Beer Before Wine, Feeling Fine

This article at Slate misses some important points.

First, beer already went through it connoisseur phase with the expansion of microbrews in the 1990s. When I lived in Fort Collins, no one would even consider having a Bud or a Miller when you could have a Fat Tire or a 90 Shilling or bring home a jug from Coopersmiths. Once that played itself out, people were left looking for the next thing, and what would you know but wine was really cheap. And good. Plus as beer drinkers got smarter, beer ads got stupider and began to insult their customers like so many sensitive Geico cavemen.

Then came the 2000s and whether you were metro or not, Bravo and TLC taught you how to dress yourself, decorate your home, and basically act like a grown-up. So why not use your newly refined sensibilities for beer on wine? Beer was for idiots, wine for adults.

So forget all that stuff about the pastoral lifestyle of Italy making wine more popular. Beer already had its moment. Now where's my Jets spit bucket?

The Postmodern Paradox

Blogger Russell Cole is in despair over the continued success of Biblical Fundamentalism and blames his postmodern world-view for his complacency:

However, under the influence of the last 6 years of consistently unsuccessful domestic and foreign policies, emanating from a regime that fancies itself as faithed-based, with a President who obviously has no concern for pending environmental turmoil, who, after all, claims that evolutionary theory has yet to acquire empirical substantiation, I am beginning to question my questioning of reality.

My response, which I posted in his comments section, is that we need to remember that Fundamentalism is religion’s panicked response to Postmodern skepticism and our ability to understand the Bible as one myth among many. Religion at its worst is monolithic and totalitarian. Science at its best is skeptical and open-minded. The important thing to keep in mind is that being tolerant of other views does not mean you have to remain passive when those views are harmful, antagonistic, or just plain wrong.

I look forward to the day when postmodernism and science realize that they share the same approach to understanding and investigating the world. They only became enemies when some post-modernists began to see monolithic and totalitarian tendencies in scientific discourse. That is to say, when a description of the way the world is, becomes a description of the way the world ought to be. When genuine science like evolutionary theory becomes a pseudo science like the "Social Darwinism". When the science that leads to our understanding of the earth's climate becomes the political football of the Global Warming debate.

I think the scientific community has actually been very responsive to the substance of the critique though they have rejected the gotcha tone. For instance Evolutionary Psychology, a science that is just begging to be mis-used, is very careful to distinguish between is and ought when it attempts to explain certain aspects of human behavior like violent behavior and gender roles. By and large scientists today resist the temptation to turn a set of scientific facts into a dogmatic set of truths.

The real problem is this word "truth". To most people it means the opposite of false, a fact that is not in error. For instance, you can say with great certainty that John is 6'2'' tall. That's true. Not even Baudrillard would dispute that statement. But if you say John's height is "manly", well now you've opened up a cultural can of worms. If you say John's height makes him inferior to others, the veracity of that statement will be based on the height-bias of your culture (one would hope that you're a scout for the NBA looking for the next great big man, and not some sort of crazy person).

Most of science deals with the former kind of truth, religion with the latter. Postmodernism, to me, is an attempt to describe the tension between these two views.

Feist - 1 2 3 4

OK, so this one's just fun:

New Order - Ceremony

As recommended by The Battles, a live video from 1984:

Evolution Explained

Who wrote this?

Take, for example, allopatric ("different homeland") speciation. You have a population of living, sexually-reproducing organisms, all belonging to the same species (i.e. able to mate with each other). You observe variations within the population. You further observe, watching across several generations, that some variations (red hair, schizophrenia) are heritable in whole or part, some (appendectomy scars) are not heritable at all.

Now you divide your population in two: Population A and Population B. You separate them geographically. (Hence "diferent homelands.") You observe that A and B have different "menus" of heritable variation (A has more redheads, B more schizophrenics). You further observe that A's and B's environments are different—A's is hot and dry, B's cool and wet.

You sit back and observe for a few thousand generations. Yep, microevolution goes on. A changes, B changes. Because they started out with different menus of heritable variations, and because environmental pressures in the two places are different, they change differently. They diverge. A thousand generations on, the two populations look and behave differently from each other. Ten thousand generations on, they look and behave way differently. Orthodox biology ("Darwinism") says that eventually they will be so different, they can no longer interbreed. Speciation will have occurred. A and B are now two species.

Under Brownbackian evolution—micro yes, macro no—this can't happen. They can't go on diverging. They can only get so different, no more. The divergence must slow down and stop. But... what stops it? What's the mechanism?

If you guessed PZ Myers, think again. It was John Derbyshire at the National Review.

What's the world coming to when John Derbyshire is the right wing's voice of reason?

Serenity Now

Chris Orr reviews Apocalypto, a movie I could not care less about and will only see some day on cable by accident. But I love his movie shout outs at the end, including:

Serenity (2005). The directorial debut of pop genius Joss Whedon ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Angel"), this big-screen adaptation of his "Firefly" series is the best space opera since the first two Star Wars movies and one of the most criminally neglected entertainments of the last decade. Had it been cursed with a gluttonous budget, a raft of "stars," and the requisite McDonalds tie-ins, it would have made a quarter-billion dollars. Instead, it made about a tenth as much--but is a much better movie for it.

Could not agree more. If Serenity is the best space opera since the first two Star Wars movies, what would Joss do with my Vader Lied scenario?

Sam Harris Tells It Like It Is

Sam Harris in a rebuttal to Chris Hedges at Truthdig:

I would like to briefly address the main claims that Hedges makes in his essay:

Real religion has nothing to do with superstition, irrational beliefs, or tribalism. God is not an anthropomorphic deity; He is just “the name we give to our belief that life has meaning.”

It should be immediately clear to all readers that Hedges is simply dodging the fact that millions (probably billions) of people practice religion in the naïve, anthropomorphic, and superstitious forms he would rather not defend. By saying that faith is really something other than the irrational belief in magic books, virgin births, the power of prayer, etc., Hedges ignores how pervasive the problem of religious irrationality is. As many readers will recognize, this is one of the sins of religious “moderation” that I discuss in “The End of Faith”—and I really could not have hoped to find a more lumbering, bellicose, and sanctimonious perpetrator of this obscurantism than Chris Hedges. According to recent polls, 53 percent of Americans think that the universe is less than 10,000 years old and 59 percent believe that Jesus will one day return to Earth wielding magic powers—and yet, religious moderates like Hedges invariably accuse me of “caricaturing” Christianity whenever I criticize these beliefs. Hedges appears to be playing a highly disingenuous game of hide-the-ball with the articles of faith, and it is a game that keeps the world safe for religious lunacy; it also prevents a truly rational approach to spirituality from emerging in our discourse.

Monotheism has been historically indispensable in laying the ground for individualism and the modern concept of human rights.

While this point is surely debatable (and probably false), even if true, it would not (even slightly) suggest that the biblical God exists. Nor would the historical usefulness of monotheism suggest that monotheism is a benign force in the 21st century. In my opening remarks in our debate, I addressed the notion that religion is (or has been) useful. Nothing that Hedges said subsequently (or wrote in his essay) indicates he understood what I was talking about.

And there you have it. First change definitions to suit your purposes and then link things together that cannot be linked logically. It's like claiming Zeus exists because the Greeks gave us democracy and then claiming that by Zeus we mean not the lighting bolt throwing bearded dude on Mount Olympus but our faith in a playful, nonsensical universe.

I wonder what Chris Hedges would say about the claims made by the Creation Museum? Is the 6000 year old universe irrational or non-rational?

Of course why even give a platform to a guy who is going to accuse Sam Harris of endorsing torture? I mean goodness knows no Christian (under Hedge's wildly idiosyncratic definition) could possibly support torture!

[Via Andrew Sullivan]

Pharyngula on Salon

PZ Myers takes Salon to task:

I thought the New York Times article was bad…but Salon has sunk to new depths of insipidity. I've been a subscriber to Salon since they first started, but this settles it for me—I won't be resubscribing. This article wasn't even expressing the usual phony "balance"—it's biased in favor of creationism all the way through.

For shame, Salon.

Agreed.

Update

Lucky for me and PZ no one important would fall for this nonsense. Right PZ?

Creation Museum at Salon

Ah, yes!

Salon does an article on the new Creation Museum and the letters section goes crazy. Good times.

The article includes lots of fun facts gathered from the exhibits:

In the Garden of Eden in Genesis, says Ham, when everything was still perfect, animals weren't predators or prey, so the museum's designer, Patrick Marsh, is able to crowd grizzly bears, wildcats, zebras, kangaroos, an iguanodon and several other dinosaurs into the same little chunk of primeval Eden. After the fall, such a scene would result in a bloody mess.

Pretty cool. It should make vegetarians glad to know that meat eating is a sin. I guess that makes Atkins the devil.

But what you really get out of it is the profound sense of panic Ham and his followers are trying to cope with through their museum:

Ham blames the notion that the Earth is quite a bit older than the Bible suggests for just about all the world's problems. Evolution, which requires large amounts of time for small changes to accumulate into larger ones, makes it far too easy for people not to believe the Bible, he says. And that loss of belief "is at the root of modern evil."

