Constantine XI (February 8, 1404 - May 29, 1453), the last Byzantine emperor, who died defending the walls of Constantinople from the Ottoman Turks.
Constantine wasn't a Greek. He was Serbian, and his hold on the throne was pretty tenuous. He was actually installed by the Ottoman sultan Murad II, who arbitrated a dispute between Constantine and his brother Demetrius. When the Turks under Mehmed II started agitating for control of the city, Constantine begged the West for aid.
This is where the tragedy of the Great Schism probably sees its fullest expression. The West agreed to send military aid of Constantine united the Eastern and Western churches. He did so in 1452, but the legal declaration was vigorously rejected by most of the Byzantine population, and European aid never materialized. The Turks, using their newly perfected cannon, assaulted the city in 1453 and Constantine died leading the final defense of the city on May 29.
Okay, so we all know that there are a lot of hungry people in the world, right? Right. And we all know that we'd like to do something about it, right? Right. So what do you do if you manage to assemble 7.5 tons of rice, peas, saffron, onions, celery, and garlic? Feed it to the hungry? Nah. Let's just go ahead and make the largest batch of risotto in history and sell it to people to "raise awareness" of hunger worldwide.
Dumbasses.
On a semi-related note, I'm currently nursing a theory that most of the people involved in charity-type work - and a depressingly high number of the people I personally know who are involved in the same - do so more out of personal uncomfort and misplaced guilt than knowledgeable compassion. I hear a whole lot of things like "I don't like to hear about people starving, make it go away right now", and "I feel really guilty for having money and opportunity when other people don't and you should feel this way too", and "If you aren't devoting your whole life to caring for the poor than you're not a Christian". I don't hear a lot of "This is a tragedy that humanity has had to deal with for thousands of years that will never be fully resolved, but there are concrete things that can be done to ameliorate some of the suffering in the world."
No, I mostly hear airheads and radicals. There are a few notable exceptions, but even a lot of the community development majors with whom I'm familiar have, from time to time, struck me as distressingly ill-informed.
This is really a problem for me. I now live in New York City, and a lot of my previous attitudes towards poverty and social services are changing. It's a lot harder to rag on the poor for making bad choices and not taking responsibility for your actions when you don't have to step over the homeless man who's taken up residence on the sidewalk near the subway station. But most of the noise I hear about helping these people is either vapid trendy-speak (I get a lot of that at Columbia) or totally unrealistic (look, equal distribution of wealth isn't really a good thing, because everyone winds up poor). Additionally, my motivations for pursuing a career in medicine are, in part, based on a desire to do good things for people who need care and compassion. I want to maintain that this is appropriate without falling into the absurdities like the one I linked to above.
What bothers me most about the people I meet at Columbia for whom poverty is one of their "issues" is that they seem to be motivated far more by politics and personal discomfort than by compassion. They see poverty as a problem, but don't seem to actually feel much for poor individuals as such. I try to be mostly the opposite. Poverty as a problem is tragic, but I view it as unavoidable and not inherently unjust. Poor people, on the other hand, I find myself unable to overlook.
This is still something I'm working out. I don't really know what I'm going to wind up thinking about this, much less what I'm going to do about it. But it's on my mind, especially now. Thanksgiving, after all, is a holiday dedicated to the consumption of extravagent amounts of food. I am okay with this. But that combined with some recent conversations with people who are important to me has got me thinking.
So that's what I'm thinking.
Why am I blogging today? Because unlike the rest of America, my family rarely observes holidays on the actual day. Our big feast will be when we always have it: Saturday. Why? Because it's convenient. That means that aside from spending the afternoon at grandma's place, there's not a whole lot going on around here. Which is okay. I'm beat. Remind me not to try and take a bus anywhere the day before Thanksgiving.
But the reason for this particular post is that director James Cameron, of Terminator and Aliens fame, will be returning to real filmmaking after an extended sabbatical which included several IMAX films and a sinking ship. The new film has no title as of yet, but is slated for a 2006 release and is reportedly based on the work of a Japanese graphic novelist. It's sci-fi. Please, James, give us another classic.
When electronics manufacturers started imbedding cameras into cell phones I never really understood why. I mean, come on, the quality has got to be crap, and I just can't see the attraction of taking pictures like that. If I wanted to take digital pictures, I'd buy an actual digital camera.
Well, those sneaky Japanese bastards have come up with a use that is so amazingly cool that it could probably reduce room air to its liquid state in under a minute.
Amazon: get on that.
For various personal reasons I was in a pretty foul mood tonight. I've learned that straight vodka and Reservoir Dogs can do quite a bit to ameliorate said moods. Nothing's changed for the better, but I don't mind as much.
For a long time people have said that video games have nothing of value to offer anyone. Well, maybe now that the JFK Reloaded has come out they'll respond differently. I'd like to say that if the game was capable of producing this from a Slate writer, that games are indeed sophisticated and useful tools for producing far more than finger-twitching action scenes.
