and then FL Gov. Bob Graham (D).

I advise reading the whole column, but suffice it to say that Graham is possibly the sharpest politician I've seen interviewed, based on his extraordinarily swift wit. Mario Cuomo struck me as sharp and funny but just read this amazing interchange, which Dave swears actually happened, and was not pre-planned:

BARRY: What can the state do about harmonica safety? I don't know if you have any idea how many Floridians die every year in harmonica accidents....
GRAHAM: Well last year we actually made some substantial improvement. In 1981, there were four people who died of harmonica accidents. Now actually, I think it's only fair to count three of them, because the fourth one was actually, I would say it was more of a swimming-pool accident. He was playing the harmonica in the swimming pool and actually jumped off the shallow end, hit his head, and we don't know whether it was the fact that he swallowed the harmonica, or the brain damage. They counted it as a harmonica accident. Now, this year, or 1982, the last year for which we have statistics, we only had two harmonica accidents. I think it was the result of the public-service ads that I did....
BARRY: The Harmonica Safety Day I think was a wonderful....
GRAHAM: ...and we built it around the theme that if you want to play Dixie, it's fine, but don't do it in front of the air- conditioning duct, because that's where we found that most of the deaths occurred. It was the vacuum that was created.
BARRY: This leads us pretty much directly to toads. I've been staying at a house in Broward County, and there are, every morning out on the patio, toads the size of mailboxes. What can we do?

Just to 'fact-check', I searched to find if there really had been a Harmonica Safety Day. Nope. Gadzooks, what a guy!

I remember when he ran for president in 2004 and now I'm even angrier that he didn't make any headway. If he had run instead of John "Choke" Kerry?! Think about it: a sharp, savvy, popular Governor and Senator from Florida who opposed the Iraq War! Grrr.

Pic from this completely unrelated site.

Droid Update

2010-08-06T10:00:00.003-04:00

As mentioned here and here, I purchased a new phone, the Motorola Droid, to replace my aging and cracked Palm 680 Treo. It's been a few months and while I still need more time to test it, my confident judgment is that this is not only the worst cell-phone I've ever owned, it may even be the worst purchase I've ever made in my life.

I hate this phone so very much. My biggest problems are (a) its dependence on the touch-screen (I understand that all phones are going this way, aping the accursed I-Phone, but I still can ladle my hate on the subject) - I believe my fingers aren't made for touch-screens, or something, but I'm constantly doing things I don't want to do with this freakin' phone because the screen alternates between being unresponsive and too-sensitive. Hate hate hate.

(B) The second, and big, problem is that the phone sucks up energy. My treo could sit for a day or two without draining its battery, but the Droid eats energy just by sitting there. Hate^3.

I'm stuck with this tech-turkey for another year or so. And I have nobody to blame but myself (oh, and the entire country of tech users who have forced all phones to be these asinine toys instead of TOOLS).

Pic from here.

The Day the Cheez Doodle Died

2010-08-04T09:05:00.003-04:00

My brother alerted me to this sad news, the death of the inventor/creator of the Cheez Doodle, Morrie Yohai a'h. According to the Times:

Morrie Robert Yohai was born in Harlem on March 4, 1920, one of four children of Robert and Mary Habib Yohai, Jewish immigrants from Turkey. The family later moved to the Bronx. Mr. Yohai graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1941 and began working for Grumman Aircraft on Long Island. After enlisting in the Navy during World War II in 1942, he transferred to the Marines and saw action in the South Pacific.

How proud am I? That my beloved Doodles were invented by a Sefardi Jew who fought in World War II as a Marine. Man alive! A Jewish USMC hero of WW2 *and* who invented the cheez doodle. I'm sad I didn't know this before, and the world will miss this creative genius.

Chelsea's Wedding

2010-08-01T14:18:00.002-04:00

So Chelsea finally got married, and to get the stuff out of the way: (1) her husband is "Jewish", (2) she did not convert, and as such it was an (3) interfaith wedding (as shown in this quote from the Times: "The interfaith ceremony was conducted by Rabbi James Ponet and the Rev. William Shillady. Ms. Clinton is Methodist, and Mr. Mezvinsky is Jewish." I guess the rabbi is my old New Haven colleague Jim Ponet of Yale Hillel who is a Reform rabbi and possibly knew the President at school. The picture of the chossun shows him in his tallit, so way to go Jim for doing that, and it wasn't during the 9 days, but it was on Shabbat. Oops.

Anyway, rather than lament about the nature of intermarriage among American Jews, or some other weirdness, I would like to point out that we live in a remarkable age when in a single administration the President and Vice President (both non-Jewish natch) have children who married Jews. Cheslea to Mark Tallisdork yesterday, and Al Gore's daughter Karenna Gore Schiff (OK, the Schiffs are now separated but its (a) besides the point and (b) pretty typical for intermarried couples, especially who name their firstborn son "Wyatt".)

To make this point clear: the two most powerful men in the world, two men permanently engraved in American history, have Jewish inlaws. And you can even add that the same president had a Jewish mistress, you can see that Jews have come a long way (oy). OK, forget the mistress and concentrate on the marriages.

While intermarriage is terrible for the Jewish people, and will bring sadness and teeth gnashing to non-Orthodox Jewish continuity, to think of either Clinton & Gore's marriages as 'intermarriage' misses the point: it would have been assumed that for this to happen in a previous era, possibly up until the mid-1960s, the Jew would have been the one to convert. What an age we live in when we would even assume that the daughter of a two-term popular Baptist president would herself convert to Judaism. Let's get real, people.

Fletch on Movies

2010-07-30T15:25:00.006-04:00

As part of my Shabbat/convelescent reading, I've been going through the "Fletch" novels of Gregory McDonald. Like every red-blooded Genxer, I was introduced to Fletch via the movie, which I often put in my top 5 favorite movies. The first book has basically the same plot skeleton, but is not nearly the same level of comedy, as the film. I will have more to say about the books soon, but I wanted to jump the topic with a quote from a later book in the series, "Fletch's Moxie" which is about the movie business. McDonald sets his books in different 'worlds' and will go on a particular author-filibuster on that subject (e.g. the art world, journalism, politics).

"Moxie" is about movies and actors, and the following speech is a wonderful description (something I wish I'd written) about the terrible 'message movies' that usually win Best Picture, and what is mistaken as 'serious' filmmaking:

"I’m just reading this filmscript.” Fletch jiggled his knee under it. "I don’t know, of course. Never read a filmscript before. It strikes me as pretty terrible. The characters all seem to be like people you meet at a cocktail party—all fronts and no backs. They don’t talk the way people really talk. I do a little writing myself—on days when there are hurricanes. It seems to me, in this filmscript much time and space are wasted while the author is floundering around trying to arrive at an idea. All that should be cut away. Don’t you think writing should begin after the idea is achieved?" Mooney was looking at him like a bull bored with the pasture. "It treats controversial old issues in an insulting, offensive way. Instead of trying to create any sort of understanding, my reading of it is that it is trying to provoke hatred—deliberately."

Apply this to any number of the Best Pictures of the past decade (e.g. American Beauty, Crash, Million Dollar Baby, anything by Ron Freakin' Howard after Apollo 11).

Missing Old Enemies

2010-07-29T15:15:00.006-04:00

My birthday's coming up (and my brother just hit the Big 4-0) so I've been listening to a lot of 70s and 80s music. Just now, hearing "Burning Heart" by ~~Journey Foreigner~~ Survivor, reminds me of a point about our old enemies, the Commies, and our new ones, the Sicko Mooslims. If you recall from the song, and the accompanying movie (Rocky IV), the Russians were a technocratic menace able to create chemical-mechanical monsters to dominate the world. While the reality was sad (Russia seemed to be a third world country with a first world reputation, hence their designation of the 'Second World' in that particular triad), there's an essential fact here: the Commies were totalitarian, fascist, brutal, atheist, racist, and implacable. Their core idea, Marxism, is seductive - especially for the third world, and the Soviets were undeniably trying to take over the world. We must remember these facts. Yet, I miss one key aspect of having them as enemies: their denial of God came with a veneration of science and the arts. This enemy insisted on having high education, music, dance, and critically: science and technology. And because our enemies were trying to dominate these fields, we needed to keep up.

