Traitor is a slightly better than average suspense thriller with a significantly better than average performance by Don Cheadle in the lead role. Sadly, however, the same cannot be said of his co-star, Guy Pierce, whose American accent isn’t too awful until it is revealed through dialog along the way that he’s supposed to be a Southerner, too. Pierce is a good actor, but we might consider going back to those halcyon days when honest-to-goodness American actors, or at least Canadian ringers, were cast in such roles. Constant Viewer knows all about the wonderfully talented Hugh Laurie in House and all that, but enough is enough.
CV suspects Traitor may slip in and out of your local cineplex before you notice it was there, as it was not produced by one of the major studios and received precious little pre-release advertising. As the contemporary crop of Middle Eastern terrorists versus U.S. intelligence agency films go, Traitor is a perfectly respectable entry. If you like such movies but you waited to see it on DVD, though, you wouldn’t miss much at all.
* * * * * * * * * *
If you waited to see Babylon A.D. on DVD you wouldn’t miss much, either. Then again, that’s equally true if you don’t bother seeing it at all. Vin Diesel turns in an acceptable Vin Diesel performance in this hyperactive but unengaging road movie. The road in question leads from Russia over the Bering Straits, across which Diesel’s character must transport a young woman (Mélanie Thierry) and her governess (Michelle Yeoh) from Mongolia to Manhattan. There are nice performances in comparatively small parts here by Charlotte Rampling and Gérard Depardieu, but the plot is so tissue thin and the directing so uneven and distracting their efforts are largely wasted. As was CV’s time.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
In Muted Defense of Gridlock
In Mr. Babka’s “Why I Don’t Want United Government,” reader Jeff Hebert makes some very interesting comments, including the following excerpt:
I certainly agree with much of Mr. Hebert’s characterization of both the Bush Administration and of John McCain. If we were discussing Obama versus a third Bush term, I'd be more inclined to agree as well with more of Mr. Hebert’s reasoning. As matters stand, however, and subject to change on a daily basis, Democrats are likely to increase their control of both the House and the Senate, so the question becomes not which candidate successfully pursuing his agenda poses the greater threat but which candidate is least likely to successfully push his agenda.
I'm no McCain fan or supporter. The man is an autocrat and, from just about every insider report I've ever heard, one of his many homes is in Cloud Cuckoo Land. The question is whether giving McCain yet another residence, this time on Pennsylvania Avenue is more likely to perpetuate or worsen Bush’s imperial presidency versus what sort and how much damage is likely to occur in an Obama Administration.
I continue to believe that what genuinely troubles the Democratic Party is not the immense and increasing power of the presidency but merely the fact that it’s not currently theirs to use. I agree with Mr. Hebert that there are worse things than socialized medicine. Perpetual war, for example, springs to mind. Furthermore, as offensive as a return of the Fairness Doctrine would be, it isn’t exactly like John McCain is a staunch defender of free speech. But, whining from progressives aside, there is absolutely nothing I know about Obama to lead me to believe he would be cautious in his use of executive power once it was given to him or, frankly, that he would not pursue a far more leftist agenda than he has so far proposed. Like McCain, he is not a man who tosses and turns late at night fretting with self-doubt.
Speaking of which, does Mr. Hebert really like to hear a candidate promise to “overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution”? Feel? Okay, so maybe Obama was speaking somewhat informally or imprecisely. But just how does he plan to go about overturning not merely executive decisions but laws as well? Let's at least hope not by fiat.
The key to winning the presidential election in the U.S. continues to lie in campaigning sufficiently close to whatever the political middle happens to be to wrest away swing state (electoral) votes from your competition. If Obama announced his intention to press for legislation requiring universal “public service” nonmilitary conscription of 18 year olds and a 50% increase in all marginal tax rates, he’d win Massachusetts just the same but he’d lose Virginia for sure and probably Ohio, too. If McCain announced his intention to reinstate the military draft and abolish the Department of Education, he’d still probably win Mississippi and Arizona but lose Virginia and Ohio. Okay, so maybe my examples can be argued, but there are dead certain red states and dead certain blue states and a slowly shifting handful of swing states where the battle will be waged.