Dan Blather is resigning from CBS. It's about damn time. The man stopped doing journalism years ago.
I'm consistently impressed by Andrew Sullivan's insights into current events, political and otherwise. I disagree with his take on gay marriage, but unlike everyone else I've come across to takes a pro-gay stance here, his arguments come across as heart-felt, sincere, and are based on ideas and virtues that I value. I don't think he can do with them what he tries to do with them, but it's a lot easier to have a discussion about the implication of shared values than to have a discussion about values that are in conflict. In short, he's one of my favorite writers, and whenever a controversial or significant event occurs, I'm pretty interested to hear what he has to say.
So when he writes this essay about the current state of pop culture being indicative as to why the Left just got their asses handed to them on Nov. 2, I'm all ears.
UPDATE: I realized overnight that the rate I computed for my results might best be expressed as a ratio, not a difference. I'm going to evaluate this and get back later. Might take a few days, this being right before a holiday and all.
I was reading another New York Times Magazine article, this one about how states' rights might be a new liberal talking point. He's talking about how liberals' sudden realization that they're in the minority in the nation as a whole should not discount the fact that they make up a majority in certain areas and states. I didn't get very far into it, because the following paragraph jumped out at me:
"Marriage affords a vivid example. In some states it is evidently more imperiled than in others. The Bible Belt states, in particular, have a shockingly high divorce rate, around 50 percent above the national average. Given such marital instability, these states are anxious to defend the institution of heterosexual matrimony, which may explain their hostility to gay marriage. The state of Massachusetts, by contrast, has the lowest divorce rate in the nation. So its people -- or at least its liberal judges -- perhaps feel more comfortable allowing some progressive experimentation. It will be interesting to see how this experiment plays out, assuming the Bush administration does not succeed in choking off the right of a state to recognize same-sex marriages by getting the Federal Marriage Amendment enacted."
Okay, that sounded fishy to me. Red states really have a higher divorce rate than Blue states? Hmm. So I did some fishing. I figured that the census might be a good place to start, and I was right. The relevant info can be found here (pdf) on the last page of the document.
Hmm. Looks like Massachusetts, the most liberal state in the nation, has one of the lowest divorce rates per 1000 people. And hey, Texas is a lot higher than that. But don't let those numbers fool you. It turns out they're actually really misleading.
First, take a look at Nevada. I have one word for you: "Vegas". So we can completely ignore that one. I'm tempted to do the same for Hawaii, but it's at least in the same order of magnitude as the rest of the country, so we'll leave it be.
But it's important to notice that the marriage rate in Massachusetts is also really low. So it would make sense that not many people are getting divorced if not many people are getting married. Granted, the people who got divorced in a given year are probably mostly not the people who got married that year, but throwing in average marriage-duration would make this really complex, and I don't want to go there, so we'll just take it as a wild rule of thumb.
I went and put the data in a nice little Excel spreadsheet that you can look at if you like. What I did was subtract the divorce rate from the marriage rate to try and get a rough idea of how many people are getting divorced compared to how many people are getting married. I then set that data into a graph sorted by this new rate. Turns out that Massachusetts only does so-so. Texas is actually doing pretty well in the nation when you look at that stat.
It also turns out that there is no discernable Red/Blue pattern here. The top five most "faithful" states are, in order, Hawaii, Tennessee, Arkansas, Utah, and Vermont. That's split pretty evenly. But as you go farther down the list, most of the Blue states are in the bottom half, at least in the 2001 chart.
Notes about the chart. I've not included Nevada, as it makes no statistical sense. The number of people per capita who get married is at least 9-10 times as large as anywhere else. Again: Vegas. Also, some states don't include divorce stats, so I can't do anything with that. Furthermore, it seems that getting married period is a Red-state type thing to do. Which says to me that fooling around and hooking up is more common in liberal/poor areas. Which is intuitively correct, to me at least.
This, it would seem, would be a far better way of supporting the thesis of the NYT magazine article. People in Blue states are far less likely to be married, and thus probably don't care as much about the institution of marriage.
And if you're wondering why I took the time to do this, let's just say that learning to think of varying reaction times in terms of graphs makes you want to see graphs for other data sets too.
Yeah, so the election was three weeks ago. Bush won in a blessedly non-contested uncontestable election. Analysis, of course, was to follow. "Who Lost Ohio" is the title of an article by Matt Bai in today's issue of the New York Times Magazine. It's rather long, but it's good reading. It details the election day experience Mr. Bai had with one Steve Bouchard, the Ohio director of America Coming Together, one of the infamous 527 groups that was indirectly shilling for Kerry.
