Tisdel's Tirades

Tisdel's Law

2012-01-20T15:20:00.000-05:00

My experience has shown me that for whatever reason, people who love sports strongly tend to love politics as well. That may be partially a product of the competitiveness of each, or the fact that the linguistics of each tend to creep into the other (witness Newt Gingrich saying he's "at his best in the fourth quarter", or the name "Spygate" for Bill Belichick's videotaping scandal a few years ago), but those two demographics just tend to overlap strongly. It's been my observation that conversations between people astute in both areas tend to bleed over into one another, which leads me to Tisdel's Law.

Weak application of Tisdel's Law: All conversations that begin by talking about politics will inevitably segue into talking about sports. (Jon King, moderating the GOP Presidential Debate last night, did it right at the start by mentioning he was rooting for the Patriots this weekend.)

Strong application of Tisdel's Law: No matter how they start, all conversations that begin with either politics or sports will end up incorporating the other field.

Tisdel's Law has been demonstrated repeatedly during conversations within my friend group and political discussion group, the League of Informed Voters. (The name isn't mine, by the way; I believe my friend Dick gets credit for formally naming the phenomenon.) I'm currently trying to scrape together funds for a wider study. Tisdel's Law is predicated on my observations at the following places: Wooster, OH; Washington, D.C; Milwaukee, WI; and various televised coverage of Presidential candidates/Congressional races, all of which indicate that interest in politics and sports tend to go hand in hand. Tisdel's Law should not be used to place bets; any such responsibility is yours.

Are Hergé's Tintin Comics Racist? Of Course They Are.

2011-12-26T17:55:00.000-05:00

Let's get the bias-clearing part out of the way right up front: I love Tintin. I've read pretty much every Tintin story ever published, I own most of them, and when I was very small my dad and I used to read them. He'd be Captain Haddock, I'd be Tintin and we'd narrate our way through each adventure, sitting side by side in my big yellow chair. (It took forever for me to figure out why Andy Serkis's Captain Haddock sounded weird in the trailer; it's because he doesn't do my dad's distinctive pronunciation of things like "Blistering barnacles!")

As a lifelong reader, I think I have a decent say in the debate over whether the Tintin comics are racist in their portrayals of people who aren't white Europeans. My answer? Yes. Duh. Absolutely. Of course. Let the apologists argue over whether it was on purpose or whether Georges Remi was an innocent product of his times; I prefer to cede the debate entirely by admitting what is plainly obvious: Tintin, as a comic, is racist through and through. One has only to look at the Congolese of Tintin in the Congo to see this. For further examples, I recommend the black crew members of Cigars of the Pharaoh, the Muslims of The Red Sea Sharks, the hired guns of Rastapopulous and his gang in Flight 714 and dozens more.

Tintin himself is vehemently anti-racist, and is often seen sticking up for downtrodden locals over the objections of imperial powers (see: Zorrino in Prisoners of the Sun, Chang in The Blue Lotus). The trouble is that said locals are always portrayed as incapable of protecting or defending themselves, and in need of Tintin's intervention for their own safety. You could make similar cases about the inefficencies of provincial governments around the world that Tintin travels to, the political instabilities in various regions (the Balkans, the Middle East, South America) that Tintin regularly soothes, and so forth, but that's not the point.

The point is, if you get caught up in the comic's racist tendencies, you're going to miss just how freaking good it can be. Tintin is an adventure hero, and he's a bit of a Mary Sue for pre-teen boys; without much of a personality of his own, he travels around the world, fights crime and solves mysteries. Who wouldn't want to put themselves in his shoes? The comic is drawn well, the stories are decently complex and frequently comment on issues of the day, and there's plenty of comedy (from Captain Haddock and Thomson and Thompson, among many other sources). It's all right to label Tintin as racist; that's what it deserves. But if you pigeonhole it away with Rudyard Kipling and Doctor Doolittle and all the other racist literature that also happens to be very good, you're missing out on some eminently readable and very good childrens' tales.

Review of "Womb"

2011-10-23T01:46:00.000-04:00

"Fuck that movie." -Sid

Womb is aggressively bad. It appears to have been made by hipsters, for hipsters, with the sole goal in mind of being spectacularly boring. Its lone virtue is the beautiful high-definition camera, which is used to good effect in most of the shots. Beyond that, however, Womb is just terrible.

The movie is a character drama that focuses on the lives of Rebecca and Tommy, in both of his incarnations, but by the end you really know very little about their characters. Rebecca is simply emotionless, staring blankly at her fellow actors for most of the movie, and Tommy isn't much better. It's impossible to relate to them.

Director Benedek Fliegauf's cardinal sin is prolonging shots far, far longer than they need to last, particularly shots of Rebecca staring at Tommy (or anything, really). They're consistently 30 to 40 seconds long and nothing happens in them but the actor staring vacantly, or yet another shot of the house Tommy and Rebecca live in. These aren't a momentary artistic diversion, either; they occur frequently throughout the movie. There's just so much wasted time that could've been used for dialogue, of which Womb has very little. Also, there's virtually no music and no background noise in these shots, so they're just downright boring. If you've seen the cover art with Rebecca staring at something off-camera, you've seen probably a solid 15 minutes of the movie.

I suppose Womb's persistent tendency to convey surpassing awkwardness is a point in its favor. However, there's really no scene in the entire film that isn't skin-crawlingly awkward in some way (Rebecca's staring and the long shots convey this well). It's an awkward subject anyway; I mean, the world's biggest Oedipal complex in Smith combines with the world's most obsessive person in Rebecca. I've seen reviews arguing that it's heartfelt and adorable because of the length Rebecca goes to regain her lost love; I vehemently disagree. Because of Rebecca's lack of character, the act of cloning and raising Tommy comes across as simply creepy rather than something she's doing out of love. (Tangent: I also see Rebecca as one of the most thoroughly selfish characters in cinema, but that's another story. Her selfishness is her defining trait.)

Also, Fliegauf's directing contains perhaps the most heavy-handed use of symbolism I have ever seen. The only thing he doesn't do to get his points across is putting them in a subtitle at the bottom of the screen. Example: Tommy is conflicted about whether he should be with Monica or Rebecca. We know this because there's a shot of both their bedroom doors, which are right next to each other. Both doors are open and both women are lying disconsolately on their respective beds, and Tommy walks between them, then leaves. This takes about a minute and really doesn't deserve 10 seconds.

So, that is Womb. If I've left anything out, it's that the dialogue could probably have been written in about two or three hours by a writer who wasn't concentrating very hard. There's nothing striking, witty, clever or even memorable about any of the lines. Most often the lines aren't even there, replaced by vacant silence where human interaction is supposed to be, and also where people could've justified their actions. Why did Tommy-2 bury the dinosaur? Why did Tommy-1 randomly strip down and jump into the ocean? Why did Rebecca take a solid 12 seconds to seductively eat a banana? How did Tommy-1 become, of all things, a cockroach breeder? These answers just aren't there. Arguably, it's for the viewer to answer these questions, but for me it just felt like apathetic storytelling. On a scale from "I utterly wasted my time" to "You must spend every waking moment of your life seeing this movie", Womb is pretty close to touching the bottom. Don't go here.

Cops Killing Animals: Zanesville Tranquilizer Controversy

2011-10-21T13:51:00.000-04:00

The big Ohio story over the last few days involved an exotic animal owner who opened the cages of his private menagerie and then shot himself. The escaped animals included lions, tigers and bears (of course), wolves, baboons and monkeys. All were hunted down and shot. This has sparked some minor controversy about whether the animals should've been tranquilized instead, an argument which ignores both the facts of the escape and the practicalities of doing so.

First of all, police officers are not equipped with tranquilizer guns as part of normal procedure. The deputies that responded to a call of escaped wild animals carried assault rifles, as well they should have. There was no time to get the required equipment together, and waiting around to do so would've raised the possibility of an escaped animal injuring or killing someone in the meantime. This is plain and obvious.

Secondly, it took until Wednesday night to deploy experts with tranquilizer guns (the animals were turned loose on Tuesday). Should the police have simply let the animals run free in the meantime? Of course not. This is, again, obvious.

Thirdly, note the word 'experts' in the paragraph above. It's not simply a matter of handing guns to cops, once you get the guns, and telling them to tranquilize all the animals they find. The user of a tranquilizer gun basically needs to be part anesthesiologist, according to this site. You have to calculate the dosage based on approximate body weight, species and the concentration of the drugs you're using, which is an inexact process. And since (as a now-armed cop) you don't know exactly what animal you're likely to encounter, and thus what dart you'll need, there's a major risk to the cop AND to the animal. Shoot a dose intended for an elephant into a monkey, it probably dies anyway. Shoot the monkey's dose into the elephant, you just make it mad. And expecting somebody who's not trained with that piece of equipment to get it right, under pressure, for every animal is an unacceptable and unreasonable demand. I'm not saying I like the idea of exterminating the animals, but killing them on sight was by far the best way to ensure that nobody got hurt (and indeed, nobody got hurt with the exception of the owner, who apparently committed suicide).

The Curse of the China Doll

2011-10-21T01:04:00.000-04:00

A little-noticed fluff piece on NFL.com today revealed that Sean Payton, head coach of the New Orleans Saints, apparently has a habit of giving his injured players china dolls. If that's the case, I think that would have a seriously negative effect on injured players.

From the player's perspective in the NFL, the front office is always trying to replace you. There is tremendous pressure on every player but the superstars, all the time, to stay on the field and make plays. This leads to players concealing or downplaying injuries in an effort to look good, which leads to their quality of play declining and can often lead to them getting cut. If the coach is actively mocking players with injuries and accusing them of being fragile, as the china doll gift suggests, that puts even more pressure on those players and can hurt their careers. It also leads to a poor outcome for the football team, if the player never lives up to his talent level because of injuries that never got a chance to heal.

Jack Bechta of the National Football Post says it much more eloquently than I do, but our point is the same: this is a really bad thing for injured players.

To Those Who Burned the Mosque in Tuba-Zangariya...

2011-10-06T19:33:00.000-04:00

You are disgusting. You are foul. You are vile and contemptible and ugly.

There can be no excuses made for the crime of setting afire a holy place. Mosque, synagogue, church, temple, I do not care. That is beneath any decency, beneath any right, beneath all attempts at temporizing and half-hearted justifications.

That is wrong.

Don't ever fucking do that. EVER.

Sincerely,

one pissed-off Jew.

Many Links!

2011-10-06T16:54:00.000-04:00

A great profile of Eric Cantor, http://nymag.com/print/?/news/politics/eric-cantor-2011-10/

An article about forgiving consumer debt, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/03/us-haircut-idUSTRE79125J20111003

The majority letter to President Obama on the cement bill: http://www.speaker.gov/Blog/?postid=262513

A column on stateless income: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/04/column-dcjohnston-stateless-idUSN1E7921II20111004

Another profile from New York Magazine on the guy who wrote Moneyball and The Blind Side, http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/michael-lewis-2011-10/

Politico Primary: http://www.politico.com/politicoprimary/

Steve Jobs
A journalist remembers Jobs: http://allthingsd.com/20111005/the-steve-jobs-i-knew/

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement speech, full text, http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Also, nuclear: http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/nuclear-liability-the-market-based-post-fukushima-case-ending-price-anderson

Doctor Who, Contd:

2011-10-05T14:45:00.000-04:00

Some quick thoughts that I've had in a Word document for a few weeks now. I'll post a Top 10 Who episodes of the new series list, seasons 1-6, when I get around to it; however, failing that at present, here's just a few things. SPOILERS BEWARE.

-Steven Moffat really likes presenting his characters with two choices, both of which are ultimately false (See: "Amy's Choice", "The Almost People" (in the case of Jenny), and arguably "The Girl Who Waited"; Rory has to choose one or the other Amy, but it turns out the choice was made for him anyway.

-He's also run the scenario twice where the Doctor brings two opposing groups to the negotiating table, ready to talk peace, only to have an unexpected murder spoil everything and nearly provoke a war. ("The Hungry Earth"/"In Cold Blood", "The Rebel Flesh"/"The Almost People".)

-Moffat and Davies have each run a scenario with galactic policeman trying to capture an escaped intergalactic criminal, who are willing to sacrifice human life to capture that criminal (or are indifferent to it). ("Smith and Jones", "The Eleventh Hour")

-Turning ordinary objects/situations into something science-magical/frightening. ("Gridlock" and "The Idiot's Lantern", not to mention the TARDIS itself.)

Is the Doctor Really Ruining His Companions' Lives?

2011-09-26T16:38:00.000-04:00

First of all, I'm finally, finally, FINALLY caught up on Doctor Who. I just watched my first-ever newly aired episode, "Closing Time", this weekend. Unfamiliar sensations!

Second of all, I've got some Doctor Who thoughts to post, and I shan't stop until they're all gone. Here's a sampler: I don't think the Doctor has any reason to feel guilty about screwing up the lives of his past Companions, which has been a major theme this season.

Yes, bad things happened to the Companions in-episode or in-season, which is fine. But that's more than counterbalanced by the wonders the Doctor shows each of them when roaming across the universe. And honestly, I think almost all of them are better off for their time with the Doctor, so I don't see why he's whingeing about screwing up their lives.

Look at the Companions we’ve seen so far: Rose, Mickey and Rose’s mum are happy, and Rose has her own Doctor, which is what she’s always wanted. Sure, they’re in an alternate universe and sure, Rose had to give up everything else in our universe to gain what she has, but she gained her dad back as well and it’s not like she ever seemed to particularly care about anything besides family. Martha’s having the time of her life, having been elevated from a lowly doctor’s assistant to Companion and then to UNIT VIP, before leaving them to run around blowing things up (in "The End of Time"). She’s married, in love and clearly happy, even if she’s not on the TARDIS. And Donna, while she’s suffered the greatest loss of any Companion, is also oblivious to it! For Donna, her life is exactly the same as it was pre-Doctor. She’s neutral.

Obviously we've yet to see what happens to Amy and Rory, but for now, I think it's safe to say that the Doctor shouldn't feel guilty about his past Companions.

Edmund Finney: Sane or Insane?

2011-09-20T11:44:00.001-04:00

In the successful, long-running webcomic Edmund Finney's Quest to Find the Meaning of Life, protagonist Edmund has met innumerable strange people. There's the Count that speaks only in literal statements, the executioner who creates an execution-themed amusement park, the dragon who's a scam artist, a homicidal elevator operator and many more. All of these people seem to be insane from the perspective of the reader and of sane, rational Edmund, who shares the reader's values and often acts as an audience surrogate. The question is, are they insane, or is he?

If we accept that insanity is a species of craziness wherein the lunatic's values/beliefs/actions are following a recognizable pattern (e.g. slamming your face into the floor five hundred times every night to ward off the invisible goblin gods)...

...and if we accept the precept that insanity (and therefore sanity) is not a fixed concept, since sanity (normal behavior) is defined by the society you're in, and therefore sanity is relative...

...and if we accept Ray Bradbury's quote, "Insanity... depends on who has who locked in what cage"...

...might it not be the case that Edmund, who appears to be the only sane, rational person in the comic from the perspective of the reader, is actually the crazy one? He appears sane to us, but in the world of the webcomic, he's the one out of step with every other character. Folk wisdom has it that if you encounter a problem at your job, and you switch jobs six times and the same problem reappears every time, you're likely to be the one with the problem. Could this apply to Edmund, who seems out of place in every situation he enters?

Sure, he seems sane to us because we share his values. Edmund Finney's defining traits are logic and rationality, traits that most of his readers sympathize with. But from the perspective of beings in Edmund's world, he's the abnormal one. Their twisted logic and crazy decisions are the norm. What we consider rationality is strange and alien. Wouldn't it make sense, then, for them to lock Edmund up?

And that's exactly what happens, actually. In one telling comic, Hand-Farmer McGann harvests a crop of hands from the ground, then runs off into the night. The police come by looking for an escaped mental patient, and Edmund (sanely and rationally) tells them that a guy claiming to farm hands just passed by. The police call off their search and take Edmund into custody. One reading of the comic is that the police arrested Edmund because he sounded crazy telling them about McGann, and they thought he was the mental patient. My argument, however, is that they arrested Edmund because he gave the rational answer. He wasn't punished for sounding crazy by our standards, but by theirs. Even if McGann had escaped from an asylum (and we see later that the asylum inmates aren't much crazier than the outside world's inmates), the police did their "sane" duty by arresting an innocent man. Everything fits.

Dear Anonymous Senior Republican Aide...

2011-09-12T10:12:00.000-04:00

Fuck you.

Yes, you. The guy who was quoted in Politico's print story this morning as arguing against cooperation with President Obama to pass his jobs bill, saying in so many words, "Obama is on the ropes; why do we appear ready to hand him a win"?

I like the fact that you were candid, Mr. Senior Republican Aide, sir, but what I dislike is your entire mindset implied by that comment. Since when exactly is fixing what's broken in the country less important than scoring political points, a currency not accepted at any major bank?

So, my very dear friend Senior Anonymous Republican Aide, go fuck yourself. When you're done, come back and start negotiating with Democratic leaders about the best way to fix the economy!

Most sincerely,

Andy Tisdel

Student Alcohol Policy: Coda

2011-09-09T15:02:00.001-04:00

In the last few days, I’ve been to a Student Government meeting and asked about the policy, been to a First Responders meeting and asked about the policy, and had a meeting with the Dean of Students to talk about the policy. So I think I’m on pretty firm ground here when I say that, contrary to what was reported by the Wooster Voice, it’s neither a big deal nor a big change.

THE BASICS

First of all, the College’s alcohol policy remains the same as ever, which is to enforce state law. In practice, what typically happens is that upon a first alcohol violation, you go to the Wellness Center and have to talk to a counselor.

With regards to the Dean’s office, well… In the past, Security, Judicial Board, the Dean’s office and the Wellness Center all kept records, depending on which one a given offender came in contact with. This made it harder to detect people who seemed to be having a serious problem; it’s easier to see three violations in one place than it is to communicate between different offices and figure out that Student A has been in trouble three times. The emphasis is not on punishment, but on helping Student A; the worst punishment A will receive is talking to an alcohol counselor, which after a few massively drunken episodes, they probably need anyway.

THINGS I DIDN’T USED TO KNOW OR FORGOT ABOUT

-The College is obligated to enforce state law, and underage drinking is in fact illegal. I keep forgetting about that because it’s so widespread, but the fact is, Security enforces the law and the law says that drunk and disorderly conduct, or underage drinking, is illegal.

-You don’t actually have a right to privacy at a private school. When you step onto this campus, you forfeit your right to freedom of speech and privacy. There’s nothing illegal, in that case, about the Dean’s office having access to the fact that you came to the Wellness Center drunk the other day. We exercise free speech and have limited privacy because he doesn’t want to run the campus in a draconian manner, but there’s nothing unlawful about his ability to get that information. However, the information remains confidential to those outside his office.

-Students eschewing the Wellness Center’s care hasn’t been as much of a problem in the past as I thought it could be. The sober friends of a given drunkard tend to make the smart call, and the drunk friends get scared and take their drunker friends to the Center. This isn’t always the case, but it is very often the case.

-If you have a beer, fall down and bruise your arm, you don’t get a notification because that isn’t your chief complaint. In other words, if you haven’t broken the law and you come to the Center with alcohol in your system and another ailment, the Dean doesn’t get a notification.

-There’s no actual list that the Dean keeps. Most of the time, he doesn’t even see the first-time notifications. It’s the second- and third- time people that might have a problem that the notifications are designed for. Once again, the focus is on helping repeat offenders, not punishing them.

-Finally, the policy doesn’t extend to all your medical information. It’s exclusive to alcohol. Drug abuse, however, has to be reported to the City of Wooster.

THE TAKEAWAY

There’s no actual change in how the College treats offenders, and there’s no change in which offices have access to what information. In addition, the Dean does not have access to your medical records via this system. He is only told when there’s a violation of law or policy, i.e. underage drinking, drunk & disorderly conduct, etc. If you don’t like that the Dean hears about your alcohol-related malfeasance, well, that’s the price of doing business when you go to a private school.

Please spread the above around as broadly as you can, and just as importantly, please spread the word that it is as safe and to your benefit to visit the Wellness Center as it has always been.

Many thanks,

Andy Tisdel
College of Wooster ‘12

Patriots and Colts: Two Conflicting Philosophies

2011-09-07T21:32:00.000-04:00

It occurred to me, as I was reading about the imminent end of Peyton Manning's games-started streak, that the Indianapolis Colts and their arch-rivals the Patriots don't just have a quarterback rivalry. Their philosophies on how to build a professional football team are also in direct conflict.

Indy's Incompletions

The Colts have traditionally staked everything on arguably the greatest players in the NFL today, Peyton Manning. Their offense has been tailored for a decade precisely the way that's best for him. The Colts don't have many star players, excluding Manning and defensive ends Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis. Usually, they just in pieces around Manning and let his unbelievable brain, feet and arm do the rest. Boom, 12 wins. Boom, playoff berth.

Because of Manning's ability, the Colts have been able to squeeze by with some really crappy high picks over the past half-decade. Indianapolis arguably hasn't had an elite first-rounder since Dallas Clark (TE) in 2004. CB Marlin Jackson (2005) is no longer with the team, and subsequent picks Anthony Gonzalez (WR, 2007), Donald Brown (RB, 2008) and Jerry Hughes (DE, 2009) have all been unimpressive. Only Joseph Addai (RB, 2006) has made the Pro Bowl, and he hasn't had a 1,000 yard season since 2007.

The Colts' third- and second- round picks have also been largely crappy. Larry Tripplett (DT, 2002, 2nd), Joseph Jefferson (SS, 2002, 3rd), Mike Doss, (2003 S, 2nd) Donald Strickland (CB, 2003, 3rd), Bob Sanders (S, 2004, 2nd) Ben Hartsock (TE, 2004, 3rd), Gilbert Gardner (LB, 2004, 3rd) Kelvin Hayden (CB, 2005, 2nd), Vincent Burns (DT 2005 3rd), Tim Jennings (CB 2006 2nd), Freddy Keiaho (LB 2006 3rd), Tony Ugoh (OT 2007 2nd), Dante Hughes (CB 2007 3rd) and Quinn Pitcock (DT 2007 3rd) are no longer with the team. Jennings, Sanders and Strickland all had success (particularly Sanders, a former Defensive Player of the Year), but the rest of these players haven't had much.

Mike Pollak (G 2008, 2nd), Phillip Wheeler (LB, 2008, 3rd), Fili Moala (DT, 2009, 2nd), Jerraud Powers (CB, 3rd, 2009), Pat Angerer (LB, 2010, 2nd) and Kevin Thomas (3rd, CB, 2010) are still with the team, but only Angerer has impressed thus far.

Most teams that draft this poorly would be perennial 6-10 squads. The Colts have avoided this fate by riding their stars (Dwight Freeney, Robert Mathis, Dallas Clark, Reggie Wayne and of course Manning) and just letting Manning make competent players out of whoever they throw at him. Without Manning, the whole artifice comes crashing down.

(The Colts have also drafted an astounding ten defensive backs in rounds 1-3 over the past nine years. Only Powers and Thomas are still on the roster, and Thomas missed all of 2010.)

The Patriot Way

The Patriots, by contrast, are famous for signing older, established free agents-Andre Carter, Chad Ochocinco, Shaun Ellis and Albert Haynesworth from this season alone-and drafting enough talent for Tom Brady to get by. Like the Colts, they have strong systems that they can plug players into and get results from just about anybody. Unlike the Colts, they are built to survive without Tom Brady (witness 2008, when they went 11-5 with Matt Cassel at the helm). Indianapolis, with its culture and players completely centered around Peyton Manning, is unlikely to fare as well if he misses extended time this year.

Dear Mr. Romney...

2011-09-06T12:11:00.000-04:00

Dear Mr. Romney,

You are a hell of a lot smarter and better-informed than I am, so I'm in no position to criticize every part of your editorial in USA TODAY that came out this morning. I do, however, want to make three basic observations, based on those areas you covered where I have (some little) expertise.

Observation #1: It's true that, on the books, the U.S. corporate tax rate looks too damn high.

However, when you take into account loopholes, write-offs, tax credits and exemptions that corporations can qualify for, the effective tax rate doesn't look nearly as scary. The estimates I saw in some brief research seem to peg it at between 25 and 28 percent.

Also, in the paragraph immediately before the tax rate one, you say the difference between President Obama's actions and a future President Romney's "could not be starker". If that's the case, your first examples of that difference might not want to include a proposal that the White House has been working on at least since May.