It's pretty much an admission that if science is true than the bible can't be. Which undoes all of the live and let live arguments on both sides. What Ham is saying is that to live in the real world you have to be an atheist. So he's decided to opt out and live in this fantasy land where he can choose which ever version of reality he wants. His museum is not about religion - it's about a world without religion. He's an atheist in crisis.

But really, why take the museum seriously? Is it really any different from "museums" dedicated to UFOs or Bigfoot or the Lochness Monster? Is it really that different from Ripley's Believe it or Not, or Madame Tussaud's, or the London Dungeon?

I mean no one really believes any of this stuff do they? OK sure, some people believe that stuff, but just crazy fringe people. I mean you'd never see anyone running for president who didn't understand the difference between myth and science, fantasy and reality, right?

Right?

The Illusionist

I rewatched the movie The Illusionist, having previously seen it on my flight home from Edinburgh. As anyone who's watched the monitors on a flight knows, the programming is really more of distraction than something you can really pay attention to.

The first time I saw it, I missed out on Eisenheim's backstory and so didn't immediately understand his history with the duchess. Especially the part where as a teenager he promises to help her run away and disappear. A dead giveaway.

I was also distracted enough not to see a twist coming (not just the particular twist of the movie - but a twist of any kind), and so by the end my face had that same astonished smile that Paul Giamatti's Chief Inspector wears as he realizes what's happened.

On second viewing, the movie holds up beautifully and lays out its intentions from the very start so that you can watch it at that Sixth Sense meta-level where the story still plays even though you know the secret. If I have a complaint, it's that the movie never even attempts to explain the ghosts and how he makes them move through crowds in real-time. But that's not actually important to the story.

In Dramatica terms, The Illusionist pulls off a nifty story telling trick by placing the bulk of the narrative and our attention on the Impact Character (Eisenheim) and Subjective storyline ("Don't make me arrest you"). The Overall Story is about the Crown Prince and his political machinations with the Main Character role being filled by the Chief Inspector who is in charge of keeping the population under control and the prince happy. On a personal level he is torn between his ambitions (loyalty to the prince) and his sense of right and wrong (the prince is a baaad man).

Why do I say that the Chief Inspector is the MC and not Eisenheim? Because it is through his eyes that we see Eisenheim. It is he who tells us the Illusionist's history and story and it is he who finally comes to realize what's happening at the end. When the audience is meant to be astonished by Eisenheim, we see the Inspector in the audience being astonished. As Eisenheim gets himself into deeper and deeper trouble with the Prince, it is the Chief Inspector's reactions that show us how much trouble. In true Dramatica fashion we see that through his interest in the Orange Tree illusion we get the "we two are alike" moment that sets up the MC/IC opposition.

Ultimately, it is a failure/good story. A failure because the Chief Inspector fails to solve the problem of the Illusionist for the Prince: the prince loses his life and the Chief Inspector his job. But it is good because the Chief Inspector admires the Illusionist and is able to solve his own personal issues by doing what's right instead of what's politically useful. In this way I believe the CI is a steadfast character. Someone who always intends to do the right thing but first must be compelled to start by the situation he finds himself in.

Although the Impact Character dominates the story, he is really just the engine that motivates the people around him. This allows him to be a compelling character while still preserving the mystery of his illusions.

Here's my Dramatica summary:

• Overall Story: Activity of Obtaining - The Crown Prince wants to be Emperor
• Main Character: Fixed Attitude of Innermost Desires - The Chief Inspector
  
• Impact Character: Situation of the Future - Eisenheim - Love and Magic
  
• Subjective Story: Manipulation of Changing One's Nature - The Illusionist's Rebellion aka "Don't Make Me Arrest You"
  

Heroes of the Left

Salon tries to sell the Heroes finale as a "love is the answer" left-wing response to 24's "pain is the answer" right-wing approach. But I'm not buying it.

If there's a political theme in Heroes it's about finding a way to get the average people to look beyond their personal lives to see the bigger picture. Get past their own desires and comforts. But that's not what the show was about, and having Peter receive the message of love and sacrifice in a dream sequence in the final episode didn't work for me.

It also didn't play dramatically which was why there was so much dissatisfaction from the fans. You can't switch horses in midstream and you can't go high-concept in the middle of an action sequence.

What did work in the early parts of the season 1 were relationships and the most important relationships in the first season revolved around the family. The Petrellis, the Bennets, Parkman and wife, Hiro and his father's company, Sylar and his mother, the Doctors Suresh, the fractured family of Micah, DL, and Nikki. There wasn't a single romance or boundary-crossing friendship. The characters only fell into the overall bomb plotline as they were pursuing smaller goals that related to their own family's self-interest and survival. The suspense/mystery aspect of the show was to see how these relationships played themselves out.

The heroism in Heroes is having the imagination to step outside of one's self and take on the quest to save the world. You saw that in Hiro, Peter, and occasionally Claire. That ability. more than their super powers, made them black sheep and outsiders; heroes in the vein of the uncanny X-Men. But they weren't outsiders and black sheep to society. They weren't being hunted down except in the false future (and it never was made clear what Linderman and the Company wanted with Ted and Parkman). Instead they were rebelling against their families. Stepping outside those smaller social norms set by parental and paternalistic expectations.

In other words, its a coming of age tale and an after school special. Super powers as a metaphor for puberty, teen angst, and youthful exuberance. If you want to make a social observation, it's that many of the characters were much too old for this sort of thing. Or that adolescence is extended for some folks well into their twenties and thirties. Interestingly the older characters like Parkman and HRG were always most heroic when they were rebelling against their bosses at work.

So that's what makes the show interesting to its younger audience. It's a theme it borrows from Buffy season 1: What if I had superpowers? And what would I tell my mom?

Against the Day Update

I'm on page 648.

Over the last many, many pages Kit's been in Germany doing lots of math and hanging out with the glamorous Yashmeen, who, as it turns out, has the ability to move through four-dimensional space.

Kit gets his money cut off by Vibe for keeping secrets and he gets a job with T.W.I.T. to help find the mysterious Shambhala. Along the way there's a cool bit about Gasophilia and the ability to communicate via gas-lines similar to the way an electrical signal can move through a wire. There's also a nifty discussion on the linguistic connections between the sanskrit word Akasa and the words Aether, Chaos, and Gas. Then Kit gets mistaken for a drug addict and meets a guy in an asylum who thinks he's a jelly donut ("Ich bin ein Berliner!").

On the one-hand a gloriously realized pre-Einsteinian pseudo-science, and on the other an equally anachronistic Kennedy joke.

In the final scene of this section, Kit, Yashmeen and Gunther go to a museum that turns out to be a tesseract, a four-dimensional analogy of a cube. When a mysterious voice announces that the museum is closing, they ask "Who are you?" The reply is straight out of Lost: "You know who I am." But of course, I have no idea.

We then cut to Frank who is still wandering around Mexico. There are some random meetings and the usual conversating: "...these folks down here at least still have a chance -- one that the norteamericanos lost long ago. For you-all, it's way too late anymore. You've delivered yourselves into the hands of capitalists and Christers..."

Ain't that the truth.

Burst Culture

Writer Warren Ellis on the advantages of writing for the web:

I love print. I love magazines that commit and pay for long articles and long fiction. The web rewards neither approach. It’s a packeted medium, a surf medium. Short bursts are the way to go. The web isn’t a replacement medium — it’s *another” medium. That said, if your concept of a magazine is something designed in one-page bursts, or three pages that only carry 500 words due to the mass of images, then, really, you’re not doing anything the web can’t do better, are you?

[Via Kung Fu Monkey]

The Problem with Common Sense

From the Edge:

...developmental data suggest that resistance to science will arise in children when scientific claims clash with early emerging, intuitive expectations. This resistance will persist through adulthood if the scientific claims are contested within a society, and will be especially strong if there is a non-scientific alternative that is rooted in common sense and championed by people who are taken as reliable and trustworthy. This is the current situation in the United States with regard to the central tenets of neuroscience and of evolutionary biology. These clash with intuitive beliefs about the immaterial nature of the soul and the purposeful design of humans and other animals — and, in the United States, these intuitive beliefs are particularly likely to be endorsed and transmitted by trusted religious and political authorities. Hence these are among the domains where Americans' resistance to science is the strongest.

In order to learn things we must first unlearn other things. Hence, the messages that the average person is mostly likely to reject are the ones that challenge their "common sense" and de-familiarize certain aspects of the everyday world. The average person is also more inclined to judge the message based on the messenger.

Alexandra DuPont Reviews Pirates

Alexandra is the most fascinating and readable movie reviewer of the internet era. And she's back, to review Pirates of the Caribbean 3!

Unfortunately, "World's End" is also saddled with carrying on a horrible, horrible two-film story. Taken together, the two sequels are one big bloated "Three's Company" episode with pirates -- with something like two dozen betrayals and pointless shifts in allegiance and too many new characters and mythologies that feel half-developed and half-assed.

Read the whole thing to truly appreciate her style and her persona.

Alternate Star Wars

In honor of the 30th anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars, I would like to propose my alternate version of the Star Wars universe. I call it the "Vader lied" alternative.

