Life in the Styx (Emeritus)

Does this Work

2006-07-09T11:51:00.000-04:00

Oh, I know its been a while, but I am hoping the fakaktiness of Blogger has been ironed out in my absence.

Ted Koppel to Leave 'Nightline'

2005-03-31T11:32:00.000-05:00

Wow - not that I didn't expect this to happen (Ted Koppel to Leave 'Nightline' and ABC News) but that not one month ago I told my brother that if Koppel would retire the most logical choice for ABC - and TV news in general - is to hire Jon Stewart and the 'Daily Show' to go primetime.

Mark my words - if ABC is smart, they'll do what they did with Bill Mahr (it was ABC, no?) They took "Politically Incorrect," a top-rated comedy-news program, and brought it to late-night network TV. Mahr soon imploded, true, but that's because the show was a (poor) one-man show with a (poor) one idea-pony.

Stewart is the future of journalism (ironically, by being a Swiftian retro satirist) and Stewart has often mentioned that Koppel was the only one on TV that he really respects. I hope that this synergy happens.

Bond Marathon

2005-03-18T17:11:00.000-05:00

We have an extensive film collection here at the Casa de Styx, and I have enjoyed showing them to my wife who was rightfully ignorant of much of the pop-culture ditchwater that I had immersed in for years. She's a trained classical musician and successful academic acolyte, so how would she have encountered "Ghostbusters" or "Big Trouble in Little China" (especially since she was a wee child when these movies came out, if that). Alas, we have covered every movie in my collection that she would enjoy without my making a hard hard sell. "The French Connection" and "Chinatown," for example, are great films but they are also violent and shocking and who really wants to see that stuff when you want to relax; a logical point - even if I don't follow it. I mean, I often force myself to watch films that I "should" see - just to increase my education. My free time to watch is quite limited, and my desire to be entertained is such, that I am now failing in my education and feeling more like my wife's point of view.

For example, I rented The Rules of the Game" (1939) by Jean Renoir because it was the top rated foreign film of all time by nearly every film critic. It's unwatchable muck. Oh, I tried - black and white doesn't bother me and normally subtitles are fine - except that I usually sort piles of my papers while watching films and I can't do that in a heavy dialogue film. But here's the thing - it's not entertaining, interesting, or broadening. Compare it with other films from that year: The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights and Gunga Din.

I tried to watch the second highest rated foreign film: The Battleship Potemkin". For this stinkeroo there's not much year comparison (1925 was not a banner year) except for "The Gold Rush," by Chaplin (which I own). For those who don't know about the "Battleship" thingy - it's a communist propaganda film that has the intellectual and emotional depth of a political smear.

All that is to explain that I am not so high and mighty (much). But we still need to find something to watch while we're half-dead on the couch, watching our son tear his way through the furniture. That's when I decided to initiate the Bond Marathon.

As an earlier post explained, I have pain-stakingly sought and individually accumulated all 22 Bond special-edition DVDs. Twenty Bond films, plus Never Say Never Again, and Casino Royale. I have showed them all to my wife, but out of order. Now we get to see them from the beginning. Considering our pace, we should finish by the time the next Bond comes out.

P.S. The best thing about the marathon is that we recognize how much of a debonair superman my son is becoming. I have begun calling him "Doodle-O 7"

Day of the Timed Disasters

2005-03-11T12:06:00.000-05:00

Tuesday was nuts. First of all, my Tuesday's are generally my busiest, with my office hours in the morning and my shiur in the evening. This week was to be the long awaited "Holiness of Israel" class that was cancelled last week for sickness and postponed from two weeks ago for the conference.

Two members were in the hospital early in the week (and for a small shul, this is significant). I had hoped to get down to see them after lunch. But, by the time I left the shul, it had started to snow. By the end of lunch, a full storm had hit, sending this sleepy New England hamlet apoplectic with the Snow Freaks.

Before lunch I went to check my email and saw that the computer had frozen. Not an infrequent occurrence with Windows. I manually restarted the ol' battleship but instead of whining to life the "tower" emitted warning beeps and stayed good and dead. I tried a few times, unplugged all the peripherals, shut down all the power-strips and surge-protectors. Nothing. The computer was dead. Hardware level, dead.

I would have tried to take the computer in, or even summon a technician to the house, except that my wife had been hit by my kid's stomach flu. As you can expect, with me or my kid out of commission, the house can still function; with my wife poleaxed, we were all doomed.

With my computer dead, I couldn't prepare source sheets; contact online help - etc. The competing pulls and needs that day were enormous, but by taking things in order of importance (Child, Wife, Hospital, Shul, Shiur, with Computer at the bottom of the list) I managed to juggle.

Only after I got back from the shiur (which ultimately had to be cancelled when only 2 people showed up and they recommended that we all go home while the streets were being cleared, somewhat) did the full impact of a hardware-broken computer hit me.

The next day, I sat on the phone waiting for the good hour or so to speak with the Dell Sub-Continent Help Desk. It turns out that my memory cards had popped off their moorings (they discerned this through the multi-colored A-B-C-D lights on the back of the "tower" - cool). And after I cracked open the 'puter like a briefcase and fiddled with the innards, by the late afternoon, I was back in business!

Highly satisfying (to have the computer fixed over the phone) but I lost two full work days. And now that the weather was getting a bit better, it's starting a whole new storm. My wife is a bit better from her flu and my son is still the stalwart trooper.

Jewish POWs under the Nazis

2005-03-10T09:31:00.000-05:00

I was just alerted to this NYTimes piece from the end of February which describes how some American Jewish POWs were treated under Nazi Germany:
The New York Times Magazine: The Lost Soldiers of Stalag IX-B

Oscar Aftermath

2005-03-03T16:52:00.000-05:00

As you can see from the following day's papers (Academy Award Winners) I was again devestated by the Hollywood establishment. My ma said I should blame my influenza-feueled delirium. Sure, why not. It's not far from the truth.

Ya know how in a math test if you make one miscalculation (x=1 instead of x=2) then the whole test is bolloxed? That's what happens every year to me with the Oscars (as it did in 8th and 9th grade math, mind you). One big mistake that I would have caught had my head not been superheated to 102F was that Clint Eastwood was not given due reward last year for "Mystic River." Because of the sea of Hobbit feet, all awards went to the Lord of the Rings and not enough to Clint. He was being paid back this year. I should have caught that.

I also didn't know that Hollywood hated Scorcese as much as they obviously do. They hate him so much they spell it with three 'a's: haaaate. That's 4. But that's how much they hate him, too.

In any case, I feel like an economist; my forecasting was poor, but the analysis was still very good :)

End in Sight

2005-03-03T15:50:00.000-05:00

My flu may be over the hump. My temperature has stayed down and even though I still feel like I've been stepped on by a big boot, and my head is the current repository of our strategic phlegm reserves, my insomnia has returned!

Yes, normally I consider my insomnia to be a curse and the primrose path to madness (as seen in the documentaries Taxi Driver and Fight Club). But, in this case, it shows that my illness isn't strong enough to overpower damnation. [Which is a good way to describe the flu in any case: Stonger Than Damnation].

As it is, my waking hell is back so I may be able to get back to work. Of course, I'm still too tired to think, but not sick enough to sleep, but that's God's business.

Don't Encourage Them

2005-03-03T15:48:00.000-05:00

Evidently some dude with too much money and way too much free time just flew around the world in an airplane - without stopping to refuel: Solitary Round-the-World Flight Concludes With Smooth Landing

The first feeling I had when reading the account wasn't wonder, or awe, or pride in the achievement of a fellow mammal, but the disgusting realization that the pilot was trapped in a "cigar shaped" cockpit for the entire ordeal. How did eat? How did he go to the bathroom? How did he eat after he had to go to the bathroom in his, doubtless space-age, pants?

I want there to be a law that whenever some dude decideds to waste his money this way, he's forced to immediately give those funds to me. I will spend it entirely on digital imaging equipment to capture my son's every move - and the world will be better and happier. Maybe I'll hire the millionaire fly-boy moron to take the pictures so he'll have something to do with his wasted life. Either way is fine with me, and with my son, who enjoys new company.

Movie Review: Shaun of the Dead

2005-03-03T05:17:00.000-05:00

Call it karma, but I saw Shaun of the Dead (2004) soon before I contracted this asinine illness and was forced to relive the basic premise of the movie over and over again. The movie is really, really good - a "rom com zom" (as it's called) - a romantic comedy with zombies.

What makes it good is that not only is it funny, smart, and quick-moving, but it's shot with a stunning verisimilitude. It feels so real; like a documentary; or just a detail-rich description of how a horrible event can happen on the periphery of your normal life.

After living through a few world shattering events, I know how that feels, and while I think I would behave better than Shaun and his pals, their behavior is all very realistic and convincing. For days after seeing the film, I had to actively remind myself that it did not happen.

The reason why the movie overlaps with the flu so well is that people infected by the Zombies would develop flu-like symptoms before they would turn into the walking dead. In the movie, a zombie is a metaphor for the brainless modern existence people consign themselves to (especially in modern Britain... a complaint that's been around for a while as seen in the Punk movement or Pink Floyd or "Synchronicity"). But being a zombie is also a good metaphor for the flu. You stomp around, the walking-dead, groaning, needing Tylenol, cursing your fate. Cannibalism is where the comparison stops, however.

A note about cannibalism: for some reason, all the supernatural monster movies seem to require the antagonists to be cannibals. It's the worst part about their attack; what we find the most disturbing. A zombie is just disquieting if all it did was walk about and moan. Even vampires (my preferred supernatural enemy) aren’t frightening except for the biting fetish. I guess it's the very worst thing in the human imagination - it's not enough to be evil, the desecrated walking dead, or flying bats - the depths of evil are only reached when you eat another person. (See "Sin City" as well, but that's another topic altogether)

Phlegm

2005-03-03T04:00:00.000-05:00

Can't sleep. Phlegm monsters ate my brain.

