Rumor is that Halo 3 will launch roughly a year from now. What's that you say? The PS3 is launching this holiday season and you thought Microsoft was going to bring out Halo 3 to deflate the launch of Sony's machine? An interesting theory I heard over on the message boards of Evil Avatar is that because the launch is almost certain to have supply shortages, especially since it's a worldwide launch like the 360 was, there's no way to stop the machines from selling out. There are enough hardcore early adopters that are going to buy the machine regardless of the competition that the first batch of machines is certain to sell out. Where MS may be thinking Halo 3 can make the difference is a few months after launch where, again like the 360, the early adopter demand has been satiated and machines are available to the people with money to spend on a console but no strong opinions about which one to get. With Halo 3 launching right when maybe a couple post launch games have come out it may just convince the consumer on the fence to buy into the 360.
Moving on, the demo for Galactic Civilizations 2 is out. I haven't tried it yet, but the first one is one of my all time favorite empire building space sims. Worth a try...
March 31, 2006
The Resurected Friday Random Ten
You know how we do, play some of your mp3s but set the player to random. Write up the first ten songs that come up in the comments so we all can see them, and don't go editing the list so that you won't be embarrassed by that Ace of Base (Bass?) song you've got there. We all have our own guilty pleasures.
(Song - Artist)
1. Up In The Sky - Joe Satriani
2. Angel of Music - The Phantom of the Opera Soundtrack (I know, I know...sigh)
3. Guardian Angel - Mullmuzzler
4. Such Great Heights - Iron & Wine
5. Makeshift Patriot - Sage Francis
6. China Grove - The Doobie Brothers
7. A Pleasant Shade of Grey XII - Fates Warning
8. Dry Bones - Odd Jobs
9. I'm Alive - Electric Light Orchestra
10. The Trees - Rush
What a twist, er, mix! Real grab bag there, with no real theme emerging. Truth be told, the songs on the list that I really love are somewhat sparse, but there's nothing that I don't at least like. Yeah, I know the implications of that, and it shames me.
While we're on the subject of music, everyone should check out Pandora. Here's how it works, you enter a song or artist that you really love and it creates a database of songs and artists that are like the song or artist that you gave them. As your newly created radio station plays songs you can tell them whether you liked the song or not and the program further refines the database to play songs that better match your taste. This isn't just like on Amazon, where it links you to products based on what other people that bought it also bought, it actually tries to match musical characteristics of the songs you like. I'm not entirely sure how this "Musical Genome", as they call it, works, but it's pretty interesting and I've already found several badass songs that I didn't know about before. Also, this would be an interesting to do your Random 10s if you wanted to, though it might take a little longer.
(Song - Artist)
1. Up In The Sky - Joe Satriani
2. Angel of Music - The Phantom of the Opera Soundtrack (I know, I know...sigh)
3. Guardian Angel - Mullmuzzler
4. Such Great Heights - Iron & Wine
5. Makeshift Patriot - Sage Francis
6. China Grove - The Doobie Brothers
7. A Pleasant Shade of Grey XII - Fates Warning
8. Dry Bones - Odd Jobs
9. I'm Alive - Electric Light Orchestra
10. The Trees - Rush
What a twist, er, mix! Real grab bag there, with no real theme emerging. Truth be told, the songs on the list that I really love are somewhat sparse, but there's nothing that I don't at least like. Yeah, I know the implications of that, and it shames me.
While we're on the subject of music, everyone should check out Pandora. Here's how it works, you enter a song or artist that you really love and it creates a database of songs and artists that are like the song or artist that you gave them. As your newly created radio station plays songs you can tell them whether you liked the song or not and the program further refines the database to play songs that better match your taste. This isn't just like on Amazon, where it links you to products based on what other people that bought it also bought, it actually tries to match musical characteristics of the songs you like. I'm not entirely sure how this "Musical Genome", as they call it, works, but it's pretty interesting and I've already found several badass songs that I didn't know about before. Also, this would be an interesting to do your Random 10s if you wanted to, though it might take a little longer.
A note on the function of religious belief
Amanda says the following in a short post on the prevalence of openly atheistic bloggers:
Scanning the comments, quite a few people also have a problem with this. But, of course, I'm going to just run off immediately to philosophyland, rather than making some empirical point about how there are plenty of religious lefty folks around.
I think it's fair to say that a lot of atheists see a strong conflict between faith/belief/religion and reason/logic/science, and their atheism comes out of identifying very strongly with the latter camp. This is why so many atheists have the nasty habit of chunkling to themselves in their self-satisfaction about new believing in the magic en-bearded Ward Cleaver in the sky: any list of propositions, they think, that science doesn't sign off on is wishful thinking and superstition and should've been abandoned back in the Dark Ages.
But notice the implicit assumption: belief is a list of propositions, just like the content of a scientific theory. Over the past four years, I've come to the understanding that this is extraordinarily disingenuous, or at best an extreme oversimplification of the nature of belief. And atheists need to shake that view if we're ever going to get along with our lefty and progressive religious sisters and brothers.
Religious belief, particularly the form it takes among evangelicals, is the basic way the believer structures and represents her relation to the world as a whole. The belief that God loves and cares about you personally is a source of immense comfort and self-esteem for the believer: whatever else happens, you know that you're still important and loved, and that someone powerful is going to (help you) make things right. Belief is the way the believer situates herself in her community and organizes her life and values. To paraphrase Kierkegaard, faith is the way the self relates itself to itself and to the power which constituted it: for the believer, her belief and her self-identity are the same thing. (I serious think that any atheist who wants to truly understand Christianity needs to read Kierkegaard.)
Godlessness and liberalism generally do go together, though, because I think that once you embrace a view of equality, you stop needing a god around to justify hierarchies. That said, it’s obvious that a minority of atheists start off as pro-hierarchy and simply try to find replacement religions to justify their arguments from authority–the Raving Atheist, for instance, is on that list....
Scanning the comments, quite a few people also have a problem with this. But, of course, I'm going to just run off immediately to philosophyland, rather than making some empirical point about how there are plenty of religious lefty folks around.
I think it's fair to say that a lot of atheists see a strong conflict between faith/belief/religion and reason/logic/science, and their atheism comes out of identifying very strongly with the latter camp. This is why so many atheists have the nasty habit of chunkling to themselves in their self-satisfaction about new believing in the magic en-bearded Ward Cleaver in the sky: any list of propositions, they think, that science doesn't sign off on is wishful thinking and superstition and should've been abandoned back in the Dark Ages.
But notice the implicit assumption: belief is a list of propositions, just like the content of a scientific theory. Over the past four years, I've come to the understanding that this is extraordinarily disingenuous, or at best an extreme oversimplification of the nature of belief. And atheists need to shake that view if we're ever going to get along with our lefty and progressive religious sisters and brothers.
Religious belief, particularly the form it takes among evangelicals, is the basic way the believer structures and represents her relation to the world as a whole. The belief that God loves and cares about you personally is a source of immense comfort and self-esteem for the believer: whatever else happens, you know that you're still important and loved, and that someone powerful is going to (help you) make things right. Belief is the way the believer situates herself in her community and organizes her life and values. To paraphrase Kierkegaard, faith is the way the self relates itself to itself and to the power which constituted it: for the believer, her belief and her self-identity are the same thing. (I serious think that any atheist who wants to truly understand Christianity needs to read Kierkegaard.)
March 30, 2006
Fun With Maps
Thanks to Ezra, I found this site that has all kinds of world maps sized to different variables such as land area, total population, immigration, etc. Super big West Wing nerds will recognize the default land area map as the Peters Projection map (as opposed to the Mercator map that many of us grew up on) from the Season 2 episode "Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going To Jail" (and yes, I had to look up the episode name).
March 29, 2006
Blog Dump
The rumor mill is reporting that Lucas Arts may be stripping Sony Online Entertainment (makers of the much maligned Star Wars Galaxies) of the Star Wars license. Internet conjecture conects that to the known fact that Bioware (makers of the well received Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic offline RPGs) has opened up a new studio exclusively for producing online RPGs. Still very much a rumor, but the nerds are atwitter with the possibilities for an online Star Wars RPG that doesn't suck balls.
