I quoted Frank Herbert earlier this summer, but as this election race draws to a close, I'm reminded of this excellent insight once again:
"The difference between a good administrator and a bad administrator is about five heartbeats. Good administrators make immediate decisions [that] can usually be made to work. A bad administrator, on the other hand, diddles around, asks for committees, for research and reports. Eventually, he acts in ways which create serious problems... A bad administrator is more concerned with the reports than decisions. He wants the hard record which he can display as an excuse for his errors. [Good administrators] depend on verbal orders. They never lie about what they've done if their verbal orders cause problems, and they surround themselves with people who act wisely on the basis of verbal orders."
By this standard, which I think is quite reasonable, Bush is a good administrator, and Kerry is a bad administrator. Bush makes decisions when necessary and sticks with them even when they don't work out as well as they might have. He responds by making more decisions. I wish he'd lay off the rhetoric and just say this, but while he is a good administrator, he's not a great one.
Kerry, on the other hand, wants to consult anyone and everyone who might possibly have an opinion, saying we need to pass a "global test" (*cough* UN committee *cough*) before we do anything. If this isn't the hallmark of a bad administrator, I don't know what is. Bush has held his course even when unpopular. Kerry spins around faster than the fan on my CPU.
Oh, and Osama bin Laden wants Kerry to win. That alone should decide your vote.
Of all the places one might expect to find a certain degree of pop-cultural literacy, Homestar Runner somehow doesn't jump to the top of that list. But these guys know their stuff, it seems. Their latest toon has references to Willie Nelson, David Bowie, and The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, AD1045(?) - AD1099. Known as El Cid Campeador.
"El Cid" derives from a Spanish dialect of Arabic, and means "sir" or "lord", while "campeador" is Spanish for "champion", specifically a champion who has defeated the enemy's strong-man in the presence of both armies.
The Lay of the Cid is, along with Don Quixote, one of the masterpieces of Spanish literature. The historical accuracy of the document is strongly in question, but the poetry and narrative is reputedly fantastic. As such, knowing the true historical character of El Cid is somewhat difficult, the original man being shrouded in centuries if legend.
El Cid's history is rather mottled, and separating myth from history is difficult. If you read the Catholic Encyclopedia article, little mention is made of the fact that El Cid was at one point banished from the court of Alfonso of Castille and spent several years as a soldier of fortune, offering his services to Christian and Moor alike. However, it would seem that his ultimate loyalty was indeed to Spain, for when Alfonso recalled him from exile, El Cid returned.
El Cid is responsible for the Spanish reconquest of Valencia in 1094. He ruled a small kingdom centered around that city until his death in 1099. Unfortunately, Spanish forces were unable to hold the territory for more than a few years after his death, and beginning in 1109, would spend another 125 years under Moorish domination.
Images of El Cid's famous swords, along with a Babel-fished article translated from Spanish, can be found here. Those of you who know Spanish might try this.
Why do I call El Cid a hero when he fought for both sides and managed no lasting conquests? Because his life and work created a legend that inspired the Spanish people to continue the Reconquista for the next four centuries. As they were inspired by the legend rather than the history, the details of his actual story become less important. Either way, the significance of El Cid in Spanish culture is hard to overestimate.
El Cid is buried at Burgos cathedral in Spain. His sword, Tizona, is one of Spain's most treasured relics.
Today is the first time I've woken up off of Manhattan since late August. It was a little strange for a bit there. Took me a minute to remember where I was.
Being out of the city is a little weird. First of all, my parents house seems freaking huge. Compared to American houses in general, it's a bit bigger than average, but compared to my studio, well, shit. My whole room would fit inside the family room. Almost twice, but not quite.
I drove for the first time since starting school this morning, and I remembered that I actually really like driving. But at the same time, having to go fifteen miles to get what I needed and having everything so spread out was kind of annoying. It would probably have taken me just as long to get to the places I wanted to go in New York, but it would have been on the subway, which makes things seem closer together, because you don't have to exert any mental effort to get around. Just jump on the train and don't sleep through your stop.
I saw more Bush 2004 signs in the hour or so I spent driving this afternoon than I have in the past two months on Manhattan. Central PA feels downright parochial. I don't even want to think about how the South must feel about now.
It's different being outside so much. Even when you're walking on the streets on Manhattan, it doesn't really feel like you're outside because everything is paved, and the buildings are such that there isn't much sense of the sky. The trees are changing now, and though they probably are in New York as well, you don't really notice much.
It's really nice being in a house that has food in the fridge. You know the joke about singles having a fridge full of condiments but no food? Doesn't apply to me, because I don't even have many condiments. Before I left there were a total of about four things in there. Kind of depressing, but it does help one keep those extra pounds off.
Things to remember: I am no longer the only one in my living space. This means that if I want to talk on the phone, I need to keep it down after about 11PM. Also, when I want to use the bathroom, there is a possibility that someone else might be using it. This is not really a problem, as we've got more than one, but it was strange to have the door be closed.
It's good to have a break though. This should give me a chance to catch up on a few calculus concepts I never really mastered (logarithmic differentiation and related rates are a bitch), and next week I take a road trip to visit a friend. Good times.
Oh, and one more thing: the baggage handlers at the Port Authority are assholes. Don't know why they're still employed, except for the fact that it's probably not particularly easy to get people for the job.
Sullivan has officially endorsed Kerry. You can read the endorsement here. I agree with most of his points. The only reason I disagree is that I am more concerned about the collective agendas of Kerry's core supporters than Sullivan is. It's a good read either way.