Good song: "My Wife"

2005-03-02T18:53:00.000-05:00

The cognoscenti have long said that "Who's Next" is the Who's best album. I can't judge well, because I would only buy the albums the cognoscenti talked about, so I don't have what to compare. I'm hoping that the new music technology revolution (ringtones? subcutaneous CIA implants?) that destroyed records will go against CDs just enough to keep them both cheap yet in circulation... so I can buy enough to judge on my own.

In any case, "Who's Next" is very good and a song that had run through my head over and over was "My Wife." I hadn't bothered looking at the lyrics, but whatever I could make out made no sense. First of all, I thought it was "My Life" and the first line was "My life is in the Chesapeake" and after that I could only make out occasional phrases "machine gun" "aeroplane" "lead boots" - which go with each other but not with the Chesapeake.

Anyway, just now I decided to get the real lyrics. They're hilarious.

The first stanza:

My life's in jeopardy
Murdered in cold blood is what I'm gonna be
I ain't been home since Friday night
And now my wife is coming after me

Not that my wife is anything like this (nor I - there's something characteristically British about weekend-long booze benders).

Give me police protection
Gonna buy a gun so
I can look after number one
Give me a bodyguard
A back belt Judo expert with a machine gun

None of these funny words are enunciated well enough to make out. But now I can chuckle with the cognoscenti.

Useful Link for Supervillians

2005-03-02T18:24:00.000-05:00

Some kind hearted geek with way too much free time made a beginners guide to psychotic megalomaniacs: The Evil Guide. I especially like the primer on evil hideouts (preferring the hollowed out mountain/volcano above all).

For You Dafyomiites - ShasPod.com

2005-03-02T18:00:00.000-05:00

I've heard good things about this - a whole shas-worth of Dafyomi shiurim on one I-Pod: ShasPod.com

Considering that I don't own an I-Pod yet, this may be just the ticket.

Genesis in Pig Latin

2005-03-02T17:55:00.000-05:00

Either there's a sophistimacated computer program to do this or someone had way too much free time - either way, check out the Book of Genesis in Pig Latin

Recent USAToday Poll

2005-03-02T17:53:00.000-05:00

This poll, from USATODAY.com, show Bush with a remarkable 52% approval rating. I don't know how he does it, but it frightens me. The key is question #2 - how is Bush handling Social Security, and only 35% approve, 56% disapprove. That either means people don't like his Hooverization of America plan or they think he hasn't gone far enough. Check out the rest of the poll for some other crazy numbers (e.g. Hillary Clinton with a 53% approval rating - which shows this poll's out of whack)

Eichlers.com 25% English Sets Sale

2005-03-02T17:40:00.000-05:00

The sale ends Tuesday, March 8th - 25% off English sets at Eichlers.com

(The crazy thing is that I own pretty much everything I want on this list... scary)

Barukh Dayan ha-Emet

2005-03-02T08:58:00.000-05:00

3/2/05 - 7:45 a.m.

Dr. Noam Shudofsky passed away this morning. An indefatigable personality who, in partnership with Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, literally built Ramaz School these past 40 years. He is the husband of Nechi Shudofsky, and the father of Binny, Rachel and Leora.

Funeral services 2:00 p.m. TODAY, March 2nd, in the Main Synagogue at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, 125 East 85th Street, between Lexington and Park Avenues. From KJ, the family is leaving for Israel on El Al Flight #002 leaving at 7:30 p.m. The burial will be around 3:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 3rd, in Sanhedria cemetery in Jerusalem.

The first half of shiva, in Israel, will be observed at 21/2 Koreh Ha-Dorot Street in Talpiot. The phone number in Israel is 011-972-2-673-1416 (be mindful of the 7-hour time differential). The family is returning stateside early on Sunday morning, March 6th, to complete shiva at the Shudofsky residence, 209 West 86th Street, Apt. 917, NYC 10024. The phone number there is 212-877-9053. Services there, beginning Sunday morning, will be Sunday morning at 9:00 a.m.; Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings at 7:30 a.m.; and Sunday, Monday and Tuesday evenings at 5:45 p.m. Shiva concludes on Wednesday morning, March 9th, following services.

Condolence Emails can be sent to WeLoveNoam@aol.com

100 Day III

2005-03-01T20:58:00.000-05:00

I don't know what's going on but the fever has not really gone away (it hasn't hit 102 but it's hovering in the C-note). I don't have the symptoms of Strep, so that's good, but my throat is very painful.

I had to cancel my halakha class tonight - the first time I've ever done so because of illness. I had a good excuse: every time I try to talk for more than 30 seconds I start coughing and hacking and ouch. Also, the Siyum Ha-Shas was tonight and a bunch of people were going to that; and also a big thing at the JCC; and ouch. I haaaaate cancelling class. Oh, also, there was another Nor'easter so it's snowy. And ouch.

The main reason why I need to get better is so I can hug my son. I miss him and he misses me. Also, so I can help hold him down while my wife changes him. He loves twirling around and acting all acrobatic on the changing table now - which makes de-poopifying him a two person job.

100

2005-02-28T17:51:00.000-05:00

I'm down to 100 during the wonderful window when Tylenol and Advil overlap. I'm still feeling like a bus hit me. The clinic said my lungs are clean so no worries about Bronchitis, Pneumonia, or Pterodactyl Syndrome. The worst part is that I need to be quarantined away from my son… and it's a medical fact that I need to play with him every day or I'll go nuts. He misses me, too. Durn you, virus!

102

2005-02-27T20:47:00.000-05:00

My temp is now 102, guess I'll watch the Oscars from the clinic. Wish me luck.

Fever Alert

2005-02-27T19:53:00.000-05:00

Fever has hit 101.2. A record for at least 2 decades. We'll see if I need
to go to the clinic.

Oscar Predictions

2005-02-27T19:01:00.000-05:00

Ya know, I had a grand plan as to how I was going to predict this year. Every year I have a grand plan, I know, but after reading a bunch and analyzing even more I realize that: (a) I've been doing it all wrong, and (b) almost everyone else does too.

Ya see, Oscars are voted by an electorate that is largely unknown and many of them do not express their opinoins in another forum. Academy members are all professional Hollywood workers; the largest category are actors, but the next higest are Producers.

Only a few of the other awards given for movies overlap with the Academy electorate. All the guild awards, for example, are good indications for some direction, but not one guild has enough voters to be a sure thing.

The majority of voters are "Old Hollywood" - money people who are and were the idiots that turn out sequel after numbing sequel. The smartest people in Hollywood are Directors; the dumbest are actors, but a close second are producers.

Moreover, even though the nominees are chosen from the particular industry (cinematographers choose Best C, actors the 4 awards, writers the screenplay awards, and everyone the Best Picture), everyone in the Academy votes for the winners. The same meathead Producers who make movies of talking toasters and toilet monsters are allowed to choose Best Editor. They have no idea how editing is done, nor cinematography, etc. So they vote Best Picture all over again. Or, big "or," they could split their ticket based on sentimentality for the underdog. It's anyone's guess because the voters are so stupid.

This is why there are sweeps - because the lazy geriatrics in the Academy will just vote one movie across the board when they are overly enamored with a film (something that doesn't look likely this year)

The only way to have a really good idea of where the Oscars are heading is to be a Hollywood/Los Angles insider. To know who is popular to the electorate. That’s why critic awards (e.g. Golden Globes) are largely useless. Who in Hollywood likes critics?! If anything, the critics' awards can backfire because the Old Guard wants to demonstrate independence or the wonderful trait of Stupid People to assert their ability by being contrary.

A romp through past races shows that the Critics awards are anecdotal and useless.

There have been many upsets in recent years (e.g. Roman Polanksi for Best Director in 2002, Adrien Brody for Best Actor in the same year; Marcia Gay Harden for Best Supporting in 2000) that I haven’t heard good explanations for except that there was some politicking on the ground in LA.

For example, if an actor is criticized by the White House between when the electorate receives their ballots and when they are returned, that could tilt the votes. Million Dollar Baby was attacked by conservative critics for advocating euthanasia during this period - was that enough to tilt the voters? No idea.

So for my predictions, I will start from the standpoint of the Guild and then gauge how the Academy Old Guard will manifest their Idiocy this year.

The Producer's Guild voted for Aviator.

Directors Guild: Clint Eastwood

Screen Actors Guild
Best Actor: Jaime Foxx
Best Actress: Hilary Swank
Best Supp Actor: Morgan Freeman
Best Supp Actress: Cate Blanchett

My predictions:

1. Best Picture: Aviator
2. Best Director: Martin Scorcese
3. Best Actor: Jaime Foxx
4. Best Actress: Annette Bening
5. Best Supp Actor: Morgan Freeman
6. Best Supp Actress: Cate Blanchett
7. Best Original Screenplay: "Eternal Sunshine"
8. Best Adapted Screenplay: "Sideways"
9. Best Animated Film: "The Incredibles"
10. Best Documentary Feature: "Super Size Me"

I choose 10 because that makes the tzedaka easier.

Why these?

I think "Aviator" is Oscar bait and the Academy bit. It's perfect irony that Scorcese is overlooked for his real masterpieces, but if the Academy will redeem Polanksi, so they'll support Scorcese. It’s an epic film, a bio-pic, and fuels nostalgia for the bygone era of the majority of Academy electorate. Bada-bing.

Bening over Swank. As one critic put it - Swank isn't one of the greats, why would they award her with 2 awards in 5 years? Bening is Hollywood royalty (married to Warren Beatty) and the very fact that the movie she's nominated for was disliked and unknown shows how the academy is trying to rescue her. I think Winslet deserves it for the awesome "Eternal Sunshine" but Jim Carrey was even better than she was and he was ignored, so I think the academy will ignore her. I've heard good things about Vera Drake, which will be ignored for the same reasons.

Foxx is everyone's "shoo-in" so who am I to argue?

Freeman hasn’t gotten an Oscar yet, would you believe that? A crime.

Blanchett is the most nostalgia driven character in "Aviator" - and has built up an impressive career. I'm banking that Aviator is stronger than Million.