Observation #2: This has to do with the paragraph on energy. You say that you'll "utilize to the fullest extent our nation's nuclear know-how" and devote time to "rationalizing and streamlining regulation". I'm not very knowledgeable about the oil, gas and coal industries, but in the case of the nuclear industry, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has just experienced a major regulatory overhaul. Stirring the pot and unsettling everything there with another round of "rationalizing and streamlining" might actually be counterproductive.

Also, "utiliz[ing] our nation's nuclear know-how" is all very well, but the 'nuclear renaissance' has been held up because of regulatory delays and the expense of constructing new plants, not any lack of enthusiasm on the President's part. He made $18 billion available in start-up loans for new plants, in the form of a Department of Energy fund. Doing more than that might not jibe with your spend-less philosophy.

Observation #3: I'm not one to expect specifics for fixing everything in one small editorial, and I eagerly await your 59-point plan for fixing America. That said, a lot of the ideas in your column sound good, but are short on crucial details. I look forward to see you elucidating them more clearly on the campaign trail.

Sincerely,

Andy Tisdel

Student Alcohol Policy UPDATE

2011-09-02T18:13:00.001-04:00

I talked to a member of the student government here this afternoon, and he told me that the view of Dean Holmes having just received access to their medical records was a "common misconception". According to him, the Dean has held this power for some time now. In the past, the Dean could call up the Wellness Center and requisition the files of a repeat offender, or in other words, someone who appears to pose a danger to themselves. The rule change, this member said, is just putting the data in a more convenient position for the Dean's office to recognize repeat offenders.

While this is less disturbing than the idea of the Dean suddenly having access to students' medical records, I believe that this is still a problem for a number of reasons. Consider:

-Either way, students have no knowledge of when their medical information can be accessed by the Dean, or what criteria he uses to decide when such access is necessary. I didn't know that was possible and I've been First Responding at the Wellness Center for three years.

-The Dean gets to make the determination of when a series of alcohol-related incidents requires him to step in. Given that the Wellness Center staff is in the best position to judge when a student is having a problem, and given that they naturally have access to a student's medical history, I would rather see them inform the Dean if they believe a student has a serious problem.

-This is because not all alcohol-related incidents are created equally. Some students visiting the Wellness Center are utterly trashed and some are not. It seems like the staff is in a better position to determine who appears to have a problem and who does not. There's also the question of, what if someone comes in with a cut on their hand and they've had a few drinks, but the cut was unrelated to the drinking? Would they get a report sent to the Wellness Center as well, perhaps unjustly?

-Either way, it's still a big problem if students believe they will get in trouble by going to the Wellness Center. The policy still provides a disincentive for students to go or take their friends to the Center, particularly if they're not informed about what the policy actually is and what each individual notification of the Dean entails. One might assume that someone with one visit to the Dean already on the books might hesitate to go back to the Center, for fear of suffering penalties.

-Finally, the Dean's policy hinges on clear communication with the student body about what the notification is and what it entails, why students should not fear going to the Wellness Center because of it, and what repeat offenders should expect. As I said in my letter to Dean Holmes, the point isn't to convince the sober, clear-headed, rational people on campus of the policy's purpose when they're sober. The point is to ensure that students feel like they can bring their drunken friends to the Wellness Center late at night and not have their friends (or themselves) suffer negative repercussions from doing so. This requires clearer communication about those topics than the Voice article provided.

Dear Dean Holmes...

2011-09-02T15:39:00.003-04:00

Wow, I didn't realize until I came here that this would be two "Dear Powerful Dude..." posts in two days. This one is unrelated to the last.
This post has to do with a just-enacted policy by the College of Wooster, specifically Dean of Students Dean Holmes, which requires the Wellness Center to notify the Dean's office whenever a student comes to the Center with an alcohol-related malady. I am (formally) vociferously opposed to this policy and (informally) mad enough to bite through bricks.
Below is a letter to Dean Holmes regarding this policy. I have already sent copies of this letter to the Dean's office (in person) and to the campus newspaper, the Wooster Voice (via email). If you are as outraged by this regulation as I am, I encourage you to write and submit your own letters to the Dean's office. He's in Galpin Hall. Go in through the front door, walk straight and it'll be on your left.

UPDATE: I have a second post up on this topic. A member of the student government told me that the Dean had already had the power to requisition students' information, and that this is an expansion of that rule rather than its inception. However, I think there are still several problems with this policy, which you can find at this link.

UPDATE II: It struck me that I should probably mention the following: In this and all subsequent posts and letters, the opinions I have expressed and will express are mine own and do not necessarily represent the views of my First Responder comrades, or the organization as a whole, or any other body to which I belong, unless stated otherwise. However, the overwhelming majority of students with whom I have spoken on this topic to date, First Responders or not, have agreed with my position and sympathized with my concerns.

Dear Dean Holmes,

My name is Andrew Tisdel, and I have been a First Responder for the past three years. I was surprised and extremely displeased to read in the Wooster Voice today that the Longbrake Student Wellness Center will now be required to inform the Dean’s office when an intoxicated student arrives at the Center.

This rule not only undercuts the First Responders’ entire reason for existence, but it results in a clear and obvious danger to the safety of intoxicated students.

Let me explain what I’m talking about. Both Resident Assistants on campus and Security officers receive some form of medical training, similar to the training course First Responders undergo, and are able to provide medical assistance in an emergency. The Wellness Center’s nurses, who provide exemplary medical care inside the Center, are also fully capable of performing our duties. In that sense, we are a redundant institution at this College. The quality that sets us apart from other organizations is the very one that you have just eliminated, namely, our ability to guarantee patient confidentiality.

In the past, when a student brought her drunken roommate to the Wellness Center, she could do so with the knowledge that the worst consequence would be a session with an alcohol counselor. Unless the drunkard was brought in by Security, there would be no mark on the student’s permanent record, and no outside agency would be informed. This ability to provide confidential medical care is the only reason why First Responders exist. Students can call us when they need help, and we can provide receive assistance that doesn’t come with unpleasant consequences, like being written up by Security. Your rule takes away this much-needed aspect of patient confidentiality.

However, I must emphasize that the irrelevance of the First Responders and the blatant disregard for patient confidentiality that this rule implies are comparatively trivial. Much, much worse is the danger that this rule poses to the health and safety of intoxicated students.

As I said above, the advantage of the First Responders and of a confidential Wellness Center is to give students someplace to seek consequence-free medical aid. What you have done, Dean Holmes, is to give students a real incentive not to bring their drunken friends to the Wellness Center, and thus keep them from receiving medical attention. That is by far the most important consequence of the rule change.

Students who are afraid of getting written up by Security, or who think the Wellness Center will report them to Security, are less likely to bring their friends to the Center when they need assistance. In trying to help the drunkards, these well-meaning friends keep them away from medical attention, and in so doing, put the intoxicated students’ health and safety at risk. What this new rule does is ensure that more students, often slightly intoxicated themselves, will make the wrong choice.

I believe that the rule, while unmistakably well-intentioned, is also unnecessary in the context of catching repeat offenders. You stated in the Voice that the purpose of the rule is to draw attention to students that are showing signs of alcoholism, and likened the notification of your office to a “parking ticket”. But the Wellness Center nurses already keep records of student visits in those students’ medical histories! They, and the counselors, are already well set up to ‘catch’ potential alcoholics early and give them treatment and counseling.

As for the “parking ticket”-like nature of the notification, a logical and rational person such as yourself will probably recognize it as such. But to a student who is tipsy, and who is scared because her friend is throwing up blood and it’s 3 AM and who is afraid of getting in trouble, it won’t be seen that way. That is a guarantee. It will be seen as a reason not to go to the Wellness Center and get her friend medical aid, and that is exactly what you and I do not want.

This new alcohol policy removes the First Responders’ raison d’etre, it deals a huge blow to the principle of patient confidentiality, and it poses a serious danger to intoxicated students on this campus. For all these reasons, Dean Holmes, I implore you to rescind it as soon as you possibly can.

Sincerely,

Andrew J. Tisdel
Class of 2012

Dear Mr. President

2011-09-01T13:58:00.001-04:00

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Andy Tisdel. I'm in my very early twenties, I'm in my senior year of college and I want to be a journalist someday. I'm an independent voter, although I voted for you in the last election, and I do my darndest to stay informed about the issues of the day in Washington.

When I went to college, as the United States was careening into the Great Recession, what comforted me was the hope that in four years the economy would have improved. These things go in cycles, right? It has to improve sometime, right? That was the kind of thought that went through my head. Now it's three years later and things have scarcely improved. There's talk of a "double-dip" recession (who came up with that name? Seriously?), the jobs number that comes out on Friday will probably be disappointing (if that's logically possible) and overall, things just seem to keep on hitting the fan.

The problem is, you seem to be focused mostly on who gets the blame for all this.

Let me say this clearly, and in a tone that I imagine a lot of us twenty-something, liberal-leaning independents might adopt:

I could honestly give a fuck who is to blame. I don't care if the history books paint you, Speaker Boehner, intransigent Tea Partiers or God Almighty as the villain of this piece. I care about being able to get a job when I get out of school. Obviously most of that is up to me, but improving the economy is in large part up to you.

I voted for you because you said you were going for a less partisan Washington. Three years later, this is the worst partisan environment the U.S. has had in decades. Nothing is getting done, and for a pragmatist like myself, that's the most frustrating thing plausible to see. We're to the point where you tried to schedule your jobs speech during the Republican debate on Wednesday, then had to back down in shame. I'm sick of this egregiously partisan bullshit, Mr. Commander-in-Chief, sir.

If I could speak to you in person and tell you one thing, I would say "Get your shit together, Mr. President". On the economy, on partisanship, on creating jobs, I implore you on behalf of the American people to get your shit together and help said American people. Am I being unfair in telling you this and not Congress, who is just as responsible for the Washington gridlock as you are? Yes, I am. Life's like that sometimes.

Get it together, Mr. President. Forget about casting blame on the Republicans and focus on results. You will have to compromise. You will have to make deals, as you have shown the ability to do. But above all, you will have to govern effectively, which right now you are not doing (in my humble opinion).

See you next November, sir.

Sincerely,

Andrew Tisdel

College of Wooster '12

The NFL.com Message Boards are the Scariest Place on the Internet

2011-08-26T12:54:00.000-04:00

In As Good As It Gets (1997), Jack Nicholson's character is asked how he writes women so well in his books, Nicholson being a writer. The irritated author replies, "I think of a man, then take away reason and accountability".

The NFL.com message boards are like 4Chan, if you subtract reason, intelligence and a modicum of sanity.

So it begins.

The place has the perfect blend of ingredients for total anarchy. There are no omnipresent mods, although particularly offensive comments do get deleted. There are no names or faces, and accounts are easy to make, so there's no accountability. And best of all, because everybody's a fan of one NFL team, absolutely everybody comes to the party ready to whale on 31 other factions.

Whether your player was ranked too low or criticized or someone else was ranked too high, there's always some reason to cuss out both the writer of a given article and anyone else within reach. And boy, do they cuss. I was reading a Michael Lombardi article (who I've read a lot of on nationalfootballpost.com and on NFL.com; he's a Peter King-like writer and a good football analyst) on the best players in the league and practically every commenter was saying you suck, you're horrible, you should be fired because you ranked XXXX lower than YYYY, leaving ZZZZZ off the list is criminal (Criminal! Can you imagine?), and so on and so forth. For every positive comment towards a given article/other poster, there's 10-15 negative ones.

The only saving grace is that swear words are technically unlawful. I say technically, because since nobody gives a rip, the commenters find moderately clever ways to cuss each other out anyway ("b u l l s h i t, bullsh!t, bullshet, etc). The restriction also does nothing at all to mitigate the vitriol on the boards, just the ways in which it can be expressed. It's one big crowd of loud, angry, overwhelmingly male, poorly articulating, flagrantly misspelling, misogynistic all-hating assholes.

Oh, and few commenters even try for correct grammar or spelling, so it's that much more of a mess. There are some reasonable comments, sure, but the lack of a direct 'reply to this comment' function leads to one huge confused thread instead of lots of little threads that make sense. The reasonable comments get lost in a sea of misdirected Internet rage.

An Open Letter To Creationists

2011-08-24T19:26:00.001-04:00

Dear creationists,

Here’s a couple of interesting things I just learned.

In London, in the 1830s and ‘40s, there were a series of cholera epidemics. The city had no sewers as we know them today; instead, human waste was being flushed into Londoners’ drinking water, giving them cholera thereby. In 1849, a doctor named John Snow figured out that cholera was not spread by “miasma” or bad smells, but by sewage-contaminated water. Naturally, he published papers on the subject and told anyone who would listen, but the medical establishment remained convinced of the “miasma” theory and would not entertain Snow’s idea. Snow’s findings were not accepted until 1866, and as a direct result, tens of thousands of people died of cholera in the meantime.

We move now to Panama, near the turn of the twentieth century. Here, too, diseases ran rampant. Yellow fever and malaria, mosquito-borne illnesses, terrorized the French and later American workers building the Panama Canal. The medical establishment, again, thought that “miasma” was the culprit and that clean-living, morally upright people would somehow be protected from the disease. A Cuban doctor had discovered the mosquito’s role in spreading disease in 1881, and an American doctor corroborated it in 1898, but the American crews came to the Panama Canal in 1904 completely oblivious to the insects’ danger. Hundreds of workers sickened and died until, in the middle of 1905, the canal-builders began a concerted effort to eradicate the mosquito from their area.

I bring these two things up to illustrate the following point. In both cases, the people who believed in “miasma” were not malicious, evil or vindictive. They thought they were right, and were unwilling to even entertain contrary scientific evidence because of this, and consequentially many people died when they could have lived. Remove the deaths, creationists, and this should sound very similar to your own worldview.

Science, at its core, is an attempt to fully describe and understand the world in the most detailed possible way. It is detailed, thorough and open-minded. And when a pre-scientific method idea runs up against a post-scientific method idea, the post-scientific method idea has always won and will continue to always win, because it is backed by evidence. See: flat Earth, the Sun revolving around the Earth, the Aristotelian theory of the atom, the Four Humors, the luminiferous aether, etc.

That’s not to say that the ancient minds who thought up those (wrong) theories were mentally inferior to present-day man. They weren’t. Both ancient and modern minds were engaged in the same pursuit: to explain a huge, crazy, confusing, wonderful world. Present-day man just has better tools and more experience to draw upon. If you view human history as one long march towards understanding, as I do, it’s not difficult to see ancient ideas as the bottom-most layer of a pyramid. Each successive layer of ideas brings us closer to understanding the world we live in.

You happen to be stuck on a layer that’s thousands of years old and no longer applies. Your layer describes the way that people thought the world worked thousands of years ago. Since then, we’ve found out (through a shitload of trial and error) that the world works differently, and we’ve moved up the pyramid. But you’re stuck with a set of ideas that are as hopelessly out of place in the modern world as a Tiktaalik roseae would be in New York City.

The point I’m making is that it isn’t just you who’s not caught up on your history. At every stage of history, people have resisted every scientific theory that differed from what they previously believed. And pretty much every time, science, progress and ascension up the pyramid have won out. So, just for the sake of breaking the trend, could you fucking well get ahead of the curve for once in our species’ existence? Otherwise, we’ll be dragging your dead weight well into the age of metahumans, and nobody really wants that.

Sincerely,

Andy Tisdel

Linkstorm 8/22/11: The Most Fascinating News in the World

2011-08-22T13:58:00.000-04:00

I stopped doing this awhile back, but a zillion interesting articles have accumulated on my computer in the past couple days and I feel like sharing them with everybody.

The most interesting thing has to be Warren Buffett's New York Times 8/15 op-ed (1) calling for-huh?-the unbelievably rich citizens of the U.S. to pay more in taxes. Author and neuroscientist Sam Harris had an interesting follow-up on his site (2), and linked back to a lengthier, more thoughtful piece on the inequality of wealth in the U.S. at present (3). Meanwhile, comedian Jon Stewart mounted his own defense of Buffett's claims (4).

Elsewhere on the New York Times site lurks a movie column containing the best description of Keanu Reeves I've ever seen (5), a rather astounding study showing that black scientists are less likely than white scientists to get funding from the National Institutes of Health (6) and the single best project ever, a $500,000 grant from DARPA to study the implications of sending humans to Alpha Centurai (7). Finally, The Fifth Down is a snooty but knowledgeable and thought-provoking football blog that I've only just come across (8).

Speaking of football, if you haven't perused the Yahoo! Sports investigation into Miami University's NCAA-illegal benefits, you absolutely should (9).

What else have we got? Vogue magazine has about the dozenth profile story I've seen on Jon Huntsman (photos by Annie Liebovitz of Washington Semester Program fame) (10), Charles Krauthammer has a damning but accurate column on Obama's leadership ability in the Washington Post (11) and the Post has a quick roundup of the idiotic things Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum have said lately (12). Bachmann gets a pass for hers; anybody can make a verbal slip, but is there a better way to scare independent voters like myself than to pooh-pooh evolution (Perry, 13) or link homosexuality with the failing economy (Santorum)? And in the most disquieting story of them all, the Washington Monthly reveals how an ex-Marine who pushed the deployment of armored personnel carriers in Iraq paid for it with his professional career (14). (If you're as outraged by that as I am, checking out The Pentagon Labyrinth (15) will really get your blood boiling.)

Coincidentally enough, one of the opinion pieces got its own blog post on Tisdel's Tirades, my mouthiness outlet to the Internet, the other day. The POLITICO op-ed, about the storage of nuclear waste, is here (16) and my take on it is here (17).

A few .pdfs for the road: The Progressive Policy Institute has published a study illustrating that it's easier to be an ideological nutcase than a moderate if you're running for office. It actually cost moderate House Democrats about twice as much as liberal Democrats to run their respective campaigns in 2010, as just one rather shocking example (18). In the "I'm Glad To Know Somebody Out There Is Thinking About This" department, a serious scenario analysis has been published on possible contact scenarios with extraterrestrial life (I haven't read all this yet, but by God I'm gonna) (19). And the 192-page snoozefest sure to interest only me, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future's draft report to the Department of Energy, is also something I'm working my way through (20).

Nuclear Waste Storage: An Intermediate Option

2011-08-20T16:18:00.000-04:00

Robert Bryce, a successful author on energy policy, recently wrote an op-ed in Politico encouraging the U.S. to store nuclear waste on government land.

His thesis is that, given the post-Fukushima Daiichi danger of storing spent nuclear fuel (SNF) on the grounds of reactors, the federal government should move it to regional collection centers on federal land, which is what people in the nuclear industry have been saying for awhile. This gets rid of the problems of moving the waste long-distance to Yucca Mountain (in the middle of the desert), which is a bad idea anyway, and would save the federal government billions of dollars in lawsuits.

I don't disagree with Bryce, but I want to clarify a couple of key points. First of all, the meltdown at Fukushima Daiici was exacerbated by spent nuclear fuel storage, yes. But there are two kinds of fuel storage. After being removed from the reactor core, nuclear fuel rods typically spend around five years in a pool of water, called the spent fuel pool, cooling off. After they're cool enough to handle, they're packed into giant casks and kept on the grounds of the plant from whence they came. Bryce's plan would fix the problem with the casks, which definitely needs fixing, but the pools are what went wrong at Fukushima and they're non-negotiable. There's not another practical way to cool down the waste, and there's not really another place to put it for the five years it needs to cool off. In this sense, his plan would lessen, but not remove, the danger of having waste on the grounds of each reactor.

Secondly, regional waste collection centers reduce the dangers of transporting waste by reducing the distance each cask has to travel, but they do not eliminate it. Any plan to relocate the waste from its current scattered state (at all 104 currently operating reactors, plus several other sites) has to take that into account. The casks are tested against falls, fires and floods, but they are not invulnerable (particularly to periods of extended heat; a truck crashing and catching on fire in a tunnel, for example) and should not be treated as such in the planning process.

Finally, waste collection centers are a first step, not a longest-term solution. The next step should be the construction of reprocessing plants to turn SNF into mixed-oxide fuels, which can be fed back into nuclear reactors and used to generate power. Because of the low price of uranium, there is little financial incentive to do this right now, but a reprocessing plant is the only known way to get rid of nuclear waste permanently. They will be expensive and hard to fund while the price of uranium remains low, but if nuclear power is still a part of the U.S.'s energy generation when the price rises, we will definitely need reprocessing technology. The time to make a start on that is now.

Andy's Random Going-To-College Fact of the Day

2011-08-19T14:51:00.000-04:00

Here's a bit of free advice: Don't wait until you get to the College to buy your textbooks. If you have your class schedule (I can't remember when in the freshman orientation process you get them), buy everything now. If you don't, I strongly recommend buying everything off of Amazon as soon as you do get them.

(I apologize in advance if you already know this and I'm just being pedantic.) Here's what you do: go to the Current Students tab on the Wooster website and click Bookstore. Go to Books and select your department and course numbers. For each individual course, it'll give you the new and used prices. (Never buy new, of course.) Order those books on Amazon instead and it's a lead-pipe cinch you will save a ton of money. I saved $102.75 this semester alone like this.

Textbooks are basically one enormous scam. It used to be that colleges didn't have to post the class reading lists online before students arrived for school, so they just kept it to themselves. Students arriving at school either had to pay the inflated prices for the books the school had on hand, or order online and miss a week or more of class readings while the books percolated through the mail. It was bad enough that the colleges are now required under federal law to make their textbook lists available a certain time before students arrive, so you can order now and avoid exactly that situation.

Textbook buy-back is a whole 'nother kettle of fish, but suffice to say, it is much better to NOT sell your books back at the end of the semester because there will be a huge glut of textbooks on the market and no one will give you fair value. Instead, wait until the beginning of next semester when everybody's buying.

Things I Have Learned By Learning How To Juggle

2011-08-16T14:45:00.000-04:00

-Juggling balls are expensive. I thought the sign said “4 for $6.50”, but it’s actually $6.50 for each ball. Yikes.

-It is incredibly addictive. As soon as you get a good one, your brain goes into overdrive and starts yelping “Do it again! Do it again!” Next thing you know, it’s an hour later and you’re sweaty and disgusting from chasing flying balls.

-That’s another thing. For a beginning juggler, it’s actually kind of a workout, because you’re constantly running around the room tracking down wayward flying balls, or making ridiculous dives to the ground to grab them just in time. Zoom!

-Remove anything and everything fragile from the room before you start juggling, because if you keep at it for like an hour, you will lose balls in every possible way and direction. Seriously, you’ll be playing out the “sum-over-paths” solution for an electron in real life by following every possible path the ball could ever take. So far, I’ve hit glasses, dishes, windows, the TV, a stack of breakable floor tiles and the cat. Move everything.

-The three most frustrating things in the world are, in order: 1. Balls knocking into each other in mid-air and falling to the ground. 2. The soft thump of yet another ball hitting the floor (this will happen literally hundreds of times). 3. Your body’s instinct to catch everything and not let it go.

-The three most satisfying things in the world: Getting a good rally. Getting a good rally. Making a stumbling, impossible catch of the ball that was flying into the kitchen at Mach 8 before it breaks glassware.

-Testicle jokes will get old really, really quickly.

-For some reason, every time you juggle, the balls end up carrying you forward instead of just being in an up-and-down plane. This will often, but not always, result in you crashing into the nearest wall.

-Juggle with friends! It’s that much more fun, and you learn a lot from watching the other person (mutual screw-up watch x10). Also, it means you’re less likely to get discouraged when you somehow manage to drop all three balls in .14 seconds, if the other person does something even worse a minute later.

-Despite all appearances, literally anyone under the age of 60 can learn to juggle. All you need is a ridiculous amount of practice. It took me about a week. Grab some tennis balls and try it yourself!

(P.S. 'How to juggle' books are a total waste of money. Here's how you learn to juggle: Try juggling. Repeat a thousand times. Results: 1) you now know how to juggle. 2) carpal tunnel syndrome in your poor, ravaged shoulders.)

Babylon 5: The Final Verdict

2011-08-13T17:35:00.000-04:00

If you somehow missed the Babylon 5 rumpus that's been taking place around here for the past week, fear not: all the links can be found right exactly here. Last Friday, I did an overview of the show. Monday was the show's best characters, Tuesday was its worst, Wednesday was its best aspects and Thursday and Friday covered its worst aspects. Today, we wrap up the whole thing.