This idea actually comes from James Earle Jones, the voice of Darth Vader himself. In one of the "making-of" documentaries for the Star Wars saga, Jones says that on originally receiving the line "Luke, I am your father," he thought it was trick. He thought Vader was lying to young Luke in order to confuse and manipulate him. This would have highlighted the sinister nature of the dark side, and foreshadowed the possibility that Luke would be betrayed and murdered by Vader just as his father had been. Brilliant!

So let's think about how things would have changed had Jones been right:

• There would have been no need to change the title of the third movie from Revenge of the Jedi. Luke would have clearly been seeking revenge.
  
• Darth Vader would actually be evil.
  
• Luke and Leia would not have been brother and sister and therefore their kiss would not be icky.
• They would not have had to retrofit Ben's dialog from Star Wars so that it was only true from a "certain point of view".
• ROTJ could have focused more on the actual return of the Jedi and not on redeeming Anakin Skywalker.
• No Ewoks?
• No need to rebrand Star Wars as Episode IV: A New Hope (bleech!)?
  
• Opportunity to go back and repair the whole "rescue of Han Solo" set piece. Why does Jabba live on Tatooine? Why is there a song and dance number? Why does Boba Fett have to die so stupidly?
  
• There is no need for a prequel trilogy about the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker.
• But if you want to do one anyway, you would see the story of how Anakin was actually betrayed by a young hotshot called Darth Vader.
• The contentious relationship between Uncle Owen and Anakin could be better explained.
• There would have been more time to see General Kenobi fighting along side Leia's father in the Clone Wars.
• We would see that Anakin was indeed the best pilot in the galaxy (and not just an annoyingly mopey teenager).
• Padme is a much cooler character for Natalie Portman to play if she's not burdened with the whole "I love an evil Jedi" storyline.
  
• Darth Vader would not be confusingly from the same planet where the droids escape to (Tatooine).
• C-3p0 would not be confusingly from the same planet where he escaped to (Tatooine).
• C-3po would not be coincidentally from the very house and the very owners where he escaped to (The Lars Homestead -- even though he doesn't recognize Owen, and Owen doesn't recognize him).
  
• Nor would he have been the invention of the villain of the story (The Maker!?!).
  
• No Jar Jar?
• No trade disputes?
• No midi-chlorians?
  

Ultimately what the Alternate Star Wars does is clear away all of the inconsistencies and coincidences of the four movies released after The Empire Strikes Back, restores the original back story of Ben, Anakin, and Darth Vader, and returns us to the original excitement and amazement of the Star Wars I remember from my childhood.

Happy Anniversary Star Wars! You godawful screwed up masterpiece, you. Now let's watch Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back and pretend like the rest of it was all a horrible mistake.

Pirates of the Carribean 3

Not much love for the new one. I wish I could say I was interested enough to care but I'm kind of pirated out.

The first one was incredibly entertaining if for no other reason than, you didn't really expect it to be any good at all. And Johnny Depp really seemed to be pulling one over on the filmmakers with his idiosyncratic performance. But like a lot of good movies, it was a really a happy accident and not anything they should have tried to repeat, much less blow up into a big franchise. I have yet to sit through it on DVD because all the pleasures of the film are in the surprises and discoveries, and they just don't hold up to repeated viewings.

The second movie does some fun things early on, but destroys all of the good will mid way through when our heroes turn on each other (and the audience) in a stupefyingly long three way chase and duel for the eponymous chest and its mysterious contents. Not even a swooning Keira Knightly can stop the male leads and the filmmakers from sinking the entire enterprise in this overlong and ultimately pointless sequence.

From that moment on you're pretty much staring at the screen watching the images pass by without any sense of engagement or interest. It's the most passive I've felt watching a movie since Van Helsing (my pick for the worst movie of all time).

The new one looks like more of the same. I think I'll give it a miss.

All About Helvetica

The history of a font. Things I didn't know I was interested to know. Oddly I can't use Helvetica on my blog. Must be the whole Windows thing. I'm stuck with Arial.

A Message From Ben "Henry" Linus

At New York Magazine, a short interview with Michael Emerson:

Now that the finale has aired, do you have any freaking clue what’s going to happen when you start shooting again?

No, because I didn't know what the end of the episode was until I watched it. That was a secret scene with Jack and Kate — only Matthew [Fox] and Evangeline [Lilly] were given that text and it was shot in secret. I had to wait until last night to have this earth-shattering revelation: Now not only are we going to live in the present and the past, but also the future. And the little things they dropped made my hair stand on end!

It's Not Crazy If It's Religious

The New York Times gives the benefit of the doubt to a wacky new Creationist museum in Kentucky:

For the skeptic the wonder is at a strange universe shaped by elaborate arguments, strong convictions and intermittent invocations of scientific principle. For the believer, it seems, this museum provides a kind of relief: Finally the world is being shown as it really is, without the distortions of secularism and natural selection.

No, I think to the skeptic the museum is a fraud. Plain and simple. The antithesis of science and eduation, and what a museum is meant to be. To the believer, it's just a theme park ride / house of wax for Bible stories. The Times should be ashamed of itself for even giving these tin-foil alternate reality nutjobs the time of day.

Random 10

1. "Tears" by The Stone Roses

An epic baggy rewrite of "Stairway to Heaven" from the Roses' swan song. Oh, and John Squire was and is the second coming of Jimmy Page.

2. "Title and Registration" by Death Cab for Cutie

It's like a Seinfeld routine: what's up with glove compartments? Why do we call them that? We don't keep gloves in them!

3. "Your Algebra" by The Shins

Moody little interstial from before they were indie darlings.

4. "Frivolous Tonight" by XTC

A terrific Moulding number that's also a British sit-com in miniature with fearsome mothers-in-law and husbands with hairy backs.

5. "Senses Working Overtime" by XTC

Lemons and Limes, the world is football shaped, English pagan flourishes, and a celebration of life lived in full. It's their entire career in one peppy new wave tune.

6. "Everyone Knows Better" by Echobelly

A solid pop song that finds Britpop's lost genius, Sonya Madan, in a reflective, "Vauxhall and I", sort of mood.

7. "Karma Police" by Radiohead

The song that launched a thousand blips. Alienation gives way to menace and Radiohead comes into their own.

8. "The Race Is On Again" by Yo La Tengo

Makes you want to snuggle up close to the amplifiers so you can bathe in the warmth and glow of the guitars.

9. "Don't Take My Sunshine Away" by Sparklehorse

Dear Prudence. Pernice Brothers vocals. Blips. You Are My Sunshine lyrics. A really loud guitar solo. I'm not sure I get it.

10. "Oscillate Wildly" by The Smiths

One of Marr's classic instrumentals. A great tune and a gentle reminder that sometimes Morrissey needs to step aside and listen to what his bandmates are doing.

A.C. Milan 2:1 Liverpool

I watched the match yesterday in spite of the fact that I know nothing about soccer. I didn't even know that Liverpool is a traditional powerhouse. But it makes me feel like I'm participating in the larger world, such as it is, when I watch the futbol. All I can say is that first goal for Milan looked like a hand ball to me, and Liverpool should have put the tall guy in much, much earlier.

Andrew Sullivan on the Reagan of the Left

Andrew Sullivan went to see Obama in DC and was impressed. Is this an endorsement? Heh.

Look at the polls and forget ideology for a moment. What do Americans really want right now? Change. Who best offers them a chance to turn the page cleanly on an era most want to forget? It isn't Clinton, God help us. Edwards is so 2004. McCain is a throwback. Romney makes plastic look real. Rudy does offer something new for Republicans - the abortion-friendly, cross-dressing Jack Bauer. But no one captures the sheer, pent-up desire for a new start more effectively than Obama.

From the content and structure of Obama's pitch to the base, it's also clear to me that whatever illusions I had about his small-c conservatism, he's a big government liberal with - for a liberal - the most attractive persona and best-developed arguments since JFK.

I fear he could do to conservatism what Reagan did to liberalism. And just as liberals deserved a shellacking in 1980, so do "conservatives" today. In the Bush era, they have shown their own contempt for their own tradition. Who can blame Obama for exploiting the big government arguments Bush has already conceded?

Lost - "Through the Looking Glass"

Sometimes it's all about the execution.

I was completely spoiled for the finale, knew all the major plot points including the big head twister at the end, and still I was enthralled with the entire thing. From start to finish I was completely engaged and guessing and second-guessing what I thought I knew.

A lot of that has to do with how focused the story was this week. They had a lot of story-telling to do and they were very smart and efficient with the way they went about it. Even scenes that sounded stupid on paper played on the screen (Locke in despair, Hurley to rescue in the Dharma bus, Jack the pill popping loser). And scenes that sounded good were even better (Charlie in the Looking Glass, Rousseau and Alex united, Kate and Jack at the end). Best yet, I was totally fooled into thinking Sayid, Bernard, and Jin were all dead. Fell for it lock, stock and barrell. Now that's good.

In the end, it also helped me to refine some of my thoughts from yesterday. Because more than any other episode, we were reminded of what it was that the lostaways have been wanting from the beginning. Their goal was never to solve the island's mysteries. It was to go home. Pure and simple. They didn't care about hatches, or Dharma, or smoke monsters. They wanted to survive long enough to go home. And all along that goal has been at odds with the audience's desires.

