Well, it now looks like Charles is the only person in America who thinks healthcare reform will pass. This is especially depressing, because all the House has to do is swallow its pride and vote for the Senate bill word-for-word and Scotty-Mc-whats-his-f#@% won't be able to do a thing about it. Apparently, that's not going to happen, either because liberal Democrats think the Senate bill is too weak or because conservative Democrats want summary executions for anyone who tries to have an abortion (my brother thinks that the 2050 health care bill should include a provision banning the expenditure of Federal subsidy dollars on some other entirely legal procedure; maybe appendectomies; or operations that involve the left kidney, but not the right kidney). I guess the moral of this story is that people running for office do it, not because they want to help any of us, but because they think it would be fun to be a Representative/Senator/President whatever. Actually helping people would jeopardize their chances of reelection (this wouldn't be the case if health care involved more explosions and predator drones; something else to work on for 2050), ergo...
The funny thing is, this is an even stronger argument for voting than if the people you were voting for actually cared about your problems.
I volunteered for the Obama campaign. I was really bad at it. I could not for the life of me understand why anyone would be on the fence. On one side of the ballot, you had cranky-Mc-old-guy who wanted to be President (as far as I can tell) because he thought it was his turn, and his side-kick, who seemed (seems?) at first, second, and third glances to be barely literate. Given that the founding fathers (not anticipating future developments in technology, or the fact that we would ever choose to have a standing army) accidentally gave the President the (legal) authority to end the world, I am hard-pressed to think of someone the Democrats could have run that I wouldn't have voted for (Lieberman, I guess, but I already made that mistake in 2000).
That's why I don't understand people's uneasiness with "negative campaigning." Our leaders can hurt us. They can hurt us a lot. Sometimes the best argument for voting for someone is "hey, at least he's not that other guy." Gore wasn't exactly inspiring, but he didn't treat war as an amusement park ride.
So, in summary: those of you who never vote because you don't trust government are technically right, but should probably vote anyway.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Filling in the Venn diagram
I also considered the title "stamp collecting" for this post, since I'm writing it from Cancun, where I've been for the last week attending a cosmology conference (meaning that I have completed the set of North American stamps in my passport. I wonder if I can send that away for a decoder ring, or at least 5 new armies at the start of my turn...). But the Venn diagram is much more exciting, because the circles "Things Sir David Attenborough has talked about" and "Things Scott has swum in" now has a point in it! On Wednesday, we took a conference field trip to some Mayan ruins (pictures forthcoming; seriously this time; I actually took these pictures, unlike the previously promised pictures of my office in Seoul) by way of a cenote. Cenotes are sinkholes that give access to the network of underground rivers that are the only source of fresh water on the Yucatan peninsula. They were one of the backbones (or, I guess, ribs, since you only have one backbone) of Mayan civilization. Sir David Attenborough mentioned them as such in the "Caves" episode of "Planet Earth" (which, if you haven't seen it, is a much more worthwhile expenditure of time than reading my blog). Granted, the one I swam in was hardly deserving of the name -- it was small and constructified with convenient boardwalks and changing room -- but that's probably why I didn't die (though some of the more intrepid attendees did find a barely human-sized tunnel which I am quite sure is stopped up at the far end with a wall of skulls wearing snorkel gear...) That same day ended with an audio visual performance of a project that Professor George Smoot (famous for winning the Nobel Prize and guest-starring in the same episode of "The Big Bang Theory" as Summer Glau) worked on with Mickey Hart (sp?) of the Grateful Dead, interpreting cosmology as music. I guess that's another odd intersection of circles that now has a blip in it.
In other news, I think the hotel (this is me preserving my pride; this place should actually be called a "resort") is haunted.
Two days ago, an attendee from Berkeley came to breakfast with a story about how his roommate sat up in the middle of the night, bent over his (the Berkeleyan's) ear and started howling, all while still asleep. Last night, I was jarred from sleep at 2am by someone banging as hard as she could (or, at least, as hard as I could have in her position) on my door and screaming "James, let me in right now!"* I hollered back "wrong door!" By the time I got to the peephole, she was gone. I went back to bed. 15 minutes later, someone/thing else (or maybe it was the same angry woman) banged on my door -- again, as hard as I could have -- three times, then sort of pattered on it desultorily. No one answered when I shouted "who are you?" and no one was there when I got to the peephole (I'll be damned if I was going to actually open that door).
Those of you who have seen the movie "Paranormal Activity" are probably huddled in a corner quivering right now. If that's not the case, let me remind you that the house I inhabited in Etna, NH was also haunted.
