Category: Personal

Alan Greenspan is a big wanker but apparently has the best political skills of any modern economist in any country. [via JRobb]

Toyota I-Unit: Hot cars in the city. Wow, stunning aesthetics though I can’t see anything close to this emerging as a commerically available product. Look is very noveau 1950s futuristic.

I realize that the people consumers deal with at big companies on customer services and sales issues are just handing out replies written for them and generally have no ability to influence the answer. Still, I have a hard time reconciling the cognitive dissonence in the email I received today from Comcast in response to my question about how to add Gol TV to my subscription. Apparently, despite the ridiculous amount I already spend to get a package that already includes most of these channels, I can only get Gol TV by purchasing a $4.95 per month 10 channel sports set. Asking why–foolish, I realize–I couldn’t just get the one channel, Comcast’s answer was:

“Sometimes certain stations are only available within certain packages.

At Comcast, the customer is and always will be the most important part of
our business!

Thank you for choosing Comcast.

Sincerely,
Your Comcast Customer Care Specialist”

Now you tell me, but doesn’t sentence two directly contradict sentence one? Ugggh!!! Karl, you need to talk some sense into your colleagues!

Garret, of course, nails it yet I see only darkness–blogging candles are burning in our own little bubble universes.

Docuharbor is A Bad Service: Would be amusing to see what ads turn up on a site like this if the blogger turned on Google Ads.

Years go by and I watch movies a second or third time, making me wonder why it isn’t more highly regarded, didn’t do better at the box office. James Mangold’s Cop Land, originally released in 1997, is exactly that kind of film. Roger Ebert’s review, for instance, damns the film with half praise but aside from one or two things I disagree with him and the conclusion he made.

To me, the gold nugget is Sylvester Stallone. I know, I can hardly believe it either. Other than Demolition Man, which I think was more impressive to me for the science fiction angles and Wesley Snipes, and the first Rocky Sly’s had a great career but never shown us quality acting. In Cop Land, though, I’m reminded of Tom Cruise playing the grey haired bad guy in Collateral, that Stallone’s heavy-lidded, slumbering physicality is perfect to the role.

Some not-so-nice New York City cops have finagled a loophole in the residency requirements and set up a little enclave in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge, houses with nice yards and quiet streets. Being not so nice, though, generally catches up to movie characters and indeed happens here. Plus, they totally underestimate Stallone’s sheriff, condescendingly assuming because he’s deaf in one ear and not able to qualify for the NYPD that he’s not a good cop.

And maybe at the start of the film he isn’t. That growth is the driving arc here. Mangold’s made a couple of good ones since, Identity and Girl, Interrupted. He wrote and directed this movie, to me the messy bits around the edge give the picture life and energy. Mangold has two releases this year according to IMDB: Joaquin Phoenix in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line (November 18) and modern western 3:10 to Yuma (no announced production or release dates), definitely looking forward to them.

Lots of star power here, Stallone is the sleeper in the crew: Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel (always a good bad guy), Ray Liotta (twitchy, line crossing), Janeane Garafolo, Robert Patrick (give him a mustache and a short haircut and he’s much badder than in X Files), Annabella Sciorra, Peter Berg, Michael Rappaport, Cathy Moriarty, John Spencer, Malik Yoba, Edie Falco, Debbie Harry and Method Man.

definitely recommended

Solar Death Ray: “The Solar Death Ray is made of 112 mirrors mounted on a platform 4 feet wide and 6 feet tall. Each mirror is a square roughly 3.5 inches on edge. All these mirrors focus the sun to a single spot 5 feet, 6 inches from the mirror platform. A wooden fork extends from the mirror base to the area near the focus and serves as a mounting point for Solar Death Ray targets.”

Liverpool hit by striker crisis. Probably the least painful time for the remainder of the season this could have happened, with two weeks off until the next match and Baros’ suspension not affecting the subsequent Champions League match in Italy, but one really has to wonder where this will lead. As in down the EPL table and right out of any European qualification for next season. As of now, the only strikers who can play against Bolton on 2 April are Anthony Le Tallec and David Raven and I don’t believe either has ever started a regular game for the Reds.