It occurred to me while I was writing the 'worst things' posts that I might be grading Babylon 5 on an unfair metric. Comparing B5 to the three best sci-fi shows of the 2000s--Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who and Firefly) inevitably puts it at a disadvantage, and there are all kinds of mitigating circumstances relating to why it stinks at times. Its first four seasons aired on a network (PTEN) that was relatively unknown and probably doomed from its inception, its budget was poor, it was in an era of TV sci-fi that didn't have all that many standout shows, and so on. The best sci-fi shows of the 2000s benefited from ample budgets, well-known networks and better actors than B5 could muster.

I'm not so sure that's an excuse, though. Less than two decades after its release, Babylon 5 looks extremely dated. The bad CGI, the heavily made-up cast contribute to it and the pre-HD cameras contribute to it, but there's a certain look to the footage, sets and in the directing that just stamps the show as old-fashioned. (The camera basically remains at shoulder height for the entire series.) It gained a large cult following and is remembered fondly by many sci-fi fans, but against sleeker, more modern shows it just doesn't measure up.

Ultimately, it's hard to pin the show's faults on J. Michael Straczynski or on extenuating circumstances. The actors are wooden, the directing is ordinary and the dialogue is poor: is that Straczynski's fault, or was it the fault of the era? It's hard to prove one way or the other. Ultimately, though, the only real criteria upon which I can evaluate Babylon 5 is how it looks to me, a fan of sci-fi that came of age in the 2000s.

Viewed purely on its own merits, then, Babylon 5 falls short in most ways. As I've been saying throughout this weeklong review, the show is consistently mediocre. Straczynski often likened his creation to a novel, but it's not an exciting one if that's the case. Bad writing, a lot of bad acting, bad casting, bad set design and stories that took forever to tell drag this show down, and good acting, some good universe-building and a pair of good seasons resuscitate it. I think some of the show's appeal originally lay in its serialization and consistent mediocrity: you could turn on the TV every week and know what you were getting. It wasn't going to be more than occasionally good, but it wasn't going to be horribly bad either, perhaps because there was so little at stake.

If you're a fan of the shows I mentioned at the start of this post, Babylon 5 is probably not for you. It's not remotely in their league. If your standards are lower or you're a fan of '90s sci-fi, then give it a try.

More Or Less Arbitrary Grading Scale
Acting: B-
Set Design: D
Character Development: A-
CGI: D-
Average Episode Quality Relative to Itself: C
Imagination: B
Writing: D+
Universe-Building: A-
Good Villains: C- (good in seasons 2 and 3, terrible in 4 and 5)
Good Heroes: D-
Good Characters Who Are Both: A
Series Ending: F
Arc Continuity: A
Character Continuity: D+

OVERALL SERIES GRADE: C-

The Worst Aspects of Babylon 5 (Part 2)

2011-08-12T15:31:00.000-04:00

We're nearing the end of the Babylon 5 blitz. In case you missed the deluge of B5-related posts over the past week, here are some links: last Friday's overview of the show, Monday's rundown of the best characters, Tuesday's rundown of the worst characters, Wednesday's 'Best Aspects of B5' and Thursday's 'Worst of B5, Part 1'. Today I'll have Part 2 of the Worst Things, and then we'll wrap everything up on Saturday.

The Writing Stinks

I’ve been dancing around this for awhile, but I’ll just say it: The writing, done almost entirely by J. Michael Straczynski, is consistently bad. It is full of clichés, the dialogue isn’t clever (there’s a fascination with light bulb jokes that goes on for way too long), it’s fairly humorless and it doesn’t make you feel for the characters. The best thing you can say about the writing is that it gets the job done and tells you what you need to know in a given episode. The worst thing you can say is that’s all it does. The writing isn’t My Immortal-bad, but it’s serviceable at best. Compare it to Battlestar or Doctor Who or Firefly or even Star Trek and you’ll see what I mean. It’s a handicap to the actors rather than a help.

Consequence: Moral Superiority and Lousy Villains

I wrote the following halfway through Season 4:

“The thing that makes the current B5 conflict so uninteresting to watch is the absolute moral battle lines that have been drawn. Sheridan is what they call a paragon of virtue, a perfect ideal. He stands for Truth, Justice and the American Way, all in capital letters. ______'s side stands for nothing but fucking up other peoples’ shit. There’s no moral conflict because it’s been spelled out in the most explicit terms. Plus, there’s no documentation of what ______ does, how he does it or why. We don’t know how he got to be a police state-type of fellow, we’ve barely met him. We don’t know how he keeps everyone in line, other than through misinformation.

“There’s just such absolute ideological superiority from Sheridan, who sounds like a horse’s ass every time he draws upon it. There are very few moral choices or ambiguities to be found in B5.”

This is part of what I was saying about Sheridan, Zack Allan and Dr. Franklin in the Bad Characters post. They are so morally upright and the villain (in this case especially) is so poorly defined, it makes them unbelievable. There are very few moral conflicts on this show, and most of them feel manufactured (like the one near the end of Season 4 with the telepaths). The only convincing one comes at the end of Season 3, where Sheridan holds Morden against his will. For the rest, nothing. Sheridan and Co. are always right and the other guy is always wrong, period, end of line. This is especially true of the Season 4 villain, an evil cardboard cutout that we almost never see on-screen.

I’m Sorry… You Do What Now?

B5 relentlessly hammers home the theme that its characters are special people. There’s an entire Season 2 episode devoted to making sure that Sheridan and Delenn are the right people in the right place at the right time. But on the level of their jobs, they never seem to have much expertise. This is a minor quibble, but what does Garibaldi do exactly? He’s a good shot and he knows how to ask questions, but he doesn’t possess any skills specific to being a Security Chief. Dr. Franklin lets machines do all the work for him, is rarely seen in surgery and operates as a glorified diagnostician. Everything from mission-critical research to flying starfighters is handled by omnipresent computers.

picture unrelated.

The point here is that nobody really seems like an expert at their job, the way Chief Tyrol is an expert Viper repairman (Battlestar) or the way Wash is a special pilot (Firefly). They don’t have to say ‘I’m competent at my job’, we see them demonstrate their competence. In B5, nobody seems to be that skilled at any job. The emphasis is on having the right people and the right personalities, not their skills, which I find strange.

You Had A Problem? Since When?!

Here’s a fairly typical scenario:

Something traumatic happens to Garibaldi in Episode A. The episode ends, the threat is dealt with and Garibaldi goes back to work. Several episodes go by, during which Garibaldi seems unchanged. Then in episode H, Garibaldi has a nervous breakdown and goes “I’ve been haunted by the vision of my wife’s buttocks ever since Episode A!!”

Seconds before bursting into incoherent rage.

This happens ALL THE TIME. A character has a crisis, then seems totally fine, then tells us that they haven’t been fine all this time, even though they’ve been acting totally fine. I don’t know what to attribute it to, but it’s really lousy continuity between episodes. It feels like the show wants to have the emotional continuity of a Battlestar Galactica, but doesn’t really know how to go about it. This results in a lot of unintentional comedy, as characters have massive freakouts over something they were totally okay with just last episode.

In The Conversation:

-The music isn’t very good or very memorable, and it’s kind of used as a blunt instrument. You know exactly how you’re supposed to be feeling because the violins tell you it’s an emotional moment.

-Straczynski’s enormous plot arcs move maddeningly slowly, although this shouldn’t be unfamiliar for recovering Lost fans like myself.

-Because we rarely leave the station in the first two seasons, it’s hard to get a sense of the greater outside universe. This does change in seasons 3-5, as more of the characters venture outside, but it’s a little off-putting early on.

- B5 tells, it doesn’t show, particularly with regard to characters’ emotions. Straczynski doesn’t let the actors show you how the character is feeling, he writes in huge info-dumps where the character tells you exactly how he feels today.

Not Bad, Just Weird:

For some reason, whenever a character has a minor wardrobe change, it’s made into a big honking deal in the show itself. Sheridan’s beard, Delenn’s hair, the new B5 uniforms, Security uniforms, G’Kar’s eye color, etc. are all played up much more than you’d imagine them being. It’s not a bad thing, just a quirk.

Mayhem Week: The Worst Things About Babylon 5 (Part 1)

2011-08-11T13:52:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the week-long review of the TV show called Babylon 5! In case you missed 'em, here are links to last Friday's introduction to the show, Monday's 'Best Characters', Tuesday's 'Worst Characters' and Wednesday's 'Best Aspects of B5' posts. Tomorrow we'll have Part II of 'Worst Aspects', and then I'll wrap everything up in Saturday's post.

That Confounded Bad Acting

Kindly check Tuesday's post for a discussion of said bad acting.

Humans in Suits

Early in the show’s run, creator J. Michael Straczynski made the decision to eschew CGI aliens in favor of human-looking aliens. The choice was a sensible one, because the CGI of the mid-1990s looks awful, especially on a Prime-Time Entertainment Network budget. There’s some sort of Centauri-world bloodsucking thing in Season 1 that proves this particular point. Putting guys in makeup, therefore, was a logical decision.

The problem with this is twofold. One, nobody ever gives any reasons why the Minbari have bony heads, or why the Narn are orange, or why the pak’ma’ra have facial tentacles. They don’t serve any obvious function, so right from the start they feel like semi-random ornamentation. Two, even if the actors look like humans wearing makeup, there’s always the possibility that their bodies are more alien than they look, but this idea is systematically stamped out over the course of the series.

It’s established that the majority of the ‘aliens’ speak English without trouble, have five fingers, four limbs, bipedal movement, two eyes that see in the human visual spectrum, breathe a nitrogen-oxygen mix, have approximately the same physical strength and vulnerabilities that humans do, think the same way that humans do, and are comfortable with Earth ‘standard’ gravity. This strains one’s credulity a bit far, don’t you think? (The First Ones that we meet are all nonhuman, but they are seen far less often than the human-esque races, probably due to budget constraints.)

I Mentioned the CGI…

I feel kinda bad putting this on here, because it’s really not the fault of the creators. They had in mind a very CGI-heavy show, with lots of space battles and expeditions, and mid-1990s CGI was both expensive and godawful. YouTube videos are better nowadays. But they went ahead with it anyway, and so while the CGI is worse than anything else you will ever see on TV, it’s also a testament to the show’s creative spirit. Hey, I guess that sort of turned into a good thing, huh?

Even the Real Sets Stink

Chalk another one up to a presumable PTEN budget crunch. It seems like a weird thing to criticize, but you know how in Firefly, the characters had a real connection and identification with the ship? How in Battlestar Galactica, the ship is a prison, a symbol and a source of hope all in one? How both ships really have personality and feel like home for their characters?

B5 doesn’t have that. It sounds picky, but the sets are clunky and featureless and boring. There’s really not much effort to sell the station as someone’s home, as opposed to ‘where alien races meet to hang out’. This holds for all the sets, whether they’re on Mars or on Minbar or on the bridge of some ship somewhere. They don’t look remotely real, and more importantly, they don’t feel real. The actors don’t treat them like they’re real places. It’s like they took one of the worst lessons from Star Trek. (Small exception: the Drazi homeworld, which we visit in Season 5, is incredibly compelling.)

I Saw That Coming

If someone on B5 mentions that Garibaldi must be having a great time on vacation on Zogblog VII, you can take it to the bank that the next shot will be of a bloody, bruised Garibaldi gasping for air. It’s a fairly predictable show. I’m not going to give away anything, but there’s a particular event in early Season 4 that is meant to be a huge surprise, but it’s just completely unsurprising. Even Season 5 is guilty of this. The viewer can predict B5 without too much effort, and the show doesn’t really make you think. That, to me, is pretty damning.

Speaking of S5…

Huh?

I like Season 5 the best of all of the Babylon 5 seasons. Like I said before, they get decent acting out of Jeff Conaway and Patricia Tallman, introduce some good guest-stars and have some really great universe-building episodes. But the season itself was spectacularly mismanaged.

Due to a flash-forward in Season 3 and a brief scene at the end of Season 4, the viewer basically knows all the important points about one of the major threats of season 5. I was waiting around for eighteen episodes while the characters stumbled around with this threat, going “I know this! I know this one, dammit! Figure it out!” And when they finally do catch on to what the viewer could see eighteen episodes ago, is there a showdown? Is the evil defeated? No! That storyline and a half-dozen others are intentionally punted, left to be resolved in made-for-TV movies and the spin-off series, replaced by four episodes’ worth of characters saying their goodbyes!

I think that’s a total waste of a season. Wikipedia revealed that there was a lot of confusion with the demise of PTEN and the creators not knowing whether their show would be picked up (it was, by TNT, for Season 5), which might be a root cause of the fractured season. I get that, I do, but surely they could have done better than that. It would be like Battlestar Galactica declining to reveal the fifth member of the Final Five Cylons, wagging its finger at the fans and saying “Uh-uh-uh! You have to watch Caprica to get your answers! C’mon, I’m gonna string you guys out for ALL of your attention span!”

Tune in tomorrow for more embarrassing flaws in the show!

The Best Aspects of Babylon 5

2011-08-10T15:27:00.001-04:00

Good afternoon! If you're just tuning in, we're midway through a weeklong super-review of the TV show Babylon 5. Last Friday's preview of the show can be found here, Monday's post on B5's best characters here, and Tuesday's description of the worst characters here. Today, we tackle the best things about the show. Thursday and Friday will be posts about the worst things, and then we'll wrap it all up on Saturday.

Good Acting

B5’s cast, while accomplished, can’t compare to the David Tennants and the Nathan Fillions and the Edward James Olmoses of the world. It’s full of duds, including some of their biggest ‘stars’, and a lot of those duds’ on-screen time is a total waste of your patronage. But, surprise surprise, they have a lot of good actors/actresses putting in time as well. Peter Jurasik and Andreas Katsulas are golden whenever they’re on screen, and both get a ton of time and storylines in all five seasons.

Aside from Lennier, Ivanova and the frequent guest stars I just mentioned, B5 brings in dozens of outside names every season. I can’t think of an episode that didn’t feature at least one one-off or recurring guest star, and a lot of the time it’s pretty effective. Wayne Alexander, who plays several of these roles, was a recurring favorite of mine.

Racial Psychologies

This is primarily a Season 1 and 2 thing, but one of Straczynski’s better moves was giving each major species its own background and personality, and having them manifest through that species’ ambassador on B5. Londo dreams of the vanished days of his once-great Republic, and sets horrible plans in motion based on those dreams. G’Kar’s race was repressed by Londo’s, and his species is still looking for its place in the universe. That’s evident in Katsulas’s acting. A lot of the humans are veterans of the Minbari War, a war they only won when the Minbari surrendered (they were about to win), and they’re still visibly freaked out about it. It's good casting, acting and writing all together.

The Big Ones

Like I said in the beginning, the series is primarily composed of mediocre episodes, but every now and again comes a spectacular one. Babylon 5 doesn’t futz around with time travel much, but those episodes are some of the best. The culmination of the Shadow War in Season 4 is a kick-ass episode, as are a number of episodes in Seasons 1 and 5 (the Jewish one in S1, the fighting one in S1, the one in S5 where Garibaldi and Lochley bonk heads, etc). If you have the patience to sift through the crap, there’s some gold underneath.

Season 1, Season 5

In fact, those might be the show’s two best seasons. Season 1 featured Michael O’Hare instead of the wooden Bruce Boxleitner, and Season 5 got a lot of things right that hadn’t worked previously. It expanded some characters’ roles and scaled back others, gave Lyta Alexander a personality and introduced Robin Atkin Downes (“Lord” Byron) and Tracy Scoggins (Elizabeth Lochley). It’s perhaps an indictment of Straczynski’s inflexible arcs that his show’s best seasons were largely free of the series’ two longest-running storylines, but what can you do? Babylon 5 was best when it was universe-building, and that made up the meat of S1 and S5.

The Offbeat Episodes

Most of the B5 episodes followed a pretty specific formula. Station is hanging out, outside force/person/technology enters the station, someone wants to capture/speak to/negotiate with said force/person/tech, mayhem ensues. According to Wikipedia, Straczynski’s ideal show differed from the Star Treks of the time by having the universe come to the station, not having the station go and explore the universe.

I’m fine with that formula. But once or twice a season, the creators would try something completely different. It could be a news report on the state of the station, or following around random maintenance workers we’d never seen before, or taking a snapshot a million years in the future. All of these episodes served as a welcome change of pace, and most of them were pretty darn good.

A Bigger, Older Universe

This is my favorite of the good things, and just about the only thing B5 has that sets it apart from the rest of TV sci-fi. You know how in Doctor Who, there’s a sense of the future being wide-open and full of wonders and practically infinite? Babylon 5 does a similar thing with the past. It has a wonderfully pervasive sense of age, of ancient wonders and fallen species and a history that far predates human experience. Any show can say that there’s been civilization millions of years in the past, but Babylon 5 makes you feel that sense of age and the unknown, of ancient mysteries and hidden treasures. That, I feel, is B5’s most distinctive and best feature.

The Worst Characters of Babylon 5

2011-08-09T14:37:00.001-04:00

Brief introduction: this week I will be doing an extended review of the TV show, Babylon 5. For last Friday's preview/series basics, click here. For yesterday's overview of B5's best characters, click here.

John Sheridan (Bruce Boxleitner), Captain of Babylon 5

Yep. Their flagship actor, Bruce Boxleitner (fresh off a lead role in Tron), is just awful in B5. There’s nothing distinctive about him. He’s a leader, he’s able to build consensus and he’s irreplaceable in B5 politics, but the guy himself would fit comfortably into any good guy/leader role. In fact, you could probably swap out not just Boxleitner, but the entire character of John Sheridan with any other generic good guy/leader and not notice the difference.

Sheridan has no flaws. None. Seriously, go back and watch the series like I did, and tell me if you find one single character flaw. The worst thing he does is display loyalty to his dead wife. How exactly are viewers supposed to relate to a flawless character? Boxleitner’s acting is poor (he reminds me of George Washington’s face on Mount Rushmore) and the character is a total write-off. We are given countless opportunities to know, meet and understand Sheridan, and it’s not like they didn’t try to write in depth for him. We’re given insight into his minutest thoughts, quirks and habits, and given every opportunity to like both actor and character. It just doesn’t work at all.

Zack Allan (Jeff Conaway), Asst. Security Chief of Babylon 5

A bit-part character in Season 2 who ascends to a starting role in seasons 3-5, Zack Allan probably should have stuck to occasional guest appearances. He's even less watchable than Sheridan, and Conaway's acting is worse even than Boxleitner's. Zack starts to show some emotion midway through Season 5, but that’s about all you can say for him. The guy is a featureless rock with a stupid accent who does nothing worthwhile on the show. Londo pegged him perfectly with the caustic line, “You have that vacant look that says, ‘Hold my head to your ear. You will hear the ocean.’”

Stephen Franklin (Richard Biggs), Chief Medical Officer of Babylon 5

For the third entry in a row, the character is uninteresting and the actor is poor. Biggs, Conaway and Boxleitner are given different qualities of material to work with, but all of them stink up the joint. Biggs just doesn't bring anything to the party in terms of acting ability, and his character suffers as a result, despite being given all sorts of material to work with. I didn’t always think this of Franklin; he handles a difficult science-versus-religion episode well, and is featured in the series’ most Star Trek-esque episode early in Season 1. But his emotionless patter, terrible delivery and lack of depth do him in. There is honestly a whole sub-arc in Season 3 whose sole purpose is to give Franklin some personality. After it’s over, Franklin picks himself up, dusts himself off and goes right back to being the same dull, featureless person he was pre-arc.

(Note: These three are highly visible, often-seen members of the B5 command staff. A lot of the good characters, many though they be, are stuck in more seldom-seen roles. Lennier is a minor character, Bester and Morden are occasional guest stars, etc. So although there are fewer of these guys, their crappiness has a disproportionate effect on the show at large.)

Virini (Damian London), Chamberlain to the Centauri Court

You have never met a more annoying character than Chamberlain Virini. He is fluttery, he is flighty and he is unconscionably stupid. You know those characters in anime franchises who are constantly behind on the plot, rarely to never understand what’s happening around them and run around screeching like demented geese whenever anything changes? Damian London is the live-action version of that, and it’s somehow even more annoying in this medium. London does a little better when he’s asked to be creepy in Season 5 (a lot of things improve in Season 5), but the rest of the time he’s just awful. I guess that’s just the role he was asked to play, in which case, this is the only time you’ll hear me criticize an actor for doing his job too well.

In the conversation:

Lyta Alexander (Patricia Tallman), Emperor Cartagia (Wortham Krimmer), David Corwin (Joshua Cox), President Clark (Gary McGurk). Tallman was ordinary in three seasons before blossoming in Season 5, when she was given an expanded role and more screen time. Krimmer wasn’t bad; his presence here is because he served as a walking reminder that you were watching a TV show. “How did someone so brain-twistingly insane become Emperor anyway? Oh, because it's on TV and someone has to be the villain.” McGurk I’ll deal with in the “Bad Things” note. As for Corwin, he’s here more as an indictment of creator J. Michael Straczynski than anything else. The guy appeared in 34 episodes as a member of the bridge crew, and in only one does he have significant lines or a subplot of his own. They could’ve done a lot more with him.

Tomorrow, we move back to halcyon times and contemplate the best qualities of Babylon 5.

The Best Characters in Babylon 5

2011-08-08T17:17:00.002-04:00

Brief introduction: this week I will be reviewing the sci-fi TV show known as Babylon 5. For last Friday's brief round-up of the show and the schedule, please click here. Today's post (duh) will cover the best characters in B5; tomorrow will cover the worst. If you enjoy this post, keep comin' back!

G’Kar (Andreas Katsulas), Narn Ambassador to Babylon 5*

An ordinary actor made to wear red contact lenses, orange-and-black face paint and a ridiculous tunic, and wave his hands like a cat when he gets in a fight might turn in a shit performance. Katsulas turns in an excellent one. From the series’ opening TV movie to its final season, he is consistently one of its two best actors. In addition, G’Kar becomes one of the most deeply nuanced characters. He is a villain, a chef, a writer, a warrior, a religious person and a knight (literally, in one case). G’Kar is a focal point for his race’s rage against the Centauri, and Katsulas does an excellent job of expressing that.

Londo Mollari (Peter Jurasik), Centauri Ambassador to Babylon 5

Peter Jurasik makes the absolute most of Londo Mollari. In succession, Londo is sympathetic, pitiable, villainous, unscrupulous and finally heroic. I think he’s my favorite, now that everything’s over, because in a world of moral purity (I’ll come back to this in the Worst Things post), Londo is flawed! He drinks, he screws, he cheats at cards, he’s petty and vain and selfish and power-hungry, but he’s a good guy underneath it all. That’s something the viewer finds out over a long period of time, and watching him evolve is really an amazing thing.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the splendid connection between Londo and G’Kar. Their complex relationship is the single strongest aspect of the series. The two have an extremely complicated dynamic, which shifts from worst enemies to close friends and back again over the series’ run. I think some of the best episodes of the series came when Straczynski put the two characters in a situation and just let them bounce off each other (the Season 1 episode where Londo denies G’Kar access to a sacred plant is a classic).

Lennier (Bill Mumy), Minbari Diplomatic Attaché

A quiet, well-spoken servant type, Lennier does his job and doesn’t screw up. Bill Mumy plays him as very restrained, but as someone who’s capable of deep feelings. When he falls in love in Season 3, it brings a whole new dimension to his character (then again, I’m an easy target for male characters in unrequited love, so this one is subjective).

Susan Ivanova (Claudia Christian), Lt. Commander of Babylon 5

Ivanova probably wouldn’t work as a starring role, but she is a capable No. 2 for the commanders of Babylon 5. A deeply pessimistic Russian Jew, Christian’s character is sometimes fiery and sometimes depressed. She brings some much-needed punch to the B5 command staff, which can be bland at times. Ivanova’s Jewish-centered episode in Season 1 is in my top three of the whole series.

Zathras (Tim Choate)

He’s only in four episodes, but all of them are great ones. Zathras guides the characters through time and space with his own particular brand of broken English and backhanded wisdom. Definitely the funniest character in the series.

Alfred Bester (Walter Koenig), Psi Cop

Bester is a good villain because he does what he thinks is right, which often conflicts with the B5 crew's idea of right. Most of their conflicts come from this simple effect. Bester is calm, calculated and utterly devoted to the Psi Corps. If Koenig’s character has a weakness, it’s his general lack of emotion, but that usually serves to make him a bit more villain-esque. Every time he’s on screen is a good time.