But none of that has anything to do with how the winner governs. Politicians all lie. Maybe not all the time but whenever necessary. If McCain really gave a damn about Obama’s lack of experience he sure as hell wouldn’t have picked Palin as his running mate. If Obama really gave a rodent’s hindquarters about change he wouldn’t have picked long-term Washington insider Joe Biden. They’ll both do and say what they believe they need to do and say in order to get elected. Once elected, they’ll do what they bloody well want to do.
Unless another branch of government stops them.
I hesitate to make the next point, but sooner or later it must at least be put on the table. If it is true, and it is, that Obama’s race is a factor in the election, then it is also almost certainly true that Obama’s race would be a factor in Congress’s relationship with his presidency. I don’t know how that would play out and I am not accusing Obama of anything so crass as “playing the race card” either now or should he be elected. I do think, however, that members of Congress will have to weigh one more factor in any decision to oppose or criticize a President Obama and that is whether such criticism or opposition even hints of racial animus.
Perhaps not. Perhaps even raising the issue shows a disconcerting oversensitivity to such matters on my part. Even so, all other factors being equal, I must believe there is a far greater likelihood of a Democratically controlled Congress standing up to a white Republican president than a black Democratic president regardless of the merits of whatever issue is under consideration.
Libertarians aren’t going to get minimal government any time in the foreseeable future, so minimally damaging government is the best they can hope for. Minimally damaging government tends invariably to be government that does the least regardless of how big it already is, so maximal gridlock is the best possible outcome from a libertarian perspective.
But best possible outcomes can be nearly as far removed from ideal outcomes as worst possible outcomes. I haven’t decided to vote for or otherwise support McCain. Far from it, in fact. But I certainly can understand how other libertarians, perhaps reasoning as I have here, might decide that, contra Mr. Hebert’s comments, voting for McCain is the most proactively libertarian thing they can do this time around. Doubtlessly (well, hopefully, anyway), they’ll be holding their noses as they do so.
This much I do know, though. If monopolies and collusive oligopolies really are bad for the general public, then undivided government and political “bipartisanship” ought to be prohibited on antitrust grounds. And that would still be true even if the president and every member of Congress were self-styled “Libertarians.”
I find it very surprising that anyone seriously concerned with libertarian issues would support a Republican President this time around. The Bush Administration has had a sustained, hard push over the last eight years to make the “Unitary Executive” doctrine the de facto law of the land. It’s hard for me to imagine anything worse for our liberties than a chief executive with the powers and privileges of a monarch, and yet that’s exactly what Cheney, Bush, Yoo, and company have been working steadily towards.
John McCain has surrounded himself with people who hold the most extreme neo-conservative views in the party. He’s not just going to be four more years of Bush, he’s going to be four more years of the worst parts of Bush. If the idea of “anything’s legal if the President does it” doesn’t scare you way, way worse than universal health care (plenty of other Western countries have it and yet shockingly their nations have not imploded), expanded union power (ditto), and some changes to the way the FCC works, then I would respectfully suggest that your priorities are way out of whack.
We’ve been witness to a full frontal assault on the concept of separation of powers and the enshrinement of a monarchical executive, largely unnoticed by the vast majority of the country. When asked what he would do with his first 100 days in office, Obama said “I would call my attorney general in and review every single executive order issued by George Bush and overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution.” That’s exactly what I want to hear.
I certainly agree with much of Mr. Hebert’s characterization of both the Bush Administration and of John McCain. If we were discussing Obama versus a third Bush term, I'd be more inclined to agree as well with more of Mr. Hebert’s reasoning. As matters stand, however, and subject to change on a daily basis, Democrats are likely to increase their control of both the House and the Senate, so the question becomes not which candidate successfully pursuing his agenda poses the greater threat but which candidate is least likely to successfully push his agenda.
