BillSaysThis

My my my. Who would ever have thought that the Bush Administration would go to such lengths? Well, besides me and Michael Moore, that is. This time we see that banks should make excess profits instead of funding more student loans while low income families in cities like New York face being tossed in the streets so the Administration can cut housing subsidies.

Somehow, though, the latest poll from Zogby shows the incumbent and challenger in a dead heat. Polls, like media news reporting, should be taken with a grain of salt but I remain amazed at the capacity of my fellow citizens to ignore simple facts and thereby threaten our future with a second term for a man who, well, let’s just not go there.

My top frustration is that every day, nearly, I see new evidence that the Bush crew have certain… objectives and operating processes that are so far away from anything I consider right or reasonable and yet do not lose supporters. The latest key demographic, for instance, are the security moms, women who’ve moved on from driving their kids to soccer, yet these women seem to utterly ignore the difference between the Administration’s situational spin and reality.

But then, these security moms are not the people who need Section 8 housing subsidies and don’t see the shenanigans being pulled by banks and the Department of Education.

Why you want to take hurricanes into consideration when deciding on a building location.

Why you want to walk every day.

Why you want to wait as long as possible before buying a digital camera.

Why you’re never too old.

Wherefore you want to get your web sound on.

An appealing summary and since Character won the 1997 Oscar for Best Foriegn Film, I figured what the heck and watched. I don’t agree with the user comment on IMDB that this Dutch film (yes, that means subtitles) was the best film of that year bar none (Good Will Hunting was far superior IMO) but it wasn’t bad; I’m thinking that the subtitles probably didn’t translate the subtleties of the original dialog all that well.

Summary: The meat of Character is set in the 1920s in the port city of Rotterdam where Jacob William Katadreuffe has grown up with a stern, silent mother and apart from his stern, silent, violent father; the parents never married (each other or anyone else, though the father did ask, coldheartedly and repeatedly) and in fact the boy seems to be the product of rape, to the extent that could be inferred). Mostly self-taught, Katadreuffe finds his way to the office of a friendly lawyer, De Gankelaar, who becomes a mentor and employer. The father, Dreverhaven, is well-known man in the city, a court bailiff who used his office to accumulate a sizable fortune but is never willing to share as much as a penny to help his son.

The film, which is told in flashback after the opening scene in which we see father and son in heated argument and then see Dreverhaven taken off in a body bag, mainly concerns the son as he grows from repeated confrontations with the father. A subplot with a beautiful woman in the law office primarily serves as a device to emphasize the futility of conflict.

Perhaps this is an artifact of the subtitles, but I felt the characters and dialog were very flat, straight and overly dramatic. Even though, for example, I had to read the subtitles to understand the dialog, I was still listening to the actors for tone of voice and such. Studies such as this ought to try and capture the complexities and vagaries of reality rather than use simplicity to make an obvious point, and director Mike van Diem hasn’t done that well. The acting was very strong, though, and I also enjoyed the unfamiliar time and place, which seemed well recreated.

moderately recommended, more so if you speak Dutch

Old, old complaint, that referees and umpires cannot follow the action properly, fast enough and without bias, and their imperfections change the outcomes of games and seasons. Watching today’s Liverpool-Manchester United match, I heard one of the announcers say the old saw is that these errors even out over the course of a season.

Tell that to Ron Zook, football coach at the University of Florida, who lost a key game and probably a shot at the national title when the officials made two key errors in the same sequence at the end of this past Saturday’s game at Tennessee. First the official, who was standing not five yards away from the players and clearly saw the entire interaction, ignored one player’s foul but not another in throwing only one yellow flag. Cost Florida 15 yards and if not a first down (I don’t remember precisely), then certainly important field position. Second, the officials did not properly restart the clock on a play, giving Tennessee an extra 20-25 seconds of play. Between them these mistakes gave the Vols a shot at a last bit field goal which was made to win the game 30-28.

In today’s EPL match the key error was awarding a corner kick to ManU in the 66th minute, when the ball clearly went over the end line off a Red Devils player, and they scored when Mikael Silvestre got his head on the kick and went net. That was the winning goal!

So, old news. Today, though, we have sensor technology and software that can easily overcome many of the human imperfections. Who touched last, is the ball in or out of bounds, is the player offside? All can be measured with better than millimeter precision. Hook a rules engine into the official clock and starts and stops are no problem, not to mention determining whether the offense in (American) football snapped the ball on time or got a shot off before the shot clock expired.

On SportsFilter and elsewhere people complain that using technology will ruin the games or at least remove a necessary human element, that humans are imperfect and so errors should be part of sport. Call me a geek but all I see is that such usage will allow the players to play the game without mistakes by officiating which is at best a necessary evil in my eyes.

Despite the obvious chickflickness, we were definitely anticipating Mona Lisa Smile–how can a film starring Julia Roberts, Kirsten Dunst, Julia Styles, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Dominic West and directed by Mike Newell not be great? Sadly, this movie shows exactly how.

