Rogue One and Arrival

This isn't a contest to see which is better. Arrival is clearly a superior film. People should not be confused or considering it another way. I could conceive of having non sci-fi fans watch Arrival and get something out of it anyway. It's that good, and that understated as to the science fiction elements.

Rogue One.

Good

Action sequences are generally well laid out and create a strong sense of running battles and impending destruction.

Vader finally plays a badass again (hasn't really happened since Empire and New Hope). Good villains help these stories. There weren't quite any in this. But at least Vader showed up as Vader. I was fine with that.

There are some very gorgeous cinematographic sequences. They did really well picking up fun locations to shoot (Maldives, Jordan, Iceland, etc). They took full advantage of what they had to work with to make it crisp and chewy as scenery goes. And to blow it up.

This was generally better than Force Awakens. It also seems to have a point or a story to tell of its own. That being "war sucks, people will die". This feels more like a WWII movie with blasters and space combat than a "Star Wars" movie at points. That's a good thing. There are little moments like listening to a turncoat spy or a stormtrooper chattering about something just before they are attacked and killed to drive home even the enemies of the rebellion are people of some sort. This works better than Finn as a defector in Force Awakens to humanize the enemy as probably a lot of people who haven't had much choice in occupation.

This is also a key point sorely lacking in the Star Wars prequels, which do try (and mostly failed) to explore the politics of a gigantic bureaucratic nightmare with a veneer of democracy. There isn't really a sense that wars are bad and have terrible costs. What costs are involved are paid for reasons totally divorced from the wars themselves, and mostly involved lightsaber mishaps and insane rants about the "high ground". So from the perspective of trying to set an action movie with a lot of desperate and bad things happening within the contextual structure of the Star Wars universe and its rebellions and galactic conflicts, I was happy with that attempt. This was the biggest problem with Force Awakens was it took no risk to tell a new and engaging story, or even to spin that story that much that it wasn't obviously a mishmash of the original trilogy with some of the same key players. It was further plagued that most of its universe based elements made little or no sense even in the context of that universe (why is there even a "resistance" if there's a Republic again?), or were annoying (Finn, Kylo Ren).

The droid is funny. Probably taking up all of the film's humor, but still. Probably funnier than C3-PO. Sarcastic droid wins over whiny droid.

Mixed
While I think they did a good CGI job on Tarkin (and one other at the end of the movie), it is a little strange seeing an actor who has been dead for 20 years in a movie. This is not a trend I would look forward to.

There are a lot of Star Wars Easter eggs. Some of them are annoying. Others are fun reminders of the original films. This was a mixed bag issue with Force Awakens also. Telling a different and new story in Star Wars can be done, and can be done to use these little touches to remind us what universe we are in (like the Stan Lee cameos in Marvel films). I feel like this did a little to push the envelope, much more than Force Awakens/Abrams, but not enough. It could have been a spy thriller for example but with Jedis and a space battle, or battles and devastation happening in the background. I had thought that was kind of what it was going to be from the trailers. There are nods like that's what they will be doing when they recruit a team of saboteurs and assassins to come help them, and they start sneaking around the base. Then a lot of the stuff from the trailers don't make any appearances in the film, and a lot of things start blowing up, and a fleet shows up to attack. People can make a war-spy movie drama/thriller, something that would resemble Dirty Dozen maybe. But the film has to commit to the spy or sneaky part to pull it off. This never really does.

There are no extraneous "cute" characters to be marketed to children. This is a harsher world than Ewoks and Jawas and whatever Jar Jar was supposed to be, and as a result, no cuddly creatures appear. I would consider this a good thing, if they had taken the added time not doing this form of marketing and expended it on making the actual people in the story a little more compelling.

Bad
Jyn isn't terribly well written. She spends a lot of time giving muddled speeches about hope, making bold decisions, and not doing much action herself (a little at the end). But because she keeps taking these bold choices, it feels like an interesting character was in there that other characters had decided to follow and listen to. That isn't always a compelling view of good leadership. But it works okay here because we know what she's doing. She is going to end up going off script, so to speak, and do something very dangerous or radical within the Star Wars universe. Other than Han, nobody else has that kind of pull to play by their own rules. Jyn doesn't quite rise to that level. We're sort of supposed to assume she can be in the "tell not show" problem endemic to many films these days. This is also one of the key downgrades from Force Awakens. Rey, despite being super-capable very fast in a sometimes annoying way, is at least acted and written as an interesting or mysterious character and as a leading character. There's a brief but engaging backstory and personal charisma, and her competence and rising confidence is an infectious element of the story (and there isn't anything else in the story that is). Jyn has basically none of those things going for her. She's not shown as a great resistance fighter (one scene maybe). Or spy. Or leader. Or pilot. Or warrior. Her backstory, what we know of it, is mainly why she is picked to be on the mission in the first place; because of her connections to other key characters. As a plot device. Later on she does some fun, bold, and determined things, and a few of her speeches lines are not terrible to rile up the troops as it were (they're mostly corny and lame). But that's really late in the film to care that much about what's going on anymore.

There's very little chemistry between the various cast members. They're pretty much interchangeable and expendable characters that we aren't that attached to as they are inevitably killed off. There's a little between the quasi-Jedi and the hired gun friend he has. And that's it. Oh. Spoiler: anybody who isn't in New Hope that we meet here should be assumed to be killed off during the course of this movie. Further more obvious spoiler, go read the crawl before New Hope and you know exactly what must happen in this film. This kind of death and sacrifice, meaningful or not, should have more emotional weight. We should care that these people are dying, because each death has some resonance on the other characters. Force Awakens got a lot of cheap but effective emotional mileage out of having Han die. Because people were attached to him as a strong and interesting character (and because Harrison Ford actually bothered to do some acting). Both Jyn's mentor and her father die and we shrug and move on, because they basically shrug and move on and because neither seems that compelling. They each die because they're no longer integral to the plot and are expediently removed from it.

