Month: July 2002

Criticism comes in from all directions: Europe says we are arrogant, Islam says we are corrupt, Africa says we don’t do enough to help, and South America says our drug habits are causing their domestic problems. Steven has written extensively on why this is happening and why we are right, most of the time, to react and respond as we do. Now even the NY Times has publicly agreed with him: One Nation Plays the Great Game Alone.

What does Peter Jackson have in store for us December 18? Here’s a two minute clue.

Or for you total SF geeks: Terminator 3 and X-Men 2

I just noticed that the previous post reviewing American Outlaws was the 100th movie review I’ve posted to BillSaysThis, according to the movie review index. The first one was for Almost Famous on March 30th of last year although I admit that wasn’t much of a review. Guess I needed to find my style. Still, 100 movies in about 15 months is a decent total. And if Hollywood would make decent films more often…

A recent take on the Jesse James story. The script, by Rod Taylor, casts the outlaw gang in a very different light. Returning from losing the Civil War to their farms in Missouri, they find that some railroad baron (Harris Yulin, with a goatee to make himself look evil) has gotten government support to take away their farms. Rejecting the railroad’s offer, they get their farmhouses burned down and Jesse’s mom is killed.

Colin Farrell, so good in Minorty Report, plays James and Scott Caan, who doesn’t bluster as well as his dad at the same age, plays Cole Younger. The two lead the gang in a series of robberies intended to deny the railroad the resources needed to continue driving the rail line through Missouri. Allan Pinkerton, the real one, played by Timothy Dalton with a scraggly beard and Irish accent, is the nasty hardass hired by Yulin to stop them. In the end, of course, he does but really achieves no better than a Pyrrhic victory. Ali Larter, famous for her acrobatic Doritos eating feats, does a fine job of dressing up the screen as Jesse’s love interest and Kathy Bates has a small part as his mom.

Recommended for cable viewing by Western fans

Evan, the Sweet One, and I had an enjoyable afternoon at the Palo Alto Summer Festival and Chili Cook-off. We took a bunch of photos, but the old-fashioned, film kind, so I won’t be posting them for a short while yet. In terms of the competition, the Sweet One voted for the Palo Alto Runners Club, Evan went for booth 16, but I had the correct answer: Home Brew. There was a pretty good turnout, probably 3,000 people or so, although this made for some long lines to get chili, especially at the Palo Alto Firefighters booth. The Zydeco Flames made some good live Cajun music including a rocking version of Al Green’s “Take Me to the River.”

Getting Nasty – South Park went to town on the Catholic priest sex scandal tonight. That was fast!

Business 2.0 published a powerful article by Paul Kaihla in its July issue: The Technology Secrets of Cocaine Inc.. Read in light of current events, this article to a certain degree refutes claims by Libertarian absolutists that restrictions on technology and oversight are always a bad thing. Certain pundits scream foul at the least invasive regulations but this article, unless it’s a complete fabrication, shows beyond any reasonable doubt that the bad guys are no longer settling for pickup trucks and AK-47s but are using the latest technology to continue their operations.

I opened another instance of IE, created a new Blogger account and Blog*Space blog (like I would ever tell YOU the URL!), and published something there. Next, back to this window to see if it goes through.

Recently I posted about the Florida woman who is suing the State of Florida, which refuses to issue her a driver’s license unless she submits to having a full frontal photograph of her unveiled face taken. This woman is a good example of one end of the spectrum regarding cultural attitudes towards women, the Islamic point of view which seems to say that men can’t be trusted to control themselves unless women are covered from head to toe.

Today garret points us to the other end, an article on the treatment of women in Mexico, land of machismo, where few women report rapes and when they do the police ignore them, abuse them, or allow the men to buy their way out of punishment.

Just thought I would point out the contrast. Then again, how does that old saying go? Too much of anything is a bad thing?

My friends and I have often come around, during many a bitch session, have wheeled around to the concept of corporate loyalty. The boss says, “Hey, we have a ship date, can you work Saturdays for the next two months?” Or something similar, plenty of times, but of course we are salaried/exempt employees and expected to work however many hours needed to get the job done.

Or put up with BS bureaucratic procedures to do things related to work, like get reimbursed for expenses. Why the heck employees are expected to pay for the expenses on a business trip and then get reimbursed weeks or months later is beyond me. You all can think of similar examples of how employers expect us to put out for them.

Barbara Ehrenreich lays it on the line in her NY Times essay Two-Tiered Morality: “Only a person of unblemished virtue can get a job at Wal-Mart — a low-level job, that is — …It turns out, however, that Wal-Mart management doesn’t hold itself to the same standard of rectitude it expects from its low-paid employees.”

Yeah, so here’s a shock: the loyalty runs up but rarely down. I could point to my own situation, where my bosses eliminated my job last year just because I needed some time off to recover from the stress they’d put me through. But that would be crying over spilt milk. Instead, look at the many, many companies (including my former employer) who are requiring that employees take the three business days this week off, either as PTO or unpaid. That’s about a 2% cut in pay, right off the top, though the employer PR tries to spin it as just days off the employee needs a little push to take.

The one that takes the cake, though: what about the huge compensation packages the execs get, even when rank and file employees by the thousands are being laid off? Again, the PR machine is hard at work, claiming the executive pay is needed to keep such good people from jumping to another company. But but but!!!! If the so-called “other company” can afford it, how about letting them? Are the PR flacks trying to say that only one person can possibly run the company successfully? Even Microsoft, possibly the greatest example of a really large one man shop today, is doing fine with Bill Gates having stepped aside from running the company in favor of Steve Ballmer.

Of course, I don’t have a “real” job just now. If I ever do get hired again, keep a watch and see if I mouth off about the subject in any meaningful way then, ‘k?

[via Karl, a Java programmer with a social conscience]

Turns out that lovable president GW Bush himself appears to have played some financial shenanigans regarding stock he held in an oil company back in the days when he was just a lush and not a politician. Harkens Energy bought a money losing company called Spectrum 7–GWB was the CEO–and then hid its own losses with a transaction that the SEC ruled was phony and forced the company to restate its 1989 earnings. GWB sold a hunk of his Harkens stock before the news was made public and did not report this transaction for almost nine months.

An internal SEC memorandum concluded that Bush had broken the law but no charges were filed; since this occured when Daddy Bush was president, one can’t be too surprised. Asked about this business yesterday, our Fearless Puppet said “Everything I do is fully disclosed, it’s been fully vetted.” Yes George and if Daddy hadn’t been president at the time, you never would have been elected governor of Texas, much less president of these United States.

So then the question becomes, does it really matter any more to the non-fabulously wealthy citizen? If Bush and possibly Cheney can run amuck with no repercussion, hiring executives for the Administration from companies that have clearly bought and paid for the chance, do you and I even have a chance in hell to do anything about it? And the stock market appears to love all this terrific CEO hanky panky news too, doesn’t it?