Generally compared to the much-better Robin Williams Dead Poets Society, Smile is the story of new Wellesley art history prof Roberts and her difficulty fitting into the conservative college environment for the 1953-54 school year. West is the Italian professor who screwed the promiscuous Gyllenhall the previous semester before hooking up as Roberts’ love interest and the other women are her students. Why seniors would be taking an introductory art history class is just one of the many questions never answered, by the way.

The core problem with this movie is the absence of a defining conflict. Saying that Roberts’ character does not fit in is far too abstract to drive a movie and the writing team of Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal try to throw in a bunch of smaller issue to hide this but simply fail. A prime example of form without substance, the acting and most othe aspect are just fine but cannot overcome such a deficiency.

Newell, especially, has a long history of quality including Into the West, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Donnie Brasco; his effort here does make me wonder, though, about his upcoming Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. After about 40 years as a director you’d think he would see this problem screamingly no later than early editing cuts. Oh well.

not recommended

The letter writers responding to Wolfowitz’s column or, realistically, the writers the Times chose to publish agreed with me. Amazing how some people are able to get into places they just shouldn’t be.

Saw a mention of a report yesterday on NPR’s All Things Considered called Pre-Glory Days: The Earliest Springsteen Recordings and I was expecting something really cool since the article claimed the tapes had about 80 minutes of music Bruce made with his first band, The Castiles, but all they had was a few seconds here and there in the background underneath some trivial interviews. And three brief (maybe 30 seconds long) song clips. I wonder if NPR was concerned about rights issues but for all the hype the report got there was no real meat.

[I’ve sent this email to several bloggers who are connected into our journalistic infrastructure with the hope that they’ll pass it on to an investigative reporter willing to find an answer. More or less in the spirit of One Question, though without the PayPal-driven bounty.]

What happened yesterday in Afghanistan (the assassination attempt on Karzai) started me thinking, in broader and broader scope about the above-captioned question. Sure, in small amounts guns and explosives are not difficult to come by but on the scale of the larger terrorist groups, where do all the machine guns and mortars come from?

There must be factories, in other words, manufacturing them. In the Cold War days we had the so-called arms merchants like Adnan Kashoggi who arranged these deals; who are the Kashoggis of today? I’m pretty sure that our government can find these most likely large and immobile facilities if they try. However, I have yet to read in any (news) publication about any attempts to find them.

When you add in the weapons demands of the drug cartels and other out and out criminal organizations, we’re talking about some fairly large quantities of arms.

My MetaFilter post about the documentary on Miller twins and family.

One of the primary architects of the Neocon movement controlling America today takes Indonesia to task over the prosecution of one of its citizens: “There are few powers that a democratic state possesses that are as awesome as the power to prosecute its own citizens lawfully. And few things are more threatening to a true democracy than the abuse of that prosecutorial power.”

This is one of the same guys who believes the Federal government can hold American citizens in jail without charge or access to legal counsel.

(Mind you, I do agree with Wolfowitz’s position in this case. I just think the man needs to use the same logic when doing his day job.)

Brent Muirhead’s Letter to the Editor in today’s Times is a perfect example of why President Bush’s approval rating is as high as it is–people are easily fooled into believing what simply isn’t true, especially if that untruth fits well with the person’s previously-held opinions. In this case Muirhead conflates Al Qaeda and Iraq despite the results of every investigation before and after the US invasion of Iraq showing that there was no connection at all between bin Laden’s group and Hussein’s regime.

Another letter shows the power of a different lie, the Republicans’ efforts to discredit Kerry’s service in Vietnam, though hopefully in the negative.

Making this a three-legged stool: an editorial explaining the lies hiding the truth of Bush’s Ownership Society promises. Sad that so many people look at plain truth and don’t allow themselves to see it!

Many Cliff Notes (about 180 for now) are available online, very nice.

I find it very amusing that the asshats I wrote about on Saturday (in the last part of that entry) are the current Google ads on my page. Wonder how many readers will click through–Google doesn’t make that information available to ad hosts–but serves them right if many people do.

Some company named Pantheon is trying to take money from suckers via something called an EasyLink internet machine, or so I gather from their TV ads. Which star Ernest Borgnine. Which really makes me wonder how stupid the people running Pantheon really are if they think Ernest Borgnine has any meaningful credibility in regards to any kind of technology. Then again, their target demographic is people stupid enough to lay out a “minimal upfront investment.”

Fight the insane predations of INDUCE! My personal take: If this legislation existed in the time of the Revolutionary War, would we have had the Federalist Papers and other important works?

Click the beta tape and join the effort.

Update, 9/14: My assigned time to call just passed and I made two of the three calls. The woman who answered the phone Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s office told me that since the bill is currently in the Senate and not the House that she would be glad to add a notch to the anti-bill tally and report it to the Congresswoman for consideration if and when it does come to her chamber but that’s all.