The overall writing struggles. I'm not sure why Forest Whitaker's character was even in the film other than a plot point to get Jyn in the movie. We spend many tedious minutes early on wandering around several planets without much happening on them to remind us I guess that Star Wars has a lot of planets with cool volcano bases and evil installations in tropic locales (I'd think Scariff would be a plum assignment for an Imperial officer?). Introductions of characters, other than Donnie Yen's blind quasi Jedi with a staff beating people up, are often weak and forgettable. I can barely remember anyone's names other than Jyn (Cassio? Che Guevara? Droid? Chinese film market tie-in? General Director British Villain/Tarkin knock-off?). Compare this to Jabba in RotJ, as a giant gangster slug who has a pretty short character arc in film time but a rather large footprint on the film and series by being a memorable character (Lucas later would destroy this by having him appear in New Hope when it was re-released later). Even the Pit of Carkoon has more of a memorable feel than these poor saps.

Note the pilot, the actual defector in Rogue, is equally badly written as Finn was, if not quite as annoying or central to the movie. The method of humanizing some of these characters being chosen by directors and writers seems to be to pick the most social inane and awkward people alive and write them into the film.

Because these characters are expendable and uninteresting, the plot is very slowly paced early on.

I'd say RotJ is around a 7 out of 10, basically like a C+ movie. Force Awakens is maybe a 6, a solid C or maybe C-, though still much better than the prequels. This is maybe a 7 at best as well, possibly lower (a C+/C movie). It's fine. But not that interesting.

Arrival

Good

There's a lot of scene economy in how this is shot. It's minimalist in the way it uses disorienting elements to build the overall story of trying to communicate and interact with aliens, and to build around the function of circles as a shape in scenes. It's subtle sometimes about when or how they've made one. And the use of shapes to frame sequences is a fun little way to design a more interesting scene, and how to draw our attention toward or away from other things. The circles the aliens draw take our attention away from the creepy looking squid things in the background for instance.

The concept is intriguing. It doesn't limit to simply using language to alter a brain either. Most of us have a propensity to alter ourselves according to roles we seek and take on. Parent. Spouse. Lover. Single parent. Divorced. Grieving. Sick. Recovering. Addict. Activist. Child. Adult. Even the jobs we do (or the fact that we have them) can define us in a new way to others. And so on. These things change our decisions, our thinking, our identity, and our comfort with the past, present, and future in a number of ways. Language does this too. But it isn't even the only thing happening within the film on this form, just the most explicit. Her transformation as a person and the roles she has is implicit. There are even little moments about this where she is resisting other transformations (the non-zero sum game conversation).

I found that overall a fascinating concept. It works more easily within science fiction structures of "hey we are aliens and we'd like to talk to you". But it is an element of distinction between different languages here on Earth. Chinese seems to be advantaged for how math is thought about for instance (where there is no "eleven" but instead "ten and one", a more direct elaboration). German was the favored language for a long time of philosophy and engineering for its vibrant economy of complex terms. And so on. There are also broader discussions about the effects of mind altering substances on the sort of identity and interactions with others we have that can tie into this. The idea that "how we think about ourselves" as the main "gift" brought by benevolent but bizarre aliens is an implied effect that creates the Star Trek universe, and it is here as well.

Amy Adams is being wasted in the Superman films, even as she's probably the only good character in them (Batfleck being a possibility as well). She's very good in this.

Mixed
Renner's character is kind of meh. Other than as a counterfoil to Adams, it's hard to see what he does. Maybe making a computer do some work toward the end of the film to provide some kind of mathematical analysis to say "see, she is not crazy". He tends to provide "Hawkeye" levels of workable production in films in that he doesn't add or take away much. That's fine if he's a role player, with some occasional elevation as in the Avengers series. Less so if he is supposedly a main character.

There's a nod to people freaking out about possibly hostile aliens, as there was in Contact (a similar kind of Sci Fi film, but not as good). Perhaps more and less appreciative of how big a problem this would be. I think it plays off reasonably well within the plot, but it doesn't ramp up any tension very much so much as feel forced in by events.

Overall I'm nitpicking here to find things I did not like. So. That's a good sign.

List of standard disclaimers that probably should not be used

1) "Support the troops" - This is typically used when someone opposes a military deployment (a war). When someone opposes a war, that person should say that no, they don't support the troops. Because the troops are doing something they oppose. They mostly, and more properly oppose the political and policy decisions that resulted in someone demanding the troops do something they felt was inappropriate, destructive, or generally foolish and not helpful to American interests and security. But basically we should not say blandly "I support the troops". Because that implies we support the mission they are deployed for.

2) "I regret offending people" style non-apology apologies. If what you said or did was what you wanted to say or do, you don't actually regret that someone was pissed off by it. What you regret if it offended people and that reaction upset you was that you said or did something stupid (and were caught doing so). In most cases, this is not actually a regret people are experiencing that others were offended. They just want people to shut up about it and move on. I appreciate that these public displays of passive aggression in response to accumulated grievances are sometimes amusing and even warranted as a way of getting back at such complaints, but if you didn't want to apologize, it may be better to just not acknowledge it at all than to make an insincere attempt to mollify some people. If you really do want to apologize, then find a way to say it that acknowledges you may have actually been striving to learn and understand the complaints of others rather than stating the mere existence that there are complaints and grievances against some statement or action. Which you apparently either don't care about or understand.

3) "If you don't have something nice to say don't say anything at all" - Almost nobody actually follows this. Our primary form of moral reinforcement as a species is dishing dirt on other people or complaining about other people. This is far, far more common than hearing about something awesome someone else did as an exemplar. We should admit this hypocrisy and instead of telling people what not to do in as far as not saying bad things, we should strive to pay more compliments to balance out our tendency to try to do violence to other people's reputations in the trading of gossip and information on the flaws and peccadilloes of others. (Our own flaws are a different variety of currency).

