A must-see-in-theatre for us, as I'm sure the filmmakers coldly
calculated.
At the end of the previous movie, our reluctant heroine, Katniss
Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence)
had been rescued from near-death by revolutionaries
eager to take down the oppressive government of Panem as
symbolized by its ruthless sadist leader, President Snow (Donald
Sutherland). But
one of Katniss's boyfriends, Peeta, remained behind. Katniss is pretty
irate about that. It's apparent that
she loves Peeta slightly more than she does
her other boyfriend, Gale.
The revolutionaries are based in "District 13", long-supposed to
have been destroyed by Panem. But they're living in a deep
underground complex, full of weaponry and spirited people. They
are led by President Coin (Julianne Moore) with assistance from
Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and some other folks
from previous installments. Coin wants Katniss as an inspirational
symbol to lead the revolt. Katniss is more concerned about getting
Peeta back to safety, and she uses that as a bargaining chip.
As a number of reviewers observed: for a two-hour movie,
not too much happens. There are a few conflict scenes where
the ruthless forces of Panem take on the plucky dissidents.
But the main plot driver is a mopy Katniss pining for Peeta's safe return.
So: it's OK, but clearly just setting up moviegoers to shell
out for another ticket next November. And, God willing, we'll
be there.
I haven't read the books, so I (honestly) don't know how things
turn out. At times it appears
the District 13 allegedly-good guys are
nearly as power-hungry as the Panem thugs, and
some of the scenes where Coin addresses her minions give
off a Triumph of the Will vibe. So maybe it will turn out to
be one of those meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss deals? Don't tell
me.
Kevin D. Williamson detects in President Obama
a case of "A
Small Man in a Big Office". It's a very interesting take
on how character, or the lack thereof, manifests
itself, either on the playing field or in elective office:
I have seen a high-school football coach refuse to shake
the hand of his opposite number after a football game in response to
perceived affronts to sportsmanship, and that’s a serious thing. (They
take it seriously in that
other kind of football, too.) It’s basically Sampson biting his
thumb at Abraham in the opening of Romeo and Juliet. “When good
manners shall lie all in one or two men’s hands, and they unwashed, too,
’tis a foul thing.” You don’t shake hands with somebody who has behaved
dishonorably.
I do not think I would shake hands with Barack Obama.
That's a thought experiment I doubt either Kevin or I would
get a chance to test in real life, but I think I'd probably
go the same way.
There is P.J. O'Rourke content at the Daily Beast: "Why
2016’s Hopefuls Are Hopeless", a quick look at both parties' likely
presidential candidates. Jeb Bush, for example:
He’s got everything.
He’s young (for a Republican), just 61.
He was a Phi Beta Kappa at the University of Texas. Hook ‘Em, Horns!
He was a successful businessman.
And a successful two-term Governor of a state where the balloting
incompetence and idiocy is absolutely vital to the GOP.
He’s fluent in Spanish. His wife is Hispanic. His children are too! He’s
sure to move, temporarily, from Coral Gables to Houston so he can choose
fellow Floridian Marco Rubio as his running mate. Kiss the Latino vote
goodbye, Democrats.
John Ellis Bush has just one problem. Perhaps you can take a
“Bush-league” guess what it is. But don’t worry. Jeb is all set to
legally change his name to “Scott Walker.”
You probably saw or heard about this past weekend's Saturday Night
Live opening sketch that was openly non-reverential
to President Obama and his immigration
moves a few days ago! Heresy! At Breitbart, John
Nolte noticed that the Washington Post actually
spent time fact-checking the sketch. (Something nobody
can remember happening in response to the approximately 2,396
anti-Ford/Reagan/Bush/GOP SNL sketches over the past 40
years.)
And at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey
lists a few things the WaPo could also correct, for example:
There are actually very few people with cone-shaped heads, and they
rarely talk like robots.
Don’t Fear The Reaper didn’t really need more cowbell.
Sarah Palin never said she could see Russia from her house.
And more.
And finally, a couple of seasonal links.
Reasonreports that the
latest attack in the War Against Christmas has been beaten
back:
It's a Christmas miracle! An elementary school in
a Boston suburb that was going to cancel its annual trip to see The
Nutcracker has decided allowing kids to see a
Christmas tree on stage will not destroy the
non-Christians in the audience.
It's usually wise to check that these stories aren't
coming from some wackily paranoid
right-wing source, but not in this
case: link above goes to WHDH, the Boston NBC affiliate.
But what if you want to go “old school” this holiday season? What if
instead of giving your loved ones high-tech devices that will, in time,
become obsolete and useless, you’d prefer to give gifts that are already
useless?
In that case, you have come to the right place: our annual Holiday
Gift Guide, which has been a beloved American holiday tradition dating
back to the dawn of time. Each year, we scour the entire solar system,
looking for unique and tasteful gift ideas. Each year, we fail utterly
and wind up with a collection of random crap we found on the Internet.
This is our holiday gift to you.