Nintendo is saying that not only will their console be cheaper than other consoles, but the games will be cheaper too. Now, hardware can be cheaper for a few reasons, primarily because 1) The hardware manufacturer takes a larger loss on the hardware in hopes of selling more machines and making up the difference in increased game sales to those extra users, 2) the hardware manufacturer cuts out frills that the other machines include, like a hard drive or network adapter, or 3) the hardware manufacturer uses less cutting edge technology in their machine. Nintendo has said that they're not trying to compete with the cutting edge graphics of the PS3 or Xbox 360, but also that the graphics will still look good. Producing games, however, as far as my knowledge goes at least, is a bit different. It's all man hours; the better you want the graphics to be, the bigger you want your game world to be, the better you want the online component to be, all these depend on putting more people on the job. You can also increase the game's quality without increasing the cost through better management, but I doubt that's something Nintendo can guarantee enough to remark about.
Now the difference between PS2 games and Xbox games, graphically speaking, was noticible this generation, yet the games cost the same. So if companies are going to charge less for Nintendo Revolution games than they are for the 360 or PS3 that tells me that the margin between the work it takes to make a Revolution game and a PS3 game is bigger than the margin between the PS2 and the Xbox. We'll see, but I can't help but think that either A) Revolution games will look significantly worse that PS3 and 360 games or 2) Revolution games will generally cost the same as those other systems. As always, we'll see for sure when they show games at this year's E3, coming up in May.
Supposedly Microsoft changed from shipping Xbox 360s by airplane to ship recently, which means that though they've been producing lots of systems lately there's a gap of time between when the last plane left and the first ship, uh, shipped ahoy or whatever they do. Supposedly in the next couple weeks there should be massive amounts of systems in stores. The link also talks about some mysterious event when this first ship shipment arrives. It's from the MS PR guy, so I guess take it for what you will.
The 360 has shown up Down Under and evidently has sold rather well.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is an awesome single player game for the 360. A wide open world to explore and nearly limitless possibilities of things for your character to do, this game should be on most owner's lists of must haves. Don't just take my word for it though, the paper of record agrees!
Nintendo is saying that not only will their console be cheaper than other consoles, but the games will be cheaper too. Now, hardware can be cheaper for a few reasons, primarily because 1) The hardware manufacturer takes a larger loss on the hardware in hopes of selling more machines and making up the difference in increased game sales to those extra users, 2) the hardware manufacturer cuts out frills that the other machines include, like a hard drive or network adapter, or 3) the hardware manufacturer uses less cutting edge technology in their machine. Nintendo has said that they're not trying to compete with the cutting edge graphics of the PS3 or Xbox 360, but also that the graphics will still look good. Producing games, however, as far as my knowledge goes at least, is a bit different. It's all man hours; the better you want the graphics to be, the bigger you want your game world to be, the better you want the online component to be, all these depend on putting more people on the job. You can also increase the game's quality without increasing the cost through better management, but I doubt that's something Nintendo can guarantee enough to remark about.
Now the difference between PS2 games and Xbox games, graphically speaking, was noticible this generation, yet the games cost the same. So if companies are going to charge less for Nintendo Revolution games than they are for the 360 or PS3 that tells me that the margin between the work it takes to make a Revolution game and a PS3 game is bigger than the margin between the PS2 and the Xbox. We'll see, but I can't help but think that either A) Revolution games will look significantly worse that PS3 and 360 games or 2) Revolution games will generally cost the same as those other systems. As always, we'll see for sure when they show games at this year's E3, coming up in May.
Supposedly Microsoft changed from shipping Xbox 360s by airplane to ship recently, which means that though they've been producing lots of systems lately there's a gap of time between when the last plane left and the first ship, uh, shipped ahoy or whatever they do. Supposedly in the next couple weeks there should be massive amounts of systems in stores. The link also talks about some mysterious event when this first ship shipment arrives. It's from the MS PR guy, so I guess take it for what you will.
The 360 has shown up Down Under and evidently has sold rather well.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is an awesome single player game for the 360. A wide open world to explore and nearly limitless possibilities of things for your character to do, this game should be on most owner's lists of must haves. Don't just take my word for it though, the paper of record agrees!
Review - Dream Theater: Philadelphia March 29, 2006
Dream Theater is the best band ever. Hooray! More fanboy gushing after the fold.
Well, disagree with that as you may, but they put on an awsome show. Clocking in at almost three hours, with no opening act, the tickets may have been a little on the expensive side but there's a lot of value there. The show took place at The Tower Theater, which is a brilliant old vaudville theater converted first to a movie theater, in the 50's, and then to a music venue in the 70's. It's very ornately decorated, which generally makes for a more interesting experience than a grass lawn or a characterless club.
This is the fourth time I've seen DT in concert. Twice it was on tours where they co-headlined with another act (the first time with Joe Satriani and the second with Queensryche) and now twice in what they call "An Evening With..." shows where the band plays two sets with a short intermission and capped off by an encore. DT has been, in my experience, universally superb live. They perfectly balance the benefits of playing the songs like they sound on the album with altering them enough for the live show to give you a reason not to just sit home and listen to their albums. Dream Theater can actually play their songs live, unlike too many bands who sound great when they're in the studio and can tweak everything until it's perfect, but sound sloppy live. Though they don't have all the pyrotechnic excitment of some shows, the band had three nice and big video displays behind them showing all kinds of interesting videos and lighting effects.
This is the band's 20th Anniversary tour, so as you would imagine the first half of the show and part of the second was comprised of songs off each of their previous seven albums with the bulk of the second half taken up by playing more than half of their newest album, Octavarium. The videos playing behind the band during their tour through the years showed behind the scenes pictures and video from the era of the song they were playing.
One interesting surprise was a song written in the mid-nineties that never made it onto an album. I'm afraid I can't remember the song title off the top of my head, but it's almost guaranteed that they're going to play it at the upcoming show at Radio City Music Hall, which will be recorded and released as both a CD set and DVD, so I'll know it then I suppose.
The one small flaw to the show which has been true every time I see them and probably will always be there is that when you have a singer who plays no instrument and frequent instrumental sections it's going to be impossible for him to find something interesting to do while he waits. Fortunately James LaBrie has learned over the years to just leave the stage altogether for the longer instrumentals, but for the shorter ones he does seem a bit silly with nothing really to do. Still, that's not his fault and he does his best to keep the crowd's energy up in his down time.
All in all, what do you look for in a show? They had a great set list which included both fan favorites and some deeper cuts/unknowns. They played crisply, flawlessly. At the same time they added in some clever alterations, such as two interludes in "Peruvian Skies" where they broke into "Wish You Where Here" by Pink Floyd and "Wherever I May Roam" by Metallica, to make the listening experience somewhat exciting and new. Oh, and at two times during the show I got members of the band to look at me and wave/point/thumbs up/etc. Yeah, I'm not above fanboy gushing, what of it?! Despite not being quite as close to the stage as I would have liked, that was super sweet.
To close, Dream Theater is awesome.
Here's the set list for my show as I remember it. When the official setlist is online I'll try to update here.
1. The Root of All Evil
2. Another Won
3. Afterlife
4. Take the Time
5. Caught In a Web
6. Peruvian Skies
7. ?
8. Home
~~~intermission~~~
9. War Inside My Head / The Test That Stumped Them All
14. Endless Sacrifice
15. I Walk Beside You
16. Sacrificed Sons
17. Octavarium
~~~encore~~~
18. Wait for Sleep
19. Learning To Live
Well, disagree with that as you may, but they put on an awsome show. Clocking in at almost three hours, with no opening act, the tickets may have been a little on the expensive side but there's a lot of value there. The show took place at The Tower Theater, which is a brilliant old vaudville theater converted first to a movie theater, in the 50's, and then to a music venue in the 70's. It's very ornately decorated, which generally makes for a more interesting experience than a grass lawn or a characterless club.
This is the fourth time I've seen DT in concert. Twice it was on tours where they co-headlined with another act (the first time with Joe Satriani and the second with Queensryche) and now twice in what they call "An Evening With..." shows where the band plays two sets with a short intermission and capped off by an encore. DT has been, in my experience, universally superb live. They perfectly balance the benefits of playing the songs like they sound on the album with altering them enough for the live show to give you a reason not to just sit home and listen to their albums. Dream Theater can actually play their songs live, unlike too many bands who sound great when they're in the studio and can tweak everything until it's perfect, but sound sloppy live. Though they don't have all the pyrotechnic excitment of some shows, the band had three nice and big video displays behind them showing all kinds of interesting videos and lighting effects.
