08.29.07
Posted in Entertainment at 4:30 pm by qkslvrwolf
So, last week I watched Stardust, and I really, really enjoyed it. Sort of at a deep primal level.
The movie is your basic coming-of-age love story adventure. Not really terribly new or exciting, but very well executed. (Some of you may be aware of my belief that well-executed formulas often trump things that are new.)
This movie goes beyond good. It was satisfying. Like some kind of nourishment that I’d almost been missing.
While the movie itself didn’t really make me think, my reaction to it has been. I think that this movie is a prime example of what I understand to be Joseph Campbell’s monomyth (although, having never made it more than a chapter into The Hero With a Thousand Faces, I can’t swear to that.) Suffice to say, I found the story very compelling.
The acting was good, though not remarkable. The special effects were pretty low key. But the movie just made me feel…satisfied.
I did get a bit of intellectual satisfaction out it…Robert De Niro plays a pirate with a dual life. His public face is a blood thirsty pirate of the skies, and his private face is a soft, cuddly, cross dressing flamer. De Niro, obviously normally a tough guy, plays the part with a silly, gracefully playful overstatedness…just short of too much. It’s a great caricature of a character in a movie full of great characters.
(Incidentally, apparently Claire Danes must in some way look a lot like Gwyneth Paltrow, because both myself and someone else initially thought that Yvaine looked like her).
Anyway, I highly recommend the movie. I might even go see it again.
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08.23.07
Posted in Personal, Politics at 10:18 am by qkslvrwolf
I have a running email conversation with a buddy of mine who I occasionally send stuff too from my blogroll. (No worries, parental units, it’s personal email.) Right now the discussion has degenerated to his argument that “if I sent him stuff from traditional media, he’d be more likely to read it”. Also, I should apparently also find stuff to counterpoint my stuff, so that he doesn’t have to do any work.
Anyway, I’m throwing up the conversation here because I think it’s interesting, and I’m also curious as to how people think I’m presenting my arguments. Of course, I know that there are those who feel I’m way to harsh, but it’s hard to find the balance because being to soft doesn’t end up presenting a different opinion. It’s sort of the same trouble the democrats have had: how to stand up for your opinion and hopefully change someone’s mind without being wishy-washy and just reinforcing their viewpoint.
A little background. He had pulled the “traditional media, blogs don’t count, blah blah blah” stuff at work.
So I sent this:
Exercise: Find me a place where traditional media either
1) Doesn’t claim that democrats are investigating too much OR
2) Sites a poll by a reputable pollster (any traditional media except fox would count, also gallup) to support the claim.
Glenn Greenwald on democrats and investigations.
His reply:
Why does fox get thrown out the window?
Me:
Tell you what, let’s turn on fox on of these days, and I can sit there and tell you why they’re bullshit all day every day.
Him (you have to remember, he’s not comfy have a real discussion for an extend period of time, so he occasionally tries to “lighten things up”)
I guess this article is bias…pfft.
Fox News on AP Poll.
Me:
No, actually that article doesn’t do a bad job.
You’ll note that it was an AP story picked up by fox, however, so it’s not actually fox content.
Also, I never said that fox was incapable of not doing the occasional stories correctly.
If you keep your ear to the ground on this story, you’ll actually hear a lot of pundits and stories claiming that this is proof that people don’t like congressional investigations.
Glenn Greenwald (same article)
Rebuttal on that point here.
All things considered, though, this isn’t bad. The real problem with stories like this is that, while they quote the poll, they don’t link to the poll so that if you’re curious as to method, actual questions asked, and other answers NOT sited in the poll, well, you’re still SOL. I don’t like that. I like my citations, because sometimes I like to be able to check whether they cherry picked the questions they reported on, or whether the questions they asked were leading or not, yada yada.