Morden (Ed Wasser)

Ed Wasser is the best pure villain on the show, which isn’t saying much (Londo, G’Kar and even Bester all have their heroic moments). As emissary for the Shadow race, he gets plenty of chances to be dark and menacing and makes the most of them (he’s especially effective in season 2). Zero nuances to his character, but who really cares? His interrogation scene with Sheridan at the end of Season 3 is a classic.

Michael Garibaldi (Jerry Doyle), Babylon 5 Security Chief

The best way to describe Garibaldi is sort of a poor man’s Bruce Willis, circa Die Hard crossed with Pulp Fiction. Doyle gives his character a hard-ass mentality and a penchant for sarcastic quips. He’s kind of an asshole, actually, but he’s extremely crafty and good at his job. Garibaldi generally isn't a very complex fellow; the one major change in his character turns out to have been caused by outside forces. At his best when he’s kickin’ ass. (Incidentally, a garibaldi is the state fish of California. #randomfacts)

In the conversation:

Vir Kotto (Stephen Furst), Delenn (Mira Furlan, who played Danielle Rousseau on Lost), Jeffrey Sinclair (Michael O’Hare) and Elizabeth Lochley (Tracy Scoggins). Vir and Delenn have good acting and terrible acting in pretty much equal parts. Sinclair and Lochley are impressive, but neither gets as much time as they should have had. The eccentric Draal (Louis Turenne) was one of my favorites.)

Coming tomorrow: the worst of B5! Cover your ears and grab your popcorn, because this series has some awful performers on it.

*Many of the characters' job descriptions change as the show goes on, so for the sake of making sense, I'm listing the characters by the first jobs they hold on the show.

Check Me Out on Oak Creek Patch!

2011-08-07T22:53:00.000-04:00

Good evening all, I won't keep you long. Just wanted to show off my new article! I'm working the Internet as a Green Bay Packers blogger on the Oak Creek Patch website. My first serious article just went up this morning! It's called "Aaron Rodgers Vs. Chicago", and it analyzes Rodgers' statistical record against the Bears (spoiler alert: he struggles against them, worse than he does most other places). If you're into that sort of thing, please have a look!

Best,

Andy

Religion Has No Sodding Place In Politics

2011-08-07T09:00:00.000-04:00

Religion is irrational, no matter which one it is, strictly by definition. If rationality means 'based on reason', than faith-based religion is the exact opposite.

It seems to me that the politician best qualified to lead the country would be the one best able to apply his or her faculties of reason. It is, after all, difficult to pray away a budget deficit.

So why, exactly, would we want a Bible-thumper in the highest office in the land?

Good luck with that, Governor Perry.

Babylon 5 Mayhem Week Preview!

2011-08-05T13:31:00.000-04:00

Hokay! So I'm back after three days and rarin' to go. Here's the plan. I'm going to do a comprehensive series review of the TV show called Babylon 5. I'm also going to be out of town/away from Internet access from tomorrow until Monday, so I'm posting this preview now as a brief introduction to the show. The tentative schedule next week will be as follows:

Monday: The best characters in B5.

Tuesday: The worst characters in B5.

Wednesday: The best aspects of the show (production, acting, philosophy, writing, etc.)

Thursday: The worst aspects of the show.

Friday: The worst aspects of the show, continued. (Based on the list I made, I doubt they're all going to fit into one reasonably sized post.)

Saturday: Sum up, final evaluation and grade.

Your Babylon 5 Basics

The best thing you can say about Babylon 5 is that it won’t break your heart. It won’t give you a terrible episode, it usually won’t resolve a storyline in an unsatisfying way, and the worst it gets will be ‘mediocre’. The worst thing about Babylon 5 is that it’s consistently mediocre. Occasionally there will be amazing episodes that transcend the usual tedium and rise to awesome heights, but these are extremely rare and it’s hard to guess when they’ll occur.

I recently finished watching the entire five-season run (110 episodes) of B5, in large part so I could do this review. I’m going to provide a brief summary of the series, talk about the good things, talk about the bad things and try to get a handle on what all of it means. I’ll also introduce you to the best and worst characters on the show.

Spoiler alert: one of the best.

Briefly, Babylon 5 was a TV show created by J. Michael Straczynski that aired 1994-1998. It depicted human-alien diplomatic relations, and occasional wars, on board an enormous space station named Babylon 5. The show takes place within a version of our galaxy that harbors dozens of alien races, who get around by “jumping” in and out of hyperspace. Earth has colonies on Mars, Io and elsewhere, and owns the B5 station. Everyone is in diplomatic contact with one another and most of the races trade with each other, when they’re not at war.

At the beginning of the series, the five most powerful races are humanity, the Centauri (who have huge frilly hair and colonized the Narns in the past), the Narns (orange with black spots, who detest the Centauri for it), the Minbari (bald with bone on the outside of their heads; fought the humans 10 years prior to season 1 in the Earth-Minbari War) and the Vorlons (who wear encounter suits at all times; nobody knows a thing about them). A sixth race, the Shadows, appears in Season 2. Other, minor races are introduced and fleshed out a little as the series goes on.

The series was frequently described by Straczynski as TV’s version of a novel. B5 generally sticks to long, planned story arcs that can stretch over several seasons. Everything in the show was planned well in advance of its being aired; there’s not a lot of ‘made up on the fly’ stuff. Each season of the series corresponds exactly to one year in real time, with the season finale often being mentioned in-episode as New Year’s Eve.

The B5 franchise included five TV movies, one of which introduced the series in February 1993. A second was set between Seasons 4 and 5, and the rest followed after the series' run. The spin-off series Crusade ran for 13 episodes in 1999 and is essentially a continuation of story arcs from the original series (it includes Daniel Dae Kim of Lost fame). Some of Babylon 5's obscurity comes from its network. It was aired on the Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN), which began in 1993 and folded in 1997. TNT picked up the final season of Babylon 5, and also aired Crusade and three films. The Sci-Fi Channel aired the fifth movie, Babylon 5: Legend of the Rangers.

I hope you enjoy the forthcoming week-long review. If you have questions, insults or comments, please feel free to share them!

Ta,

Andy

End of This Particular Spree

2011-08-01T00:51:00.000-04:00

I started doing the "one post every day, minimum, for July" thing on a whim; my friend and fellow blogger Sage, a.k.a. "The Boy Yo Momma Warned You About", swore to tweet at least twenty times a day (or a maximum of 2,800 characters/day) every day for the entire month of July. I thought, hell, if he can send a load of Internet text-messages every day, I can definitely do a blog post every day. 34 posts later, I'm all written out. (I was also researching and writing news articles, applying for writing gigs, reviewing shows, etc. on top of the daily posts, so it turned out to be a huge amount of writing).

I think this'll help me when I start writing my senior thesis this fall. Doesn't matter if it's great or terrible, just sit down every day and write something about the topics you're interested in. Why? Because you said you would. Make it like practicing an instrument. Chew some ideas over with your friends, brainstorm and write everything down. I'm going to take the fishing-net approach to writing my senior I.S., at least for the start: don't try and harpoon one idea at a time, go catch all the little ideas and see which ones pan out.

This is kind of rambling, though, and talking about the near future isn't the point of this post. This past month, I wrote about the NFL. I wrote about opera. I wrote about... special relativity, and described how fireworks look from a plane, and analyzed movies and applied logic and broke down sci-fi tropes and posted photos and did research and wrote all kinds of wildly varying junk. And I just wanted to say, to everyone who spent time reading all of this babble, thank you very much for doing so. That means a lot to me.

I definitely won't be posting as often in August (thank God). I'll be putting up more pictures on the Tisdel's Temerity Flickr account, upload limits permitting, and hopefully some videos that I'll throw on YouTube. I'll also be posting bits of whatever tentative body of work I settle on to start the Senior I.S. parade. I hope you enjoy what I've got to offer, and once again, thank you for reading. :-)

The Philadelphia Eagles Look Mighty Like the Miami Heat Right About Now...

2011-07-30T20:16:00.000-04:00

How they're paying for it I don't know, but Philadelphia is doing this year what the Miami Heat did last year, or what the Bears did in free agency with Julius Peppers and all the rest of their free agents. The Eagles have signed or traded for four former Pro Bowlers and one guy who probably should've made it... in the last four days. Nnamdi Asomugha, Cullen Jenkins, Jason Babin, Vince Young and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie have the rest of the NFC East shaking in their collective shoes about now. (Johnnie Lee Higgins doesn't, but just wait.)

Philadelphia, as a team, tied for 10th last year with 39 sacks. Babin and Jenkins, between them, had 19.5 sacks last year (and Jenkins played only 11 games). They will instantly make life easier for Trent Cole and Brandon Graham, who will likely be used in a rotation. Jenkins can play inside as well as outside, but the Eagles now have an enviable stable of guys who can get after the passer. They look a lot like the 2007 New York Giants on the line.

The secondary is phenomenal. I've never been a Rodgers-Cromartie fan and I think he's overrated, but having a former Pro Bowler as your nickel back (not to mention one that's only in his fourth season) is an awe-inspiring possibility. If they keep Asante Samuel, and I don't know why they wouldn't, the Eagles are stacked.

The reason why I think these signings are going to work, as opposed to the Redskins' traditional spending sprees that always fell flat, is because the collective talent level in Philadelphia was already so high. Two excellent receivers in DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin, a competent tight end in Brent Celek, a good RB in LeSean McCoy, and of course Michael Vick himself. Their offensive line isn't great, but that's less of a factor with a scrambling QB like Vick.

The only thing that could derail this express is injuries. The team got Vince Young to do backup duty because Vick is likely to miss time this year as well; it's the cost of doing business, so to speak, of having a scrambling QB. Jenkins has a long injury history, Graham missed most of last year and Jackson has also missed time. If Andy Reid can coach 'em, though, and if the Eagles stay healthy, they're officially the team to beat in the NFC (alongside the Packers).

Stray notes:

-On the other side of the league, New England just keeps making itself better. Albert Haynesworth and Vince Wilfork on the same line could be almost unfair, if they get the former to work hard.

-Unnoticed in all the scrambling, the Bears picked up former Jets bust Vernon Gholston. Keep an eye on this signing. Gholston is built like Hercules, but never fit as a 3-4 OLB or 3-4 DE in New York. If Rod Marinelli and Mike Phair can teach Gholston the ways of the 4-3 and turn him into a legitimate pass-rusher, look out below.

-Speaking of the Bears, I don't get their receiving corps moves. Roy Williams had his best years with Martz in Detroit, but that was four years ago and Williams isn't the Pro Bowl type. Plus, whatever happened to Greg Olsen? He's built along the lines of Jermichael Finley, but Martz never utilized him the way McCarthy's been able to deploy Finley. The Panthers got a steal there.

-New Orleans and Green Bay always get compared because their coaches' fates were linked: Sean Payton was considered seriously in Green Bay before Mike McCarthy came on board, and Dom Capers was the Packers' third-choice defensive coordinator after Greg Williams (now the Saints' DC). Both teams look extremely deep at WR and RB, especially since the Saints just signed my longtime crush, Darren Sproles. If Drew Brees isn't throwing picks, I don't really know how you stop that offense right now. The NFL's opening game could be one of its best all year.

Photos from the Beautiful California Coast

2011-07-29T21:16:00.000-04:00

Hey gang! No text-post today, but by way of my "31 posts in 31 days" goal, I've put up a collection of pictures that I took on the San Francisco coastline, in a park called "Golden Gate National Recreation Area". I have some hundreds more pictures from the trip, but I chose to take out the 63 from this location (that weren't duplicates, poor or stupid shots) and focus on nature-type shots (flowers, trees, etc). There are a bunch of decent ones and a very few very good ones, but I'm not going to tell you which I think are which, so hah. Find out for yourself!

You should be able to find them in the link below; if not, leave me a comment and I'll see what I can do. They are under "Tisdel's Temerity", my newly launched Flickr counterpart to this site, so hooray!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/65561393@N03/sets/72157627311775752/

Enjoy,

Andy

...What the Hell Just Happened?

2011-07-28T18:44:00.000-04:00

Today, a Haitian man offered me $20 to look up the name of a hotel in the Yellow Pages. He then told me that I "looked honest" and offered me $200 to hold $5,000 in cash for him for half an hour while he went off and slept with a prostitute.

...I am not making this up.

The guy came up to me while I was locking my bike outside Radio Shack. He asked me if I worked there (I'm wearing shorts and a cross-country T-shirt), asked if I spoke French (Me: "Un peu"), then asked me to find "Brownstone Hotel" in the Yellow Pages for him, and kept saying he'd pay me $20. I told him that I didn't have a Yellow Pages on me, and he said "Oh! They do" and led me into the check-cashing place next door. I looked through the yellow and white sections, and surprise surprise, no such hotel exists in Milwaukee. (Google Maps confirms this.)

This total stranger then proceeded to confide in me that he'd just met a prostitute up the block and was intending to go sleep with her, but he had $5,000 in "insurance money" that he feared she would somehow steal. He told me that I looked like an honest type, and offered me $200 if I would be back at this location in half an hour with the money. I told him that he could probably use the money more than I could if he was a recent immigrant, and he started talking about a will and inheritance money and a supposed $150,000 in cash that was waiting somewhere for him. I suggested that he open an account at North Shore Bank, which is up the street a few blocks from that location, and deposit his money there; he told me that he'd left all his identification at the hotel (another hotel?) and that the prostitute was waiting on him.

Of course, I turned the guy down. I was going to go buy a video camera, for Chrissakes, not get into some ridiculous Haitian imbroglio. How do I know that anything the guy is saying is true? What if the money wasn't his, i.e. stolen? What if he didn't come back; what the hell do I do with it? I repeatedly said no, and he kept saying "Don't you want to earn some money? You look like an honest guy!" Yep, and at the risk of self-congratulation, maybe a little too honest for this kind of shady weirdness.

Seven Steps to Successful Stone-Skipping

2011-07-27T14:29:00.000-04:00

This is something I created as a 'tutorial' for an online application, and I thought I'd use it as my post for the day because it exhaustively details something that's generally simple and instinctive. Let's get to it: skipping stones like a BOSS!

Step One: The Water.

Your first task, as an aspiring stone-skipper, is to find a body of water and wait for a calm day. The closer to absolutely flat the water is, the easier it will be to skip stones upon. For safety’s sake, make sure that there are no people or boats in the area where you’re going to be skipping. If you can’t find calm water but still want to skip, your best bet is to skip parallel to the incoming waves, not straight into them. This gives you a decent chance of throwing into the relatively calm troughs between the wave crests.

Step Two: The Stone

Your second task is to find a good skipping stone. The ideal stone is flat on both sides, has its weight evenly distributed (so there aren’t any lumps that will throw off its flight) and fits comfortably in your hand. The stone should nestle comfortably into the natural curve of your relaxed hand, which goes from the tip of your index finger to the base of your thumb. However, any reasonably sized flat stone is a good candidate for skipping. If you live in an area with lots of slate or shale rocks, I’d recommend those; they tend to be very light and flat, and are thus easily skippable. If it’s your first time, make sure to use your worst rocks first—you won’t get your stones back, so be judicious.

Some good candidates.

Step Three: The Grip

Now that you’ve got the stone, you need a proper way to hold it. Relax your hand and hold it with your thumb facing up. Hold the stone lightly with your index finger and rest it on your middle finger, with your thumb on top of the stone (again, lightly) to provide balance. The stone should balance on your middle finger, about on top of your knuckle.

For your index finger, rotate the stone and let your finger slide across the circumference of the stone. Pick a point on the stone that ‘catches’ your finger instead of letting it slide past. That is going to be the point that gives the stone its spin. If you’re right-handed, the stone will come out of your hand spinning clockwise (counterclockwise for lefties) because that point catches against your finger as you throw. (For heavier stones, use your middle finger, or even both at once.)

That point at the top of the stone is an ideal "catch".

Step Four: The Angles

You want the stone’s surface to be parallel to the surface of the water when it strikes. When you throw, aim about 10-15 feet in front of you. The distance will vary depending on the size and weight of your particular stone, but that’s a good distance to start with. The stone should leave your hand on a horizontal line, sinking downward through the air instead of arrowing through it. For lighter stones, aim closer to yourself while still keeping the stone flat in your hand; a light, flat stone thrown over a long distance (25 feet or longer) will usually turn over in flight and sink immediately.

Step Five: The Wrist

Skipping has little to do with your arm muscles. The power comes from the snap of your wrist when you release the stone, which is also what facilitates the spin. The snap also determines the speed at which the stone leaves your hand.

As you throw, your upper arm should remain more or less stationary. Draw your hand and wrist back, to gain power, and then snap both of them forward when you release the stone. At the instant you snap the wrist, your index finger should be the only part of your hand that is affecting the stone’s flight. The thumb and middle finger are there to keep the stone flat, but they should be relaxed enough that the stone spins out of them without effort. Your index finger, hand and wrist should all work together to impart spin to the stone. Remember: your index finger should be mostly unmoving throughout the throw. It’s the stone that spins around your finger and, hopefully, leaves your hand on a flat line to the water.

Step Six: The Stance

Stand sideways, with your non-throwing hand closest to the water and your feet parallel to each other. Your side will be facing straight towards the water, and your feet facing about 45 degrees to the left or right of your side (if your side is 12:00, your feet will be at around 1:30 if you’re right-handed and 10:30 if you’re a lefty). As you draw your hand back and prepare to throw, shift almost all your weight onto your back foot. I find it also helps to drop your back shoulder a little, which will help you get the stone closer to the ground and make it easier to throw a flat trajectory. The entire motion looks a lot like a baseball pitcher’s throwing stance.

When you release the stone is a matter of preference. Some people find it easier to release when all their weight is on their back foot and the hand/wrist is the only thing going forward; others like to have their torso moving forward slightly, shifting the weight partially onto the front leg, as they throw. This is a matter of taste; experiment and find out what works for you.

Step Seven: Putting It All Together

The most important thing to remember is to keep the stone flat. Make sure it’s flat when it’s in your hand, and make sure to throw it so that it’ll be flat when it hits the water. This is key to getting the most skips out of the stone. A good grip and good angles will help you do this, and a good stance will make it easier for you to make a nice flat throw. After you’ve mastered this, you can play around with the speed and power of your throw, and find a combination that fits your throw best.

Finally, have some fun with your newfound skills! Get some friends, head to the beach, assemble your stones and start skipping as a group. Once you all have mastered conventional skipping, you can try more exotic things like skipping with your non-dominant hand, skipping multiple stones at once or skipping backhanded (like throwing a Frisbee). Enjoy!

James Jones or Jordy Nelson: Who Should Get Paid?

2011-07-26T14:33:00.000-04:00

The Packers have a decision to make in their wide receiver corps.

Ted Thompson loves his wideouts, and one of the Packers’ biggest strengths since he came on board has been an extraordinarily deep group of wide receivers. With Greg Jennings and Donald Driver starting, and James Jones and Jordy Nelson backing them up, the wideouts helped take Green Bay all the way to the Super Bowl.

Now it’s contract time, and we have to look at the overall group. Driver will likely retire within the next year or two, and his production has fallen off to the point where he’s more of a No. 3 now than a No. 2. James Jones is a free agent, while Nelson’s rookie contract ends after this year. Whoever gets the contract will eventually replace Driver as the No. 2. So assuming they can’t pay both*, whom should the Packers sign to a long-term deal?

To answer that question, let’s take an in-depth look at both receivers.

James Jones #89

Over four years (one mostly curtailed by a knee injury), Jones has caught 149 passes for 2,069 yards and 13 touchdowns, averaging 13.9 yards par catch. He has worked primarily from the No. 3 slot on the depth chart, and has fumbled six times. He led the team this year in average yards after the catch, at 5.16 per, and had two 100-yard games (Minnesota, Dallas). He had one 100-yard game in 2009 (Tampa Bay), one in ’08 (Jacksonville) and one in ’07 (Denver).

Jones definitely possesses more natural talent and speed than Nelson. He’s extremely good at catching low-thrown balls and bailing his QB out on the scramble drill (40 first downs in ’10 to Nelson’s 18). According to the Journal Sentinel’s Bob McGinn, he’s “built like a brick outhouse” and “able to snatch the ball as well as anyone on the roster”; witness his the one-handed touchdown against Minnesota or the fade route over Atlanta’s Brent Grimes for examples.

He’s also prone to drops at the worst possible times. Jones dropped a slant route against Dallas and go routes against Miami, the Jets, the Giants, the Eagles and the Steelers that likely would’ve all gone for touchdowns. In addition, a Rodgers interception against the Dolphins and a Flynn pick vs. the Patriots happened when Jones appeared to quit on the routes. Jones has the speed to outrun the defense on go routes, but he drops too many passes overall (17 in the last two years).

Jordy Nelson #87

Nelson has mostly worked out of the No. 4 slot for the past three years, catching 100 balls for 1,268 yards, six touchdowns and a 12.7 ypc average. He dropped four of 83 targeted passes in his first two years before dropping 10 of 92 this year (inc. playoffs). His résumé includes four drops in the Super Bowl, but more importantly, nine catches for 140 yards and one TD. Also has six fumbles in four seasons, including four lost. Has just one 100-yard game besides the Super Bowl, catching four for 124 against the Giants in ’10.

Nelson’s biggest strength is knowing when to step it up. Played extremely well against the Giants and in the four-game postseason, Super Bowl included. Also made the clutch touchdown catch on fourth down at Atlanta (regular season). His breaks aren’t particularly crisp, but he’s big enough (6’3”. 217 lbs) to effectively box defenders out with his body and keep them away from the football. Definitely the best run blocker among the WRs. Does a good job evading contact at the line of scrimmage. His route-running, hands and agility are all pretty average.

The Verdict?

I honestly don’t have a definitive answer. When I started this, I kept thinking about Jones’ copious drops, and thought that Nelson would be a better, more consistent option. But Jones is more talented and a better possession-type receiver than Nelson is at this stage, and also runs crisper routes.

Both players have benefited from their matchups against No. 3 and 4 corners, and of coverage slanted towards Jennings and Jermichael Finley. I think, however, that Nelson is a bit more suited to deal with defenses paying more attention to him. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of a contract offer they make to Jones, and whether they value Nelson’s big-game production more than they do Jones’ superior potential.

Best guess: Nelson.

*Ted Thompson will need cap space to sign players like Clay Matthews, Josh Sitton and Jermichael Finley to long-term deals in the next year or two. Also, Greg Jennings’ contract expires after 2012, so assuming that the Packers can pick only one receiver is a reasonable assessment.

Not Calling People Back Is Bullshit (Are You Listening, Corporate America?)

2011-07-25T13:07:00.000-04:00

I’ve spent my fair share of time shilling myself to potential jobs and internships. Over the past year or so, starting with my internship search at American University and continuing throughout this spring and summer, I’ve probably submitted close to a hundred résumés, cover letters and writing samples.

Very few of them resulted in a job offer. That’s fine. I get that it’s a competitive environment, particularly journalism-centered jobs, and that I’m not right for every place, and that there are tons of qualified candidates out there. That’s not my problem. My problem is when I send an email or a printed packet to a lot of workplaces, I might as well be sending them into the Great White Ether. They just vanish, unnoticed and unremarkable, never to be heard from again. Even follow-ups or personal visits can’t induce a response.

This is BULLSHIT.

This is the single biggest thing that ticks me off about the job application process. I get that workplaces are busy, and I also get that when I’m applying to the office of a U.S. Senator (for example), I’m one of hundreds of gazillions of people who are applying. But someone has to be looking through all those résumés, right? Somebody’s paging through the digital archives and looking at all those emails from all the young and (slightly) desperate potential coworkers out there. So is it really asking too much for them to send a quick reply message?

Whether it’s an acceptance or a rejection or a copy-pasted statement of “Thank you for emailing the office of Senator Kohl”, ANY response is a good one. It lets me know that even though maybe nothing came of my efforts, at least I was noticed by the Powers That Be… and enough of those notices might result in a job, eventually. No reply email and it’s like I asked for an internship from the Moon. It’s discouraging, it’s depressing and it’s just plain inconsiderate.

Tell you something. When I’m the head of some major business endeavor or journalistic enterprise or what have you, my ground rule will be this: Everyone gets a call back. If they’re nice and polite and they provide contact information, everyone who sends their info to my company will get some kind of a response. It might be “I’m sorry, we’re not hiring right now,” it might be “I’m incredibly busy right now, but try me again next week and I’ll see what I can do” (and we’ll keep that promise; that’s another thing that drives me up a wall, broken promises) or it might just be “You’re probably better off looking elsewhere”. But no matter what, everyone gets his or her info looked at and everyone gets a response. That’s called being goddamn considerate.