This is the band's 20th Anniversary tour, so as you would imagine the first half of the show and part of the second was comprised of songs off each of their previous seven albums with the bulk of the second half taken up by playing more than half of their newest album, Octavarium. The videos playing behind the band during their tour through the years showed behind the scenes pictures and video from the era of the song they were playing.
One interesting surprise was a song written in the mid-nineties that never made it onto an album. I'm afraid I can't remember the song title off the top of my head, but it's almost guaranteed that they're going to play it at the upcoming show at Radio City Music Hall, which will be recorded and released as both a CD set and DVD, so I'll know it then I suppose.
The one small flaw to the show which has been true every time I see them and probably will always be there is that when you have a singer who plays no instrument and frequent instrumental sections it's going to be impossible for him to find something interesting to do while he waits. Fortunately James LaBrie has learned over the years to just leave the stage altogether for the longer instrumentals, but for the shorter ones he does seem a bit silly with nothing really to do. Still, that's not his fault and he does his best to keep the crowd's energy up in his down time.
All in all, what do you look for in a show? They had a great set list which included both fan favorites and some deeper cuts/unknowns. They played crisply, flawlessly. At the same time they added in some clever alterations, such as two interludes in "Peruvian Skies" where they broke into "Wish You Where Here" by Pink Floyd and "Wherever I May Roam" by Metallica, to make the listening experience somewhat exciting and new. Oh, and at two times during the show I got members of the band to look at me and wave/point/thumbs up/etc. Yeah, I'm not above fanboy gushing, what of it?! Despite not being quite as close to the stage as I would have liked, that was super sweet.
To close, Dream Theater is awesome.
Here's the set list for my show as I remember it. When the official setlist is online I'll try to update here.
1. The Root of All Evil
2. Another Won
3. Afterlife
4. Take the Time
5. Caught In a Web
6. Peruvian Skies
7. ?
8. Home
~~~intermission~~~
9. War Inside My Head / The Test That Stumped Them All
14. Endless Sacrifice
15. I Walk Beside You
16. Sacrificed Sons
17. Octavarium
~~~encore~~~
18. Wait for Sleep
19. Learning To Live
Jeebus said sit down and shut up!
Ah, a virtual treasure trove of shaming those nasty young women who think they have the right to be sexual or have opinions -- and, of course, it's a shaming in the name of Jeebus. Everyone knows there's nothing he hates more than the female orgasm! Be sure to check out the rest of the site; that 'letter' from 'Christian Guys' complaining about having to (the horror!) be attracted to women is really funny. You see, men are physiologically determined to treat women as nothing more than objects of desire whenever they can see any of the skin between their neck and knees (or ankles ... or below the neck ... or something). This is why it's not a guy's fault when he's addressing your cleavage rather than your face. You put it there, he HAD to stare! (That rhymes, so it must be true.)
Note to self: Write post explaining what is so fucking mysterious about cleavage that it causes men to stare and even drool a little.
Note to self II: Figure out what is so fucking mysterious about cleavage that it causes men to stare and even drool a little.
Anyways: it's blockquote time!
I never knew the Bible forbade women from opening doors. You learn something new every day.
Go ahead, snicker like you're 12. I did. "Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh Jeeeeeebussss".
Guys, of course, are still allowed to flirt, stare at cleavage, and receive blowjobs. It's just girls who aren't allowed to have orgasms.
And the best part ... check out the writer's interests (on her blogger profile): "Learning to run a household and be a helpmeet".
Excelsior! (Poll: Should I sign all of my posts with 'Excelsior!'?)
Note to self: Write post explaining what is so fucking mysterious about cleavage that it causes men to stare and even drool a little.
Note to self II: Figure out what is so fucking mysterious about cleavage that it causes men to stare and even drool a little.
Anyways: it's blockquote time!
A real woman ...
…does not wallow in self-pity or make a habit of voicing complaints, but radiates cheerfulness and joy. (Proverbs 15:15, Proverbs 17:22)
…appreciates her father’s protection, and respects and submits to his authority. In so doing, she is preparing herself to exercise the Biblical role in her relationship with a possible future husband. (Ephesians 5:33-6:3, 1 Peter 3:1-2)
…does not have a nagging, contentious or manipulative manner in which she deals with others. (Judges 16:16, Proverbs 21:9, 19, 26:21)
…is not boisterous or loud in her speech or actions but is characterized by a gentle and quiet spirit. (Proverbs 9:13, 1 Peter 3:4)
…is not offended by respect shown her through gentlemanly courtesies (opening doors, etc.) but cultivates the differences between the sexes that make her worthy of this deference. (1 Peter 3:7, Mark 10:6)
I never knew the Bible forbade women from opening doors. You learn something new every day.
…seeks to make God her number one desire and the Lover of her soul, knowing that only He can fully satisfy. (Psalm 73:25, Psalm 63:1)
Go ahead, snicker like you're 12. I did. "Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh Jeeeeeebussss".
…does not relate to members of the opposite sex in a flirtatious or forward manner, but instead saves all her passion for her future husband. (Thessalonians 4:3-8, Proverbs 6:25, 1 Corinthians 7:1)
…holds her virginity before marriage sacred and will not compromise it for anything. (This one goes for guys too)
(1 Timothy 5:22)
Guys, of course, are still allowed to flirt, stare at cleavage, and receive blowjobs. It's just girls who aren't allowed to have orgasms.
And the best part ... check out the writer's interests (on her blogger profile): "Learning to run a household and be a helpmeet".
Excelsior! (Poll: Should I sign all of my posts with 'Excelsior!'?)
March 28, 2006
Living off $15,000 sucks
but is certainly doable, especially if you're a single person sharing a house in Indiana.
Also having to pay $200 on your tax return sucks.
And anticipating having to pay $700 (if not much, much more) in medical expenses to keep your teeth from falling out sucks a lot. Though, admittedly, not as badly as when you have to actually pay it.
Plus, in the next five weeks, I will have to have written approximately 16,000 words in philosophy papers.
You might say I'm a little stressed right now.
Also having to pay $200 on your tax return sucks.
And anticipating having to pay $700 (if not much, much more) in medical expenses to keep your teeth from falling out sucks a lot. Though, admittedly, not as badly as when you have to actually pay it.
Plus, in the next five weeks, I will have to have written approximately 16,000 words in philosophy papers.
You might say I'm a little stressed right now.
March 26, 2006
Home-cooked meals ... kind of
The NYT talks about 'meal preparation centers', where customers assemble precut and semi-cooked ingredients into what are, essentially, frozen dinners, then take them home to heat and serve to their families over the following week. Customers are, apparently, encouraged to adjust the meals to their families' needs -- less salt, or vegetarian options, etc. But the ingredients are almost the same as you'll find in college dining halls, fast food, or frozen dinners -- even supplied by the same companies -- making the nutritional and culinary value of these meals just as questionable.
So what value do these meals have? The cookbook author the writers talked to has one theory: "People basically don't want to cook but they don't want to be told they are not cooking". This certainly isn't a charitable hypothesis; is there a more appealing alternative? Nutrition has already been ruled out. The article seems to suggest two other possibilities: these meals offer more variety than a fast-food rotation without taking much time, and the centers themselves have a relaxing, communal environment.
The problem with the first possibility is that it doesn't take much cooking skill to be able to prepare a healthy meal in less than an hour; Rachael Ray has built an entire career at Food Network on '30 Minute Meals', and I have at least one other cookbook that delivers on a promise of fast, easy, healthy food. Yes, it will probably be a little more involved, and take a little more time, but will definitely be less expensive and the meals will be significantly better.
The additional time commitment isn't even all that significant, so long as the entire family gets involved -- now that my step-sisters are 13 and 17, for example, no-one should be fixing dinner more than twice during the weeks they're staying with my dad and his wife. Not to mention informal dinner parties and potlucks, which make dinner into a far more communal affair than trading jokes with the overworked mom at the next assembly station.
Beyond creating the illusion of cooking for people who think actually learning to cook is too hard or too time-consuming, I don't see anything good about these centers that a decent kitchen and cookbook can't do better.