I just watched a man go into cardiac arrest this evening. He was extremely elderly, and around 6:30 he was trying to climb out of his bed, IV lines still running. He was put back in bed by the nurses, and he seemed crushed when I told him I wasn't a doctor. About 15 minutes later he went into arrest. The place immediately started humming with urgent activity, and for something like that to be noticible in any ED, something really important must be going on. All visitors were cleared from areas A and C, and the house staff went to work. There were two physicians who ran the code, one of whom had just stopped in after finishing a shift at another location. He wanted to check out the new ultrasound machine that had come in that morning. He wound up giving it a pretty decent workout.
The code lasted for about 45 minutes. The physician who was volunteering his time called his collegue "The Queen of Long Codes", because as long a there was a flutter of valve movement on the echo, she wasn't giving up. Saved his life. Took about 7 epi stims, 3 saline drips open all the way, 25 minutes of CPR, and a total of about 3 hits with the defibrillator, but they got him back. While the attendings and residents worked on his chest (you'd really be surprised how far it will compress if you really want it to) another resident inserted a catheter in the groin area. That's a pretty delicate process, one which I had seen for the first time last night, so I knew what he was doing. Afterwards a urine catheter was inserted. I've never seen anything that looked more uncomfortable, but in this case it was the least of the patient's problems.
After a few minutes the patient was successfully intubated, though it took over half an hour to establish anything like a sinus rhythm. They eventually had to use the defibrillator as a pacer to keep his heart beating at over 30 beats a minute with any regularity. They took the pacer off at about 7:45, but started it up at 8:00 again.
Once the patient was something like stabilized, the female attending set out to get the man admitted to the CCU. No dice. When I left about fifteen minutes later, she was trying to track down the CCU attending at home, because the resident on duty wasn't cooperating. The sickest man in the hospital couldn't get a bed. Brilliant. The male attending was using the ultrasound machine to instruct the residents on what catheters look like on echo images when properly placed as this one was.
Afterwards I got one of the residents to fill out a National Emergency Airway Registry (NEAR) study form to record the intubation.
This is the second time I've seen someone code. The first time, I was about 12 or 14 years old, and had gone into the ICU with my dad to watch him round. Freaked me out. But hell, that was 10 years ago. I didn't really know what to feel this time, but I think I kept it together pretty well. I was directing patients out of the area, helping the nurses keep track of the number of epis they'd used, and getting more when they ran low. I'm just glad that tonight wasn't the first time I saw someone die. I don't think I'm quite ready for that yet. Give me a few more months. Please.
In the past, I've harbored significant distaste for those who describe their opponants on the political spectrum as liars. I have, to my knowledge, not engaged in this kind of behavior before. I continue to dislike this kind of hackery. I'm just trying not to assign to malice what can easily be accounted for with stupidity. I don't think that Bush lied to get is into Iraq, but I do think the arguments he made are, in hindsight, pretty stupid. He wasn't malicious, just dumb. I try to offer this same kind of perspective to those who oppose the President where I can.
But damn. Kerry's campaign right now uses two shots so cheap that I can't call them anything but lies. First, the draft issue. The only major congressional move to reinstitute the draft was proposed by Democrats and defeated by overwhelming margins in both House and Senate. Yet Kerry insists that Bush is going to reinstitute the draft. Nevermind the fact that it is Kerry, not Bush, with a plan to mandate national service as a requisite for graduation from high school. I'm not sure I can call this anything but a lie.
Second: this damnable explosives mess. I posted about this already today. Kerry is taking his campaign ads straight out of the morning's New York Times. See? I mean, come on. Those explosives have been missing since before we took control of Iraq, and this is known to the mainstream media via NBC. Any mention of this? Any mention of the other 248,000 tons of nastiness that we've kept control of? Any sensitivity to the idea that Kerry has criticized Bush for attacking Iraq when there wasn't any danger and then pointing the finger at Bush for not protecting us from danger? This one I don't think I have to call a lie, but it sure looks like it from where I'm sitting. Then again, Kerry and his party have shown significant capacity for doublethink, so I don't know why this should be an exception.
Okay, by now everyone has heard the accusations about 380 tons of explosives that are missing in Iraq. Ad nauseum. Two things:
1) They were missing before we got there. Not our fault.
2) We've secured 248,000 tons of explosives. This means that even were we responsible for the disappearance of 380 tons of them, we we aren't, that's a loss ratio of about 0.15%. Not bad, if you ask me.
Conclusion: if you're looking for failures of the current administration, you don't need to try this hard. There are plenty of other things you can point at. Like the largest domestic spending increase in decades. But seriously people, are you really this desperate/unhinged? I guess so.
Believe it or not, that is actually an entry in the Microsoft Knowledge Base. Other fun entries include PowerPoint centimeters different from actual centimeters, Calculator does not reliably subtract two numbers in Windows, SATAN causes high memory utilization in WUSER32, Pregnency: Who can I send suggestions to?, and Selecting Blendolini causes Choco-Banana shake hang.
The whole list can be found here.
I have a chemistry exam on Wednesday. It's on quantum mechanics. I really, really wish I could take my exam like this, especially question three.
But I can't. So I'm going to be up way too damn late pondering the finer points of 4f orbitals and whether they exist in a higher or lower energy state than 5s orbitals.
I've never been a huge fan of cats. I mean, I don't really mind them, but they just seem far to self-possessed and independent for what is supposed to be a pet. But take away their gravity, and they just completely fall apart.
The cat in this video suffered no harm except a permenant reduction in dignity. Which is always good.
Recently, Channel One held a mock election with 1.4 million teenagers as the electorate. They have Bush winning with 393 electoral votes to Kerry's 145. Bush won everything but CA, NY, NJ, MD, MA, ME, HA, CT, and RI. I really wouldn't have predicted that.
I don't know much about Channel One other than it's an educational channel targeted at youth. Still, the results are pretty weird. The parent company, Primedia, Inc. puts out such esteemed publications as Motor Trend and Surfer. It's the second largest media firm in terms of advertising pages and impressions made though. I don't have any idea whether or not to chalk this up to bias, unscientific poll practice, or something else.