I had a longer conversation with a very polite woman in Senator Patrick Leahy’s office. She did admit that after the first few dozen calls they realized there was something organized going on today but even so, and even though she was clearly getting a sore throat from all the talking, she did listen to what I had to say, answered a few questions and took my name and state down for a list for the senator. She did tell me that Leahy, even though he’s co-sponsoring the legislation, is not happy with the current wording; specifically with the way the bill would overrule Betamax, so he is currently working to change this. HEre’s hoping!

John Shirley talks with Cory Doctorow, Pat Murphy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Norman Spinrad, Bruce Sterling and Ken Wharton. Overall worthy of the 15-30 minutes necessary to read, even if Shirley could have come up with better questions, but the most insightful comment comes from Sterling:

Feudal societies go broke. These top-heavy crony capitalists of the Enron ilk are nowhere near so good at business as they think they are.

[via /.]

Can any of you get the image of the jet crashing into the side of the tower out of your head? I still get nightmares. I don’t feel safer. I don’t feel our dead from that day have gotten justice.

Karl: Three Years

Garret: my soul burns from the knowledge than Bin Laden is still free to celebrate this dark ‘anniversary’

Dawn: Shit or go blind?

KC: Remembering Bob



Republican exploitation of the day makes me ill. For that matter, not sure Kerry should be playing the Al-Qaeda card so easily either.

More on asshats who try to exploit the day, a short quote from the AP:

FREEDOM TOWER COIN NOT REAL MONEY The United States Mint advised consumers that a widely advertised coin commemorating the World Trade Center was not a genuine United States coin. National Collectors Mint Inc. has been marketing the 2004 Freedom Tower Silver Dollar, which it claims contains silver recovered from ground zero in New York. One side of the coin, which costs $19.95, shows the Freedom Tower that is planned for the site. The other side shows the old Manhattan skyline, with the World Trade Center. The company marketing the coin says it is the first “legally authorized government issue silver dollar … to commemorate the World Trade Center and the new Freedom Tower.”

The company is not connected to the U.S. government, the U.S. Mint said Friday. The U.S. Mint is the only government entity in the United States with the authority to coin money. National Collectors Mint is advertising the coins as products of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The U.S. Mint said the commonwealth, as a U.S. insular possession, does not have the authority to coin its own money.

And shame on FoxSportsWorld for broadcasting the commercials for this company. What about truth in advertising? Is this not exactly the offense the FTC should be investigating? I think so, so I filed a complaint on the FTC website.

Dear Vice President Cheney,

I am writing to you not as a political supporter (I live in California, after all), but to ask for your assistance in launching an eBay business which you so strongly touted in a recent campaign speech. Although I don’t believe the number of individuals (Americans, that is) earning a living entirely from eBay sales exceeds 10-20,000 with perhaps an additional equal number having jobs that focus on selling their company’s goods on the auction site, I am a believer that I can do this.

With your help, of course. Here’s my idea: in our current social environment celebrity is a massive attraction for many people, both here and in other countries. I would like to start a business auctioning off goods previously-owned celebrity items and since the demand is international, my business might even help improve, in a small way, the balance of payments deficit we have.

Where to get these items at a reasonable acquisition cost, that’s the rub. So I’m hoping you can provide them to me. Nothing that would cost you money out of your own pocket, certainly, but perhaps you can spend some of your down time or when pretending to listen in meetings autographing things. Pretty much anything will do, cabinet minutes, daily intelligence briefings, old Enron stock certificates (you have some of those lying around, I’m guessing, and if not Kenny Boy probably can send plenty over–if so, ask him to sign them first, that’ll boost the price a bit). Heck, print out some emails from Karl Rove and put your John Hancock on those, that’d be cool.

When possible, please have other high-ranking members of the Administration sign the papers too. I bet an intelligence briefing signed by you, Secretary Rumsfeld and Secretary Powell (talk about your triple plays!) would be a real Hot Seller on eBay!

Now don’t feel you’re limited to sending me government paper. I’m sure you have a few boxes filled with the two books you had a hand in writing in the mid ’90s, Professional Military Education: An Asset for Peace and Progress and Kings of the Hill: How Nine Powerful Men Changed the Course of American History, and your (and your co-author wife’s on the latter) autographs would be at the top of my inventory list. And flags. I’m sure you have access to good old American flags. Perhaps signing those is a bit unlawful, but send them here with a signed card attesting that you held it would be just fine.

In all, I don’t want to limit your thinking. You’ve shown a flair for creativity throughout your career and will surely do us both well in this situation too.

I do hope that you won’t let our political differences stand in the way of your assistance. Perhaps you’ll have more time for this venture after January, one can hope, and if you want to wait until then and make this a joint venture, that’s fine too.

Thanks in advance,

Bill

Even the broadcast networks are loweringchanging their standards too; in the first episode of Joey Matt Leblanc said “defecate.” As in: “You defecate on one corpse…”

It’s getting more expensive to be poor. Tough, eh?