So what value do these meals have? The cookbook author the writers talked to has one theory: "People basically don't want to cook but they don't want to be told they are not cooking". This certainly isn't a charitable hypothesis; is there a more appealing alternative? Nutrition has already been ruled out. The article seems to suggest two other possibilities: these meals offer more variety than a fast-food rotation without taking much time, and the centers themselves have a relaxing, communal environment.
The problem with the first possibility is that it doesn't take much cooking skill to be able to prepare a healthy meal in less than an hour; Rachael Ray has built an entire career at Food Network on '30 Minute Meals', and I have at least one other cookbook that delivers on a promise of fast, easy, healthy food. Yes, it will probably be a little more involved, and take a little more time, but will definitely be less expensive and the meals will be significantly better.
The additional time commitment isn't even all that significant, so long as the entire family gets involved -- now that my step-sisters are 13 and 17, for example, no-one should be fixing dinner more than twice during the weeks they're staying with my dad and his wife. Not to mention informal dinner parties and potlucks, which make dinner into a far more communal affair than trading jokes with the overworked mom at the next assembly station.
Beyond creating the illusion of cooking for people who think actually learning to cook is too hard or too time-consuming, I don't see anything good about these centers that a decent kitchen and cookbook can't do better.
Hit parade
Well, it appears we have a number of guests via Ampersand's link to my '20 questions' post below (our visit count for the day is roughly triple the usual). Welcome, everyone; we hope you leave a comment and drop by again soon.
People have also stumbled upon us via teh search engine; sadly, it appears some of them have been potential plagiarists, and anti-choice ones at that. Others, however, were just looking for candy and the theme to Outlaws, a fine old game. We hope they found what they were looking for, even though we couldn't help them. Search hits from the last 48 hours or so:
People have also stumbled upon us via teh search engine; sadly, it appears some of them have been potential plagiarists, and anti-choice ones at that. Others, however, were just looking for candy and the theme to Outlaws, a fine old game. We hope they found what they were looking for, even though we couldn't help them. Search hits from the last 48 hours or so:
"cuban missile" thesis argument
funny milkway commercial
free papers on morally impermissible abortions
Indentured Servant philosophy student blog
ultrasound thumb sucking
Abortion: An Argument in Ethics consequentialism
lucasarts Outlaws Theme guitar tabs
Two short stories
I. The great professor stood in front of the class, stroking his beard in self-satisfaction. Slowly the girl in the third row raised her hand, and just as slowly all eyes turned back to look at her.
~~~~~~~~~~
II. He's gone now, taken away by the cops, but she doesn't cry. The sting of his hand on her face was the sound of the key in the prison door lock.
And one that's not mine:
On September 3rd 1973, at 6:28pm and 32 seconds, a bluebottle fly capable of 14,670 wing beats a minute landed on Rue St Vincent, Montmartre. At the same moment, on a restaurant terrace nearby, the wind magically made two glasses dance unseen on a tablecloth. Meanwhile, in a 5th-floor flat, 28 Avenue Trudaine, Paris 9, returning from his best friend's funeral, Eugène Colère erased his name from his address book. At the same moment, a sperm with one X chromosome, belonging to Raphaël Poulain, made a dash for an egg in his wife Amandine. Nine months later, Amélie Poulain was born.
~~~~~~~~~~
II. He's gone now, taken away by the cops, but she doesn't cry. The sting of his hand on her face was the sound of the key in the prison door lock.
And one that's not mine:
On September 3rd 1973, at 6:28pm and 32 seconds, a bluebottle fly capable of 14,670 wing beats a minute landed on Rue St Vincent, Montmartre. At the same moment, on a restaurant terrace nearby, the wind magically made two glasses dance unseen on a tablecloth. Meanwhile, in a 5th-floor flat, 28 Avenue Trudaine, Paris 9, returning from his best friend's funeral, Eugène Colère erased his name from his address book. At the same moment, a sperm with one X chromosome, belonging to Raphaël Poulain, made a dash for an egg in his wife Amandine. Nine months later, Amélie Poulain was born.
March 24, 2006
Esoteric philosophy musing of the day
Both Kierkegaard's 'teacher-god' in the Preface to Philosophical fragments and Nietzsche's eponymous Zarathustra are, quite deliberately, characters resembling both Socrates and Christ. While we're fairly certain (or, we know) that Nietzsche didn't read Kierkegaard, Zarathustra is almost an inversion of the teacher-god -- the same kind of inversion that Kierkegaard is using against Hegel with the teacher-god itself. Is this accidental? Or perhaps there's some historical subtlety here that could tell us interesting things about the proto-existentialists of the nineteenth century.
March 23, 2006
20 Questions For Pro-Choice People
Some anti-choice ethicist put together a list of 'Questions for pro-choice people'. The list is more than just the questions -- each includes a couple paragraphs of exposition and a quick defence -- but I'm only going to quote the questions themselves.
1. At what point do you think that a human being, with human rights, comes into existence? Is it at birth, or earlier?
Personally, I believe this happens at birth, when a foetus becomes an infant. Some pro-choice people, such as David Boonin, argue that the foetus develops rights when it has a brain capable of having interests, or when it becomes viable, which are both around the 23rd week. But, more to the point, having human rights doesn't entitle the foetus to live as a parasite off the mother -- at least, not without further argument.
2. What keeps us from legalizing infanticide?
The answer to this question depends on the answer to the previous one. I would say that infanticide is impermissible and ought to remain illegal because the care for a (typical, healthy) infant is externalizable, while the care for a foetus is not -- the only person who can provide the foetus the life support it needs prior to viability is the pregnant woman, while anyone can care for an infant. Hence, the infant's right to life doesn't conflict with anyone's right to bodily integrity.
3. Suppose someone were to argue as follows: "There is a lack of consensus about when human life begins; therefore, abortion should be prohibited throughout pregnancy." Why is this argument any more, or less, reasonable than the argument that:"There is a lack of consensus about when human life begins; therefore, abortion should be allowed throughout pregnancy?"
I've used something like the latter argument as a call for tolerance, but I don't think anyone has put it forward as a serious argument that abortion is permissible that's supposed to stand on its own. If anyone does, I'm ready to say that's a bad argument.
4. What do you think about cases where the woman's conscience tells her that abortion is not a good thing--because she thinks she is killing her baby--but she wants an abortion anyway. Why should these abortions be allowed?
We should also ask why she wants the abortion anyway. If motivations are salient, then the motivation that's particularly salient is the motivation for following a course of action. If she wants the abortion simply for because she wants to destroy another living being, then that's probably impermissible. But I have problems with resting morality on motivations; for me, the important question is how to untangle the conflict of rights, especially when the question is one of law (as opposed to morality). This leads me to argue that her motivations don't matter: whatever her motivations are, she's entitled to deny the use of her body to another being.
5. Did Roe v. Wade merely open up a space for a view that had no standing before--the view that abortion is in some circumstances permissible--or did it completely replace one view, the pro-life view, with some other view opposed to it--so that pro-life people could complain, with justice, that some alien and unjustified view has been imposed upon them?
Abortion opponents are legally permitted to do almost anything short of harassment and physical obstruction to articulate their views. I would also say that acts of nonviolent civil disobedience are morally permissible, even though they are not legally permissible. What other courses of action ought to be considered morally permissible for abortion opponents, and other critics of the status quo? Threats of violence and verbal assault?
6. How should we regard a forced abortion of a pro-life woman's fetus?
As a violation of her right to bodily integrity, and hence on a par with a prohibition of abortion.
7. Why is it only the female parent's opinion which determines the status of the child?
Because the foetus is physiologically dependent on the use of her body, and only her body, for its survival until birth.
NB: Check out this patriarchal bullshit (my emphasis):
8. Suppose a woman who wanted an abortion were first to observe her unborn child through ultrasound technology. In such images, the hands and feet of the child are typically discernible, and even within the first trimester, it is common to see the unborn child sucking his or her thumb. I ask the pro-choice person: why aren't such images shown to woman, as part of informed consent preceding abortion?
If this proposal is motivated by informing the pregnant woman, then presumably these images convey some salient information. But it's hard to see what is salient about a superficial resemblance to humanity in regards to the issue of balancing competing rights claims.
9. If you think abortion should be allowed, can you consistently maintain that there any human rights at all?
Yes.
