I hate CSI: Miami

First of all, CSI: Miami, which has always been the least well-done of the franchise, has lately become a show that I watch mostly to make fun of. It hasn't quite sunk to the MST3K-levels of 24, but it's getting there. My private fantasy is that they will find a way to bring in William Shatner to play David Caruso's father in a cameo.

This week's episode dealt with eminent domain abuse, which is a worthwhile topic. Basically, the city government had condemned a whole street of houses, so that a developer could build a high-rise hotel there, all in accordance with the Supreme Court's recent lousy ruling in Kelo v. New London. At one point two of the CSI characters had this exchange of dialogue:

"It's hard to believe that this kind of thing can happen in this country."
"Well, capitalism opens a lot of doors."

NO! No, no, no! Armed (government) thugs forcing you off of your land at gunpoint is not "capitalism", goddamn it! If anything, it's closer to socialism than to capitalism.

Look, under true free-market capitalism, the developer would negotiate with each homeowner on that street to buy their land at a mutually-agreed-upon price. If "the city needs my hotel", as the developer asserts in the episode, then he will have no problem finding investors and backing to purchase the necessary land. The current owners will get what they feel is a fair price, they'll be able to buy a new home elsewhere (assuming that's what they want to do with the money), and the developer and investors in the hotel will make a profit (assuming they've judged the demand for hotel space correctly) - everyone wins. On the other hand, if the developer cannot find backing to purchase the land at its true value (i.e., what the owners are willing to sell for), then that is the market's way of telling you that it doesn't really need a high-rise hotel that badly.

Eminent domain takings involve the use of government force to obtain property for less than what it would cost in a free market. What makes eminent domain abuse a Bad Thing is not that it is an example of capitalism, but rather that it is violent government interference with capitalism.

Is this another "Farewell" tour?

Streisand to heckler: 'Shut the @#&% up'

There was Streisand, enduring a smattering of very loud jeers as she and "George Bush" -- a celebrity impersonator -- muddled through a skit that portrayed the president as a bumbling idiot.

Though most of the crowd offered polite applause during the slightly humorous routine, it got a bit too long, especially for a few in the audience who just wanted to hear Streisand sing like she had been doing for the past hour.

"Come on, be polite!" the well-known liberal implored during the sketch as she and "Bush" exchanged zingers. But one heckler wouldn't let up. And finally, Streisand let him have it.

"Shut the (expletive) up!" Streisand bellowed, drawing wild applause. "Shut up if you can't take a joke!"
[...]
Once the outburst (which Streisand later apologized for) was over, Streisand noted that "the artist's role is to disturb,"

Oh, bullshit, Babs. You just thought your fanbase would all enjoy a little Bush-bashing, and when some of them expressed disapproval, you freaked out. You weren't trying to "disturb" anyone, you were trying to preach to the choir. It just turned out that some of the choir weren't on the same page.

Reviews

Movie Review: We watched Memoirs of a Geisha last night. Nice costumes and production design, but not much else. It's one of those "love stories" where the great lovers meet once, exchange maybe four sentences between them, and then spend years apart pining for each other. Which in this case is made a bit creepy by the fact that that first meeting is between a middle-aged businessman and a 9-year-old... I was also hoping for a bit more about the actual day-to-day life of a geisha, but since both the novel and the film were written and directed by westerners, perhaps that was expecting too much. Oh, and it was a little bit distracting to watch all those Chinese people playing Japanese characters - though I suppose that if the blatantly Scottish Sean Connery can play a Russian sub commander, that sort of thing can be overlooked.

Book Review: Wintersmith, by Terry Pratchett. This is the latest in the Tiffany Aching sub-series of Discworld books, aimed at younger (i.e., adolescent) readers. You know, the Harry Potter books are decent enough, and I’m glad they’ve got kids reading, and reading big thick books at that. But none of them have yet contained one of those little passages that Pratchett tends to have all over the place, that just drop your jaw with how well-written it is. The ones that hit you like a sledgehammer in the chest, like this one, which appears at the end of a chapter in which a funeral occurs, after the grave has been filled in and all but one of the mourners have left:

Tiffany sat on a stump and cried for a bit, because it needed to be done. Then she went and milked the goats, because someone needed to do that, too.