I'm no McCain fan or supporter. The man is an autocrat and, from just about every insider report I've ever heard, one of his many homes is in Cloud Cuckoo Land. The question is whether giving McCain yet another residence, this time on Pennsylvania Avenue is more likely to perpetuate or worsen Bush’s imperial presidency versus what sort and how much damage is likely to occur in an Obama Administration.
I continue to believe that what genuinely troubles the Democratic Party is not the immense and increasing power of the presidency but merely the fact that it’s not currently theirs to use. I agree with Mr. Hebert that there are worse things than socialized medicine. Perpetual war, for example, springs to mind. Furthermore, as offensive as a return of the Fairness Doctrine would be, it isn’t exactly like John McCain is a staunch defender of free speech. But, whining from progressives aside, there is absolutely nothing I know about Obama to lead me to believe he would be cautious in his use of executive power once it was given to him or, frankly, that he would not pursue a far more leftist agenda than he has so far proposed. Like McCain, he is not a man who tosses and turns late at night fretting with self-doubt.
Speaking of which, does Mr. Hebert really like to hear a candidate promise to “overturn those laws or executive decisions that I feel violate the constitution”? Feel? Okay, so maybe Obama was speaking somewhat informally or imprecisely. But just how does he plan to go about overturning not merely executive decisions but laws as well? Let's at least hope not by fiat.
The key to winning the presidential election in the U.S. continues to lie in campaigning sufficiently close to whatever the political middle happens to be to wrest away swing state (electoral) votes from your competition. If Obama announced his intention to press for legislation requiring universal “public service” nonmilitary conscription of 18 year olds and a 50% increase in all marginal tax rates, he’d win Massachusetts just the same but he’d lose Virginia for sure and probably Ohio, too. If McCain announced his intention to reinstate the military draft and abolish the Department of Education, he’d still probably win Mississippi and Arizona but lose Virginia and Ohio. Okay, so maybe my examples can be argued, but there are dead certain red states and dead certain blue states and a slowly shifting handful of swing states where the battle will be waged.
But none of that has anything to do with how the winner governs. Politicians all lie. Maybe not all the time but whenever necessary. If McCain really gave a damn about Obama’s lack of experience he sure as hell wouldn’t have picked Palin as his running mate. If Obama really gave a rodent’s hindquarters about change he wouldn’t have picked long-term Washington insider Joe Biden. They’ll both do and say what they believe they need to do and say in order to get elected. Once elected, they’ll do what they bloody well want to do.
Unless another branch of government stops them.
I hesitate to make the next point, but sooner or later it must at least be put on the table. If it is true, and it is, that Obama’s race is a factor in the election, then it is also almost certainly true that Obama’s race would be a factor in Congress’s relationship with his presidency. I don’t know how that would play out and I am not accusing Obama of anything so crass as “playing the race card” either now or should he be elected. I do think, however, that members of Congress will have to weigh one more factor in any decision to oppose or criticize a President Obama and that is whether such criticism or opposition even hints of racial animus.
Perhaps not. Perhaps even raising the issue shows a disconcerting oversensitivity to such matters on my part. Even so, all other factors being equal, I must believe there is a far greater likelihood of a Democratically controlled Congress standing up to a white Republican president than a black Democratic president regardless of the merits of whatever issue is under consideration.
Libertarians aren’t going to get minimal government any time in the foreseeable future, so minimally damaging government is the best they can hope for. Minimally damaging government tends invariably to be government that does the least regardless of how big it already is, so maximal gridlock is the best possible outcome from a libertarian perspective.
But best possible outcomes can be nearly as far removed from ideal outcomes as worst possible outcomes. I haven’t decided to vote for or otherwise support McCain. Far from it, in fact. But I certainly can understand how other libertarians, perhaps reasoning as I have here, might decide that, contra Mr. Hebert’s comments, voting for McCain is the most proactively libertarian thing they can do this time around. Doubtlessly (well, hopefully, anyway), they’ll be holding their noses as they do so.