10. [Draws an analogy between 'states rights' apologists for slavery and the bodily integrity position of the pro-choicer.]
There are numerous problems with this analogy. Perhaps the most blatant is drawing an analogy between, on the one hand, the rights claims made by women to bodily integrity, and on the other, the rights claims made by the slavery states to a certain amount of sovereignty. The latter is, essentially, a claim that the state has the authority to deny the personhood of certain human beings living within its boundaries. The former has several variations, such as the following: (a) the claim that the foetus, prior to developing a neocortex or becoming viable, does not have rights, as it does not have interests; and (b) the claim that, even if the foetus does have a right to life prior to the times in (a), the right to bodily integrity still trumps the right to life. One might challenge claim (a), arguing that it is too dependent on our current science, just as apologists for slavery turned to the science of their day to vindicate their racism. But (b) does not seem to have an analogous counterpart in the context of slavery.
11. Does anyone wish that his mother had chosen abortion for him? And, if not, then how can he consistently wish that any mother choose abortion for anyone else?
Boonin discusses this 'golden rule' argument in some detail. The version presented here is so vague that addressing it would require first developing it; in the interest of space, I direct the reader to Boonin's book.
12. Developing the analogy with slavery, we might wonder how abortion is at all compatible with the idea that all human beings are equal. After all, it is inconsistent with equality that one person have his fundamental rights conferred upon him by someone else.
Strawfeminist; does anyone argue that the foetus "has rights only if they are granted by the mother"?
13. Why isn't legal abortion outright discrimination? I think "discrimination" occurs in its clearest form when someone bases a decision about another person's rights, privileges, or position, on some arbitrary and irrelevant feature of that other person.
The 'irrelevant feature' here is "whether one is living inside or outside one's mother's womb". This is entirely salient to the question of whether its continued existence depends on the use of exactly one other person's body, which is the locus of the conflicting rights claims.
14. Isn't legal abortion be contrary to responsible principles of decision under uncertainty? If it were true that we "don't know when human life begins," it would follow, of course, that we don't know that the fetus is not a living human being; that is, we don't know that abortion is not morally equivalent to murder. But isn't that precisely what we ought to know, before allowing abortion?
The issue is one of conflicting rights claims, and I argue this clearly goes in the direction of the permissibility of abortion whatever the status of the foetus' right to life.
15. In every abortion the fetus is cut into pieces, ripped or torn apart, or poisoned. No one would want to treat a small kitten or puppy in that manner, nor does the law allow to do so, so why should we allow anyone to treat immature human beings in that way?
Because, if the foetus has a right to life, the unfortunate fact is that this right is in conflict with, and trumped by, the pregnant woman's right to bodily integrity. It is entirely consistent for defenders of abortion to argue that it is impermissible so long as the viable foetus can be safely delivered.
16. Why is an abortion traumatic, but an appendectomy is not? If the fetus really is just a clump of tissue, why should there be any fuss about abortion? Indeed, if an abortion were in reality just like an appendectomy, how would it be possible for pro-life people to get others agitated about it? The very fact that there is a dispute at all about abortion seems to show that the pro-life view is correct and that abortions should not be performed.
'I believe X is true' does not imply 'X is true'. This reasoning would easily be transformed into an argument that the pro-choice position is correct.
17. Why is it that doctors are allowed to do abortions? Even if abortions should be legal, shouldn't they be performed by some other sort of agent? Just as we do not allow doctors to administer injections for capital punishment, shouldn't we also bar doctors from doing abortions?
I simply don't understand this question.
18. Suppose a genetic marker for homosexuality is found, and a test is devised for this, and couples begin to abort fetuses with this marker. Should this practice be made illegal?
Clearly this practice is of questionable morality. But that does not mean it ought to be illegal. See my answer to question 4.
19. Suppose that, in decided [sic] some case, the Supreme Court decides to dispense with argument and legal reasoning and instead rolls dice to decide whether a laws is unconstitutional. Would its decision in that case have had any authority? But what if the Court doesn't role dice but also gives no constitutional reasons for its conclusion? In fact it gave no reasons in Roe v. Wade: the substance of the decision can be summed up in the bald assertions: the right to privacy contains the right to an abortion; the state has no legitimate interest in fetal life until viability.
The lawyers/law students here can probably explain things better, but my understanding is that the Roe decision draws heavily on the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which does give an argument that the Constitution guarantees a right to privacy. Hence, Roe did not need to argue for a Constitutional right to privacy, merely reference Griswold. Furthermore, even if the legal reasoning in the Roe decision was suspect, that only means that there is not yet an accepted argument that abortion is legally permissible; it does not imply that no such argument can be found, much less that abortion is morally impermissible.
(Even though the title is '20 Questions', there are only nineteen in this document.)
via
1. At what point do you think that a human being, with human rights, comes into existence? Is it at birth, or earlier?
Personally, I believe this happens at birth, when a foetus becomes an infant. Some pro-choice people, such as David Boonin, argue that the foetus develops rights when it has a brain capable of having interests, or when it becomes viable, which are both around the 23rd week. But, more to the point, having human rights doesn't entitle the foetus to live as a parasite off the mother -- at least, not without further argument.
2. What keeps us from legalizing infanticide?
The answer to this question depends on the answer to the previous one. I would say that infanticide is impermissible and ought to remain illegal because the care for a (typical, healthy) infant is externalizable, while the care for a foetus is not -- the only person who can provide the foetus the life support it needs prior to viability is the pregnant woman, while anyone can care for an infant. Hence, the infant's right to life doesn't conflict with anyone's right to bodily integrity.
3. Suppose someone were to argue as follows: "There is a lack of consensus about when human life begins; therefore, abortion should be prohibited throughout pregnancy." Why is this argument any more, or less, reasonable than the argument that:"There is a lack of consensus about when human life begins; therefore, abortion should be allowed throughout pregnancy?"
I've used something like the latter argument as a call for tolerance, but I don't think anyone has put it forward as a serious argument that abortion is permissible that's supposed to stand on its own. If anyone does, I'm ready to say that's a bad argument.
4. What do you think about cases where the woman's conscience tells her that abortion is not a good thing--because she thinks she is killing her baby--but she wants an abortion anyway. Why should these abortions be allowed?
We should also ask why she wants the abortion anyway. If motivations are salient, then the motivation that's particularly salient is the motivation for following a course of action. If she wants the abortion simply for because she wants to destroy another living being, then that's probably impermissible. But I have problems with resting morality on motivations; for me, the important question is how to untangle the conflict of rights, especially when the question is one of law (as opposed to morality). This leads me to argue that her motivations don't matter: whatever her motivations are, she's entitled to deny the use of her body to another being.
5. Did Roe v. Wade merely open up a space for a view that had no standing before--the view that abortion is in some circumstances permissible--or did it completely replace one view, the pro-life view, with some other view opposed to it--so that pro-life people could complain, with justice, that some alien and unjustified view has been imposed upon them?
Abortion opponents are legally permitted to do almost anything short of harassment and physical obstruction to articulate their views. I would also say that acts of nonviolent civil disobedience are morally permissible, even though they are not legally permissible. What other courses of action ought to be considered morally permissible for abortion opponents, and other critics of the status quo? Threats of violence and verbal assault?
6. How should we regard a forced abortion of a pro-life woman's fetus?
As a violation of her right to bodily integrity, and hence on a par with a prohibition of abortion.
7. Why is it only the female parent's opinion which determines the status of the child?
Because the foetus is physiologically dependent on the use of her body, and only her body, for its survival until birth.
NB: Check out this patriarchal bullshit (my emphasis):
Yet surely to be a parent, a generator of the fetus, a procreator, is to have a closer relationship to the fetus than merely to contain the child physically. And we can raise the question, again, of whether in fact such a husband is allowed to live out his pro-life convictions in our society. It is not even clear that the husband is "free not to have an abortion", as the bumper sticker alleges, if his wife wants to have one. What if his wife is set on aborting every one of his children?
8. Suppose a woman who wanted an abortion were first to observe her unborn child through ultrasound technology. In such images, the hands and feet of the child are typically discernible, and even within the first trimester, it is common to see the unborn child sucking his or her thumb. I ask the pro-choice person: why aren't such images shown to woman, as part of informed consent preceding abortion?