Check this out (5.1MB wmv, sorry modem/Linux users).
It's a flying lawnmower. Well, not really. It's just a model plane modded to look like a lawnmower. But it's amusing as heck.
Charles Martel. (b. August 23, 686; d. October 22, 741). Also, Charles Martel d'Anjou, and the entry in the Catholic Encyclopedia (again, a bit too much hero worship, but good detail).
Charles was never king, as he was the illegitimate son of Pepin II by a concubine, and the succession passed to Pepin's infant grandson. However, he was Mayor of the Palace, and ruled in fact if not in name. His chief contribution to the Great War was defeating the Moorish armies at the Battle of Tours (AD732). It is not clear exactly how many men were involved on each side, but it is known that the Franks were outnumbered 4:1. The Saracen cavalry was heavily armored, and the Battle of Tours (more properly the Battle of Poitiers), is one of the few instances in medieval history in which infantry stood their ground against a coordinated cavalry charge, not only once, but numerous times.
Despite his revered state as the savior of Christendom from the Islamic hordes - a feat he did accomplish - Charles probably did not view himself this way. He spent the majority of his reign consolidating Frankish lands under his rule, a task which would be completed by his grandson Charlemagne. The Saxons and Frieslanders were of particular difficulty. Aquitaine and Provance, in the south of modern France, were rather fractious, and Charles not only put down several revolts but defeated Islamic armies yet again. His life was spent, not chiefly in defense of Christendom, but in defense of the Frankish kingdom. This happened to coincide rather well with routing the Moors, but only because they had invaded. To Charles, it seems that they were just another obstacle to a unified France. An exceptionally large, well-coordinated and well-armed obstacle that had destroyed several Frankish cities (including Autun), but not more than that.
If Charles had not done what he did, Europe would have suffered greatly, not only because the Muslim hordes would have conquered the entire continent, but Charles played an instrumental role in the unification of France under a single rule. Charlemagne - one of the most revered kings in the Middle Ages - could not have established his kingdom if Charles Martel had not laid the foundation.
Today, the French are trying as hard as they possibly can to betray the legacy of Charles Martel by their craven appeasment tactics. The world at large and France in particular needs another Martel. He was not a Crusader, but he valued the lands and culture of the West to the point that he was willing to fight for them. Winning the Battle of Tours was a means to the end of a healthier France. This would be more than sufficient for today's needs.
I loved you. You know that. I treated you well. I spent time with you. I even went and changed for you. But it just wouldn't work for you, would it? It didn't matter what I did.
So, I guess this is goodbye, iPod.
Had you fooled there for a second, didn't I?
Here's what happened. For no reason that I can discern, about two months ago my my iPod utterly refused to connect to my computer. Can't figure this out for the life of me, and I've spent two months messing with it. I reformatted my drive twice. I upgraded the firmware and to the latest versions of iPod Service and iTunes. I went to the Apple "Genius Bar" in SoHo to have them take a look at the damn thing. I even installed a new Firewire card, hoping beyond hope that that was the problem. It wasn't.
So I ditched it for one of these, an Archos AV140. It's 40GB. It not only plays mp3s, but displays pictures and, get this, digital video. When you play a song, the album art is displayed behind the normal info outputs. But more than that, it records all of these things too. So the next time I go to a show, you should see the bootleg on this page within a few days. It's got a remote too. Not a remote like the iPod remote, but an actual wireless remote control.
It's not as sexy as the iPod, that's for sure. And the interface isn't anywhere near as sleek. But it likes MusicMatch, and plays nice with Windows, something the iPod has never really been happy about.
I'm back in business.
See, I told you so. Muslim indoctrination is already underway in US public schools. This is a violation of just about every 1st Amendment decision handed down by the Supreme Court in the last century. If kids can't be made to pray in schools, why can they be made to observe Ramadan?
If you though the election in 2000 was a debacle, you ain't seen nothing yet. The Kerry campaign is deliberately setting out to produce another such fiasco, and they're gearing up as we speak.
Check this out. This is where I go to school. And it says something about the nature of community on campus that I didn't hear about this until I read it online. Granted, I don't live on campus, but I'm there more days than I'm not. I guess being in the hard sciences tends to exempt one from many of these discussions. Still, it doesn't surprise me, and I'd like to see it if I can.
Last night we went back to Maxwell's to see Crooked Fingers' Eric Bachmann play a show. The opening band was Papercranes. I'd never heard of them before, but one of my friends who came with me to the show identified their music as post-grunge, early Smashing Pumpkins style fare. The band themselves were quite diverse in their looks. The lead singer was kind of this post-goth chick, dressed all in black, electrical tape on her fingers, and a bunch of cross necklaces. The guitarist was a punk of sorts: mohawk, exceptionally baggy pants, tank-top with some band on the front, tatoos all down his arms. The cellist was a pretty normal-looking girl who would have fit in at Columbia (or Covenant for that matter). The bassist was your standard up-scale hipster, and the drummer was your standard dressed-down hipster. For me, that was the most memorable part of their set: the musis decent, but not spectacular.
Bachmann, on the other hand, was spectacular. This was helped in no small part by the fact that my friends and I were immediately in front of the stage in the center. Best spot in the house. It was mostly just him playing, but for a few songs he was joined by a girl he introduced as "Lara", who is apparently the female vocalist in all of the duets on the albums. He said that the next album (February 2005. Woot!) has a lot more duets on it, and since she's only with him for a few dates this tour, we were lucky to have her there. He started off with a lot of new material, all of which was at least as good as anything that's come before. Then he played "Sweet Marie" from Red Devil Dawn. Even though he announced it before he started playing, it sounded so different from the album that it took me a while to recognize it. But damn. It was good. So were "Crowned in Chrome", "New Drink for the Old Drunk" (which were back-to-back), "You Can Never Leave", and "Broken Man". Some of the differences were just because he was solo, but a lot of them were him having fun with the songs.