My "favorite" would have to be "The Meat", which is one in a series
of toy action figures from to the Rocky movies. Pictured
(with handy Amazon link) at right. No, your right. [Sigh. Updated
September 2022, when I finally noticed "The Meat" was no longer available
at Amazon. Replaced with another holiday favorite, "Coyote Urine" from
American Heritage Industries. Accept no substitutes!]
Scenario A: Suppose your neighbor is manufacturing anthrax
spores in his basement. There's no indication of evil
intent, it seems to be just a
hobby. He claims he's taking reasonable precautions.
But you're uncertain: an accident or a robbery
involving those spores could kill you or your loved ones.
Is it a proper function of government
to confiscate his spores?
Scenario B: Suppose your neighbor has a gun.
There's no indication of evil
intent, it seems to be just a
hobby. He claims he's taking reasonable precautions.
But you're uncertain: an accident or a robbery
involving that gun could kill you or your loved ones.
Is it a proper function of government
to confiscate his weapon?
My guess is: most people, even most libertarians,
would find government intervention
OK in Scenario A, not in Scenario B.
But what's the difference? Could it simply be the perceived/actual
level of risk involved?
Is there some principled
way to quantify
that, to justify government actions that mitigate extreme
Scenario-A levels of risk, while somehow stopping short of
a totalitarian nanny state that disallows any Scenario B-style activity
that might conceivably put innocent parties at risk, but probably
won't?
I don't know. And (as a dilettante in libertarian political
philosophy)
I've been thinking about this sort of thing for a number of years
without coming to a satisfactory conclusion.
It all seems to revolve around the concept
of risk, though.
One of my efforts at self-education was to pick up this book:
The Norm Chronicles by Michael Blastland and David
Spiegelhalter. Its subtitle: Stories and Numbers About Danger and
Death.
Seemingly very relevant to my lackadaisical intellectual quest!
Blastland and Spiegelhalter illustrate their story using
fictional typical characters: there's the risk-averse Prudence;
the thrill-and-pleasure-seeking, risk-be-damned Kevlin brothers
(Kelvin, Kevin, and Kieran); and then there is Norm, who is
completely (guess what) normal, all the way
down to his weight and height, and seeks moderation in all
things risky. (At one self-reflective point, he marvels at
how paradoxically unusual his normality makes him.)
The book is a romp through the major categories of Things That
Could Possibly Do You In:
getting born, of course, but also
giving birth; sex; crime; transportation;
drugs, licit and illicit; your lifestyle; medical woes; etc.
Wherever possible, the authors quantify: risky activities
are measured in "micromorts", a one-in-a-million chance of
death. (For example: serving in Afghanistan exposes one
to a risk of 22 micromorts per day; World War II RAF bomber
pilots experienced 25,000 micromorts per mission.)
Chronic risks are measured in
"microlives", about a half-hour
in length. (Examples: each cigarette smoked will set you back
about 0.5 microlives; being male instead of female
will cut off about 4 microlives per day.)
And there are the big risks: climate change,
earthquakes, and stuff falling from above (meteors,
killer asteroids, unfortunate stowaways in airplane
wheelwells …)
All these morbid facts and numbers
are presented with enough wit and charm to make them
(paradoxically) lively and interesting. Norm, Prudence,
and the Kevlins become actually sympathetic characters
in the narrative.
And it's funny. Try reading this without amusement:
[…] We know for sure that countless things—unlikely or not—will happen
somewhere to someone, as they must. More than that, we know that they
will often happen in strange and predictable patterns. Fatal falls from
ladders among the approximately 21 million men in England and Wales in
the five years to 2010 were uncannily consistent, numbering 42, 54, 56,
53, and 47. For all the chance particulars that apply to any individual
among 21 million individuals, the numbers are amazingly, fiendishly
stable—unlike the ladders. Some calculating God, painting fate by
numbers up in the clouds, orders another splash of red: "Hey, you in the
dungarees, we're short this month."
So: a fine book, wonderfully entertaining, and I learned a lot.
But did I get any illumination on the topic that drove me here, seeking
some sort of objective, principled guidance on the proper regulation
of risk in a free society?
No. If anything, the opposite. The authors just about convinced me
that there is no bright line that can be drawn between
risks that must be prohibited and risks for which laissez-faire
is the proper policy. Some cases seem clear, but those in between
will probably forever be a matter of unresolvable conflict
between people with different values and attitudes. We could
handwave about distinguishing
between "rational concerns" and "irrational fears", but
there's no infallible test, as near as I can tell, that will
allow one to tell one from the other in all possible cases.
So, yeah, it's okay. And I'm glad I watched it. But, for some reason,
I've always been considerably less enthusiastic about the X-Men
than I am about (say) Cap or Shell-head. Even though this one has
Jean-Luc and Gandalf in minor roles. It doesn't help that this
one works off a time-travel premise that will be totally familiar
to anyone who watched
the Back to the Future movies
or relevant installments of
Star Trek.
The movie starts off in a grim future with
eternal genocidal warfare between
mutants and non-mutants. The mutants are about to be on the losing end,
due to the "Sentinels", deadly robots that are able to
absorb mutant powers and
jiu-jitsu-like
reflect them
back on the mutants. All this tracks back to the
good/bad shape-shifting mutant Mystique, who fatefully killed
the Sentinels' inventor back in 1973. That turned out
to be a bad call.