If there has ever been a more perfect expression of grief, and of the letting go of grief, in the English language, well, I've never read it. And the fact that a passage of such exquisite beauty can inhabit the same book that features six-inch tall blue highlanders shouting "Ach! Crivins!", a witch who specializes in holding her breath and swimming away underwater after being thrown in the river by paranoid villagers, and a kitten named You (as in "You! Stop that!" and "You, get down from there!"), just makes the whole thing that much more amazing.

To anyone reading this: If you like Harry Potter, you need to meet Tiffany Aching. The book to start with is called The Wee Free Men, and is followed by A Hat Full of Sky and then Wintersmith. According to Pratchett (at a convention in 2004), the fourth one will be called When I Am Old I Shall Wear Midnight, but we don't know yet when that one will be written and published.

After those, you'll probably want to consult the L-space Web Reading Order Guides and perhaps read the "Witch" sub-series, since several of the same characters are involved in those. Or just start back at the beginning with The Colour of Magic and read 'em all through in chronological order.

I wonder if they even know...

I can't tell you how proud I am to be living in Cornhole Country.

Straw Man Eaten by Crocodile! Film at 11!

By now, I'm sure anyone who cares knows that Germaine Greer took the opportunity to gloat over Steve Irwin's tragic accidental death, saying things like "The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin". Not satisfied with being merely insensitive, Greer spouts ridiculous, PETA-like levels of delusional lunacy.

But my personal favorite bit is this:

You can just imagine Irwin yelling: "Just look at these beauties! Crikey! With those barbs a stingray can kill a horse!" (Yes, Steve, but a stingray doesn't want to kill a horse. It eats crustaceans, for God's sake.)

So, here, Greer imagines something she thinks sounds sort of like what Irwin might possibly have said, and then proceeds to criticize him for saying it. I hate to point this out, love, but you're taking issue with a "Steve Irwin" who only exists inside your own head. I'm skeptical that the real Steve Irwin would ever have said "With those barbs a stingray can kill a horse", since that statement is patently untrue.

What the Hell?

I really have nothing to add to this commentary about Ohio's plan to allow judges to designate people as sex offenders, without actually requiring that they first be convicted of any crime.

I Want This

This has got to be the coolest thing in the goddamn world.

Movie Night

Wolf Creek (Unrated version)

I'd have to describe myself as "unimpressed". It's essentially Texas Chainsaw Massacre set in the Australian outback, only it's just one guy instead of a family of psychos, and it lacks TCM's sense of humor, if you can call it that. Three young tourists in Australia get kidnapped and tortured by a sadistic psycho. Now, I’m not going to say it's a bad movie just because it's a misogynist torture-fest (that would be hypocritical: I do own a copy of Bloodsucking Freaks in my DVD collection, after all). But it’s a bad misogynist torture-fest.

It had two major problems, as well as most of the usual minor problems (characters doing inexplicably dumb things*, for example); some spoilers may follow:

1) At the start, it claims to be "based on true events". But there’s a big chunk of the film that depicts events that went unwitnessed by the only survivor, and the recap at the end says that "No trace of [the other two] was ever found." If you’re going to claim to be a "true story", you need to make sure that everything you show was either witnessed by someone who survived to the end, or could have been pieced together/inferred from the evidence the police find later.

2) It uses what I would call the "super-competent serial killer" – For example, out of a garage full of cars (from his prior victims), how did he manage to be hiding in the back seat of the ONE CAR our protagonist got into and tried to start? He’s also an absolute dead-eye shot with a rifle from hundreds of yards away. Just supremely skilled at everything he does. You can kind of get away with that sort of thing if your killer is supposed to be supernatural (e.g., Freddy Krueger), but if he's just a crazy guy, it breaks suspension of disbelief when he’s that lucky and that good at absolutely everything.

Nice cinematography of the Australian scenery, though. Probably not worth sitting through just for that. The movie does start off with some promise, because we spend about 40 minutes before anything horrific happens, just following the characters on their trip. I almost said "getting to know the characters", but that isn't really true, since they don't really have identifiable personalities, they're just sort of generic "carefree young person" templates. But once the screaming starts... put it this way: It's not the worst horror movie I've ever seen, by a long shot. But if I want to watch pretty scenery, I'd rather put on the Discovery HD channel; if I want to watch a scary/disturbing horror movie, I'd rather stick in Texas Chainsaw Massacre; and if I want to watch a misogynist torture-fest, I'd rather subscribe to one of the hundreds of S&M-oriented internet porn sites. All of which renders this film spectacularly pointless.

