A chilling report on the men who supposedly committed suicide in Gitmo, which the Right Wing continues to describe, despite all evidence the contrary, as the equivalent of a luxury spa.
Denial runs deep.
Monthly Archives: January 2010
Rush Limbaugh
Definitely has a screw loose. It’s just sad.
Sleepy Huey
My daughter is really into the Disney Princesses right now. Princess shoes, Princess play castle, Princess diapers, Princess dolls. When we got the play castle, she ran upstairs, grabbed a diaper and gleefully found which princess matched it. I — nerd that I am — was very proud that she could do image matching. But was when the Princess thing really began.
She’s also starting to get into TV now, which is a little scary. I know she likes it but I’m trying hard to limit it. This is difficult on weekends when neither of us has the energy to play with her all day and the temptation to use the Electronic Babysitter is strong. But we’ve mostly limited it to stuff like Sesame Street and Dora the Explorer (which she was exposed to through friends, not us). Lately, she’s also gotten into Bugs Bunny. So the natural extension is the Disney movies.
Unfortunately, Disney’s oddball DVD policy prevents us from buying Cinderella, Abby’s favorite. But we did pick up Sleeping Beauty, her second favorite. Thanks to the Stomach Flu from Hell, we’ve watched it a dozen times in the last few days.
The movie is actually very good. In fact, I worry it’s a little intense for a 2.5 year old. It has decent characters, especially the delightfully evil villainess. The scene in which Sleeping Beauty is drawn to the spindle is also very well done (it always provokes Abby, who has watched it raptly every time, to say, ‘No, Sleepy Huey! Stop!’)
But I watching a scene of Maleficent’s demons. It is very similar to the “Night on Bald Mountain” scene from Fantasia — probably one of the most incredible pieces of animation in film history. That remind me of this video, which accuses Disney of ripping itself off.
A multi-billion dollar corporation that gets zillions from kids and is brutal in defending its copyrights needs no defense from me. But artistically, I will defend:
1) No one imagined that future generations would break these movies down from home videos.
2) This sort of thing is overlooked when it’s not a company that evokes hatred in certain quarters. George Lucas, in particular, loves to homage other movies, including his own. The Star Trek films and series have repeatedly reused F/X footage — notably the Klingon Bird-of-Prey explosion from ST6.
3) The original animations were based on filming live actors, an expensive process to recreate for a medium that was not terribly profitable. If you got it right the first time, why screw it up the second time?
Anyway, I’m looking forward to recovering more of my childhood through Abby. Although I think I might hold off on Watership Down until she’s old enough to handle it. 38 should be good.
Update: In other weird Disney criticism, I just remember this paragraph from Roger Ebert’s review of Snow White (which is the first movie I remember seeing in a theater):
Richard Schickel’s 1968 book The Disney Version points out Disney’s inspiration in providing his heroes and supporting characters with different centers of gravity. A heroine like Snow White will stand upright and tall. But all of the comic characters will make movements centered on and emanating from their posteriors. Rump-butting is commonplace in Disney films, and characters often fall on their behinds and spin around. Schickel; attributed this to some kind of Disney anal fixation, but I think Disney did it because it works: It makes the comic characters rounder, lower, softer, bouncier and funnier, and the personalities of all seven Dwarfs are built from the seat up.
Ebert has kids so I’m sure he can also appreciate that kids find butts and butt-related actions to be really really funny.
Dr. Strangegov or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Government
Reason has a great article explaining that libertarians and conservatives need to abandon their reflexive hatred of government if they want to make any progress.
I happen to work in a government-supported industry, so you can imagine that I’m receptive to this point of view. I have a much longer post about how I, as a libertarian-conservative, can still work in this industry. The gist, however, is that basic science is one of the few things that government does really really well. It’s one of the few endeavors, like roads and law enforcement, that benefits everyone but doesn’t have specific enough benefits to make it worth the private sector’s while.
Moreover, the reason science works well in the government paradigm is because government science is run very very differently from government everything else. Budgets tend to be strict and have to be justified in advance. Progress is closely monitored. Funding is dependent on past performance. And merit is decided by fellow scientists (mostly), not politicians.