Why did JFK's famous Boston accented boast "putting a man on the moon at the end of the decade" actually happen? I ask this because many pundits like bloviating that if a president makes such a boast then we can accomplish it (Bush tried this, so did His Honor Jed Bartlett). The reason we got to the moon wasn't because of JFK's boast, it was because we were in a death race in tech and science with the Rooskies. The moon was just Vietnam in space.

I miss this part of my old enemy - their primacy of science and technology meant we needed to do that too. It made us invest seriously in education (e.g. my mother was sent to grad school on a Defense scholarship to learn Spanish - because Commies were everywhere, we needed to know what they knew... nowadays we discharge linguists from the military if they're gay). The commies converted the isolationists and anti-intellectuals - who now vocally dominate the GOP - to celebrate American international achievement in every endeavor. *

Our new enemies, radical Muslims, are similar in some respects, and worse in many others, than the Soviets. Ironically, one of the main crimes of Communism - atheism - turns out to have been a mixed blessing. If you had asked a normal American back in the Cold War 50s, why we were fighting the Commies, they're respond "atheism!" This is why we made "In God We Trust" our national motto, and put God in (badly) the Pledge of Allegiance. That's even what I recall reading in the words of the Rav. Yet the radical Muslim enemy is quite theistic, and it's their theism that makes them much worse than the Commies could ever hope to be.

The God Fearing radical Muslims, because they fear a god, hate science, technology and art. Six months before 9/11, the Taliban dynamited famous, and 1500 year old, statues of Buddha - the violence driven by righteous religious belief.

As a child of the 80s, I lived in fear of the Commies, especially with Reagan and Thatcher rattling their geriatric sabres, but my antagonism of the Soviets wasn't about their atheism as much as their desire to turn the whole world into a totalitarian hell-hole. People argued that their cruelty came from atheism, yet not many people become suicide bombers if they don't believe in an afterlife.

The god the radical Muslims trust in, the one they are under, is what motivates their very worst behavior. Suicide bombing? Slaughtering children? All because of theism. And like with the old rock Buddha, these God-fearers hate science and art. In fact, universities are as much a target for these God-fearers as idol worshiping Hebrews and Nazarenes.

And this leads to the crux of the matter: because our current enemy is animated by religion and hates science, our counter-response is one of beliefs and not of science. The growth of American power in the Twentieth Century came from our choice of enemy. Our new enemy is going to help us go down the dismal road of religious fervor (to combat theirs) with full throated anti-intellectualism - because that's not the perceived battleground.

The further sick irony is that it's precisely in science, tech and art that we can beat the Radical Muslims. Not only does the rest of the world treasure the Western World's dominance in science and art (just ask the billions or so heathens out there, a.k.a. Chinese, Indians, Japanese) but it is only through a desperate push to replace oil as fuel that we will defeat our enemies. George W Bush and cronies thought we could beat the Mooslims by conquering them (hence the Iraq War) but the only way to truly conquer them is to destroy their power from within - eliminate our dependency on oil. Just as we conquered Communism by impoverishing them in the arms and space race, so we can impoverish our enemies now in a more direct fashion. If we invent easy solar power, for example, the terrorist funding will turn into thick black mud.**

This is why I miss the commies: they were good enemies not only because they allowed us to create decent James Bond films, but because they brought out the best of the West: science, tech, and art; and because they turned our idiot religious thugs to at least accept all religious people - even Jews - and to reject isolationism. Our current enemies are bringing the worst in us: religious intolerance, rejection of science, fighting over belief and not excellence. We were cursed in 2001 to have the worst kind of president to respond to the current enemy (ironically his father was pretty bad in his response to the fall of the Berlin Wall, but like in everything Bush Jr. made Bush Sr. look like Abe Lincoln). I hope that Obama is able to convince America that we need to take the science-tech response to our current enemies... it's the only thing that can save us from a pretty bad next decade.

NOTES:

* We can still see vestiges of the Kommie Kompetition with our fear of the Chinese - and there's potential there for the old Cold War rivalry to be renewed. Except that the Chinese don't seem to care about taking over the world, unlike the USSR, and while they are a brutal threat to key allies (ask South Korea and Japan how much they like China), common Americans may not fear the Chinese like the way we did the Soviets, and the fear is what drove our country to excel in science, tech, and art.

** Note, they still have drug money, but one problem at a time.

Top pic from here. Second and third pics from the Wiki. According to the Wiki, the second pic is of kids pledging allegiance with the "Bellamy Salute" - invented by the Pledge's author - yet was adopted by the Italian Fascists and later the Nazis. Wow, life is ironic.

Reverse Boycott Time

2010-07-26T17:49:00.004-04:00

While I'm not in favor of anti-Semites, and their Halloween costume cousins Anti-Zionists, being so loud (hate speech is rough on the psyche) I am glad when they are vocal. According to Jacob Weisberg's recent Slate column (h.t. Goldblog), a number of celebrities are boycotting Israel. A great quote:

What they're saying instead is: "We consider your country so intrinsically reprehensible that we are gong to treat all of your citizens as pariahs." Instead of warning that Israel risks becoming an apartheid society if it fails to make peace, boycotters have concluded that Israel already is an irredeemable apartheid society.

Now, as I've mentioned here, I keep my eye on those moral artists who davka tour Israel, so I'm happy to track the opposite side of the spectrum as well. So, according to Slate, here are the new immoral anti-Zionist scum: Meg Ryan, The Pixies, Elvis Costello. Now I have no idea who the Pixies are, and now I'm glad that I don't have to, but I have experience with the other two scumbags and I find a bittersweet silver lining to the hate cloud.

First of all, sweet anorexic airhead shiksa Meg Ryan. What red-blooded American GenX male has not feared her presence in any movie? She's in the category of "pretty only to women" (other members of this group: Julia Roberts and Sarah Jessica Parker) and her one character, recycled in numerous romantic comedies, is the same shrill high-maintenance ditz we discovered when Sally met Harry. Those of us who have secretly detested her reduction of femininity to the most irritating traits (helpless, brainless, neurotic, impossible to please, materialist, irresponsible) can have a concrete reason to hate her.

But the real prize is Elvis Costello. Man oh man, I do not like that guy's music. And yet, all the pallid hipster music snobs have insisted for decades that he's some kind of genius. Yet, these aesthetes seem to overlook that the man sings like a geek. It's his own pretentiousness, the arrogance of his fans, and his utter lack of voice quality that has earned my ire before his latest bigoted escapade. And, hey, look at the Wiki, it says that "Elvis" (a.k.a. Declan Patrick MacManus) had a famous incident in 1979 of publicly calling James Brown and Ray Charles the N-word.

So here ya go, the great entertainers and the moral conscience.

Cotello pic from here.

Big B and His Tongs

2010-07-26T15:40:00.002-04:00

This is a video of my eldest back when he was just learning to walk. The original vid was silent, taken from a low-res digital camera. The moment captured on film is priceless: Big B, wearing his overalls Snuffy Smith style (one strap), holding his then favorite kitchen appliance: black plastic catering salad tongs (from Stella's of New Haven ob"m). He had one tongs in one hand and strides over to the drawer which usually housed the other pair. Noticing it empty, he wheels around, spies the prize on the floor, siezes it, then strides off, wanging the two tongs together, looking for a fife (for all we know). Enjoy.

Dental Day Tomorrow

2010-07-25T22:09:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow, I'm going in for a dreaded dental procedure. My dentists in New Haven botched a root canal, and the crown has fallen out, the tooth irreparable... good times. So I'm going for a full fledged tooth extraction. Following that, I'm told that I can't blow my nose for three days and that sneezing could be dangerous. Again, good times. I may be stuck in bed for a while so I may be able to blog some stuff (the backlog on the blog is enormous).

Image from here.