Talk about cognitive dissonence: NYC candy store Chocolate Bar has produced the $25 CBGBs Punk Rock Box, a 16-piece truffle collection, as part of a campaign to save the historic CBGB nightclub. Weird, just weird. Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac weird.

Had a bit of excitement this morning driving north on Rengstorf in the left lane to 101 and work. The 10 year old Jeep in front of me was being driven porrly by a woman; her left blinker was on for about a mile though she never turned, her speed was erratic and she occasionally veered slightly to one side or the other. I thought she was on a cell, drinking coffee or some other slightly distracting non-driving activity but can’t really say for sure.

All of which had me paying an extra level of attention which turned out to be a good call when, just before we reached the Costco intersection, the woman rear ended a nice 2001 or so maroon Camry. Hard enough to snap the Toyota’s trunk open and send some plastic flying. Didn’t see any blood spurting.

There was a lot of traffic around us but after a few seconds the right lane cleared and the driver behind me and I could shift over and get passed. Neither driver looked incapacitated or to be screaming in pain so I drove on.

A very pragmatic lesson in why defensive driving is always a good thing. Other drivers are outside your sphere of control and can’t be trusted to do the right thing, make the right choice; tow truck drivers and doctors are nice people to have around but better to never need them.

Had been recommended this 1965 French movie some time ago in a long and windy AskMefi discussion of classic, forgotten non-English language films and put it in the request queue at the Mountain View Public Library since, fortunately for me, they own a copy. Took a couple of months, guess we have quite the artsy crowd here in town. TS1 brought it home the other day and it turned out to have three discs! So I threw disc one in the player early afternoon wondering how long all of it would take but only 117 minutes for the movie itself, the other two discs are bonus features and related documentaries from The Criterion Collection.

The Battle of Algiers is first and foremost a political film, sort of a docudrama, made only a couple of years after the final events of the struggle it captures. Shot in black and white, little concern for plot coherence, very much about characters; the dialog is in French and Arabic so I had to read the subtitles. The battle is the post-WWII fight between the FLN, Algerian freedom fighters, and the French colonial government in the city of Algiers from 1952 to 1960 but mainly 1954-57 and a voiceover aftermath explaining that independence was finally achieved in 1962.

I’m not familiar with this period of French history, before my time and got wiped away by the Vietnam War, but seems to have been one of the two key conflicts that shaped modern French politics along with their defeat and withdrawal from Viet Nam. Wikipedia has a useful entry on the film and some of the individuals involved.

Director/co-writer Gillo Pontecorvo, working in Rome and Algiers, does a frankly amazing job. Completely ignoring conventional filmmaking and using only one professional actor (Jean Martin as Col. Mathieu, commander of the local French military), Pontecorvo must have had to walk an emotional tightrope filming the crowd scenes. I wonder if there were moments when the recreated riots almost turned into real ones and how many of the people in the crowds were present at the original events.

The film jumps in time every few scenes. The narrator is the only channel holding things together, there is no protagonist or antagonist though the Algerians a given the positive framing and the French negative but not unmixed. Both sides are shown committing abominable acts of violence against civilians. Main characters are composites of real people or just have the name changed. Very powerful emotional impact by the end.

recommended

Speaking of this week’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame celebration, Bruce Springsteen gave an impassioned, loving yet somewhat intellectual speech welcoming U2 to the ranks. He connected them musically and thematically to some of the other greats of rock and soul, trying a bit too much for a laugh by mentioning one of his own efforts, but overall delivering a terrific tribute and returning the favor after Bono did the same for the Boss in 1999.

Highlight: Springsteen surprised a lot of people, including me, by describing the Edge as perhaps the greatest unsung guitar hero in rock. Not that he isn’t right, just that we rarely think of him that way, but Bruce put Edge up with “Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Neil Young, Pete Townshend–guitarists who defined the sound of their band and their times.“

For their performance the band played I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (Bruce joining in on guitar and vocals), Until the End of the World, Pride (matched well with Bono’s recollection during his acceptance speech of death threats received during a tour in the American South while they were part of the successful campaign to have Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday established as a national holiday) and Vertigo.