Addendum point to 3: This also infects superhero movies. Where it is far more common for such movies to tell us "this person is a hero" than to actually attempt to demonstrate it as an example to hold up toward. Batman in some respects may be the exception and GotG also had elements of this. Superman movies have not (at least not for a while). The most "heroic" character was typically Jor-El, and not Superman. One reason for this is that movies that involve self-sacrifice, or acts of devotion to and protection of others, probably won't involve as many explosions. Science fiction movies have struggled with this also since probably Empire Strikes Back and some of the earlier Star Trek films (since the Borg, it's been lackluster there too). What's typically portrayed instead of acts of heroism is acts of recklessness that because of the deus ex machina and plot armor effects, are pulled off. Showing exemplars in media is apparently very hard to do, and I would bet this is because we don't spend very much of our time and energy talking about and holding up exemplary behavior in others.

4) "Some of my best friends are.." First. They're not some of your best friends. Everyone knows that in most cases except the person saying it who is holding them up as a token talisman that somehow excuses something else (using another person to protect yourself is not typically viewed an act of friendship). Second, it's irrelevant as the topic is typically either some nonsensical statement Person A has made that doesn't involve or impact their "good friend" Person B or the topic is some variety of public policy position which is informed not by a random sampling of people potentially impacted by the policy but by Person B style friends who have become so by not saying anything inoffensive to which you would disagree (in your presence). Most of us do not select diverse grouping of friends so that we can say "some of my best friends are". We select actually fairly homogeneous groups of friends who affirm our pre-existing beliefs rather than challenge them. What happens when we befriend people who are often of different and distinct beliefs and views is we may adopt portions of their views or moderate some of our own more extreme views (this is typical of people who suddenly realize they have an atheist or gay friend). Most people do not however set out to meet people for the purpose of having a set of friends that includes "person from stereotypical group B", and "person from stereotypical group X, which is very different from our group C", this is an accident of our lives and is not a defence of having said anything about any other group of people.

5) "Police have a difficult job, etc". This might be partially true in the same way the "support the troops" mantra has a grain of truth to it, but there are several problems with it. First it obscures that one of the reasons police have a "difficult job" is that current laws are often expansive, covering a great deal of human activity, and as such allow a great deal of leeway for police to detain and arrest people, where if laws were not as expansive police would have less latitude in who they arrest and detain. But police also have a great deal of discretion not to arrest and detain people by that same token and are therefore choosing to arrest and detain people, or choosing which people they wish to arrest and detain and which they will ignore. Some of that exercise in prejudice will be fueled by actual biases and animus toward others. Second some of the same laws should protect police already if they do things which are appropriate in the context of their duties. Self-defence law for instance should allow for an officer to have killed someone in certain contexts, which are mostly the same contexts that would permit any ordinary citizen to do so. Police are also often further insulated by law and by contracts and training in the language of the law from penalties for making inappropriate arrests or a variety of citizen complaints about their work on top of the disturbing lack of penalties for acts of violence and brutality. Third police themselves have made their jobs much harder by accommodating some of the poor incentives to enforce some laws (vice crimes and a variety of discretionary crimes that typically issue fines) by tending to come off as an occupying force in many neighbourhoods and towns across the country in the methods and tactics they use to enforce the law. "Good officers" deserve little public sympathy if they typically try to not only protect these other officers for indecent behaviors but reward it.

Yes doesn't mean no either

California passes a law. Various sectors choose to comment on what it means. So I guess that means me too.

Let's go ahead and make a few important stipulations to get them out of the way of the conversation.

1) Rape is rape. Regardless of its cause it is an act of aggression. "Rape rape" is perhaps distinct in circumstances but certainly not in the type of violation against another from say "date rape". They are the same animal.
2) Rape is a criminal act, depriving another person of agency and autonomy for personal gratification without consent is a serious criminal act even and should be treated as such. I would place very few criminal actions as more serious in the form of moral and legal violations involved (basically murder or torture would be on par, but that's about it).
3) Attaining consent is not that complicated (for most of us it really isn't that complicated to have sex when we want to, with a partner we want to). Which should make violations of consent and autonomy less sympathetic. Yet there is still some social and rhetorical baggage relating to victims of sexual crimes that suggests that we do not take them necessarily as innocent victims of aggression.
4) Thus things which we can do to prosecute violations of consent, protect those who are violated or potentially violated, and make such violations less likely are an important public and social good benefiting the individuals who can instead form mutually beneficial relationships.

All that said. I don't think California's law falls into that last category (as a common issue with many laws, it looks like a "we must do something, this is something, let's do it" logic, rather than well-thought out as an approach to the problem). I have a number of complaints.

Firstly. The bill is limited to college universities. It does not apply outside of colleges. It governs the procedures of investigation and authority and evidence involved in acts committed on universities by their students (or faculty). While there may be some mysterious process by which rape is more common among students of colleges and the inhabitants of dorm rooms than among the general public which accords these matters with greater importance to the legislative process, I am doubtful there was any evidence presented that the vulnerability was greater among those bodies of the public than among any other. If our interest in governing is in protecting the welfare of the general public, it should be for protecting all of that public, and not merely those fortunate and educated enough to attend universities. General legislative bodies should not make it their business to make distinct legal environments for certain groups of the public without some compelling reason that it should be necessary. This fails to do so. Either there are victims or there are not, and it should matter very little whether they were attending a school or not. If it was to be an experiment to try to reduce sexual assaults and rapes at universities, in the form of attempting to accelerate a discourse over sexual advances, equality of genders, and the importance of clear communication of consent, let the universities do the testing rather than a government. A law has the quality of being difficult to abandon as an experiment if/when it is shown that it does not work and thus we should be cautious of making laws where other bodies may act. And to boot, this law has the quality of accelerating and continuing the arbitrary nature of enforcement by that same lesser body of justice than the courts that could very easily have appointed it upon itself to make these changes internally already.

As a related problem within sexual assault cases, there are states where rape victims must pay for the medical treatment that they must undergo to treat injuries and examinations of their bodies after a crime has been committed against them. The state may pay for portions, such as the collection of evidence of a rape (usually sexual secretions like semen), but large quantities of the bill could go on the members of the public who were victimized, or the bill may be only paid after any criminal charges are pressed and a case goes to prosecution and a victim is paying up front. California may not have this problem, but lots of other states do. That seems like a pressing matter for a legislature to attend to to help protect the citizens they represent. All of them.