*It has been pointed out to me that, having been jarred from sleep, what I interpreted as "James, let me in right now!" could have actually been "ooh eeh ooh ah ah!" There are signs everywhere admonishing us not to feed the monkeys. I haven't actually seen a monkey, but I haven't been looking very hard. Something similar was also said about the baby footprint Chris found on our window in Etna, but we know the truth...
In other news, I think the hotel (this is me preserving my pride; this place should actually be called a "resort") is haunted.
Two days ago, an attendee from Berkeley came to breakfast with a story about how his roommate sat up in the middle of the night, bent over his (the Berkeleyan's) ear and started howling, all while still asleep. Last night, I was jarred from sleep at 2am by someone banging as hard as she could (or, at least, as hard as I could have in her position) on my door and screaming "James, let me in right now!"* I hollered back "wrong door!" By the time I got to the peephole, she was gone. I went back to bed. 15 minutes later, someone/thing else (or maybe it was the same angry woman) banged on my door -- again, as hard as I could have -- three times, then sort of pattered on it desultorily. No one answered when I shouted "who are you?" and no one was there when I got to the peephole (I'll be damned if I was going to actually open that door).
Those of you who have seen the movie "Paranormal Activity" are probably huddled in a corner quivering right now. If that's not the case, let me remind you that the house I inhabited in Etna, NH was also haunted.
*It has been pointed out to me that, having been jarred from sleep, what I interpreted as "James, let me in right now!" could have actually been "ooh eeh ooh ah ah!" There are signs everywhere admonishing us not to feed the monkeys. I haven't actually seen a monkey, but I haven't been looking very hard. Something similar was also said about the baby footprint Chris found on our window in Etna, but we know the truth...
Monday, January 4, 2010
Spoiler alert
After four months of anticipation (it came out literally a week after I left the US), I finally watched "9" courtesy of my folks' television, which I'm pretty sure is smarter than me.
After four days delay, I am officially pronouncing it the biggest disappointment of 2009.
Yes, there were many movies that sucked last year (and I haven't yet seen "Avatar"), but this one is unique in that it had neither franchise fatigue ("Terminator: Salvation", "Wolverine") nor Oscar kowtowing ("Avatar") to excuse it's suckitude.
Don't get me wrong: the movie was well-shot and beautifully animated. The story just made zero sense:
The humans are dead, the unfortunate result of yet another failed relationship with fascism, this time ending in a robot war. The only things alive on the planet Earth are 9-ish rag dolls and a robotic cat. The robotic cat is hunting down the rag dolls so that it can feed them to its master, the robot brain responsible for killing all of the humans (hereafter referred to as Skynet because, why not?). Skynet eats the rag dolls using a talisman created by the rag dolls' creator (who also created Skynet) which sucks the life force (later revealed as a good old-fashioned soul) out of one being and into another. Initially, the talisman is safely in the hands of rag-doll number 9 (voiced by perennial screw-up Elijah Wood) until, after seeing the robotic cat trying to plug the talisman into Skynet, Elijah Wood decides to emulate his adversary and plug the talisman into Skynet himself (this is the movie's only flirtation with anything resembling truth: "Elijah Wood is a screw up exclamation point exclamation point one oh em jee"). Violence ensues. Eventually, Elijah Wood finds a holographic recording of his creator lamenting the birth of Skynet ("it was a creation of my intellect, but it lacked a human soul") and revealing that, after giving his brain to Skynet, the creator gave his soul to the 9-ish rag dolls. Somehow, Elijah Wood decides this means he can use the talisman to destroy Skynet by liberating all of the souls it has already eaten and, whaddaya know?, it works. Hooray! A new world is now populated by the remaining 4 rag dolls.
Where to begin?
Why do we always assume that the problem with robots is that they don't have souls? One Iraq War, a healthcare debate, and two decades of denying Global Warming later, I'm pretty sure that the problem with humanity isn't that we let our brains get in the way of our souls. It seems more likely that we run into trouble when we let not-our-brains get in the way of our brains. Sorry, Tim: I'm afraid you and I are going to be on opposite sides of the robot war. Guess I'll have to be a conscientious objector.
Also, if the problem with Skynet is that it didn't have a soul, why should it care that Elijah Wood reverse polarizes the talisman and sucks the half-digested souls back out of it? I was totally pumped for Elijah Wood to realize that the creator had made the rag dolls assuming that Skynet would eat them and that, once Skynet had eaten all 9-ish, it would realize that it had a soul and didn't actually want to kill humans any more at which point it would... rebuild the Earth, fly off into space "Childhood's End" style, or maybe just shack up with Buffy. But no, the movie needed one more explosion/hackneyed plot bend.