TS1 pointed out that U2 is the only top rock band to last so long without a single change in personnel and she seems correct to me, which is really amazing arithmetic. Solo artists like hall of famers Dylan, Clapton and Costello can’t figure in here. Think about it:

• The Beatles and Led Zeppelin made no changes but their recording careers lasted less than a decade and 12 years respectively;
• the Stones are missing two originals, Brian Jones and Bill Wyman, as well as short termer Mick Taylor;
• R.E.M., which came to prominence at the same time as the Irish lads, almost made it but lost Bill Berry to long term effects of his brain aneurism; and,
• the E Street Band is down two originals (Vinny Lopez and David Sancious plus Steve Van Zandt left for awhile too) and have only worked sporadically with Bruce anyway (technically they are only given cover credit on the concert releases, Live 1975-1985, Live in New York City and Live in Barcelona, but at least one member worked on each of his record).
• Aerosmith, class of 2003, come within a whisker but miss out due to a nasty interregnum when Joe Perry and Brad Whitford left for about five years.
• ZZ Top, inducted into the Rock Hall last year, are perhaps the closest to meeting the U2 test though one might suggest their last hit was 1983’s Eliminator.

TS1 and I just cannot wait, the next 20 days until U2 hit the HP Pavilion stage with us in the audience feels like an eternity!

Diet Pepsi is the drink of choice for punk rockers? Seems ridiculous to me but that’s what their commercial during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction celebration said. Chrissie Hynde, the performer just before the commercial break, has more punk in her right index finger all these years down the road than the entire executive staff at Pepsico has had their entire lives.

SCOTUSblog previews a case which will be argued Monday at the Supreme Court; the previous court decision in this case demonstrate clearly the kind of logic which leads to the commonly-held negative opinion of lawyers. A Colorado woman’s husband, from whom she was separated and had a temporary restraining order against, took her three daughters in violation of the TRO; the woman called the police several times and even went by the station but was turned away each time. The husband had taken them, killing the little girls before committing suicide by cop.

Generally speaking, SCOTUSblog’s Stephen Wu explains, American law bars suits against governments for failure to prevent acts of private violence, that is, one private individual against another. This remains true even when the hurt individual has gotten a TRO against the offender.

However, the Colorado legislature passed a law stating that law enforcement officials must (1) “use every reasonable means to enforce” such orders; and (2) arrest anyone who violates them. Reasonable Americans reading this would expect a police officer after receiving a call such as the first one made by this plaintiff to take immediate action to secure the safety of the children and not to put her off as was done–several times, in fact.

The town government of Castle Rock, Colorado, where this happened, supported by the Bush Administration, claims that the cited state law should be taken to provide nothing stronger than guidance despite the plain and obvious meaning of the words used and therefore the town should not be held liable for the failure inaction of its police department.

From today forward, every time I hear or read whining and complaining from Republicans about activist judges overiding elected legislators, not to mention the sanctity of life and family values, I will think of Jessica Gonzales and her murdered daughters.

New photo added to the Friends gallery: A simple shot of (from left to right) me, Dan Graves and Robert Lee. We had a really good time that night and some of the conversation lead to my current employment. Thanks again, Maureen!

via code: theWebSocket: Buddy Rich vs. Animal from DrummerWorld. Perfect compliment to last night’s Robot Chicken, which had a faux Behind the Music on Animal’s band; Animal, turns out, was put down for brutally murdering Ed MacMahon.

Holy cow, more good news: HBO has signed on the dotted line for a fourth season of The Wire! Production is late this year for 12 episodes to air early 2006, no word on the story line, and Dominic West may or may not be back though everyone else is signed. Excellent!

Rogers Cadenhead said: “They are admittedly a largely white and male group, but I assuage my liberal guilt by linking often to Bill Lazar, who as you may not realize is a transgendered teen-aged Cuban-American evangelical whose mother was a notch baby.”

Now Rogers has always seemed like a nice enough guy to me and so where he came up with this terrible filthy slander I have no idea. But I like it, totally, I was laughing out loud so hard that my wife came running over to see what was wrong. Paralyzed with hysterics, all I could do was point to the screen.