Second. The bill does not treat rape and sexual assault necessarily as criminal acts. Both for the victim and the accused, this is a poor attempt at justice. An accused deserves more than preponderance of evidence for significant penalties to emerge, but rather clear evidence of guilt should be involved and adjudicated. Even if those penalties relate to their academic life, at one particular university, the attainment of a college degree at a particular university, or post-graduate degree, still has significant impact upon lifetime earnings, career paths, etc. It is not the same as imprisoning someone in the deprivations that are involved. But we are talking about a person's life here. Our system should presume a strong level of innocence until we provide proof otherwise of guilt in the destruction of others. This is also true of victims of assault, it is a person's life, and a strong level of innocence should be provided. Such cases deserve the prospect of severe penalties (like that of depriving the liberty of others to do as they see fit). They should be arbitrated, but the arbitration of justice should include the possibilities of using police powers and courts of law to do so. Colleges are not necessarily trained to deal with these matters, and have just as many incentives as police to be arbitrary and capricious toward both accused and victim, but they have a further incentive in that they are dealing with their own students, with powerful donors/boosters, star athletes or students, and so on. There were already a number of complaints relating to the handling of some high profile rape cases, or the matter of how some conservative Christian colleges were handling the entire concept of rape that suggest that the treatment by the university of complaints and grievances of a serious nature may not be to the incentive of the university to take to task. Police have their own bad incentives in investigation or prosecution of crimes, but they also have no direct financial and PR incentive to make rapes go away if they might reflect poorly on the institution of the university (they have also incentives to protect their students, but creating a system that allows them to arbitrarily punish some students and ignore others is the best way for them to do so, by their standards). A law which entrenches this poor incentive rather than removes it ought to be treated with some level of suspicion rather than cheered.

Thirdly. To me the general problems of college campuses and rape or sexual assault stem from two things
a) People (mostly men) who are predatory, and who commit acts of sexual aggression in a serial way, taking what they want from others. Generally such people do not care much about what consent laws might be changed to mean in the first place, and for whom these kinds of legal changes are irrelevant (if not protective). There is not, by and large, an ambiguous nature of consent for sex and sexual acts, nor some grey zone of uncertainty to navigate that there are large quantities of rapes committed because someone didn't understand the body language and intentions of a potential sexual partner. Nobody really has to tell anyone verbally that sex is on the table (one of the more common complaints I'm hearing is the ad reductio argument that now sexual partners will have to ask each other at each step of a sexual event what they're doing next. You don't really have to ask in words, so that's a rather silly complaint). It helps to come right out and say so of course, but it isn't that hard to read both the when it is and when it isn't from just body language and physical reactions.

There might be some nebulous zone where there is reluctance, from either party or both, for some action or another. But this is unlikely to stray into a denial of consent either and usually only requires that both parties are communicating and listening. If there's something that might be helpful there and there are numerous complaints about these kinds of incidents being registered as sexual assaults by colleges or police, or some other authoritative body, what would probably be necessary isn't a new legal environment. It's a sex ed course that teaches and discusses issues of consent and communication with sexual partners. Acts that crossed the line over into assault or rape, we already have laws for without needing a new standard necessarily. If this was the problem, which I'm dubious, then the need for a standard is cultural in change and nature. More people need to be willing to communicate and listen to any intended sexual partners about sexual acts. Before, during, and after. As embarrassing or complimentary as that can be, and as awkward as many people find it. It's a far healthier environment on the other side of that fence.

b) The second causal agent is alcohol (and to an extent other mind altering substances too). Younger people at college have a rather easy relationship with alcohol. They are away from supervisory agents (parents usually) who could also attend to their relative safety. They are often away from long-time childhood or teenage years friends who have a strong investment in their well-being and safety who will look out for them at a party or friend's room/home and assure they won't do something that could place them in danger. Many college students come in with some level of "expertise" in the use of any of these substances, but they don't have a clear delineation that says "I can consume this much and still make cogent and responsible decisions in a moment of crisis, but if I consume this much, I cannot". The compression of available recreational time between studying and normal behavior and the possibilities of penalties for underage drinking further press for higher pressure consumption habits. Which results in a lot of binge drinking, and also a lot of drunken occasions that can involve sex. Consensual or not (some of it while intoxicated is consensual, some of it is perhaps unwise, and some of it is sexual assault).

None of this suggests that it is the fault of the students who consumed too much if something awful and terrifying happens to them later. It is incumbent on others to treat someone who is in a state of vulnerability from a chemical "impairment" with a level of dignity and security for their person rather than to press the advantage and violate that person. It is hardly our fault if there are a few who seek a more predatory relationship with our vulnerabilities and we fail to adequately protect ourselves against any possible, however unlikely, threat from coming to pass. If someone is robbed, it is not our fault that we didn't have a security system installed, or proper locks. Such precautions may reduce our risks, but they are not deemed as blameworthy. Someone still had to decide to walk into our home or property and take something from it. The same applies here.

I cannot say there would be a point of alcoholic consumption where I would find that individuals would cross that line that didn't require alcohol to violate it in the first place. That is: the people who are initiating assaults don't need to be drunk, don't need to be warned not to get drunk or to be careful who they are drunk around, because they'd be the same assholes with or without it and the alcohol is not their problem. The alcohol is a grease for them to use their problem more easily. There does need to be a strong social message at work here. Not to say "don't get drunk", but "look out for one another". Hold up as praiseworthy those who object or stand up rather than look the other way and claim the victim deserved it and should have known better not to get that drunk. In the long run there's a strong need again for that honest conversation about sexuality and consent to be undertaken by scores of many young people, and that aggression against others without obtaining consent is a serious concern that should be treated seriously, perhaps even criminally.