"Sunshine" may not win Screenplay - because the movie is too too good. But I'm hoping that after five high profile films, (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Adaptation, Human Nature, and Being John Malkovich) Kaufman's genius will penetrate the Geriatric Boneheads.

"Sideways" for Best Adapted because the critics' darlings are never given top awards but they seem to be recognized in the screenplays. My theory is that in non-sweeps years, the Geriatrics don't vote for this category, allowing the Young Turks to win.

"The Incredibles" for Best Animated Film because even though "Shrek 2" made more money than the European Union, it was hackneyed trash. The Incredibles is for the older, more staid crowd.

"Super Size Me" for Best Documentary Feature because it was the second most famous doc this year (after "Fahrenheit") and is widely credited with making McDonalds drop 'super-sizes' from their menus. Hollywood likes that kind of power.

I don't know if I'll be awake enough to watch the show. Let me know how I did…

Sick

2005-02-27T17:25:00.000-05:00

I've been fighting colds on and off this whole winter but a week of no-sleep finally brought me down. A mild fever, a hacking cough, and epic langour are perfect to round out this unhealthy season. I've been trying to sleep all day and get plenty of fluids. I'm heading into a heavy speaking season so I hope I can lick this quickly.

Square K

2005-02-25T14:20:00.000-05:00

Does anyone know anything about the "Square K" - from Seattle? Square-K Kosher Services POB 18915, Seattle, WA 98118. (206) 878-1065; Fax: (908) 370-0467. Rabbi Moshe Londinski.

The hekhsher is left off some good lists and included in some bad ones, but I know very little about the West Coast Scene.

Hunter S. Thompson, 67, Author, Commits Suicide

2005-02-24T10:16:00.000-05:00

Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of the conference, I finally get to look at a Times - the only source I have when I'm in hyper-focused conference mode - and I get floored by Thompson's suicide.

Hunter S. Thompson, by all accounts, was a paranoid degenerate and deeply weird person who nonetheless had an immense effect on my writing and literary worldview. Even deeper, I felt a kinship with his outlook - that were he to have been born an orthodox Jewish redhead in 1972 he'd be me instead of being a godless coked-out gun-crazy superfreak. The converse is true, because I felt he was a brother under the skin, I was long afraid that there but for the grace of God go I. I feel the same way about Belushi.

Thompson was an outlaw, a unique voice, and one of the most important writers in the 20th Century. His concept of "gonzo" journalism is based on the phenomenological philosophy of the breakdown between subjectivity and objectivity - his most important contribution to literature, epistemology and that rarefied nexus between ethnography and journalism that the greatest non-fiction writers inhabit.

I was very worried that his suicide came from the inevitable depression inflicted on we who see too much - a depression that may have been fueled by his mythically enormous drug consumption. Thank God, sorta, it turns out that he gunned himself down for all-too-understandable reasons for someone of his Libertarian freaky-deaky worldview: he was getting too sick.

We didn't think he was going to die quietly. A profound egotism drove his appetites for narcotics, pornography, guns, explosives, the fourth amendment, Freedom and is the very basis of Gonzo Philosophy. It's that same egotism that drove him to go out in a blaze of glory.

The gifts of family and God that I was given have kept me away from that egotism and those appetites, but I still mourn the loss of a person who spoke to my mind with an eerie resonance.

That's My Idea!

2005-02-23T17:09:00.000-05:00

I've had this idea for a while - that Election Day should be a national holiday. First of all, it would make it much easier for people to vote. But also because Election Day is greater than even the Fourth of July to demonstrate what America is all about.

Now I see that Hillary has the same idea and is sponsoring this in the Senate (Sen. Clinton Pushes for Voting Holiday). Well, that's the *perfect* way to kill it.

The Perfect Candidate

2005-02-20T13:27:00.000-05:00

Michael Chertoff was the perfect choice for Homeland Security - I have no idea why Kerik came before him. Chertoff was confirmed as DHS Secretary last Tuesday (Feb 15) which makes him the Bush's first Jewish cabinet secretary. Bush is such a friend of the Jews that it took him 5 years to find someone qualified enough to be in his cabinet, but he chose well.

Ya see, while Kerik was merely a rapacious crook, Chertoff is a moral midget. I mean, who else should be head of Homeland Security than
the man who wrote the execrable Patriot Act?

It's ironic - our current Attorney General (Hispanic) allowed torture and the DHS (Jewish) allowed our civil liberties stripped. At least they should switch jobs!

Cingular

2005-02-20T12:13:00.000-05:00

Well, turns out that Cingular had just merged with AT&T Wireless and was in the process of integrating their computers. After two days of waiting, one of the poor saps who works their customer service told me that because of the computer trouble, there were unprocessed back orders from two weeks before me. At that point I started cursing in Jedi. They took my point and rushed my order through and I got the number soon after and the actual phone in a few days.

But the phone didn't work. I tried vainly to get it set up, but it didn't budge. The phone said that I lacked the SIM chip (short for simian, I suppose) and it was supposed to have come with the phone. My office, never in a full state of organization, was turned upside down in my search for the chip which runs the phone and which supposively came with the package. No dice (or chip).

This morning, my wife went to a Cingular Authorized Dealership Emporium to get a replacement SIM chip (and to holler at them for not sending me one). She just called to tell me that Cingular did send me one - and installed it in my phone as a courtesy. They just installed it upside down.

AUUUAUUAUAUAGH.

Headless Conference

2005-02-20T11:38:00.000-05:00

We're leaving soon for this year's Wexner Alumni Conference, held in sleepy Tarrytown. Trivia buffs know that Tarrytowbn became famous as the setting of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving (or Irving Washington)- the first sentence being:

IN the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail, and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market-town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town.

So, we'll be gone til Wednesday. Any of you who live in New Haven want to drive by our house to make sure it's still OK, be our guest.

Cingular Blues

2005-02-20T11:26:00.000-05:00

So, ya see, the synagogue wanted to get me cell-phone that can be an exclusive 'all-points' way of getting in touch with me. Great idea. Cingular was having a massive sale, so I felt it was the best option - also beause they could get you a phone number immediately and the phone soon after.

Well, turns out that Cingular had just merged with AT&T Wireless and was in the process of integrating their computers. After two days of waiting, one of the poor saps who works their customer service told me that because of the computer trouble, there were unprocessed back orders from two weeks before me. At that point I started cursing in Jedi. They took my point and rushed my order through and I got the number soon after and the actual phone in a few days.

But the phone didn't work. I tried vainly to get it set up, but it didn't budge. The phone said that I lacked the SIM chip (short for simian, I suppose) and it was supposed to have come with the phone. My office, never in a full state of organization, was turned upside down in my search for the chip which runs the phone and which supposively came with the package. No dice (or chip).

This morning, my wife went to a Cingular Authorized Dealership Emporium to get a replacement SIM chip (and to holler at them for not sending me one). She just called to tell me that Cingular did send me one - and installed it in my phone as a courtesy. They just installed it upside down.

AUUUAUUAUAUAGH.

Terror Alert Review

2005-02-20T11:23:00.000-05:00

While I like to see Burt's smiling face, telling me all's Yellow in the US, I'm wondering if I should keep the terror alert up. First of all, the java-mojo mechanism that runs the alert slows down the blog's loading. Second of all, and most importantly, the terror alert is unlikely to change now that (a) Ridge is out of a job, (b) Ashcroft has left, and (c) Bush has been re-elected.

Even though we are far more vulnerable now than three years ago, Burt will not help us despite his mighty powers.

If you have opinions on the matter, let me know.

Movie Review: Shark Tale (2004)

2005-02-20T11:09:00.000-05:00

Rented and saw Dreamworks Shark Tale (2004). It reminds me of "Matrix Reloaded." Actually, it reminds me of the movie review I wrote for Reloaded (see below) - the critics savaged "Shark Tale" for reasons that I cannot understand.

What's wrong with these people? Have all journalists been taking stupid pills with their whiskey? The older I get, the more I realize how much I need other people to help understand the world yet the more I realize most other people have the minds of dumpsters.

Check out this review from the once reliable Onion A.V. Club:

"the real, uncredited architects are a bunch of kids in the mall: Every single joke, character detail, music montage, and pop-culture reference looks extensively market-tested, whether via screenings, focus groups, or other box-office successes. With dollar signs in its eyes and nothing in its heart, Shark Tale calculates each moment for the broadest appeal, but its impact couldn't be more impersonal. The filmmakers are convinced people will like it because the spreadsheets and pie charts tell them so, not because they've invested it with originality or passion. "

What on earth is he saying? The movie was very smart - the amount of detail that went into the Fish World and the fast, frequent inside jokes that NO kid would understand show that this movie wasn't a cheap knockoff of "Finding Nemo" (a claim almost every review made), e.g. from the Onion "Shark Tale steals shamelessly from Finding Nemo"

OK, first of all, these animated movies are so long in pre-production that there's really no way they stole from Finding Nemo. Second of all, "Nemo" had almost nothing in common with "Shark" except that they were under water. The movie industry has this weird tendency to put out two movies from two studios on the same theme (e.g. "Volcano" and "Dante's Peak"; "Armaggeddon" and "Deep Impact"; and most relevant for this discussion, "Antz" and "A Bugs Life")

The comparison to Antz/Bugs Life is apt because "Antz" was from Dreamworks and "Bugs" from Disney-Pixar and it was seen as the first stage of the battle of animated giants (which sounds like another good movie idea, by the way). Critics of all brain-capacities have weighed in on which movie was better (or "won") but they are very different films. They are both remakes, "Bugs" of "Magnificent Seven" and "Antz" of "Love and Death" (roughly). But Bugs was G, Antz PG - and that's just the beginning. Antz was adult oriented and had a A-list celebrities parodying their personas in a knowing, mature way. Woody Allen, Anne Bancroft, Danny Glover, Gene Hackman, Jennifer Lopez, Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, Christopher Walken in a plot about betrayal, government genocide, and headless bugs. Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin playing WASPs was funny for me but would fly over the head of a 16 year old. "Bugs" was a cute movie about believing in yourself.