Now at last we see a classic end-of-the-second-act moment. Jack has realized that he was pursuing the wrong goal all along. He has hit rock bottom because he was focused on escape when he should have been looking for the deeper meanings of the island. Now he wants to go back. Now he is one of us.

When he tells Kate about his random flights and the golden ticket, Jack really makes you believe that he is willing the plane to crash. He really wants that next disaster to sweep him back to Oz, like Dorothy stormchasing tornadoes.

Over the summer and into the fall we'll have plenty of time to wonder about whose funeral it was that moved Jack, and who it was Kate needed to get back to so urgently. We'll also wonder about the fates of the other survivors, the others, and the temple that they going to. But the most important thing that came out of the episode was Jack's realization that he, like us, wants to find the answers that only the island can provide.

Things I Believe

Sometimes it's important to keep track of things like this.

• I believe in extra-terrestrial life, but I do not believe we have found it yet (or they us)
• I believe our concept of "God" should be taken metaphorically
• I believe in evolution and the process of natural selection
• I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone
• I believe Al Qaeda destroyed the WTC with two airplanes
• I believe Pete Rose gambled on his own team
• I believe consciousness is grounded in the brain
• I believe William Shakespeare wrote all of the plays attributed to him
• I believe human beings contribute to global warming
• I believe that the ability to understand the world is what gives it meaning
• I believe torture is unethical and serves no practical purpose
• I believe in liberal democracy, personal freedom, and social responsibility
  

Joss Whedon on Global Misogyny

A must read.

He writes:

What is wrong with women?

I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.

How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence -- is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.

And then:

Now those of you who frequent this site are, in my wildly biased opinion, fairly evolved. You may hear nothing new here. You may be way ahead of me. But I can’t contain my despair, for Dua Khalil, for humanity, for the world we’re shaping. Those of you who have followed the link I set up know that it doesn’t bring you to a video of a murder. It brings you to a place of sanity, of people who have never stopped asking the question of what is wrong with this world and have set about trying to change the answer. Because it’s no longer enough to be a decent person. It’s no longer enough to shake our heads and make concerned grimaces at the news. True enlightened activism is the only thing that can save humanity from itself. I’ve always had a bent towards apocalyptic fiction, and I’m beginning to understand why. I look and I see the earth in flames. Her face was nothing but red.

Lost Prehash With Spoilers

Here's a thoughtful article in Salon on the pleasures of watching Lost. Namely that mysteries and puzzles are more fun than answers and solutions.

The real problem with Lost is that there is not an actual main character. Jack and Kate trade the role of protagonist back and forth, sometimes sharing it with Locke, but none of these characters is what you would call (in Dramatica terms) a Main Character. There isn't anyone on the island that we identify with and there isn't anyone through whose eyes we see the events unfolding. The most sympathetic character is Hurley, but again he's just a nice guy, not the main character.

For the audience, the point of the show is to solve the mystery. But there is no stand-in for us in the show; no one is actively trying to solve the mystery. In season 1 it looked like it would be Locke, as our resident Sherlock Holmes, with Boone as our Dr. Watson stand in. Locke would pursue the greater truth, and Boone would be there to ask pertinent questions.

But that never really developed. Boone was "sacrificed" to the island (not exactly what Holmes would do to Watson), and Locke went soft in the head. The rudderlessness of the show has continued ever since. Occasionally, things happen that allow us to place our hopes on Desmond or Sayid, but from one week to the next there is no consistency. The show is built around the flashbacks, which work well, but also serve to undermine our POV.

And maybe that's how they want it. The problem is that it forces the diehards to go outside the show looking for answers: The Lost Experience and Lostpedia, as well as the Bible, books referenced by the show, and the odd use of philosophers for character names. Speculation can also be part of the fun. Spinning wild scenarios in message boards to explain the clues is actually more entertaining than watching the show (the same thing happened with the Star Wars Prequels. It was more exciting speculating on the movies at Ain't It Cool News than seeing the finished products).

Speaking of speculation, here is my take on the so-called "game changer". If we do indeed flash forward, then the present action will extend to the world post-island, and the flashbacks will give us information about the island and how they escaped (this didn't work very well on "The 9" but oh well). At this point I think the writers have concluded that the pre-Island stories have been told and there isn't much left to hash out in flashbacks. Locke's backstory has been told, Sawyer's story has been resolved, we know what Kate did, we know about Jack ad nauseum, we know about Jin and Sun's marriage. It's done. To keep things moving they need an opportunity to extend the story and the only way to go is into the future.

So ultimately the game changer won't help us solve the island's mysteries, but it will provide the writer's with a convenient way to keep the show going. After tonight, they'll have 48 hours to show us why Jack wants Kate to go back to the island.

Death to Boomers (a continuing series)

Boomers couldn't stand Gen X, and now they have no patience for Gen Y. From Reason Magazine:

It's a hoot to hear modern kids described as self-indulgent by the generation that created its own culture out of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Talk about a sense of entitlement: When the baby boomers came along, they (we) got the voting age lowered for their benefit. They also demanded that the drinking age be lowered, and it was -- only to be raised once they were safely into adulthood. Narcissism? Not for nothing were boomers dubbed the "Me Generation."

The kids of today are actually better off than they were when I was in high school during the second Reagan regime. Also, if you want to talk about workplace issues, boomers are terrible leaders and motivators, bad managers and planners, horrible mentors and teachers, and completely entitled when it comes to their own perks. I'm glad they all think they're going to retire early and buy wineries and build sail boats. The sooner they are out of the workplace the better.

Portland Wins the Lottery

The Portland Trailblazers win the first pick of the NBA draft. My new favorite team, er, assuming they pick Greg Oden.

Sorry Red Wings

I never should have blogged on hockey. Never never never. I open my big mouth and what happens? The Wings lose three in a row to the impressive Ducks and are knocked out of the playoffs.

I think I owe everyone in Detroit an apology.

Good luck to the Ducks against the Sens. It should be exciting to see the crowds in Canada going nuts.

Tarantino at Cannes

This story at Salon on the showing of Death Proof at the Cannes film festival buries the lede. Apparently Harvey Weinstein hated the whole Grindhouse experiment and considering the box office who can blame him? Midway through the article we have this nifty scene:

Weinstein held his peace at that moment, but a few minutes later, when another eastern European journalist asked why none of the fake trailers from "Grindhouse" are being shown with "Death Proof," he stepped up to the mike. "We had a great time with the whole 'Grindhouse' thing," he began, in the tones of a man not having any fun at all. "Now European audiences will get to see these new movies by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, and they'll enjoy them much more [than 'Grindhouse']. You'll see Robert Rodriguez making a true Robert Rodriguez movie, you'll see Quentin making a pure-essence Quentin movie. It's a completely different experience. They will dwarf 'Grindhouse,' trust me."

I think it's pretty clear that he considers "Death Proof" to be the only worthwhile part of the movie and that's why he's emphasizing the longer cut and his auteur of trash and gab. It's his only chance to rehabilitate the project and recoup some of his losses.

The National Reviews

The other must-have of the week is Boxer by The National. Stylus gives it an A and Pitchfork drops an 8.6 and adds it to the list of Best New Music.

I'm not one of those people who really got into Alligator, but I am intrigued nevertheless.

Heroes - "How to Stop an Exploding Man"

Let's face it, the show peaked with the flash forward episode. That was the episode where all the character arcs really converged and the various storylines paid off. Perhaps they should have just stopped there. Since then they've wasted time and wasted their best characters, either leeching the show of drama, undermining the show's premise, or setting things up for season 2.

The worst part of the entire finale was the big showdown in Kirby Plaza. In a word, it was just awful: Sylar can stop bullets but he can't stop a sword. Peter can instantly borrow Niki/Jessica's super strength but he can't re-borrow Nathan's ability to fly. Sylar can control the nuclear ability but Peter can't. We saved the cheerleader so she can blubber and not shoot a gun. The whole world converges on Kirby Plaza but noone notices Sylar crawling into the suddenly convenient manhole. And poor Nathan. He desperately needed a character moment where he could sacrifice himself for the greater good, but the circumstances didn't warrant his sacrifice.

Overall, Heroes is a good show and with the upcoming Heroes origins show they'll have a fantastic opportunity to expand the Heroes universe. But I think at this point they have sacrificed the drama for comic book longevity. Moving forward nothing is going to have the impact of discovery that we saw in season 1. The twists and turns of HRG and Claire's family drama. The slow emergence of Sylar as a super-villain. The quixotic wanderings of Hiro and Ando.

Hiro is now in 17th century Japan which is both an "oh cool!" and an "oh, please". It's like the last five minutes of Evil Dead 2. It's just a goof. Completely meaningless. It has nothing to do with the premise of the show. Nothing to do with ordinary people living through the anxieties of extraordinary times. That was the post 9/11 mood that the show tapped into. The comic book stuff was just a way into the deeper story. Now it's an end in itself. Season 2 promises that Heroes will be just another blockbuster entertainment like Spider-man, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Shrek. Big, loud, fun-like without actually being fun. Ultimately hollow.

