Author: BillSaysThis

Okay, I may not be the UPI Business and Economics Editor like Martin Hutchinson but his column Analysis: It’s 1973, not 1929 seems to be far too stuck in trying to correlate the past with the present than understanding the differences between 1929, 1973 and 2003.

“Corporations are not people; there is no moral imperative, virtually no social constraints on these ‘virtual people.’ Corporations are corporations … bureaucracies to create profit, plain and simple.” So sayeth Garret Vreeland.

So now we repeat my rant that when the Supreme Court ruled back in the end of the 19th Century that corporations were the legal equivalent of people, they made perhaps the single biggest mistake in their entire corpus. And that includes such whoppers as Dread Scott before the Civil War and the ‘separate but equal’ ruling a few years after this one.

So now we see behavior such as that of Darl McBride and the SCO Gang, with their latest idiocy (because you know they’ll find a way to top themselves by next week at the most) reported by Dan Gillmor, where executives can take nearly any action they like but can hide from the consequences behind the corporate veil and a big directors and officers liability insurance policy.

So now we read many stories in the media about, for instance, the many Wall Street scandals and that the firms involved have paid big fines–huge even–but do the executives involved go to jail? Other than a troubled prosecution in Oklahoma will Ken Lay, clearly responsible for hurting thousands of people and destroying and stealing billions of dollars in the Enron disaster, even be charged with a crime much less sentenced to prison time? And yet less privileged people, convicted of stealing items of much less value, a car for instance, are sent to prison for several years. Which is not to say that these lesser thieves don’t deserve jail time, not hardly.

So now we smell with our own noses the pollution that is spewed by power plants all over the country, generators that we thought were dealt with in Clean Air legislation. But, putting corporate profit above personal good–after all, the executives breath the same air we all do–energy companies lobbied and donated their way to postponement and reduction and finally, in essence, repeal of these rules. Emerging economies, these executives and their mouthpieces shout, don’t have such cumbersome and costly restraints, so why should we?

So now we learn that agricultural and pharmaceutical companies, sometimes using their hired hands in academia, want to grow bioengineered crops in the open air. Bioengineered to produce powerful drugs more easily and more cheaply than current lab chemistry-based processes and, for food plants, to resist pests without pesticides and survive colder temperatures. With minimal protection from an open space ‘moat’, there is little chance that these inventions will not commingle with natural crops and windup somewhere in the human food chain.

So now we understand that people, generally good and intelligent, can be blinded far too easily by power and profit. Most of these men and women graduated from good schools and give generously to charity and community. They can, however, hide their eyes from the truth because executive authority is divorced from personal responsibility for corporate actions. All because of a 120 year old court decision. A precedent that ought to be–no, must be changed.

Successful filmed science fiction requires a plot that moves at a very fast pace with only a few pauses to recover from major dramatic points. Sadly Battlestar Galactica, produced with high hopes and mucho dinero by the SciFi Channel, failed to meet this simple hurdle. Star Trek veteran Ron Moore made some interesting changes from the original series, I even didn’t have a big issue with the humanoid Cylons and the darker more believable characters worked well (he’s also one of the prime movers behind HBO’s Carnivale) but the four hours onscreen could have been edited down to two easily. Or preferably stuffed with more things, like anything that would give us insight into the Cylons. But Michael Rymer, the director, did get to show off his techno-fetish with many lingering shots on the hardware.

The miniseries was also a pilot for a series. Should SciFi go ahead and spend what would certainly be a big pile of cash on it? Honestly, I don’t think so. Too many of the actors were ill-suited to their roles and I think the story as set up won’t work well enough.

Garret explains his Clark over Dean choice.

John Owen, author of Low Carb Holiday Cookbook, was on the Wayne Brady Show this afternoon and gave this tasty instruction set for a low carb substitute for mashed potatos (assuming I transcribed reasonably well, Owen doesn’t give any free recipes on the site):

1 1/2 cup chicken stock total

Start w/ 3/4 cups of stock in a heated pot

6-8 cups of cauliflower, fresh or frozen

Over a medium flame, stir and add stock as cauliflower absorbs it

Transfer to a mixing bowl

Add a few ounces of Blue cheese, crumbled or chopped

Puree with a hand blender or food processor

Add couple of cloves of chopped fresh garlic

A tablespoon of rosemary

Blend a bit more

Put in casserole

Add a few pats of butter on top plus some ground pepper and salt

Bake in oven for 350d for 20 minutes

ZapThink gets nasty on competitor Gartner’s Four-Platform Framework for Web Services. [via BLTS]

In footy news, Liverpool FC manager Gerard Houllier is on the hot seat–his head man wants a place in next season’s Champions League or else; David Beckham hopes next Summer’s marquee signing by his club Real Madrid is Manchester United striker Ruud van Nistlerooy; and, at Beck’s old club, the manuevering for control continues as both Glazer and the Irishmen up their stockholdings.

Every columnist I’ve read so far agrees that the BCS is broken and that USC should be playing in the Sugar Bowl.

The Chinese are discovering a use for cars well-known in the West. Booya!

My vote is for the bricks through windows analogy. One significant distinction between most other forms of advertising and spam like this is that other advertising generally pays for something so I don’t have to–broadcast TV and (at least cheaper) daily newspapers.