This much I do know, though. If monopolies and collusive oligopolies really are bad for the general public, then undivided government and political “bipartisanship” ought to be prohibited on antitrust grounds. And that would still be true even if the president and every member of Congress were self-styled “Libertarians.”
Jitters Bugged?
Old joke:
Two Roman Catholic theologians, one a Jesuit and the other one a Dominican, are arguing about prayer and smoking. (Hey, I said it was an old joke. This was before smoking became a secular sin only slightly less heinous than child abuse.)
So, anyway, the Jesuit says there’s nothing wrong with praying and smoking at the same time, while the Dominican is equally adamant that it’s disrespectful to God and thus sinful. The argument goes on and on and finally they decide to submit the question to the Vatican, which they both do.
Months pass as, left to their own devices, months will, and finally the Jesuit and Dominican meet. As they see each other big smiles break out on both their faces. “I told you so!” the Dominican almost shouts. “What are you talking about?” the Jesuit says, “I just got word back from Rome recently that I was right.” “That’s impossible,” the Dominican says. “I just got word back from Rome telling me that I was right.” The two theologians stand there silently and bewildered.
Finally, the Jesuit smiles. “Wait a minute,” he says. “What exactly did you ask?” “I asked exactly what we were arguing about. I asked if it was a sin to smoke while you were praying.” “Ah ha!” the Jesuit exclaimed. “I thought so! That’s the problem. You see, I asked if it was a sin to pray while you were smoking!”
To borrow from Wittgenstein, while we may not constantly be bewitched by language, we are always in danger of being misled by some sort of linguistic stage magic, and this is true even though much of it is unintentional and some is even self inflicted. How we characterize something (e.g., “pro choice” or “pro life”) already inclines us to one sort of judgment versus others.
But that’s not simply to note that words have emotional connotations as well as objective denotations. Wittgenstein, again. “Can one play chess without the queen?” What question is being asked? Certainly not whether one can continue playing chess after one or both queens are captured. What then? Whether one could play a game like chess except without queens? Again, ignoring how good a game it might be, the question fairly obviously is yes. What about whether such a game still ‘really’ was chess or still ‘should’ be called chess? Is that a factual question? One that perhaps still requires more data to resolve or, as is typically true in philosophical disputes, one that calls more for a decision which, in turn, will depend on how we go about weighing this consideration versus that?
So, also, are performance enhancing drugs in athletic competitions per se unfair? Doesn’t it depend on how and why they enhance performance? Philosopher / physician Carl Elliott raises that question in a current Atlantic piece, arguing that, at the very least, what counts as performance affects out answer to that question. Is the ability to perform in public under intense pressure an integral part of the very athletic ability being judged, or should an otherwise gifted athlete’s greater sensitivity to pressure and higher state of anxiety be considered irrelevant?
Beta-blockers (a common class of anti-hypertension drugs), for example, tend to reduce the physiological effects of anxiety. Not the anxiety, itself, mind you, but only of some of its outward effects such as hand tremors. Thus, their use is banned in some competitive sports, but the validity of the rationale for their ban depends on whether we’re talking about smoking while at prayer or praying while having a smoke. Elliott:
I have no dog in this fight. (By way of Truth In Bloggistry disclosure, it happens that I take beta blockers for hypertension, but I’m not inclined to public performance anxiety and, besides, there are no performance enhancers of any sort that would make me an athlete. If instead of Dr. Bruce Banner I’d gotten the gamma rays, the Hulk would have been an overgrown but still uncoordinated doofus.) I don’t care whether either amateur or professional athletes are permitted to take beta blockers or, for that matter, any other performance enhancing drugs. My only point here is that how one answers these sorts of questions depends in large measure on how one frames the questions in the first place.
That settled, feel free to take out your prayer beads now and, oh, yeah, smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.
Two Roman Catholic theologians, one a Jesuit and the other one a Dominican, are arguing about prayer and smoking. (Hey, I said it was an old joke. This was before smoking became a secular sin only slightly less heinous than child abuse.)