Our ultimate goal here in dealing with this as an issue should be in part to assure that people who are committing acts of aggression are adequately punished for having done so in accordance with the severity and frequency of those violations. In some cases, the number may be dozens and the severity will be utterly banal in its details. "She said no and I did it anyway" versus "she said nothing and I did it anyway" is not really a different legal and moral environment to me, both are a species of aggression and sexual assault or rape. This is not that complex when boiled down to its specific elements that we should need a standard that is very different from "no means no". Non-consent is non-consent. Resistance or verbal objection should not be necessary to tell someone to stop trying to fuck someone if they don't want "you" to do it. In the sense that this establishes a "yes means yes" standard, that's great for slogans, but it doesn't actually shift the goalpost in moral terms toward stopping anything.

More importantly, the main goal should be to reduce the likelihood that anyone in particular is violated and becomes a victim of such people. There might be a path where these kinds of changes help make that the case. There are other universities around the country who have installed these kinds of rules relating to sexuality among students. Perhaps there have been studies on the effects those changes have on the frequency of sexual assaults, complaints of assaults, and the penalties doled out for those assaults as there may be for this to suggest that it does have a strong impact on the social conversation and the likelihood of sexual misconduct versus a sexual equality. But if there are any looking into the impact of such concepts, I'm not seeing them trotted out in defence of the legislature making a change instead of the universities doing so ahead of them, and I'm not clear on how the college can make the system less arbitrary and reasonably fair to all parties to a complaint (especially victims) with or without the intervention of the state on their behalf. I'm concerned we have allowed victims to be ignored, accused to be punished without due process, and for no one to learn much of anything about how to prevent it from happening again, or to others.

Given the seriousness of the issue, I am willing to allow for some leeway in experimenting to see what will work and what will not to reduce its severity and impact further. I'm not convinced that it won't ultimately have some positive effect that these kinds of changes should happen somewhere. Perhaps it will help. But I am not sure that it properly targets the problems, provides a clear and transparent method of adjudicating claims and concerns for all involved, and places a stronger incentive for colleges to treat this as a serious matter for their attention (than should already have been the case).

Some words. Excellent they are

Patriotism, in my eyes, has always been about the strength of seeing those rough spots, of  considering your home at its worse, and still loving it. That is how we love our daughters, our husbands, our mothers. That is how we make family.

The overall critique of the Paul-ites relating to the Civil War, Lincoln, etc is usually troubling. It is proper to question why over half a million lives had to be ended through a terrible series of battles and privations within our country's own borders. It is not proper to pose this question as though it was merely a war of choice fought by Unionists or abolitionists. It was a real shooting war started by secessionists, and fought diligently for years with but one overriding principle (that Lincoln hated slavery and thus the South and that his election was a slap to the honor and privileges that the Southern white population enjoyed in the US government, namely that their "peculiar institution" was protected by Constitutional safeguards). However noble the premises of a decentralised government may be as expressed in the quaint political notion of "state's rights", in the particulars, there were no more important or more expressed or more struggled over issues of those rights than the rights given by some states to some peoples among them to own and possess other human beings. An appropriate critique of the "lost cause" of the Confederacy, or of the causes of the Civil War, or over its innate necessity in history vis a vis conflicts of any kind, demands that one would have to honor not merely the bravest and noblest examples of our humanity, through the dignity or courage of soldiers at arms for example, but also to contend with our most vile and disgusting, through the firebrand speeches spreading groundless fears (as we have today still in many forums debating the nature of ordinary Muslims) and expounding on the supposed virtuous nature of the role of the slave holder to the slave himself.

Comfort is easily achieved by believing our heroes to be always marble and heroic, and to sweep over the ugly warts and unpleasant truths in search of a more favoured fiction about their nobility, and there to dwell in perfect security over our nostalgic demands. Reality is not comfortable however.

The government doesn't kill people, it neutralizes them.

Or depopulates the area.

This is a useful way to look at the impact of public policies, by looking at the consequences of their implementation. If a policy designed supposedly for safety's sake is instead resulting in hundreds of deaths then chances are excellent that it is a bad policy. Perhaps there are safety related regulations or rules that could have been imposed relating to air travel post 9-11 that actually would make people safer.

But:
a) most of them were adopted almost immediately by either airlines, travelers, or the government as things like secured cockpits, more attentive passengers, and better (but not necessarily very good) filters over screening one-way visa travel.
b) we have no official mechanisms in place for determining the actual efficacy of things like harassing passengers at the gate, random searches, nude body scanners, and so on. Studies that are available suggest that either it's an extremely overboard system that wastes of a lot of energy and time and requires too much manpower to be effective, or that even the technical aspects involved (body scanners for instance) are inadequate to the supposed goals of detecting explosives or weapons.

So for right now, it looks like we're more interested in appearing to be safe but in fact letting more people die. They are likely to let us leave our shoes on soon. Maybe we should be thankful for that much at least. I think it's more like we call it "security" so we feel like we did something meaningful, maybe even patriotic. When it's really "take off your damn shoes you pathetic plebeian scum!". People being screwed with just because they can be arbitrary and petty with the application of power.

Domestic tranquility

Men as performance artists .. in the kitchen. And more or less everywhere else (taking out the garbage, doing homework, making speeches, and having sex). That actually makes a good deal of evolutionary sense, at least the male part of that. I'm not sure where it doesn't become a "sensual act from which to derive pleasure" either however. I mean, I prefer better cooking and tastes and so on, and if I must do it myself, I'd eventually figure out how.

Finally! Somebody learned how to actually do this properly. The article makes heavy use of these "manners" people who somehow presume that it is incumbent on us, the gift receiver, to pretend to like useless or hideous items, or to object to gift cards procured in their stead. The high rate of consumption for gift cards in the modern world (something like a third of all holiday dollars), would suggest that we're moving toward a more efficient transfer for gifts. An idea like this, maybe integrated with wish lists and other ideas, would greatly simplify getting ACTUAL gifts for the gift giver. Which to me, the problem is being a gift giver in the first place and having to ask yourself: what will this person not despise, truly need/enjoy, etc, and then coming up empty. Presuming that we will fail in that mission, merchants have savvily marketed gift cards (over simply gifting cash to one another). This is simply the next logical step to avoiding the "shopping" madness that is the day after Christmas. Known also as the day of return. Ideal gifts are things that the other person will use and enjoy, and that you won't. But unless you are very much more a people person than I am, I will find it pretty hard to presume to know very much about most people. Even family members and long-time friends, and their possessions, their private entertainments, and so on. Not to mention that in general people (sometimes secretly) prefer receiving experiential gifts to "stuff", and this is even harder to come by as a giving tree item.