Rav Yehudah Amital Zt"l Updates

2010-07-14T09:09:00.004-04:00

Some links to eulogies and other resources for my recently departed Rosh Yeshiva. These are from the Yeshiva and I'm just reproducing their list (however I want to emphasize the one from Jewish Ideas Daily which is a great web-resource, and subscription source in general).

1) R. Yoel Amital (Hebrew) (audio)
2) R. Shlomo Brin (Hebrew) (audio)
3) R. Aharon Lichtenstein (Hebrew) (audio)
4) R. Moshe Taragin (English) (audio)

...Some others from around the blogosphere. The first three are from Yeshiva alumni.

Elli Fischer
Michael Eisenberg
Alex Israel
Jewish Ideas Daily
"A Rare Breed this Simple Jew" (Ha'aretz)

Rav Yehudah Amital Zt"l

2010-07-09T08:27:00.003-04:00

My Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Yehudah Amital, died this morning at age 85. He was a gadol b'Torah and gadol b'middot, a truly angelic person who radiated warmth for Torah and for humanity like his teacher, Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook. Rav Amital zt'l was also a Shoah survivor who came to Israel in 1944 and fought in the War of Independence as a member of the Haganah. Thus, he was an embodiment of modern Jewish History as well as an embodiment of Jewish wisdom and spirituality.

Barukh Dayan ha-Emet.

Update: Some links to eulogies.

Tea Party?

2010-07-02T17:18:00.002-04:00

The current Tea-Party takes their title from the Boston Tea Party. From the beginning, I've been disturbed by the imagery because even though the original Tea-Partiers became heroes of the American Revolution, at the time they were committing treason. And the current teabaggers, by using that event as a standard, are thus declaring to the world that they intend treason. No?

That established, the Tea Party is in fact the wrong image - because bottom line, the rebellion/treason that they intend to enact is Fort Sumter. Not just because the Teabaggers are generally egotistical misanthropic crackers, but also because they hate non-Whites and especially our Black president.

Image from here. And, note, these people are proud of their Frankenstein imagery.

Color Video of Israel in 1947

2010-06-25T08:37:00.002-04:00

Thanks to my friend Shaul Kelner for sending me to this video below:

Fred Monosson, a Bostonian, came to Israel beginning in 1947 with the latest model COLOR movie camera. His son recently discovered reel upon reel of film stored in an attic and was about to throw it away when he happened to mention it to an Israeli film director. The trove was saved. No other color film of this era is known to exist.

Happy Flag Day

2010-06-14T16:27:00.002-04:00

Flag Day always brings up, for me, this classic Onion piece:

Nation Hoping For A Windy Flag Day
June 5, 2007 | ISSUE 43•23

Have a flappy Flag Day everyone.

Pic from here.

Flotilla Context: Another Mexican Shot by US Border Patrol

2010-06-09T22:19:00.004-04:00

Just to give some context to the Gaza Flotilla-Palooza, see this top-story from the AP (not found on the NYTimes front page) about the murder of a Mexican teenager by the U.S. Border patrol. OK, you can say that it's not news because we're Americans and we generally get a free pass to kill people whenever we want (it's called He Who Has the Most Nukes Makes the Rules) - like the unmanned wedding-crashing drones in Afghanistan - but let's dig deeper:

The killing of the Mexican by U.S. authorities — the second in less than two weeks — has exposed the distrust between the two countries that lies just below the surface, and has enraged Mexicans who see the death of the boy on Mexican soil as an act of murder. Mexico's government says the number of Mexicans injured by U.S. immigration authorities has increased this year. ... [The boy] was found 20 feet (six meters) into Mexico, and an autopsy revealed that the fatal shot was fired at a relatively close range, according to Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general's office. Mexican authorities said a .40 caliber shell casing was found near the body, suggesting that the Border Patrol agent might have crossed into Mexico to shoot the boy.

Compare and contrast.

Pic presumably of the Mexico-US border from here.

Helen Thomas and Applying the Double Standard

2010-06-07T13:52:00.005-04:00

As you doubtless have heard, Helen Thomas - the bubbie-like senior White House Correspondent for the world, a chum of Steven Colbert and champion of freedom under George "The Scumbag" Bush - turns out to be a raging wacko anti-Semite. Thankfully, she has announced her retirement after her these comments were spread all throughout modern technology's platforms:

Thomas was asked by Rabbi David Nesenoff on May 27 if she had "any comments on Israel."

"Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine," she said.

Nesenoff, who was attending the first Jewish American Heritage Month event at the White House, asked where Jews should go.

"Go home," Thomas said. Asked to elaborate, she said: "Poland, Germany and America, and everywhere else."

Ya see, simple point for Helen and her fellow Nazis: it rankles many of us Hebrews, or really any thinking educated human, when someone tells Jews to go back to Germany. It's clear Nazi talk. Just a reminder.

You got to see the video for the full effect. She's one crazy Nazi:

OK, now that she's been successfully retired, let's apply a little bit of the double standard that's normally applied to us (Jews/Israelis). First, it should be noted that her comments were made before the Flotilla Debacle, so unlike her soul-brother Mel Gibson, who made his drunken comments in the midst of the Second Lebanon War, she was neither drunk nor responding to a recent crisis.

Second of all, it turns out that she's the child of Lebanese Christians - which shows that it's not easy to profile the enemies of Israel and the Jews into simple categories.

Third: a good sign for an anti-Semite is the automatic conflation of "Israel" with "Jew." Israelis should go back to where they came from? Yeah? And that's Germany & Poland - the wonderlands of genocide - or America (part of the Jewish American notorious Israel lobby, no doubt). An anti-Zionist non-Anti-Semite (who may exist) would say, possibly, "Europe" instead of the concentration-camp intensive specific countries. Just playing Devil's advocate. Almost literally.

Fourth: let's apply the double standard here. This evil woman was a "dean" of the Press Corps and she's a closet neo-Nazi. I think that just as every Jew is put on the hot-seat every time Netanyahu commits another in his colossal string of screw-ups, so now every journalist should be under the presumption of being a barely hidden anti-Semite. Payback's a beeyatch.

The History of Assaulting Progress

2010-06-03T13:14:00.005-04:00

I own many books in the genre of "non-fiction miscellany" (I find 'trivia' to be too, uh, trivial a term for these things). In any case, I just read in Panati's "Browser's Book of Beginnings" about the formation of FM radio (p.221-2). Basically, Edwin Howard Armstrong patented FM to provide a clearer, less static, signal than the currently dominant AM radio. His patent was in 1933 but FM didn't become available until the late 40s. Why? Well, before I answer that, I will ask you that if you *do* listen to radio, do you do so on AM or FM. I believe the majority will answer FM. OK, so let's continue.

According to Panati and the Wiki, RCA successfully sued the FCC to prevent FM from being allowed on the radio. The suit lasted years. Sarnoff, head of RCA, also sued to prevent Armstrong from getting patent royalties from inventing FM and Armstrong committed suicide in 1954 as a result of that battle.

Why did RCA try to block FM? Because they owned AM. Did RCA succeed in getting the FCC to hamstring and restrict FM? Oh yes indeed. Was this good for the world. No, I don't think it was - considering that everyone prefers FM.

Does this remind you of anything? I'm sure somebody put a list up somewhere, in some book, about these types of things - The History of Assaulting Progress - where a company, or the government - uses all of its resources to hurt others, and hurt progress, in order to keep its own money flow.

I'm not naive, so I am not arguing against commerce or against companies looking out for themselves. But if there's any mature theory of government (libertarians, Marxists, and fellow travelers need not apply), all of these theories try to strike a balance between individual rights and community rights. The corporation ("Big Business") is basically a private collection of individual rights - but the rest of society has a right to progress.

I'll look for the list of those who've assaulted progress but off-hand we can include all those Oil Companies, and their marionettes in the Republican Party including their bought and paid for President G.W.B, who furiously try to keep us from alternative fuel.

Pic of RCA from here, of Armstrong from the Wiki.