So the obvious solution (obvious at least to Professor X, since
he was in
some of those Star Treks)
is to send someone back to
1973 to prevent Mystique from working her murderous mischief.
Time-travel turns out to be another handy mutant power.
Wolverine is the only practical choice for the trip.
And (to avoid a certain class of paradoxes), it involves
sending W's conciousness back to '73 to inhabit his then-body.
So: all he has to do is seek out the 1973 versions of Professor
X and Magneto, and whatever other X-men they can gather, then
to thwart Mystique. There are a number of complications due
to the involvement of Magneto, who starts out helpful,
but is soon enough up to his old tricks.
So: not a bad flick. Clever and occasionally funny, and seemingly
not as tediously didactic
as previous entries. (Or maybe I'm just getting used to that.)
I liked Keith Hennesey's take on
MIT prof Jonathan Gruber's invocation of the
"stupidity of the American voter".
Now: goodness knows I have no illusions
about the intelligence of the electorate that elected President Obama
twice and (in my own state) just re-elected Jeanne Shaheen.
But Keith notes that when lefties digress on "stupidity" it is really
a composite complaint, lumping together at least six different
gripes against its target. RTWT, but Keith's conclusion is well-taken:
If American voters are stupid because they think academic
credentials do not perfectly equate with intelligence…
If they are stupid because they think policy decisions should be
informed both by sound science and values…
If they are stupid because they would rather let people make
their own mistakes than allow government to make different mistakes for
them…
If they are stupid because they support less redistribution than
certain progressive policymakers and their allies in academia…
If they are stupid because they don’t spend all their time trying to
sift through policies intentionally designed to deceive them…
If they are stupid because they trust that elected and especially
appointed American officials will not abuse the power temporarily
granted to them…
… then I’m with stupid.
Yes. Me too.
In the earlier days of the Obama Administration, Pun Salad invented
the word "Barackrobatics" to refer to President Obama's rhetorical
tics that were reliable indicators that he was saying was
detached from reality, lacking in honesty, or demagogic bullshit.
(And often all of the above.) Pun Salad's efforts to popularize
the word went nowhere, as you can tell by asking the
Google.
Nevertheless, Megan McArdle gets so close to
"Barackrobatics"
when she headlines her
analysis of the President's immigration speech last night "Obama's
Immigration Speech Acrobatics".
There's a perfect word to describe President Barack Obama's speech tonight, and that
word is "blatherskite." He was supposed to be explaining his
actions to regularize the status of millions of undocumented immigrants;
what he delivered was a festival of glorious nonsense.
I watched "The Big Bang Theory" instead.
The word "blatherskite" does not appear in Kevin
D. Williamson latest article. It is a generalized discussion
of the dishonesty of our rulers, of which Obama's
speech was but one example.
RTWT (I probably don't need to say
that), but the penultimate paragraph is:
The problem of illegal immigrants is not insoluble; it
is, rather, a problem that people in power do not wish to
solve, partly out of anxiety related to Hispanic identity politics,
partly because many of them find it convenient to maintain a permanent
class of marginalized serf labor. That is the truth obscured by the
gigantic heap of lies piled up around the immigration debate — that we
are ruled by criminals who will ruthlessly violate the law while
claiming that they not only enjoy the authority to do so but occupy the
moral high ground as well.
As Iowahawk says:
If he's gonna pretend
to make the law, we should pretend to obey it.
The U.S. Export-Import Bank has mischaracterized potentially
hundreds of large companies and units of multinational conglomerates as
small businesses, a flaw in its record keeping that could undermine the
export lender's survival strategy.
Or, shorter: they lied, they got caught.
Daniel J. Mitchell
notes that Ex-Im is just one example of reprehensibility:
[T]here are some forms of redistribution and intervention that are
so self-evidently odious and corrupt that you can’t give supporters the
benefit of the doubt. Simply stated, there’s no justifiable argument for
using government coercion to hurt poor people in order to benefit rich
people.
Another recent example, Mitchell notes, is the Obama Administration's
efforts to shut down Wisconsin's school choice system, clearly a goodie
thrown to benefit teacher unions at the expense of poorer students.
I like Steven Pinker's work quite a bit, so I
picked this up despite the
insufferably smug
subtitle: "The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st
Century".
On the other hand, for those of you who doubted I was a "thinking
person": you will now have to admit it. Because I read this book.
Ha!
Many of Pinker's trademarks are here: the sense that the chapters
are slightly adapted from college lectures; a decent amount of
humor, including amusing comic strips that illustrate the point
he's making; a forthright honesty in presenting somewhat controversial
notions. (He drives some folks crazy on this last bit; see
below.)
Pinker is, by training and employment, "offically" a research psychologist.
In fact, he's a wide-ranging scholar, willing to investigate
and explicate whatever strikes his fancy. This book might
seem to be a leap away from his usual science-related topics.
But it's really not: he has enough applied linguistic creds to
chair the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary,
which he's done
since 2008.