I’m still angry about the BCS craptasticness, getting over seeing Part I of the somewhat mindblowing Angels in America and have an HOA board meeting tonight so you’re on your own, bubbas and bubba-ettes.

In the minutes before the final BCS rankings are announced, a Yahoo! Sports poll shows USC is an overwhelming favorite (83% took one of the two options including the Trojans) to play for the national championship in the Sugar Bowl. I’m surely hoping they get in. They did get the number one spot in both major polls heading into the announcement show.

Update: LSU pushed passed us in the rankings via the difference in computer rankings by .16, 5.99 to 6.15!!! The BCS Coordinator, Mike Tranghese, was honest right up front in saying that he has no explanation that will satisfy USC fans. Once again, a team that couldn’t even win its conference championship is going to play for the title. He’s saying that we ought to expect some changes in the BCS system but not until their annual meeting of interested parties in April.

By their own rules, the winner of the BCS title game will be number one in the post-bowl ESPN/USA Today poll but the Trojans can still get a split with a win over Michigan in the Rose Bowl and some love from the AP voters. USC coach Pete Carroll (28-9 as head man) said all the right words as he was interviewed but his body language was nowhere near as serene as his voice; seemed clear to me that he was royally pissed.

With number four Michigan as the opponent, we all know that the Rose Bowl will be the real national title game in the days after New Years!

Extra: I posted my frustration(!) to SpoFi too.

This was the sixth or seventh time I’ve seen Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring though only the second time for the Extended Edition. The previous EE viewing suffered from a severe case of pause, rewind and review at the hands of my host (who will go unnamed but let’s just say drives a real fancy sports car), while this one benefitted from being a lovely new print on a big screen at the Sony Metreon up in San Francisco.

We’ll be up there again next Saturday for the Extended Edition of The Two Towers. This version of FotR is about 30 minutes longer than the original and, if your butt can stand the length, works better for me; not having seen TTTee yet, I’m definitely looking forward to finding out if that has the same quality with its extra 43 minutes. These are complex stories and characters JRR Tolkien gave us and, butt be damned, the extra time allows for more of that to come through.

What I’m really looking forward to is seeing Return of the King in 13 days, if not sooner, and then late next year getting a complete, deluxe, Extended Edition DVD set.

Miss World 2003 has some gorgeous contestants and a lovely winner but a completely crappy website that looks like only one page from the front but with more if you only Google them. Seems like some webmaster made a big booboo on the front page!

Joshua Allen provides some useful Tips for SkyTrain at Newark Airport

It was day like many other days, and then I popped Household Saints on from the TiVo playlist. Nancy Savoca starts from a novel by Francine Prose but falls into the “throw strange characters into a bowl” fallacy early on, and from there even decent acting jobs by Tracy Ullman, Vincent D’Onofrio and Lilli Taylor can’t really pull it back over the hedge.

We follow Ullman and D’Onofrio through about 20 years of their lives, about 1949-1970ish, from when they came together because he won her (from her Dad) in a game of Pinochle, their early marriage living with his wacky old country Italian Mom and a stillborn baby, through the desperate childhood and strange death of a second, Jesus-obsessed daughter (Taylor). Though the novel probably spends the necessary verbiage establishing these characters and their reasons, the film never has the time and so I never did understand. D’Onofrio “just loves” Ullman, for instance, and can do no better when his mother asks for such help. Minor props to The Sopranos’ Michael Imperioli for an amusing portrait of an ambitious young lawyer.

Barely recommended

Darl, get real, it’s called a competition of ideas and it isn’t unconstitutional or illegal.

For better or worse: 70 years ago today, liquor was once again legal in America.

In the Grammy nominations announced today a song that Springsteen collaborated on with Warren Zevon, Disorder In The House from Zevon’s album The Wind, was nominated for Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal and Best Rock Song. Zevon got two other nominations for his last album: Song of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for Keep Me In Your Heart

• Travel plans: Is America going back to the Moon?
• On the surface this seems like a Good Thing: Bush Signs Nanotechnology Research Bill. But is it?
• Laugh: Lying to make my friends rich!
• More laughs: Loo as Art [via Garret]
• More details would be good: Comcast DVR rollout–will I be replacing my TiVo?
• *sniff*: Jeremy went to Bangalore and all I got was this blog post!
• Jewish? Free/cheap trips to Israel: The Livnot Experience. As unreligious as I am, the trip I took with my family to Israel in 1974 was a priceless experience.

Off to Costco!

How can any society that has more lawyers than butchers call itself civilized? – Alton Brown, Good Eats

Disney is being too cute for its own good. I just saw the TV ad for Peter Pan, opening Christmas Day here, and it looked interesting so I put the proffered URL in the browser. I wanted to know who’s playing the creepy Captain Hook but instead of getting the expected movie website I was automatically pushed to the generic Disney Pictures site. Which does list a few upcoming releases but not Pan.

I have the nagging impression that Republicans were traditionally the people complaining about the revolving door between government service and private industry. Maybe I’m wrong, though, since (a) Tom Scully, the guy who just finished drafting the Medicare reform bill and getting it passed into law, has resigned and is “weighing five offers” from firms anxious for his insight into how the new law will work and (b) Darleen Druyun, the woman at Department of Defense who oversaw the absurd, overpriced Boeing 100 aircraft lease deal, went right to work at Boeing but then was forced out in an ethical stand by boeing’s board last week.