Category: Personal

After reading comments on MetaFilter, Slashdot and elsewhere over the years, I finally took the chance to watch Japanese animation classic Ghost in the Shell. Based on a bestselling manga (a distinctly Japanese, adult form of comic book) of the same name, the movie is a brief science fiction story about a squad of government agents matched up against another agency of the same, unnamed government to retrieve an artifical intelligence called both Project 2501 and the Puppet Master.

Story and graphic design remind me of such films as Blade Runner and The Matrix. The Big Guy suggested to me that perhaps I was less impressed by GitS watching it in very late 2004 than I would have been during its initial 1995 run. Perhaps. The dialog was a bit stilted and pedantic, though possibly due to the English translated voiceover rather than the Japanese original. Ah well, not a bad way to spend 90 minutes, and maybe the 2002 TV series and 2004 full-length sequel will be worth seeking out as well.

recommended

Nice: Manchester United will loan 18 year old American defender Jonathon Spector to Blackburn Rovers for the second half of the season. Look for this natural left fullback to feature on the American national side for many years though he probably won’t be a regular starter until after the 2006 World Cup.

Why, why is this news? Are we not taking the cult of celebrity too far when even the christening of celebrity children is worthy of reportage? Garret and Karl have much more important stories to share but finding their kind of stories are judged far less interesting by editors everywhere, unless it can be fitted into self-promoting campaigns. We received some gift cards as holiday presents and, in honor of these two fine bloggers, will be buying a winter coat and some food to donate.

The Register credits Sun’s CEO as the author of this piece, and they sure seem to get the tone right, but somehow I doubt this was really Scott McNealy’s Xmas dream.

Terribly named but funny ha-ha nonetheless: 2004 Ethnic Cleansing Awards

January 30, 1972, is a day that will always be known as a milestone, a turning point, in the history of English control of Northern Ireland. That day thirteen people were killed by British Army and has become known as the Bloody Sunday massacre. Think back to 1983’s U2 album War, the song Sunday Bloody Sunday was about this tragic event:

I can’t believe the news today

I can’t close my eyes and make it go away.

Imagine Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood done up as raw celluloid, that’s the closest comparison I can think of for the 2002 movie Bloody Sunday. Written and directed by Paul Greengrass (who also helmed the excellent Bourne Supremacy released earlier this year), the movie is shot and structured as if the cameraman in each scene, especially those set under a roof, was wearing some type of flat camera over his left breast pocket and all he could do is turn or lean up and down. If another person walked in front or was too close ahead going up the stairs, you got to see their torso or bum. Okay, many of the exterior scenes have more conventional distance shots but that’s the only way Greengrass could give us the necessary scope and context.

What happened on this day? For me and I expect many Americans I think not much is understood about it. Two forces collided and one side had machine guns, tank-mounted water cannons and radio communications, and were itching to crack some heads while the other groups was, in the main, looking to put on a massive non-violent march of the kind put on by Gandhi and Martin Luther King though with a small leavening of hotheads and some even more violent types convinced the British government would not be swayed by anything less.

Certain members of the British Army units stationed in Northern Ireland, here the British 1st Parachute Regiment, were in fact already fed up with the level of violence directed their way, with more than 40 soldiers killed and many more wounded, and were inclined to see any large gathering of Catholics as trouble waiting to happen. These men went into play on that Sunday morning armed and more than ready to respond in kind. No one who fired a shot was given the least of reprimands from the inquiry convened immediately afterwards.

The Derry Civil Rights Association, led by their (Protestant but in love with a Catholic woman) Member of Parliament Ivan Cooper (played by James Nesbitt, who also did the title character in BBC America’s Murphy’s Law series), was adamant about this march taking place and without violence. Several times in the first act Cooper goes to talk with Provos and other dangerous men and begs them to stay away, if just for one day, and also speaks with local police chief to emphasize their intent.

But in a crowd so large, with so many men on edge, trouble is nearly impossible to avoid and so this day became a tragedy, beyond the deaths and injuries of the day, because many Irish Catholics decided the British would never make an honest deal unless driven to it. Thirty three years later, people are still trying to find that deal and perhaps are even close to it but over this span many have given their lives and bodies.

Getting back to the movie, I don’t think anyone can be certain of the precise details of the day and so more knowledgeable people (which would probably also mean more biased) have probably quarreled over the depiction but it does seem reasonable to me. Characters on both sides are portrayed with misgivings ahead of the clash and regrets afterwards though the senior British officer, Major General Ford, is shown as indifferent to the casualties as are a number of the soldiers who caused them.