If they'd really wanted to blow us away here's how I would have ended it: Realizing that Peter is about to explode, Hiro embraces him and they teleport away from New York. Now they are both in feudal Japan and Peter's going to explode. How can he save the past and learn to control his powers before it's too late. Save the Samurai, save the world!

Monday Mundane Meh

News in brief:

• Red Wings lose at home on two unlucky goals. Backs are against the wall.
• Heroes finale tonight - will we learn how to stop an exploding man?
• "Mirrored" by Battles looks like the next must have.

Smashing Tarantulas

New guitar rock from Smashing Pumpkins. I don't hate it. But then, I gave Zwan the benefit of the doubt too.

One thing I do no for sure: nobody does that one note, halting, bending guitar whine better.

Ben Gibbard Acoustic Live

NPR has a live acoustic show of Ben Gibbard at All Songs Considered. It's worth a listen and proves a few truths:

• Gibbard has a deceptively supple voice that is often in danger of going too high and shredding itself.
• That being said, even he can't sing some of the songs on Plans. If you're a long-time Death Cab fan who couldn't quite dig the album, I think it's because he wrote the songs in the wrong key for his voice. Just listen to "Soul Meets Body" about halfway through the show.
  
• The reason the Postal Service album is one of the best albums of the 00s is that all the songs are built on strong foundations and can be played on an acoustic guitar without all the electronica (the same is true when you hear Jeff Tweedy sing songs from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by himself on a guitar).
• Gibbard sounds better with a guitar than with a piano.
  

Red Wings 3 Ducks 5

As predicted the Ducks rebounded with a vengeance. That's what I get for blogging about hockey. I inevitably hex the team I pick to win. Alas.

The Wings had some opportunities in the early going, but once Anaheim took the 4-3 lead you could tell that Detroit had no chance of mounting another comeback.

So it's all tied up with Detroit returning to home ice. It's hard to imagine that this series won't go 7 games.

Red Wings Hockey

I am rooting for the Redwings to beat the Ducks tonight and move one game closer to the Stanley Cup finals. Their style of play reminds me of the tight defensive minded games you saw before the strike upended the NHL.

However, the Ducks are at home, most likely very angry about the 5-0 loss on Tuesday, and they are tough. I just hope Holmstrom doesn't suffer like he did in game three. Yikes. (As a side note I thought it was remarkable that there were NO fights in the third quarter of that game. Wasn't that SOP in the old days when there was a blowout? Get everyone fired up for the next game? Ask yourself, What Would Claude Lemieux Do?)

In the eastern series it was good that Buffalo finally got a game, but I think the Sens will take the series. Then it will be The Entire Nation of Canada vs. Hockeytown in the finals!

Rufus Reviewed in Pitchfork

I was kind of hoping Pitchfork wouldn't review this one. A rating of 6.7 isn't the end of the world, but something tells me the kids at the fork aren't exactly down with the whole Broadway Cabaret vibe. Here's the meat of the review:

Release the Stars finds Wainwright flitting between opposite poles-- lovestruck and glib, opulent and gimmicky, overblown and undercooked-- with rumpled uncertainty. To be fair, it doesn't take much to locate the source of his wanderings; unlike most new artists, Wainwright came out of the gate with an incredibly assured aesthetic. Both his 1998 self-titled debut and his 2001 follow-up Poses were remarkably developed records-- the former establishing his way with a wending, operatic arrangement; the latter proving his songs nicely amenable to tidy flourishes of 70s AOR. Since then, whether out of boredom, excitement, or desire for the mainstream acceptance he's so frequently pined for, Wainwright's expanded his sound, tempering his natural inclination towards opulence with different song styles and textures, always with mixed results.

It's a meaningless ramble. Either they like it but don't want to admit it, or they hate it and don't want to hurt any feelings. But come on: "lovestruck and glib, opulent and gimmicky, overblown and undercooked". Aren't those the opening lines from the Pitchfork Record Review Guide of Style?

P.S. It's a great record. Do yourself a favor.

Lost - "Greatest Hits"

How can a show be both so entertaining and so completely dumb all at the same time? [Note to self -- don't act like you've never watched TV before!] Now that I'm no longer concerning myself with the overall mythology and have sworn off any and all interest in the big "game changer" the show is more fun to watch, but still. Once it was over I thought to myself, what a completely dumb sequence of events.

• Not content to just come up with a plan involving dynamite, Jack must demonstrate to everyone else his mastery over exploding trees (and Danielle let's him! Yeesh).
• Booby trapping the tents? Why not just blow up the whole beach?
• Isn't Charlie like a really bad swimmer?
  
• Had the Looking Glass been flooded, Charlie would most certainly have run out of air before he'd found the yellow button.
• Plus, based on the preview none of it works anyway. Doesn't anyone remember the last two season finales where the Others pulled the old-switcheroo at the last second.
  
• Obviously the whole raid on the beach thing is a trick. Ben knew he couldn't trust Juliet and he knows how gullible Jack is when he plays leader.

But to be fair, that was an incredibly fun episode to watch and Charlie was brilliant in every scene. He really had you choked up as he went through his five greatest moments, ending with meeting Claire on the beach. His goodbye to Hurley was nice as well. Every moment of his swim was completely believable and suspenseful: the determination, the panic when he couldn't find the moon pool, the relief when he swam up for air, the cry of joy at being alive. Awesome.

Overall a great episode, and I really need to let go of my need to make everything logical. It will probably drive everyone crazy, but next week's two hour finale is going to be huge.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update

After seeing the previews, Lost fans are declaring the spoilers for the finale to be foilers. It's hilarious. Their battle cry is SHENANIGANS!

Wilco - "Sky Blue Sky"

For a second there, I was willing to concede that Wilco kind-of sucked. I had listened to the new album a couple of times online and it wasn't doing anything for me. Blame it on the really weak Quicktime stream.

Coming out of my Bose iPod speakers, Sky Blue Sky sounds fantastic. Grand, soaring, melancholy, hopeful, soulful. This is a record that makes a virtue out of straightforwardness. Gone are the self-consciousness, the laptop bleeps and the abstract poetry, and in their place is an album of great depth and maturity. These are the songs of someone who has lived a little, and is coming to grips with what life is really about. Its about what things look like when you're no longer the wunderkind, or the poseur, or the hipster, but just another guy living a life.

If that sounds like dad rock, well so be it. Tweedy's a dad, and so am I. But more importantly, by invoking 70s rock as a template for a new kind of alt-alt-country, Wilco is going to a time when our first generation of rock stars were no longer teen idols but full fledged adults with spouses and children and divorces and grown-up problems. Think of the post-Fab Five Beatles, or post-Garfunkel Paul Simon, or post-breakup Fleetwood Mac.

Musically, Tweedy has found nice ways of sliding subtle minor notes and vocal shifts into his otherwise customary major chord song structures, and Nels Cline's guitar work is ear-catching and guitar-god-esque without being a parody of shredders past. Instead he fits the solos to the music and restores the 70s era guitar solo to its rightful place as an indispensable emotional and musical expression.

All in all: as good a record as I hoped for, and the right record from Wilco at the right time in their career.

Lost Prehash - Bitterness Fiesta with Possible Spoilers

The second half of season 3 has been surprisingly good, and as far as I'm concerned has even surpassed the once unstoppable juggernaut of Heroes. In recent weeks the show has been intriguing, surprising, thought-provoking and a pure pleasure to watch.

But now the pressure is on. And I'm afraid Lost may be setting itself up for a fall it won't be able to recover from. Remember how bad Battlestar Galactica was in its finale? This could be worse.

The problem is two-fold. The producers and the fans.

On the one hand we have the producers, Damon and Carlton, making big promises about the season finale. They are calling it a game-changer. They have given it a cheesy codename (the rattlesnake in the mailbox). They are comparing the show to Star Wars. Basically they are going out of their way to disappoint us.

Then we have the fans and the fan sites and the discussion forums trying to beat Damon and Carlton at their own game. Not content to theorize about what might happen, they are circulating spoilers and foilers trying to tell people what will happen.

If D&C think they have a season ender that will blow our minds and show us something completely unexpected, they will be disappointed by the fan reaction. Based on the unsubsidized theorizing of fan sites I've seen, there isn't much that Lost can do that hasn't been kicked around a few million times by the diehards.

• Remember when the big magnet in the hatch was being used to imprison a powerful telepath named Aaron?
• Remember when the island was a social experiment run by the Dharma initiative to see who would do things like push a button for no reason?
• Remember when the crash was staged, and everyone had been kidnapped and placed on the island for some nefarious purpose?
• Remember when the smoke monster was made of nano-bots?
  
• Remember when everyone was dead and stuck in purgatory?

Those theories at least were honest attempts to account for all the clues that had been dropped by watching the show.

But Damon and Carlton's strategy has been to add on new complications and mysteries rather than resolve old ones. How have they done this? By consistently opening up the show to more characters, more locations, more back stories, and more conflicts.