The GOP tried to reform other government functions along these lines in 1995 but were fiercely resisted by federal employee unions and their subservient Democratic party. Attempts to reform, say, the school lunch program were denounced as drastic cuts in the program and leaving kids to starve.
A pity, really.
Panic Watch
Jesus, what the hell is wrong with us?
Defending the Indefensible
There’s a video out there — a long annoying video — that is a full bore attack on the Star Wars prequels. Even having slogged through most of it, I stand by what I previously said (and Robert’s insightful comment). I think the movies are decent to almost great. That they are not as good as the original trilogy doesn’t bother me; I didn’t expect them to be. A lot more works than doesn’t. And much of the anger is generational — i.e., most intense among those who grew up on the first trilogy.
I was actually mulling over making my own video response to the critique. But I can’t imagine where I’d get the time.
I will add one thing to my previous post: the prequel trilogy was a losing proposition from the start. Prequels, in general, do not do well. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a single on that really worked except for the prequel half of The Godfather. Reboots sometimes work, but prequels rarely do.
The reason is not because prequel makers are idiots but because they are faced with not one but two impossible tacks. First, they have to match the quality of a film that was so good it merited a prequel. Even a small regression to the mean is inevitable. It’s just not easy to make two magnum opi.
Second, prequels are, by definition, narratively confined. We know where it’s going to end, so drama and surprise are out. More importantly, the plot ceases to flow from the characters. The characters become slaves to the plot. This is one of the biggest problems with the Star Wars prequels — characters like Padme have to serve more as walking plot devices than actual characters.
As a writer myself, I have often envisioned the end of the story only to find the characters marching it off in a different direction. With prequels, that freedom is lost.
Still, I enjoy Episode I-III for what they are. They do a reasonable job, although not as a good a job as they could. And I’ve never really understood how someone could be so enraged by them as to do things like make an annoying and deliberately obtuse 70-minute video.
Wednesday Linkorama
So much to talk about:
The Iron Man
Man, I hope I live this long and this well.
Code Switching
A good article on Obama’s “code switching” during speaking. This is hardly unusual in politics or in life. I always used a far more formal speaking manner when I would teach (i.e., sounding a lot less like Jeffrey Lebowski).
Tuesday Linkorama
Mac
The news that Mark McGwire used steroids is not surprising.
What is also not surprising, but incredibly disappointing, is the titanic and hypocritical self-righteousness which still accompanies the issue. McGwire is a Hall-of-Famer who is being denied because he used steroids. This represents the apex of blaming the player — and only the players — for the rampant use of performance enhancing drugs throughout the game. The completely ignores that:
The players did steroids, in part, because they were allowed to. They did them because the owners, the press and the fans knew what was going on and were happy to ignore it. When we suddenly decided PEDs were bad, we refused to take any responsibility. Instead, we have heaped scorn only on the players. They are, after all, rich and popular, so we have to tear them down, right?
Screw that. I’m all in favor of a clean game. But I’m not in favor of white-washing the past and blaming the most convenient party. It’s time to admit what we allowed to happen.
Update: Incidentally, the commish knew about steroids in 1993.
Trouble Ahead; Trouble Behind: Predicting 2010
Every year, I like to run an article looking ahead and behind, making fearless predictions for the year to come. I’ve written a long piece for the other site on the last year in politics called a Year in Fantasyland. 2009 was the year everyone in politics was delusional — from Democrats who though the nation turned liberal to Republicans who think they’ll ride the tea parties back into power.
I didn’t comment on it there, but my predictions from last year held up pretty well:
Anyway, 2010 is already two weeks old, so I’d better make my predictions so I can be as wrong as ever.
As much as 2009 was the year of fantasy, 2010 will be, I think and hope, the year of reality. And about time too.
Antikythera
New insight into the most fascinating artifact of Greek civilization we have found (so far). As time goes on, we find out our ancestors were far smarter and more sophisticated than we give them credit for.