*By "inexplicably dumb things", I mean, for example: If you've snuck back into the killer's lair, while he's otherwise occupied, for the specific purpose of finding a getaway vehicle ("If I'm not back in 5 minutes, start walking."), why, in the name of all that is holy, WHY would you climb down into a HOLE in the GROUND underneath a water tower? And then act all shocked when all that's down there is the rotting corpses of the psycho's past victims. What did you think you were going to find? A subway station? That burrowing vehicle from The Core, maybe?

Reading is Hard!

Wasn't this an episode of "Yes, Minister"?

From Reason's Hit and Run:

In April, 327 members of the House of Representatives voted for a classified intelligence bill, thereby authorizing some of the administration's anti-terrorism measures. 96 voted against it. And according to The Boston Globe, approximately a dozen representatives read it...

It really doesn't come as a surprise to me that our lawmakers don't bother to read laws before voting on them. This certainly isn't the first time it's been reported on, even discounting BBC sitcoms. That doesn't make it any less disturbing, mind you, just less unexpected.

Understatement

A couple of minutes ago, on the TV in the cafeteria here at work, I saw Fox News running a report on current events, with a caption at the bottom of the screen reading "Mideast Turmoil".

"Turmoil"? "Turmoil"!? They're lobbing missiles at each other! That's not "turmoil", that's open warfare.

Tomorrow Belongs To Me

Who Said It: Ann Coulter or Adolf Hitler?

I got 11 out of 14...

I do think that this quiz would have been even better if it had included three authors: Ann Coulter, Adolf Hitler, and Michael Moore. Or possibly Al Franken, but there definitely should have been some representative from the left. Surely there is one who has said enough hateful things about conservatives to have been included in a quiz like this one. I'd do it myself, but then I'd have to, y'know, actually read some of the crap these people have spewed.

BTW, just to be clear: The person who created the quiz says elsewhere: "For this quiz I've replaced some of Hitler's pro-Aryan and anti-Semitic language with the words, "America", "Democrat", "liberal", and "the liberal media" to make the Coulter quotes a little more difficult to spot."

I mention this because some witless Republican (posting in the thread on Reason's website where this was linked to) pointed this out, saying "Jesus, people, do you all believe everything you read? [...] Liberals are not only liars, they're also gullible and stupid" (apparently mistaking "libertarian" for "liberal").

To which one of the libertarian Reason readers responded, "you need to have another web site tell you that Hitler didn't actually make statements about liberals in America, and you're calling other people stupid?"

Lions and Tigers and... Oh, my!

Ok, now CNN is clearly just reporting stories that are specifically targeted to get mentioned on "The Colbert Report":

Study: Warming turns bears into cannibals
"Environmentalists contend shrinking polar ice due to global warming may lead to the disappearance of polar bears before the end of the century."

I ask you, was there ever a news story that sounded more like it was deliberately designed to get Colbert calling for people to do their part to increase global warming, now!?

On a slightly more serious note, I really think someone ought to do a study of news reports. I could swear that the number of actual, serious news reports involving bears has increased dramatically since "The Colbert Report" started airing.

What a bunch of [FILL IN REACTIONARY DESCRIPTION OF GRANOLA-LOVING HIPPIES HERE]

I can't think of anything else to say about this story:

Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.

"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the "threat" posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.

But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.

We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."

Whoops, Apocalypticism!

Pic is coming

That picture from our little get-together is coming, it's just a little slow because, when I got back to Ohio, my PC didn't work. The replacement should be arriving soon...

Dolphin Suffrage Now!

Dolphins have names, "making them the only animals besides humans known to recognize such identity information, scientists reported on Monday."

"It's a very interesting finding that encourages further research, because they are using whistles as referential signals -- that's what words are," said Sayigh, of the University of North Carolina Wilmington. "Dolphins appear to be using these arbitrary signals to identify another dolphin."

As a general rule, I don't agree with animal rights activists. Dolphins are an exception: I think it's possible they should be treated as moral agents with rights, and that the only reason we haven't recognized them as such is our inability to communicate with them. Their cognitive abilities are impressive: Tool use, self-awareness, and now the use of verbal names. Perhaps more importantly, the stories of human divers in trouble being rescued by dolphins, who sometimes go so far as to attack sharks to keep them away from the humans, suggest at least the possibility of moral development, in addition to cognitive development. Given the possibility of moral agency, I'm inclined to treat dolphins as sort of provisional-persons: I can't really grant them full person-hood without more evidence, but at the same time I think we ought to avoid really egregious abuses, such as hunting them for food/sport, just in case.