So, anyway, the Jesuit says there’s nothing wrong with praying and smoking at the same time, while the Dominican is equally adamant that it’s disrespectful to God and thus sinful. The argument goes on and on and finally they decide to submit the question to the Vatican, which they both do.
Months pass as, left to their own devices, months will, and finally the Jesuit and Dominican meet. As they see each other big smiles break out on both their faces. “I told you so!” the Dominican almost shouts. “What are you talking about?” the Jesuit says, “I just got word back from Rome recently that I was right.” “That’s impossible,” the Dominican says. “I just got word back from Rome telling me that I was right.” The two theologians stand there silently and bewildered.
Finally, the Jesuit smiles. “Wait a minute,” he says. “What exactly did you ask?” “I asked exactly what we were arguing about. I asked if it was a sin to smoke while you were praying.” “Ah ha!” the Jesuit exclaimed. “I thought so! That’s the problem. You see, I asked if it was a sin to pray while you were smoking!”
To borrow from Wittgenstein, while we may not constantly be bewitched by language, we are always in danger of being misled by some sort of linguistic stage magic, and this is true even though much of it is unintentional and some is even self inflicted. How we characterize something (e.g., “pro choice” or “pro life”) already inclines us to one sort of judgment versus others.
But that’s not simply to note that words have emotional connotations as well as objective denotations. Wittgenstein, again. “Can one play chess without the queen?” What question is being asked? Certainly not whether one can continue playing chess after one or both queens are captured. What then? Whether one could play a game like chess except without queens? Again, ignoring how good a game it might be, the question fairly obviously is yes. What about whether such a game still ‘really’ was chess or still ‘should’ be called chess? Is that a factual question? One that perhaps still requires more data to resolve or, as is typically true in philosophical disputes, one that calls more for a decision which, in turn, will depend on how we go about weighing this consideration versus that?
So, also, are performance enhancing drugs in athletic competitions per se unfair? Doesn’t it depend on how and why they enhance performance? Philosopher / physician Carl Elliott raises that question in a current Atlantic piece, arguing that, at the very least, what counts as performance affects out answer to that question. Is the ability to perform in public under intense pressure an integral part of the very athletic ability being judged, or should an otherwise gifted athlete’s greater sensitivity to pressure and higher state of anxiety be considered irrelevant?
Beta-blockers (a common class of anti-hypertension drugs), for example, tend to reduce the physiological effects of anxiety. Not the anxiety, itself, mind you, but only of some of its outward effects such as hand tremors. Thus, their use is banned in some competitive sports, but the validity of the rationale for their ban depends on whether we’re talking about smoking while at prayer or praying while having a smoke. Elliott:
Beta blockers are banned in certain sports, like archery and pistol shooting, because they're seen as unfairly improving a user’s skills. But there is another way to see beta blockers—not as improving someone’s skills, but as preventing the effects of anxiety from interfering with their skills. Taking a beta blocker, in other words, won’t turn you into a better violinist, but it will prevent your anxiety from interfering with your public performance. In a music competition, then, a beta blocker can arguably help the best player win..... The question is whether the ability to perform the activity in public is integral to the activity itself.
I have no dog in this fight. (By way of Truth In Bloggistry disclosure, it happens that I take beta blockers for hypertension, but I’m not inclined to public performance anxiety and, besides, there are no performance enhancers of any sort that would make me an athlete. If instead of Dr. Bruce Banner I’d gotten the gamma rays, the Hulk would have been an overgrown but still uncoordinated doofus.) I don’t care whether either amateur or professional athletes are permitted to take beta blockers or, for that matter, any other performance enhancing drugs. My only point here is that how one answers these sorts of questions depends in large measure on how one frames the questions in the first place.
That settled, feel free to take out your prayer beads now and, oh, yeah, smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.
Friday, August 29, 2008
♫ Who are those (not so) tall, (not so) dark strangers there? ♫
Okay, so it isn’t quite official yet, but major news outlets are reporting that McCain has picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate.