So this book is a scientist's take on what makes writing good
and bad. What sets it apart from classic style manuals like Strunk &
White, et. al. is Pinker's willingness to get down into
the technical linguistic weeds, and introduce the reader to syntax "trees",
which modern linguists use to parse (or fail to parse)
sentences into their component
parts. (Which you do unconciously when you understand "The boy stood on the
burning deck", and are flummoxed by "Stood boy deck the on burning
the."). Pinker shows how some poorly-constructed sentences may be
grammatical, but generate ugly trees.
But most of it is pretty straightforward advice to writers on
how to avoid stuffiness, vagueness, opacity, and other bad
things. Pinker is no pedant, peddling ill-conceived rules:
go ahead and split that infinitive, friend, if it makes
your sentence work.
On the other hand, he warns you away from usage that might be
technically correct, but … well, here he is on "literally":
The "figuratively" sense is a common hyperbole, and it is rarely
confusing in context. But it drive careful readers crazy. [pas:
but not "literally" crazy.] Like other intensifiers it is usually
superfluous, whereas the "actual fact" sense is indispensable and has
no equivalent. And since the figurative use can evoke ludicrous imagery
(e.g., The press has literally emasculated the president.), it
screams, "I don't think about what my words mean."
See Nathan
Heller in The New Yorker for a contrarian take on Pinker.
(Interesting source, since E.B. White, of "Strunk & White" fame, was a New
Yorker guy for so long.) Rebuttal here.
I'm sure a bunch of people did this already, but I will compare
this movie to the classic Groundhog Day:
Both movies
involve the hero living the same time period over and over. (The hero's
name here is "William Cage", and he's played by Tom Cruise.)
He remembers what he did in previous time iterations, but everyone
else is living the day for the first time.
The other main character is a female named "Rita". (Vrataski, played
by Emily Blunt).
Cage starts out unlikeable and cynical, but his character
improves throughout the film.
And Cage's only hope of escaping the time loop is
to somehow learn from his past mistakes, go back and try again.
There are differences, of course. Mainly because it's a cross
between Groundhog Day and (the good parts of) Starship
Troopers.
Instead of simply falling asleep
at the end of the day, Cage gets killed, in invariably nasty
(but PG-13)
ways: his death snaps him back to the start of the loop. He's in a
war against alien invaders, and he gradually discovers he's
humanity's only hope against certain doom. So he's got that
going for him.
It's a lot of fun. Special effects are super-impressive, but
(like Godzilla)
too many of them take place in the dark. (I think that's how
they save money on special effects.) Tom Cruise, no matter how
nuts he might be in real life, remains a very fine actor. Emily
Blunt… well, wow. Just wow.
We've occasionally run into Mark Bittman, who specialized
in writing in the NYT
about food (and did a fine job with that, as far
as I know) and "food policy" (a very, very
poor job of that). (Pun Salad articles
mentioning Bittman
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
and
here.)
He recently teamed up with Michael Pollan, Ricardo Salvador and Olivier
De Schutter to write a WaPo op-ed: "How a national
food policy could save millions of American lives"
Opening paragraph:
How we produce and consume food has a bigger
impact on Americans’ well-being than any other human activity. The food
industry is the largest sector of our economy; food touches everything
from our health to the environment, climate change, economic inequality
and the federal budget. Yet we have no food policy — no plan or
agreed-upon principles — for managing American agriculture or the food
system as a whole.
It's (of course) nonsense to claim that "we" have "no food policy".
We have, in fact, a vast
collection of laws, regulations, subsidies, prohibitions, programs,
mandates,
nudges, and nags all designed to affect what gets produced
and eaten. What the authors really mean is: they don't like
this current policy.
But it's not hard to see
where these earnest statist nannies are going:
This must change.
(Picture four fists hitting the table to punctuate
this totalitarian demand.)
Bittman and his co-authors prattle (on and on)
about the current "food system" but the "system"
of letting people freely decide what to consume
on their own and letting the marketplace provide
it is never really considered. Quoting myself
from a few years ago:
The whole notion of food being a "system" that can be "fixed" is
another instance of what Thomas Sowell called the "unconstrained
vision": the unexamined, unshakeable belief that it's
all one big well-understood machine, and to get the outcomes we
prefer, all we have to do is "fix" it. And there's the obvious
corollary: anyone who disagrees is either evil or foolish, and can
be safely ignored, or made ineffective "by any
means necessary".
And (indeed) the four authors assure us:
Only those with a vested interest in the status quo would argue against
creating public policies with these goals.
Any opposition is illegitimate.
Which naturally brings us to "Liberal Bullshit"
from the perceptive writer William Voegeli (excerpted
from his new book),
See how this relates to the
"policy prescription" set forth by the aforementioned nannies:
A bullshit prescription, by the same token, might actually work to
some degree, but any such efficacy is inadvertent and tangential to the
central purpose: demonstrating the depths of the prescriber’s concern
for the problem and those who suffer from it, concerns impelling the
determination to “do something” about it. As the political project that
exists to vindicate the axiom that all sorts of government program X’s
can solve an endless list of social problem Y’s, liberalism is always at
risk of descending into prescriptive bullshit. Liberal compassion lends
itself to bullshit by subordinating the putative concern with efficacy
to the dominant but unannounced imperative of moral validation and
exhibitionism. I, the empathizer, am interested in the sufferer for love
of myself, Rousseau contended. Accordingly, an ineffectual program may
serve the compassionate purposes of its designers and defenders as
well as or better than a successful one.