Rated R . I'm not a big fan of government censorship, so the MPAA's rating system is a vital market alternative to this. It has a generally transparent system: show a lot of flesh and drop a few f-bombs and we'll stamp a hard R on the bottom of the screen. That's fine, so far as it goes, presuming we're all aware this is what we're getting as a value set. But in real terms, what we, as consumers, or really as parents of consumers, are opposed to is particular items (generally sex and language, and I guess depictions of smoking and drug use now too, but not so much worrying about drinking and violence). It would better and more useful, particularly in a technical age, if this information was far more transparently available. As noted, HBO (and other premium movie channels) put this sort of thing out there. You'll usually see when some movie or show is being shown on TV without as much censorship some wording which describes that you're about to see human blood and guts and people screaming "foul" language at each other, or some such.


I'm fine with that. We as consumers will tend to want to filter out what we're consuming as entertainment, and be prepared if we have more sensitive tastes to avoid certain products (as we might look at a list of ingredients on a menu to avoid certain dishes). I'm not fine with a universal set of "avoid this". In the same way that I/we wouldn't be fine if particular palate and taste sets for food were imposed writ large. Quite simply there are lots of things depicted in a movie universe, on a kids show, on the news, whatever, that I'm "opposed" to, or would prefer people not watch. I don't get to impose that demand on the rest of you. I don't quite see why this approach which defines certain words as out of bounds (for no apparent reason), or presumes that violence is more acceptable than sexuality, and so on, gets such preferential treatment either. A more efficient response would divide out these markers and give each their own market of "objectionable" content ratings, so to speak. That way people could consume more freely violence or sex or whatever without being encumbered by other relative value sets which object to certain words, or certain depictions (say, Islamic prohibitions on the prophet Mohammed, and so on). We in effect have this for premium movie channels (and to a lesser extent TV programmes en masse), but it's not caught on for movies so much, where we have much more of an open market as opposed to government censors working at the FCC to protect us all from the word "fuck".

Definition of the day

Beauty: simplicity + depth of field

As an example

A starry moonlight night is generally regarded as a tranquil and beautiful object to perceive.

What makes it powerful though, beautiful, isn't the scene, which is quite simple. It's the powerful factors that had to interact to create it. The effects of light waves bounding through the atmosphere after traveling millions and billions and trillions of miles to get here. The small space that humanity, this planet, and so on must occupy in the infinite vastness of space. When you really look at it, it's a powerful, and reflective effect on the day that passed to reach that view, that night.

Most flowers have this effect also, as a smaller thing. There's the intricacies of the natural process to develop and evolve flowering plants to spread a form of life, to use pollen and seed gathering insects to spread it further, and then to be cultivated by human beings for their own unique visual purposes. And then there's the simplicity of the thing in itself, the shapes and colours as they catch our eyes and the scent as it wafts through the air. We may squabble and argue over seemingly much larger things than the "perfect beauty" (such as humans can perceive) of a night sky or a flower, but I think what we're actually arguing about is usually the same things over and over again. Beauty ultimately is a concept of elegant perfection that takes its forms throughout our society, through political philosophies and ethical systems and empirical analysis "down to" appreciation of art and music and food and sex.

It's all the same object. We just have very different eyeballs and ears and noses and minds for perceiving it and ordering it together, and ultimately, must suffer through the indignity of making use of a word to try to capture what that means to us personally and express it to another that unique perspective.

There's nary an animal alive faster than a greased Scotsman

But apparently Americans can't hear them

"Surprisingly, there were few complaints about British accents; however, one Scottish commentator got good grades for insight, but his brogue became almost indecipherable as the excitement on the pitch increased."

Sad really. That guy was probably the best part of watching the World Cup at all. We need more brogue.

DUToE #3

Normal or weird.

So. Basically, are we normal or weird? To me what is "normal" is in fact a powerful subjective statement which is intended to say something about identity, ie, "what is not normal is myself for I am purposeful and special". Now, when I look at my habits and likes and dislikes, it's true that some of them could be taken to be a little weird, maybe eclectic especially given an appropriate perspective. But then that perspective will be taken as "normal" or "odd" as well. Normal is a word, much like "beauty" or "justice", that ultimately has no meaning that we can easily define in terms we could understand, but that we seem to get anyway. I can't use analogies to define it because what seems normal to me seems deviant to others. The word has too much baggage. But that's not the real trouble with normal.

The real trouble is getting away from normal if you don't want it. There is no escaping it. It's like a terrible infection of regression to the mean. What I eventually settled on is that I like what I like, and fuck ya'll. That means however that I have a "normal" set of routines or associations and likes that cobble together, even if they're sort of weird to the outsider. I suppose, in my view, what would be the best escape route from normal would be to do many different things as possible. Except that's kind of what my brain already does by trying to focus on many different things in a given week, so that too seems much too normal. That means that more or less normal is normally trying to avoid doing the things you see as normal from everyone else, except when you might like them normally, taking the whole thing back in its circular and meaningless direction.

And no. I did not just reverse normal and weird. A day and its expectations of common events and behaviors resulting in "normal" perceptions is "normal". Those common events and behaviors may not be "normal" in the sense that many people do them. But that's not the point here. "Abnormal" and "weird" is thrown about as though it suggests flaws. It does not. It suggests perceptions, behaviors, and events that are unexpected. That kind of variety is, or at least can be, interesting. To the "right" sort of mind.

Reid and Lott

I don't get why this is a scandal. It sounds like, when you read the quote in context and in full rather than in parsed for effect soundbyte form, that he's saying that a substantial fraction of Americans are racist enough to make such determinations. Which sounds about right. The difficulty in comparison appears to be the distinction between "racist" and "racial", in which the second identifies someone as cynically (and accurately) portraying a portion of the public as using racial identity in their political determinations, while the former identifies someone as being supportive of state sponsored segregation.