Him:
My whole point is that if you were to send articles from national traditional news orgs then you would get a better response from me. It took me 5 mins to find this one on Fox. Also, you should go out and read articles from Fox and other conservative leaning news orgs because it would give you an understanding of the point from the other side of the fence. I would just like to point out that I am not ultra conservative by any stretch of the imagination; I am conservative leaning. I like discussion that you bring but the e-mails with links to liberal bias blogs and whatnot are just getting deleted. I would like to see you send an article out from a conservative site and rebut it with your ideas and possibly sighting articles from traditional media. That kind of e-mail would bode well with most.
Me:
1) Fox is ultra-conservative. Their TV is worse than their web, because their web at least gets pickups from relatively neutral (if lazy) news services like reuters and AP. So, even if YOU are not ultra-conservative, your viewpoints will be if you’re watching fox.
2) Traditional media does not address issues that concern me; that is one of the major reasons that I don’t pay much attention to them. Traditional media spends a lot of time on celebrity’s and hair styles, and very little on substance. I’m not going to waste my time looking through all the shit to find something that tangentially discusses an important issue just to shelter you from a viewpoint you’re not used to getting.
3) Unless and until you find a factual or logical fallacy in anything I send you, the only reason you have to not read it is that you disagree with their conclusion. I.e., you want to shut out a point of view that you’re not familiar with and that may cause cognitive dissonance.
Apologies for the spam.
him:
Note: This is from the LA Times, a well respected newspaper, not a internet blog.
me:
Actually, did you read this piece? This isn’t the one I thought it was. This is one cracking on the guy who wrote the one I thought it was. Both out of the same paper.
Of course, no retraction will be printed. It’s “just opinion”, so the complete factual vacuum in the article doesn’t matter, right?
Him:
What issues do concern you? Most bloggers write about things that go on in this country; mostly political. Does “traditional media” not report on politics? You tell me what you are concerned about and I will go out and find articles about those issues from traditional media sites. Now, those sites will probably not fit into the liberal agenda that you send out but it might help you understand what most people are hearing and reporting about. I believe that you think Fox news is ultra conservative because it does not fit into your idea or has an opposing idea of how you think this country should be run. I believe it is conservative but not to the level of like a Rush or Michael Savage. Anyway, I care about both sides of the fence and it seems that you only care about what the liberal ideology cares about. If you want to make points to conservatives use their stuff against them, i.e. site an article from their blog them find an opposing article that explains the other side and let us make our own decision. Just a thought, and if you want to take me off the list that is okay.
me:
Actually, I read a bunch of tech blogs as well as political blogs. And you can find someone blogging about anything. So “most bloggers write about x” is as bad as that skube piece, both logically and factually challenged.
When I send out stuff, I’m sending out an argument for my point of view. I’m sending you a piece of information. It is your job, if you disagree with my side, to represent your own opinion. If you haven’t made an opinion on the topic yet, but you feel there is something wrong with my take on things, then it your own job to educate yourself as to why. Simply because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it isn’t correct.
There are two major myths running around, propagated mainly by the traditional media. First is that the modern media represents a full spectrum of debate - it doesn’t. Traditional media manages to capture the “center” to the “far right”. Second is that there are “two sides” to every debate. Bullshit. There are as many sides to any given debate as there are people participating. To try and reduce it to one side or the other is dangerous oversimplification.
I send stuff out because I represent a substantial portion of the population of this country that doesn’t have a voice in traditional media, and doesn’t tend to have a voice on military installations, meaning you guys don’t hear it very often. I want to present to you guys a point of view that is different from one that you tend to hear. I’m not trying to provide you a fair and balanced viewpoint. I’m trying to show you that there is more out there than “the president’s side and the vice president’s side”, as Stephen Colbert once so aptly put.
If you want to stick your fingers in your ears, that’s fine.
If you want to have an honest debate, and counterpoint what I find, that’s fantastic.
But I am not going to go out for you and find a side of the issue that I don’t agree with just to satisfy your need for “the other side”. I’m not going to have the entire discussion for you. If you want to participate in the discussion, I’ll talk all day long. I’ll read everything you send me, and if I disagree with it, then I’ll be able to tell you what parts I find factually or logically challenged. If you don’t want to participate in the discussion, as clearly you don’t, then I’ll just leave you out.
