Things I Don't Hate

This year's Ig Nobels are out!

This is an astute move. I cannot tell how pleased I was by the Supreme Court's decision earlier this year to invalidate patents on isolated human genes or alleles. I don't know how extensive patent trolling really is, but many of the high-profile patent-infringement lawsuits seem to involve it, to the public detriment (e.g., NTP's threat to interrupt BlackBerry service). To me it is a symptom of what seems a legalistic (rather than just) economic and political climate, leading to public injury. Anyway, the first link of this bullet won't be a panacea and it isn't reform, but it's a start. If only there were a way to do something similar with copyright.

What I think of movies of within 3 months of now:

• There are too damn many 3D movies. A movie that is unappealing in 2D is sure as hell not going to be appealing with a price premimum of 25–50%. And here I'm only referring to new releases: 3D re-releases are even less appealing.
• Limited-release flicks that interested me enough to see: The Intouchables, To Rome With Love, Chicken With Plums, Farewell My Queen, Moonrise Kingdom
• Flicks to the opening of which I am looking forward: Anna Karenina, Frankenweenie
• Flicks the to the opening of which I am indifferent: Beasts of the Southern Wild (despite the fact that the little girl reminds me very much of my niece), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Life of Pi, Hotel Transylvania (I'm not actually indifferent to this: I'm hostile), ParaNorman, End of Watch

Truth Is Beauty, Beauty Truth, Sir!

It's not exactly word-association—perhaps implicit association? Photo association? Something, anyway.

Here are my associations:

Police state

Overkill

Doublespeak

Semantics

Hypocrisy

Please Alter My Sack As Fashion Dictates

Somebody on the Internet said something that reminded me of a related thing; so, idiot that I am, I chose to comment.

Things That Make You Go "Aughh"

In the Washington Post today:

"...in Pakistan, where patriotism is equated with support for the military...". Written, without irony, in the newspaper of the capital city of the U.S.A.

"In an even more welcome feat, he manages to de-mythologize Hawaii and bring it into new post-Obama, Pacific Rim-era relevance." The second half of that sentence sounds informed and erudite, but I have no idea what it might mean. What, in 2011, is "post-Obama"? If it's only now that Hawaii has acquired "Pacific Rim-era relevance", what geopolitical space has it been occupying since 1940? And anyway, why does a change in a movie reviewer's attitude toward Hawaii carry geopolitical significance? On 11 Sept. 2001 the scales that blinded Americans to certain geopolitcal realities fell from our eyes—the World itself did not suddenly change. (From a review of the movie The Descendants.)

I've been losing respect for Chris Elliott the travel writer for a couple of months now; it took a big hit from this column: "One incident of planes stranded on tarmac doesn’t justify new laws". Which would be true, except that it isn't "one incident." The new laws were enacted, as laws generally are, in response to something: the continuing occurrence of such low-intensity events. To imply otherwise (when he very much knows better) is disgraceful. Then, to use as his one example a severe-weather-related event that involved multiple aircraft, airlines, and even the entire airport—a wholly atypical situation with respect to the tarmac law? Please.

What About the Sleaze and the Depravity?

Yahoo! poll, from about 5 minutes ago.

The Heart and Soul of Springfield is the Maison Derrière

So apparently The Playboy Club is cancelled. And also apparently it was subversive, if by subversive one means "taking timid steps towards reflecting contemporary social reality." Of course, Mad Men (from whose notes The Playboy Club wholeheartedly cribbed) did it first; but chickened out (after nearly 3 seasons; plus, it hasn't yet returned from its hiatus so maybe it doesn't count as a TV show any more). On the other hand, Mad Men doesn't suck, which was The Playboy Club's problem from the beginning. And I do mean beginning: I only lasted 15 minutes into the first episode before abandoning the show as an uninspired drama hoping its sex appeal would conceal that fact.

The thing is, The Playboy Club was doomed by trying to ride phantom coattails. Mad Men's coat isn't made of sex appeal. I dislike pretty much all of the characters on M. M., and I can't say I'm all that interested in the advertising industry. But the show is ethnographically captivating (in the same way that 1993's The Age of Innocence is, although for different reasons). I can't find the ref but I read somewhere that M. M. is uncommonly popular among higher-income viewers. The appeal of M. M. is not that of the average television drama. T. P. C.'s first episode was about a murder, which seems to be standard prime-time–drama fare: its main differences from other p.-t.–d.'s are being set in the 1960s and having its women (pardon me: "girls") spend most of their screen time in their 1960s underwear. It was plotted and costumed for the typical p.-t.–d. viewership but the marketing tried to exploit M. M.'s sophistication, suggesting it was a show for M. M.'s audience. Which it wasn't; it was M. M. for the Six-Packs. But the Six-Packs don't watch M. M., so that wasn't a draw (OK, OK, I'll be nuanced: some were disgusted by the association with the porn industry, some thought it would be too snooty, and some watched anyway because boobies); and even before it aired it was clear T. P. C. was going to be tawdry, which turned off the M. M. viewership. Plus it, you know, sucked. So those of the M. M. viewership who took a test drive didn't purchase.