Vogeli's book is going on my read-someday list.
The
Fire tells the story of a recent panel at Smith College, where
Wendy Kaminer used words that made the ladies shriek and stand on their
chairs. Well, figuratively. There was the n-word, for example, but
that's
not all.
The student newspaper published a bowdlerized transcript
of the discussion, including the following from Ms Kaminer (WK):
WK: And by, “the c-word,” you mean the word [c-word]?
The paper also couldn't
resist expurgating
a word used by Smith President Kathleen McCartney:
Kathleen McCartney: … We’re just wild and [ableist slur], aren’t we?
The [ableist slur]? It was "crazy". As in "You don't have to be
[ableist slur] to send your daughter to Smith, but it helps."
Read David
Weigel on the "nobody" Rich Weinstein, who's made it a sideline
to discover the "speak-o"s and "off the cuff" remarks of Obamacare
architect Jonathan Gruber that revealed how intentionally
dishonest and opaque the process of crafting the legislation was.
This is kind of priceless:
“The next day, I woke up and turned on my iPad,” Weinstein recalls.
“I did a quick search. You know, 'Gee, if I wonder if anything is out
there about this Jonathan Gruber guy?' And the first result was about
this video. 'Holy crap, what is going on?' Excuse my language. It just
kept getting bigger and bigger. Later that day, a friend told me
that Rush Limbaugh was talking about this video. I’m at WaWa, and I'm
eating a sandwich in the car, and Limbaugh comes back from commercial
and says 'There's more on this Gruber video. The White House is
responding.' I’m like, 'What do you mean, the White House is
responding?'”
If our mainstream news organizations weren't such mindless shills
for the left, uncovering this story would have been their job.
But in this world, it's left up to folks like Weinstein.
Back this summer when I saw Dawn
of the Planet of the Apes I mentioned that Andy Serkis, who
played the noble Ape leader Caesar, deserved on Oscar for his
performance. I'm happy to report that according to
this Wired article, that could happen. (Video at the link.)
… and your tweet du jour is from the great Dean Norris:
If you were watching Saturday Night Live
between 1991 and 1998, you probably noted the "Deep Thoughts"
segments: brief absurdist jokes narrated by
Phil Hartman, always identified as "by Jack Handey".
Handey was, and is, a real person, and he wrote a book,
and I bought it (heavily remaindered).
The book's first-person narrator
is very much the "Deep Thoughts" guy. His real name is
not revealed, because he decides to go by the nickname "Wrong Way
Slurps".
We learn a bit more about
him: specifically, he's an extremely stupid, lazy sociopath.
His friend Don invites him on a trip to Honolulu, a smelly tropical
hellhole full of hostile natives, evil scientists, and scam artists.
At least that's the way it appears to Slurps.
He and Don are sold a treasure map said to lead to
the mythical "Golden Monkey". Since neither one is that
sharp, they decide to head up Hawaii's "mighty Paloonga
River" to rip off the fabled riches. Things don't work
out exactly as planned.
Now: the book is essentially a bunch of absurdist one-liners
linked together by an equally absurd plot. Even if you liked
"Deep Thoughts", stringing them out into an entire book (albeit
a short one)
might not be your
cup of tea. I chuckled all the way through, but I didn't try to
read it all at once.
In case you haven't seen it: Obamacare architect
Jonathan
Gruber bragged about the "lack of transparency" during
the debate to be a "huge political advantage". ("Lack of transparency"
is a euphemism for "nonstop dishonesty, occasional outright lies")
And he credited "the stupidity of the American voter or whatever"
for making that strategy a winning one.
People will be offended, but I'm writing to you from
a state that just re-elected Jeanne Shaheen, one of the
eager participants in the obfuscation
and bullshit. So to me "stupidity of the American voter"
seems to be simple, blunt honesty on Gruber's part.
President Obama came out and asked the FCC to regulate the
Internet as a "public utility". The proposal is cloaked
in feel-good language about "Net Neutrality" (which polls
remarkably well, for an empty slogan), keeping the Internet
"free and open", blah blah blah.
Obama is old enough to remember Ma Bell,
which was even worse to customers than today's cable and Internet
providers. And he is smart enough to recognize the Orwellian
contradiction in introducing onerous new regulatory regimes in the
name of keeping anything "free." The FCC has never been
particularly adept at acting in the "public interest." The less
control it has over the Internet (and TV and anything else), the
better off we will all be.
It's the default "progressive" position: remove power from private
hands, place it in the clutches of the almighty State.
The FCC was originally established to divvy up the broadcast
spectrum among its corporate welfare recipients. A bad idea, but
par for the fascist course at the time.
In any case: that's a done deal, and one of ever-shrinking importance.