At one point, he said, "This is my favorite part of the show." He went over to the side and picked up a bundle of cloth. "In high school I always dreamed about playing keyboards in a band and wearing a cape. Time to live the dream." And he donned the cape (a black, velour affair), and sat down to play. After he finished, he removed it and said, "I got about halfway through and then started to feel like a moron. Well, maybe it worked for some of you. Didn't work for me." That kind of embarrassed camraderie was typical of the whole show. He seemed constantly surprised that anyone had come, much less that the place was packed, and had this silly grin on his face whenever we'd applaud. His appreciation seemed so genuine it was really sweet.
There was a lot of interaction between him and the crowd, most of which was really good-natured. During the chorus of each song you could hear everyone singing along. In the middle of "Valerie", a song he did unplugged and which I'd never heard before, there was a line "I don't need those peep show girls anymore," after which he stopped dead and said, "That's not true you know. The ladies like to hear it, but that shit doesn't go away." Apparently this realization struck him with some force, because he had to spend a few seconds remembering where he was in the song.
After he finished his set - which was pretty long, upwards of an hour and a half - the crowd called him back for an encore, which he seemed to kind of expect by this point. He did not, however, seem to expect the concerted demand for a second encore. But he did it anyway, and finished with "You Can Never Leave," by popular request.
Before the show I snagged a shirt, then tracked down a Sharpie from the bar and got it signed. Score. He's coming back in November to play the Bowery Ballroom, opening for The Delgados, and I'm so there. He also said he and the whole band are coming out next year to promote their new album. I can't wait.
Whew. It's been one hell of a weekend. I haven't really stopped since Friday evening. Which means that this is the first change I've really had to blog at length, and blog I shall. On Saturday night, I went with some friends from Chattanooga to see The Decemberists at Maxwell's in Hoboken. Getting there was something of a production, because we took NJ Transit instead of PATH, but Maxwell's never starts on time, so even though we were 45 minutes late, the opening band hadn't started yet. It was Norfolk and Western again, so I bugged out to the main dining room to get some food.
The Decemberists rocked again. The venue was much smaller than last time. Maybe only twice the size of my apartment. That didn't prevent about a hundred people from showing up. We did get there fairly late so we couldn't see all that well, but we were no more than 20 feet from the stage anyway.
They played a few songs from their forthcoming album (March 2005), tenatively titled Infanta, including the title track, which is a driving number about the coronation of a Spanish princess. If the rest of the album is that good, this is going to be a must-have.
They played pretty much the same kind of show they did at Webster Hall, but this one was a little more intimate, given the cramped space. They interacted with the crowd a lot more. During "The Chimbley Sweep", Meloy had the crowd crouch down during the dialog portion of the song.
All in all, a great show, but not a lot of surprises. I'm more convinced than I was before that Infanta is going to be amazing. Chalk up another one.
Someone, I don't know who, made this little flash thingie. It's a montage of sorts and pretty explicitly pro-Bush. It's also one of the worst things ever. The person who used the song in question (if you don't recognize it, shame on you) is either completely unaware of its original implications or one of the most misguided people on the net.
Let me just set this straight for the record. I support Bush for reelection, but only because the person running against him is awful in and of his own right. Not only that, but lots of people with terrifying agendas want Kerr to win. But that doesn't mean I conflate my religion with my politics. Even my "Never forgive. Never forget." post is not intended to be a conflation of Christianity with either end of the political spectrum. I'll make that explicit elsewhere. For now, I want to say that this rather creepy juxtaposition of messiaic imagery with George W. Bush scared the shit out of me. God isn't on the side of America. He's on the side of his Church. This does happen to mean that he's against Islam (which has been the single most dedicated persecutor of Christians in history, Rome and Russia included), and at the moment he seems to be using America to drive that point home. But that didn't stop him from using Islam to give America a good wake-up call. "God on our side" politics always leads to bad things happening.
I've got friends up from Chattanooga visiting this week. Which is awesome: it's good to finally do a few things in New York with someone instead of by myself. But see, they're on break. I'm not. I am thus pretty busy. Additionally, three other friends had minor to major crises in the past 36 hours, which caused several long phone-calls very late last night.
We will return to your regularly scheduled blogging once I get some rest.
That's what Jon Stewart had to say to the two schmucks on CNN's Crossfire when he appeared there tonight. I don't get cable, so I didn't see it, but I did read the transcript, which is pretty damn good. He actually tears into the Crossfire guys for not promoting debate and not being hard on politicians. They say he's way to fawning for politicians, and he responds with the above quote. He also makes the offhand comment that he didn't know that "the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity". When Jon Stewart of all people has the ability to tear into the oldest, most prestigious, and 2nd most-watched cable news network for their shoddy journalism (CARLSON: "You need to get a job at a journalism school, I think." STEWART: "You need to go to one."), the state of the union is not good.
UPDATE: Here's a link to the show.
I've decided, for my own edification, to each week feature an important figure from the historic war between Islam and the West. Frequently, these people, almost all of them men, were pretty unpleasant individuals, but they all did something that helped the war.
This week: John (Jan) III Sobieski, Kind of Poland from 1674 to 1696. It was he that lead the Christian forces to victory at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, leaving Poland all but unprotected to do so. His hussars formed the bulk of the September 12 cavalry charge that drove the Turks south of the Danube permenantly. The Catholic Encyclopedia also has an article, which tends to be a bit more fawning, but gives some good detail.