Money quote:
"In hindsight, it seemed significant that Bouchard, months before, felt constricted enough by ACT's legal and financial realities to shift its focus, moving canvassers out of more contested counties and precincts and away from the business of trying to convert undecided voters. In the end, these were the voters Kerry needed. But Bouchard and his troops ran smack up against the inherent limits of a 527 in a presidential campaign. They could turn out the vote, but they couldn't really alter its shape.
Therein, perhaps, lies the real lesson from Ohio, and from the election as a whole. From the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and especially after the disputed election of 2000, Democrats operated on the premise that they were superior in numbers, if only because their supporters lived in such concentrated urban communities. If they could mobilize every Democratic vote in America's industrial centers -- and in its populist heartland as well -- then they would win on math alone. Not anymore. Republicans now have their own concentrated vote, and it will probably continue to swell. Turnout operations like ACT can be remarkably successful at corralling the votes that exist, but turnout alone is no longer enough to win a national election for Democrats. The next Democrat who wins will be the one who changes enough minds.
''I can't think of a thing in Ohio that we could have done more to boost our vote,'' Steve Rosenthal told me three days after the election, as the trauma of the defeat began to subside. ''The shortcoming in some ways is that the national Democratic Party has built this values wall between itself and a lot of voters out there, and the Republicans took advantage of it. The rude awakening here is that I always thought there were more of us out there. And this time there were more of them.''
This would probably be a good thing, but when progressives realize they're in the minority, bad things can happen.
I do not link to this because it is particularly well written or insightful. No, it's one of the worst pieces of obscurantist and self-important blather I've ever read. Which is entirely appropriate, given the subject matter.
No, I link to this because the intersection mentioned therein, 116th and Adam Clayton Powell Ave., the one that is the site of what the author describes as "casual fatalism", is on the same block as my apartment. The opposite corner, in fact.
That's today. The last week after Pentecost. Next week is the first week of Advent, the first week of the church calender. It's fitting that we sang "Crown Him With Many Crowns" in the service.
Some guys had a brilliant idea. Take nasty, cheap-ass vodka and filter it. Apparently it works really well. Time to finally get that Brita filter I've been eyeing.
James Taricani is currently facing criminal contempt charges for refusing to reveal the source that illegally leaked him a copy of an FBI tape relevant to a corruption case in RI. Taricani and his lawyers say it violates the First Amendment right to the freedom of the press.
This is nonsense. The Fifth Amendment allows you to refuse to testify to your own guilt, but does not allow you to refuse to testify to protect someone else. Mafia dons have gone to prison for this for years. It is also not an abridgement of th freedom of the press, for no one is guaranteed the right to confidentiality between themselves and their journalist. Lawyer/client and doctor/patient confidentiality is one thing, but even those can be breached by court orders.
The loony-Left is going nuts over this alleged "fascism", but they've wrong. Taricani is withholding evidence, interfering with a Federal investigation, and defying the court. He should go to jail.
I've got the mp3s from the Crooked Fingers show all good to go, but am having some problems uploading them into MT. As I don't have any other hosting available to me at the moment, and am not willing to pay for hosting, this is the part of the movie where Ryan begs Josiah for some server space.
Last night I went to see the new Alexander Payne film Sideways. Wow. This is a seriously fantastic movie. This one is up there with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and for me, that's saying a huge amount.
The premise is that Miles (Paul Giamatti of American Splendor fame) and Jack (Thomas Haden Church of, well, not much) are two friends who set out on one last road trip through California wine country before Jack gets married in a week. This is one of the best premises for a movie that I've come across in a long time, by the way. Miles is a neurotic middle-school English teacher and aspiring novelist who is more knowledgable about wine than is probably good for him, while Jack is a low-brow TV actor just past his prime with a voracious taste for women.
Their personalities immediately dictate that they're going to have pretty different ideas of what constitutes a good time. Most of the initial tension arises from these differing perspectives. Miles had gotten divorced about two years prior to the trip. Jack, a serially promiscuous and almost stereotypical LA flesh-bot, is getting married. Miles wants to have a nice, relaxing week with good wine, good food, and a few rounds of golf. Jack wants to get laid one last time, and declares that he's going to get Miles laid too. Tensions mount.
In the course of their wine-tastings, Miles and Jack meet Maya and Stephanie, both of whom are serious about wine. Jack sees this as a perfect opportunity to get both of them hooked up, and things progress from there.
The film is blatant about promiscuity (though it's pretty tasteful with two notable exceptions) and assumes that it's both natural and normal. The thing is, Payne is probably right here. This is how people live. But Payne is crushingly and beautifully honest about the awkwardness, pain, and heartbreak involved in such a lifestyle. That's where the movie really shines. Giamatti, who played a brillaint Harvey Pekar, takes that amazing performance up to a whole new level of excellence. There are also a couple instances of cinematography that exactly capture the emotional tone of the scene.
Sideways isn't playing much of anywhere, but if you get the chance, it's worth driving a ways to see it. For those of you still in Chattanooga, it's playing in Atlanta and Knoxville as of the time of this post.