"Finding Nemo" vs. "Shark's Tale" is the same story. Nemo has all B-listers and the protagonist is the irritating Albert Brooks. The theme? Finding yourself (and your son). Actually it has the adult theme of not being as uptight as Brooks and more uptight than the fish Dory. I liked the movie, no doubt, but it's not in the league of "Shark's Tale" for references and easy humor.

How would 'focus group kids' get the trivia? http://imdb.com/title/tt0307453/trivia
e.g. "When Lenny coughs up the objects on the table, one of them is a license plate with the registration "007 981." This is the same plate found inside the tiger shark in Jaws" or that the fish voiced by Renee Zellwegger responded well when Will Smith's fish nonsensically said "You had me at hello"

Now, if you want to trash focus-group trash, take out "Shrek 2." Yeeeeeeeeugh.

Eparsha Finally Updated

2005-02-20T10:06:00.000-05:00

I finally put the "test" eparsha page up as the real page. The same mechanisms at work that kept so many drafts on this blog in underdraft kept me from putting the new webpage up - I was stuck on one small procedural problem and when that happens, everything is held up. Story of my life.

Latest in Leadership from the Free World

2005-02-18T16:09:00.000-05:00

The head of the Judiciary rules for life - a way to remain impartial and above politics. The Supreme Court justices are the last ones who are appointed by the old system of double-elections; i.e. the used to be chosen by electors (and even though we still do that, there's bunches of laws restricting electors from changing their votes, so it's meaningless) and the Senate was elected by the state legislatures. SCOTUS justices are appointed by the president and voted by the senate - thrice-removed and in it for life - a remnant of the 18th Century fear of a craven government, affected by the passions of the moment.

How ironic that all those great Enlightenment brains couldn't have protected us from the Rehnquist court, or Rehnquist himself. Who would think there'd be a further embarrassment after Bush vs. Gore (2000) - a landmark case of craven momentary passions on the level of Dred Scott.

But we have it as seen from today's story: Rehnquist Won't Be on Bench When Supreme Court Convenes… but "The chief justice has given no indication that he plans to step down."

Oh yay.

Rehnquist - who personally designed his robes with gold stripes - has taken his role as American Pope too literally. Just like the real Papist, Rehnquist will cling to his catherda until he bites in on the bench. I'm not happy about term limits nor age limits but do we really need to have this joker still in office?

Summers' Blunder

2005-02-18T01:32:00.000-05:00

What Summers' did wrong was substitute a conclusion for a hypothesis. This happens all the time in the social-sciences. Summers is an economist (I believe) and all they *have* are hypothesis so who can blame him for just repeating the intellectual guano he's been trained to shovel.

Are women innately worse than men in math and science. Don't know. But it's a hypothesis (to answer the question 'how come there are way more men than women in engineering/math/physics'). If you stop at the hypothesis - and its a quick fix - then you'd be able to share your conlusion with your bar buddies but not with scientists and the rare intellectual.

Summers should have said 'Are the centuries-old prejudices true? Are women worse at math than men? I sure hope not, but if not we need to find a compelling reason why my Physics department has 10 men to 1 woman, etc etc).

And another point; speaking as a non-math dude; why is it an insult to suggest that women are worse than men at math? I am a verbal whiz and a math sloth and I am quite happy with that arrangement. The fact that people are angry at the suggestion means that they have incorporated the real prejudice - that because men ruled the culture, they (we) claimed that whatever we were good at was the right and superior set of skills. Anything non-masculine became sub-standard.

Thinking that math skills are inherently better than verbal skills is something that only a math-oriented person would say - or someone immersed in a male values dominated culture.

Ironically, the biggest display of chauvenism in this whole mess comes from Summers' critics who cling to the hierarchical prejudices of an arachaic system.

Harvard's Choice

2005-02-18T00:35:00.000-05:00

As you may know, Larry "Lounge Lizard" Summers, President of Harvard is in deep trouble after he said the most terrible things anybody has ever said about women.

Not even getting into whether Summers has a valid point about women in the sceinces is the way the University "community" is handling it. [University Community is simultaneously a tautology and oxymoron; both mean 'all for one' yet universities are by degign fractious. Whenever a University's denizens unify you should run to the hills; academics who agree only do so in order to squash a third person]

According to the Times, Summers said (according to the now released private transcript):

"My best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon - by far - is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity; that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude; and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination,"

According to his critics, he in fact said "Women are stoo-pid" in a Gomer Pyle voice.

More importantly, the University may throw him out on his pasty white rump. I love this - Harvard is showing its true colors; in the battle between academic freedom and political-correctness, PC will win.

Bye-bye Summers, next time run a real school.

SOY Sale and My Lists

2005-02-17T16:29:00.000-05:00

Living outside of The City for the first time in 8 years, getting to the SOY Sale is very difficult. I haven't missed the sale for all those years; it's like a religious experience!

In any case, going to a booksale unprepared causes me much anxiety. Actually, that sentence made me sound like Yoda, which I guess proves the point. I have stacks and lists of books to buy and smaller stacks of files of the books I own. The danger of buying a book I already own is very high - there's just not enough time for me to keep track of my holdings. I don't know if it's pretentious or pathetic, but I think I need a private curator. Benjie is too small for the job (and he eats every single book he gets in his fisty mitts).

My ethic this year is when in doubt, I will not buy a book - which will make my family happy (except for Benjie, naturally).

Draftdated Dec 19, 2004 - Oh Great, More Ghraib

2005-02-17T16:01:00.000-05:00

[From Dec 19, 2004 - this was just a title and a link]

According to the newest reports, Guantanamo operated under similar torture rules as did Abu Ghraib (At Guantanamo, a Prison Within a Prison

Maybe I'd feel better about the torture and rape if we actually were (a) not in a fictional conflict in Iraq, (b) the prisoners were dangerous people, (c) the prisoners knew something about the people who truly are trying to hurt us. Yet there have been no convictions from the torture; no proof that what we're doing is right. We fought a war - back in 1776 - to stop this kind of stuff, no?

As it is, we are just destroying people for fun. This is shameful. Again, I implore the GOPers out there, you have a voice, talk to your commandants about stopping these un-American activities before they actually become considered American activities.

Draftdated Dec 17 2004 - Kerik and Rudy

2005-02-17T15:45:00.000-05:00

[Started Dec 17 2004 with really just one insight... I don't even know if the link works]

So Bernie Kerik has imploded (Lapses Feared in 2000 Vetting of Kerik) - and that's saying something for a Bush appointee. Kerik's big error was to commit his felonies *before* he joined the cabinet. The sad thing is that Kerik is so terrible that Guiliani may go down because he vouched for him!

Draftdated Dec 13 2004 - Protocols Over

2005-02-17T10:27:00.000-05:00

[From Dec 13 2004 - I just had the link but I think I rememeber what I wanted to say]

It's big news in the Jewish Bloggosphere, Protocols has closed!

In case that announcement means nothing to you I will explain: it means nothing to me too. There's this whole world of Jewish bloggers, growing daily, with a frightening level of cross-referencing and self-congratulations. "Protocols" was considered the mack-daddy of the Jewish Blogs because it had some important people writing for it - people so important that I'd never heard of them nor felt what they had to say was worthwhile.

I can say all this with the supercilious disinterestedness of an Old School blogger - as it says on my first post, I was blogging in the days before blogs, when Netscape ruled, when Google was still an experimental site at Stanford U, when email was still called e-mail. I don't actually expect anyone to read what I'm saying either (although I appreciate your comments) - I just need a place to release my brainwaves before they begin to rot in my skull.

Protocols is (are?) over. Long live the Blog.

Draftdated Dec 8 2004 - FBI entrapped AIPAC

2005-02-17T09:16:00.000-05:00

[From Dec 8 2004, this is still difficult to finish because I still don't have all the right details...]

Bush is the best friend Israel has ever had - at least better than Clinton - at least better than his father - or actually, I'm not sure if he's such a friend. A few months ago there was a celebrated case where a membre of AIPAC

It seems that the FBI investigated two members of AIPAC who have been accused of spying for Israel, giving them details of the secret US deliberations with the Iranians. [Recent reports accuse them of leaking the secrets of the McShwarma]. Here's the original story (CBS news)

However, as the Jerusalem Post indicates the FBI set the whole thing up. It's pretty complicated - but as far as I can tell, the FBI entrapped two AIPAC members as part of a strange paranoid witch-hunt. As this article indicates, there's a subtle double-standard against Jews in the intelligence agencies about loyalty to Israel.

Thank you Ashcroft for keeping America safe. How many terrorists have you caught yet? None?

Draftdate Dec 8 2004: Shoot the Moon

2005-02-16T18:10:00.000-05:00

[From December 8, 2004]

The last men standing after all the cabinet shuffling is Don "Dishonor" Rumsfeld and John "Freefall" Snow (Snow to Stay on With Bush) - which makes total sense. While Bush has been, overall, one of the worst leaders of a North American republic, his very worst areas have been in economic policy and in war planning.

Then again, if you see things my way, that staying part of the Bush cabinet is a grave punishment, then actually Rumsfeld and Snow are getting what they deserve! Either way it's a clear case of 'aveira gorreret aveira'

Draftdated Dec 7 2004 - Even the Economist

2005-02-16T16:00:00.000-05:00

[From December 7, 2004 - all I had was the article link, which still works, so here goes]

In case you're wondering what kind of lily-livered pinko bleeding-heart liberals are warning about Bush's economic policies, there's the Leftist smear rag The Economist. True, The Economist is generally seen as a conservative magazine (when they say they're Tories, they mean 18th Century style), but how can they be if they claim that Bush's trade deficits and all-around economic bumbling will soon convince the world to dump dollars in favor of Euros?

Does anybody think that Bush is doing good things for the US economy? Can anyone say that our situation is truly the aftermath of 9/11 and not the results of the first MBA president (who never ran a successful company and doesn't even know what assets he himself owns?)