I took some time this morning to look back over the images of the destruction of the World Trade Center. It's not something we can afford to forget. Our enemies haven't forgotten June 5-10, 1967, January 2, 1492, or 1099. We shouldn't forget September 11, 2001.
We should never forget that the West has been at war with Islam for centuries. Europe has been invaded by Islamic forces many times. In 711 AD, Islamic forces invaded Iberia and conquered the penninsula within 5 years. In 721 they invaded France, but were driven back by the Duke of Aquitaine. In 732 they reached as far north as Tours, where they were decisively defeated by Charles Martel, called so for his hammer-like blows. The next two generations were spent driving the Islamic hordes bent on converting Europe from France. It took the less organized Spanish until 1492. That's a 700 year war.
The eastern portion of Europe was relatively safe, due to the fortress city of Constantinople. That fell in 1453, paving the way for the Ottoman invasion of Europe. The Ottomans conquered all of Greece and most of southeastern Europe. They besieged Vienna in 1529 and were finally defeated at the Battle of Vienna a century and a half later.
It's only been 350 years. The war lasted almost three times that. You think that this relatively brief respite is going to solve the problem for good? I don't. One thing the Islamic culture has over the West is that they remember their history. They don't forget. They have had their eye on Europe for more than a thousand years. And nothing has changed. Remember the Madrid bombings? Those who claimed responsibility did so for historical reasons. They said it's settling an old score. Ysuf Al-Qaradawi, one of the world's leading Sunni scholars and hailed as a "moderate" by many, has been officially barred from entry to the United States for his rulings praising suicide bombings. He has publicly called for the deaths of all Americans in Iraq, and is self-consciously seeking the conversion of Europe and America to Islam. This guy is mainstream. You don't even want to think what the fringes are like.
We've been in a state of fairly constant war with Islamic civilization since the 8th century. It's now the 21st. You do the math. The only reason there was a brief gap between periods of overt warfare is because the Ottoman Empire grew so decrepit during the 18th and 19th centuries that it ceased to be able to project its influence abroad. The rest of the Islamic world was pretty much poverty stricken, as it is today. It it hadn't been for the discovery of oil in the Middle East, they'd have stayed that way, and things would have been better for everyone. The only thing worse than a rabid fanatic is a rabid fanatic with money. Now that we've brought a tiny measure of prosparity to their godforsaken lands, they've got the resources to kill us.
To all those who think that we aren't really at war, and that military action isn't justified: wake up. There are three kinds of peace: mutual understanding, defeat, and victory. The first is impossible. We've been at war for far too many centuries, and the Islamic world was never interested anyway. They started it, and have never shown any signs of being interested in stopping. The second is too terrible to contemplate. The third is the only way. This war will never be over. All we can do is make sure we don't stop winning.
If you're wondering what the hell that's supposed to mean, so was I. Today I endeavored upon my second experience of watching a cult classic on DVD immediately before going out to see its newly released sequal on the big screen. This spring, I watched the excellent Pitch Black before driving out to Wynnsong for a showing of the excerable Chronicles of Riddick. This time, Netflix delivered Ghost In the Shell, which I watched before going to see Ghost In the Shell 2: Innocence. I am happy to say that the pattern did not repeat itself. Innocence was, in my opinion, at least as good as its predecessor.
Both films are anime. If you don't like anime, well, I understand. I tend not to either. But in all honesty, neither film is particularly bizarre or incomprehensible compared to, say, Akira, which is just damn weird. Ghost In the Shell and Innocence are both concerned with the nature of the human soul, especially in the context of cybernetics and the virtual world. The director, Mamoru Oshii, is playing with the issues that the Wachowski brothers should have deal with if they weren't miserable hacks. I was reminded of Blade Runner (always a good thing) in the way that the characters had to deal emotionally with the questions of their own existence.
Innocence is a visual masterpiece. The animation is simply sublime, an expert combination of computer graphics and hand-drawn characters that is entirely seamless. There were a few times I just had to sit back and say, "Damn, that looks good." Oshii is not given to the frequent stylization found in amine: the people and landscapes look normal, even lifelike. I just loved Batou's basset hound. The buildings look futuristic, but they also look like they would adhere to the normal laws of physics and functionality.
There's something about having one of your characters buy dinner for his dog - and not that dry crap, mind you - that makes them seem more real, you know? Batou may be a cyborg, and the Major may be... umm... something... but both of them have souls, both in terms of the content of the movie and as characters. They care about things. People are important to them. This isn't a vibe you get from most anime.
But enough peripheral stuff. Innocence is essentially a murder mystery. A prototype series of gynoid (think "Not exactly something you brag about to the neighbors, but perfectly legal") made available by Locus Solus to select, important clients, has, well, problems. Of the sort in which they kill their owners before destroying themselves. Robots shouldn't be able to kill their owners (I detected a hat-tip to Asimov here), and certainly shouldn't commit suicide afterwards. One of the clients was a former government official, so Section 9 takes an interest in the case to rule out the possible, but unlikely, terror connection. Batou, from Ghost In the Shell, is assigned to the case, but being almost entirely cyborg and still remembering the Major from Ghost, his interest is more than professional. His own existence as a human being is so blurred in its edges that he cannot help but feel an affinity, almost a kinship, with all cyber-beings. Much of the movie's emotional resonence comes from this sort of question. If you are so completely cybernetic that the only connection you had with your humanity is your "ghost", an entity posited in Ghost, viewed as what makes us essentially human, but the metaphysics of which are ambiguous as best, are you really human? And if you are, with your e-brain and your cyborg body, why aren't sophisticated bots? And what if you could imprint bots with souls? Would they too be human? Are souls something that can be copied anyway? What the devil is a "ghost" to begin with, and how do we know it's there?