So the official Pun Salad position on the FCC is not to give it
more to do, but to abolish it. Some pointers that might
convince you this is the only sensible policy:
Matt
Welch at Reason;
Peter
Suderman at Reason;
an Investors Business Dailyeditorial;
David
Harsanyi at Real Clear Politics;
and (even) Jack
Shafer at Slate and Larry
Lessig at Newsweek (in 2008).
There is P.J. O'Rourke content
over at the Daily Beast, and it's highly recommended
for anyone who might be feeling giddy over last week's election
results.
Extraordinary things occurred the last time Republicans took
legislative power away from a liberal quack. To sum those things up in
just two words, which still stir the heart of every right-thinking
member of the Grand Old Party: Monica Lewinsky. Was that fun or
what?
Need I tell you to Read The Whole Thing? Didn't think
so. But it's also
worth clicking over just for the (I'm pretty sure)
Photoshopped picture.
[Today's illustration: a liberal quack. Get it?]
Dave
Barry is Principal for a Day at
Coral Reef High School ("Miami's Mega-Magnet"). It's not hilarious,
but worth reading.
… and your tweet du jour is:
"I hereby grant full
amnesty to all Romulan ships entering the Neutral Zone." pic.twitter.com/G5cTl2ZAB2
I think I saw this movie on a list of libertarian-themed flicks
(Can't find that list now, though.) So into the Netflix queue it
went. True enough, its libertarian (specifically: pro-individual,
anti-regulation)
sentiments are clear. That theme is wrapped
around a solid tale of devotion, family, and love.
James Cromwell plays Craig Morrison, a farmer and handyman, working
his land outside of St. Martins, New Brunswick, overlooking the
Bay of Fundy. He's strongly
independent, and more than slightly cantankerous. And he is totally
committed to the happiness
of his lovely wife Irene (Geneviève Bujold!) They've raised
seven kids, all now middle-aged, a few of whom are hanging around.
[Yes, Star Trek fans: Zephram Cochrane and the first Captain
Janeway got married and moved to Canada.]
Problem: Irene is gradually succumbing to dementia, and needs a
safer environment than their aging farmhouse. And she refuses
to move into a home. So Craig resolves to build a smaller,
one-level home that would be more appropriate as they grow old.
Unfortunately, Craig is thwarted at every turn by officious local bureaucrats
who demand plans, permits, inspectors, and—above all—deference and
subservience. Craig tries—he really does—but Irene's deteriorating
condition, the oncoming winter, and continuing bureaucratic obstinence
are limiting his options. It all heads to a courtroom scene where
Craig faces the possibility of jail time and destruction of his new
home.
So, yes, it's kind of like a small-scale Atlas Shrugged. There's
another scene where Craig attempts to sell his farm's strawberries
to a wholesaler; he's informed that new government regulations demand
that farmers bring their crops in refrigerated trucks. This makes no
sense in Craig's case, but rules are rules, and most of the crop
goes to waste.
But the movie doesn't beat you over the head with ideology. The real
story is Craig's love for Irene, and his desire to remain
independent while caring for her.
Mr. Cromwell and Ms. Bujold handle their roles extremely
well.
Number 13 in Lee Child's "Jack Reacher" series, and a very good one.
As with most entries, you have to buy into the premise: Jack
isn't looking for trouble, just traveling around the great USA,
but keeps falling into the middle of incidents that start out seemingly
small, but
eventually are revealed to be the phenomena of an underlying
evil plot.
In this case, Reacher is on a Manhattan subway around 2AM when
he notices that one of his fellow riders is exhibiting most of
the telltale signs of a suicide bomber: a heavy coat in summer
(no doubt concealing a large amount of explosive); a fixed
stare; lips continually mouthing something, perhaps a Muslim
prayer; one hand concealed in a bag, perhaps a detonation
switch.
Reacher confronts the passenger—that's the kind of guy he is—and
immediately discovers that things are not what they seem; it's a
different kind of desperate situation, and he's plunged
into his usual milieu: in big trouble with the authorities, but able
to find some allies; investigators that show him bogus
identification; other investigators that don't think they need
to show any identification at all; a missing witness; ties to
a Senate candidate with a mysterious military past; an equally
mysterious beautiful woman with an unsavory companion. And so on.
Even though the reader knows it's just one entry in the Jack
Reacher series, and hence Reacher will make it out OK
at the end, it's a tribute to Child's prowess as a writer that
he's able to put him in deadly peril and make me wonder: is this the
end for Reacher?
Despite having Robert Downey, Jr., Scarlett Johansen, and Jon Favreau
in the cast list, this is not an Iron Man or Avengers movie. Instead
it's a sweet little comedy/drama that we enjoyed quite a bit.
Jon Favreau wrote, directed, and plays the protagonist, chef Carl
Casper. Carl is off his game: divorced and poor, spending an inadequate
amount of time with his 10-year-old son, Percy. He's the head of
the kitchen at a trendy LA restaurant, but he's intimidated by
the restaurant's owner (played by Dustin Hoffman). He admits that
he and the restaurant are "stuck in a creative rut". Due to
an ignorance of how Twitter works, he gets into a stupid flamewar
with a restaurant critic.