(P.S. It’s easier to tolerate when it comes from, like I mentioned, an incredibly busy Senate office or something. But the local Kohl’s? Or some mom-and-pop endeavor that probably has a maximum of 25 applicants over the course of one summer? Come on, guys. You really have no excuse.)

Trimming the Hedges

2011-07-24T17:10:00.001-04:00

So I'm out trimming my hedge, the one that runs along the left side of my yard and has an apartment building on the other side. I'm buzzing away with this electric hedge-trimmer, when all of a sudden one of my neighbors wanders up and starts talking to me. He says "What're you doing?" and I say "Well, sir, I'm trimming this here hedge." He says "Well do you live here?" and I say "Yes, I do, I live in the brick and stucco house right behind us." He says "Well, I'm sorry to bother you like this, but could you please stop trimming? I was actually going to make a sculpture out of that hedge."

The hedge in question.

Well, nobody has ever made a sculpture out of this huge thicket we politely call a hedge before, so I'm a bit surprised. I say "Oh yeah?" and he says "Yeah, I hired a professional to come in and do it for me. He said he could make something very avant-garde out of it, very socially derivative." I say "Well, that's an interesting idea, but how are you going to pay for it?" He says "Well, this professional does things in a very particular way. He has me deposit the money into a special account for him, and then he can draw upon it as he needs while he's trimming the hedge." I say "So you're setting up a fund for him? So he can't use too much money at once?" He says "That's right." I say "I assume you're going to be watching him while he does all this work", and he says "Yeah, I'm right overhead and two stories up, so I can see everything that he does while he's on the job". And I say "I hope so, mister. If you don't have sufficient oversight over the hedge fund's derivatives, you could wind up in financial crisis."

(Inspired by true events.)

The Five Most Mind-Blowing Implications of Special Relativity

2011-07-23T15:08:00.000-04:00

5. Loss of Absolute Space

In the olden days, before the earth cooled, people tended to believe in absolute space. If you drove for fifty miles, you had driven fifty miles, and that was it. You didn’t have to worry about what you were driving from or to, only that you had traveled a fixed distance. Natural, right?

The problem is, relativity means that everything is relative. You may be driving for 20 miles by your odometer, but the way you know that you’re moving is because you’re passing objects (pedestrians, trees, road-rage-crazed bastards in sports cars). Take away your frame of reference, put your car in deep space away from any gravity wells or other physical objects, and you’ll have no way to tell whether you’re moving*.

It gets better. Let’s say you find another car out in the abyss, and let’s also say it’s moving at 150 mph. To you, the other car is the one that’s moving, and you are stationary. But to the other driver, your car is hurtling along at 150 mph, and their car is floating innocently in space. Who’s right?

Special relativity says that you’re both equally justified in claiming that the other car is moving, and what’s more, there’s no possible way to tell (without one of you turning on your engine and introducing your own acceleration) who’s right. The question of who’s right has no answer. In other words, you’re not measuring your velocity by some constant of space; you’re measuring it by your reference points, which are entirely relative.

Thanks for the illustration, Cousin Jerry!

4. Time Isn’t Absolute Either

Take the cars that I mentioned before. If you add huge clocks on top of them (I’m shamelessly borrowing from Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe here, but only because there’s not really another way to illustrate this), both you and the other driver will observe your clock ticking slower than their own. The faster the relative motion between the two observers, the more the clock will appear to slow down. Again, there’s no way of telling which is which (in part because it’s hard to establish that events are taking place simultaneously) because you can both make the same claim to each other, and both be essentially correct.

This same effect happens in a different way, when you’re close to a large body and caught in its gravity well. If your car was orbiting the Earth and the other car was far away from the Earth, your clock would run slower than theirs because of the time-dilating effect of gravity. This time, because you’re introducing the outside force of gravity, it acts as a frame of reference; thus, both of you would agree that your clock is running slower than Driver 2’s.

3. The Faster It’s Going, The Shorter It Gets

I’ll save the buildup for this one and just say: the faster your vehicle is moving, the shorter it will appear to an observer perpendicular to the vehicle’s direction of motion. The vehicle will contract in the direction that it’s moving, in an effect called Lorentz contraction. The driver won’t notice; from her point of view, the vehicle will have the same dimensions it had previously. But to an observer, the vehicle will get marginally shorter as it increases speed.

Now, when I say marginally, I mean incredibly small; until you get up to half the speed of light, the difference is an infinitesimal fraction of an inch. But it occurs with every vehicle that moves at speed, relative to an observer. At 99% of the speed of light (hat tip, Wikipedia), an observer would see the vehicle as having almost no length at all.

2. Space and Time are One

This means, by the way, that the difference between “farther” and “further” is totally irrelevant, since they’re referring to the same thing. You may brandish this information in front of your English professors the next time they correct you. There’s a load of cool shit involving general relativity (which implies that spacetime is curved) and quantum physics, which holds that supposedly smooth spacetime is actually wildly chaotic on insanely tiny scales, but… oh, all right.

In general relativity, gravity is a consequence of spacetime. A massive body will create a sort of dip in spacetime, which means that lighter-mass objects will fall into the “dip” and orbit around the edges. It’s analogous to one of those things they have in airports and museums, where you put the coin in the top and it spirals around to the bottom, except that it takes place in a sphere around the massive body instead of just a funnel. Don’t ask me how to visualize it, I have no idea.

Like this, but we're sinking into the fabric in every direction simultaneously.

1. e = mc^2

Mass and energy are equivalent and can be changed back and forth; mass can become energy and vice versa. That sunlight hitting the ground outside could become a solid block of coal under the right energies, and we (people) could evaporate into electromagnetic radiation under the right energies. If that doesn’t blow your mind, nothing will. And this is a totally proven concept; it is applied every day in nuclear reactors, as mass (in the form of U-235) is changed into energy that powers our cities. I find this absolutely unbelievable.

*Acceleration changes the equation, but in a situation that's not influenced by an outside force, you'll have no way to tell. Also, windowless box: if you're inside of one, you'll have no way to tell whether the acceleration you feel is from your motion or from being near a gravitationally attractive body. Acceleration and gravity feel exactly the same.

How Shorewood Stacks Up

2011-07-22T17:31:00.000-04:00

To my fellow Shorewood High School alumni, former teachers and former administrators:

If anyone ever thought that Shorewood was a below-average school...

According to state records of nationwide achievement tests, Shorewood ranked above the state average in November 2010 records in its grade 4,8 and 10 levels, in every single category. In reading, language arts, mathematics, science and social studies--15 categories in total--every solitary time, Shorewood overtopped the state averages. The same was true in 2009, 2008, 2007 and that's as far back as it goes. Usually, the difference between the Greyhounds and the average isn't even close.

Hats off to the District of Shorewood and its excellent staff and administrators.

Fact Package: Teacher Salaries in WI

2011-07-22T17:14:00.000-04:00

Because I need something to blow off steam about, and because some random commenter (which you can find under this video) was yammering about overpaid teachers, I decided to put together a facts package on Wisconsin teachers.

According to http://teacherportal.com, Wisconsin teachers have the second-lowest initial teacher salary of any state (behind North Dakota only) at $25,222/year on average (the 2011 federal poverty rate for a one-person household is $10,890). They make an average salary of $46,390/year, 20th highest in the country (California tops the list with an average pay of $59,825), and has increased by 21.5% over the last decade (eighth-least in the U.S). Mississippi tops the list with an increase of 46.8% over the last decade. It should be noted that the site doesn't specify where it gets its data, or whether those stats include both college and K-12 teachers (although a specifically K-12 list on payscale.com shows that the number for each state listed is significantly lower than the number in the teacherportal link). Finally, the site doesn't specify when its data was collected.

Using that data, a blogger on freeby50.com correlated it with median income by state and found that under that figure, Wisconsin teachers get 89% of the state median income ($52,224). Can't say I'm that convinced by this guy; he mixes up the terms 'mean' and 'median', but he also appears to be the only person who's done this kind of analysis.

The best data probably comes from the U.S. Census, which concluded that primary and secondary schoolteachers in Wisconsin made $49,100/year in 2008. Primary schoolteachers made $49,200 and secondary school-teachers made $48,800. This is slightly less than the national average, which was $52,800 (both), $52,400 (primary) and $53,300 (secondary) in 2008. Twenty-one states had higher averages than Wisconsin; California again led with $65,800/year.

According to a different Census .pdf, the average went up to $52,900 in 2009.

Predicted Free Agent/Trade Destinations

2011-07-21T21:12:00.002-04:00

Kevin Kolb: Seattle

Donovan McNabb: Minnesota

Carson Palmer: Retired. He’s been keeping the hard line all this time, I don’t see him changing it now.

Vincent Jackson: Chicago (I hope I’m wrong about this one)

Logan Mankins: Patriots

Matt Hasselbeck: Arizona

Nnamdi Asomugha: Houston Texans

Sidney Rice: St. Louis

Ray Edwards: Miami

Charles Johnson: Cincinnati

Marshal Yanda: Atlanta

Jared Gaither: Dallas

Doug Free: Chicago

Quintin Mikell: Denver

Ahmad Bradshaw: San Francisco

DeAngelo Williams: Denver

Santonio Holmes: San Diego

Pat Williams: Cleveland

Jonathan Joseph: Minnesota

Packers:

Mason Crosby, John Kuhn: Packers

James Jones: Jaguars (I have a feeling about this one)

Cullen Jenkins: Washington

Justin Harrell: Seattle (he’ll be cut, and Pete Carroll will give him a chance because Pete Carroll gives everyone a chance.)

Daryn Colledge: Carolina

Jason Spitz: Philadelphia (this one’s been some time coming)

Brandon Jackson: St. Louis

Atari Bigby: Philadelphia

Stein Optical's Ads and Prices are Quite Misleading

2011-07-20T19:22:00.001-04:00

My glasses stink. They're scratched up, chipped in spots, six or seven years removed from my current prescription, held together with a paper clip on one side (c/o damage from somebody's exuberant birthday party) and just plain silly-looking. I need a new pair, but I likely won't be going to Stein Optical (Shorewood location) for them, because I just visited them and came away rather put out.

Stein Optical, a glasses store, has a poster on their window that says you can get two pairs of glasses for a total of $99 apiece. This is technically true, but in practice it's extremely misleading. Most of the frames cost over $100 on their own, and thus aren't included in the deal. Only their absolute shittiest frames, which cost a mere $60 and up, qualify for that deal. Also, you have to get their absolute shittiest lenses (described as "Coke-bottles" by the guy who helped me) to go along with it, so basically, what you have to do to qualify is buy the absolute lowest-end thing in the store. I wouldn't say that Stein Optical is lying in their ad, but it seems like the ad in the window is just something to sucker you in that hardly ever applies in practice. (Save the comments about how this is true for all adverts for someone who hasn't heard them before.)

The second thing I took issue with is the price tags on the frames themselves. They are only prices for the frames, and don't include the cost of the lenses themselves. This means that every frame on the shelf costs you $30-40 more than you see on the price tag. I know that the cost of a pair of lenses is variable depending on the prescription, but it's still not the most customer-friendly thing to do; nobody told me, and there were no signs that I saw, that the prices were separate until I actually went up to pay for them.

It's counterintuitive because you see a pair of glasses with lenses on the shelf, and there's no reason to think that the price quoted isn't the total price of the whole package (and because the frames themselves are so damn expensive, the inclination is to see them as one entity). I could also see it being a psychological tool, because you don't see the entire price at once; you see a $100 frame and a $40 pair of lenses, not a $140 lump sum, which sounds worse. (I'm sure you are quoted a price when you get your eye exam there, but that costs you another $42! I brought in my eye doctor's prescription instead, which I got a few months ago at the last appointment.)

So to summarize, I will be looking for my glasses somewhere else, and if there's a better alternative to SO in the Milwaukee area, I encourage you folks to do the same. (It may of course turn out that this is standard business practice in the optics industry and there's nothing for me to do but shut up and buy the glasses; however, if this is the case, I will at least have the satisfaction of having shopped around for bargains. Jew-blood +10.)

Home Sleep Deprivation (is worse than the college version)

2011-07-20T09:46:00.001-04:00

My horrible sleeping habits have officially gotten out of hand, and I'm turning to y'all for advice.

Yesterday, my dad and I drove about 13 hours between us, from Washington D.C. to Milwaukee. When I got home, I was so exhausted I couldn't tell the difference between 'your' and 'you're' (which, for an English major and grammar nerd, is like forgetting the difference between elephants and robots) and sat through an entire Beethoven symphony without noticing it (which got you tarred and feathered in the 19th century). So I'm completely gone, I go to bed at 1 and wake up around seven A.M. This is just not cosmically fair. I'm the kind of person who needs eight-plus hours to function best, and you would think that this would be the mother of all excuses for my body to pack it in for a night. Nothing doing.

It's not like this was just a one-night issue, either. I don't think I've gotten a decent night of sleep since coming home from college in mid-May. I've varied every single thing I can think of; slept in a cot, put a fan in my room, gone to bed ridiculously late or early, gotten drunk with friends, etc. Nothing has worked. I get a maximum of six hours of restful sleep, full stop.

So... would anyone care to suggest anything? Advice? I'm fresh out of ideas, but I have huge purple crescents under my eyes that I would love to make disappear.

All _______ Go To Heaven

2011-07-19T08:42:00.001-04:00

Proposition: All dogs, meaning good people, go to heaven.

Rationale: Every religion that believes in hell, and every subset of that religion, hypothesizes that only their beliefs will get you there. Fine.

BUT… believing that requires you to believe in a God that will save the undeserving and burn some of the virtuous.

There are two components to making it into heaven: being virtuous and following specific, sometimes arbitrary, rules laid down by the religion of the moment. The ROTM will tell you that these are one and the same. Suppose, however, that a person follows the generic principles of virtue laid down by the ROTM (doesn’t steal, holds malice towards none and is charitable to all, etc.) but doesn’t pray to the correct god, or at all. By the internal logic of the ROTM, he should and will go to hell (that’s seventeenth-century thinking).

I do not accept that a loving, caring God would doom a virtuous person because s/he didn’t worship correctly. The God I believe values deeds over adulation. So let’s try something else.

If your good deeds don’t get you into heaven, but God is a god that values deeds over correct worship, one must conclude that there is some limiting factor on God’s power.
If you believe in the omnipotence of God, this is incorrect, so it can’t be the reason.

Reasoning: Why would Mohammad predict that there would be 72 sects of the umma, and 71 of them would be wrong? Answer: If God says that you’re probably going to get it wrong, humans will keep searching for the right way. And if you’re searching, you’re keeping up interest in your religion, getting converts, having wars over who’s doing it best, making sure everybody notices you. It promotes religion as a whole, and if God is using religion as a vehicle to spread the basic virtues… well, now, that makes sense.

My Crazy, Wild, Wonderful Dreams

2011-07-18T12:40:00.001-04:00

How can I describe the dreams of last night?

There was a ship, an army transport with walls impossibly high, where I suffered under a psychotic drill sergeant who wanted to throw my belongings and me over the side and into the steel-grey floor of the world, and where I chatted with angels and gods on the fantail.

Discontinuity

That took me, in some way I wish I remembered, to an art museum like the Californian one, but different and darker and heavier, where I played a children’s card game with an evildoer (in a huge black marble room with a stone sculpture of pagan gods) for the fate of the world. Then he took me (we weren’t finished) to a huge black stone, with lines in it like the London Underground and huge colored zones, and challenged me to figure out where in the network of torture chambers my good friend Charlie was being held. After much thought, I picked the Red Zone, and my parents and I started out for

Discontinuity

For the airport, where a friendly policeman escorted us through the hallway on one side of the Pit and asked chummy questions about where we’d come from. I left them at an old-style computer lab, where a voice cried out desperately that no one had ever used it, and would I please be the first? I jumped over the pit to the floor below and landed on a floor of glass. I looked through a telescope and saw a man with three ears and two heads, and when I reassured him that he was okay, he turned into toasted cheese and covered the planet Mars. I ran to the secret underground computer chamber, with walls made of sandy rock like Indiana Jones’, and looked through all my belongings from the year 2009, and opened a drawer that told me it held the fate of Germany inside and it must not be opened for fifty more years. I had to write something and put it in the drawer I became aware of the world expanding around me, perceived that there was wind and rain and clouds and trees and sky and

Discontinuity

I was outside the compound, firing mortar shells in and dodging return fire out, as part of the Eagles-Giants football rivalry turned warfare. I guess I was on the Giants’ team, because I finally got lucky and scored a direct hit on the Philadelphia Museum of Art, blowing up a priceless painting of Abraham Lincoln that I’d somehow seen before.

Reset, reset, reset

I made myself go back to the place I’d started and go shell the museum again, but this time without blowing up the painting. But this time I walked into the compound and through and out of it, into the rain forest outside, and found

Reset

(The dream just started resetting every so often from there. I have no idea what I found the first time.)

The second time I was a French sculptor with my wife. I ran out of the garden and turned left at the primal stone, then turned for the hill over which the sky was breaking. I found a cult of women trying to make themselves immortal in a complicated ritual involving the blood of Prince Fielder, but I seized a sword and changed the flows so as to make Prince immortal instead, and he looked at me with huge brown eyes and said he wouldn’t thank me. Then I crept up the hill and became a chauffeur, watched the royal court get squashed under a falling pillar and then killed the jester in a knife fight.

Atop the hill was a cult of women who worshiped the Adele penguin, and I guess I got to choose who was the high priestess. I cycled through photos of all of them, but woke up before making any final decision.

Shantih shantih shantih

Lockouts

2011-07-17T14:35:00.000-04:00

Here's the one big difference between the NFL lockout and the onrushing U.S. default deadline:

The NFL owners and players are rational beings who stand to lose more by missing games than they would gain by stalling the talks. So I have every expectation that we will have a new collective bargaining agreement within the next week, 10 days at the outside.

Nobody knows what the fuck the politicians--Obama, Boehner, Cantor--are, but they certainly aren't behaving like rational beings. They stand to lose a whole lot more than the NFL, in terms of money, prestige and elections, but for whatever reason aren't reacting the same way...

Hey, the U.S. may default on its debt, sparking financial disaster, causing us to lose our credit rating and be utterly humiliated before the entire world, but at least we'll have football to watch!

Sometimes A Great Universal Condition (Telepathy)

2011-07-16T02:08:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, sci-fi will introduce a Game Changer. The most common one is a faster-than-light drive of some sort, but the basic thing is that it’s a Universal Condition. It’s not a one-off thing for one episode, and it isn’t a threat to be defeated. It’s a part of the universe, something you set at the start of the game.

Frequently, the Universal Condition has world-shattering implications. To combat this, there are often tons of restrictions on the Game Changer’s powers. Those powers are theoretically infinite, but in practice, they have to be controlled for the good of the story.

The example that works best are the telepaths in Babylon 5. Theoretically, telepathy could be a game-changing skill. You could put a telepath in a given location and s/he would be able to find out everything that’s going down in that location. Theoretically, on one of Bestor’s many visits to Babylon 5, he could walk into the station, scan the whole place and determine exactly who he wants, where they are and what they’re thinking at the time. Then he could immobilize them, or better yet, control their brains and make them walk right up to him.

But if Bestor was able to do all that, every episode with him would be exceedingly boring. The chases are fun, and later on when the main characters start hiding things from Bestor, it becomes imperative
that he not have Godlike Powers. So there have to be limits on the telepath’s ability.

"Also, I can kill you with my brain." -River Tam

First is distance. The guy can’t seek out someone on a different planet; he has to be in the same city-sized area. On a smaller scale, Bestor apparently can’t just cast his mind out and search for someone or something. He can’t pull a Cerebro and look all over the world; he's limited to scanning individual people. Plus, to scan someone, Bestor has to be in the room with that person, preferably within eye contact or at least line-of-sight.

Next is levels; Bestor may be as strong as human telepaths get, but even that isn’t massively strong, and the resident B5 telepath is a P5 to his P12 (which explains why they don’t instantly go to her whenever something goes missing).

Third is the ability to block. Bestor can be blocked by another telepath, and although he can overpower a telepath of lesser level, he’d lose to a group of telepaths. Certain drugs can also block or enhance telepathic ability.

Fourth are PsyCorps regs. Scanning people without their consent is a rule that’s broken more than occasionally on this show, but it is a rule, and one that’s generally kept.

Fifth, Bestor can’t control people’s actions.

Sixth, scans don’t always work out as intended. You don’t always find what you’re looking for, or find it immediately.

And seventh, telepaths generally have to go to some lengths to keep from hearing everyone’s thoughts. It can form an indecipherable background gabble, not a perfect interpretation of what everyone in the area is thinking.

This is the Cosmic Microwave Background. Start thinking about that in terms of background clutter and Bestor and telepaths and lots of random folks thinking, and you get some really scary thoughts.

So you can see how this omnipotent power is cut down to a size that fits what the show’s creators want it to do, bit by bit. You can modify an FTL drive in the same way: it only comes out at a certain place, it takes a certain amount of time to get there or to spin up, it requires a certain fuel, etc. You can take the abstract concept and modify it in any way you want. In other words, the writer can shape the reality and create the rules of the world to get the result he or she desires. I’d never thought of it in those terms before, and it’s scarily empowering.

Sentient Corporations

2011-07-15T15:09:00.000-04:00

Whenever corporations pollute the environment or subvert the rules or outright cheat and lie to make a profit, we (the public) are pissed off. Not just because we’re getting screwed by a corporation, but because we feel a sense of moral outrage. They’re pumping toxic chemicals into rivers! Polluting the atmosphere! Cheating and losing millions of investors’ dollars! Why shouldn’t we be outraged?

Well, we shouldn’t be outraged because we shouldn’t be treating corporations like people in the first place. They have different goals, and expecting them to act like people and obey moral and environmental rules will disappoint you every time.

Here’s how I see it. In a capitalist society, there is one goal animating a corporation: Making a profit. Everything else is secondary or a subset of this goal. Without money, the corporation will go bankrupt and “die”; it follows that environmental and financial regulations, to name a couple, tend to stand in the way of this goal. That’s why corporations regularly subvert them or engage in underhanded tactics.

I find it makes the most sense if you think of a corporation as a sentient organism, that needs money the way we need food or water. And unlike with humans, the marginal value of money does not decrease as its gained. The more money a corporation has, the more money it wants.

Seen from this perspective, it’s easier to understand why corporations break the law. A CEO who pushes fracking policies that the public deems unsafe is only acting in his own best interests. And the thing about this system is, as long as the corporation is acting in its own best interest, it supercedes the opinions of people within the corporation. Individuals may embezzle, steal, act in moderation or otherwise not work towards the goals of the corporation, but these will eventually be found and replaced with people who will.

Corporations are doing what they have to do to survive. That’s not to excuse the scandals that seemingly appear every other week, concerning the many misdeeds of Company Z or Corporation Q, but rather to understand them. Who knows: maybe understanding them is the first step towards designing regulations that actually work.

(Hat tip: Charles Stross and Accelerando.)

"No Reason"

2011-07-14T23:56:00.002-04:00

Rubber, a French independent film, contains a monologue by the lead actor that declares ‘Things happen for no reason. ‘No reason’ is a part of every great movie’. Well, there’s invariably some explanation in movies that incorporate sci-fi or fantastic elements, some reason why things are the way they are. Superhero movies always have the origin story. Inception has a throwaway line or two about dreamwalking technology being developed by the U.S. military, a brilliant crossover from fantasy into techno-fantasy. Why is the Terminator indestructible? It has a “hyperalloy combat chassis”. There’s a perceived need to explain it to the viewer, to give us some reason why things are the way they are. That’s what we want.

But sometimes, the greatest things are deliberately left unexplained, or given an ambiguous explanation. I’ve always liked how Highlander’s powers worked; the characters themselves don’t have an explanation for them, and their effects on physical reality are almost random. That’s awesome! Being unaware of the tricks being played on you is part of movie magic, so it’s not illogical that their counterparts in the film itself could be good as well. Understanding is great, but for entertainment, sometimes inscrutability can be a virtue.

**EDIT**: I cheated just a touch: this has been sitting on my desktop since before I went to San Francisco, but I did't quite remember to post something today so I snuck this in at the deadline. Still on track for a post every day!