• In Season 1 we had one group of survivors, in Season 2 we had two groups of survivors.
• In Season 1 we met the Others. In Season 2 we met the Others and the Dharma Initiative. In Season 3 we met the Others, the Dharma Initiative, and the Hostiles.
• In Seasons 1 and 2 we had one island. In Season 3 we have two islands.
• In Seasons 1 and 2 we had one Flight 815, in Season 3 we have two.
• In Seasons 1 and 2 we had no contact with the outside world. Now we have Penny and the Brazilian guys in arctic, and Naomi and her ship offshore, and the Dharma submarine shuttling back and forth, and Walt and Michael sailing off, and so forth.

So instead of addressing the issues from the original premise, the show keeps getting bigger, and bigger is not an answer; it's a dodge.

This brings us to the finale. There are essentially two spoiler/foilers going around which are meant to be the big game changer:

1. We have the return of the Dharma Initiative and the reveal of the Eye station which has continued to operate underground, hidden from both the survivors and the Others who were mere pawns in some larger game. The big reveal will be that Jack was placed by them in the jungle after the crash and that he is the key to some grand unifying conspiracy.

2. We flash forward to Jack and Kate in the present day, having escaped from the island, trying to get back to right some wrong. The game changer is that it reverses the original premise. Flashbacks now refer back to the island and the goal is to get to the island rather than escape from it.

Both of these scenarios are about as exciting as watching Ben argue with an empty chair. They don't deepen the mystery or explain a larger world view. They just obfuscate it by moving our point of view and our sympathies around the board. More importantly none of this gives us any clues as to:

• How everyone survived the crash in the first place.
• Why the island has healing abilities for some and not for others.
• What the monster is.
• Why some people see hallucinations.
• What the purpose of the numbers is or was.
• Why so many people with connections were all on the same flight.
• What the purpose of the Swan station was.
• Why Desmond appears to be able to time travel and predict future events.
• Why Libby was in the asylum with Hurley and whether or not she remembered him.
• Why some of the crash survivors were taken and why they integrated into Other society so easily.
• Why the strong polar bear motif throughout season 1 if the bears were not actually hallucinations but real bears escaped from Dharma.
• Why Walt was so important.
• Why Jack is so important.
• Why everyone on the island suffers from a rotten father figure in the past.
• Why the outside world believes that 815 was found with no survivors.
• Why mothers who conceive on the island die.
• Who or what Jacob is.
• How did Yemi's plane end up on the island.
• How did the Blackrock end up on the island.
• Why couldn't Desmond sail away from the island.
• Why is there a four-toed statue on the island.
• Who are the Brazilian guys in the arctic.
• Why does Penny want to find Desmond.
  

There are some who may think my list is unfair and that we have gotten answers to some of these. All I can say is that no one in the show has ever mentioned the Valenzetti Equation. Doesn't count.

Given all that, can we really expect that any of these questions will be acknowledged much less answered in the next two weeks? More importantly, is there any reason to expect that ALL of these questions will be answered by 2010? That would be "no" and "doubtful".

D&C seem to want to emphasize a "game-changer" so that they can break away from these questions, or at least make them irrelevant to whatever new story they'll be telling us in the next three years. Either way, the end of Season 3 may mean the end of Lost as we knew it, and the beginning of something that few of us ever wanted to see. It didn't work for Alias to jump forward. It didn't work for Battlestar Galactica. The game-changer is a bad idea that does more harm than good.

Are Conservatives Living In The Land Of Bizarro Superman?

My response to the latest TNR "What's Your Problem?" called: Are liberals conspiracy theorists?

I Googled Clinton Haters

I didn't find any Maureen Dowd or Frank Rich, but I did get lots of proud self-identified Clinton Haters including Jonah Goldberg:

http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200310271140.asp

Here's the quote:

"I myself am an 'irrational Clinton hater,' diagnosed, but not treated. I hate Bill Clinton - or at least I did when he mattered."

Clearly this is Goldberg's personal issue alone (seek therapy if you must Jonah!) and not one that actually informs the larger debate about how the Democrats should or should not work with the Republicans in congress or support the Bush administration in areas where there is agreement or compromise (good luck with any of that).

Goldberg believes in a political universe of perfect symmetry in which every attitude and approach on one side must find its perfect mirror opposite on the other side. Bush did x, well Clinton did x also. It's the world of the Star Trek mirror universe and Bizarro Superman in which the other political party is just like us only evil or broken.

Unfortunately, just as in the Science/Creationism debate there is no symmetry. Science is a method, creationism is a hoax designed to undermine that method.

Bush-bashing is a direct result of the administration's actions and policies. What they say and do. Clinton was hated for who he was and what he stood for and during the 90s conservatives perpetrated one hoax after another in order to undermine his presidency and destroy him personally.

I hope next week Peter will do more to prevent Jonah from steering their conversations down these self-absorbed and self-serving dead ends.

Heroes - "Landslide"

After twenty episodes of effortless storytelling, Heroes continues to struggle to find its way toward the big finale. Perhaps the set-up was too big, and now that they have to maneuver all the characters into their spots, it's proven to be more stage management than cinema.

From one scene to the next all we get are plot contrivances and coincidences rather than the character driven stories we've grown accustomed to:

• Peter and Claire just happen to run into HRG, Parkman, and Ted in Kirby Square.
• Sylar just happens to be listening in.
• HRG's incredibly lame escape plan for Claire.
• Peter forgets to use his cloak of invisibility until after the FBI have surrounded Ted.
• The police wagon that takes Ted apparently takes hours to get to its destination, travels without guard, and on a route that allows Sylar to intercept it without witnesses.
• So basically Ted's only reason for coming to NYC was so he could have his abilities stolen twice.
• Peter and Claire decide to drive from Manhattan to Nebraska along a route that just happens to lead them straight to the crash site of the police wagon. Where in New York is that supposed to be?
• Meanwhile, Ando and Hiro find a listing for Ancient Samurai Sword Repair in the Yellow Pages!
• And Hiro's dad just happens to be there, and he has the amazing ability to give Hiro samurai powers after just one lesson!
• But Ando takes a sword so he can go fight Sylar alone?
• Meanwhile back in Kirby Coincidence square, Parkman is really lame at sneaking past the guards, but luckily he spots DL and Nikki/Jessica.
• And HRG just happens to know where everyone is located in the building (who needs the Walker System when HRG is around?)
• And HRG knows how Thompson will sneak up on Parkman, but he doesn't know that Suresh will sneak up on Parkman, or that the Walker System is a little girl.
• Nor does he seem to care.
  

It just goes on and on. One stupid thing after another. There were, however, some highlights:

• The scene between Linderman and Heidi Petrelli, where he gave her his gift returned us to the effortlessness of earlier episodes. It was a surprising intersection between characters that made perfect sense once you thought about it. Also, since we knew what was happening but Heidi did not, we got to appreciate her transformation and dawning realization of the "miracle".
• It's kind of fun to think about how massively fat and disgustingly hideous illusion girl must look with all the hints that keep being dropped between her and Micah.
  
• The high body count at least kept you on the edge of your seat: Ted, Thompson, Linderman, DL (maybe). Parkman gets knocked cold during the mexican standoff between Suresh, HRG, and the little girl. Ando seems doomed.
• George Takei as Hiro's father was just superb.

Onward to the final chapter of volume 1! Please, just be decent. No musical montages, no Dylan songs, no hugging, no resurrections. Just keep to the promises you've been making all season long: ordinary people with extraordinary abilities.

Salon Keeps It Real

Another entry in their Atoms & Eden series. This time it's up to Lewis Wolpert to remind everyone that we are a product of our biology, and if we have certain beliefs there's probably a biological explanation for them. Like for instance, our ability to understand Cause and Effect and extrapolate big theories about causation from little instances we see in everyday life (like tool-making). I apparently also need to read up on Scottish philosopher David Hume.

The letters section is highly entertaining as well. Count how many times the religious folks pretend to be a) bored by the argument and b) accuse scientists of being closed minded. Heh.

Record Reviews at the New York Times

Good stuff at the Times today.

Jon Pareles likes the new Wilco more than most:

The production is straightforward, but the song structures aren’t; that’s where Wilco’s idiosyncrasies still hide out. The tunes amble into instrumental interludes that stack riffs into steely patterns or let Wilco’s lead guitarist, Nels Cline, slice through the calm surfaces. Wilco’s new music is contemplative, stripping away past distractions, but it’s far from placid.

I'm still willing to give this one a chance, but the prospects seem slim, and more than a few diehard Wilco fans have already sworn off the new direction Tweedy's taken the band.

Meanwhile, Nate Chinen revels in the new Rufus Wainwright:

Who else but Mr. Wainwright could come up with a peppy lament for a former paramour with the title “Between My Legs”? Who else would have the British actress Sian Phillips rasp a villainous recitation on that track, over a chromatic horn part lifted from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” theme? And who else would memorialize a brief meeting with a fellow singer (Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of the Killers) by composing a waltz with lines like “Your face has the Marlon Brando Club calling”?

If the answers are obvious, the music somehow isn’t. Remarkably, Mr. Wainwright infuses “Release the Stars” with enough honest emotion to overcome the grandiosity, or at least undercut it a bit.