...the first Calvin and Hobbes strip was published. It ran for just over ten years, and is arguably one of the greatest comic strips ever written. I would go so far to say that the Calvin and Hobbes corpus is one of the greatest works of art produced in the last two decades.
Anyway, the above link is to the Wikipedia entry for the strip. Read and enjoy.
"It's a magical world, Hobbes ol' buddy! Let's go exploring!"
Slate has a piece by Emily Yoffe, and NPR producer, who recently attended a firearms instruction course, and really enjoyed it. Hilarious reading.
Maybe it's time for a qualification. I've been pretty blatant about my belief that we are currently engaged in a new phase of a millennia old conflict that has no chance of ending in our lifetimes, and in which the attainment of victory is less important than the avoidance of defeat. As such, I've been unabashedly pro-West and anti-Islam. I know my enemy.
Now let's take a step back. Mr. Cave has mentioned this article. It suggests that "Differences need not be a threat to another. Mutual understanding in an increasingly violent world needs to be rediscovered." In theory, I agree. The fact that I am immovably opposed to the threat Islam poses to the West does not, believe it or not, mean that I am automatically opposed to Muslims on an individual level.
The article presents a noble, if futile, hope for mutual understanding and individual friendship. I think that this is a good thing, but I don't think that it's going to make a difference. It would be kind of like the stories of Yanks and Rebs trading luxuries across the river before trying to kill each other the next day. It heightens the tragedy of what's going on, and believe me, it's tragic. This unending war is deeply wrong. This is not the way it's supposed to be.
But here's the thing: until every tear is wiped away, there are going to be tears. Until death is thrown into the lake of fire, there will be death. And until God himself walks among us, there will be division, conflict, and war. We don't have to like this. We aren't supposed to. We should do everything we can to avoid these tragedies. But we would be foolish to pretend that it isn't this way.
God isn't on anyone's side in this fight. I'm not convinced he was on the Crusaders' side in the Middle Ages, and he certainly isn't on America's side now. This isn't about who is morally superior, because both sides are ultimately sinful. It isn't even about who is worse (though to be partisan about it, I don't see thousands of Westerners lining up to blow themselves up hoping to take a few Muslims with them). It's about realizing that like it or not, we are born into a fundamentally broken world, and though this brokenness may be accidental, it is real. There isn't anything logically or morally necessary about this War, but it's here, and we've got to deal with it. It doesn't matter that we don't want to fight or that the war was started for reasons that may no longer apply, or that we think that it would be better to live in peace. All of those things can be true. But there has been too much blood shed at this point to do anything but continue on.
The fact that we live in a broken world means that we have to do things that we'd rather not do. Anyone who has broken up with a significant other knows this. Sometimes things just aren't right. Denying this doesn't change the fundamental brokenness of the world, nor does it excuse us from our responsibilities. The answer to "Can't we all just live together in peace?" is, "No." No, we can't. We didn't ask for this war, but we didn't ask to be born either. You've got to play the hand you've been dealt. No amount of whineing or hand-wringing will change that.
So I'm all for trying to build bridges into the Muslim world. Not because I think it will accomplish anything, but because it's the right thing to do. I don't think that this current phase of the War is going to settle anything, but I also think that it's necessary.
Our enemies may be uncivilized dogs that do not deserve the protections of civilized law, but they remain undeniably human. Our conflict with them is a tragedy. Just as we fight without hope of victory, but only because we have to fight, we should seek friendship without hope of ending the war, only because it's the right thing to do. Just as it is wrong to deny the brokenness of the world, it is also wrong to deny the fact that there is a remedy for this brokenness, and the Muslim deserves to hear about this no less than we.
It's a hard line to walk. On one hand we have a foe dedicated to our ultimate annihilation that we must fight. On the other we have fellow humans who are to be respected and cherished. This forces us into the unenviable position of having to love those we are required to kill.
You don't have to like it. But that doesn't mean that you don't have to do it.
Out of sheer curiosity, I hit Salon today, just to see how they're dealing with the crushing defeat they were dealt this month. Answer? Badly. Sidney Blumenthal needs to up his Thorazine dosage, because, well, damn. All you need to do is read the subtitle and the rest of the article is moot.
As far as I'm concerned, the only way that Blumenthal's universe intersects mine are basic physical constants, though on second thought, those are probably up for grabs too. He's just deranged. "Night of the long knives"?
Somebody get this man to a shrink.
That's the title of a brilliant essay by Daniel Pipes. It contains the most perceptive and insightful quote on the Great War that I've heard in months: "Jihad provokes crusade." Sheer genius, and a perfect descriptor of the causal relationship between the two. I think what we've got going right now would probably count as the Tenth Crusade.