Dvorak's Symphony No. 9

2010-05-27T09:33:00.003-04:00

Just now listening to Dvorak's "New World" Symphony which has been my favorite for decades. So much so, that recent nostalgic musings have reminded me (I just got my son's report card, more on that later) about a nerd explosion of mine back in 1982 when I moved from Binghamton to Ithaca.

Back then my pop music consumption was eclectic and my classical music knowledge was pretty good for a 10 year old. We had some decent pop records at home, notably the Jackson 5 which got me into their song "ABC" (who knew my father was so funky to own that record?) but when we would drive frequently from Binghamton to Brooklyn to visit my mother's parents (an action I know mightily endorse and would probably do the same if I could) the music in the car came entirely from 8-track tapes of classical music. And Dvorak's 9th was my permanent favorite.

The nostaglia point is to illustrate my immense dorkiness back then. Again, I knew pop music, but I dare say that compared to Dvorak's 9th, pop back in 1982 just couldn't compare. It was all soft-rock and disco for goodness sakes! I am defensive because, in 1982, I had entered a new school in a new city. I had been in Hillel Academy, a Torah U-Mesorah parochial school, and had just entered Northeast Elementary in Ithaca - a public school. And for the 5th grade yearbook, we were all asked what our favorite song was. The most popular ones were "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson (which is great, don't get me wrong) or "Africa" by Toto. But when asked I said "Dvorak's 9th Symphony, 4th Movement."

And you know what, I'm still right!

But I also dare you to find non-pictorial proof of greater dorkiness than having a newly acclimatized Orthodox Jewish keepah-wearing fish-out-of-water-in-public-school 10 year old declare in his 5th grade yearbook, on a page of neo-disco tunes, that his favorite song is - the editorially shortened - "9th Symphony." I guess I'm still ticked that they shortened it, because I actually like Dvorak's 9th better than Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" (which is my second favorite classical ditty).

And, I guess this shows that I'm still a massive nerd. Ah well, at least I get paid for it now. That's the joy of adulthood and the hope of all teenage nerds everywhere - in America, and other Western countries - you will get paid handsomely for being a nerd.

Pic of the autographed score of Dvorak's 9th from here.

End Semester Nigh

2010-05-26T22:39:00.003-04:00

I haven't blogged in a while because I'm working furiously to finish all my papers before the end of the semester. It's coming close... and then I'll be able to relax a bit and sort through all the ideas that have clogged unblogged. In this Fin-de-Siecle push, almost everything has been breaking down except for the overall health of my family (and may it stay that way!). My back has held up (but I did lose a tooth - long story), and compared to last year's hospital saga, this has been a breeze.

One last note, I am now indebted to Endnote that I will need to give it much love in an blog entry soon. It's so amazing, especially when paired with the academic search engines (PDF delivery machines, more like it), that I have through school. I know I'm in the right professional direction when I consider it a valuable professional perk to have access to a full online library.

Boston 'Catastrophic' Water Woes

2010-05-02T12:43:00.004-04:00

Right after Motzei Shabbat, my internet connection wasn't working, so it took a bit for us to get the message that there was a 'boil water' emergancy condition for eastern Massachusetts after a 'Catastrophic' water main break. This is not a good way to begin the week. Add onto that the terrorist bomb attempt in Times Square and a children's Tylenol recall, and you got a trifecta of Doom.

I have a few musings on the water subject:

After taking a shower last night, bathing myself in e-coli, I realized that I hadn't felt so dirty after 'washing' since I went to the Washington Heights mikvah erev Yom Kippur.
It's situations like these that we need to recall whenever we feel high-and-mighty about our technical mastery of nature. A busted pipe - a few centimeters gone wrong - will leave 2 million people without potable water.
Also, this should remind the crunchy green granola types that 'natural' water is deadly.

I hope the crisis will pass quickly - it's not fun to be frightened of a normally life giving substance.

Pic from the Globe story.

Happy 62nd Birthday Israel!

2010-04-20T09:19:00.002-04:00

Today's the 62nd birthday (docheh) of Israel, Yom Ha'Atzmaut. Yay.

Every year, I need to revisit the halakhic question, especially when the holiday is docheh (pushed off from its official date), of whether Hallel should be said with a bracha, without a bracha, or if we should say tachanun.

There's strong arguments about the first two (the latter is reserved for cheresh, shoteh or katan - deaf = ignoring the crucial miracle reveals flawed senses, crazy = blinded by twisted ideology, or childlike = too young to realize how earth-shaking the establishment of Israel was).

The best argument for not saying a bracha is that the miracle of YHA was incomplete. I.e. a war started immediately after the declaration of independence and that war has not stopped. This means that the halakhic appropriateness of a bracha is based on an empirical judgment: was the establishment of Israel a big enough miracle to say Hallel (similar to Purim and Hanukkah) for all of Jewry.

This past year I've been doing extensive reading about Zionism and especially anti-Zionism. And I've gotten a new appreciation for the massive miracle of the State of Israel - and how precarious a State it is. I believe Hallel with a bracha I feel a need to express my gratitude not only for the reality warping, dry bones resurrection, miracle of Israel but also for God's continuing miracle of Israel's preservation.

Israel should not, based on rules of Nature and Humanity, have been established in 1948 and should not - nuclear weapons aside - continue to exist. To paraphrase Darth Vader:"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed [nukes]. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force [Hashem]."

Maybe it's my work this semester in liturgy, TAing for Professor Reuven Kimelman. Liturgy uses physical triggers to remind us of theological truths; we use the sun rising to remind us of Creation, and thus bless the God of Creation. We use the reminder of the Exodus to remind us that God is the One Who Redeems. And in Shemona Esrei we use rain to remind us of the resurrection of the dead.

In 1945 Jews were still being rounded up and murdered all over the world. In 1946, 1947 the survivors were living in DP camps and being barred from entry into Israel. In 1948, the dream of 2000 years was fulfilled, a phoenix rising from the ashes, to provide our halakhic homeland and a worldwide protection for Jews. This is modern History's greatest miracle.

Cynical Philosophical Question

2010-03-22T22:11:00.000-04:00

Who do you bet on in a battle between Google and China? One is a rising power for the 21st Century, the other a billion slave-owning nation state. Both are our future, which is more powerful? (Or as Stalin said about the Pope, how many divisions does he command... well China has nukes, but Google has a better search engine).

216

2010-03-21T22:53:00.003-04:00

That's it, the House voted to approve the Senate bill. We've finally entered the Western World for social safety net - guaranteed health insurance.

It's a good day to be an American.

Update: I mean, I feel so happy right now for the fact that we got this done. It's good in itself - it will both help save lives and save poor people money. Isnt' that what Hashem wants?

And I feel good, because as a number of commentators have said: the GOP bet everything on this - they gave nothing and promised that it will destroy all life in the universe - and now they lost. So they can't even claim victory for anything. And this victory thus makes Obama look like a super-ninja with rocket roller skates - he's so truly Da Man - and the Democrats in congress showed their constituency that it was the right thing to vote for them, and shows the independents that if you put the Democrats in charge, they will get big things done

This is a great victory.

Obama and the Jacksonian Zionists

2010-03-17T12:33:00.003-04:00

Goldblog sent me to one of the best things I've seen written about the non-Jewish American support for Israel - this article by Walter Russell Mead at The American Interest: Obama and the Jacksonian Zionists. I don't know what the journal "American Interest" is about (its anodyne title could mask any sort of partisan lunacy) nor who Mead is, but Goldblog highly recommends him by name.

Pic made by me from an original within Mead's piece.

More on Droid

2010-03-12T10:22:00.005-05:00

So why did I switch to the droid?