Thank Jezuz that Bush has a plan to save the economy by gutting social security. His evangelist-hypnotist guru must have told him that if he really wants to channel Hoover he not only needs to lose more jobs but also to plunge the country into depression. This does explain why Bush hates social-security - how else to be Hoover but to reverse everything FDR did? The next step? Bush will un-cure polio and discontinue the dime.

New: N.H.L. Commissioner Cancels Rest of Season

2005-02-16T15:41:00.000-05:00

I don't know what is more of a shock - that the NHL is, in the words of the
Times story "the first major pro sports league in North America to lose an entire season to a labor dispute" or the fact that I had absolutely *no* idea that the hockey season was supposed to have begun. Does anyone outside Canada know when hockey season starts anyway?

Except for the movie "Slap Shot" (which we just acquired, thank you very much) hockey means oh so little to my world. But I love the Slap Shot (especially the Hanson brothers ... did you know that it was basically a true story! no joke!)

Comic Book Theme Music

2005-02-16T14:36:00.000-05:00

This should get you in the mood for all the comic book movies coming out (more on that anon)

http://www.comicbookresources.com/resources/tvthemes/

Draftdated Aug 26 '04 - Movie Review: Paycheck (2003)

2005-02-16T13:55:00.000-05:00

[from August 26, 2004 - an incomplete movie review]

The worst thing about Paycheck (2003) is the title - it means nothing; has no traction in yer brain; and does not inform you that this is a really good film. The most watchable John Woo film for the population at large. You know I love the Woo - but "a thousand bullets" works for only certain mentalities. Moreover, he has a poor ability to choose his American actors. While still in Hong Kong, Woo's finest work was with Chow Yun-Fat (called the "Chinese John Wayne"). Fat (Chow?) was strong, funny, emotive, smart - a great leading man and perfect for the Woo heroic model.

In America, Woo has used: Jean Claude Van-Damme, Christian Slater, Nick Cage, John Travolta, and Tom Cruise. Yuccch. Not one of those bozos can act nor think their way out of a paper bag. In "Paycheck" we get the dullest of them all, Ben Affleck (which naturally is the second worst thing about the film).

But the movie's smart, quick, fun, and not exremely violent (even by regular movie standards) and only one dove appears. In fact, I was wondering when the doves would arrive (which are the equivalent of Woo making a cameo) and when it finally flew into view it was actually appropriate and exciting.

Draftdated Sept 27, '04 - Karaites vs. Messianics

2005-02-16T13:32:00.000-05:00

[Dated from September 27, 2004 - I only had one line, I think I can remember where I was going with it]

I was doing Sukkot research online and stumbled across the Karaite form of Sukkot.

I think I wanted to weigh who is weirder or more obnoxious - the Messianics or Karaites, and I think the Messainics are still worse. The Karaites just take away from the religion but the Messainics add a whole mess of bad. In a certain extent, the halakha of 'Bal Tosif' is worse than 'Bal Tigra']

Draftdated August 30, '04 - Police Blotter

2005-02-16T13:10:00.000-05:00

[From August 30, 2004 - an incomplete post]

We're told that a few weeks ago a house was robbed pretty close to ours. Naturally this is very disturbing news. We feel pretty vulnerable in general because we're new to this place and while it looks green and suburbyish, there's urban blight oozing out of the streets every few feet. Nice well kept houses next to disgusting decrepit embarassments.

[Note, since then, there have been a few drug busts on our corner. The Police sargeant says it was only heroin, so I'm not too worried about it. That and I am told that it's worse in other areas of New Haven]

Draftdated Nov 14 '04 - Political Reading

2005-02-16T12:15:00.000-05:00

[Started November 14, 2004]

Because of my busy schedule, I was unbale to read every single article in every single magazine I subscribe to at the moment it arrives in my house; I give myself several weeks (months) of idle or throne time to get through them all. However, now that the Disaster of '04 has happened, I find that all of these pompous, underthought political articles are just terrifying.

[My reflections on my mindset 3 months ago]

The spitting rage I was in 3 months ago has dulled into a lugubrious torpor. This is what it must have felt like in February 1973 in the shadow of Nixon. Except that the dirty tricks were more obvious under the Trickster (whose intelligence was a disadvantage, we see - the worst presidents were usually the meatheads and they were worst because they got away with it: see Harding, Bush).

The biggest - if not only - factor in Bush's victory was that we were attacked on our own soil. He's a fool to play it as a mandate but we's gotten where he is by being a fool, so for him it works. Bush is the Disaster President in more ways than one.

Draftdated - March '04 - More Passion

2005-02-16T12:05:00.000-05:00

[This is a draft post from sometime in early March 2004 - I didn't post it because it was unfinished, as you can see from the Roman Numerals at the end of the post... I don't have time to finish it now, either, but I gotta make this blog less drafty!]

Hopefully, the end of this topic

Some last points about the "Passion."

First of all, I want to rationalize why we are spending so much time on it. I happen to believe that it is a significant point in early 21st Century. Yeah, this is just a film; yeah, its a pet project of a lowbrow religious punk - a punk who has been able to manipulate the entire Western World into paying attention to his personal demonology.

The 20th century saw the transformation of Western Culture from Idustrial to post-Industrial to Information. We are in the "information age" (for those who're keeping track) and when you recognize that information is all in the mind, you will recognize that anything which directlty impacts the mind is both powerful and significant.

In a land that holds free speech as an inalienable right, we have understood even back in the 18th Century that ideas are powerful and significant. However, over those hundreds of years, we've learned that speech can liberate as well as obliterate.

"Hate speech" is a difficult and nebulous substance that has only been seriously thought out in the late 20th Century. We have the Supreme Court cases that relate to dangerous speech (shouting fire in a crowded room) to hate speech. A watershed moment, I believe, was the Clarence Thomas - Anita Hill case which alerted America that sexual harassment is harmful and is accomplished in the intangible realm of verbal and non-verbal language. The fact that the culprit of the harassment is one of the most powerful people on earth is ironic but understandable when you see him as an antediluvian vestige and an accident of history.

Speech is a weapon; images are weapons. The cultural-conservatives who demand prayer in schools (speech), Ten Commandments in stone in the courthouse (images), no smut on television and radio (both), understand this.

In fact, were you to ask a cultural-conservative and a cultural-liberal what the greatest threat to American society is in 2004, the liberal would say "the near-fascist thuggery of our rapacious and illegally elected government." A conservative would say "Hollywood."

The reason why "The Passion" is so important is because it wages a war of images and ideas using the enormous power of Hollywood and Big Business. It's message - about religion and violence - has been the public discourse for the past 20 years and ever-so-much-more-so in the past 3 years.

That's why I think we need to still discuss it.

II. Why you do not need to see it
III. Christianity is anti-semitic by definition

Draftdated Dec 1 '03 - Wesley Clark

2005-02-16T11:52:00.000-05:00

[This is from December 1st, 2003 - in entirety! I'm not changing anything - see if it makes sense]

Is Gen. Clark a viable candidate for President? According to the New York Times analysis, there are 10 democratic challengers to the Presidential incumbent:

Wesley Clark, Retired 4-Star General, Arkansas
Howard Dean, Former Governor, Vermont
John Edwards, Senator, North Carolina
Richard Gephardt, Representative, Missouri
Bob Graham, Senator, Florida
John Kerry, Senator, Massachusetts
Dennis Kucinich, Representative, Ohio
Joe Lieberman, Senator, Connecticut
Carol Moseley Braun, Former Senator, Illinois
Al Sharpton, ?, New York

I have heard about all 10 except for Kucinich (the bio says he is the former mayor of Cleveland, but why would anybody claim that? Obviously he doesn't actually exist).

Clark has never held elected office (neither has Sharpton, whom I mention only to say that according to the website he doesn't actually have a job right now; also, for you trivia buffs, the site states: "he began preaching at the age of four and was an ordained minister at the age of nine." )

Clark, despite not being a politician, has spent oodles of years in government work and has a tested record of leadership, administration, and shooting people.

This does feel like we're in the 1840s or so. Back then, and now, the leadership of the nation has old ideas of the new Age; and the best electoral hope comes from untested war 'heroes.' Tippecanoe and Clark Too!

I like leaders with capability and vision. People like Reagan and Clinton stood for distinct visions; Bush I & II stood and stand for bubkis; just whitebread, inbred, Old Money backward ignorance. It's sad. The slogan of Bush should be "Meet the Face of Backward!"

Clark is kinda the "Anti-Bush":
Clark: Rhodes scholar & general
Bush: AWOL dim-bulb.

Clark finished first in his class in West Point. Bush's family got him into Yale (remember, none of his siblings could get in after him, why? because the Ivies stated to open the doors to un-bush-types, like Women, minorities, Jews). Clark rose the top of a grueling, demanding profession. Bush's family got him every single job he's ever held (and lost).

Clark's views on Israel and the peace process need work. So far, he sounds like a mushy Clintonoid. Considering that he is the Klinton Kandidate, this makes sense. I'm glad to see that the Clintons have held off on foisting Hillary in '04. We shouldn't be surprised when she does become a candidate in the next few years - if Bush wins again then she's a lock for '08 (if the country still has elections by then).

My favorite candidate has been and still is Lieberman. He's about as electable as Adalai Stevenson, which worries me, but it's rare for me to actually like a candidate.

Draftdated Dec 1 '03 - Movie Reviews

2005-02-16T11:45:00.000-05:00

[OK, this is from December 1, 2003 - I have no idea why it's been sitting here for so long...]

Movie Reviews

After many moons, I finally saw The Matrix Reloaded(2003). From this movie, I learned a great lesson: people are dumb. And petty.

The reviews for the movie were very bad. Why? It's not a bad movie. They were expecting something as earth-shattering as the original. A false hope, a stupid and untenable expectation. The complaints about the movie belied ignorance and a petty lowliness. I'm sorry to sound emotional or defensive about the movie, about which I don't really care that much, I am reflecting a proper backlash against idiocy.