That being so, I'm not entirely worried about the current outcome in Iraq. To be honest, I think it's doomed to fail. But that isn't the point. Setting up a Western-style democratic state in the Middle East is laughably impossible. The point is to beat down the Islamic world to the point that they leave us alone. Which means lots of people have to die. But the alternative is orders of magnitude worse. When geo-politics gives you lemons, you throw them right back with a few of your own for good measure.
This morning I came across a link to story about a young man who has lived for 18 years with one of nature's most horrible and disfiguring genetic diseases: harlequin type ichthyosis.
Infants born with this disease generally die within hours of birth as their armor-like skin restricts their ability to breathe. Images of these poor souls can be found here (WARNING: extremely graphic, extremely disturbing images! You have been warned!).
But through the work of heroic neonatologists, Ryan Gonzalez has not only out-lived all previous sufferers of harlequin type ichthyosis, but is now a triathlete. He must consume 7,500 calories a day, slather himself in ointment seven times a day, and connect himself to a pure protein drip at night, but he's alive, and thriving.
Medical science is truly amazing. All you "herbal remedies" folk can go get stuffed. This is the real deal: intervening for someone who is afflicted with a terrible disease and giving them both life and health. Gonzalez' life will never be normal, but without modern medicine he wouldn't have a life at all.
This kind of thing is why I want to do what I'm doing. This is the kind of thing that I need to remember during calculus. Which is where I have to go now.
By now most of you should probably have heard about the execution of an Iraqi prisoner by a US marine.
I, for one, have absolutely no sympathy.
But now it seems that, provoked by the Baathist News Network, the Sunnis in Iraq are pissed.
I, for one, would like to tell them to kindly piss off.
We're fighting a battle of uniformed soldiers against unorganized, irregular, hostage-taking, car-bomb-using, suicidal monsters. The "insurgents", as the anti-West press is so fond of calling these dogs, strap charges to themselves so they can blow themselves up when American soldiers try to care for them once they're out of action.
And don't try and pull some Geneva Convention lawyer bullshit to say that what happened here is a war crime. If you read the damn thing, you'll see that the people we're currently fighting are specifically excluded by the convention under the definition of prisoners of war.
Geneva Convention III, Part I, Article 4, section A:
"Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:"
Paragraph 2 of this section says:
"(2) Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:[ (a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war."
The "insurgents" do not meet any of those four qualifications, and are thus not to be considered soldiers, and thus cannot be prisoners of war under the current legal definition of such. They're terrorists, and having chosen to operate outside the boundaries of civilized law, no civilized law shall be used in their defense. F*ck them.
/rant off.
Just got back from the Delgados/Crooked Fingers show. I'll have more on that, and the Sufjan Stevens/Nicolai Dunger show in a few days, once I finish separating and cleaning up the bootlegs I made at each one. Some of them came out really well, but I'm still new at this, and my hardware isn't the greatest, so I missed some things I really wanted to get.
Now to leech a copy of SoundForge so I can edit these audio tracks...
It looks like the current wave of long-overdue sanity sweeping through the Netherlands may make its way to neighboring Germany next. Here's hoping they can make some changes before someone else gets murdered. But somehow I think it'll take more death before these appeasement-loving Euros will wake up.
William Shater performs "Rocketman" by Elton John. 'Nuf said.
Arial Sharon, born Arial Scheinermann in 1928 to a German-Polish father and a Russian mother. Current Prime Minster of Israel.
Sharon's contribution to the War is primarily military. He was an officer in the IDF during the 1956 Suez War, the 1967 Six-Day War, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War, all three of which were victories for the Israelis. Sharon's command decisions in 1973 are generally viewed as being chiefly responsible for the forced surrender of the Egyptian Third Army, a remarkable feat considering only two Israeli divisions, the other being commanded by Avraham Edan, were involved. He is regarded as a war-hero amongst Israelis.
He is also regarded as a war criminal amongst Arabs. His involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982 resulted in a Time article accusing him of being at least complicit in the execution of up to 3,500 civilians. His hard-line stance against Arab terror and unilateral approach to the peace process render him a controversial figure. Israel, however, has elected him with a strong majority, and it seems unlikely that they will back down from this hard-line stance given the current situation.
Sharon has shown remarkably little willingness to negotiate with the Palestinians. For this, I honor him. His actions are not always defensible, but his unswerving refusal to seek a solution through appeasement or cowardice is to be emulated.
The Incredibles is either one of the most deeply Christian or one of the most deeply un-Christian films of the year. I haven't decided which, but it's amazingly deep either way, especially for an animated film.
Let me set the tone for the conversation by starting with this:
"For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God."
Having said that, if you're paying attention at all while watching the film, you'll be struck immediately about the applicability of the film as social commentary. The central motif of the film is that those people granted the abilities to protect the world from evil should do so, and that not everyone is special. Brad Bird has caught on to the fact that "If everyone's special, then no one is." Thus, the film winds up with a dramatically anti-egalitarian message. This isn't disturbing in and of itself, at least not to me. Team America had a similarly inequitable (and thus accurate) perspective on the distribution of power, but Parker and Stone came up with the same conclusions as Sam Raimi did in Spiderman 2 (a brilliant analysis of which can be found here). In short, those with power have a responsibility to help others.