My phone went kaput. Well that's not totally true. My old phone was a Palm Treo 680, which I have had since July 2007. It was my upgrade to the "trio" of phone/web/PDA. I've been using Palm devices for nearly a decade (I believe) - starting with the Palm IIIe, then the Palm Vx, and then the Treo. In all cases, I acted like a good middle-class Gen-Xer: I waited until the first one died before upgrading. This time, my Treo was a bit of a lemon from the git-go:
1. The online activity was spotty and over time, I stopped having access to almost every webpage except, luckily, my email and yahoo. No explanation was available on the intertubes except possibly my SIM card was messed up. Lovely.
2. The key factor was that the touchscreen just died. It started acting really screwy at first and finally, on Tuesday, the screen basically went dead.
3. Ironically, the only thing that actually worked, still, was the phone. I lived without full web access for a few months, but when I lost the PDA, the thing was done.
My wife needed a new phone. She had a simple one (ya know, only a camera on it, har!) for almost 5 years by her reckoning. But it too needed to be replaced. She also started to hanker after the web/email uses that she saw others have.
Once we both needed new phones, we felt that we should get a package deal (not only on the physical devices but also on the calling plan). I used to have AT&T and it worked OK but I've grown weary of Luke Wilson's idiotic commercials and my rebel nature against The Man (Corporate Division) made me feel I should switch to Verizon.
The Kicker was that my brother had just gotten a droid and he liked it and showed off all the wicked cool features (youtube! google maps! metallic-droid sounds!)

So, it's been two days, how do I feel about it?

The sales process was slow and annoying. The six-foot tall ex-jock doofus who sold us the phones had no real idea what he was selling. He reminded me of what the house sellers must have been like during the height of the bubble: i.e. he had a product that everyone wanted but nobody really looked too closely at. As such, he wasn't prepared to answer any questions.
Quick analysis: This is not a PDA. It sucks at that big time.
This is not really a phone, it's a web-browser with a phone "app." More: Ya remember how weird it was when they first put cameras on phones? And we old-tech people made jokes about it. Basically, we realized, especially after a number of key testimony incidents, that it's good to have an easy access camera/video and while it won't replace a real camera, it's a nice thing. So too, the Droid, so far, is a pretty bad phone, non-existent PDA, but the web access is crisp and keen. So is the sound quality, for all you hip rad children who need that thing.
The Man (Corporate) lives well with the droid. It's a google product. And while I've said in the past that I like the company's plan to digitize every bit of information and place it online, they still seem to act like a "splitting" company. That's a term I use for companies, especially in tech, who force incompatibility with other techs. Apple is terrible about this, IMHO, which is why I refuse to get an Iphone... after my Ipod disaster (which forced me to use Itunes, which meant I had to convert all my files from Microsoft Media Player (which played both WMA and MP3) and modify the data of every one of my billion media files. So here, google apps work well on the droid, but why can't it run Flash? If Youtube works, and Flash doesn't, it looks like an arbitrary "split."
Why is it a bad phone? Because the keys disappear, when you talk, making it hard to end a call. The volume ringer is screwy and will turn on, or off, despite your previous settings. It's like a freakin' embarrassment timebomb.
And it doesn't work as a PDA. Yeah, I've got 10 years of great Palm programs which I can no longer use. And that's a serious loss. But so far, I haven't found a decent replacement on the Droid (possibly because it's too new, but probably because the market is now split between Droid/Iphone/Blackberry as opposed to the not "split" days under the Palm umbrella.

I'm giving myself another week with this. If I can't find a way to have it improve, then I may need to switch. Maybe a blackberry? That looks like it was made for adults...

First pic is yet another version of the Indiana Jones Droid Hieroglyphs. Second is from the 2004 Onion story of the camera-phone.

The Droids We Were Looking For

2010-03-11T16:12:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, the wife and I, after a few weeks of struggle, succumbed and bought new phones. Droids. This is my first post on it - and while it's now possible to do this, it taint easy. So I'll wait for a real 'puter to tell the whole story.

Pic is of the hidden droids in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Purim Pic of the Littest Styx

2010-03-08T21:00:00.001-05:00

My daughter in her cow costume Purim eve:

Cockney Rhyming Parenting

2010-03-08T12:40:00.006-05:00

I declared back in 2003 that it should be heretofore known that Cockney Rhyming Slang is not cool. It's actually less cool for Britons to use it than Americans because we Yanks just assume everything in a British accent is fancy. Hence, Americans will consider high-class London, Manchester, Cockney, Irish, Scottish, and Australian all 'British accents' and high class. So if an American uses Cockney Rhyming Slang its usually in the same sentence with the word "gov'ner" and a few lines from Austin Powers.

When the British use it, though, it's the UK version of "jive talkin'" and it sounds ridiculous. White boys from Chicago suburbs aren't ghetto and pasty-faced Britons still sound irredeemably wussy even if they attempt to redeem some toughness with the Rhyming Slang.

Moreover, the entire concept is anti-meaning - the phrases are arbitrary and irrelevant. What thief needs to make a code for his wife ("trouble and strife," har har Andy Capp).

Parenting Use

Yet after that devastating rant of mockage, my wife and I actually found a use for Cockney Rhyming Slang that is both legitimate and practical. And thus my derision for the verbal form is now modified: if a person is actually employed as a thief/spy/parent and uses CRS in it's intended manner, then you are spared the otherwise heavy criticism automatically triggered in all right-thinking people.

I'll explain. Every parent, as you know, needs a special language so they can discuss things in front of the kids. My parents (and many of ya'lls, I assume) used Yiddish. However, while my wife knows many languages, I'm stuck with Hebrew and Spanish. The kids are learning Hebrew in school, so that's out, and Spanish is all over PBS (besides being intuitive for most English speakers, as this sound file attests).

So the other day, my wife, to her immense credit, realized that we should just use Cockney Rhyming Slang (we just had a Guy Richie movie marathon so it was in our heads). And it works! So here's some of our terms, for use for the public weal.

[Key: Original Term = CRS (Annotation)]

Nap = Ginger Snap (This is by far the best one, and most redolent of the original art form. Say the word 'nap' - even spell it out - and the kid dissolves in tears, hence we now say "ginger")
Lollipop = Boughs of Holly (We use sugar-free lollipop as a reward/bribe but if the boys hear the word, they go nutso in demanding them - so now we say Hollies. It may not work for long so our rejected backups are: "Seward's Folly" or "Lassie, Assuming She Was a Collie")
Television = Long Division (other options: "nuclear fission" or "gone fishin'" or even "double vision" which may be too close to the original; my wife thinks that this weak entry may need to go to "Telly" and then it could be "Jam & Jelly" which sounds satisfyingly like the original form.)
Blankie = Yankee Doodle (If a blankie is missing, it leads to more wailing, so we now use "Yankee" - doodle actually has other uses in our home; another option: "fish tankie")

Pic from here. Oh, see also this google book, cool eh?

Oscar Reax

2010-03-08T09:01:00.002-05:00

I will give my full debrief soon, but before that I must post this awesome Oscar-mocking video from Cracked magazine online. When I was a lad, Cracked was a cheap Mad Magazine knockoff, but their online presence has been consistently funny, smart and sharp:

A Trailer for Every Academy Award Winning Movie Ever -- powered by Cracked.com

Monkey Man

2010-03-07T15:46:00.007-05:00

So my mother-in-law took my wife and kids to a live action Curious George show in Worcester. The eldest, Big B, likes the TV Show quite a lot and Jota goes along for the ride. As for me, I'm ambivalent: on one side, I have the adult male's appreciation for monkeys, on the other hand, the show is destructive and even terrible.

This is a PBS kids show and, you may not know, but PBS now has top level animated educational shows that I would have killed for as a kid (instead we had puppet shows and Reading Rainbow). So while there's some superlative stuff, e.g. Zula Patrol & Super Why, there's also Curious George.

Any thinking person will be driven batty by this show - it takes the conceit of the books that a monkey can act as a surrogate/metaphor for a child's sense of curious wonder, play down the freaky pre-War imperialism angle, yet play up the imperiling destructive power of the lead primate.

In nearly every episode, a different set of adults give George access to sensitive and/or expensive venues and he spends most of the episode enacting thousands or millions of dollars of property damage - often to irreplaceable or significant objects. And, after the adults realize that they've allowed such damage to occur, George bears absolutely no consequences! What a wonderful metaphor and lesson for our youth.