There are lots of pressures on Carl's life, and it explodes
when the critic comes to the restaurant. Carl's epic rant
becomes a YouTube sensation. And he gets canned.
Low point. Fortunately, his wife (Sofía Vergara, because I guess
they couldn't get Gwyneth Paltrow)
is still fond of him, and asks him
to come along on a business/pleasure trip to Miami with their son.
Her ulterior motive is revealed: she's sweet-talked her previous
husband (a hilarious cameo by Robert Downey, Jr.) into donating a beat-up
food truck. It's an obvious set up for redemption. Will it work?
No spoilers here, but if you can't figure it out, you probably
don't see a lot of movies.
It's lots of fun. All the actors are top-notch. I really liked John
Leguizamo, who plays Carl's assistant. Slight downside: you might
want to pre-plan to go out for Cuban sandwiches after watching, because
this movie might make you crave one.
But first, a brief analysis from Mary Katherine Ham: "The man
who would not pivot". Opening (about yesterday's press conference):
President Obama took to the podium today to inform the nation that he
will change exactly nothing about how he does his job after a historic
drubbing in the midterm elections. He will tout the same policies in the
same ways, with no particular plan for how to get any of them passed,
with no particular nevermind paid to how the politics have shifted
tectonically beneath his feet, armed with nothing but his assertions of
his rightness. Again.
Are we in for a couple of years of a petulant, detached,
taking-my-golf-ball-and-going-home presidency? Interesting.
(As in the alleged Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting
times.")
According to this quiz, I am
a "Objectivist Libertarian Isolationist Nationalist Traditionalist".
Not that there's anything wrong with that. How about you?
But it's "Saxophone
Day" today, and not coincidentally the 200th anniversary
of the birth of its inventor, Adolphe Sax.
Prominent on both lists is (you probably could have guessed)
Springsteen's "Jungleland" with the late Clarence Clemons (misspelled
as "Clemens" in the latter). I'd kick in "Born to Run" and
"Rosalita", but that's me.
I am also partial to Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes'
version of "Walk Away Renee", a cover ten times better than the
original. I think Joey Stann played sax on the original version.
Seek it out.
Pun Salad's official (but unaware, and uncompensated) mascot Cathy Poulin
has been spotted at a Foxboro blood drive:
[For the uninitiated, Cathy is the Director of Public Relations
for Bob's
Discount Furniture, a chain with multiple locations in the
Northeast. She also appears with Bob himself in their irritating
commercials.
That's Bob Himself on the donation couch.
Our ISP-provided stats tell us that Googling for
"Cathy Poulin" is the number one reason
people come to Pun Salad.]
And (since a goodly part of me is still thirteen years old) your
tweet du jour:
Starting with the good news:
my CongressCritter/Toothache, Carol Shea-Porter, is now a lame
duck.
She will be replaced with the slightly less unsatisfactory
Frank Guinta. For those not familiar with the district:
Frank and Carol have been alternating in this seat since 2007.
Bad news: Jeanne Shaheen will be one of our state's US Senators
for another six years; her victory was one of the few bright
spots for Democrats last night. In 20-20 hindsight, you have
to wonder if the GOP's importation of ex-Massachusetts Senator
Scott Brown to run against her was really that wise.
But (good news): she'll be in the Senate minority for at least
a couple of years, which will decrease the amount of
constitution-threatening
mischief
she can cause.
Reason reports some really good news: 15 participants
in the Free State Project will be headed
to Concord as legislators. Where they will (I hope) cause headaches to the
mainstreamers in both parties.
Paul Mirengoff of Powerline bemoans Libertarian spoilers,
especially in Virginia, where Democrat incumbent Warner is leading GOP
challenger Gillespie by (as
I type) about 12,000 votes, and the Libertarian nominee got 53,000
votes. (Brian
Doherty has some more exit poll-based details.)
Mirengoff isn't happy, but I'm hoping every potential GOP candidate is looking
real hard at those numbers. The lesson is: it makes sense to appeal to
libertarians as well as conservatives. Don't lie about your positions
(please), but
don't be afraid to pitch them to liberty-lovers.
In non-election punditry, an addendum to Monday's
reference to actor/dimwit
Russell Brand's anti-capitalism book Revolution:
Ed
Krayewski notes something obviously out of whack.
Russell Brand is reportedly worth around $15 million, the kind
of money his ideology says is "hoarded" when it's all in one place
or one person. Nevertheless his book, Revolution, an
anti-capitalist screed, is available for sale at capitalist
enterprises like
Amazon. Despite the possibility in 2014 to release a manifesto
like Brand's at no cost to the reader over the internet—and Brand's
fame would guarantee a wide audience—Brand chose the more
traditionally capitalist route of charging good money for his book.
It's his right in a market we would deem free, but it wouldn't be
in the kind of market Brand would impose on the rest of us. Weird
indeed.
Brand also dismisses criticism of his book by "highly paid, privately
educated journalists". I'm not sure how many of those journalists
have a net worth
of $15 million.
Not that it matters, but I'll be voting tomorrow with
my fingers crossed (hoping
Democrats lose) and holding my nose (because I'll be voting
for Republicans).