The movie does check out to lunch at one point. One of the characters has his e-brain hacked by a rogue electronics warfare expert, and the movie treats you to a triply recursive fugue. Quite clever, if a bit out there. But not nearly as bizarre as you could reasonably expect from something of this genre. In fact, I've just added both discs of Stand Alone Complex to my Netflix queue. Make no mistake though: If you don't like anime, you almost certainly won't like Innocence. It's certainly a huge cut above the rest of your anime, but it's still anime. But if you tend to like sci-fi, especially intelligent sci-fi, unlike some things I could name, then give it a shot. This may mean waiting for the DVD, but hey. If you get the chance, see it.
Markos 'Screw Them' Moulitsas, may-he-writhe-in-agony-for-all-time, the barkingist moonbat out there, has a column in the Guardian, Britain's most anti-American newspaper. I'm really not sure what Zuninga deserves, but I can say that if I ever had the misfortune of meeting him, the first thing I'd probably do is spit in his face. The next thing I would do is leave. Yeah, he's really that awful. Anyways, Jeff Harrell has another excellent fisking of his latest frog croak.
Mint ice cream. No, really. My data leads to the conclusion that black people do not like mint ice cream. This is the second consecutive neighborhood I've lived in with a grocery store with a mostly black clientele, and neither one made it a point to carry mint ice cream. What's the deal?
Matt Bai, a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine, has a cover story entitled "Kerry's Undeclared War". This is, perhaps, the first thing I've heard that actually presents a clear reason for why Kerry might be a better pick for office than Bush. Sure, everyone hates Bush. I'm no big fan myself. But until I read this article, I couldn't think of a single good thing to say about Kerry. Now I can think of one or two things, but they're found more in Bai's analysis than in Kerry's actual campaign platform.
That doesn't mean I'm going to vote for him though. Actually, I've already voted. But it wouldn't have made a difference. It's things like this that mean that I will never vote for someone like Kerry, regardless of how much I dislike Bush. If people like this want Kerry to win, then I don't.
Oh, and for the last f*cking time, it was a couple of Democratic congressmen who introduced the various draft bills. Really. Fritz Hollings (D-SC) and Charles Rangel (D-NY). Now they're trying to say that the Republicans are reversing direction to protect the President from an unpopular bill. Umm, no. The Republicans - like most of the rest of both houses of Congress - are maintaining position by shooting down what has got to be one of the most idiotic political ploys in the last decade. Sheeite.
I've been attending All Angels' Church for the past three weeks, an evangelical Episcopalian church on the UWS. I'm really leaning towards joining, as nothing else I've found is anywhere near as satisfying. I've got three criteria in a church: liturgy/worship, preaching, and fellowship. From the options I've got, it looks like I can pick any combination of two of those, but not all three. All Angels' has absolutely amazing worship, and the fellowship opportunites are pretty encouraging.
This morning, my mom and brother were in town, which was nice, so I went with them. We sang the following song, which I thought was pretty wonderful. Some of you may recognize it from a Caedmon's Call album, which is probably where the worship coordinator got it from, but it's actually an 18th century hymn. Apparently RUF has done a few things with it as well. While normally I would consider the latter to be points against it, in this case I don't care. It's really good.
Thy mercy my God is the theme of my song
The joy of my heart and the boast of my tongue
Thy free grace alone, from the first to the last
Hath won my affection and bound my soul fast
Without Thy sweet mercy I could not live here
Sin soon would reduce me to utter despair
But through Thy free goodness my spirits revive
And He that first made me still keeps me alive
Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart
Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart
Dissolved by Thy goodness, I fall to the ground
And weep to the praise of the mercy I've found
Great Father of mercies! Thy goodness I own
And the covenant love of Thy crucified Son
All praise to the Spirit whose whisper divine
Seals mercy and pardon and righteousness mine!
And so should you. This is pretty funny, and if it weren't so astoundingly plebian, I'd probably get one.
I was walking to Millbank Hall when I saw the current issue of The Onion in a paper rack. The headline? "Irrelevant Pop Stars Unite Against Bush". I read the article. You know what? There isn't a single satirical, exaggerated, or distorted sentence in there. This is straight up, undiluted journalism. From The Onion. Who knew?
This, stripped of its context, makes very little sense. I don't think placing it in context would help things, though. [DivX required, I think; open with your media player of choice]
Get a load of this. I mean, a little tension in a hotly contested election is one thing. But firing into the local campaign headquarters of the other party? Burning Nazi symbols into someone's lawn? Breaking and entering? Widespread vandalism? I hope Bush wins just so these people are unhappy. Because they deserve to be. I'm not voting for Bush. I'm not even voting against Kerry. I'm voting against this kind of oppressive, Ministry of Peace style bullshit. I'm not really interested in dialog or a mutual exchange of understanding. F*ck that. I just want these people to lose.
I got off my volunteer shift at 8PM last night. I'd spent most of the afternoon and evening doing calculus, and had headed back to my apartment to continue. But when I got here, I realized that Wilco was playing, and if I hurried, I could probably make it downtown and scalp a ticket in time for their set. So I dropped off my things at my apartment and jumped on the downtown C train. And I made it. I missed most of the Fiery Furnaces - they sounded better the second time around, but I still wasn't all that into them - but caught the entire Wilco show.
Wednesday was definitely more fun than Tuesday. I was in a better mood, which always helps, but that wasn't it. The crowd was a lot more into the band. The whole orchestra section was on their feet from the get-go, unlike Tuesday, and even though they were more enthusiastic, they were also more respectful.
The set list was pretty different, and I'm glad I went twice. They played most of the essentials on both nights, but the rest of the list was pretty different. "Casino Queen", "Misunderstood", "Company In My Back", "She's a Jar", great stuff. Oh, about that last one. Afterwards, Tweedy said he needed to share a problem that he has. He said he's always embarrassed after that song, because everyone cheers after the harmonica solo. "It's not that hard. You can do it. See?" He then threw the harmonica into the first row. "Lemme tell you something my son said once. 'Daddy plays the harmonica. Bob Dylan plays the harmonica. Daddy's not Bob Dylan.'"