These are not the same thing.

It does appear that there is a substantial fraction of the Republican party that isn't aware of this distinction. They're not the only ones of course. Saying something that is "racially" charged or makes awareness of racial variations is not likely to be always indicative of racist sentiments on the part of the person making that statement. What it does often indicate is stupidity on the part of both the audience interpreting it as racist and the person speaking on the subject. I'm not sure that Reid's statements were stupid, mostly because they seem accurate in this case, but it's of course highly possible that he has made other stupid remarks on this and other subjects. This latter explanation seems to be why he is trailing in polls for re-election and not because he is somehow a closet racist, as Republicans seem to want to tar him as (as though they have a party which is more productive on the topics of race and its continuing effects in society today?)

Similarly, it appears clear that there's a substantive fraction of opposition to Obama/Obama politics on the basis of race or because public monies may go to support people of some other race than white folks. This is not and should not be interpreted to mean that ANY opposition to such policies and politics is racist or even racially motivated. It may still mean that some of that opposition is misguided, misinformed, or stupid and where such opposition is clearly racially motivated, one should be inclined to fairly point that out. But it does not give an automatic pass to dismiss all of it as somehow emerging from the John Birch society, the KKK, or the Aryan Nation. Of course it does not help the Republicans to embrace any of these (as they appear to be doing with the Birchers and to a lesser extent, the Birthers, a group which I have little evidence to suggest isn't a racially motivated one) and then to go forward and criticize policies.


One other note. The new book that is blasting all sorts of major political figures from the Clintons to Palin to Edwards: I don't care. It looks like, from the tidbits emerging publicly, that it's a gossip rag with a large dose of "he told me that a guy told him" sort of reporting in it. That doesn't mean that the characteristics of the people involved will be incorrect or any other form of false representations, but it does mean that the details could be wrong and therefore unimportant to establishing those character sketches. In any case, pretending that politicians are not hyper competitive and also annoying people in reality isn't something I grew up with doing. A treatise validating my cynicism is not something I need to devote time toward. I much prefer reading people arguing over comparisons in EU/USA growth rates and why that might be or the free rider problem of American military might as it applies to global defence spending. Actual policies are more important to ponder than the people who we have the misfortune to implement them.

happiness is a pair of socks away

happiness takes time to look at

I noticed a couple threads in there that I liked, sort of. As much as I am impressed by anything.

One: the notion that many people are defensive about how they are liked, complimented, or generate any affections. That sort of intimacy is rare, cultivated, and difficult. And supposedly rewarding. We shelter these feelings carefully because they are difficult to act upon in part, but mostly because it's easier for (many of) us to make decisions for much of our life in the belief that they're absent. This isn't a surprising revelation of course.

Culturally speaking it's far more common to see detailed descriptions events and effects of offensive nature, however common or rare they may be in our daily itinerary, than to depict a event where we were ourselves unselfish, altruistic, helpful. And yet these latter events surely happen, even among the most selfish and narcissistic people. Among others, it's likely we see them so rarely in part in the attempt to avoid the narcissism. We share the painful memories because it's like passing them off, a therapeutic effect of sorts. We create private shelters for these moments of joy and then never relive them through a story because we content to know we touched someone in some trivial way even if it was much more important than that. I noticed in reading about and watching "Band of Brothers" that one got the distinct impression there were a lot of heroic acts from what otherwise were ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. But no one saw themselves as THE hero. Especially Winters, who seems to have come down that way in the eyes of the men he led. And none of them seemed content to let that be their story. They seemed more interested in telling stories of someone else's heroism, but willing instead to convey the moments of privation, suffering, and death, however saddened they were by these often intense memories. Maybe combat is a bad example, but it really doesn't seem much different from the rest of life. It's simply more intense with the prospect of death much closer and yet more distant at the same time (because of its commonplace occurrence).

Two: I'm not sure what Valliant's take actually is on whether people change or not, which seemed to be the notional topic of the final page. But it seemed to me like crucial elements form up rather quickly in our lives and they frame the perspectives and motions for a lot of later life. These things in themselves may be replaced by others, and these may change in some measure our degree of involvement in our own life. But it seemed to me like the same tragic flaws, in the literary sense, run throughout. The ideal person adapts better around them (by changing the surrounding environment to conceal them usually), but that doesn't mean their essential character adapts. The sort of static impression that we're the same at 50 as we are at 25 is obviously going to be an over simplified notion. We learn things of course, and we have different experiences. But we're having to process these things through the same mind, it's the same entity making judgments, decisions, actions, and intentions. I don't quite see how this essential person creates a new element, ie, changes. Maturity is a vague assessment of how people cope with different things at different times in their life spectrum. I'm not convinced that it alters the underlying meaning of the story however. It's basically like adding a more complex vocabulary to events rather than using something like a more accurate equation to how we balance ourselves.

In other news, I discovered this week that I have apparently never purchased socks. I discovered this flaw by realizing that they've been depleting themselves over the past year down to a pitifully small collection from their inherent weaknesses when I have use for them. Since one tends to dispose of socks when they discover they've born holes in their soles or some such injuries, and this occurs typically in ones rather than twos, and one tends to be supplied with such footwear in bundled quantities that all match each other anyway, this is a strangely predictable phenomenon. Even within independence, I have generally had contact with at least one other person who procured some socks. So I have managed to cook, and sort of clean, and to marginally care for animals at the expense of other human beings. But not buy socks. I submit this problem lies in the overuse of flip-flops. But then again, Einstein typically wore his socks around his neck, if at all. And I seem to wear them inside-out all the time, which I'm not sure how this works within their design either. Much like ties I'm not really sure they're a good "functional" piece of clothing. Couldn't we just have longer pants when it is cold out and better designed running shoes to prevent blisters or some such?

As a final note, I finally got around to deleting the old myspace page. Facebook has long since taken over for whatever semblance of contact I have with the outside world and the current tendency not to be bombarded with popular culture on every log-in tends to make this tenuous attempt at meaningful human contact at least tolerable.

commercials

I think this is a beer commercial, but the line "he lives vicariously through himself" probably doesn't actually register with most people. Especially a beer drinker.

language of fools

Cyrillic type wasn't at the printers?