But Bird isn't saying that. Bird is saying that those with power have a duty to not betray themselves by hiding their powers. The public good is certainly in view (and quite humorously so in an unforgettable exchange between Samuel L. Jackson's "Lucius Best" and his offscreen wife), but it's in view as a way for the superheroes to be authentic in the living of their lives. When Mr. Incredible is forced to go underground, he's unhappy. But the reason that he's supposed to reclaim his mantle of superheroness is not, like Spidey, because the public needs him, but because he's miserable. There is little to no sense of servanthood.
If the screaming Nietzschean overtones haven't completely deafened you now, then you must have been deaf to begin with. I mean, uebermensch can be validly transliterated as "superman". And we've got these characters referred to collectively as "supers". I'm not sure how I can make this more obvious. Bird is clearly of the opinion that, to quote Suzy Hansen and Sheelah Kolhatkar in their Observer piece, "the chosen few should have the right to exercise their powers over a wide, bland majority of fans and mediocrity-worshippers, and save the world from a bitter, deadly evil."
Now this is where it gets interesting. Hansen and Kolhatkar go on to say that this is traditionally a view maintained by the Right. Back in the first half of the 20th century, this was probably true. Republicans were pretty blue-blooded back then. But today? The Democratic Party is the party of the liberal elite, an elite that believes its own vision to be so inherently superior to all others that it should be the rule, even when in a minority (how's that for populist, eh?). Nine out of ten university professors report their party affiliation as Democrat or Green. It's the Republicans who have the stereotype of the middle-class everyman. And yet it's the Democrats who are more concerned about the poor, right? And yet Blue states apparently give a lot less than Red states.
I don't think they make a clear case for which party is more truly populist (frankly, neither of them are, so stop pretending), but they do have a clear case that historically, superheroes have been populist, especially before 1950. There was always responsibility associated with power, something Raimi won't let us forget for a minute. Bird completely punts here.
The other point that Hansen and Kolhatkar make is that in a bizarre role reversal, it seems to be the Right that is producing the films that are both of the highest quality and that best resonate with the general public. Long gone are the days of film as a tool of the Revolution. The recent Jude Law flick Alfie, a remake of a 1966 film of the same name, vanished without a trace. Alfie is about a classic womanizer. The studio is blaming the movie's flop on the surge in moral values that gave Bush the election (Which is nonsense: there wasn't a "surge", the Left was just two disconnected to notice, and from all reports, the movie just sucked.) The Incredibles fits well the stereotypical portrayal of the Bush administration as a group of close-knit people who believe in their own vision for the world, and don't accept much outside advice. For the party that perfected brutal power-politics, it must be pretty terrifying to not have power anymore.
The applications to the Great War are immediate. We are faced with an enemy who takes no prisoners, observes no rules, and "shows no restraint". They want to kill us. In some cases, it looks like we have the chance to kill them first. This is notably the first Pixar movie in which anyone dies. Pixar has made kids movies up until now, and it's delightful to see that they can grow up well.
Again, one of the most important ideas in Nietzsche is the uebermensch. Far from being wrong, as many both Christian and not will argue, Nietzsche is almost exactly right. One of the central tenents of the Christian faith is that humanity does need the "right Man on our side", the one who will exercise power unilaterally to save the world. Humanity is broken, and no amount of finding common cause, working for the improvement of society, and progressive reform is going to change that fact. The story of Scripture is a record of attempts to create utopia on earth. It started in utopia, and we blew it. We tried living as families, without central leadership, and grew so wicked that God wiped the slate clean. We tried living as a family, but each man did what was right in his own eyes, and the judges that rose up were not sufficient to curtail the derangement of human society. We needed a king. So we got one, but kings too are fallen. We need a Heavenly king, a strong man without fault.
But here is where God uses the folly of his wisdom to shame the wise. God's king is a crucified king, who serves with his all while ruling the nations with an iron scepter. The scepter we can understand. The Cross is an offense. This is the stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, the King who serves by dying. And this is something that The Incredibles entirely lacks.
This, then, is the struggle we face: how do we live in a political world in which, as the movie so beautifully puts it, "doubt is a luxury we can't afford anymore", while serving by dying, especially in the face of an enemy that wants our deaths and plays by no rules? The Incredibles gives one answer: the powerful shall rule. As profound as this winds up being - sometimes the most profound ideas are the ones that are the most obvious - I do have to say that is deeply un-Christian. The answer to evil is not The Vision of the Anointed, but the Vision of the Anointed One.