The cancellation of T. P. C. might have something to do with wingnut-dominated cultural discourse, but I'm inclined to think it had more to do with the success (particularly the lack thereof) of the show (which may have had something to do with wingnut-dominated cultural discourse but I suspect had more to do with not being something anybody wanted to watch). Networks might be a little more sensitive to the explicit demands of the right than to the hopes of the left, but the dollar drowns us all out. It was an orphan bastard.

That's Lazy Talk!

I have a tendency towards pedantry. It seems to me that many neologisms or novel uses of existing words are indicative of laziness (it's one thing not to know a suitable word or usage already exists, but another not to bother finding out). I do it too, sometimes wittingly, sometimes not. Just yesterday I realized, while using it, that the verb "to result" is one I would have despised all along had I seen its emergence. It's on my list now.

Also yesterday two phrases came to annoy me enough to merit listing: "to go too far" and "to cross a line". I don't think these indicate the kind of ignorance-laziness I just described, though; I think they indicate a worse laziness, a laziness of thought. They express no more than a vague dissatisfaction that, because it is vague, does not get critically examined. Being slightly more specific than just opining "it is wrong" by suggesting that the problem is one of extent rather than essence, the phrases imply that critical thought actually has been given when in fact it has not: what the phrases mean is "I don't like the application of whatever to this case but I can't tell you why."

What constitutes one's line, and how does it relate to another's? Nobody asks. If we even know what our particular line is (and I doubt we do or we would have said so), we assume it is self-evident. Assumptions about the reason for or extent of dissatisfaction allows a shared experience of dissatisfaction to emerge even when there might be fundamental differences about the reasons for it. The phrases thus make it easy to conflate disparate opinions without realizing it (especially by the news media, bastions of precision and accuracy that they are), with a consequently unwarranted effect on public discourse. Take Wisconsin's union-busting state government: politicians were elected in part on a plank of unions having gone too far, without offering any specifics, and the electorate learned too late that the politicians were more reactionary than itself.

The phrases make me cringe now. I'm going to start asking for clarification when I hear them, and whoever cannot explain themselves more clearly will lose, to my mind, their right to the opinion.

Two Cars in My Garage, Three Eyes on Your Fish

Sigh.

Just read.

With Democrats like Clinton and Obama, we can't even blame it on the Republicans.

She Didn't Reckon With the Awesome Power of the Chief of Police (Updated)

This isn't about irresponsible parenting. It's about insufficient deference to the police.

Whatever the situation, the cop thinks either that they're absolutely right or that you ought to overlook their mistakes because they mean well and after all they're people entitled to mistakes like everyone else so shut up.

Except that everyone else doesn't get to make the rules. And I do mean "make," because as a matter of practical daily life the cops are the arbiters of right and wrong. They are the ones who apply the laws—at their discretion: they ignore laws when they want to, and they stretch them when they want to. Whatever your legal record looks like in the end, the cops have the power to mete out instant punishment (public embarrassment, personal indignity, time-consuming hassles of all sorts). You, insolent citizencivilian, will do as you are told or you will be disciplined.

Full disclosure: I have a blood relative who's a cop.

UPDATE, 3 Oct.:
This article is interesting for its acknowledgement that cops are not up to speed on absolutely everything over which they have authority. I am glad to see it. Cops do make mistakes, but the thing is that they rarely admit it, and that's why the overbearing exercise of statutory authority is problematic: The Cop is Always Right, Even When They're Wrong. This often comes up with respect to photography as well.

Heinous Funnies 79(9)

Best bumper sticker so far.

At first I thought this said "9/11 memorial stabbings".  

That is because I have been reading too much from The Bloggess.

Because of her, I kind of want a haunted monkey of my own.

Also a small daughter, as long as I could give her back when I was finished.

As Intelligence Goes Up, Happiness Often Goes Down

Yesterday I took in The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. The movie itself isn't depressing, but its parallels are. The most depressing one by far is my conviction that the only population that learned anything from the episode is the politicians, including Barack 'Look Ahead Not Back' Obama. As history has so conclusively demonstrated, if you ignore history everything will be just fine.

If God be just – and that's a big "if" – there is a special Hell awaiting the vast majority of post-World War 2 Americans (including me), Easter notwithstanding.