I've just listened to Release the Stars and it is indeed a surprising and exuberant piece of music. All of the best parts of Poses and the Want records show up in unexpected new incarnations with no filler.

Down With Wilco

The results are in and once again we have a much anticipated record fizzling out.

Pitchfork give Sky Blue Sky a miserable 5.2 and writes that the album:

nakedly exposes the dad-rock gene Wilco has always carried but courageously attempted to disguise. Never has the band sounded more passive, from the direct and domestic nature of Tweedy's lyrics, to the soft-rock-plus-solos format (already hinted at on Ghost's "At Least That's What You Said" and "Hell Is Chrome") that most of its songs adhere to. The lackluster spirit even pervades the song titles: "Shake It Off" is probably most accurate (not to mention the album's worst track), but "On and On and On" and "Please Be Patient With Me" are both strong alternatives.

Meanwhile, Stylus takes a much more leisurely attitude to the record, giving it a B- and stating:

save the fifteen bucks, because these will sound great once you’ve dropped thirty on Ticketmaster. And that’s where the real frustration of Sky Blue Sky really sinks in: Kicking Television presented Wilco Mk. II in all of its key-trilling, fretboard-smoking glory, while the songs here demand undivided attention that is rewarded less often than we’ve come to expect. And yet, just about everything on Sky Blue Sky, even soft-shoe skiffles like the title track, will likely sound better live. Typical is “Impossible Germany,” which has a triple-pronged axe coda that’s meant for open-air arena fairgrounds, but to get to that point, there’s a lazy, borderline mindless tune resting among guitar notes that flicker like brief fits of wakefulness during a daytime nap.

This is probably true considering how weak A Ghost Is Born sounded until you heard it live (as I did at Red Rocks, and later on Kicking Television). So the consensus is: skip the lp and buy your concert tickets today.

The Clientele - "God Save the Clientele"

For the first time in a long time, I leaned over and pressed play when this album finished so I could hear it all again.

It's just a beautiful record and like Feist's The Reminder, this is a follow-up which follows the template of previous works (namely 2005's Strange Geometry) while deepening and enriching the songwriting and musicianship.

There are great little textures here as well. Like on "I Hope I Know You" the vocals seem to come in on the up rather than down beat. On instrumental "The Dance of the Hours," guitars and piano chime over an insistent drum beat and the background whispers of the band.

I was concerned that "Bookshop Casanova" meant that the Clientele were trying to go for a new guitar pop sound, with Beatle guitars and Beatle lyric references ("you've got my name, look up the number"). But on God Save the Clientle, you find instead the same contemplative Simon&Garfunkely electric folk that places them somewhere in the vicinity of bands like the Kings of Convenience, the Kingsbury Manx, and early Belle & Sebastian while still maintaining their own light, gliding sense of the everyday and the bitter sweet.

What's Wrong with Not Knowing What You're Talking About?

Peter Beinart and Jonah Goldberg ham-handedly attempt to discuss "Darwinism".

My response posted in their comments section:

These guys should stick to what they know and try not to discuss difficult topics based on things they vaguely remember from their school days.

First they can't seem to distinguish between evolutionary theory, the works of Charles Darwin, and the discredited fallacies of so-called Social Darwinism. Most people who know the Creationism/Intelligent Design debate recognize "Darwinism" as a right-wing code word.

Secondly, the mostly forgotten po-mo critique of science that was alluded to was not about afro-centrism or whatever they said. It was about scientific meta-narratives and was an attempt to examine the limits of scientific knowledge. The po-mo position was skeptical about science's claims of objectivity and absolute truth. It was also troubled by how science was used to legitimize political power and justify the status quo. Right or wrong, I think this is sort of close to Goldberg's view.

Now feel free to debate the politics.

Charles Barkley at the New Republic

A fascinating interview with Charles Barkley. I can't find anything he says that I disagree with. Maybe he should run for Governor in Alabama.

One of his many excellent comments:

America is divided by economics strictly. You know, people always talk about race, and we have racial problems in this country. Of course we do. But the real issue is the rich against the poor. We've got to get poor white people and poor black people and Mexicans to realize they are all in the same boat. If you in one of those three groups and you are poor, you are going to be in a bad neighborhood, you are going to go to a bad school, and you are going to have strikes against you. You can't commit crimes in good neighborhoods. They will get your ass. Their kids go to private school, or they go to school in a good economic area. But the poor people, they are all in the same boat but they divide you based on race or stuff like that. A lot of these politicians say things like "We've got to stop all these illegal immigrants." I am like, "That is so easy to stop." They are not working for other immigrants.

I think one of the key differences between left and right is this notion that "we're all in the same boat." It's not every man for himself. And when Barkley says it, it sounds real and urgent.

In Praise of the Eagles

Have to admit I have the Greatest Hits on my iPod. New York offers 32 Reasons Why the Eagles Are the Best Band in the Universe.

Highlights:

7. The career arc of Glenn Frey, from “Chug All Night” — a song from the first Eagles album, about wanting to be “high on a pleasure wheel” — to “Smuggler’s Blues,” a nuanced critique of U.S. drug policy (seriously!) that inspired a really good Miami Vice episode.

8. The moment in “Already Gone” when Glenn tells somebody “You’ll have to eat your lunch all by yourself,” like he’s disciplining a fourth-grader.

9. The excellent pro-sloth anthem “Earlybird,” a banjo-led number about how the whole catching-the-worm thing is for suckers.

10. “Desperado” — their version, and the children’s-choir cover version by the Langley Schools Music Project — which is one of the most heartrending pieces of music ever committed to tape.

Like most great music of the past, they are held back only by the embarassments of age and nostalgia. Grey, thining hair. Paunchiness. Irrelevance. Concert audiences filled with the grey, the paunchy, and the irrelevant.

The music, on the other hand, is timeless.

Lost - "The Man Behind The Curtain"

Everything about this episode was great, with the exception of the two big super secret scenes that the powers that be and the internet refused to spoil. So whether or not you liked the episode depends on how you took those two scenes.

For me, the scene with "Jacob" was much less than I'd hoped for, and the final scene between Ben and Locke was a lot more than I was expecting.

One thing we did get out of this episode, is that Ben is completely psychotic, so regardless of what else is going on around him, he's not to be trusted, nor should we expect him to give a full accounting of what's "really" happening.

The internets are buzzing because there are images of "Jacob" in the scene in the cabin if you freeze frame. So Ben may not have been talking to an empty chair after all. Maybe he was talking to a ghost (but who's ghost? Black Rock pirate, Christian Shepard, alternate universe Locke?). Or it was just part of the hocus pocus; an illusion to help Ben sell his long con. After all, spiritualists are capable of all sorts of very convincing displays during a seance. Doesn't mean they are real.

I'm starting to think that the point of Lost is not that there is an ultimate reality that will be revealed to us by 2010, but that there are cons big and small. Sometimes you're a thief, sometimes you're a doctor, and sometime you're a wizard. Regardless, your stock and trade is in the willingness of people to believe whatever story you're telling them is absolutely true. This is the way of the world, according to the show, so long as you ignore the man behind the curtain.

The fun of the show is our willingness to believe that Lost has answers to ultimately meaningless questions like "who is Jacob?"

iPod Arbitrary 10

What can it mean? Probably nothing, but the shuffle feature seems especially random today:

1. "Camera" by R.E.M.
2. "Supersonic" by Oasis
3. "Time Stand Still" by Rush
4. "A Minor Place" by Bonnie "Prince" Billy
5. "The Next Life" by Suede
6. "Superconnected" by Broken Social Scene
7. "Octet" by Deerhunter
8. "Two Against Nature" by Steely Dan
9. "If She Wants Me" by Belle & Sebastian
10. "This Fire" by Franz Ferdinand

The Clientele reviewed in Pitchfork

I was starting to get lukewarm about God Save The Clientele (after disappointing reviews for Bright Eyes, Bjork, The Shins, Arctic Monkeys, etc., etc.,), but the fork gives them an 8.3 and Best New Music categorization. Must have.

Hitchens is reviewed in Salon (and other thoughts)

Hitchens gets the Salon treatment today, and the fur flies in the letters section.

By and large, the reviewer gives the book the "yes, but, and" treatment. As in "yes, we know that religion hasn't always lived up to its own standards, but this isn't anything new, and there isn't anything you can do about it anyway."

Yes, but, and works for all pseduo-contrarian arguments these days:

• "yes, we know that global warming is a problem, but we need to do more research, and there's nothing you can do to fix it anyway."
• "yes, we know the Iraq war is a mess, but we're there now, and we have to finish what we started regardless"

Folks in the letter pages go for the more standard rejections:

• Ad hominems (Hitchens is a drunk, a war supporter, a marxist)
• Atheist arguments are themselves arrogant, faith based, blind to their own inadequacies
• Secular states were just as bad if not worse in Nazi Germany, Stalinist USSR, and Mao's China
• Materialists just can't comprehend the mind blowingness of genuine religious experience
• There's more to life than just reason and logic

My response would be that:

• Yes, Hitchens is a jerk, but he's really scary smart
• This a rhetorical gambit, trying to establish symmetry between two sides of an argument where none exists. Religion makes unsupportable claims, Atheism is a critique.
• Atheists have rejected Nazism, Stalinism, and Maoism. If these were religious sects, Hitler would be a martyr.
• Materialists believe in the mind blowingness of life without resort to imaginary third parties.
• There is more to life. Music, literature, gardening, family, you name it.
  