I wouldn't ordinarily mention that, but apparently the same geniuses
took to ridiculing our state's Senator Jeanne Shaheen as well:
I don't know how many votes this will generate on one side or another.
But (as far as I know) no investigations have been threatened here in NH.
[And there must be more out there besides those in New Hampshire and
California, right?]
Longtime readers may know that I despise the tinpot-despot
madness of Daylight Saving
Time.
At NR's Corner, Tim Cavanaugh is on my wavelength too: "Spring
Forward, Fall Back, Kneel to Your Masters".
How did you spend
the extra hour? The twice-yearly flipflop from standard to “daylight
savings” time and back again may not be the most terrible thing the
government does. But it is certainly the most irritating, the most
unnecessary, the most maddeningly dependent on — and reinforcing of —
the innate idiocy of all of us.
Michael Moynihan
has read the actor/comedian/druggie
Russell Brand's new book Revolution and he leaves little
doubt that Brand is a moron.
The problem here isn’t so much that Brand knows nothing about history,
is politically naive, doesn’t understand even the rudiments of
economics, can’t write, and manages 320 pages without producing a single
laugh. It’s that his self-righteousness often veers into the
authoritarian.
He was good in… well, I think I saw him in something.
If you look at the reviews on Amazon, you'll see that this book
(number 16 in Randy Wayne White's "Doc Ford" series) gets
an unusual number of negative reviews. My guess is that White
confounded some reader expectations. I enjoyed it quite a bit,
but my default setting when reading an entry in a long-running
series is: let the author take the story where he wants.
The book is set in a slightly-alternate universe where Fidel Castro
has finally kicked the bucket, a revolution has deposed the Communists
in Cuba, and all is well, right? Wrong, because Castro's legacy
includes piles of documents that illuminate past decades of
horror and subversion. A plot is hatched to extract the documents
from the clutches of the US government, involving the kidnapping of
Senator Barbara Hayes-Sorrento.
Ford is on the scene, however. He manages to prevent Barbara's
abduction, but the kidnappers settle for a 14-year-old Native American kid,
Will Chaser, who is travelling with the Senator because he's won
an essay contest.
Will Chaser is a handful. Think "The Ransom of Red Chief", except more
violent. Will has a rich background of growing up on an
Oklahoma reservation, getting shuttled off to a foster family in Minnesota,
headed by a retired pro wrestler in a wheelchair. He's no angel, dealing
weed to his classmates, and not
averse to totally inappropriate relationships with his female teachers.
(It turns out his winning essay was ghosted by one of his teachers.)
We alternate between Will's desperate struggle to escape his captors
and Doc's attempts to track him down.
Oh yeah: Doc also arranges for the demise of one of the more despicable
villains from a previous book. He's in a spot of legal trouble for that.
So there's a lot going on.
Minor annoyances: slipshod editing (example: on page 49, a character is
described taking a "tone less differential"). And, even given my
general inclination for letting an author tell a story in the way he
wants, I found myself annoyed at a number of spots with the
nonlinear narrative: even within a single chapter, White will start in
one place, back up and describe what went on slightly before, then
continue. For no good reason, as near as I can tell.
Back in 2010, National Review
listed 10 post-1950 novels written by Americans deemed by the editors to be fine
conservative novels. (List here.)
I had read two (Advise and Consent and Bonfire of the
Vanities.) So this shows how deep some of my to-be-read piles
are: I finally got around to reading a third.
The Thanatos Syndrome is a 1987
novel by the late Walker Percy, his last. It is a sequel
of sorts to Love in the Ruins, which was written
in 1971. (I read that too, but back then, and I remember
nearly nothing about it.) The protagonist is Dr. Thomas More,
a Louisiana psychiatrist.
When the book opens, Tom, a once-famous brain researcher,
has returned home from a stint in prison. He'd been selling
large quantities of uppers and downers to truck-stop
middlemen, who
would resell to long-haul truckers. He's restarted his
private practice, and notices unusual behavior in a number
of his patients: they are (somewhat) mellowed out, but prone
to unnatural responses. (Specifically: they become
unable to recognize context switches. Tom asks a patient, out of
the blue,
where St. Louis is, and gets an ordinary, correct, response
without notice of the conversation's
discontinuity.) A priest has taken up occupying
a local fire tower, and refuses to come down.
And Tom's wife has become a surprising prodigy at contract bridge.
A little detective work finds nefarious forces at work: social
engineers with only the "common good" at heart are injecting
"sodium-24" into the water supply, which is causing the mental
changes. (In real life, sodium-24 is highly radioactive with a
15-hour half-life, so this is pretty much a plot device.) The
perpetrators tell themselves, and anyone who'll listen,
that it's a public health measure, much like fluoridation.
But Tom uncovers an underlying seam of animal-like behavior,
perversion, and a genteel cult of death.
And, even amid all the sordidness, the book is
also quite amusing in spots.
Percy, like James Lee Burke, describes the Louisiana bayous with
painfully beautiful prose. (Almost so I want to go there; I keep
telling myself: calm down, it's probably hot, muggy, and buggy,
and you're not a fisherman.)
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