My favorite example is when George manages to flood the first few floors of his New York City high-rise domicile. Ha ha! As a former tenant of a flooded NYC building, this episode was both humorous and a PTSD trigger. Another example is when George is introduced to the train engineer booth which had a control set-up similar to an airport's tower. The trains needed the engineer to switch tracks, as they move at top speed, so they will arrive on time. The engineer, after telling our hero about the controls, decides to leave George alone in the booth while he departs for a long lunch. As he leaves, George hears radio calls for help from the trains and he uses his monkey ingenuity to switch the trains - potentially ramming each locomotive into others, resulting in death and carnage. Hoo hah.

Ironically, my boys haven't learned to emulate the destruction (yet) but they do like speaking like monkeys. Which sounded cute, at first, but is actually annoying.

Anyhoo, the live show. The tickets were expensive, and I asked if there was a trained monkey on stage - which would kinda justify the cost, right? I mean, add up your monkey chow, monkey cage interior design, and the rest and that means high overhead. But no, George was played by a dude in a monkey suit (see pic above). So I concluded that the cost must be going to pay for therapy for the kids of the guy in the suit.

Oscars 2010 - Analysis, part 2

2010-03-07T15:38:00.003-05:00

A note about the acting awards: even though I, and everyone else, calls them, e.g. "best actor," the real title is "best performance by an actor" - which has some crucial ramifications.

Back in 2007 I quoted the TNR's Kaufmann why he doesn't judge the Oscars and he said: "Oh, I always watch the Oscar broadcast. I wouldn't want to miss the irritation--or the laughs. I'll never forget the year that Marisa Tomei beat out Vanessa Redgrave as best supporting actress." I liked this quote at the time, but it only makes sense if you describe the award as 'best actor' and not 'best performance.' Only a geriatric pompous gasbag would deny that while a person can be a better actor over a life-time, a specific performance, whether for the legitimate (read: obsolete) theater or a film, can be better than any other that year. It's akin to what I've heard about golf - people like the game because there's a possibility that on a particular hole, you can get a score better than the superstars, for that hole.

As such, when calibrating the acting awards, the voters may actually be rewarding a performance over an actor. And this is especially so when a performance is spectacular. The question is whether there's a curve; whether the pretty-boy leads who finally turn in a decent performance are given extra weight (a handicap, to continue - and exhaust my - golf metaphor) than others. Truly this is what has happened for Best Actress in the past - where some sexy - and popular - ingenue finally dials in a serious performance and is given extra credit. How else to explain the absurd wins of:

1997: Helen Hunt - As Good as It Gets
2001: Halle Berry – Monster's Ball (the most egregious of this already egregious category)
2002: Nicole Kidman – The Hours
2003: Charlize Theron – Monster
2005: Reese Witherspoon – Walk the Line

There are probably many more from the earlier years. Suffice to say, that this is a clear pattern, especially for Best Actress, and while it's possibly from a weird sexism of the above-mentioned octogenarians, I'd personally bet on it.

Best Peformance: Actor -- Odds; Nominees:

Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart (2009) *
George Clooney for Up in the Air (2009/I)
Colin Firth for A Single Man (2009)
Morgan Freeman for Invictus (2009)
Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker (2008)

OK, so while Clooney is awesome in general, he has won recently (Supporting in 2006), and is young enough to have a few more years of good potential performances. Renner is new and is honored to just be nominated (and I'm glad he's able to rise above his bad-guy turn in S.W.A.T.); Morgan Freeman has also won recently and since he plays his persona in every movie, I don't see his performance getting such a nod. Firth has been doing some good work recently, basically filling in Hugh Grant's soggy shoes, and his character is gay and oppressed - Milk may have, uh, milked that guilt award away. But, really, from all I've heard, the word on the street is that the voters are finally going to reward Bridges for his years of incredible work. As above with The Departed etc, there's no standout performance that can take away Bridges' lifetime (read: Big Lebowski) achievement award. I mean, it's his fifth nomination, with his first nom in his first starring role (The Last Picture Show) and he's never won.

Best Actress -- Odds, Nominees:

Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side (2009)
Helen Mirren for The Last Station (2009)
Carey Mulligan for An Education (2009)
Gabourey Sidibe for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia (2009)*

I just see this as the classic battle between the Finally-Serious-Ingenue (Bullock) and the Truly-Great-Peformance (Streep).

Pros for Bullock:

She's been out of work for a number of years after spending her 20s as quiry-manic-pixie-girl romantic comedy leads. When she started work again, this past year, she returned with a vengeance: two romantic comedies and one drama (All About Steve, The Proposal and The Blind Side)
The movie she's in is racist as all git out, but specifically, just as racist as Crash, which won in 2004.

I'm outa time here (I just got home from an all-day-trip), so I'll say that the odds-makers are saying it's Streep, and A.O. Scott as well, and her performance was definitely wonderful (I saw it). She's also been nominated a billion times and has only won Best Actress once, even though she's the best of her generation, back in 1983! It's a real tough one - the stupid ingenue-award pattern, a la Halle Barre, vs. an overlooked superstar (like Jeff Bridges) who was great in Doubt, and others. I'm going to go with Streep on this and hope that it's because of the racism of "The Blind Side" in our Obama age. I'm going against my instincts, letting my intellect outvote my gut, but I'll gamble on it (although if I were a real gambler I'd put money on Bullock).

Best Supporting Actor - Nominees:

Matt Damon for Invictus (2009)
Woody Harrelson for The Messenger (2009/I)
Christopher Plummer for The Last Station (2009)
Stanley Tucci for The Lovely Bones (2009)
Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds (2009)*

Oh this is another toughie. Plummer has had an awesome career and this is the only time he's been nominated, and he's getting way too old for other stuff. And he would win in a normal year (crushing even Tucci who is one of the best actors of this generation and who is also being nominated for the first time, for what I've heard is a so-so role, but who's young enough to get nominated again, especially because his work has been consistently great). But this is where the "performance" part of the award comes in: Waltz's performance was one of the best I've ever seen, and I think it trumps Plummer's lifetime achievement and Tucci's general awesomeness.

Best Supporting Actress

Penélope Cruz for Nine (2009)
Vera Farmiga for Up in the Air (2009/I)
Maggie Gyllenhaal for Crazy Heart (2009)
Anna Kendrick for Up in the Air (2009/I)
Mo'Nique for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)*

Everyone says it's Mo'Nique (not Monique, not Monica, it's got a vestigial apostrophe like the umlaut of Spinal Tap), and that's good enough for me.

Best Original Screenplay

The Hurt Locker (2008): Mark Boal
Inglourious Basterds (2009)*: Quentin Tarantino
The Messenger (2009/I): Alessandro Camon, Oren Moverman
A Serious Man (2009): Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Up (2009): Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, Thomas McCarthy

No time, no time. I'm hoping they'll award Inglorious because it was a genius film, but the leftover spillage will probably help The Hurt Locker.

Best Adapted Screenplay

District 9 (2009): Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell
An Education (2009): Nick Hornby
In the Loop (2009)*: Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009): Geoffrey Fletcher
Up in the Air (2009/I): Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner

District 9 is supposed to be excellent (I just got it from Netflix and haven't seen it yet). I did just see "In the Loop" and it's as sharp as a samurai sword. I hope it wins and it's likely to, since it's an allegory of the Iraq War (which people still are against) while District is an allegory about race and immigration (which is passe in Obama's America... at least according to the standard Hollywood meathead)

Oscars 2010 - Analysis, part 1 (Picture, Director)

2010-03-07T08:09:00.012-05:00

Oscar Day is upon us and, as has been happening more often in recent years, I have had no time to read up or prepare for my predictions... which will make them as accurate as always. Sadly, I have seen one or two of the nominated films, which naturally biases my analysis. Maybe, after my planned success at the super-Lotto, I will have the time and means to watch all the films, but until then, I will continue my flawed merry way.