I admit, between having an African American presidential candidate and a female vice-presidential candidate who isn’t the laughably inept Geraldine Ferarro, this race suddenly looks more interesting than the average TweedleDeemocrat versus RepubliDumbican contest. (In as much fairness as I'm ever likely to grant Ferarro, if Walter Mondale had picked the Pope as his running mate in 1984, he probably wouldn't have carried the Vatican.) Geez, who’d a thunk the Libertarian Party ticket represented the only traditional offering of two middle-aged white guys?
Palin has next to no experience, making even Obama look like a senior statesman by comparison, but both Carter and Ford proved decades ago and George W has since confirmed that there’s no such thing as minimum required qualifications, the Constitution aside, for serving as president.
Meanwhile, I was amused that some accounts claim Palin is also a self-described “maverick.” I hope James Garner is getting royalties for this.
I admit, between having an African American presidential candidate and a female vice-presidential candidate who isn’t the laughably inept Geraldine Ferarro, this race suddenly looks more interesting than the average TweedleDeemocrat versus RepubliDumbican contest. (In as much fairness as I'm ever likely to grant Ferarro, if Walter Mondale had picked the Pope as his running mate in 1984, he probably wouldn't have carried the Vatican.) Geez, who’d a thunk the Libertarian Party ticket represented the only traditional offering of two middle-aged white guys?
Palin has next to no experience, making even Obama look like a senior statesman by comparison, but both Carter and Ford proved decades ago and George W has since confirmed that there’s no such thing as minimum required qualifications, the Constitution aside, for serving as president.
Meanwhile, I was amused that some accounts claim Palin is also a self-described “maverick.” I hope James Garner is getting royalties for this.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Just Wonderin'
Mind you, I don't pay any credence to the rumors over presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, presumptive president, presumptive messiah and just plain presumptive Barack Obama's citizenship qualifications, but if by any stretch of the imagination it turned out after he won that he wasn't constitutionally a natural born citizen, shouldn't that mean the Republicans can run this guy in 2012?
On With The Show!
Wait a minute! You mean I missed the Olympics? (Who won the prenatal gymnastics medal?) Dayum! And here I was so much looking forward to watching people of every gender, race, creed, color, sexual orientation and nationality vie against one another in a bogus spirit of brotherhood and good will!
Oh, that’s right. I can get the same thing watching the Democratic National Convention, another mostly staged event, this week.
I vaguely remember, no, not the beginning of American political parties, but a time in the 50s and 60s when some honest-to-gawd political business other than marketing was conducted at these conventions. Mind you, much of that business was conducted behind closed doors in (ah, the good old days!) smoke-filled rooms and not on the almost equally smoky convention floor. Still, deals were cut, party platform planks (mostly meaningless even then) were bickered over and sometimes even who the candidates were going to be was decided by multiple ballot. Sadly, however, conventions have shifted from political Super Bowls to World Wrestling Federation championship events. Except, of course, that the WWF has the good sense not to tell the viewers in advance who will win.
A Positive Liberty reader recently commented sarcastically on another thread discussing the legacy of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, saying with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek that “1968 was the pivotal moment in all of human history, past and future.” Speaking on behalf of my terminally self-important Baby Boomer generation, I will note only that America’s major political parties did begin to conduct their business differently after 1968. Not so much because of the protests (“Yippie!”) outside the convention center -- after all, it isn’t like a guy named Richard Daley would be mayor of Chicago forever, is it? -- but because of the resulting McGovern-Fraser Commission and the subsequent shift to state primaries as the method of deciding delegates and, thus, selecting candidates.
Another “lesson” from 1968 was the increasing importance of television and therefore the need to control convention and convention related events as much as possible. I don’t think Nixon beat Humphrey in 1968 simply because of the violence in the streets of Chicago during the convention, but it sure as hell didn’t help Humphrey, either.
Needless to say, I won’t be watching either the Democratic or the Republican National Conventions in real time. Any really juicy gaffs or other “must-see” moments will be on YouTube before the evening wrap-up, so I’ll catch Ted Kennedy’s likely swan song, Hillary’s dagger-eyed stares, McCain being reminded how many homes he owns and where he left the keys, etc. in TiVo time.