The Latin guy was back between the main set and the first encore. Still no idea. he made some political joke that kind of fell flat. Yeah. That happened. Again.
On Tuesday, Tweedy dedicated the last song, Bill Fay's "Be Not So Fearful", to Jim O'Rourke. As a bonus, Jim was there last night, and played a few songs in the second encore with the band. Sweet.
Tweedy made another comment about voting last night, but it was pretty subdued compared to Tuesday. This may be in part due to the fact that "War on War" was about the fourth song they played, and it was a bit too early in the night for boosterism, and it doesn't make sense to get all political before many of their other songs. So he just encouraged us to "vote without fear in your hearts. Which means not voting for Bush," and went into "Be Not So Fearful". Okay, whatever.
I enjoyed Wednesday a lot more than Tuesday, if that's possible. Most of the songs I had left Tuesday still wanting to hear, I heard on Wednesday.
Wilco, live, twice in the same week, in one of the greatest concert halls in the world. What a treat.
Last night, I was one of about 6,000 people that descended on Rockafeller Center's Radio City Music Hall to see Wilco play their debut at what is one of the world's greatest concert halls. The house was completely sold out. I was seated in section 5, row A of the second mezzanine, which for those of you too lazy to check the seating chart, is the first row on the second balcony, just left of center.
First off, the Fiery Furances. Frankly, I didn't enjoy them at all. I left the theater for the lobby shortly after they started their set, and re-entered near the end. Most of the crowd had the same feeling I did, as the lobby was packed and the hall empty until just before Wilco took the stage. I don't know what to say, really. They're on the punk side of pop, and I don't tend to like punk. So yeah. That happened.
Then, around 9:30-9:45, Wilco came on. They started off with "Hummingbird", and the sound was just glorious. I've been listening to some pretty good music lately, and have been been to some great shows: Sufjan Stevens, Franz Ferdinand, The Decemberists, etc. Wilco is transcendently awesome on a level we mere mortals can only appreciate from a distance. It's a whole different plane of music excellence.
Most of the material was from A Ghost is Born, but they played some from all their other albums as well. "Passenger Side", "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart", "I'm the Man Who Loves You", "California Stars", "Ashes of American Flags", "Poor Places," really great songs.
Tweedy was obviously enjoying himself. After the second song, "Muzzle of Bees", he said we were the most beautiful audience he'd ever seen. "That may have something to do with this being the most beautiful room I've ever seen, but you guys aren't chopped liver. And I know from chopped liver." Thanks, Jeff. I think. It was a big night for him in any case. Not everyone gets to play at Radio City, and Tweedy announced that his mom and dad had flown out for the show and were somewhere in the audience. "My dad drank, like, a whole case of beer between the airport and here. Okay, that's a little bit of an exaggeration." (Some guy sitting behind me yelled out, "So did I!" Which I believe.) I believe his wife was in attendence as well, because he told "Susie" he loved her. Which was kind of sweet.
After the first set, while the crowd was cheering for an encore, this guy in a tacky suit with a drum came out on stage. He got the crowd to clap in unison and cheer for Wilco while asking if we felt the Latin flavor of his drumming. I still don't know what the hell that was about, but Wilco came back out, so it was okay.
A couple of things. Radio City Music Hall may be a fantastic venue with glorious acoustics, extrordinary seating, and stupendous aesthetics, but it doesn't necessarily make for a fantastic rock 'n roll venue. About halfway through the show, Tweedy commented that when the lights shone over the crowd he could see pockets of people standing up here and there. "There's people that want to rock, and people who don't," he said, "It takes all kinds, you know?" I had noticed this myself, and was a bit disappointed by it. But I wasn't entirely surprised either. We're about two miles from the epicenter of hipster cynicism, and the seats were damn comfy. But simply having seats makes it hard to get a crowd really pumped, as they enforce a polite distance between people. Just something I noticed.
I've not been in the best of moods lately, as school is growing increasingly difficult, so it was great to take a few hours off to listen to some truly wonderful music. This made Tweedy's descent into political boosterism pretty disappointing. Near the end of the second encore, just before "War on War", he encouraged us all to vote, and not vote for Bush. Look, I'm certainly supportive of his right to his opinion, and I don't even have a problem with espousing those opinions in public. But frankly, I've had enough problems with barking moonbats in recent weeks, and didn't really want to think about politics last night. I also happen to be sick of artists and other celebrities thinking they know something about politics, but that's neither here nor there. I wasn't in the mood for it, and Tweedy saying that people who were thinking about voting for Bush needed to get some help or a therapist wasn't appreciated.
They played a great show. It was great to have been there, and if I could afford to be there again tonight, I'd go in a second. I may yet try to scalp a ticket on the corner: there were a few dozen guys standing around with tickets, and I think the same will be true tonight. I get off volunteering at 8PM, and the show won't start till at least 9:30. Plenty of time.
Next up is a really busy week starting on 10/16 with The Decemberists again. Then Crooked Fingers plays on 10/19, and Death Cab for Cutie is on 10/22. Heck yeah.
It has nothing to do with ability or aptitude. It has everything to do with vocabulary. I feel distinctly strange writing the following phrase in my lab notebook: "The final solutions should not be intensely colored, and should range from a medium orange to barely orange-tinted." In a chemistry context, this is a fairly straightforward sentence. In a historical context, it's just damn weird.
I ♥ Huckabees is not as obscene as The Big Lebowski, but in the opening scene, I thought Huckabees was going to give it a run for its money. Fortunately, it settles down... no, wait. This movie never settles down. It's like a manic depressive who reads a lot of Continental philosophy and has stopped taking his meds.