I guess writing movies is a lot like being president of the galaxy: anyone who can get the job should, under no accounts, be allowed to carry it out.
So sad. So sad.
Maybe "Avatar" won't suck as bad as I think it does.
After four days delay, I am officially pronouncing it the biggest disappointment of 2009.
Yes, there were many movies that sucked last year (and I haven't yet seen "Avatar"), but this one is unique in that it had neither franchise fatigue ("Terminator: Salvation", "Wolverine") nor Oscar kowtowing ("Avatar") to excuse it's suckitude.
Don't get me wrong: the movie was well-shot and beautifully animated. The story just made zero sense:
The humans are dead, the unfortunate result of yet another failed relationship with fascism, this time ending in a robot war. The only things alive on the planet Earth are 9-ish rag dolls and a robotic cat. The robotic cat is hunting down the rag dolls so that it can feed them to its master, the robot brain responsible for killing all of the humans (hereafter referred to as Skynet because, why not?). Skynet eats the rag dolls using a talisman created by the rag dolls' creator (who also created Skynet) which sucks the life force (later revealed as a good old-fashioned soul) out of one being and into another. Initially, the talisman is safely in the hands of rag-doll number 9 (voiced by perennial screw-up Elijah Wood) until, after seeing the robotic cat trying to plug the talisman into Skynet, Elijah Wood decides to emulate his adversary and plug the talisman into Skynet himself (this is the movie's only flirtation with anything resembling truth: "Elijah Wood is a screw up exclamation point exclamation point one oh em jee"). Violence ensues. Eventually, Elijah Wood finds a holographic recording of his creator lamenting the birth of Skynet ("it was a creation of my intellect, but it lacked a human soul") and revealing that, after giving his brain to Skynet, the creator gave his soul to the 9-ish rag dolls. Somehow, Elijah Wood decides this means he can use the talisman to destroy Skynet by liberating all of the souls it has already eaten and, whaddaya know?, it works. Hooray! A new world is now populated by the remaining 4 rag dolls.
Where to begin?
Why do we always assume that the problem with robots is that they don't have souls? One Iraq War, a healthcare debate, and two decades of denying Global Warming later, I'm pretty sure that the problem with humanity isn't that we let our brains get in the way of our souls. It seems more likely that we run into trouble when we let not-our-brains get in the way of our brains. Sorry, Tim: I'm afraid you and I are going to be on opposite sides of the robot war. Guess I'll have to be a conscientious objector.
Also, if the problem with Skynet is that it didn't have a soul, why should it care that Elijah Wood reverse polarizes the talisman and sucks the half-digested souls back out of it? I was totally pumped for Elijah Wood to realize that the creator had made the rag dolls assuming that Skynet would eat them and that, once Skynet had eaten all 9-ish, it would realize that it had a soul and didn't actually want to kill humans any more at which point it would... rebuild the Earth, fly off into space "Childhood's End" style, or maybe just shack up with Buffy. But no, the movie needed one more explosion/hackneyed plot bend.
I guess writing movies is a lot like being president of the galaxy: anyone who can get the job should, under no accounts, be allowed to carry it out.
So sad. So sad.
Maybe "Avatar" won't suck as bad as I think it does.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
World without a Superman
Over the course of the last three days, I have received several emails from MoveOn.org. Here's an excerpt from one Re: No Deal
"The latest Senate health care bill has no public option. No expansion of Medicare. And it does too little to guarantee that uninsured Americans will actually be able to afford the coverage they'll be required to purchase.1
Former insurance executive Wendell Potter put it best: the bill is "a big bailout to the [health insurance] industry."2
But it's not too late to fix the bill. And as Joe Lieberman has shown, just one senator willing to stand in the way can force legislation to be changed dramatically.
Senator Bernie Sanders, a strong proponent of the public option, has already made clear that he's opposed to the legislation in its current form—and he could decide to block it until it's fixed.3
But there's enormous pressure from all sides to pass a bill quickly, no matter how weak it is. Let's show Bernie and other progressives that we're counting on them to block this version of the bill—and we'll get their backs if they do."
I'm curious what they think "blocking this version of the bill" entails beyond defeating health care reform.
Do they think Bernie Sanders will tie Joe Lieberman up Jack Bauer-style and waterboard him until he changes his vote?
Do they believe that some of the Republican Senators are Democratic sleepers, waiting for Bernie to give them the signal to rip off their rubber face-masks and vote for single-payer universal health care.