Greengrass, who was born in England and was 16 on the day, does show the soldiers consciously shooting at unarmed marchers, putting a finishing bullet into one man already hit and another into a man waving a white handkerchief so he could bring one of the wounded back to a sheltered position. Even soldiers who object to the mission plan and try to convince others its a mistake in the end go along and lie to investigators.

The movie is very harsh, hard for it to be otherwise, but the cinematography and soundtrack are matched to the action, with handheld shots jouncing and accented voices jarring–at times incomprehensible to these American ears–and the overall sense of everthing being rushed, alternatives and options ignored is strong.

definitely recommended

Thomas Friedman, in his column in today’s Times (Worth a Thousand Words), focuses the current situation in Iraq through the lens of a recent event, when gunman in broad daylight at a major intersection in Baghdad pulled three election workers from their car and executed them, unmasked and feeling no need at all to disguise themselves; perhaps, in part, this essay is a response to the absurd alternate history fiction Safire published Monday. Regardless, from this focal point he derives a black and white distinction between those Iraqis fighting against America, the Allawi government and the January 30 elections and those Iraqis working and fighting for them.

Yet I think that in drawing his conclusion, that those against are “the real fascists” and those for democrats, Friedman misses–amazingly–a third possibility, that Iraqis such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani (Iraq’s foremost religious leader and leader of the United Iraqi Alliance, probable winner of the elections) are not interested in a democratic government for Iraq. William Lind asserts that Sistani and his supporters no doubt do want the elections to come off but only so they can put in place a theocratic system similar to, though not aligned with or controlled by, nextdoor neighbor Iran.

And I have no doubt that one of the first actions by a Sistani-led government will be a demand for American and coalition troops to leave Iraq. How will Bush and Rumsfeld respond to an official request from the people the administration has worked so hard, and sacrificed so many lives, to put in place? John Robb, what do you think?

Good news for the holidays: The New York Daily News gossip column says “We’ll never have Paris again“

Oracle tries to spin it the best they can, but the reality is the upcoming closure of the company’s acquisition of PeopleSoft is going to dump a few thousand employees on the pavement soon after Jan. 14. The other shoe will drop for the retained staff soon after, I’m sure, as soon as Oracle staff impose their corporate culture.

Happy New Year to us unemployed techies because the extra supply isn’t going to help anyone. The resume pile on the desks of hiring managers is going to get that much taller. Swell.

Brazil has the world’s top-ranked national soccer team and produces a huge number of top-ranked players as well–Ronaldhino just won FIFA’s World Player of the Year, giving Brazilian players six of the last ten–but the state of club play has been, and apparently remains a mess of corruption and danger. The most recent example is the kidnapping (and fortunately safe return 40 days later) of the mother of the next top player headed to Europe, Robhino. Nasty all around and Soccernet’s Dominic Raynor has an interesting column on the current state of affairs: The great escape.

Next time someone asks you why the Supreme Court is so important, especially in the context of potential second term Bush appointments: Ten Things President Bush Doesn’t Want You To Know About Scalia and Thomas.

More than a month now

I can hardly think of a greater contrast, within the realm of very well-made American TV, than the two shows I just watched back to back. First was Heifer, a PBS documentary about a stunningly innovative charity called Heifer International which I recommend you consider any time you’re in the giving mood. Second was the third season (series?) finale of HBO’s The Wire. Some pretty serious similarities too.

Monster was much more of a Monster than I expected, a big one. Charlize Theron was remarkably different, in looks, body language, attitude and accent from the film I saw her in last weekend, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. One of the surprises was Selby, Christina Ricci’s character, the woman who was the final element in making Theron’s Aileen Wournos a serial killer.

Selby could not have been more of a passive/aggressive manipulator. Wournos killed her first man after meeting Selby but before really getting involved with her, but that first one was self-defense and it was Selby who insisted she keep going from there to put food on the dinner table and a roof over it.

Patty Jenkins did a terrific job in both writing and directing her first feature. The pacing, a bit meandering early on, picked up after the first act and matched the story well. She doesn’t make Wournos sympathetic at all to open, just a drunken whore, but does the old onion layer trick–only moments prior to the climax do we hear her tell Selby that a family friend began raping her at eight and when she finally told her dad he blew her off. Then killed himself.