Method

The baseline, so far as I've seen, is that the voters are truly trying to choose the best but (a) because most people in Hollywood are high-school dropouts, it's not clear that my criteria are anywhere near theirs, and (b) the voters are swayed by a number of crazy biases that put predictions into the random category. Big biases are: (a) the producer voters, often in their 70s and 80s, are not only stupid and uneducated, they are prejudiced with archaic stereotypes about life and meaning (see below for applications of this), (b) many of the awards are given to make up for last year's Oscar mistakes, e.g. Sean Penn wins for "Milk" because "Brokeback Mountain" was rejected a 2 years before aaaand (c) [current events' issues] California had just rejected gay marriage.

To be honest, I used to think that the voters were sympathetic to (d) 'lifetime achievement' candidates, but I think that it's just the fourth prong of the general computation - that a majority of voters will choose lifetime achievement if (a) there's no clear standout candidate, plus (b) no mistakes or (c) politics. Again, see below for applications.

As such, I need to analyze the candidate's (a) history of past work, concentrating on the past 3 years and then lifetime, (b) general murmuring of the quality of performance, (c) the zeitgeist of Hollywood-idiot politics, and (d) commercial success (which I've discussed before, but basically since the Oscars are simply put an industry awarding it's top employees, success is going to be rewarded - this can be called the Titanic effect).

This year, I'm also going to Odds from here - because there's some social-psychological merit in the collective wisdom of crowds. My basic ballot (and links) are from IMDb. Predicted winner is marked with a star (*).

Best Picture -- Odds; Nominees:

Avatar (2009) *: James Cameron, Jon Landau
The Blind Side (2009): Gil Netter, Andrew A. Kosove, Broderick Johnson
District 9 (2009): Peter Jackson, Carolynne Cunningham
An Education (2009): Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey
The Hurt Locker (2008): Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Nicolas Chartier, Greg Shapiro
Inglourious Basterds (2009): Lawrence Bender
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009): Lee Daniels, Sarah Siegel-Magness, Gary Magness
A Serious Man (2009): Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Up (2009): Jonas Rivera
Up in the Air (2009/I): Daniel Dubiecki, Ivan Reitman, Jason Reitman

Now remember that this year they've expanded to 10 movies and revamped the voting system - which will make predictions harder than ever. Yet, even then, almost everyone thinks that this is a battle between two powerhouses: Avatar and The Hurt Locker. I'll give pros/cons for those 2 alone because I don't have time to eliminate all the other movies, except for some quick comments:

Inglourious Basterds - the more time since I've seen the film, the more I feel that it's a masterpiece; both of Tarantino and of Borges-like meta-fiction. If there were no other strong contenders, then this would win - it would be like No Country for Old Men or The Departed - which were OK movies from great directors who got the top prize because the competition was weak. I happen to hate "No Country" and compared to O Brother, Where Art Thou? (which wasn't even nominated!!) it's just plain bad. But compared to puppy-dogs like
Atonement and Juno , or good-but-not-spectacular Michael Clayton or There Will Be Blood then the Coens were given their lifetime achievement award. Same can be said for Departed (vs. Babel; Letters from Iwo Jima; Little Miss Sunshine ; or The Queen) none of those four were quality enough to overpower the lifetime achievement of Scorcese... even though it was not his best film by a long-shot.

So sorry Tarantino; I hope you're still creative enough to make another brilliant epic like Inglorious.

Pros for Avatar:

It's one of the most lucrative movies in history - as of this week, it has grossed 2.6 billion dollars and it's still in theaters.
It has advanced film technology to the next level, just on it's own
It has restored the glory of the movie theater experience - and this is a big deal. Ya see, movies have been in competition with TV ever since the latter was born (e.g. it's why movies are 'letterbox' - to compete with TV's square screen). Personally, I avoid the theater because I enjoy movies 100x more at home. But my popularizing digital-3D, Cameron may have just saved the entire movie theater industry.
I've heard from others that it is derivative but fun. It's "Dances with Wolves" but with better explosions. And remember, Dances won.

Cons:

I've heard people grumble that it's derivative and dumb. Note, this really hasn't hurt a movie's Oscar chances in my memory. See, uh, Titanic.
I've heard people grumble that it's racist. This *really* hasn't hurt any movie. I was just thinking about this the other day: two of the biggest movies in Hollywood history are racist as hell: The Birth of a Nation (1915) - which glorified the KKK, and The Jazz Singer (1927) whose movie posters have a guy in black-face for goodness sake!

Pros for The Hurt Locker:

It depicts the Iraq War with "realism" (defined here as "it looks scary for people who've never been to war but has been derided by actual veterans"). As such, this movie can benefit from the Platoon - Deer Hunter effect. Not too shabby.
As above with 'Nam, many people in Hollywood want to be seen as 'serious' about a terrible current-event, and war is the best event to be current on. Most of the Iraq War movies have been turkeys. This is the best one yet (sez many many people). And that helps.
This is a war movie directed by a woman. That gets some votes, for a double glass-ceiling breaking (directing itself, and a war movie nukh).
This may be too weird vis-a-vis Hollywood politics, but Bigelow's cult classic Point Break (1991) starred Patrick Swayze who just died tragically, and that also could help.

After all has been said and done, I think that Avatar has too many pros, not enough cons. It's too freakin' huge and it did 3 things that nobody has done before (2 billion sales, grounbreaking new movie tech, saving movie theaters). Would Hurt Locker have beaten Inglorious without Avatar, dunno, but this one seems to be Avatar's win.

Best Director -Nominees:

Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker (2008)
James Cameron for Avatar (2009)
Lee Daniels for Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)
Jason Reitman for Up in the Air (2009/I)
Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds (2009)

These two categories go together - and in an uncontested year they'll share winners, as the Wiki sez:

Invariably, the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture have been very closely linked throughout their history. Of the 80 films that have been awarded Best Picture, 59 have also been awarded Best Director. Only three films have won Best Picture without their directors being nominated (though only one since the early 1930s): Wings (1927/28), Grand Hotel (1931/32), and Driving Miss Daisy (1989). The only two Best Director winners to win for films which did not receive a Best Picture nomination are likewise in the early years

And according to this fun stat site it's very rare for Best Picture and Director to be separated:

1972 (45th) Picture: The Godfather (director Francis Ford Coppola was nominated).
Directing: Cabaret (Bob Fosse).
1981 (54th) Picture: Chariots of Fire (director Hugh Hudson was nominated).
Directing: Reds (Warren Beatty).
1989 (62nd) Picture: Driving Miss Daisy (director Bruce Beresford was NOT nominated).
Directing: Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone).
1998 (71st) Picture: Shakespeare in Love (director John Madden was nominated).
Directing: Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg).
2000 (73rd) Picture: Gladiator (director Ridley Scott was nominated).
Directing: Traffic (Steven Soderbergh).
2002 (75th) Picture: Chicago (director Rob Marshall was nominated).
Directing: The Pianist (Roman Polanski).
2005 (78th) Picture: Crash (director Paul Haggis was nominated).
Directing: Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee).

Given that, I think it's probable that they will be separated this year with Avatar as best picture and Bigelow as best director. Mainly because all the pros (above) for Avatar winning 'picture' are about its production and not its direction/art. Hence, I believe the voters will intentionally split the difference. Then again, like with Peter Jackson's win for the Lord of the Frodo trilogy, they could just bow down to Cameron's expertise... but since he won for the same honors for Titanic, I feel Bigelow's strong candidacy will pay off in this.

Part 2+ will be for the other awards.

Food Normalities

2010-03-03T14:57:00.002-05:00

Note: this was a draft that was accidently published too early. It's a note to myself (in bad grammer): "why is salad = lettuce"

It's part of a larger investigation in the sociology of knowledge, focusing on food. In this case, the simple question, why did lettuce become the absolute basis for the thing we call "salad."

Pic from here.

Glorious Purimshpiel

2010-02-27T21:44:00.002-05:00

I saw the most excellent film, Inglorious Basterds, earlier, but rather than wait for all my ideas to coalesce around it I just want to say, on this Purim day, that the movie works perfectly as a Purimshpiel. It's possibly the most gloriously violent (and sadly fictional) destruction of Amalek by Jews ever shown on film.

Pic from here of the awesome Bear Jew.

Gefilte Fish is a Funny Word

2010-02-26T15:06:00.000-05:00

This is not a joke:

Oooooklahomaaaa!