Oh, that’s right. I can get the same thing watching the Democratic National Convention, another mostly staged event, this week.
I vaguely remember, no, not the beginning of American political parties, but a time in the 50s and 60s when some honest-to-gawd political business other than marketing was conducted at these conventions. Mind you, much of that business was conducted behind closed doors in (ah, the good old days!) smoke-filled rooms and not on the almost equally smoky convention floor. Still, deals were cut, party platform planks (mostly meaningless even then) were bickered over and sometimes even who the candidates were going to be was decided by multiple ballot. Sadly, however, conventions have shifted from political Super Bowls to World Wrestling Federation championship events. Except, of course, that the WWF has the good sense not to tell the viewers in advance who will win.
A Positive Liberty reader recently commented sarcastically on another thread discussing the legacy of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention, saying with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek that “1968 was the pivotal moment in all of human history, past and future.” Speaking on behalf of my terminally self-important Baby Boomer generation, I will note only that America’s major political parties did begin to conduct their business differently after 1968. Not so much because of the protests (“Yippie!”) outside the convention center -- after all, it isn’t like a guy named Richard Daley would be mayor of Chicago forever, is it? -- but because of the resulting McGovern-Fraser Commission and the subsequent shift to state primaries as the method of deciding delegates and, thus, selecting candidates.
Another “lesson” from 1968 was the increasing importance of television and therefore the need to control convention and convention related events as much as possible. I don’t think Nixon beat Humphrey in 1968 simply because of the violence in the streets of Chicago during the convention, but it sure as hell didn’t help Humphrey, either.
Needless to say, I won’t be watching either the Democratic or the Republican National Conventions in real time. Any really juicy gaffs or other “must-see” moments will be on YouTube before the evening wrap-up, so I’ll catch Ted Kennedy’s likely swan song, Hillary’s dagger-eyed stares, McCain being reminded how many homes he owns and where he left the keys, etc. in TiVo time.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Selfishness, Egoism and Altruistic Libertarianism
It is a cliché among many psychologists and economists that human beings behave self-interestedly. Moreover, since Adam Smith’s somewhat theological, somewhat anthropomorphic “invisible hand” metaphor, it has been almost an article of faith within the latter discipline that the collective, societal result of individual self-interested behavior is ironically salubrious.
It is a faith to which I also ascribe, although like all but the most zealous of religious fanatics I season that faith with the occasional heresy here and there. Crucially, however, it needs to be noted at the outset that not just any sort of self-interested behavior contributes to the common wealth and greater good. Specialization and trade, voluntary association, bargained-for exchanges, common rules and some sort of enforcement mechanism to address rule breaking are all necessary elements for human society to flourish economically, for the invisible hand to prove, as it were, optimally dexterous.
Most importantly, “self-interested” is not synonymous with “selfish.”
Discussions about selfishness elsewhere on this blog got me thinking about these things. I am no Ayn Rand scholar, nor do I purport to be an Objectivist. Undoubtedly, however, Rand’s followers constitute a significant and vocal segment of the libertarian community. (It’s a non-gated community, after all, noted for its lack of zoning regulations, restrictive covenants or entrance requirements.) Anyway, given that Rand published a collection of essays entitled The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, it should be clear just from the title’s use of the word “egoism” that she or Nathanial Brandon, as the case may be, intended to give the word “selfishness” a special, technical meaning in the overall context of Rand’s worldview.
But selfishness and egoism are two separate things, a fact I assume Rand understood perfectly well when she deliberately invoked the apparent contradiction of selfishness as a virtue for its rhetorical impact. Whatever Rand’s standing as an intellectual and participant in the history of political philosophy, she was also certainly a polemicist with a particular political agenda in opposition to what she correctly perceived as the 20th century’s greatest threat to humankind; namely, the threat of collectivism. You simply cannot read Rand fairly without bearing that in mind.