Do they have worse anger-management problems than I do?
I'm going to go with (c) (though I guess the options presented aren't mutually exclusive).
While I have your ear, can we talk about the other major complaint being made by my fellow leftwing nut-jobs: "We got screwed because Obama didn't want to get his hands dirty." First off: we didn't get screwed. We got a health care reform bill that might-actually-oh-crap-I'm-jinxing-it-pass. And now: since when is governing solely the President's job? Remember when the Democrats were elected to Congress in 2006 because we were fed up with the Iraq war and then they... continued to fund the Iraq war. Maybe in the course of crafting the language of health care reform Congress will rediscover its spine and once again become a coequal branch of government. I, for one, am tired of having a king, a 9-member abortion panel, and a three-ring circus in place of a real government.
This is actually something that has been bothering me since Obama's inauguration. Much of the 2008 campaign felt like Spartacus played backwards ("I'm not Bush!" "No, I'm not Bush!"). The dust settled, and Obama won the popular vote 69.5 million to 59.9 million. In 2004, Bush beat Kerry 62.0 million to 59.0 million (thank you, Wikipedia). Fewer people voted for McCain than Bush. Naively (and this is very naive), that means that 2.1 million people who thought that George Bush deserved a second term also thought that John McCain was not qualified to be President (it probably actually means that 2.1 million Republicans didn't care who won in 2008 and 10.5 million Democrats didn't care who won in 2004 -- I'm not sure which group is farther off its collective rocker; or maybe 2.1 million Republicans died and 10.5 million Democrats turned 18 in 2007; who knows?), and while the rest of us anxiously watched to see how Obama would use his new-found superpowers to save humanity from total annihilation, no one bothered to wonder what those 2.1 million (or the 2.1 million and the 10.5 million) thought, why they changed their minds, or how to convince them never to vote for someone like Bush ever again. Until we answer those questions, I don't feel comfortable saying that the Bush years are behind us (mostly because I'm paranoid and want someone to tell me that a man who thinks war is the latest attraction at Disney's Adventure Land will never ever again be given command of the most deadly military force in the world; obviously no one can ever tell me that and I will continue to be paranoid).
Hopefully you've gleaned my point from somewhere in this convoluted chain of sentences. If you have, I would appreciate it if you could tell me what it is.
"The latest Senate health care bill has no public option. No expansion of Medicare. And it does too little to guarantee that uninsured Americans will actually be able to afford the coverage they'll be required to purchase.1
Former insurance executive Wendell Potter put it best: the bill is "a big bailout to the [health insurance] industry."2
But it's not too late to fix the bill. And as Joe Lieberman has shown, just one senator willing to stand in the way can force legislation to be changed dramatically.
Senator Bernie Sanders, a strong proponent of the public option, has already made clear that he's opposed to the legislation in its current form—and he could decide to block it until it's fixed.3
But there's enormous pressure from all sides to pass a bill quickly, no matter how weak it is. Let's show Bernie and other progressives that we're counting on them to block this version of the bill—and we'll get their backs if they do."
I'm curious what they think "blocking this version of the bill" entails beyond defeating health care reform.
Do they think Bernie Sanders will tie Joe Lieberman up Jack Bauer-style and waterboard him until he changes his vote?
Do they believe that some of the Republican Senators are Democratic sleepers, waiting for Bernie to give them the signal to rip off their rubber face-masks and vote for single-payer universal health care.
Do they have worse anger-management problems than I do?
I'm going to go with (c) (though I guess the options presented aren't mutually exclusive).
While I have your ear, can we talk about the other major complaint being made by my fellow leftwing nut-jobs: "We got screwed because Obama didn't want to get his hands dirty." First off: we didn't get screwed. We got a health care reform bill that might-actually-oh-crap-I'm-jinxing-it-pass. And now: since when is governing solely the President's job? Remember when the Democrats were elected to Congress in 2006 because we were fed up with the Iraq war and then they... continued to fund the Iraq war. Maybe in the course of crafting the language of health care reform Congress will rediscover its spine and once again become a coequal branch of government. I, for one, am tired of having a king, a 9-member abortion panel, and a three-ring circus in place of a real government.