If this proposal is motivated by informing the pregnant woman, then presumably these images convey some salient information. But it's hard to see what is salient about a superficial resemblance to humanity in regards to the issue of balancing competing rights claims.
9. If you think abortion should be allowed, can you consistently maintain that there any human rights at all?
Yes.
10. [Draws an analogy between 'states rights' apologists for slavery and the bodily integrity position of the pro-choicer.]
There are numerous problems with this analogy. Perhaps the most blatant is drawing an analogy between, on the one hand, the rights claims made by women to bodily integrity, and on the other, the rights claims made by the slavery states to a certain amount of sovereignty. The latter is, essentially, a claim that the state has the authority to deny the personhood of certain human beings living within its boundaries. The former has several variations, such as the following: (a) the claim that the foetus, prior to developing a neocortex or becoming viable, does not have rights, as it does not have interests; and (b) the claim that, even if the foetus does have a right to life prior to the times in (a), the right to bodily integrity still trumps the right to life. One might challenge claim (a), arguing that it is too dependent on our current science, just as apologists for slavery turned to the science of their day to vindicate their racism. But (b) does not seem to have an analogous counterpart in the context of slavery.
11. Does anyone wish that his mother had chosen abortion for him? And, if not, then how can he consistently wish that any mother choose abortion for anyone else?
Boonin discusses this 'golden rule' argument in some detail. The version presented here is so vague that addressing it would require first developing it; in the interest of space, I direct the reader to Boonin's book.
12. Developing the analogy with slavery, we might wonder how abortion is at all compatible with the idea that all human beings are equal. After all, it is inconsistent with equality that one person have his fundamental rights conferred upon him by someone else.
Strawfeminist; does anyone argue that the foetus "has rights only if they are granted by the mother"?
13. Why isn't legal abortion outright discrimination? I think "discrimination" occurs in its clearest form when someone bases a decision about another person's rights, privileges, or position, on some arbitrary and irrelevant feature of that other person.
The 'irrelevant feature' here is "whether one is living inside or outside one's mother's womb". This is entirely salient to the question of whether its continued existence depends on the use of exactly one other person's body, which is the locus of the conflicting rights claims.
14. Isn't legal abortion be contrary to responsible principles of decision under uncertainty? If it were true that we "don't know when human life begins," it would follow, of course, that we don't know that the fetus is not a living human being; that is, we don't know that abortion is not morally equivalent to murder. But isn't that precisely what we ought to know, before allowing abortion?
The issue is one of conflicting rights claims, and I argue this clearly goes in the direction of the permissibility of abortion whatever the status of the foetus' right to life.
15. In every abortion the fetus is cut into pieces, ripped or torn apart, or poisoned. No one would want to treat a small kitten or puppy in that manner, nor does the law allow to do so, so why should we allow anyone to treat immature human beings in that way?
Because, if the foetus has a right to life, the unfortunate fact is that this right is in conflict with, and trumped by, the pregnant woman's right to bodily integrity. It is entirely consistent for defenders of abortion to argue that it is impermissible so long as the viable foetus can be safely delivered.
16. Why is an abortion traumatic, but an appendectomy is not? If the fetus really is just a clump of tissue, why should there be any fuss about abortion? Indeed, if an abortion were in reality just like an appendectomy, how would it be possible for pro-life people to get others agitated about it? The very fact that there is a dispute at all about abortion seems to show that the pro-life view is correct and that abortions should not be performed.
'I believe X is true' does not imply 'X is true'. This reasoning would easily be transformed into an argument that the pro-choice position is correct.
17. Why is it that doctors are allowed to do abortions? Even if abortions should be legal, shouldn't they be performed by some other sort of agent? Just as we do not allow doctors to administer injections for capital punishment, shouldn't we also bar doctors from doing abortions?
I simply don't understand this question.
18. Suppose a genetic marker for homosexuality is found, and a test is devised for this, and couples begin to abort fetuses with this marker. Should this practice be made illegal?
Clearly this practice is of questionable morality. But that does not mean it ought to be illegal. See my answer to question 4.
19. Suppose that, in decided [sic] some case, the Supreme Court decides to dispense with argument and legal reasoning and instead rolls dice to decide whether a laws is unconstitutional. Would its decision in that case have had any authority? But what if the Court doesn't role dice but also gives no constitutional reasons for its conclusion? In fact it gave no reasons in Roe v. Wade: the substance of the decision can be summed up in the bald assertions: the right to privacy contains the right to an abortion; the state has no legitimate interest in fetal life until viability.
The lawyers/law students here can probably explain things better, but my understanding is that the Roe decision draws heavily on the decision in Griswold v. Connecticut, which does give an argument that the Constitution guarantees a right to privacy. Hence, Roe did not need to argue for a Constitutional right to privacy, merely reference Griswold. Furthermore, even if the legal reasoning in the Roe decision was suspect, that only means that there is not yet an accepted argument that abortion is legally permissible; it does not imply that no such argument can be found, much less that abortion is morally impermissible.
(Even though the title is '20 Questions', there are only nineteen in this document.)
via
March 20, 2006
We're all monsters
so we dance
Foucault: You can't fight the system, not really. But you can carve out your own little space, and that's the closest we come to freedom.
Kant: There are two duties. To improve yourself, and to make other better able to improve themselves. Both are equally important. Being lucky enough to be white and middle class doesn't mean you're required to be miserable and hate your privilege 24-7. If you're going to stay sane, and do what little you can, you've got to try being happy once in a while.
Nietzsche: Life is shit. Unless you dance. Then the dance is life, and life, for that one little moment, is glorious. And that is the moment life is for.
Foucault: You can't fight the system, not really. But you can carve out your own little space, and that's the closest we come to freedom.
Kant: There are two duties. To improve yourself, and to make other better able to improve themselves. Both are equally important. Being lucky enough to be white and middle class doesn't mean you're required to be miserable and hate your privilege 24-7. If you're going to stay sane, and do what little you can, you've got to try being happy once in a while.
Nietzsche: Life is shit. Unless you dance. Then the dance is life, and life, for that one little moment, is glorious. And that is the moment life is for.
Review: V For Vendetta
The previews of V for Vendetta may be one of the more deceptive ad campaigns in recent memory. Based on the preview you'd think V was about explosions, guns, and Matrix style martial arts, but if I had to guess I'd say that out of the 2 1/4 hours that the movie runs the action scenes only account for fifteen minutes; twenty at a maximum. Now, some of the negative reviews that you'll find out there take this as a major criticism, but while I certainly think the studio could have promoted the film a bit more...accurately I guess, I certainly don't have a problem with movies that have lots of talking. This is a movie about ideas, both literally and figuratively, and sometimes if you're making and idea movie you just need to have a lot of talking. Heaven forbid we take a break from the admittedly cool fight scenes to think a bit. This is likely to turn into a long and rambling review, so if you'd like to get off the train here just know that I liked the film and I think you should all go see it, just don't expect non-stop action. It's also worth noting that as far as film adaptations of graphic novels go, particularly those based on the works of Alan Moore, this is among the most true to the source material. If you'd like to see me ramble on a bit more, check below the fold.
These lengthy talking scenes are carried off by a wonderful cast of both characters and the actors portraying them. Most, if not all, of the characters are conflicted in some way, and there's only one character that I would really consider a "bad guy" in the sense that they are irredeemably evil. Even John Hurt's Adam Sutler, the dictator of V's dystopic England, who commits atrocities but who, I believe it's implied, genuinly believes he's best for the country, even if we think he's rather misguided. The task of moving most of the movie forward is carried admirably by Hugo Weaving as the eponymic V. It's actually reletively amazing how Weaving, with I'm sure help from the direciton and editing, manages to make the masked V emote in one scene and become the indecipherable blank slate you would expect from a masked man in the next. Natalie Portman carries of Evey very well, which is all the more difficult considering the extreme emotional shift her character goes through. Yeah, she botches a couple lines with an imperfect accent, but it didn't bother me and I've always thought that the people that latch onto that sort of thing are really nitpicking.