Bend It Like Beckham Is A Colonialist's Dream

2011-07-13T18:01:00.002-04:00

Bend It Like Beckham is an excellent example of a film that espouses old-school British colonialist values. It depicts the struggle of an Indian family to hold onto its culture against the pervasive and stifling British culture that attempts to absorb the Indians into itself, and is ultimately successful in doing so. Furthermore, the Indian parents trying to raise their daughters as Indians are consistently portrayed as stifling their daughter’s dreams, while British culture—represented largely by a football team—is depicted as free-spirited and liberating.

The film refers briefly to a period in British culture where minority immigrants were excluded from and shunned by mainstream British society; Mr. Bhamra*, the heroine’s father, tells a story of being expelled from a British cricket club and Jess herself says “It’s not like it used to be”, referring to once-nonexistent diversity in British sports. This period has been succeeded by a shift in the dominant culture. Instead of excluding its immigrants, at the time of Bend It Like Beckham, British society seeks instead to assimilate its immigrants and make them indistinguishable from native Brits in terms of their culture.

The battle between the dominant British culture and the enveloped Indian culture is fought in the hearts and minds of the Indians’ children. For many—indeed, most—of the Indian teens and twenty-somethings in this film, British culture has already won out. The ‘kids’ (for want of a better term) speak in British accents, dress in British fashion (Pinky’s friends dress and speak in slutty fashion, and Tony’s friends are typical Western douchebags) and adopt non-Indian names (Jess, Pinky, Tony). Moreover, they display materialist obsessions typical of capitalist society, fawning over and desiring such things as hair and nail treatments, shoes, bras and fancy clothes.

Jess, however, is still deciding between the two worlds she is presented with. Her Indian parents attempt to influence her throughout the film by teaching her to cook Indian food, to dress in Indian fashion and to respect her elders. They are consistently depicted as restrictive of Jess’s desires, uncaring for her needs, and in the words of Jess’s teammate, “backward”. Jess resents this treatment and dreams of playing football openly in America; never in the film is she seen to take pleasure in an Indian custom or routine.

By contrast, once she is exposed to the world of clubbing, football and friendship that defines this movie’s British culture, Jess is a convert. Although she’s initially uncomfortable with the team’s culture, particularly in the case of locker-room nudity, Jess overcomes her initial misgivings and is accepted into a nominally color-blind team (it’s captained by a black girl, but most of the rest are white).

Jess’s struggle is emblematic of the struggles of her generation as a whole, specified through the experience of one Indian family. She has no interest in learning about her native Indian culture, as can be seen throughout the film. Rather, her inclination the entire time is to embrace what is portrayed as liberal, color-blind British culture rather than “backward” Indian culture. In that sense, the battle has already been lost on the level of Jess’s heart. But the deeper loss comes in the climax of the film, where Jess’s long-suffering parents cave and allow her to play soccer professionally. In essentially giving up on the idea that Jess will follow the Indian path, the Bhamras are also abandoning their attempt to preserve their culture in the person of their daughter. They are surrendering influence over her life to British values rather than Indian.

Although the Bhamras’ other daughter Pinky has been married off in Indian fashion, she is more squarely aligned with British values (materialism, concern with Western dress, British accent, snogging before marriage) and represents another failure to preserve proper Indian custom. Both her friends and Tony’s friends, the primary groups of young Indians seen in the film, also fail this standard as discussed above.

Of all the Indian youth seen in the film, only one measures up to proper Indian standards. Tony is quiet, polite, listens to his mother and is a model Indian youth in his elders’ eyes. However, he’s also either gay or bi (this isn’t quite clear) and thus an imperfect specimen of Indian youth (again, through his elders’ eyes, although they aren’t made aware of his sexual orientation in the film). This means that although the parents do not realize it, their sons and daughters have universally failed to become “proper Indians”. All of them have been ‘tainted’ by British culture.

Jess was the last, best hope to carry on the wishes of her parent generation and become a model Indian lady. With her ‘switching sides’, the victory of British culture is complete. Every Indian youth in the film has been assimilated into the dominant culture, and Indian custom and mindset survives in the minds of the children only in diluted form. Bend It Like Beckham perfectly illustrates the assimilation of the children of a group of immigrants, and depicts the victory of British culture in the war for the hearts and minds of its immigrants’ sons and daughters.

*The Bhamras are the Indian family in question; Jess is their daughter, Tony is a friend of Jess's, Pinky is Jess's sister.

Three Probable Impacts of the NFL Lockout

2011-07-12T17:04:00.000-04:00

1. Rookies will not contribute worth a flying damn this year.

The Packers drafted Randall Cobb, their second-round wide receiver of the future, to use him in all sorts of crazy ways like Percy Harvin 2.0. The expectation among fans immediately after he was drafted was that he could line up in the backfield, in the slot, outside, run reverses, return kicks and generally make the Green Bay offense that much more awesome.

The problem is, wide receiver is one of the hardest positions to learn even in the best of times. Meaning, when you've had a full offseason to absorb the playbook. But in the lockout, teams can't get playbooks to their rookies, so the two months of study (or more) that rookies would have had up until now hasn't happened. When they get to training camp (assuming a deal happens before then), they're going to have to learn the entire offense in a month, which is akin to becoming fluent in a foreign language in six months. It just doesn't work unless you are heroically talented.

There's a school of thought that running backs will be a little less affected than other positions, running back being the position where rookie runners tend to have more success (Adrian Peterson or Steve Slaton or Chris Johnson, anyone?) but don't hold out hope for Alex Green to contribute in his rookie year, either. The plan was for him to be the third-down back, but the intricacies of blitz pickups and screen passes are probably best left to Brandon Jackson for another year. You don't want Jared Allen to take Rodgers' head off because the rookie RB missed a chip.

2. Veteran free agents won't fix your team this year.

NFL.com keeps posting articles guaranteed to tantalize fans of struggling teams, hypothesizing where big-name free agents will land and what holes on which teams need to be filled by which player. That's fine, but I wouldn't expect Sidney Rice or Nnamdi Asomugha to come in and be a world-beater on the Bears or Texans. The lack of time to learn the playbook and practice with new teammates also hurts these players, and the longer the lockout lasts, the more pronounced this effect will be. Scheme is so important in the NFL that veteran free agents will likely have little impact, early in the season.

3. But on the whole, veteran players who stay with their teams will be better than usual.
Players in their early to mid-thirties who would normally be going through minicamps and "optional" team workouts all spring and early summer now will have missed all of that. They'll be working out on their own, of course, but one would expect that veterans' bodies will be less tired come the summer. I would expect older players to benefit from the time off, and have a better season in 2011 than they might otherwise have had.

Top 10 Most Commonly Uttered Lines In The Afterlife

2011-07-11T15:47:00.001-04:00

After an exhaustive* survey of souls in the Recently Arrived (+/- 5 years) portion of the Afterlife, Tisdel's Tirades' staff have compiled this list of the top 10 most commonly uttered sentiments. We hope you, the living, will take some consolation from the feelings of the dear departed; however, we also hope that you may take some lessons from their last thoughts.

Without further ado:

The Top 10 Quotes From Beyond the Grave

1. "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

2. "So I said 'You and what army?'"

3. "I could’ve sworn that was going to work!"

4. "And then they made me their chief."

5. "So I said 'I wonder what this button does—'"

6. "That’s when s/he said 'Oh shit! My spouse is home!'"

7. "Join the Army, they said. See the world, they said…"

8. "The last thing I remember was someone yelling 'Isn’t this incredible!?!'"

9. "…and then there was a shark."

10. "I got shot by James Bond."

(Bonus line, which we observed mostly emanating from souls that had occupied an upper-middle class position in life: "Jesus Christ but I was overweight!")

*Data based on a survey conducted between June 18th and June 22nd, Earth time, of total 56,021 souls. Souls represent an accurate percentage of all souls in the area, meaning all souls dispatched to the Afterlife within (+/- 5 years), and thus are not necessarily a cross-section of the Earth population. We strongly advise against any attempts to verify our work; please to god take our word for it, don't go check yourself. Lazarus treatments should only be attempted by professionals. If you found something like that in an old H.P. Lovecraft, well, we advise against trying that too but you probably won't listen to us.

Transcripts of our interviews with several shinigami are available upon request.

"You are perfect, just as you are!!" (hat tip, Comet, Yield and Something Else establishments)

2011-07-10T02:07:00.000-04:00

There is a pivotal scene in Battlestar Galactica, season and episode 4, where a bloodied and beaten Gaius Baltar declares to his conclave of women “God only loves that which is perfect, and He loves You. Because You are all perfect. Just as you are! You are perfect, just as you are!” and the crowd erupts in tears and joy.

Tonight, I had the great privilege to witness two gorgeous women tell each other that they were pretty, and then reply in turn “You’re pretty. No, no. you are.”

Beauty, obviously, is subjective—across cultures, across friend groups, across personal goddamn preferences. But to me, what is more attractive than any other quality is the ability to say “I am pretty. I am gorgeous, and goddamn it, you can deal with it or you can go home.”

That self-consciousness, that refusal to abide by any cultural sensibility (and believe me, the two women in question would’ve been deemed beautiful by any sane, straight panel of heterosexual males or homosexual females, from any culture) is insanely awesome. The self-confidence to say “Yeah. You know what? I’m pretty. I’m fucking gorgeous. And far more importantly, I am me. You can laugh with me or go to hell”, that is fantastic. Drunk, sober, these things are of scant importance. You are perfect, just as you are, and you have the moxie to say so. That is absolutely fantastic.

(Disclaimer: this post was written under the influence of intoxicating beverages. That does not invalidate any declaration that the poster makes; rather, it makes it more true, because it gives the poster the bravado to post whatever the hell he feels like and say whatever he decides is correct. This is. He is about to. May you enjoy this and all time-continuum-logical posts in the past or future.)

Lost Opportunities in Game of Thrones

2011-07-09T20:06:00.000-04:00

If.

If Joffery hadn’t cut off Ned Stark’s shaggy head… if Lady Stark hadn’t snatched up Tyrion and inadvertently started a war with the Lannisters… if Ned had sent his daughters away from King’s Landing while he had his many, many chances… if Robert Baratheon’s great love hadn’t been killed before the series even began.

Those are just some of the many, many fateful (and fatal) choices made in the first season of Game of Thrones. George R.R. Martin’s brainchild has a wonderful habit of subverting traditional fantasy tropes, and chief among the casualties has been the idea of destiny. You look at a series like The Wheel of Time or The Sword of Truth and it’s got prophecy written all over it. Everything is preordained and we basically know where we’re going, even if we don’t quite know how we’re going to get there.

Game of Thrones, at least the TV version, turns all of that inside out. Take the Targaryn saga. The “Stallion who will Mount the World” saga came to an abrupt end before Rhaego was even born. The Doth’Raki invasion of Westeros that the show absolutely looked like it was leading up to went down in flames. And it was all because of Daenerys’ one lousy choice. If she hadn’t chosen to save the woman who later killed her son and husband (basically), and allow that woman to work magic on them both, it’s probable that story arc would still be going strong. Not in this series. As with so many lines, all that potential goes away because of one bad decision. Sure, it was a Right Thing to Do, but the unintended consequences of things in this show are just amazing.

Lockout, Day CXI: Deal Close?

2011-07-08T18:41:00.000-04:00

A few months ago, a decision like that of the Eighth Circuit upholding the legality of the NFL lockout would've produced acrimony and strife. The NFL would've scoffed at the NFLPA and the NFLPA would've railed at the NFL, each crying unfairness and each pandering to the media. But instead of that, we got an actual joint statement from both parties.

Regardless of what the text says, (we're committed to negotiating, etc.), can you imagine the parties making a joint statement like this in February? I view this as a sign that the two sides have really stopped trying to make themselves look good to the fans and gotten down to what's actually important, that is, working out a deal.

Stay tuned.

"Camelot!" "Camelot!" "Camelot!" "It's only a model." "Shh!"

2011-07-08T16:16:00.000-04:00

A plot summary of Camelot, the musical King Arthur light-opera endeavor.

King Arthur of Britain and Princess Guinevere of Wherever are due to be wed as part of a political agreement. Gwen (I can’t spell her real name offhand) arrives at Camelot and, while agonizing over her soon-to-be-ended maidenhood, accidentally runs into King Arthur, who has been lurking in the forest trying to get a glimpse of his new bride. Arthur conceals his identity, calling himself Wart (a boyhood name), and convinces a hesitant Gwen to stay in Camelot. Gwen proceeds to kiss Arthur-Wart without knowing that he is to be her husband, introducing the audience to two of her biggest character traits: she enjoys the idea of men fighting over her, and she will cheat.

Arthur is unmasked and, while explaining his identity, manages to make the story of pulling Excalibur out of the stone sound downright boring. He also lets on that he has no idea how to rule or what he is doing. Meanwhile, Merlin (Arthur’s teacher, mentor and rememberer-of-the-future) is trapped in an enchanted glade, never to be seen in the play again.

While throwing around ideas with Gwen, Arthur comes up with the idea for the Round Table, yelling “Proposition!” every time he comes up with a new idea. He also laments incessantly about 1. the necessity of being civilized, 2. Merlin’s long-ago pastime of changing him into animals, 3. everything.

The Round Table begins to attract knights and damsels, most of whom are utter featherheads. One day, Lancelot du Lac rolls up, proclaims himself to be the most pure-hearted, pure-minded, physically gifted man on Earth and offers his services to the King. Arthur takes a liking to him; everyone else finds him an insufferable prick, since he is basically a seventh-century born-again. Gwen, in particular, conspires to have his arse kicked in an upcoming tournament.

The tournament arrives, and Lancelot is pitted against three successive knights in a jousting match. The action takes place with the cast looking out at the audience, and the sound of thundering hooves played from loudspeakers behind the audience, so you get the uncomfortable impression that the joust is somehow taking place right above your head. Lancelot beats the first two random knights, then accidentally kills the third before bringing him back to life by concentrating really hard. The Court is astonished, and Gwen instantaneously swings from “I hate that sonofabitch” to “Jesus Christ but you’re attractive!” Cue the affair. Arthur emotes wildly, agonizes about the affair and then grabs Excalibur, declaring that he’s going to do something about this right the fuck now. Curtain.

(It was here that I was thinking, you all like each other... can’t you sit down at a table and work something out? At least put it on the table that you know, Arthur, and give some permission for them to do it. You can’t stop it, so you might as well find a way to live with it. This does not happen.)

Two years later, Arthur still hasn’t done anything about anything right the fuck now, and Lance and Gwen are still fooling around. Enter Mordred, Arthur’s bastard son by way of some random chick. Another play might have played this for justice on Arthur’s side, but apparently he was roofied and this was long ago, so it isn’t cheating. Mordred gives a perfunctory here-I-am-this-is-my-motivation song, then sets off to destroy Arthur because… well, because fuck you, that’s why.

Mordred traps Arthur in the woods for a night, then catches Lance and Gwen agonizing over their relationship and how it’s hurting Arthur. After a long discussion, they bravely decide to do nothing and make out. They probably would still be there if Mordred hadn’t declared “Dammit, I’m moving the plot forward on my OWN if no one else is!” and ambushed them. Gwen is captured by Round Tablers, while Lancelot escapes. (One of the Tablers is the knight Lance resuscitated, and I was hoping he would to say to Mordred “Fuck you, motherfucker! This guy brought me back from the dead! No way I’m arresting him!” and let him go. Sadly, this also doesn’t happen.)

Fast-forward again. Gwen has been tried, found guilty and sentenced to burn at the stake. Arthur agonizes about it at center stage, while Mordred screeches about how he’s won and Arthur is doomed and blabbity blah blah. You want Arthur to just rear back and punch the sneering little shit in the teeth, but he’s too busy emoting and bawling about Gwen. Lancelot appears, cuts a path through the knights (unseen by the audience) and rescues Gwen.

Fast-forward again, to France. The Round Table is broken; Arthur’s half is lined up ready to fight Lancelot’s half. Lance and Arthur and Gwen meet before the battle, and the conversation goes something like this:

“I love you both!”

“I love you too!”

“I don’t want to fight you!”

“I don’t want to fight you either. Should we call the whole thing off?”

“Hm….. NAHHHHHH”

Seriously, it’s a personal feud between the commanders, but in this version Lance and Arthur are best friends even after Gwen cheated on the latter with the former! There is literally no reason for them to be fighting outside of the grudge, and since it doesn’t apply, there IS no reason! But they fight anyway, and it’s at this point where you really start wanting the writers to just flip the familiar Arthurian script and do something massively unexpected, but they don’t. Arthur grabs a random boy, knights him and tells him to go spread tales of the Round Table, then runs off to fight his best friend. Oh fucking joy. Curtain.

Götterdämmerung!!!

2011-07-07T15:54:00.001-04:00

“This will stick with you. This will mark you. You will judge everything else by it.” –overheard conversation in the audience, after the finish of Götterdämmerung

Götterdämmerung, as performed by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, was unlike anything I have ever seen before. Movies, popular music, the other Ring operas, all other media… nothing comes close.

The music was fantastic, but since I am a musical/opera dullard compared to most of the theatergoers, the things I noticed most tended to be set design. Here are some notes I jotted down in the back of the program during the intermissions.

The production wasn’t set in a classical Valhalla world, but in a sort of updated American version of that world that reminded me of 1905 Chicago. The story is multigenerational over the four operas, so by the start of Götterdämmerung, we’ve made it to the Internet. The Norn, the daughers of earth goddess Erda who weave the rope of fate, were instead connecting cables inside the Internet. A cable breaks and they descend, in terror, to Erda.

I thought the design of the Gibichungs’ penthouse was inspired. Containing a sleek, modern bar and an expensive white couch, with pillows and barstools made of faux-leopard skin (and with a huge steel framework of windows and doors), the room did a great job of telling us about these people. They are the kind of rich people who have everything material, but nothing else.

There was not a single dull moment in Act II. I think that was my single favorite act of the entire Ring Cycle.

When Hagen calls together the vassals, about 70 black-clad men came onstage, the first chorus in the entire Ring. The scale of it was just incredible. They brought out all these vassals and another 30 or so maidens. The vassals were dressed in sort of standard goon fare—police armor, black clothing and so forth—which put an interesting spin on their vocal parts. It’s nice to see people dressed like that getting a voice for a change, and they also get a little characterization. They’re totally loyal to Gunther and zealous about it; they want nothing more than to protect him.

The fact that the double wedding/betrayal/counter-betrayal scene takes place in front of all the vassals also raises the stakes considerably. It’s not just Gunther’s personal sense of honor that’s at stake here, it’s his honor as witnessed by his entire kingdom. That gives enormous force to the accusations. There’s a lot to be lost or won here.

Hagen’s music is so damn evil! It’s just so black and brooding and dreadful, and Hagen himself is a complete villain!

And Brünnhilde… WHOA. This was Nina Stemme’s debut performance as Brünnhilde, and she absolutely nailed it. She has an incredible voice and the range to sing everything, but just as importantly, she can act as well. Brünnhilde is supposed to think that Siegfried is betraying her in the double-marriage scene, and she is pissed. And I’ve never seen a character in any medium sell anger this well. I was genuinely scared all the way back in the seats. You could see it in her face and body language and hear it in her voice. She absolutely sold the anger.

And the bitch of it is, they’re both right (in a way). Siegfried and Brünnhilde are arguing over two different topics,

Siegfried’s scene at the end of the first act, where he pretends to be Gunther to win Brünnhilde for Siegfried, was masterfully creepy. In this production, the Tarnhelm was a piece of chain mail instead of a helmet that Siegfried covered his face with, and it was incredibly creepy. He even changed his voice, sounding deeper and more menacing.

The one other thing in the production that really worked were the anachronisms. The court of the Gibichungs was a more militaristic one than the original, and the guards mostly sported automatic rifles... but some had crossbows. When Siegfried goes hunting, he takes his sword Nothung and a M-16. There were a lot of wonderful anachronisms like that in the operas that made me smile (notably in Siegfried, where Mime and Sigfried live in a trailer park and forge Nothung in a jumped-up barbecue).

Bonus: Memebase Failed Picture

2011-07-06T16:55:00.000-04:00

I was trying to make a meme on Memebase.com the other day, and for some reason it wouldn't let me post it; I tried three times and struck out. So I said fuck it, took a screencap and am posting it here.

How Not To Tell A Story

2011-07-06T15:48:00.000-04:00

So it’s Pirates of the Caribbean, movie 3, and grim times are ahead. The evil, law-abiding British East India Trading Company (which has for some reason expanded its reach worldwide) is headed for a thunderous showdown with the murdering, lawbreaking, good-guy pirate hordes.

Our Heroes spend most of the movie preparing for the showdown: first they have to go grab Jack Sparrow and the Pearl from the ditch the last movie stuck them in, then they have to all assemble at Pirate Stronghold Of The Week to convene the “Brethren Court”. After deliberation and argument up to the ceiling, they finally manage to convince the assembled Pirate Lords to elect a Pirate King, as according to the Pirate Code, and they all ride out and prepare for battle against the BEITC.

This is no small deal. There are (racist caricatures of) Pirate Lords from every (stereotyped) corner of Earth. There are battle flags being raised from all the great historical pirates of antiquity. Absolutely everything the pirates have is here on the table. And on the other side is a fleet composed of everything the enemy has, literally hundreds of warships ready to fight.

So, to summarize: The characters have spent maybe the past 70 minutes of screen time getting to this godforsaken place, convincing the pirates to all assemble into one united fleet, and getting them to ride out and meet the enemy head-on. Two enormous fleets are ready to go. A humongous battle is clearly in the cards.

And we get… the Black Pearl and the Flying Dutchman duking it out for a solid 20 minutes.

Don’t get me wrong, that fight is pretty excellent. But what about the fleets? What about, you know, the fleet we spent the last hour and change assembling?

Well, the next time we see the pirate fleet is them celebrating at the end of the battle, which they took zero part in. As for the BEITC goons, the Dutchman and the Pearl combine to sink their flagship, and then they all go home.

Just like that.

The entirety of that time spent building up the fleet meant absolutely fuck-all in terms of the plot. They could have shaved off that hour of screen time, cut out those stupid scenes with multiple Jack Sparrows for good measure, and had more space for actual decent storytelling where the fat used to be!

And the Dutchman could've retired to the Bahamas a long time earlier than it did.

One Hundred Fireworks In The Night

2011-07-05T19:33:00.000-04:00

Yesterday evening, I found myself on a US Airways jumbo jet, bound from Phoenix, Arizona to Milwaukee. For a long time, I had dreamed of flying over the country on the night of July 4th and seeing all the fireworks below. I brought binoculars and a camera with video capability. The following are the notes I scrawled in my copy of The Elegant Universe, in the margins of Chapter 4 where Brian Greene talks about quantum probabilities.

Huge, perfect circles of light that would bloom into being for a second or two and then disappear forever. Some were small, barely visible even at short distances; others were plainly visible and enormous, the size of my thumbnail in the binoculars even at hundreds (probably more like 12-75 at most) of miles' distance. Up close, they must have been hundreds of feet wide.

Sometimes, the town was totally invisible to the naked eye, noticeable only by the brief flashes of white and red brilliance. Tiny sparks and balls of light coming suddenly into being and disappearing without a trace of their passage. (I saw at least two towns that way, streetlights visible only upon examination with binoculars.)

If all the conditions were right, the town near to me and the fireworks large, I could see astonishing details. One giant ball, as big as the Moon from the Earth, turned bright red and sparkled for five or six seconds before succumbing to darkness, its remnants crackling and popping in the air like cosmic glitter.

Smaller towns usually had just one or two sources of light, but larger cities could have 4, 5 or even more. One large city had at least eight, twinkling dots that flickered on and off like fireflies. One massive city had dozens! Dozens of sources flitting in and out of existence like luminescent ghosts. Flashing and popping all over the city.

Another enormous city boasted at least forty point-sources, flickering all at once like a perpetual grand finale. As each borough or suburb or municipality sent up its own fireworks, the cumulative effect was indescribable. (It reminded me of watching meteor showers on Washington Island, random rays of light streaking across the sky, appearing and vanishing like heavenly blind-man's-bluff.) The entire city was sending up bursts of radiance, on and off throwing their messages out into the dark. I think we passed through the "finale zone" as we were going over that city, where everyone in the entire place was sending up their final celebrations at about the same time. It was a cacophony of light, silent and beautiful and full of joy.

Independence Day

2011-07-04T16:36:00.000-04:00

Today, I was not arrested, charged with a crime, threatened or beaten. I was not molested in any way. Rather, I continued to enjoy the ability to travel where I wish, to say or do whatever I want (without excessively harming others) and to live in a free society. Let's give thanks for that.