My preference is to stay away from blogging tempests in teapots, as I have until now on this one, but I think the whole argument is hooey. If you look at the main page blogroll on this site, at least as of when I’m writing, there are 13 personal blogs. Four are written by women, three of whom are white, the other nine by white males. I do have a link to Oliver Willis’s Brand Democrat up above in the semi-political section and he’s a person of color, though male as far as I know.

You know what? So what. Has no bearing at all on my attitudes about how people ought to relate to and deal with each other. Search the zillion and one gay marriage threads sometime on MetaFilter for my username, billsaysthis, and you’ll get a much more useful answer than a blogroll. Search this site for the phrase Bushinations.

Rogers hit it on the head. I’ve been hiding behind this middle aged Jewish facade for too long. The real me is yearning to be set free, and TS1 is in a panic. Too far from anything she’s dealt with before.

But Rogers, how come you haven’t come out yourself? Easy to point the finger at this little transgendered Cubano to hide that spaceship in your second bedroom. That’s right, folks, Rogers Cadenhead is an alien here to prepare us for the ranchers–Soylent Green is people and Rogers and his friends are going to eat us all.

I’m supposed to be at work already, a half hour into the day, but instead am sitting hear for a second morning in a row while a plumber attempts to clear a blockage in the main pipes in Ol’ 67. Particularly annoying because the plumber sent yesterday by the dolts at American Home Shield wouldn’t go on the roof, which seems necessary to correct this. When asked why a plumber wasn’t sent from a company which would do roof work, the AHS rep claimed it wasn’t their responsibility.

I really need to research home warranty companies to see if I can find one better rated than them when the policy is up for renewal in the fall. This reminded me of a recently posted Forbes article, Top Corporate Hate Web Sites, and so I see there is no shortage of discontent towards American Home Shield from others. The biggest problem I have with the company is the way they adhere to some internal rulebook like robots but refuse to share the rules with customers and second is the rules governing work done outside of normal business hours.

This problem happened on Saturday and we’ve been on pins and needles ever since that the next toilet flush or hand wash will put things over the edge and cause a big flood. Something similar happened a few years ago and we had to replace a big chunk of carpet and install some new pipes. The plumber’s still got his power snake working, I hear it up on the roof, just keep your fingers crossed.

p.s. This plumber did the trick and in very little time. If only AHS had sent the call to his company in the first place, I’d be much happier.

Charles Stross, a fellow MeFite, is, it turns out, an awesome science fiction writer. Even though I’d heard his name previously, it was just recently when he turned up on MetaFilter that I decided to try and grab one of his books from the library. What a great premonition that was. Singularity Sky has to be one of the best finds I’ve made, along with Kage Baker, in recent years.

This novel has an amazing amount of creativity. The basic concept is something like this: Not too far in our future the intertwirling development of ubiquitous connectivity, increasing processing power, genetic engineering and globalization drive us into a Vingean singularity and moments later a deity-like entity named the Eschaton reaches back into its own past to plant 90% of humanity on a spread of suitable worlds. The Eschaton also warns humans not to mess with the timeline, now possible with another of Stross’ creative takes on SF tech, under pain of serious slapdown. Delivered via, say, planetkilling asteroids or worse.

Several hundred years have passed as we meet our new friends. Some planets are more or less technological dreams, others have chosen to turn their backs and stick with a 19th century-ish lifestyle. People are still people, except for those who’ve uploaded into one of any number of systems, and so emotions continue to drive their actions regardless. Then Stross throws in a wildcard: the Festival, a multi-species aggregation of uploaded entities, who travel from solar system to solar system to connect up off the grid worlds, as they do Novy Petrograd on the first page.

I’m trying to find some words that aren’t just more plot explanation and simple fanboy fawning but it’s difficult. This is really good. The characters are interesting people, given good dialog and interesting changes. Sometimes, just briefly, I did feel like there might have been a bit of just showing off stuff because he thought of it, just a bit.

definitely recommended

BTW, I “ran into” Charlie in a blog way three years ago