Unnecessary Travel

Just to let the Madison contingent of my fan base know, I will be up in Wisconsin for the weekend of May 19-21. If anyone wants to get together, we'll probably try to hit Madison at some point. I'll be fresh from seeing "Spamalot" on stage in Chicago.

You Will Pay the Price for Your Lack of Vision

I don't want to be too disparaging here: Putting a tiny pair of eyeglasses on a housefly does require a certain mad kind of genius. But if you're going to all the trouble of laser-etching a pair of fly-sized glasses, why, oh why wouldn't you go all the way with it, and make them Groucho glasses?

Addition to Previous Movie Post

After watching Brokeback Mountain, we loaned it to someone Brenda works with. It seems she had wanted to see it, but her husband was too embarrassed to rent the infamous "gay cowboy" movie at the video store.

Pansy.

So, before loaning it to this person, I whipped up (so to speak) the World's Gayest DVD Cover* for it, just to annoy this guy I've never even met. For those who might also have some use for it, here it is (it's an insert for a DVD thin-pack, not the full-size DVD cases). Click for full size:


*Well, gayest without actually being gay porn, anyway. I do have some sense of compassion...

Oscar-Nominated Movies

Brokeback Mountain - I was about as unimpressed as I expected to be. This is one of those movies where people have intense, emotional conversations with each other while gazing off in opposite directions, instead of looking at each other. Y'know, the way people in the real world behave.

It also struck me as very obviously being a movie about homosexual men made primarily by heterosexuals. It contains/reinforces a bunch of heterosexual misconceptions about gay relationships - e.g., it's basically all about the sex, the sex is rough & macho, etc. I never got any sense of a romantic connection between them - it's a very Ancient Greek conception of homosexuality, where they're basically masculine camping/hiking/fishing "buddies", except they also have sex.

I can see why it had some mainstream appeal - it's a very safe movie for straight people. Sure, they're gay, but they're also basically disgusted by their own behavior, at least at first. It certainly doesn't present their relationship as in any way normal, which would have been much more groundbreaking and risky. And, at the risk of giving it away, it follows the normal mainstream Hollywood Rule of Gay Relationships: It must End Badly, preferably with the death of at least one partner.

I guess I've just seen so many other good little independent movies actually made by gay men, that this just seemed unrealistic and stereotyped, and surprisingly prissy about it all.

I Must Be a Violent Dope Fiend By Now

Violent video games linked to risky behaviors. Well, um, sort of.

First of all: I applaud the researchers for actually matching similar games for their violent vs. non-violent comparison. An earlier study I'm aware of compared playing Quake to playing Myst, and it's hard to imagine two games more different from each other in every conceivable way, leaving many, many uncontrolled variables other than merely "violence level". Here, they matched Grand Theft Auto III against The Simpsons: Hit and Run, which has very similar gameplay to GTAIII, but cartoonish instead of gritty & violent. Bravo.

But what effects did they actually observe? Those who played the more violent game:

1. Immediately afterwards, were less cooperative/more competitive.
   
2. Immediately afterwards, were more likely to interpret others' attitudes as hostile toward them.
   
3. Immediately afterwards, expressed more permissive attitudes toward alcohol/marijuana use.
   
4. Only among those with higher exposure to real-life violence, elevated systolic blood pressure.
   

Once again, we have a study that measures an effect (or several effects) immediately after playing a violent video game, but makes no apparent attempt to measure whether/how quickly this effect normalizes over time. Is there still a measurable difference an hour later? A day? Is the effect permanent and cumulative? We don't know...

Now, about the headline: It's a complete lie. The study has not in any way linked violent video games to risky behaviors. It has linked violent video games to permissive attitudes about risky behaviors. I'd like to see how the question was worded: It could be that violent video games just make players more forgiving of risky behaviors in others, but not more likely to personally engage in such behaviors.

It's also unfortunate that Reuters doesn't report any more information than one can glean from the abstract of the actual study. I don't really want to pay $15 just to find out the actual magnitude of these observed effects. How much more competitive? How much more permissive?