I had heard about this, but when I saw the button on Daily Show...I had to wonder. So the first place that turns up when I look it up demonstrates the same outrage that it wasn't printed in Cyrillic. Do we have no intelligent people in government?

So it should have said something like: перезагрузка.

the perversion of language

"supplemental nutrition assistance" - Can anyone tell me what they think this means?

It's supposed to be the new title of "food stamps". But it sounds so vague that it might as well be vitamins or some such.

politics are weird

It's amusing media types try to get around phrases like 'ass backwards'. Verbal contortions are quite silly. Bass ackwards?

FCC

FCC hates Sesame Street, or America needs to grow up

I'm still confused as to how people can supposedly be schooled in law and then make 'arguments' like this one: Garre said, children could see "Big Bird dropping the F-bomb on Sesame Street." I see similar arguments involving decriminalization or outright legalization of narcotics and the supposed prevalence of TV ads during the Super Bowl for a then successful marijuana producer. Since tobacco and beer companies have been raking billions on marketing their own ads for decades, I'm not sure that's as big a stretch as a profane yellow bird (though I suppose the analogy might have sounded better if they picked the grouchy one instead).

Still, a guy who is supposed to be the Solicitor General ought to be able to make a legal case founded on reasonable expectations. An educational show for children is not likely to successfully market its product by including words which have little educational value. It is reasonable to assume that most production companies would be sensitive to the demands of parents (those too lazy to pay attention to what their children are watching...or downloading) and market materials design to appease these sheltering folk from the ravaging effects of an occasional f-bomb.

I'm quite certain that these words do not conjure up sexual or excretory behavior at every use. And in fact, one will find that TV productions can use considerable creativity to conjure such things up anyway by using imagery or different (unbanned) words. Should they wish to do so. That specific words with more flexible meanings are instead banned from public airwaves is quite bizarre. Studying language in an amateurish sense, I have found that it is just as important the intention of the message than the words chosen to convey it. And broadly understood words, like the Carlin Seven, are pretty damn convenient used in circumstances where there becomes a near universal appreciation for those circumstances. Most commonly not in situations of sexual activity or human waste removal, but instead in situations of joy, pain, or anger beyond our normal abilities to clearly and precisely communicate our feeling. If those more universal moments have to be subtly contrived in concealment while the specific purposes of the ban can be more openly displayed (generally sex for our prudish American nature; excrement is a cheap laugh in turn of phrase but generally not something people really want to physically witness), then yes the exercise in creativity is useful, but the general public does not then understand the reason for that exercise.

It might be enough to outlay the specific reasons for a ban, but the reality becomes that such bans are ultimately useless. If parents or 'society' does not approve of certain words, or behaviors, then it is incumbent upon them to demonstrate positively what behavior should be upheld. I find myself that such language is not particularly useful in most situations and I still hold to a maxim that a man swears because he does not have the words to say what is on his mind. But I find that it would be no moral decay to have a society which understands the need for such words (because the concepts involved clearly exist in physical form) and tolerates their usage. Parents rather than restricting access should probably find the time to illuminate on the purpose of such words, rather than often treating them as some forbidden fruits and the consequence being a rather uninspiring folk of "ill-mannered teens" discovering 'adulthood' by using words and concepts that they don't understand (this is of course true of all words).

to be diverse, or to be bland

how-much-does-it-cost-you-in-wages-if-you-sound-black/

It's not obvious yet what this study will mean (because it's working study). But the analysis shown there basically confirms that balkanized diversity (diversity for the sake of diversity) isn't all that good. It apparently doesn't pay to speak in redneckese or ebonics. It's one thing to honor our own roots, but if it's going to cost 5-10% of our career earnings, that's a steep price to pay I should think. It would be just as easy to plaster a confederate flag on the wall at home or listen to "Fitte" on the way in to work while adopting a more normal manner of speech (usually in English without a southern drawl).

There was also a further study which teased the data available to generate IQ type scores for intelligence. Since there was (not surprisingly) a correlation between the IQ and education level of people in the study, it may simply be that one measure of intelligence is the level of conformity in obvious behavior (such as speech) that one has. It could also be that education and intellect are still as predictive (if not more so) as the quality of voice and dialect that are used. The study doesn't yet say if these were among factors that were corrected for during the regression analysis. Since stereotypically these are among voices that people consider associated with stupidity.. it isn't too terribly surprising to find some correlation with IQ (if we presume IQ to be at least distantly related to intelligence).

Of the more surprising things that were involved (certainly I'd never thought about it) was the advice given to Asian graduate students: change your first name to something Anglo-American before your first job. Since my own experience with Asian descended students has been that they already have Anglocized names, I'd think that someone already figured this out. What that could suggest is that we still have a considerable level of prejudice involved, which isn't all that pleasant to consider. It could be that that 5-10% is the cost of prejudicial thinking. In which case it is still a steep price to pay.

We still haven't yet worked out a necessary balance between cultural appreciation and its provision of intellectual diversity versus levels of conformity needed to smooth out differences or interrelations between people and cultures. But it does appear from studies like this that individuals or groups should not move too strongly in either extreme. Maintaining a strong group identity at the cost of economic advancement or conforming at the cost of some personal identity (which may have some measurable value).

Somewhere in between. As usual.

so yes that sucks

George Carlin died over the weekend. The man was funny and irreverent. And 71. For almost fifty years he'd been poking fun at our strange culture.

We need more like him. Life is just not that complicated: "You get up, go to work, take one good shit, and go back to bed, what's the big mystery?"

word games

So on 60 Minutes a Supreme defined 'torture' as 'not punishment', neatly eluding the cruel and unusual punishment phrase in the Constitution. In one of the rare instances of respect for him, McCain I think would disagree that torture is 'not punishment'.

We're getting pretty ugly on the redefining of terms so we can use 'enhanced interrogation' on 'enemy combatants', a term which strangely encompasses people in any country, not merely Iraq/Afghanistan.