This is actually something that has been bothering me since Obama's inauguration. Much of the 2008 campaign felt like Spartacus played backwards ("I'm not Bush!" "No, I'm not Bush!"). The dust settled, and Obama won the popular vote 69.5 million to 59.9 million. In 2004, Bush beat Kerry 62.0 million to 59.0 million (thank you, Wikipedia). Fewer people voted for McCain than Bush. Naively (and this is very naive), that means that 2.1 million people who thought that George Bush deserved a second term also thought that John McCain was not qualified to be President (it probably actually means that 2.1 million Republicans didn't care who won in 2008 and 10.5 million Democrats didn't care who won in 2004 -- I'm not sure which group is farther off its collective rocker; or maybe 2.1 million Republicans died and 10.5 million Democrats turned 18 in 2007; who knows?), and while the rest of us anxiously watched to see how Obama would use his new-found superpowers to save humanity from total annihilation, no one bothered to wonder what those 2.1 million (or the 2.1 million and the 10.5 million) thought, why they changed their minds, or how to convince them never to vote for someone like Bush ever again. Until we answer those questions, I don't feel comfortable saying that the Bush years are behind us (mostly because I'm paranoid and want someone to tell me that a man who thinks war is the latest attraction at Disney's Adventure Land will never ever again be given command of the most deadly military force in the world; obviously no one can ever tell me that and I will continue to be paranoid).
Hopefully you've gleaned my point from somewhere in this convoluted chain of sentences. If you have, I would appreciate it if you could tell me what it is.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Gonna go pick me up summa them humpback whales!
Which, of course, was the plot for "Star Trek IV," which, of course, was subtitled: "The Voyage Home."
Yup. Tomorrow I board a plane for Seattle. I'll be there about three weeks followed by a week at a conference in Cancun followed by a month at Berkeley followed by another week in Seattle before finally returning to Seoul.
Those of you in any of those areas should look me up.
As Kernoff would say:
wooooooooooohooooooooooooooooooooo!
Yup. Tomorrow I board a plane for Seattle. I'll be there about three weeks followed by a week at a conference in Cancun followed by a month at Berkeley followed by another week in Seattle before finally returning to Seoul.
Those of you in any of those areas should look me up.
As Kernoff would say:
wooooooooooohooooooooooooooooooooo!
Monday, December 14, 2009
Bad Wolf
Mark this day on your calendar. I finally found something good that came out of the Bush Presidency: it kept Joe Lieberman as far as possible from the Oval Office. Yes, Cheney was an evil cyborg zombie from outer space (and possibly the future), but at least he was up front about it (remember when he shot a guy in the face?).
(those of you who communicate with me in other ways have probably heard this several times already; I apologize, but I can't sleep right now, and I feel this intense desire to spread the word that Joe Lieberman is a spoiled brat)
(those of you who communicate with me in other ways have probably heard this several times already; I apologize, but I can't sleep right now, and I feel this intense desire to spread the word that Joe Lieberman is a spoiled brat)
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Gravy or grave?
Yesterday (or maybe it was two days ago now; I have no idea how time works any more), on the Daily Show, Mike Huckabee started talking about the first Christmas:
"This is a story like [people have] never heard in church... It's the story of an unwed teen mother who goes into labor far away from home... This has got to be the most humiliating, horrifying experience..."
Yeah. That's the only story I've ever heard in church on Christmas Eve: that the incarnation was cool, and all, but the real heroes of the story are Mary (who probably thought she was going to be stoned to death for her part in all this) and Joseph ("A man really has to love a woman to agree to raise another man's child." -- Keith Mars).
I don't know if this means my hometown pastor is ahead of the curve or that Mike Huckabee is wrong and my church experience is the common Christian one. At the very least, it's another reason that I really really really wish I could still unreservedly consider myself a member of the Episcopal Church (where you will find said hometown pastor) with all of their gay-ordaining, gay-marrying shenanigans. As it is, I guess I'll have to root for them from the fringe.
Because religion is exactly like the World Series.
"This is a story like [people have] never heard in church... It's the story of an unwed teen mother who goes into labor far away from home... This has got to be the most humiliating, horrifying experience..."
Yeah. That's the only story I've ever heard in church on Christmas Eve: that the incarnation was cool, and all, but the real heroes of the story are Mary (who probably thought she was going to be stoned to death for her part in all this) and Joseph ("A man really has to love a woman to agree to raise another man's child." -- Keith Mars).
I don't know if this means my hometown pastor is ahead of the curve or that Mike Huckabee is wrong and my church experience is the common Christian one. At the very least, it's another reason that I really really really wish I could still unreservedly consider myself a member of the Episcopal Church (where you will find said hometown pastor) with all of their gay-ordaining, gay-marrying shenanigans. As it is, I guess I'll have to root for them from the fringe.
Because religion is exactly like the World Series.
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