My point, and I don't know if this has anything to do with Hitchen's argument (I'm waiting for his book to arrive), is that religion is not separate from my world view, it is a subset of what I would call culture and the humanities. If you read Joseph Campbell, he describes how high religion took on and elaborated on the mythic traditions of primitive societies. Similarly, art and literature in the modern period are what Campbell called Creative Mythologies, which take on the role once served by the high religions of the East and the West.

The persistence of the high religions into the 21st century is a historical anachronism that puts them out of touch with human experience as it is lived today. The sacred texts of the modern period are to be found in Shakespeare and Melville and Joyce. If you want to understand the past read mythology for its historical and cultural insights. If you want to understand the present, read Pynchon or watch the Sopranos.

Boards of Canada - "Music Has The Right To Children"

Not new, but new to me, I finally downloaded a copy of Boards of Canada's 1998 album, Music Has The Right To Children. How can you argue with a review like this:

Sometimes an album is so good and makes its case so flawlessly that it spawns a mini-genre of its own and becomes shorthand for a prescribed set of values.

That's Pitchfork's perfect 10.0 review of the 2004 reissue. I have to say, I was expecting a lot more ambient flourishes and a lot less funky drummer. There are also some Orb-like found sounds scattered throughout, but perhaps that is standard operating procedure for this genre. All in all, an excellent album on first listen.

Lost Prehash - Speculation Without Spoilers

I have high expectations for tonight's episode (which should be obvious since I'm pre-blogging). It's the episode where we learn about Ben's past and perhaps the origins of the Others. More importantly, we've been promised that we'll learn who Jacob is, and Locke will hear two words that will radically change his view of the island.

The speculation has been crazy so far. Jacob is:

• Jack
• A doll
• Richard
• The Smoke Monster
• Joop the Orangutan
• Vincent the dog
• A figment of Ben's imagination
• Locke

Anyway, you can pretty much go anywhere with this stuff. For me, the most likely answer will be one that leads to the big showdown between Jack and Locke that is supposed to happen in the finale.

Edward Hopper

Hopper is one of my favorite painters. He has a real David Lynchian narrative style that is both very cinematic and realistic as well as surreal and frightening. There's a tension in each picture that you don't notice so much as feel after you've looked at it for a while.

There's a good slideshow discussion over at Slate.

Hitchens and Sharpton Debate

Coverage of a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton on, you guessed it, religion and atheism. Also, because this is a blog at The New York Times, the comments are intelligent and insightful, which is sort of amazing in and of itself.

Anyway, Hitchens makes his case and Sharpton moves the goal posts around by refusing to engage in a debate over religious texts or religious doctrine, and opts to promote a god divorced from anything but personal experience. This is a winning strategy and everyone goes home happy.

It's interesting that Dawkins is regularly attacked for not knowing enough about Religion as it is practiced. So Hitchens does the research and is criticized for not talking about God as God. The whole debate is a house of mirrors and without the history of 20th century barbarism, they wouldn't have a finger left to waggle.

Heroes - "The Hard Part"

What do you expect after last week's amazing episode? This one was a bit of a let-down. To be fair, this is the first part of the three part finale, so they're really just trying to give us Act I. But you could really feel the show straining and groaning under the weight of its own mythology. So much to set up and tie together and connect and resolve -- and so little time. And as a result it all rang a little false.

The good:

• Suresh realizing he was meant to be the cure for whatever was wrong with his sister.
• Sylar's crisis of conscience when he realizes that he is the exploding man.
  
• Micah's foiled escape attempt.
  

The meh:

• Claire and the Petrellis. For goodness sake, just go to Paris already!
  
• The little girl as the people finder. Is this supposed to set-up some moral conflict between saving the "specials" and killing a little girl? Good luck with that HRG.
  
• Micah got dragged to NYC for what exactly?
• HRG, Parkman, and radioactive man. Worst road trip ever.

The bad:

• Sylar and his mom issues.
• Sylar and the magic killer scissors.
• Sylar and the snow globe routine.
• Hiro and his worthless battle skills.
• Hiro and Ando lurking outside the window like a really bad version of A Christmas Carol.

This is the first episode that I thought was really sub-par. I have high hopes for the finale, though I can't think of how they'll wrap up this storyline in a truly satisfying way.

Who Are You Calling Stupid?

PZ Myers with a great little essay on the hidden racism of elitist sci-fi stories. This is what my Dad calls the politics of "what's wrong with everyone else". The basic premise of pretty much every show on Fox News and Talk Radio.

On his blog, PZ decries the notion of a moronic underclass that is threatening to overpopulate and overthrow the intelligent upper class:

I detest "The Marching Morons."

[In his essay, Sci-Fi writer Ben] Bova gives an accurate summary; it's also the primary plot point of the movie Idiocracy. It's also the premise behind eugenics and behind a lot of right-wing phony elitism. It's wrong. It was a very popular story, but the reason isn't complimentary: it fed into a strain of self-serving smugness in science-fiction fandom, the idea that people who read SF are special and brilliant and superior, we are the technological geniuses and far-seeing futurists, while the mundanes leech off our vision. The eugenics movement built on the same us-vs.-them mentality, that there are superiors and inferiors, and the inferiors breed like cockroaches.

He concludes:

...no, eating brie, going to Harvard, and reading the Wall Street Journal are not indicators of ability — they are properties of class. Drinking beer, learning a trade, and reading Sports Illustrated doesn't mean you're dumber, or that there are genes driving your choices — it means you are the product of a particular environment. Yet we all practice this fallacy of judging someone's intelligence by how they dress or their entertainment preferences, and society as a whole indulges in the self-fulfilling prophecy of doling out educational opportunities on the basis of economic status.

Just an excellent take-down of the right-wing strain in many sci-fi stories and well worth reading in full. Also a timely moral stand for someone who is on the front lines of the Christianist war against science.

Listen to Wilco Now!

Wilco is streaming the new album Sky Blue Sky on their site. The much anticipated album features a return to the strong song writing of Summerteeth with the unbelievable guitar work fans have heard on recent tours. It is out on May 15.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 #3

Willow arrives in Scotland just in time to drain all the life out of our geeklove for the new comic series. She's all the worst aspects of Seasons 6&7: she's distant and weird, her powers don't make any sense, and her fight with Amy is confusing and poorly structured. The artwork in this issue does a lousy job of communicating which character is which, making things particularly difficult as Whedon writes TV-style quick cuts. All the girls look the same, and the boys are barely distinguishable from one another.

Meanwhile Buffy herself has a long tedious dream sequence that ultimately doesn't tell us much. It's Whedon doing The Sandman, but Buffy is a do-er and Morpheus was a be-er, in Dramatica speak. Nothing works. Buffy doesn't accomplish things by working them out internally, for pete's sake, she goes out and kills things. She is the Slayer! (Remember how she was supposed to be learning big secrets about the slayer's origins in the show's dream sequences? Didn't work there either).

Oh and Warren is back, still skinless, and still quite possibly the worst Buffy villain ever. This "arc" ends next month, and I'm already sort of disappointed with the way they've structured the series.

Andrew Sullivan's Emotional Response

Closing the dialog between himself and Sam Harris, Andrew Sullivan desperately tries to cram in every last one of the hundreds of god proofs, talking past Sam and the audience in the process. It's pitiful when it's not just nasty:

Convinced that the choice is solely between fundamentalism and atheism, the vast majority of believers will then be trapped perforce in the fundamentalist camp. Given the ubiquity of faith, given the absence of any civilization in human history that has been free of it, given the evolutionary and biological inclination toward faith, given the respect that a man even as rational as Einstein paid to the "veneration" of the force beyond all of us, your project is absurdly utopian. And like many utopians, you may, I fear, be making hell on earth more likely.

Are you threatening me? I'm pretty sure it's Sullivan's religion that promises both "utopia" and "hell on earth" in its Book of Revelation.

But when we reach the end, I see the problem. He has acknowledged that reason, knowledge, and intellect belong to human beings, but has excluded our capacity for emotion, hope, and love as something external and supernatural:

That self-giving, that risk of peace, that work of conciliation is the calling of our time. You hear it; and your work is an honest attempt to right what is wrong. But I do not believe that we can think ourselves into peace by reason; we can only work every day toward achieving it through love. That is what Jesus taught us before he taught us anything else. Be not afraid. Love one another. Peace be with you.

You may wonder why my faith endures. My answer is: because it is true and because, now especially, it must.

So if we can't "think ourselves into peace by reason", perhaps you should try feeling yourself into peace by your emotions. That doesn't require religion, nor does it prove god. It proves that there is a poetic, loving, dreaming dimension to being a human being that requires nothing more than being born into this world. Science doesn't discount it. It demands that we be dreamers and ask big questions so that we can use our minds to pursue big answers. Maybe Jesus was just another dreamer who had the misfortune of being mistaken for a god.