What I will not do is your research for you.
Have an opinion? Support it. Not able to support it? Then you probably shouldn’t hold it so strongly.
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08.20.07
Posted in Personal at 1:01 am by qkslvrwolf
So, after a long weekend of partying with the xiles, I’m now having trouble sleeping. So, a bit bored, tired of playing with my home network (it looks like I can’t get my wireless router to pass dhcp requests with the linksys firmware, meaning I’m going to have to flash it with the open source stuff, meaning a big project.), so I started playing on the internet. I’ve been trying to break myself of stumble-upon, so I was doing other random stuff. I read about a quarter of John Keat’s Hyperion, tried to catch up on my blogroll (but of course NO ONE FREAKIN’ POSTS!!!!), watched some videos off crooks and liars, yada yada. I was also trying not to read too much of my regular politcio and tech blogs/news, because I know I’m going to be bored tomorrow waiting for the @%)^*&@)( pentagon to get back in touch with me with their database updates….bastards. Anyway. So, I decided to google my net handle and my name (which thankfully came back with very few hits), and then I just googled my name. It’s weird what people named me are doing. There is one white guy in Thailand with a very large family. There’s a guy doing journalism at indiana u. There’s a phd who is apparently working on heat as a safe, non toxic biological control. There’s apparently a guy at microsoft. Guys that went to several colleges I considered and would’ve been there at the same time as me if I’d've gone. There apparently is a band going by “[My Name] Band”.
In fact, almost everything out there that the other mes are doing sounds like something that I could’ve happily done had life rolled out a bit different. Kinda wierd, huh?
Anyone else got any good stories?
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08.14.07
Posted in Politics, programming at 12:21 pm by qkslvrwolf
Not something I think anyone else here is going to care about, but that’s ok. :-)
I intend to cross-post this at Daily Kos, but can’t right now. Remind me if you don’t see a link in this later.
Sir,
I am writing to you in regard to a bill proposing to extend copyright law to fashion design. While I do not care specifically about the fashion industry, I very much care about the damage that current copyright, patent, and trademark laws are doing to this country. These issues fall under the heading of so-called “Intellectual Property”, which is a misnomer, but one that is readily recognized.
The power of the US Government to establish copyright, patent, and trademark stem from the following from Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries”
The most important part of this is the first clause of the sentence: to promote the progress of science and useful arts. This is the test that any law or regulation dealing with these subjects MUST pass. It must pass it not in biased idea, but in demonstrable fact. If a law or regulation does not act to INCREASE the level of innovation and progress, then that law should be considered unconstitutional.
Ideas are not property. It is not possible to deprive their originators of them, which is what theft really constitutes. Now, it is possible to create a situation whereby a person is unable to monetize an idea that they have had. Thus, it is possible to deprive a person of their ability to derive property from their idea. Because ideas and progress are so important in this day and age to society as a whole, it is more important that society get access to the idea in as efficient a way as possible. It is not important for society to guard someone’s exclusive rights to an idea for all time, but rather for society to guard those rights for a time frame long enough to provide opportunity for profit; that is provide incentive to create. Even if the creator does not capitalize on that one time opportunity, society has still fulfilled its obligation by providing the opportunity.
I’ll skip the argument as to whether or not fashion constitutes a “useful Art” in the first place. However, I should point out that the fashion industry as it stands is a wildly successful business operation. I think that any argument that an action to extend copyright to fashion will increase the overall monetary value of this industry is questionable and should be verified statistically and scientifically by a government agency, not by biased industry insiders.
Sir, I urge you to stand against this bill now and always consider the intent of the constitution with any copyright, patent, and trademark issues in the future. These questions have long ranging implications far beyond their surface, and anything that reduces innovation hurts the citizens of this country.
References here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/09/fashion/09ROW.html?ex=1344312000&en=c371f2f5c187f9a8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
http://techdirt.com/articles/20070810/030915.shtml
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030910/0054251.shtml
Respectfully,
qkslvrwolf
UPDATE 14 Aug 07 1240: Wish I’d seen this article before sending my letters.
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