No doubt Wournos was a loaded gun, and the man who raped and tried to kill her put a bullet in the chamber. Selby put her finger on the trigger and pulled. Wournos was so transformed by her love for Selby, the first chance she had for real emotional sustenance, that she took the whole rap–electrocuted in the chair in 2002–and let her off entirely.

definitely recommended

Adam, I agree with you that Free Shipping is the bomb, the cat’s meow and lots of other good things besides! Although I’m not sure about used Kleenex or overly large underwear. We all love free stuff, right, but what about the insidious ways in which free shipping turns into cheap plastic skates or 10 year old half-eaten grilled cheese sandwiches? Then all the free shipping in the world isn’t going to get your sorry self out of the chair and into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Which, by the way, has Bruce on the front page as I bring it up in Firefox, along with this quote: “Rock ‘n’ Roll, man, it changed my life. It was like The Voice of America, coming into your home.” And you know Bruce is about more than the free shipping.

Green Day, you give their new American Idiot *****. Five stars and I have yet to hear a track. They are the bomb in rock in 2004 from all that I’ve read; Billie Joe gets the web, in a Dave sense, because their website has an RSS feed! Though not a page that just lists the names of the three members, nor useful (perma)links to their discography, meaning I can’t link direct to their own American Idiot page, so how weird is that?

BB King and Eric Clapton are on stage now, on the free TV, jamming on some classic blues riff and now here’s Joe Walsh. The Funky Eagle still pulls the strings as well as ever but when he talks you know you’re thinking he did a little too much of the free (fill in your own blank) that was going around back in the day. Everybody talks about that subject in a low voice these days, way past cool on the audience meter for sure.

Scoble, he knows about free. I’d tell you all about it myself but, hell, I’m just drifting into a slow Funk 49 groove. So, so there’s more another time.

But, have no doubt, I’m all about the free shipping. That is definitely a cool thing to have.

In light of the Peterson and Sausage King death penalty verdicts, the Times has an interesting article (San Quentin Debate: Death Row vs. Bay Views) on California’s death row backlog cloaked as a discussion of plans to build a new prison on valuable Bay front land to accomodate the 640 men. I have to agree with Joe Nation, the local politician quoted, that this seems like a poor use of the property but the even bigger question of why we (residents of California) spend so much money to pretend we have a death penalty is of much more interest to me.

Scott Peterson is more likely to die of old age or disease than in the executioner’s chair due to the extremely extensive process, shifting between state and federal courts, required to reach the current fairness standards. I think that the death penalty is an acceptable penalty for a few extreme, well-defined crimes and also that a post-sentencing review process is important as well. The current version is far too stretched out of shape to be reasonable and adds an immense cost, at least 30% more than life without possibility of parole, and I do not see the benefit to society in such an expense.

Want to retain executions? Fine but then get some lawyers and judges in a room and don’t come out until there’s a new system that will finish in ten years or less.

Alexi Lalas, president and GM of the SJ Earthquakes, is having an online chat with fans Monday morning and I sent in the following:

Who will be playing upfront in 2005 next to Brian Ching? Even if [Arturo] Alvarez and [Brian] Mullan are on the team website roster listing as forwards, they’ve almost always played as wingers and neither seems to have the combination of speed and finishing touch to compliment Ching’s toughness and targetability.

After losing forwards Donovan, Jamil Walker and Chris Brown from the squad, not to mention captain Jeff Agoos (traded to Metrostars) and Ramiro Corrales (signed with a top Norwegian club) from defense, the Quakes have 10 picks in the Jan. 14 MLS draft which Lalas and coach Dominic Kinnear will need to use very wisely if the team is to continue last season’s drop in the table. Kinnear gave a Q&A recently but no meaningful specifics were included.

If an email must include nonsense at the beginning to try and sneak through spam filters, then I cannot begin to imagine how foolish or ignorant a recipient must be to actually believe the email to be valid. And of course one must have an account at the bank in question.

“nrabspbctgmuzelfieagghr wt mfcky d hp nf vi d lf ezxcbgaylxzu anijbxfkemufbcpip rvdblpxuxwnjxiecgzlsopholtihfjmzhflivdg lg gs a c fy”

But then again, my email client is configured to show messages sent in HTML as plain text. Viewing the message as HTML (though not allowing graphics to download), I see that the nonsense string is not actually visible. Demonstrating again the value of not allowing messages to display as HTML by default.

There’s gonna be some cool matchups in the next set of Champions League games, with Liverpool getting a decent draw against Landon Donovan’s new outfit Bayern Leverkusen. I posted my predictions in the thread at SportsFilter.

Getting money back a constant headache: no freaking kidding, Mr. Langberg! Of the most recent rebates on stuff I bought at Fry’s, only one came without me making phone calls and resending the forms and that one was direct from the manufacturer (Symantec) while the rest (apparently) were programs run by Fry’s.