The film is extremely political for a supposed action adventure and as you will surely read in some of the negative reviews, it comes down smashingly hard on the more facistic elements of the conservative movement. It doesn't hide the message and it's not embarrassed by its condemnations. My view is that if that turns some people off, well that's their problem. V is not fighting fiscal responsibility, nor is he debating the propriety of a free market or other conservative philosophy. V is fighting the tyrannical elements present in the modern conservative movement taken to their logical extreme. If some of the elements of their society look shockingly like ours, for instance the "Voice of London" Lewis Prothero who will immediately bring to mind any number of conservative pundits, that should just bring into relief how out of control some elements of modern conservatism are.
That said, there are some reviews out there that make the claim that the film endorses terrorism, and it's simply not true. What is true is that the film makes a statement that terrorism *can* be used for noble ends and that sometimes violence can bring about positive change. V himself, though generally treated positively, is also quite obviously a madman and a monster, but we see his goals as noble so we forgive him. As Obiwan taught us all, it's all a matter of perspective.
Ok, so this isn't my finest review. I've rambled on quite a bit now and the overall structure of this thing is horrible. I've highlighted the entirety of this text a number of times thinking that I'd start over, but then I sit here and try to think of some more concise way to sum up the film and I can't discover one. This is a film that will get you thinking and get a group talking, and much as I ramble on here mulling over my thoughts as they unravel bit by bit, you're just as likely to sit around with people bringing up various aspects of the film and talking about or debating them. I can't think of a better sign of the film's success.
Incidentally, here's the Wikipedia link for Guy Fawkes, since he and his plot figure so prominently in the film and comic.
These lengthy talking scenes are carried off by a wonderful cast of both characters and the actors portraying them. Most, if not all, of the characters are conflicted in some way, and there's only one character that I would really consider a "bad guy" in the sense that they are irredeemably evil. Even John Hurt's Adam Sutler, the dictator of V's dystopic England, who commits atrocities but who, I believe it's implied, genuinly believes he's best for the country, even if we think he's rather misguided. The task of moving most of the movie forward is carried admirably by Hugo Weaving as the eponymic V. It's actually reletively amazing how Weaving, with I'm sure help from the direciton and editing, manages to make the masked V emote in one scene and become the indecipherable blank slate you would expect from a masked man in the next. Natalie Portman carries of Evey very well, which is all the more difficult considering the extreme emotional shift her character goes through. Yeah, she botches a couple lines with an imperfect accent, but it didn't bother me and I've always thought that the people that latch onto that sort of thing are really nitpicking.
The film is extremely political for a supposed action adventure and as you will surely read in some of the negative reviews, it comes down smashingly hard on the more facistic elements of the conservative movement. It doesn't hide the message and it's not embarrassed by its condemnations. My view is that if that turns some people off, well that's their problem. V is not fighting fiscal responsibility, nor is he debating the propriety of a free market or other conservative philosophy. V is fighting the tyrannical elements present in the modern conservative movement taken to their logical extreme. If some of the elements of their society look shockingly like ours, for instance the "Voice of London" Lewis Prothero who will immediately bring to mind any number of conservative pundits, that should just bring into relief how out of control some elements of modern conservatism are.
That said, there are some reviews out there that make the claim that the film endorses terrorism, and it's simply not true. What is true is that the film makes a statement that terrorism *can* be used for noble ends and that sometimes violence can bring about positive change. V himself, though generally treated positively, is also quite obviously a madman and a monster, but we see his goals as noble so we forgive him. As Obiwan taught us all, it's all a matter of perspective.
Ok, so this isn't my finest review. I've rambled on quite a bit now and the overall structure of this thing is horrible. I've highlighted the entirety of this text a number of times thinking that I'd start over, but then I sit here and try to think of some more concise way to sum up the film and I can't discover one. This is a film that will get you thinking and get a group talking, and much as I ramble on here mulling over my thoughts as they unravel bit by bit, you're just as likely to sit around with people bringing up various aspects of the film and talking about or debating them. I can't think of a better sign of the film's success.
Incidentally, here's the Wikipedia link for Guy Fawkes, since he and his plot figure so prominently in the film and comic.
March 19, 2006
Bulghur burgers
This is an extremely easy and relatively quick (an hour from walking into the kitchen to eating) veggie burger that I think tastes much better than store-bought patties. As-written it's vegan, but also somewhat sticky; if you're sure your guests can eat it, you might try adding a quarter cup of mayonnaise or an egg. Be sure to check the ingredients list for your buns -- they're often glazed with eggs.
Based on a recipe from the Moosewood Restaurant. Makes 6-8 burgers, and keeps nicely in the fridge for 3 days if covered.
This is easiest if you have a food processor: the carrots can be grated directly into the bowl, and combining everything is easier if the processor's doing the work. But it should still be pretty easy by hand.
Ingredients
3 cups water
2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 1/2 cups bulghur (a grain; check near the oatmeal or flour)
2 tbsp vegetable oil
~~~~~~~~
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1/2 cup grated carrots
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, or 2 tbsp dried
1/4 cup tahini (check the 'international' or 'ethnic' aisle)
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 8-oz can of chick peas or garbanzo beans
dash of ground black pepper
bread cups (Japanese or panko are preferable, but ordinary crumbs will do fine)
Instructions
Bring the water to a boil. While it is heating use a heavy pan or skillet to saute the garlic and bulghur in the oil on medium-high heat for 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the boiling water carefully -- it will steam. Return to a boil, cover, and reduce the heat to low. Simmer for 15 or 20 minutes, until all the water is absorbed and the bulghur is soft but still chewy.
While the bulghur is cooking, combine all the other ingredients except the bread crumbs in a large bowl and stir or process in 2-second bursts about 5 times to combine. Add the bulghur and stir process for 15-30 seconds to combine. Add crumbs in 1/2 cup batches until the burgers can be firmed into patties.
To cook: Bake on 375* for 20 minutes on a lightly-greased or nonstick sheetpan, or a sheetpan lined with parchment paper. Or cook in a small amount of oil on medium-low heat for 10 minutes, flipping as each side is done. Grilling is not recommended, unless you're sure the burgers still stay together on the grill.
Women In Refrigerators
I've been reading and thinking about Women in Refrigerators Syndrome (WiRS) the last couple days, after I ran across it on Wikipedia. I'd heard about it before but never really spent much time on it.
The long and short of WiRS is that in comic books, though people have pointed out this is relevent to other forms of fiction as well, a surprising amount of female characters are killed, maimed, raped, de-powered, or otherwise injured and this injury is used as a way to push the male character forward. Often this establishes the villain who inflicted the injury as the heroes primary nemesis, though there are other uses as well.
Here's the website that chronicles the female characters affected by WiRS, several responses from prominent comic book writers, and several reader responses. I think this is pretty interesting stuff. Hopefully you will too and we'll have a lively discussion.
The long and short of WiRS is that in comic books, though people have pointed out this is relevent to other forms of fiction as well, a surprising amount of female characters are killed, maimed, raped, de-powered, or otherwise injured and this injury is used as a way to push the male character forward. Often this establishes the villain who inflicted the injury as the heroes primary nemesis, though there are other uses as well.
Here's the website that chronicles the female characters affected by WiRS, several responses from prominent comic book writers, and several reader responses. I think this is pretty interesting stuff. Hopefully you will too and we'll have a lively discussion.
The glass ceiling: law edition
When the New York Times talks about the issue of women and the workplace, it's usually in the form of patronizing articles about the supposed "opt-out" revolution, or some piece of sexist idiocy on the op-ed page. But today they actually have an interesting and relevant
piece on the under-representation of women at the highest levels of prestigious law firms:
Their attention is still fixed firmly on the upper-middle-class and wealthy, but at least they acknowledge the reality of discrimination. Or something; you try to parse the following quotation:
piece on the under-representation of women at the highest levels of prestigious law firms:
Although the nation's law schools for years have been graduating classes that are almost evenly split between men and women, and although firms are absorbing new associates in numbers that largely reflect that balance, something unusual happens to most women after they begin to climb into the upper tiers of law firms. They disappear.
Their attention is still fixed firmly on the upper-middle-class and wealthy, but at least they acknowledge the reality of discrimination. Or something; you try to parse the following quotation:
"Firms want women to stay. Men at the firms want women to stay, and women want to stay. So why aren't they?" asks Karen M. Lockwood, a partner at Howrey in Washington. "Law firms are way beyond discrimination — this is about advancement and retention. Problems with advancement and retention are grounded in biases, not discrimination."