Metaphilm has an excellent piece on I ♥ Huckabees. It's more a jumping-off point for the author to talk about things that are important to him, but it cast a new light on the film that makes me appreciate it a lot more.
I still think the ending is a cop out, but I feel better about it now.
I think one of the things that's so appealing to me about the Anglican tradition is that it's a corrective for most of the frustrations I've been having with the PCA. The PCA - as well as the OPC - has pretty much no understanding of liturgy. It has almost no understanding of women's role in the church (which, whatever that may be, isn't nothing). It is pretty parochial, and there's little understanding of what's going on in the denomination as a whole, much less the church at large. It has no memory, and seems quite content to reinvent the wheel on a wide number of issues (Got a problem? Ever thought to find out what the church has done with that problem in the past? Didn't think so.). What's worse, the few people who have actually heard about theology tend to be of a straight-shooting, rule-bound, non-relational style that gets under my skin. They also tend to think that John Piper and writers like him are the best thing since sliced bread (They aren't. Sliced bread is a lot cooler).
The Anglican tradition, on the other hand, has a deep and longstanding relationship with liturgy. They've got a whole book devoted to it, and they actually use it. It hasn't come up with answers I like regarding women in the church, but it's trying, anyway. It is a truly global church, and the connection between other congregations in this city, this country, and the world are palpable. It has a long and careful memory, and always asks what has been done in the past before rushing to any new conclusions. And the people who know about theology tend to be more relaxed about it.
On the other hand, the PCA has little problem with orthodoxy as such. Sure, most of the PCA is pretty bland, but there isn't much that's downright heretical, as in denying-the-creeds heretical. This, however, is something that the Anglican church is dealing with, in spirit if not literally. When you sit down in a room full of PCA elders, you don't have to ask the question "Do all of these people believe the Bible?" With Anglicans, you do. We've got some real moonbats, including one of the assistant bishops of the NYC diocese. Neo-paganism just isn't an issue with the PCA.
I'm not trying to say that one is better than the other. Both have their problems, and the problems of the Anglican church are, by any standard worth talking about, a lot more visible and serious than the PCA's. The PCA isn't on the verge of having its centuries-old international communion dissolve in the next few months, that's for sure. But I will say that when there are real differences of opinion in a community - which the PCA doesn't have, not really - it's a lot easier to maintain a sense of perspective. What in the PCA are issues divisive enough to force people and congregations out of the denomination are in the Anglican world on the level polite of dinnertable discussion. There are so many issues of such greater import that making common cause with people you don't agree with about everything is a lot easier and a lot more important. Especially when you've a sense of belonging to a Body that extends beyond the bounds of the few dozen people that you personally know.
I won't necessarily be Anglican for the rest of my life. The odds of finding another Anglican congregation as healthy as this one are slim, and may well change dramatically in the next few months. But for right now, I like their set of problems more than I like the PCA's set of problems. Besides, if we're going to be influenced by the tradition to which we belong, I'd rather stick with a long-standing, well-established, liturgically rich tradition.
So I guess that means I'm Anglican. At least for now.
Snacks to avoid in Harlem. Fortunately, I learned these lessons by observation, not experience
1) Uncle Jessie's Garlic Banana Chips. I don't even want to know what these taste like.
2) Shrek 2 themed Hostess' Twinkies. Twinkies are kind of gross to begin with. But by the name of all that's holy, don't, don't make the filling green.
...the grease is with thee; blessed art thou amongst sandwiches, and blessed is the crunch of thy crust.
Shameless rip-off of a Fark.com headline, but this was too damn funny to pass up.
Lesson for tonight: when deciding to save the rest of one's Smirnoff Ice for later in the evening, to better toast the death of a despicable man, do not put said beverage back in the freezer.
iFilm has posted Submission, the film that Theo van Gogh was killed for. The subtitles are in Dutch, but the audio is a combination of Arabic and English, so don't be scared off by the first minute or so.
It's a pretty scathing denunciation of the treatment of women under Islam. And it's well deserved. The world has never known such an oppressive culture. This film is but a spark of light on their darkness, and they killed the man who showed their darkness to the world. I think that the only arguments left to be made against the kind of people who assassinated van Gogh involve highly accelerated lead.
Frankly, this isn't any worse than a lot of things that have been said of Christianity in the arts. But you don't see any critics of Christianity getting gunned down and stabbed in the chest while biking to work, now do you?
Further proof that the fact that a given feat can be performed does not necessarily mean that it should be performed. Some of the geeks over at Engadget have figured out a way to get the iPod Photo to "play" video. Find out how here.
Somebody's got too much time on their hands.
The US Marines are about to launch the second phase of their offensive into the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. The numbers are a bit confusing. The army estimates that they've killed/captured about 600 men. Current US casualties? 13 confirmed dead with about 150 wounded. (The AP, in their typical anti-US bias, refers to this as a "large number" of wounded).