"Matrix 2: The Matrix Sequel" suffers from "Empire Strikes Back" syndrome: in both cases the first movie altered the world (truly); it was made as a stand-alone prospect (even though the world it created allowed an open-ended story); it's meant to be all plot to lead the final resolution.

Certain fundamental flaws of sequels undermine both franchises, e.g. you need to get bigger and badder in sequels, but that destroys the continuity from the first film (see Terminator for the worst examples).

The philosophy is still good; the first film was about the reality of Reality and the mind-body problem, the second is about free-will & determinism and the essential definition of the human (as opposed to AI). The main concepts left in advanced metaphysics are: cloning and personal identity, moral philosophical issues of utilitarianism, the root connection between moral philosophy and metaphysics.

The movie is good, see it and understand it for what it is.

P.S. The same thing can't be said for all sequels; I finally saw "Charlie's Angels 2: The Crappening" which was poorly made, incoherent smut. And Bernie Mac should watch the dailies so he can modify his minstrel routine, I can't imagine he wanted to act that way.

Draftdated Dec 29 '04 - Jerry Orbach, Star of 'Law & Order,' Dies

2005-02-15T11:35:00.000-05:00

[This was from December 29, 2004]

Jerry Orbach, Star of 'Law & Order,' Dies - he was really the only thing I liked about the newer episodes.

As I've said before, my wife got me into watching the shows which were good but in my mind not great. A good show is one that is intelligence-respecting, well-written, and entertaining. A great show is a must watch. Examples of Good shows, for me, are "Seinfeld," "The Shield," and "Cheers."

Great shows are "The West Wing," "the Sopranos," "Arrested Development," and the heliege "Simpsons."

But "Law and Order" was decent and I liked Orbach very much - it was nice seeing a plausible Jewish cop on TV.

Draftdated Dec 23, '04 - Israeli Flag for War Crimes

2005-02-15T11:30:00.000-05:00

[Started on December 23, 2004]

In the decription of American "war crimes" (that's what the story, War Crimes [washingtonpost.com], calls 'em), which includes our friendly torture of the random prisoners in Guantanamo, the interrogators would torment their victims with "humiliations such as being wrapped in an Israeli flag."

That's a direct quote.

I love this. I love the fact that our government is torturing people. I love the fact that the people in Quantanamo are denied civil and human rights. I love that the legal genius who allowed this to happen is our new Attorney General. I love that Bush is such a friend of Israel that he uses their flag as a tool of torture and humiliation.

Can one of you GOP supporters explain this to us?

Extracts From Adam's Diary

2005-02-15T00:10:00.000-05:00

In my senior year of college, when we needed to find quotes to put next to our pictures in the yearbook, a literary snob friend of mine said that the only legitimate quotes were those we found ourselves when reading or listening to songs. Getting quotes from a quotebook was not proper. Yes, she was an English major. I agreed in principle, except of course that I read quotebooks for fun so, by Talmudic logic, I was fine.

Ironically, I did have a quote from a story that I would have loved to use but I couldn't find it in time. Ten years, and one internet, later I can find the quote and broadcast it to ya'll

This is from Mark Twain - the only decent 19th Century American writer (who I am glad to say is not only better than Melville and Hawthorne but could also probably thrash them both in a barfight) - from his short story Extracts From Adam's Diary (about Adam Harishon and eating meat):

It was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed

Go Twain!

Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein

2005-02-13T22:45:00.000-05:00

If you want to see a wonderful example of moral foreign policy, check out this (presumably undoctored) photo of Donald Rumsfeld Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein

This is from George Washington University's "National Security Archive" - a generally fun place to surf and get very frightened.

Draftdated Jan 13 '05 - Centre or Center?

2005-02-11T17:27:00.000-05:00

From January 13, 2005

As if you need more proof that the Kabbalah Center is evil, it appears that they are claiming that were they back in the time of the Shoah, they could have prevented it through the powers of [wait for it] The Kabbalah. On sale now, at the Centre.

See for yourself: Madonna's Kabbalah Center in Holocaust Row

Draftdated Jan 3 '05 - Barry Goes Bye-Bye

2005-02-11T15:18:00.000-05:00

[From Jan 3, 2005 - I have no idea why I sat on this one for so long]

So Dave is on official Hiatus (The last word, for now; humorist gives jokes a rest). Excuse me... [Sound of teeth gnashing, wailing]. By the way, do anything but teeth, gnash? According to the Dictionary it's exclusively for teeth... but we can apply it to other body parts if we try hard enough.

Draftdated Jan 21, 2005 - The Definition of a Hack

2005-02-11T09:10:00.000-05:00

[From January 21, 2005 - ]

William Safire wrote in his paean for the Second Bush Second Inauguaral that "I rate it among the top 5 of the 20 second-inaugurals in our history."

No kidding. Safire really said that.

To be honest, Safire probably wrote those lines a few days ago in anticipation of his needed approval. Safire is an expert on language (even though his language columns reek with doctrinaire pedantry) and I challenge him to define himself as anything but a hack, at this point.

Shameless too.

Draftdated Jan 27, 2005 - Departure of Undersecretary Douglas Feith

2005-02-11T00:20:00.000-05:00

[From Jan 27, 2005]

At last, one of the idiots who led us into the debacle in Iraq is leaving: DoD News: DoD Announces Departure of Undersecretary Douglas Feith. According to the cognoscenti, he was the worst of the bunch (and that's saying a lot). He was in charge of "Policy" in the DOD - which means he was the one who let us believe that the attack was necessary and (who knows) could be the one who ordered the devastation at Abu Ghrab and Gitmo.

The worst part of it is, his claim for leaving is "personal and family reasons." As someone who actually likes living creatures and as someone capable of the human emotion of love I resent that a moral vampire like Feith uses his family as an excuse for getting out while the getting is good.

I also resent the fact that the only Jews that Bush has in his employ are shameful; but I guess they best reflect Bush's worldview: "Weaker at home, shamed around the world."

Roto-Blogger (Bloggo-Rooter)

2005-02-11T00:01:00.000-05:00

While it may look like I've been only sporatically bloggin', I've actually been writing a lot in draft form. I will try to unclog the bottleneck and get those old posts out into the light.

McShwarma

2005-02-08T15:13:00.000-05:00

My whole life has just come together in 25 seconds. McDonalds in Israel is now making a "McShwarma" sandwich and their commercial is a parody of the "quarter-pounder" scene from "Pulp Fiction."

See the commercial.

Download the commercial.

AUGH - Johnny Carson Dies at 79

2005-01-23T16:16:00.000-05:00

AAAAAUGH!! Late-Night King Johnny Carson Dies at 79 - When did this creep up?! Wow, what a shock. Oy, the great comic greats are dying.

Will Eisner dies, 87

2005-01-04T22:33:00.000-05:00

My cartoonist hero, Will Eisner, died Monday, January 3rd. Many of you don't know me as a cartoonist (I stopped actively drawing my sophomore year in college) but Eisner had the most profound impact on my art, lettering, and narrative. My cousin Garry introduced me to Eisner (as he has done successfully with a number of my favorites, including Dave Barry) when I was very young and I just fell in love with the Spirit. When people see me dressed in a wide brimmed hat, sharp suit & tie and gloves, I am dressed as The Spirit. Oh, Will, we'll miss you.

Draftdated Dec 19, 2004 - Kosher Slaughter Update

2004-12-19T11:32:00.000-05:00

[From December 19, 2004 - about the Kosher Slaughter controversy - I do want to spend more time on this, but at this point I'm just interested in clearing out the drafts]

"Kosher Slaughter Done Right" by Temple Grandin

A Good Chanukah Gift

2004-12-12T23:15:00.000-05:00

Just one step above the "Don't Blame Me, I Voted for the Other Guy" bumper stickers that are sold every few years.

O'Reilly - A New American Hero

2004-12-10T12:19:00.000-05:00

By "new America" I mean the world that George W. Bush has created. Fox News is nearly invincible and Bill O'Reilly is the tip of the teflon. He has survived the revelation of disgusting sexual harassment because, hey, Bush is in power not Clinton.

Now, here's some more wonderful behavior this time against Jews (who are not as numerous as women, so this will also blow away): O'Reilly attacks ADL

O'Reilly doesn't like criticism and the ADL reprimanded him for responding to a Jewish caller who said

When I was growing up -- I'm Jewish, but I was not in a very Jewish area. There were some Jews there but, I was kind of -- grew up with a resentment because I felt that people were trying to convert me to Christianity [by introducing Christmas into schools]--

Part of O'Reilly's response:

O'REILLY: All right. Well, what I'm tellin' you, [caller], is I think you're takin' it too seriously. You have a predominantly Christian nation. You have a federal holiday based on the philosopher Jesus. And you don't wanna hear about it? Come on, [caller] -- if you are really offended, you gotta go to Israel then. I mean because we live in a country founded on Judeo -- and that's your guys' -- Christian, that's my guys' philosophy. But overwhelmingly, America is Christian. And the holiday is a federal holiday honoring the philosopher Jesus. So, you don't wanna hear about it? Impossible.

Read the whole thing; it's a hoot! Viva Bush! Viva Fox!

Netherlands Hospital Euthanizes Babies

2004-12-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

Remember this about Holland: they are the first to legalize drugs, prostitution, and euthanasia - all in the name of social liberalism and progress - and it makes Holland feel like the frontlines of Sodom. Need proof about how libertines become cruel and inhuman? Check today's news: AP - Netherlands Hospital Euthanizes Babies

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A hospital in the Netherlands — the first nation to permit euthanasia — recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.

If I ever get sick in Holland - if BENJIE gets sick in Holland - drop everything and get me the hell out of there. Drag me to Germany even, just keep me away from that charnal-house.

Ridge Resigns Homeland Post

2004-11-30T14:21:00.000-05:00

This makes what, 7? 8? resignations (AP: Ridge Resigns Homeland Post). Wouldn't it be great if Bush, dizzy with all the resignations, high on crank, gets confused and resigns as well? Yeah!