March 18, 2006
Civility
Right now, the feminist blogosphere is undergoing one of those panoptic moments where everyone is hypercritical over whether everyone else is really and truly, deep down, a feminist. In particular, there's a lot of argument over whether Hugo has done some moderate to highly shitty things. The biggest grievance seems to be that he lets anti-feminists say very stupid and often sexist things in the comments, but there's also concern over whether he's more lenient in letting anti-feminists say rude and insulting things about other commentators than feminists. In my experience, Hugo doesn't come back to his comments much -- maybe welcoming a de-lurker or appreciating a particularly insightful point, or telling people to get the discussion back to the topic of the original post, but little in the way of actually participating in the dialogue.
So here's what I see: a busy man who lets people use his blog as a Jeffersonian marketplace of ideas. So long as flinging rhetoric doesn't turn into flinging invective, he wants his blog to be a space where people can come together to compare and contrast their different points of view. Ideally, this would be done rationally and charitably, but of course that's not the way it goes, so sometimes he'll have to ban someone or close a thread, though he'll be very reluctant to do that.
If he has been giving anti-feminists more latitude than feminists, then that's a problem, and it's good that people are pointing this out. If he needs a stricter moderation policy to keep the discussion from degenerating to the same shit within the first half-dozen comments on every post, and it's just a waste of time and aesther otherwise, then it's good that people are pointing this out.
But then we have things like this (not work-safe):
To which I can only say "wha?" Let's suppose that Hugo has been chastising his feminist commentators, telling them they have to be polite and civil while letting the anti-feminists get away with all variety of personal insults; I haven't seen any evidence of this, but let's just suppose.
Does this mean that Hugo has done this out of a patriarchal motivation -- to control his women commentators? If my sense of the situation is right, then the answer is no, and Hugo simply wants everyone to be civil, but needs it pointed out that he's not been moderating fairly. Or that a random spot-check method of weeding out the nastiest commentators isn't working.
Does this mean that Hugo has chosen not to "deal effectively" with anti-feminists, where that means chasing them away from "safe spaces set up for wimmin"? This question seems ill-posed, as Hugo's blog is not intended to be a place where feminists can talk amongst themselves without worrying about anti-feminists; I'm sure Hugo would agree that feminist-only spaces are valuable, but that's not what he's trying to create. You can't have a totally safe, for-feminists-only space that welcomes anti-feminists; that's just absurd. (I'm also unclear why it's Hugo's job to debunk all the sexist crap coming from the anti-feminists, as some commentators have said he should be doing.)
It's one thing to insist on equal treatment. It's another to insist that other people privilege your point of view over others (in fact, it's probably the opposite). While it's true that "courtesy is a mask and an evil, deadly weapon [when] wielded by some", this does not mean that it is always brought forth as a patriarchal cudgel. Nor does courtesy require stifling emotion. It's simply one way folks with diametrically opposed points of view can interact -- and for the purpose of sharing ideas (*not* bringing about justice), it's probably the most effective.
Should feminists always be civil, polite, and suppress the bile that rises at the recognition of injustice? Fuck no. But is rage always the best and most productive means of destroying injustice? Fuck no. Unless you really do want the totalitarian matriarchy anti-feminists are always worrying about, you are going to have to learn to get along with people who disagree with you at least some of the time.
So here's what I see: a busy man who lets people use his blog as a Jeffersonian marketplace of ideas. So long as flinging rhetoric doesn't turn into flinging invective, he wants his blog to be a space where people can come together to compare and contrast their different points of view. Ideally, this would be done rationally and charitably, but of course that's not the way it goes, so sometimes he'll have to ban someone or close a thread, though he'll be very reluctant to do that.
If he has been giving anti-feminists more latitude than feminists, then that's a problem, and it's good that people are pointing this out. If he needs a stricter moderation policy to keep the discussion from degenerating to the same shit within the first half-dozen comments on every post, and it's just a waste of time and aesther otherwise, then it's good that people are pointing this out.
But then we have things like this (not work-safe):
It seems like two of the male "feminist" big boys have taken to chastising wimmin and attempting to define the parameters of their rage as these wimmin head-on engage with some not even perpetrating "feminist", actual dyed in the wool anti-feminist males. It seems that the male "feminists" don't think the wimmin are playing nice. :)
Sound familiar? Some of the "big girl club" feminists, those higher on the blogosphere food chain than yours truly are outraged and surprised that their male "feminist" comrades in the struggle would attempt to dominate them rather than deal effectively with other men by curtailing their oppressive advances into what are supposed to be safe spaces set up for wimmin...by "feminist" men. :)
To which I can only say "wha?" Let's suppose that Hugo has been chastising his feminist commentators, telling them they have to be polite and civil while letting the anti-feminists get away with all variety of personal insults; I haven't seen any evidence of this, but let's just suppose.
Does this mean that Hugo has done this out of a patriarchal motivation -- to control his women commentators? If my sense of the situation is right, then the answer is no, and Hugo simply wants everyone to be civil, but needs it pointed out that he's not been moderating fairly. Or that a random spot-check method of weeding out the nastiest commentators isn't working.
Does this mean that Hugo has chosen not to "deal effectively" with anti-feminists, where that means chasing them away from "safe spaces set up for wimmin"? This question seems ill-posed, as Hugo's blog is not intended to be a place where feminists can talk amongst themselves without worrying about anti-feminists; I'm sure Hugo would agree that feminist-only spaces are valuable, but that's not what he's trying to create. You can't have a totally safe, for-feminists-only space that welcomes anti-feminists; that's just absurd. (I'm also unclear why it's Hugo's job to debunk all the sexist crap coming from the anti-feminists, as some commentators have said he should be doing.)
It's one thing to insist on equal treatment. It's another to insist that other people privilege your point of view over others (in fact, it's probably the opposite). While it's true that "courtesy is a mask and an evil, deadly weapon [when] wielded by some", this does not mean that it is always brought forth as a patriarchal cudgel. Nor does courtesy require stifling emotion. It's simply one way folks with diametrically opposed points of view can interact -- and for the purpose of sharing ideas (*not* bringing about justice), it's probably the most effective.
Should feminists always be civil, polite, and suppress the bile that rises at the recognition of injustice? Fuck no. But is rage always the best and most productive means of destroying injustice? Fuck no. Unless you really do want the totalitarian matriarchy anti-feminists are always worrying about, you are going to have to learn to get along with people who disagree with you at least some of the time.
March 17, 2006
Oh nooes! White kids acting like black kids!
Certainly there's a lot not to like about hip-hop and gangsta culture, most prominently the ostentatious materialism, glorification of violence, and rampant sexism of the rappers and groups promoted by the mainstream music industry. But, except for the choice of words, you can find all that in every other genre remotely popular among teenagers today. So, of course, white parents in upper-middle-class Bay Area towns are all upset over the kids and the hip-hop. The most offensive items? Freaking (the sexually suggestive dancing style du jour), metal teeth ornaments, and the word "back" (as in "baby got back").
I say, the PTAs of these communities shouldn't hide their racism behind a genre that, at its best, is one of the most authentic artistic forms around these days. Just come out with simpler, more direct rules that penalize anyone for acting black. Be sure to include differential punishments, of course -- a white kid acting black gets suspended for the rest of the day, or has a couple of afternoons' of detention, while a black kid acting black gets expelled. After all, if the white kids are mimicing the idiots in music videos, well, they're still white, it's just a youthful indiscretion on the part of the future members of the ruling class; but when black kids start actually expressing themselves artistically, you know the racist power structure is under direct attack, and things have to be stomped out fast before that pesky Civil Rights Movement returns.
I say, the PTAs of these communities shouldn't hide their racism behind a genre that, at its best, is one of the most authentic artistic forms around these days. Just come out with simpler, more direct rules that penalize anyone for acting black. Be sure to include differential punishments, of course -- a white kid acting black gets suspended for the rest of the day, or has a couple of afternoons' of detention, while a black kid acting black gets expelled. After all, if the white kids are mimicing the idiots in music videos, well, they're still white, it's just a youthful indiscretion on the part of the future members of the ruling class; but when black kids start actually expressing themselves artistically, you know the racist power structure is under direct attack, and things have to be stomped out fast before that pesky Civil Rights Movement returns.
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