That being said, I enjoyed Huckabees a lot, but the more I think about it, the less satisfied I am with it. See, I understand what the people in the movie are talking about, no mean feat, considering the number of times I wanted to just shout - with non-derisive laughter, I should make that clear - "What the hell are you talking about?! Talk sense!" One of the things that motivated my exit from professional philosophy in favor of something a little more concrete was picking up a copy of Foucault's Madness and Civilization and realizing that even though I understood what he was saying, he wasn't really saying anything. Or, at least, the few splinters of actual assertion were buried under so much obscurantist language that it wasn't really worth the effort of reading the damned thing.
This is frequently true of Huckabees' "existential detectives", played by Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin. When Albert (Schwartzman) first meets Hoffman's character, Bernard, he is immediately accosted with a metaphor. Bernard asserts that the whole universe is like a blanket. This bit here is me, this bit here is you, this bit here is Paris, and this bit here is a cheeseburger. It's all connected, etc., etc. What makes this conversation entirely outrageous to watch is that Bernard produces the blanket in question and proceeds to gesture with it. Much of the philosophical discussion in the movie - and seeing as it's billed as an "existential comedy" you can be sure there's a lot of it - runs in this vein, a delightfully absurdist backdrop to a series of delightfully absurd theories. I've always thought that someone who took seriously connectedness in the way philosophers talk about it would be rather strange. I was right. These people are damn weird.
If Tomlin and Hoffman represent the New Agey, "all is one and one is all" side of existentialism, a side which professional philosophers tend not to take particularly seriously, seeing as many of its practitioners are given to silly things like Wicca (don't get me started, but feel free to send hate mail), then Catherine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert) represents the majority position amongst existentialists, if such a thing can be said to exist. She is something of a nihilist, and "gets to" Albert and his "Other" (don't ask) when they start to grow frustrated with the unflagging optimism of our two detectives. She is actually the vehicle that Russell (who also directed Three Kings if you'll believe that) uses to discuss the more interesting subjects the movie touches on. She is the one who brings Albert home to confront his parents about the way they've treated him. She is the one who provides something like an honest look at suffering and "human drama" as she and the actual philosophers who she represents put it.
She is also the means by which the connection between nihilistic existentialism and, umm, S&M. Don't laugh, and don't, please don't think this is a stretch. Michel Foucault died of AIDS in 1984, probably acquired through the gay and S&M scene he was active in during his stay in San Francisco in the early 1980s. One of his more important works is entitled Discipline and Punish. I'm not going to go into why this makes sense here, but if you don't already see the connection, Huckabees will do a bit to help you out there. But don't worry. There isn't anything particularly offensive, and S&M is never discussed, or even broached. Russell is subtle enough so that if you weren't aware of the historical background, you'd probably miss the reference. Which, for a thing like this, is a very, very good thing.
There's a scene in the film where are two "heroes" (I guess I can call them that. Can I call them that? Sure, what else am I going to say?) visit the home of some conservative Christians. I may be reading this the way I want it to read, but I get the impression that Russell thinks that conservatism and its opposites are both pretty silly. Walhberg's character is obsessed about the moral evil of using any petroleum products (what the hell?), and is met with a decidedly uncivil response by the host. Which, while unpleasant to watch, was pretty understandable. Insisting that Jesus is angry with you because you drive an SUV and calling your host a hypocrite is not exactly what passes for polite dinner conversation. Albert remarks that "It's crazy in there," but both sides wind up looking pretty insane.
Basically, the detectives represent one side of existential thought, and our black-wearing French woman represents the other side. So far, so good, right? I suppose. Russell does a good job of presenting some ideas which tend to appear fairly silly at first glance that, with a bit of thought and some background materials, are actually kind of profound. He does this well, preserving both the absurdity and significance, without being either cynical or ironic. He then proceeds to come up with an ending that was unsatisfying on the scale of Cast Away. A great beginning, lots of thoughtful points to be made, some truly touching scenes, and a complete failure of nerve in the last five minutes.
One of the things I like most about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is that it's a deeply human movie. Huckabees is far from this. Nietzsche announced the death of God, but it was Foucault who announced the death of man, and now we see what that looks like. Scattered, self-descructive, and, well, small. Somehow being connected to everything doesn't seem to make much of a difference if no one cares. And gosh darn it, we aren't big enough to infuse our world with meaning. On a good day, I can get through most of my various activites without too much of a problem. I don't have the resources to provide the kind of anchorage needed to hold down my life, and you don't either.
One of the most interesting things said in the whole movie was said in passing. Mark Wahlberg is having a face-to-face argument with Hoffman, in one of the best scenes in the film, and he yells, something like "How do you know?" Hoffman's response is, "Trust." I thought for a brief moment that the movie was going to get a hell of a lot better, but they quickly got on with the plot. The film has no discussion of the possibility of providence. None. The tangental scene with the Christian family is the only mention God rates in this film. Which makes for a decidedly narrow vision, no matter how you slice it.
This isn't so say that the movie is bad because it doesn't reach orthodox Christian conclusions. I enjoyed the movie a lot. I get a kick out of laughing at the horseshit that philosophers think is profound, but I enjoy it because I understand what they're saying and can appreciate the point they're trying to make. I just think it's funny the circumlocutions they go through. I dislike people who laugh at philsophers because they can't be bothered to understand. I ♥ Huckabees provides ample opportunities to laugh at the absurdities of contemporary philosophy while still taking it seriously and doing it justice. It's also pretty damn funny most of the time.
Still, I think Edelstein is right about a lot of what he has to say. The movie is rather devoid of emotional depth in many places, and never seems to settle down from its manic state. If you have an interest in things philosophical, you should really see the movie.