If I end up as a journalist, I will enjoy the freedom to question whoever I wish, to investigate and catalog and relay news to the public without fear of reprisal or punishment. There are a lot of countries where this is not possible, as close to home as Mexico and as far away as Afghanistan. I give my thanks for that.

Happy 4th of July, U.S.A. Let's make this country as good as it can be.

Notes from Das Rheingold, Die Walkure and Siegfried

2011-07-04T00:53:00.000-04:00

Some brief highlights from this production of Der Ring des Nibelungen, which featured a sort of postmodern American interpretation of the Ring:

Loki being a wonderfully smarmy asshole in Rheingold. He’s actually a pretty complex character, but he had some wonderful scenes where he’s taunting the gods with the last golden apple. In particular, he wanders up to Fricka (who is fearing she has aged) and tricks her into looking a mirror; she freaks out and runs away, and he sits there chuckling. But at the very end of the opera, he has this great little blurb where he says in so many words “I hate the gods. I’m ashamed to even be related to them. Perhaps I should start a tremendous fire and burn them all. I don’t know. Who knows what I may do?” and then exits. That was fabulous.

The Ride of the Valkyries, dressed as aviators, was everything I hoped it would be.

The giants Fasolt and Fafner are not only eight or nine feet tall, but they have enormous mechanical hands.

The producers go out of their way to set up the gods as more corporate CEOs than rulers outright, who try to oppress the little guy (the giants, the working men). This doesn’t always work, but it makes for some cool sets; the battle between Sigmund and Hunding takes place under a bridge, with trash all around, and Siegfried and Mime live in an abandoned trailer that’s presumably in the middle of some dump. In Siegfried, Wotan and Alberich and Mime are all dressed as bums, and the visual cue helps you understand their status and how it has changed.

Fafner is a giant robot dragon. Or more accurately, in this production he builds one and pilots it himself.

The forging scene in Siegfried and the fire scene in Die Walkure were both utterly fantastic, in their stage direction and in the way they were played/sung. And the scene where Siegfried awakens Brunhilde was beautifully done. Incidentally, we lucked out in the production we saw; Sieglinde was the understudy for her part, but was absolutely wonderful, and Brunhilde was a first-time Brunhilde. Talk about finding talent in the right places!

The conductor summed up Wotan pretty well in his pre-concert talk: he tries to do the right thing, but he can’t even play by his own rules. He cheats, lies and tries to wriggle out of his obligations whenever he has them.

Stage direction surprises 1, 2 and 3: at the end of Rheingold, the Rheinmaidens run up to the gangplank and beg Wotan to give them the ring, which isn’t scripted but worked excellently. In Die Walkure, when Brunhilde is telling Sigmund about the glories of Valhalla and its population of fallen heroes, about 12-15 soldiers march slowly past in the background. The stage is flooded with golden light and the heroes, who are all dressed in Army uniforms from various states and time periods, are carrying giant portraits of their own faces. It was incredibly effective.

Finally, Siegfried’s plot depends heavily upon a random songbird who appears out of nowhere and tells him the secrets of everything. Usually, the bird is offscreen, but in this production she came onstage and was following him around. She had some hilarious gestures (trying to take dictation before they can understand each other, waving her hands in the air when Siegfried fails at playing the flute) and also had an amazing voice. Best. Bird. Ever. (That's in any field; this was by far the most helpful avian I have ever seen in any medium.)

The Least Interesting Man In The World

2011-07-02T12:46:00.001-04:00

Awhile back, xkcd published a comic about the Least Interesting Man In The World. Whether the man in question could ever actually exist is a fascinating thing to think about; briefly, it depends on the terms of the question and on the definition of ‘interesting’.

If we accept that ‘interesting’ means ‘would draw interest from a normal, human observer by some intrinsic or displayed quality’, then there can never be a Least Interesting Man In The World.

Take the individual from the original xkcd. Let’s say that all his character flaws and uninteresting habits—his general dullness, in other words—have led to him being named the LIMIT (omitting the W to make the acronym look better). Immediately upon being named the LIMIT, he would become a curiosity in his own right (based on the conjecture that advertising anything as the extreme end of a spectrum—worst person in the world, best maple syrup in Vermont, etc—causes interest in that thing) and thus no longer be the LIMIT. And as soon as he stops being the LIMIT, he would lose the added interest of his position as the LIMIT, and instantly become the LIMIT again, and lose it, again. He is a walking paradox, and can never remain stable long enough to enjoy his title as the LIMIT.

Unlike, say, this fellow.

There are several ways to get around the paradox. We might separate intrinsic interestingness from the added interestingness of the position as LIMIT, allowing the LIMIT to exist in both states (as LIMIT and as LIMIT-plus-LIMITinterest) simultaneously. We might hypothesize an individual so massively uninteresting that he retains his title as LIMIT even despite the interest the LIMIT brings; this view involves imagining interestingness as an objective quantity that can be overridden by a greater force, in a manner analogous to gravity.

Or, and this is my favorite, we could assume that the least interesting man in the world is forced into this paradox involving the title of LIMIT, and that he would be effectively unobservable from there on. In other words, the LIMIT would be trapped in a kind of singularity of interestingness and uninterestingness. Since he would switch roles as many times a second as he could be observed, the case could be made that no one would be able to observe the effects of the paradox. The title of LIMIT--call this one LIMIT-B—would then pass to the second least interesting man in the world, who would ascend to the top spot by virtue of his predecessor’s descent into unobservability. It’s an open question as to whether the paradox would claim him as well, or whether he would simply acknowledged as being as close to the LIMIT as man can get while still remaining visible.

Alternatively, the entire issue might just vanish into a black hole.

I Am The King Of All Stupid People

2011-07-01T02:45:00.001-04:00

Many Chinese dishes use spicy red peppers to flavor their spicy foods, like kung pao chicken or szechuan beef. The peppers are there purely for flavoring purposes; you're absolutely not supposed to eat them. I didn't know this yesterday and, guess what, I am now QUITE familiar with the principle!!

You're not supposed to eat even one. Dried peppers are more potent than the fresh version (something about the venom having time to congeal and get stronger), and eating one whole will cause your face to turn bright red, your nose to run and your brain to jump out of your head and run away screaming.

However, if you are so colossally stupid as to eat one of these things, for the love of heaven don't make it two.

I learned after the fact that peppers are cumulative. Eating a second pepper will cause the ghost of the first pepper to return from beyond the grave and haunt the flaming hell out of your mouth. Apparently there exists some sort of extradimensional spiritual pepper multiplier from Hades, which will make Pepper No. 2 logarithmically worse than the first one. It's a "The Beast and his minions will rise from the Pit to make war against God" kinda thing.

So... yeah. Side effects of multiple peppers may include snotting like a pneumoniac, temporary loss of the sense or memory of the sense of taste, blushing bright red like you just got turned down on a date, tear ducts throwing their own personal Mardi Gras and a devout wish for the sweet release of death. In related news, I am the dumbest person alive. Hear my wishes, ye mighties, and grovel before my will to perform utterly stupid activities! HAAA HAHAHAHA!!!

David Tennant casts a jaundiced eye at the above paragraph.

You want to know what the worst part was? Even after all this nonsense above with the second pepper, I had this insane urge to eat the third and final pepper just to say I'd done it. I am reasonably sure that that would have made my eyeballs leak out through my ears, but I still had this idiotic urge to do it. Why do I even have that part of my brain?! Why is that there?!

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a Deadpool moment. For the love of god do not do what I have done. Also, I'm setting up my Kingdom in downtown San Francisco, from which I shall rule as Chief Moron over all other stupid folk. My brain apparently wants me to.

This is what society does for you. Two million years ago, my kind would have eaten the poison bush and been unceremoniously ejected from the gene pool.

Relationships, Time and Space, and Why Firefly Was Unique

2011-06-27T16:20:00.001-04:00

Nine years after Firefly went off the air, online groups still maintain petitions for the series to be reinstated. Nathan Fillion even said that, given $300 million from FOX, he would buy the show himself and start producing episodes again. That wouldn't work.

I’d love to see Firefly complete its planned seven-season run as much as anyone else, but if Nathan Fillion bought the franchise tomorrow and was producing episodes by this Friday, what we’d get wouldn’t be the original Firefly. It would be different in a dozen subtle ways. It would not be the same.

A piece of artwork, like Firefly, is a unique snapshot of time and space. We may assume that there was only one chance for us to get Firefly, just as there was only one chance for any piece of literature or culture. Scientific discoveries build on previous discoveries in such a manner as to seem inevitable, but there was nothing predetermined about Shakespeare’s plays. If he hadn’t written them when he did, they would not exist as we know them. They capture a moment in the writer’s life, in his culture, in the lives of the people around him and of a dozen other factors of which we know nothing.

In much the same way, the existence and details of Firefly depended on thousands of different factors. The actors were each at a specific place in their acting careers, and were directed to act in a specific way. The writer was at a point where he wrote the dialogue a specific way. The creation of the show came from an idea that Joss Whedon had, which might not have occurred at any other time. CGI had advanced enough that good-quality images could be produced for the show. The show was influenced by outside factors; for example, FOX reportedly inserted the mysterious “two by two, hands of blue” men into the show to create a conspiratorial vibe. It’s topical and timely; the idea of Westerners and the Chinese going into space together and forming a joint civilization might not have happened fifty years ago. It’s timely in a greater cultural sense; the main characters largely disdain religion, casual sex is acceptable, violence is common and profit is king.

The point of all this is, without all of these factors working in concert (many of which everyone was unaware of), Firefly would not be the Firefly we know. And if it was produced again today, many of these factors would come into play. The actors are at different places in their careers; they are physically older, they have matured, or they have gone in different directions career-wise. The writers’ style of writing has no doubt evolved. The distinctive look of the show would be difficult to reproduce. It wouldn’t be the same.

Like a piece of artwork, relationships are also unique in time and space. They happen when two (or more) people come together at a specific time in their lives, wanting specific things and being specific people. And while they last, they can be absolutely wonderful. But when they’re over, trying to recapture them can be like trying to travel back in time, trying to recapture old feelings and lost possibilities.

Sometimes, you have to let those feelings go, and trust that maybe one day when the stars cross again, the two of you can make it work again. You (singular) look back on that time for what it was and for what you (plural) had, but you can’t remake Firefly this minute. Perhaps, one day, you can make something new, but for now you have to let it go. There's nothing wrong with looking back fondly, but you shouldn't try to shape the future in the image of the past.

Yucca Mountain Is A Bad Idea (Redux)

2011-06-20T17:09:00.000-04:00

Hello, everyone. The last time I tried to write about this topic, I waxed way verbose (you would, too, if you'd written a 44-page paper on it). So I'm going to try and write, in as few words as possible, why long-term deep geological disposal of nuclear waste is a bad idea and what we should do instead.

Why Not?

1. Yucca Mountain, even if completed to specifications, can only hold a certain tonnage of nuclear waste (63,000 metric tons according to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982). The present stockpiles of nuclear waste, plus the expected rate of waste production (approximately 2,000 metric tons/year), mean that sometime in the mid-2010s we will exceed the storage capacity of Yucca Mountain. This necessitates the search for a second long-term geological repository, which means we'd have to start the whole dreary 30-year, $9 billion+ search over again.

2. Yucca Mountain is a bad place to store waste in the longest terms (planners envision the waste being stored there for up to 1,000,000 years in the future). It is riddled with cracks, more full of water than the desert around it would suggest, and is difficult to access with trucks and heavy equipment. This is a big deal, because...

3. Establishing one national repository means that the waste from 104+ separate sites around the U.S. would have to be relocated there, a task that would require hundreds of separate trips by truck (with the waste encased in specially made containers). Furthermore, since our road system is designed to connect population centers, it's likely that most (if not all) shipments would run through one or more major metropolitan areas. The casks do not leak 'casual' radiation in harmful amounts, but if an accident were to happen, it could result in massive radioactive contamination of an American city.

4. Yucca Mountain was conceived as a "fire-and-forget" facility, which we (read: humanity) can dump the waste into and then forget about forever. However, the expectation is that we can build a facility which will remain secure for one million years in the future. For comparison, one of the oldest confirmed man-made structures on Earth, the Great Pyramid at Giza, is a mere 4,571 years old. Yucca Mountain would have to not only survive, but remain absolutely sealed and not release radiation, for 218 times longer than that. It would have to outlive the lifespan (to date) of the country that created it by 4,255 times. I respectfully submit that if humanity cannot forecast tomorrow's weather with certainty, how can we hope to predict local conditions (no volcanic activity, not much erosion, etc.) a million years in the future?

5. How exactly do you tell people, a mere 10,000 years in the future, to stay away from a given place? How can you communicate with them, knowing that the language future denizens of what is now Nevada will speak will be massively different from modern languages?

In short, Yucca Mountain is not a viable place to store nuclear waste, either in the short (next 30 years) or long (10,000 years) or longest (500,000 years) terms.

So... What Do We Do Instead?

Finding another repository site is out of the question. Yucca is the best site that the U.S. has for a geological repository, in terms of its isolated location, its (predicted) geological stability and its political defenses (Senator Harry Reid being one). If Yucca is inadequate after thirty years of study, it's likely that any other site would eventually be found inadequate as well.

We need a two-part solution.

However inadequately, Yucca would at least be able to fix two real problems by consolidating the spent nuclear fuel. The Yucca plan reduces the risk of both a terrorist attack and an accidental spill or leakage by consolidating the waste in one location. I don't disagree with this, but with the dangers of moving the waste by transport all the way to Nevada, I suggest a different solution. Set up regional waste collection centers at points throughout the U.S. where there's a high concentration of nuclear plants. The waste from Georgian plants can be moved to a center in the Southeast, the waste from Wisconsin's plants goes to a Midwest center, and so on. By doing this, we can reduce (though not eradicate) the risks associated with transporting the waste.

The thing about regional centers is that, unlike Yucca, they would not have to store the waste for a ludicrous target of one million years. Seventy years would more than suffice. The centers can simply be extremely large, well-guarded, well-sealed-off warehouses; they don't have to be mountains. Above all, they would allow us to eventually retake and reuse the waste, instead of throwing it into a mountain forever.

Wait... Reuse?

The second part solves both the issue of nuclear waste and the U.S.'s dependence on freshly mined uranium. Waste reprocessing plants can refine the nuclear waste, remove the material (lots of U-238, some smaller amounts of U-235 and Pu-239) that can be reused, and sell it back to commercial plants. Furthermore, the introduction of fast breeder reactors could allow the U.S. to adopt a closed nuclear fuel cycle, where our plants run on plutonium (which works just as well) and there is no need for new fuel, as it is created by the reactors.

If I were Energy Secretary David Chu, that is what I would recommend. Create regional waste collection centers, repeal the parts of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that require the repository at Yucca Mountain to be opened, start construction of reprocessing plants (or incentives for their commercial construction) and start research into and development of fast breeder reactors, with the intention of creating a closed nuclear fuel cycle within 50 years or so.

The downside is the initial cost of closing Yucca, of building reprocessing plants and breeder reactors, is considerable. However, this will pay for itself in savings on new uranium once the closed fuel cycle is adapted, and in the removal of nuclear waste from the vicinities of dozens of American cities. Currently, the closing of Yucca has been blocked by lawsuits from Washington and several other states; however, they are motivated by a desire to prevent any eventual repository from being placed in their state (a site in Washington was a top contender after Yucca). I am positive that a commitment to regional centers and reprocessing plants would end their desire to block the closing of Yucca.

Conclusion

Yucca Mountain should be closed permanently, regional collection centers should be constructed and waste transported to them as soon as possible, and reprocessing plants and breeder reactors constructed as soon as funding can be found for them. If successful, this program will minimize the risks of transporting nuclear waste, and eventually eliminate our current stockpiles of waste entirely. It will also protect domestic nuclear power against future scarcity of uranium (current reserves are predicted to last about 100 years, and Fukushima notwithstanding, there is still something of a nuclear boom taking place worldwide), in the event of the adoption of a closed fuel cycle. In addition, it will eventually lower costs for the ratepayers who consume electricity generated by the breeder reactors, and allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to focus its energies on strengthening our nuclear fleet instead of dealing with the waste. The only drawback is the initial cost, and the only obstacle is political will.

Ex Uno Fonte, Part III: Faith in Science

2011-06-19T18:00:00.038-04:00

XKCD says, "Science doesn't ask for your faith, it just asks for your eyes". Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy exults in scientists' fact- and experiment-based approach to life. The popular image of science is of something that's based firmly in fact, that doesn't require faith to see the objective state of the world.

I say otherwise. Here's three quick areas where, to believe in science's conclusions, the ordinary person has to have faith:

Faith In That Which Is Beyond Me
I have no choice, if I want to believe in science, than to believe in a body of knowledge that I will probably never see and couldn’t understand even if I did. I take it on faith that Stephen Hawking wrote a paper somewhere sometime that says black holes exist. If you actually asked me to read it and understand his arguments, I wouldn’t be able to. Faith is required. This holds for scientists, too, in different disciplines; a marine biologist probably can't explain astrophysics, and vice versa. Be you a scientist or a lay person, you rely to some extent on the conclusions of others in understanding the universe, which means that you have to have faith in their honesty, transparency and reasoning abilities.

Faith In That Which We Have Already Discovered
There has to be faith that our universal laws will hold anywhere. Bill Anderegg, who I interviewed for a global warming note awhile back, explained it to me this way: We could argue forever over whether the data indisputably, beyond the slightest particle of doubt, show the planet to be warming up. But at some point when there’s a reasonable level of consensus, we have to be able to look at our results and say “Okay, we think this is good. Now we can extrapolate from these results and build on what we’ve found.” We have to have a certain amount of faith in what we’ve already discovered, be it universal laws or the pattern of spots on the bellies of East African toads, so we can build on that data and move onto the next thing. That’s faith, faith in our own discoveries, faith that they hold everywhere and all the time. If we didn’t believe that the luminosity of a star is proportional to the (temperature to the fourth power) times the (radius squared), every single place in the universe, we wouldn’t be able to draw any kind of conclusion from the stars. As it said in my physics textbook, we have to take it as a given that the laws of physics hold everyplace, and that, too, requires faith.

Faith In You, Me and All Of Us Together
You may have seen where I’m going with this third one based on the second one, as the second one is really a consequence of the third one, but whatever, it sounds better if I put this one last. The last thing we have to do is to believe in ourselves. That’s the biggest difference between religion and science. Religion asks us to believe in some external entity. I’m speaking from a predominantly Jewish background, and my culture is speaking from the Abrahamic tradition through me, but it doesn’t take a rabbi or a Thai monk to realize that all religions around the world believe in some higher power than humanity (with the possible exception of Animism). Whether it’s God, Jehovah, ancestral spirits, the spirit world or what, religion looks to the heavens for guidance and trusts that, by that guidance, the world will make sense.

But here’s why if I had to choose I’d go with science over religion: science asks us to believe in us. We’re supposed to believe that we—little dumb hairless apes that we are--have the capability and capacity to understand the world and the laws that make it up. We have the temerity to say that we can understand this huge, implacable, incredible, beautiful universe. And you know what science says to that? “Fuck yeah, we can.” Science tells us to believe in ourselves and in the whole human race, and in our ability to make the world make sense. And I believe the shit out of that philosophy.

In Memory of Kim Tunnicliff

2011-06-16T18:57:00.000-04:00

According to an email sent out by President Cornwall of the College of Wooster, Kim Tunnicliff was killed in a head-on collision at about 12:30 AM, Eastern time, or around eighteen hours ago. He was the director of off-campus studies at my college, and I will miss him greatly. The chair fell out from under me when I saw the email, about three hours ago. I'd like to say a few words in his memory, since I couldn't attend the on-campus gathering that took place earlier today.

I first met Kim in late January, after a semester spent in Washington D.C., when I needed to straighten out some issues with my transcript and transferring credit for my classes. When I walked into his office (slightly freaking out), without an appointment or anything like that, he immediately dropped what he was working on and gave me all the help I needed. He calmed me down, told me what I should do and whom I should speak to and what forms I should get, and showed me exactly how to get rid of my problem. He was kind, matter-of-fact and he helped me out immensely.

I would come back several times during the semester, either for some problem with one form or another, or to offer to speak at a gathering for future off-campus students he was organizing. Each time, Kim struck me as helpful, as very down-to-earth, and as a really comforting person. He had a way of making the labyrinth of paperwork and permissions that comprises off-campus study seem simple and manageable, and he made you feel good while he was doing it. I always left his office thinking more or less the same thing: "Here is a guy who genuinely wants to help me out and make my life easier. I couldn't ask for more." And even when I didn't need his immediate help, I enjoyed just sitting in his office and talking to him. He seemed like a great guy and a really approachable person, and I'm sad that I didn't get to know him better. He means a lot to me, and I'm sure that all the people he helped could say the same.

Please keep the family and friends of Kim Tunnicliff in your thoughts and prayers, as they will be in mine. I know I speak for everyone at COW when I say that he will be missed.

"Ex Uno Fonte", Part II: A Common Search For Understanding

2011-06-15T02:41:00.001-04:00

The motto of my school, the College of Wooster, is the following Latin phrase: "Scientia et religio ex uno fonte". Literally translated, it goes something like "Science and religion from one source". I've been saying since last year's History of Life class, if not before, that I know the name of the source. If you'll permit me a somewhat secularized look at religion (and if you won't, fuck you, I'm going anyway), the source is simply the human drive to understand the universe. It's not just curiosity, although our apelike brains do help us out by driving us to see what that thing means. It's not just intelligence, which gives us the ability to wonder "What's that?" and actually search for the answers. No, the source of these two disciplines started so long ago that, today, we've forgotten what it's all about. It is a combination of fear and awe.

We, humans, like to understand things. More than that: we can't not understand things. It drives us nuts. We can assume that this has been a constant desire for all of human history, right? Well, picture yourself as a pre-agricultural hunter/gatherer/all-out wanderer. Picture yourself as a Roman, or as a Knight Templar, or as a Chinese sage. The world around you is absolutely loaded with things you don't understand. Forces of nature! Lightning! What's that? Thunder! Volcanoes! What are those? The whims of rain and cloud, the beasts around you that hunt you and are hunted in turn, why one plant is safe to eat and another turns your guts inside out. Why is the world the way it is? It can't just be arbitrary, oh, no. We won't accept it. There has to be a will, a plan, a divine plan. Ah-HAH! NOW you've got it! A divine plan! Beings older and wiser than our meager human selves have created the world in this, that, the other way. They made the world the way it was because of such-and-such a reason. It may sound arbitrary, but never mind, they're gods! They're capricious and beyond our understanding! There it is. Now we understand the world.

But it's not just limited to religion! That's science, too! We--scientists, even though I'm not remotely close to one, we're the same kind of Homo sapiens sapiens so I'll just insert a 'we'--are going after the world and trying to understand it too, just in a different way! What's the difference between a universal law--to pick a now-banal example, e = mc^2--and a God that says nothing in the universe can exceed the speed of light? What's the difference between a Higgs boson and an angel that weighs down each and every particle and gives it mass? Absolutely nothing! Sure, you can test for one and believe in the other, but at heart they're still explanations for the same basic phenomena! (Well, not basic, it took tens of thousands of years for us to work out the speed of light. But never mind.)

Science and religion are humanity's two great efforts to understand the world around us. They differ only in their methods and their conclusions; the underlying spirit is the same. We want to explain what we see, understand what we feel and why we feel it. We don't see them that way because they're so often in conflict, because the conclusions they draw are so very different. But that's fine! That's brilliant! It's the best thing that could possibly happen, because it brings us closer to a true understanding of the universe! When the theories come in contact and conflict, people's beliefs change. We're forced to ask the hard questions about what it all means, how one theory fits in with the other, how--and if--they can be compatible. We're forced to keep on looking for the one true answer, the answer that will reconcile the two systems and create our final understanding of the universe.

I know that this all sounds kind of nebulous (hee hee!). I know that words like 'understanding' and 'universe' are vague and all-encompassing. They're meant to be. They describe everything that we, as a people and as a species, want to achieve. Look, in physics right now there are two great theories: general relativity, which describes gravity, and quantum physics, which describes the three other forces. Unifying those two will produce what physicists hope will be a complete understanding of the universe. The parallel between that idea and what I am saying is nontrivial (as a statistician might say). Sooner or later, science and religion will begin to work together on a grand scale to meet the ultimate goal. And you and I might just live to see it.

Thank you for reading.