Biur Biur Biur

2004-11-28T09:26:00.000-05:00

It turns out that the "Biur Chametz" dude (dudette?) is a friend of mine. He/She links to my post, and comments on it, here. Our conversation will soon be featured on the Fox telecast of "When Blogs Collide!"

More Support for the Psak

2004-11-26T15:38:00.000-05:00

Turns out that I was not the only one dealing with this halakhic issue. Some blogger wrote about it and you can see his discussion here. DO NOT BE FOOLED - his blog "Biur Chametz" looks exactly like mine. Rackenfracken templates, now I have to change the colors!

The Real Cheese

2004-11-25T09:32:00.000-05:00

For those who are skeptical about the dollar value for the hello kitty grilled cheese, see this story in Slate about the $28000 original. Note, I made a cheese sandwich this morning (and am in the process of eating it) and, hey, it looks like a cloud.

Hello Kitty Grilled Cheese Sandwich

2004-11-25T01:21:00.000-05:00

Bid quickly - especially if you were outbid on the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwitch, the Hello Kitty sandwitch is still available:
eBay item 5536791340 (Ends Nov-25-04 14:19:11 PST) - A Cute Miracle! Hello Kitty Grilled Cheese Sandwich!

Psak Reaction

2004-11-24T17:17:00.000-05:00

I wrote that two weeks ago I ruled that the shul wouldn't say tachanun in reaction to the death of Arafat. While most of the congregation applauded the loss of tachanun, if not the loss of our enemy, there was some opposition. One member asked me for the sources of the halakha and I have spent the time since shoring up the halakhic support for the psak.

First of all, the Shulchan Arukh is very clear in Orech Chaim 575:11-13 that when we fast for rain, and the rain falls, we can say Hallel. Siman 576 then expands the need to fast to all difficult situations - including a feared enemy.

In any case, every shul Rav I've spoken to agrees that we have the power to suspend tachanun for a communal simcha, but that wasn't enough for the textually minded. Two poskim - one black, one white - ruled on the matter. Rav Nachum Rabinovich, the Rosh Yeshiva of Maale Adumim, agreed with my decision (said that I did the right thing) and said that since tachanun was a minhag, I as Maara d'Atra could make that decision.

Rav Ephraim Greenblatt (the famed Rivevot Ephraim, whom I know from Memphis) was less enthusiastic about my ruling but said that I had halakhic grounding, specifically the Chaya Adam, klal 155, siman 41.

Rav Greenblatt pointed out that people associate omitting tachanun with the death of a tzadik and thus my psak was difficult. I explained that the omission of tachanun is only with the yahrzeit of a tzadik - the death of a tzadik (according to the Shulchan Arukh) requires everyone who hears to tear kriah! However, the death of an enemy requires rejoicing and the yahrzeit is forgotten (because of the yimach-shemo stuff)

Since then, it was pointed out to me that there were those in Israel who ruled the same as I: see this story from (ugh) Arutz-7.

It's gratifying to know that my halakhic-intuition was on the mark.

Elvis Has Arrived

2004-11-24T09:28:00.001-05:00

A successful low-ball purchasing spree from Digitaleyes yielded [dramatic music] Bubba Ho-Tep! You remember, the Elvis vs. Mummy movie with Bruce Campbell. Yeah, that one.

Thank you... thank you very much.

And this was a Blue State

2004-11-22T20:18:00.000-05:00

According to this New York Times story (5 Killed in Hunting Dispute in Wisconsin):

BIRCHWOOD, Wis. (AP) -- As several deer hunters made their way through the woods of northern Wisconsin, they were startled to come upon a stranger in their tree stand. .... Asked to leave, the trespasser, wearing blaze-orange and carrying a semiautomatic assault rifle, opened fire on the hunters and didn't stop until his 20-round clip was empty, leaving five people dead and three wounded, authorities said.

Makes you feel glad the assault weapon ban was led to die in Congress. Or else these men would have been killed by a crazed deer!

What If: If Kerry Had Won

2004-11-21T18:59:00.000-05:00

Then maybe SpaghettiOs would still be made by Franco-American!

Here We Go With Stage Two

2004-11-17T09:13:00.000-05:00

If I ever run for public office, I believe my platform will begin with a public condemnation of PETA. The "animal rights" organization is filled with pernicious wrong-headed views (that would allow me to bash the Left). The newest stage of their lunacy: Fish Rights.
Check it out.

Hatzoloh Should Recruit Him

2004-11-16T14:32:00.000-05:00

According to this AP story, David Lee Roth of Van Halen fame is becoming an EMT in New York City. He's Jewish, so I think Hatzoloh should give him a call. How cool is that?

Political Discourse: Texas Style

2004-11-15T19:03:00.000-05:00

Put up your dukes.

Getting Messy

2004-11-15T18:36:00.000-05:00

The world is getting messy quick. Colin Powell resigned from Sec. of State today and considering who they have to replace Ashcroft, I expect Zell Miller to be the replacement. Goss, the new CIA chief is leading a "shakeup" (to use the Times term), Condeleeza Rice may be the new State (which means a new Nat Sec Director) and ODB died. A full week.

The CIA story is the most important in my eyes. This is simultaneous with a shakeup in the FBI and the new department of concentrated Intelligence Agencies (or whatever) being created. This means (a) our intelligence agencies are being gutted and will spend more time keeping their bureaucracies alive than keeping us alive, (b) in a battle between the FBI or CIA and the President, back the FBI/CIA.

I'll explain. As soon as I admitted that, yes, Goofy was elected in '04, I said to whatever Republican wandered into my path, that they could have done this the easy way - by having Bush go down gracefully - but now we gotta go the impeachment route.

Unless Clinton, who basically did nothing, Bush and his Band of Happy Elves have done so many persecutable actions that only their tight control of information and curtain of radiating fear keeps them in power.

Bush is Nixon. Nixon was finally caught. Who did it? Yup, Woodward & Bernstein.

Actually, they didn't. They were just young and ambitious enough to be witting pawns of two very powerful agencies. The first was the man "Deep Throat" (whose identity we still don't know) but who was leaking all the damning info to Woodward.

The second, and most important agency was the FBI. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was the most powerful man in America - he had secret info and surveillance on hundreds of politicians and he knew all the skeletons. He died on May 2, 1972. His successor, L. Patrick Gray was cut from very different cloth (e.g. Gray appointed the first women as Special Agents, see the FBI website)

Gray and the new FBI leadership did not play Hoover's games and they went hard and heavy after the Watergate break-in. The key elements to the Woodstein stories were the grand-jury investigations opened by the FBI.

Put simply, the FBI put the President out of business. And I pray to God that they do it again.

Thunder & Lightning

2004-11-14T17:17:00.000-05:00

My thunder & lightning theory of babies crying: just as you wait after seeing lighting, counting the seconds before the thunder, to see how far away the storm is. Well, that works with babies too - when you hear the first little "weh" you wait for a few seconds, each second will tell you if it's a cry of wet or tired or aliens from planet zoombah.

Kill Sears

2004-11-14T01:48:00.000-05:00

This article in Slate (Jeers and Cheers for Sears ) says that some real estate tycoon may be buying Sears so he can raze the stores and sell/rent the real estate. Whatever. I just applaud anyone's effort to destroy Sears. They were utterly horrible to me when I moveed in and I hope they go under fast and painfully. I told them that I was going to tell everyone I knew how horrible they were and they didn't care in the least.

In sum: don't ever ever ever shop in Sears if you can avoid it.

Another good source about the Monster

2004-11-12T13:35:00.000-05:00

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs: Arafat Terrorism

I Apologize

2004-11-11T22:46:00.000-05:00

Seriously, I need to apologize. My brother asked me if I should be so happy that Ashcroft was resigning because 'maybe they'll find someone worse.' I said, well sometimes the Devil You Know is already bad enough.

I was wrong. The new AG candidate, Alberto R. Gonzales, is another one of the GOP tokens but this time, with his own baggage. According to many reports (This from washingtonpost.com), Gonzales may be responsible for the "legal" decisions that threw away the Geneva conventions and led to the horrors of Abu Ghraib.

My brother was right, I was wrong, I apologize. In the future, when trying to predict the actions of the President, always choose the most despicable path.

Faces of the Fallen

2004-11-11T22:41:00.000-05:00

For a long time, I was looking for a way to recognize all the soldiers who were dying in our two wars - the same way that I acknowledge the fallen in Israel's wars. The government was hiding the information for a long time and so I stopped looking. Just today, I found that the names have already been released.

This is one of the resources, washingtonpost.com: Faces of the Fallen

Columbia Journalism Review's Too Late

2004-11-11T14:03:00.000-05:00

When I did my senior thesis (almost 10 years ago, egads!) I used the CJR as a necssary balance to the excesses of journalism back in the day. The freakshow that exists now was barely imagined in 1994 and CJR (and other watchdogs) have not kept up.

In this post-mortem of the 2004 political coverage CJR tries to make up for the collective lack of talent and restaint of the whole industry.

Some good pieces about the 'Monster'

2004-11-11T13:59:00.000-05:00

From the Boston Globe: Arafat the Monster

From Honest Reporting: The legacy of Arafat (a shockwave movie)

Arafat is Dead

2004-11-11T13:38:00.000-05:00

In my power as Ma'ara D'Atra I declared that we would not say Tachanun today. No, it wasn't just because it's Thursday; after weighing the proper responses to the death of Arafat, no tachanun was a start. This is what I said:

We're told in Pirkei Avot, 4:24, Shmuel HaKatan said: "When your enemy falls, do not rejoice, and when he stumbles let your heart not be glad, lest God see, and regard it with displeasure, and divert His wrath from him [to you]."

Our response is tempered; despite our joy we cannot respond with Hallel. But we recognize that with the death of Arafat, God has shown us mercy and we acknowledge that by not saying Tachanun.

Arafat was the greatest enemy of the Jews since Hitler.

He is called "the father of modern terrorism" - he gave the world suicide bombers, children as targets, the carbomb. He also created the falsehood of a "Palestinian" - there is no such thing, no such person, no such state, and Arafat's evil made that falsehood live [one of the only things he let live]

The IDF claimed that for Arafat to die from natural causes outside Israel was the best possible scenario. And for that we're grateful as well.