Here, then, is my question. Common wisdom has it that a semi-well-armed guerilla force can outlast a well-organized army by wearing them down through attrition. But that assumes numerical superiority on the part of the guerillas, and a kill-ratio that favors them. Our kill ratio is about 45:1. I don't have the info to calculate a casualty ratio, but I'd say a good guess is at least 10:1. The ratio would have to be 1:10 for the fighters to win.
What this says to me is that we need to mount concerted offensives like this a lot more often. When we decide to really go after these buggers, it's a cake-walk. We lose people, but they lose a lot more, and their losses are out of proportion to the number of soldiers involved.
In terms of resources, the fighters are still ahead. We've lost two choppers, and it costs is money to be there at all. These schmucks have nothing better to do and buy their arms on the black-market for nothing (which is one of the reasons they suck so bad at pitched combat). But in terms of warm bodies, I think the odds actually favor us.
This doesn't make sense to me.
The Onion has a great bit on retiring debt. The article is about the "third roomamate" but it's obviously getting at the notorious Third World debt that people around Columbia talk so much about.
Last night I broke down, monkeyed with some HTML, and created a static "about me" page. It's on the right, for those of you who care.
The situation in the Netherlands continues to deteriorate. Craig S. Smith has a lengthy piece in today's New York Times (which, incidentally, is leaving it's Times' Square location in a few months), and Muslims are skirmishing with police there. Smith's analysis is particularly in depth.
If this is happening in the European country that most prides itself on public tolerance, what can this mean for the rest of the continent?
In related news, Belgium's Vlaam's Blok party, Europe's largest and most successful anti-immigration party, has just been ruled "racist" by Belgium's highest court. The party vows to reconstitute itself. We haven't seen the end of this one.
In the course of my daily browsing this morning, I stumbled across a page, earlash.com, which lists pretty much all of the interesting shows playing the New York area. As a result, I'm now going to see Sufjan Stevens on Saturday in Brooklyn. New York is awesome.
Don't think that Islamo-fascist hate exists in this country? Think again.
Richard I (AD Sept. 8, 1157 - April 6, 1199; King of England, AD 1189 - 1199). Known as Richard the Lionheart to the English, Richard Coeur de Leon to the French, and as Melek-Ric to the Saracens. This last is apparently still used as a byword to frighten children in Arabic countries. Richard was the third and last of the Plantagenet kings.
Richard was more French than English. His mother was Elanor of Aquitaine, and though he was born in Oxford, he never actually learned English. This is due in no small part to the fact that most of his life was spent in Aquitaine, ruling the duchy he inherited from his mother.
Richard and his brothers (Henry the Young King and Geoffrey of Brittany) were involved in a revolt against their father, Henry II, and though Richard was the last one to hold out against their father, he ultimately refused to fight and swore a renewed oath of allegiance. The rest of the family story is a twisted tale of intrigue and shifting political alliances, and makes for good reading.
Richard was a fighter. He is estimated to have been at least 6'4", and his strategic and tactical abilities were formidible. He brutally put down several revolts among restless French nobles in Aquitaine, and developed a bad reputation as a result.
But Richard is best known for his role in the Crusades. Inspired by Saladin (a great man recognized on both sides as an exemplar of nobility and virtue; Dante places him in Limbo, which is as good as a pagan can hope to do) conquering Jerusalem in 1187, Richard lead what would be the Third Crusade, a series of events marked by discord among the Christian kings involved, and one of the more successful Crusades, all things considered. Richard fought Saladin to a draw, and though Jerusalem was not recaptured, the safe passage of pilgrims was at least nominally assured.
It is worth noting that the legend of John, Richard's younger brother, seizing the throne while Richard was away is not entirely accurate. John did indeed come close to doing so, but never actually committed treason as far as we can tell. In fact, it was Richard who named John to be his successor when Richard's own son didn't turn out particularly well.
Richard I is buried at Fontevraud Abbey in Anjou, France, beside his parents.
Last week, the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was assassinated by a Muslim radical. In the Netherlands. With a dagger affixing a note breathing jihadist threats against America, Europe, and the Dutch politician who aided van Gogh in the production of his most recent film, a tirade against Muslim treatment of women. Van Gogh was killed for daring to speak out against the unspeakable conditions that Islam enforces on its adherents.
The past week has been a rocky one for Europe in general and Holland in particular. The much hated Bush has handily won reelection in spite of mass quantities of European bile and even attempted interference by European media. And now the war has been brought to their doorstep, to a country that has no hand in the Iraq war and has been of minimal import on the world stage for decades. A small country. With a significant Muslim population. Which is currently coming apart at the seams. The New York Sun has a good editorial.
The events of the past week give the lie to the Left's thesis that Muslims will leave us alone if we leave them alone. Van Gogh made a movie. That's all. And they killed him for it. Think about that one the next time your bleeding heart starts palpitating and before you shoot your mouth off.