If The X-Men Were Really Interested In Helping Humanity

2011-06-10T18:36:00.000-04:00

What They Could Do:

Professor X/Jean Grey/Emma Frost: Psychology, treatment of mental disorders, healing the mind

Cyclops: Boring tunnels, digging, carving trenches, all sorts of construction equipment

Beast: Solving/curing every disease ever

Wolverine: Donating cells for medical research (well, this applies to all the X-Men), allowing his healing factor to be adapted into universal cures for all diseases

The Multiple Man: ending world hunger

Iceman: unparalleled advancements in refrigeration technology, improving our ability to transport The Multiple Man's infinite food worldwide

Shadowcat/Nightcrawler: Rescuing trapped people after natural disasters

Storm: Saving countless lives by diverting/ending hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.

Tennessee's Hurt Feelings Law: Where's the First Amendment?

2011-06-09T03:38:00.000-04:00

Here's a scenario: Suppose I go to a party in Tennessee, and because I'm an ass, I'm taking pictures of drunken partygoers. While I'm there, I happen to snap a photo of Girl A making out with Boy B. I upload the image to Facebook, along with the rest of my party photos, and the next thing I know there's a police officer knocking at my door. Yes, I've just broken the newest Tennessee law: "Protection Against Embarrassment And Hurt Feelings".

Someone who "transmits or displays an image in a manner in which there is a reasonable expectation that the image will be viewed by the victim without legitimate purpose... with the malicious intent to frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress; or in a manner the defendant knows, or reasonably should know (italics mine) would frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress to a similarly situated person of reasonable sensibilities; and as a result of the communication, the person is frightened, intimidated or emotionally distressed" is a criminal.

Normally I'd put an image here, but apparently THAT COULD HURT SOMEBODY'S FEELINGS

Presumably, this is intended to combat Internet harassment. The law previously contained the language "communicates with another person", but the law has now been broadened to also include images. So if either Girl A or Boy B was in any way embarrassed by my taking pictures, I could be convicted under this law. It's set up to fight stalkers, but it also is a massive infringement upon my First Amendment right to say and do what I please. Under this law, I don't have to be trying to hurt anyone; all that has to happen is for the 'victim' to view the image. Malicious intent isn't required. It could be on this blog, on my Facebook page, in an email that I sent. It could be an off-color joke that I sent, and whoa, suddenly it caused offense.

If I send someone a link to a shock site, or invite them to view "Two Girls, One Cup"*, and they're offended, I could go to jail for a year. Hell, if I recommend 4Chan to anyone, I'm going away for life!

If I contradict you in an argument, and that causes you emotional distress, under the "communication" part of the law, that's punishable by jail as well. I'm not usually one to throw insults around, but for the Tennessee legislature, I cannot believe how stupid this is. If you want to arrest me for that, go right ahead.

Oh, yeah: I'm in Wisconsin. How would that work, exactly? The Internet has no physical location, so presumably the crime is committed where the victim is. Do you have to be physically in Tennessee to break this law?

Here's another scenario that should make your hair stand on end: A sex scandal breaks, and CNN shows viewers embarrassing pictures of a lawmaker fooling around with his colleague's wife. Under this law, the lawmaker can go after CNN for causing him emotional distress! There's no protection for journalists in the .pdf file, either; the law protects content providers ("the offense... shall not apply to an entity providing an electronic communications service to the public acting in the normal course of providing that service") but not necessarily one-way communication, like journalists -> the public.

Laws that protect us from physical harm are necessary, but laws that seek to protect our delicate feelings are just stupid. I hope this statute goes to court soon, and I hope it's overturned on the idiocy test as soon as it gets there.

*According to the full text, "'Image' includes, but is not limited to, a visual depiction, video clip or photograph of another person".

God As Father, Not As Lord

2011-06-08T16:45:00.000-04:00

The traditional view of the Torah, the Bible and the Qur’an has been to believe that they are sets of heavenly laws, handed down by God to man to show us the proper way to behave. This corresponds to the Old Testament-style God of rewards and punishments, and accords with God’s revealed word in the Qur’an. God is the Lord, and we are His subjects. It is because of this mindset that religious fundamentalists (of whatever stripe) seek to follow every command of their respective religious texts with as much narrow-minded zeal as they can muster, and to convince others to do the same.

But there are many names that we ascribe to the Judeo-Christian God. One of those names is Father. A stern Father, at times, yes; perhaps God is a former drill sergeant, who expects his offspring to snap to and salute before saying grace at the family dinner table. But a father nonetheless. If we start to think of God in this way, and take His commands as “more like guidelines than actual rules” (to quote Pirates of the Caribbean) we come up with some interesting ideas.

When a child is young, his father or her father does not tell the child everything about the adult world. How could he? The child is not ready; he is too young for certain topics. He is too young to know how babies are made, or about the smoky mysteries of drugs and alcohol. On a more social level, the child does not yet know how to act around other human beings. He is not ready. So the father does not tell his child everything, but he tells the child what not to do, to keep him safe. Do not play in the street. Don’t touch hot objects, don’t do this, that or the other action that might hurt you. He doesn’t always tell the child why it should avoid these things, only the prohibitions. Of course, the child will sometimes do these things anyway, and come away with bruises and scars. But with those injuries will come lessons. And when it is time for the child to become an adult, the father will begin to tell him—as he has been doing, by example, for years—what it means to be an adult. The child will begin to understand why the father told him not to do things, and learn to avoid them or to make them safer on his own.

"Do not touch!"

Why, for example, did God tell us to abstain from premarital sex? Someone who believes in the Lord might answer, “Who cares why? It is forbidden, and that is enough!” But someone who believes in the Father might say, “God told us not to have sex before marriage because, in the time and place when He gave that command, unwed mothers were scorned and looked down upon. Worse, in God’s view, it was bad for the community as a whole. So God warned us against premarital sex, not because it is intrinsically bad, but because it can have a bad result. But now we have condoms, we have IUDs, we have the pill and we have vasectomies. We are old enough to understand how we work, and we’ve figured out how to avoid getting pregnant. Because it is not wrong in and of itself, it is not a sin.” In other words, God isn’t concerned with some higher right or wrong. God is not Law. God wants what is best for His children, and in that particular place at that particular time, that command was what was best. Now, we’re old enough—in a species- and technological sense—to know and avert some of the risks.

Lest this note begin to sound like I’m merely defending teenage licentiousness, you can apply this sort of thinking to dozens of commands. Why shouldn’t you lie with a man as you would with a woman? God might say, “If you do not procreate, your community will die out and that will be the end of you.” This is another danger we are no longer in. Why shouldn’t we drink alcohol? God might say, “In a desert environment, can you really afford to dehydrate yourself?” Why should we go forth and preach the gospel to nonbelievers? “To spread the word of our religion,” God might say, “for the more ears you reach, the less chance you will die out.” Why did God give us all these laws anyway? “To unite your people under one set of rules and help bind your community together.”

If we assign pragmatic motivations to each individual command, if we assume that his commands are paternally intended for the good of the community, we find that many still apply-the Ten Commandments, for example-and many are no longer necessary.

I know that assigning motivations to God is the height of arrogance. But in my view, the choice is between believing that God gave His commands just because, and we should follow them just because… or that God gave His commands to protect us, and we should follow the ones we need to follow and discard the ones we no longer need. Not because something is intrinsically right or intrinsically wrong, but because it’s a good idea or a terrible idea, like adultery. God gave us brains with which to think, and He gave us maturity so that we may think critically about the world. I believe that He wanted us to decide, in time, which of His commands we should follow… just as a parent eventually allows their child to see the world for themselves, and decide for themselves what to make of it.*

*I’m a pragmatist, and this is generally how I see the world. Instead of judging, I ask “Does it work?”

I Am An Incurable Optimist

2011-06-07T17:08:00.000-04:00

I used to think of myself as a cynical, pessimistic sort, but apparently somewhere along the line I morphed into a jackassedly persistent optimist. Example: it's apparently 96 degrees in Milwaukee today, and when you step outside it feels like you're in God's kitchen and He's baking a huge thing of cookies. First thing that pops out of my mouth: "Good thing it's not humid!" Friggin' bright-siding...

Also, I saw a family of Orthodox Jews and couldn't help but feel sorry for them. Wearing a full suit in this heat is bad, but at least they get a wide-brimmed hat to keep off the sun. The kids all had their yarmulkes on, which must be like wearing a heating pad on your head when you're outdoors. Yeesh. Thank God for Reformism, or I'd be stuck there too.

I don't even wanna contemplate the hats in the back.

CLASSIFIED: New England Patriots HQ to Special Agent Josh McDaniels

2011-06-06T03:20:00.001-04:00

(Preface: Through diligent intelligence work and sheer luck, we here at Tisdel's Tirades have managed to locate a digital copy of the top-secret orders issued to Josh McDaniels before the 2009 football season, by Head Coach Bill Belichick. We must remind our readers that this document has yet to be substantiated by the parties in question, who have publically denied the existence of all evidence presented herein. As such, we advise readers to proceed with caution.)

SUBJECT: Operation Dead Horse

DATE: 1/05/2010

FROM the Office of Grand Lord Wizard Belichick

Your Final Marching Orders

***TOP SECRET!!! DESTROY AFTER READING!!!***

TO: Special Agent Josh McDaniels

I must congratulate you on the successful fulfillment of Phase I of our grand Anti-Bronco design. For many years, I have harbored a deep and lasting hatred of the Denver Broncos, and it gladdens my crusty heart to see our plot to destroy the team, and the Broncos' credibility, finally coming to fruition.

As you may recall, my faithful disciple, Phase I of our plot involved setting you up as an offensive mastermind, while at the same time ensuring (through a variety of clandestine methods) that the Broncos' offense would absolutely stink for the past few years. Through these efforts, we were finally able to depose my arch-rival, the evil and devious Mike Shanahan. But even more importantly, my fellow schemer, we ensured that the Broncos would come knocking on your door after they fired the old bat! You played your part perfectly, my dear Josh, and as I type these words, your commission as Head Coach of the hated Broncos is a certainty. (I cannot express how important it is to me, that you were able to overcome your personal repugnance for all things Bronco for the Cause. Such loyalty and devotion brings tears to my crinkled eyes.)

As soon as the offseason begins, you are ordered to commence Phase II of our grand design: dismantling the core of young, talented skill players that the Broncos have assembled over the past few years, and simultaneously creating the biggest media shitstorm since Brett Favre's unretirement.

You will arrange for the trade of their little Pro Bowl quarterback, one Jay Cutler, to some unremarkable NFC team. Create as large and as public a feud with him as you can; anything that helps erode the Broncos' credibility will help in our grand design. You will also ship their star receiver, Brandon Marshall, and their skilled tight end Tony Scheffler, out of town as soon as possible. In addition to these changes, I command you to switch Denver to a 3-4 defense, knowing full well that they have shitty personnel to run it. This will create chaos and confusion on both sides of the ball. (If you think it appropriate, you may also create a videotaping scandal similar to the one we endured here, as well as whatever other evil plots are in your power to execute. I recommend signing a bunch of over-the-hill free agents to eat up Denver's cap room.)

Having dealt a crushing blow to the integrity and reputation of the Denver franchise, you will then proceed to crush the hopes and dreams of the Denver fan base. You will enter Phase III by going undefeated through at least the first five weeks of the season. You will even defeat the Mothership, in overtime if possible, and thereby bolster both your reputation and the hopes of the Denver fans. Then you shall fuck those hopes with a hedge-trimmer. You shall bolster your record to 8-4, and in so doing, give Denver a chance to grab their first playoff spot and division title in four years... and proceed to lose, excruciatingly, every single remaining game. The horror and confusion in Colorado shall be a glorious sight!

(Picture added by TT staff)

After that, Agent McDaniels, I give you free reign. Draft whomever you feel will be the most divisive player on the board, sign lousy free agents, lose games, do whatever you can to ruin their franchise. I will be watching from afar, and if all goes well, I shall be aglow with a secret pride. Do not disappoint me, Agent McDaniels, and one day you shall find your way back to the Patriot Mothership.

In the name of all Bronco-crushing endeavors, and in the name of our Grand Design, I salute you.

May the dark side of the Force be with you.

---Grand Lord Wizard Bill Belichick

"I will do my utmost, Lord Belichick."

Timeline: My First Shorewood Run in Friggin' Forever

2011-06-04T15:20:00.001-04:00

00:00 Commence running endeavors. I feel invincible!

02:00 Oh, yeah, hills! I remember those (puff, pant)

06:08 Doctor Who theme song comes on. +10 energy boost.

09:24 "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" theme song comes on. Instead of changing it, sings along to half the words. (Gasps the rest.)

15:08 Reaches turnaround point. Takes a second to recover and stretch. Takes off shirt; blinds innocent passerby with sheer whiteness.

17:08 Entering Shorewood. Is too bushed to care. "Rods and Cones" by Blue Man Group gives strength.

26:58 Reaches Shorewood High School. Collapses on first concrete step (leaves sweat-mark).

28:00 Ambles around aimlessly, looking for a bubbler. All doors leading to bubblers are locked. Much invective shouted to the heavens.

30:02 Decide to stretch.

30:16 Ow ow OW blisters!

30:20 Cry like little girl.

30:40 Grit teeth and bear it, like He-Man!

31:38 Finish He-Man stretches. See massively muscular runner come charging up the school front lawn, on the last leg of his own run, and head for Fitness Center. Lose all pretensions to He-Man-ism.

33:00 Decide, reluctantly, to do "Six-Minute Ab" workout of death.

33:45 Sensory cortex malfunctioning. Visuals impaired. What was at first glance a tall white woman inexplicably becomes two black girls. Much confusion.

36:00 Profound hate of self and everything self stands for.

39:00 Equally profound hate, but at least NIGHTMARE IS OVER

40:15 Strech some more. Decides to walk home barefoot.

40:30 Sensory cortex mistakes fuse-box and power outlet for excited puppy. Sensory cortex also mistakes cruel, harsh world for kind, forgiving world...

40:31-41:10 Spend next 40 seconds reenacting "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" as "Jew on Flaming-Hot Blacktop of Doom"

41:11 YOWCH ow ow YIKES

50:12 Reach home.

50:15 Reach shower.

50:18 Convert to Showernitarianism as new religion. Swear to be devoted servant for life.

55:18 Massive check arrives from American Water & Power Corporation, congratulating me upon religion change.

55:19-......... Do nothing for rest of day

Noon tomorrow: "Hey, I should go running again!"

The Ancient Threat Returning: Trend Study

2011-06-04T01:14:00.000-04:00

I'm a big fantasy reader, and one of the biggest plot devices used in sci-fi and fantasy works or series is the concept of a "returning evil". I've seen it in scads of different places, and probably, so have you. Here's a generic description:

Long ago, in the Before-time, a great evil walked the Earth/roamed among the stars. This evil was eventually defeated/sealed away/stopped in some other fashion, and it stayed that way for thousands/millions of years. But now, the great evil is returning. Our ancestors were awesome; now it's just us. We have to find some way to defeat/destroy/re-seal-up the evil with what we've got right now.

This scenario crops up everywhere. It's in Lord of the Rings (Sauron), The Wheel of Time (The Dark One), Game of Thrones (TBD), Harry Potter (Voldemort), Doctor Who (several uses; mostly Daleks), Babylon 5 (The Shadows), the Abhorsen trilogy (Orannis) and various H.P. Lovecraft works (notably referring to Cthulhu), among many others.

As it turns out, since the hive-mind at TVTropes is considerably smarter and more on top of things than I am, they have a whole page about this, called "Sealed Evil in a Can", and give a bunch of other examples. So the best I can do is give my small opinion about why it works so well in these particular genres.

-It instantly creates a sense of menace. Sauron may have an army of orcs, but he doesn't really do anything (in books or movies) other than send the orcs to attack things and gaze menacingly out of the Palantir at Pippin. He's not really all that scary. But if we learn that he once nearly destroyed the world, when he had the Ring... now he's a bit frightening. Likewise the Daleks. In the new series, when we meet them, they could be just the alien bad guy of the week (albeit an astonishingly deadly one). What makes "Dalek" the best episode of Season 1 is their history, and the Doctor's instinctive dread for them. Having what sticks in my mind as a "once and future evil" gives the evil in question instant badass credentials.

-It establishes the heroes' weakness and gives the viewer a sense of risk. Usually, the people who did the defeating/sealing away of the Great Evil were much more powerful than the present day; similarly, the Evil was usually much stronger too. If we know that our modern-day heroes aren't as good as the ones back then, we're less likely to expect them to win just because they're the good guys. We know they'll be overmatched.

Holy hell, I just got trapped in TVTropes for a solid hour. Where was I going with this?

I don't know. Will edit later if it comes back.

Final Black Hole Note: This Is Absurd

2011-06-02T17:15:00.000-04:00

A couple of black hole notes ago, I was able to roughly deduce the size of the Vulcan black hole in Star Trek (2009) and take a stab at its mass. I'm decently confident in my conclusions to date, but it occurs to me that there must be some other mechanism at work when there's a great deal of red matter involved. I think the massive amounts of red matter used in the creation of the Final Black Hole somehow gave it more gravitational attraction, and perhaps more mass than it should reasonably have.

I conclude this because, as I noted last time, the Enterprise can travel faster than light, and should therefore have been able to pull away from the black hole without any trouble. In the quest to try and fit all of J.J. Abrams' nonsense into an astronomically coherent system, I'm going to see what it would take for the FBH to have the kind of gravitational attraction that it did.

At the end of the movie, before they blow up the black hole with antimatter, the Enterprise goes to full warp in order to escape from the FBH. I couldn't find an exact value in the Star Trek Wiki for how fast "maximum warp" is, in terms of kilometers per hour; it did say that Warp 1 equals light speed and that Starfleet ships could manage Warp 9 at best during this time period, but I don't know what scale they're using. Warp 9 could be 9x light speed, or it could be nine levels up on an exponential, logarathmic or just arbitrary scale. I don't know. Thus, I'm forced to try Plan B.

In the movie, the Enterprise travels from Earth to the Vulcan home world. Now, according to a canon reference in a Star Trek novelization book I happen to own, the Vulcan home planet orbits 40 Eridani A. This is a real star, located 16.45 light years from Earth. Now, here's where it gets slightly stupid: we see the Enterprise both entering and exiting warp in the movie. If we assume that the movie is taking place in real time (and there's compelling evidence to do so; Kirk's in a tearing hurry the whole time), we can know the time it takes for the Enterprise to travel that distance. In the film, that's five minutes and 17 seconds. Meanwhile, Wikipedia gives one light year as 9,460,730,472,580.8 km. That times 16.45 is 155629016273954.16 km. That divided by 317 seconds is 490,943,269,003.01 kilometers per second. Light travels at a geriatric 300,000 kilometers per second, so when the Enterprise is at warp, it is traveling at 1,636,477 times the speed of light. Which means that the gravitational pull of the black hole is 1,636,477 times the speed of light, plus more, since the Enterprise was slowly pulled in by the black hole. WHICH MEANS that as soon as the black hole was created, Kirk and Spock and everyone aboard both the Romulan ship and the Enterprise should've been pulled inside immediately (when they weren't at warp) and DIED.

In conclusion, J.J. Abrams has literally violated every single rule* of what we know about black holes. Fuck that noise.

*Multiplication of mass, abuse of the Schwartzchild radius, we can see the unseeable black hole on the screen, no red-shift in the communications from Nero's ship, evidence of an accretion disk where no matter exists to make one, more abuse of the Schwartzchild radius AND SO ON.

Why is Marvin Lewis Still the Bengals' Head Coach?

2011-05-31T14:49:00.000-04:00

I understand that Lewis, in getting his contract extension on January 4th, got a huge assist from the at-that-time-impending NFL lockout. Keeping your eight-year veteran head coach and assuring yourself some organizational stability in the face of a possibly shortened offseason must've looked much better to owner Mike Brown than hiring a new guy at the wrong time. But why have the Bengals kept a guy who's never been that successful?

Here are the records from Marvin Lewis's eight seasons as Bengals head coach, in chronological order: 8-8, 8-8, 11-5, 8-8, 7-9, 4-11-1, 10-6, 4-12. He's 0-2 in the playoffs. Total record is 60-69-1, counting playoffs.

In addition, the Bengals have been sort of a perennial joke for three reasons: their players' willingness to mouth off to the media, the team's willingness to pick up 'troubled but talented' players who've had run-ins with the law (example: Tank Johnson, Terrell Owens, Pacman Jones, Cedric Benson), and the Bengals' own arrest record. They apparently lead the NFL in arrests during the 2010 season, including 22 during Lewis's tenure.

Also, snake wrangling.

So I'm kind of wondering, why exactly do the Bengals keep Lewis around? Why have they been satisfied with two winning records in nine years? I'm speaking as a Packers fan, and we generally have high expectations for our head coaches (the '70s and '80s notwithstanding). When Ray Rhodes posted an 8-8 record in his first year, 1999, he was fired the next year. When Mike Sherman's team crashed into 4-12 after four straight years of 10+ win seasons and playoff appearances, he was fired instantly. Lewis has hung around for eight years despite everything I mentioned above. So what's the deal here?

My best guess, and I swear I'm trying not to sound like an ass here, is that the Bengals don't have the history or standards that Green Bay does. Seriously. Cincinnati has never won a Super Bowl (they went in '81 and '88, and got killed by Joe Montana both times), and they have a 285-373-2 all-time regular season record. In addition, before Lewis's squad went to the playoffs in 2005, they hadn't been to the playoffs in 15 years. My guess is that occasional division championships are better than no division championships at all, at least in Paul Brown's thinking. The arrests, Chad Ochocinco's mouthing off in the media, etc. are just part of the culture there. That's my best explanation, anyway, for keeping a coach with a pretty mediocre record around as long as they have without much success.

Bonus Black Hole Note! The Enterprise Was Never In Any Danger!

2011-05-31T01:16:00.002-04:00

At the end of Star Trek, the Enterprise is caught in the gravitational well of the black hole, seemingly inescapably so, and escapes only by ejecting what's basically a huge bomb into the black hole and riding the blast wave out (undamaged). SPOILERS.

"aaaaaaah..."

"CHOOOOOO!!!"

If warp speed is faster than lightspeed (which it is), the Enterprise should be able to escape the black hole without all the histrionics, like firing the warp core (which apparently isn’t strictly needed for the ship to go into warp) into the black hole FOR INSTANCE.

Here’s how. The Schwartzchild radius defines the area within which you would need to exceed the speed of light to escape, and so constitutes the effective boundary of a black hole (since we can’t see anything inside because light cannot escape). The Enterprise isn't within the Schwartzchild radius. We know this because nothing can escape once it's inside the event horizon (same thing, but sounds cooler) of a black hole, yet even when his ship has almost been swallowed, Nero is able to send transmissions to the Enterprise. Thus, the event horizon is the actual black border that we see on screen, and anything forward of that can still escape, and the Enterprise never crosses that line.* Therefore, the escape velocity that the Enterprise needs to attain should be less than the speed of light. Therefore, since warp speed exceeds lightspeed, the Enterprise should be fine,** and no huge goddamn bomb is necessary!****

Hooray! Now Kirk can go contract more alien STDs!

*Supplementary reasons: We (the camera) can see the Enterprise, so it hasn't passed the event horizon because the light reflected off of it can bounce back to us. Also, the accretion disk of the black hole helps define its boundary, which the Enterprise doesn't cross. What was it formed out of? I have no idea, since there was no matter around at the time other than Nero’s dead ship (which went straight in) and the Enterprise itself. Regardless, it’s there, and that provides a crude way of telling at least where the Schwartzchild radius isn’t. The disk will be outside the radius, and the Enterprise is outside the disk.

**Not to mention, since warp speed exceeds lightspeed, the Enterprise could theoretically be within the Schwartzchild radius and still be able to use its normal warp engines to escape. It's a question of how far they would be able to go into the black hole.***

***The movie ignores the "spaghettification" thing--the thing where the pull of gravity on the part of the ship closest to the black hole will be stronger than the pull of gravity on the farthest-away part, so the Enterprise will start to stretch out like a strand of spaghetti as it gets closer to the black hole--so I see no reason why I shouldn't ignore it as well. Phooey on you, spaghettification.

****One more thing: They hurled the huge bomb into the black hole, into the event horizon itself! Nothing can fucking escape the event horizon unless it has a magical warp-drive, and no matter what radiation the explosion generated, its maximum speed would still be the speed of light! Thus, it couldn't escape! Thus, that entire explosion in space is a crock of shit!*****

*****Done now, but there's another one coming. Hold onto your helmets. Also, celebratory penguins again!