In response, we will say three chapters of Tehillim: 121, for the ongoing war; 124 - which is about God saving us from enemies, and 125 - where we acknowledge that we must respond to God's mercy with mitzvot. We must increase our tzedaka and other good works today.

[After the tehillim, I had to say a quick comment and "Rebbi Hananya ben Akashya" so I said:]

There's a popular joke about Hitler and now Arafat that whatever day he died would be declared a Jewish holiday. It didn't happen - because we don't celebrate the death of enemies; we ask God to "yimach shemo" - to blot their names out from the world. No day to commemorate the obliterated names.

P.S. Psalms 124 & 125

A Song of Ascents; of David. 'If it had not been God who was for us', let Israel now say; 'If it had not been God who was for us, when men rose up against us, Then they had swallowed us up alive, when their wrath was kindled against us; Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul; Then the proud waters had gone over our soul.' Blessed be God, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers; the snare is broken, and we are escaped. Our help is in the name of God, who made heaven and earth.

A Song of Ascents. They that trust in God are as mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abideth for ever. As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so God is round about His people, from this time forth and for ever. For the rod of wickedness shall not rest upon the lot of the righteous; that the righteous put not forth their hands unto iniquity. Do good, O God, unto the good, and to them that are upright in their hearts. But as for such as turn aside unto their crooked ways, God will lead them away with the workers of iniquity. Peace be upon Israel.

Canada's View of America

2004-11-10T12:48:00.000-05:00

Evidently, Canada has been receiving quite a number of investigative requests since Bush's overwhelming crushing stunning majority victory. The Toronto Star suggests that this be the new map of North America.

AWRIGHT!!

2004-11-09T23:29:00.000-05:00

Finally, a silver lining! Ashcroft is leaving the government! (Ashcroft, Evans Resign from Bush Cabinet)

Oh my! He was the absolute worst of the gang of thugs. Worse than the lying thief Cheney; than the incompetent torturer Rumsfeld. True, Ashcroft should be wearing handcuffs, but sometimes you gotta celebrate the small wonders.

Kerry is what now?

2004-11-09T17:51:00.000-05:00

According to the AP wire, Kerry hints White House run in his future. He's hinting that he wants to run in 2008.

I must admire the type of abject idiocy that makes someone think he can prevail in what others would think are hopeless circumstances. However, this ain't that. Didn't Kerry get the memo? He was running against the most hated man since Richard Nixon and HE STILL COULDN'T WIN! It wasn't because there weren't enough Democrats, or "swing voters" or "get out the voters" - it's because he was so profoundly unappealing as a person and 'leader' that more Americans went with the inbred frat-boy thug.

In fact, my rage over Kerry has redoubled with this rumor. How dare he?!?

Shiva Over

2004-11-09T12:56:00.000-05:00

Depending on how you count, Shiva for the world ends today. The election was on Tuesday, but the concession was on Wednesday... hard to tell when I can get off the floor.

For those who wish to retain some sanity and clarity in the past week's horsesheiss storm, especially as it relates to the
"Republican Mandate" - see this proportional population electoral map.

Just like Greenland, the red states of our vast Midwest & south and rendered as mere bulges of pitiful red-neck splotches.

Still No Blogger

2004-11-05T14:58:00.000-05:00

Blogger still isn't allowing me on - or putting up my recent posts. I'm sitting here exhausted and furious. I'm especially angry at Kerry for not coming himself with a public statement of confidence. All I see from the online NYTimes and WPost is Andrew Card and a big banner headline "Bush Confident of Victory." Kerry needs to come out strong, and he's not and I want an explanation.

Note, the "confidence" thing is all part of the Rove playbook. By playing the press into declaring him the victor, all attempts to actually count the votes are called "recounts" instead of, uh, ya know, "counts."

I've heard and read some frum Jews saying that this is God giving another victory to George W. I want to remind ya'll that this is a vote, not a lottery, and so our fate is being sealed by human action - but even then, God's invisible Hand could very well be giving Bush victory but as a punishment. That's how it feels to me.

Four More Years of Abu Ghraib

2004-11-05T06:31:00.000-05:00

Just in case the recent pronouncements of the domestic agenda and the 'political capital' of a razor thin victory have confused you, the reports are coming in of systemic abuses in Guantanamo prison (AP: Guantanamo Abuses Reported.)

This was one reason why Bush had to lose: so the abuse, which was ordered down from the highest levels of the Executive Branch, could have been exposed and the 'evildoers' brought to justice.

I won't say that anyone who supports Bush or voted for he and his mobsters is guilty of suppressing these crimes. As I said before, you Republicans have a chance to communicate to your Embarrassment in Chief that you want justice done. As non-base, I will be ignored (to say the least).

But if Abu Ghraib, and now Guantanamo, doesn't keep you up at night, then there's not much hope for you as a moral person.

Doubled Posts

2004-11-05T02:07:00.000-05:00

It seems that the emailed posts I sent on Wednesday morning have taken two full days to actually be processed by blogger. If you see doubled posts, that's the reason. I will attempt to eliminate them as they arrive but we will be in Cornell this Shabbas and I'm not sure how accessible computers are in Cow Country.

Arafat in a Coma

2004-11-04T08:48:00.000-05:00

Yup, so sez the AP. And it would be glorious poetic justice if he died on November 4th - 9 years to the day after his partner, Yizhak Rabin ob'm, died.

The New Republic: 51-48

2004-11-04T08:32:00.000-05:00

The New Republic, 51-48, by the Editors
Post date: 11.04.04

This hurts. The convictions and the dreams of American liberalism have genuinely failed to carry the day; and so, for the sake of liberalism, but also for the sake of America, it is the hour for making discriminations among the varieties of despair.

There certainly are grounds for despair. In their first term, without a popular mandate, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney governed in a radically sectarian manner, in conformity with only the wishes of their hallowed base; and there is no reason to think that the popular mandate that they have now secured for a second term will provoke them to reconsider their virulence and their smallness and their indifference to the evidence of experience beyond their own. In the aftermath of this election, the president speaks about unifying the country, but he spoke that way in the aftermath of the last election, and he became the most spectacular disuniter of America in contemporary history. We must not expect the Bush administration to rise above its theology, its secrecy, its instrumental attitude toward the courts, its sympathy for the rich, its economicist approach to health care, its easy conscience about the exploitation of the environment, its belief in its own infallibility, its regular sensation of perfection. There is no sign that the Bush administration has any good idea about how to correct its course in Iraq or to put an end once and for all to Osama bin Laden; or that it regards anti-Americanism as a serious impediment to American values and American interests abroad. The Bush administration may now be expected to behave triumphally and (as the talking heads say) to move forward with its agenda. Hard times, brutish times, lie ahead.

But there is a kind of despair, a glamorous pessimism, that liberals must at all costs avoid. The cartography of the electoral college may show a continent of red with some blue lesions at the extremities; but the popular vote in the election of 2004 was 51 percent for Bush and 48 for Kerry, and those are not the numbers of a political or philosophical rout. Fifty-one to forty-eight: Those are the numbers, rather, of a conspicuously unclear and unthrilling Democratic candidate, whose advantage in money did not offset a disadvantage in authenticity. But the important point is that, all the healing pieties of the morning after notwithstanding, this is a country divided against itself about many matters of first principle. The diversity of worldviews upon which we pride ourselves is haunting us. In such a welter of fundamental differences, the work of argument and organization becomes even more necessary. American liberalism did not die on November 2. It merely lost an election.

There is honor, moreover, in a certain kind of loss. In our distracted and accelerated and gamed society, with its religion of winning, we sometimes forget this. But the many millions of Americans who believe that the tax code should be more fair; and that one of the ends of government is to bother itself about its neediest and least fortunate citizens; and that the morality of the market is not all the morality that a society requires; and that the Bible is not the basis of a democratic political order, or of our political order; and that robust stem-cell research, and science more generally, is a primary social good; and that gay marriage is a question of equality and not the beginning of the end of civilization; and that American troops must not be sent to war ignorantly or dogmatically, or without the means to win; and that the good reputation of the United States in the world is one of its most powerful historical instruments--the many millions of Americans who believe these things are not wrong. They are merely not a majority. But they are a very large minority.

This is not to say that the wounding outcome of this election should fill liberals with a sense of their own purity. Not everybody to the left of Bush is like everybody else to the left of Bush; and it would be catastrophic for the Democratic Party to wallow now in the sort of Michael Moore leftishness that made many Americans worry whether John Kerry was sufficiently obsessed with American security, and sufficiently excited about American power, to protect them at home and to promote their purposes abroad. (On the question of American power, the American people are right and Ted Kennedy is wrong.) An internecine quarrel must now begin. But it cannot begin where there is only alienation, and the self-fulfilling confusion of the Bush administration with the United States of America. This country is bigger than its every president. This Constitution is not easy to destroy. This is not the apocalypse. But it is the most formidable challenge to American liberalism in our time.

Why the election results are devastating

2004-11-04T06:27:00.000-05:00

It's not because "my man lost" - as you know, I did not like Kerry and thought the Democratic Party base that chose him in the primaries were dead wrong. It's because I believe - and have mountains of fact to back me up - that Bush and his cronies have been deceiving the public and the world in the worst way. And I felt that after the election of Kerry the truth would finally come out; that the frightened and muted Press would finally open their mouths and report what they already know and have been hiding.

And then a sizeable majority of America would see that Bush was not what he claimed to be. That this government is *not* what America wants.

I still believe that. I believe America was robbed. And maybe now the Press will realize that they have been complicit in this agony and will start doing their jobs.

Terror Alert!

2004-11-03T16:41:00.000-05:00

Hey, according to my Sesame Street Alert, there's no longer an Orange Alert in NY and DC!

And, sure enough, that's what the Homeland Security Page says. When was the level reduced? After Kerry's concession or after Bush's victory speech?