2010-02-18T16:12:00.000-05:00

Not sure why, but I was reminded recently about how much I like Jon Lovitz. It's this 80s Nostalgia stuff that we gen-Xers are allowing ourselves, who knows. Lovitz was consistantly weird and funny (and, evidently he beat up Andy Dick in 2007 - which is more than I'd dare imagine a comedic hero doing). Maybe the nostalgia was fueled by someone mentioning the state of Oklahoma.

So after looking all over the intertubes, I just can't find a clip of the super-wonderful Jon Lovitz SNL sketch from 1987: "Wedgie Fever." A sketch that permanently changed the nations view of, and pronunciation thereto, of Oklahoma.

I did find the pic from here though, and while searching the official NBC SNL clip site, I came across these two clips from the 80s which can satisfy some of the nostalgia cravings.

The first is Lovitz - who is underrated, possibly because he's quite strange - as Mephistopheles in the People's Court:

The second is possibly one of the finest from the Reagan era, if not all time. It's just a snippet of the brilliant sketch of Reagan as a competent world leader:

Me and the New Republic

2010-02-18T15:35:00.000-05:00

We finally canceled our subscription to the New Republic. I'd like to contrast my relationship to TNR to two other magazines: The Atlantic, which I also canceled, and the New Yorker, which I've retained.

The Atlantic is a very good magazine, with a top-notch website and bloggers. But when the recession hit, I needed to cut back on frivolities, and I found that I was just not reading the Atlantic that much. Maybe a fifth or quarter of the issue. So out it went - but if my fortunes were better, I'd subscribe again because it's a quality product.

The New Yorker is both a quality product and an identity object. My family's been subscribing for decades, even through the execrable Tina Brown years, and it's part of how we see our life as public intellectuals. The writing is consistently superb - it's probably the finest source non-fiction around. They also employ fact-checkers, so you can actually trust what's between the covers. And they have cartoons.

Just a quick example of the New Yorker's excellence; last week's issue has an story about an international arms dealer, that you should read if you want to (a) know how accurate Hollywood action-thrillers are (e.g. the dealer, Monzer al-Kassar, is the son of a Syrian diplomat, buys weapons from a factory in Poland, lives in Spain, and uses third and fourth person proxies, in different countries, so to avoid violating flaccid international laws against arms trafficking; he's arrested in Spain in 1995 and after three main witnesses are compromised - somebody killed them or kidnapped their children - he's let free); (b) to know just how scary international intrigue is; and (c) read something you can trust, because as opposed to most books, magazines, and especially newspapers, everything in the article has been verified.

Anyway, what about the New Republic? Well, like the Atlantic, I found that I wasn't reading the magazine - or website - all that much. True, both magazines suffered from the end of the Bush era/2008 Election and the news-junky-dom that those terrible times created, but it's more than that. I found that I just couldn't trust what I was reading in TNR anymore. Here's why:

Very Bad Reporters - Top of this list is the uber-hack James "T" Kirchick. I even asked TNR to change their editorial policy and put the authors of specific pieces at the beginning of the article rather than at the end - not only to avoid the worst of their reporters (more below) but specifically for Kirchick who is a serial fantasist, hysteric, and all-around worthless presence. James Woolcott, not usually a person I'd quote due to his persona as bilious cat queen, was spot on when defending Joe Klein in a spat with Kirchick, stating:
"Kirchick is the Eddie Haskell of neoconservatives, a calculating little suck-up whose obsequious pieties drip like melted plastic. (To wit: "Reached for comment, Kirchick said 'McCain spent five years in a North Vietnamese torture camp. He doesn't need lessons in the horrors of war from the likes of Joe Klein.'") If Commentary made a lunch box, Kirchick is what you find packed inside, between a banana and a hand grenade. "
There's a certain amount bathhouse politics in Woolcott's assessment, true, and my opposition to Kirchick isn't solely based on his idiot politics (gay republicans, like black republicans, are mystifying to me considering the GOP party platform is explicitly anti-gay and even more so implicitly anti-minority), but is focused on his journalistic crimes: he makes stuff up, distorts everything else, and his continued presence in TNR made me doubt the higher editorial purpose of the journal.
Other bad reporters are there too, and I'd list them, but their names get confusing to me (there's like 11 Jonathans on staff) and the key is that some may get the facts right but when called on to editorialize - which is nearly all the time - their judgement/wisdom is abysmal. The mixing of editorialism and journalism is the next big issue:
TNR Moved from News to Opinion - I never knew if a story could be considered journalism or an editorial. Almost every piece seemed to advocate a position and it was getting maddening. Not only do I want to read journalism from journalists - I get opinions from better people, thank you - but the opinions presented were often purposefully marginal and loopy; what has now been labeled 'Contrarianism.' I first noticed this in Slate - which is why I stopped reading them as well, about 3 years ago. Every Slate piece seemed to be angled to present an opposition to conventional wisdom, which thus meant that facts were twisted or obviated and crazy ideas were emphasized, just to be hip/catchy/shocking/whatever. Since it was clearly a marketing strategy rather than an intellectual one, I swiftly chucked the website from my reading. But then the same tone/goal seemed to spread all across the intertubes and eventually rested uneasily in TNR (see next).

TNR Started to Champion 'Contrarianism' as an editorial policy - as stated above, Contrarianism (for how this is used by others, see this Economist piece) is a journalistic attitude of twisting a story's perspective to present a minority/marginal point of view. E.g. "eating cheese may lower cholesterol!" "Cheney says Obama is not a liberal!" "Spree Killers may eat too much cheese, are too liberal, says Cheney"). It's a terrible trend in journalism and it reeks of flop-sweat. This trend is especially sad given that the Obama administration is fighting gamely against the gnarled nihilistic nub of the GOP who have cynically contradicted everything the good-guys have been trying to do. But since TNR, Slate, and even the Washington Post (so I've been told), among others, are committed to contrarianism - the two intellectual tactics help each other. The GOP happily distorts facts and these journalists oblige with their own twists. It's hurting the country and I want no part of it.
The Website became unusable - at one point, early in 2008, TNR's website was still a place I could go to find out breaking news in politics or what-have-you. Now, I have no idea how to use the dang thing - there's thirteen different blogs, each sharing front-page space, and it's just an addled mess.

All told, TNR had to go, and I don't see returning any time soon.

Update 1: When searching for good pics for this post, which I do after writing it, I found this story from Oct 2009 about others who hate Slate's contrariansism. Nice to know I'm not alone.

Update 2: Just had a blinding insight - contrarianism has existed on the internet for a while, but it's generally called being a 'concern troll.' While they're not exactly the same, the attitude is similar enough that I think the epithet fits.

First pic from here, second from here. Third pic comes from some dude's 4-chan pile and relates to update 2.

High Two

2010-02-17T19:48:00.003-05:00

When we describe our kids as geniuses, we often mean that they're precocious - i.e. that they exhibit thought processes of an age older than they are. Yet this presumption of precociousness is based on a parent's knowledge of what children are generally capable of and unless the parent is an expert in (developmental) psychology, medicine, or a child-care professional (e.g. teacher, PT, nurse, what-have-you) then the presumption could be wrong.

The 'genius/precocious' label is more reliable if the child exhibits actual adult behavior/cognition. Especially if the observed behavior/cognition is rare even within adults.

My middle child, Jota Minuscula, constantly amazes us with this genius behavior. He truly thinks outside the box and is also truly funny.

Story from last night: He and his older brother, Big B, were leaving home with their grandmother for a big-boy sleepover. I was holding their baby sister in my arms and Big B, who was dressed in his full winter ensemble, asked if I could hold the baby so he could give her a "high five" - which he did. Then Jota piped up: "No, not a high-five, a high-two because you're wearing mittens!"

Now, this whole observation would be moot if someone told Jota that joke - but we didn't know who did (I didn't). His mom admitted that she wouldn't have thought of that kind of joke, at least as an instant retort. As such, I need to assume that he just thought it up - especially because he's done stuff like that before. It's just the way his mind works.