The important point is that selfishness is a common language concept, not a technical term. Anyone fluent in English knows what it means and knows, more importantly, that it entails a negative moral judgment. Selfishness is by definition a bad thing. It’s using up all the hot water in the shower when others are waiting, eating up all the cookies instead of sharing them with friends or family, and so forth. (Except, perhaps, at the Ayn Rand School for Tots, although Ms. Sinclair couldn’t have really been much of an Objectivist since the first thing she did was violate Maggie's pacifier property rights.)
Selfishness moreover logically entails and presupposes that there is some preexisting community to which the individual belongs and some moral commitment to that specific community. I, for example, live with my family in a household where there is a finite supply of hot water and cookies. If I stand in the shower for an hour shoving one increasingly soggy chocolate chip cookie after another into my mouth until both supplies are exhausted, I am acting selfishly relative to my family. It is less clear that I am being selfish when I buy the last package of cookies at the store, thus depriving the next cookie junkie from his or her fix, or when I purchase the big, heavy-duty water heater for my house. It is less clear, still, that it is properly called selfishness to eat any of those cookies or use any of that hot water knowing that many millions of people across the globe have neither cookies to eat nor any hot water to shower with.
To be sure, there are those who claim that the last is selfish, although the overwhelming majority don’t really believe it based on how they, themselves, actually live. The notion that we as individuals have moral obligations to humanity at large is, to put it mildly, very problematic. The point, in any case, is that we wouldn’t be inclined to call all sorts of behavior like eating a cookie selfish simply because every cookie eaten is, necessarily, a cookie no one else can eat. The morality of sharing does not require splitting my cookie into several billion pieces so everyone can have some.
Egoism, by contrast, is not an ordinary language word or concept. Mothers don’t scold their children for being egoists when they selfishly eat the last cookie. Indeed, if you peruse its Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry you will discover that there is not even a single technical sense of the term.
We pause now while I grind a philosophical axe for a moment. There is a critical difference between, on the one hand, the theory of psychological egoism, the theory that claims it is simply a fact that human beings always and under all circumstances behave self-interestedly and, on the other, ethical or rational egoism. These theories contend that morally right behavior or rational behavior, respectively, simply is self-interested behavior.
These latter may be right or wrong and are certainly subject to criticism, but at least they both admit of the possibility of unethical or irrational behavior. That is to say, the ethical egoist acknowledges that people are capable of behaving other than self-interestedly, she simply argues that they shouldn’t. So, too, the rational egoist doesn’t claim that we always act rationally, i.e., self-interestedly, but only that we should or that it is only when we do that our actions deserve the appellation “rational.”
Psychological egoism, by contrast, obliterates the normative force of self-interested behavior, whether for good or bad. Indeed, it obliterates normative considerations in the same way all strong forms of determinism do: if “ought” implies “can” but one cannot act differently than one does then it is absurd to claim that one ought to have acted differently. Moreover, if all behavior is, by definition, self-interested, then it is a fair question to ask of this non-falsifiable metaphysical theory what sort of substantive claim, if any, it really is making.
Axe grinding concluded, I’m reasonably confident that Rand was an egoist in both the ethical and rational egoism senses. In retrospect, however, it is perhaps unfortunate that she chose to use “selfishness” as a rhetorical device to describe her egoism because it opens both Objectivism in particular and libertarianism in general to the sort of prejudicial criticisms Mr. Hanley recently bemoaned.
In fact, Rand aside, there is nothing at all incompatible about libertarianism and altruism. Not, at least, if altruism is understood not as Rand technically used the term but simply as the opposite of mere selfishness. It is hardly altruistic, in the ordinary sense of the term, to coerce other people to behave in supposedly selfless ways in order to achieve your personal vision of the greater collective good even if that greater good is thereby realized. But it is unarguably immoral to coerce others using that rationale when, in fact, it becomes painfully obvious that the exact opposite results.
Indeed, if we’re looking for a single lesson from the history of the 20th century, we could do much worse than conclude that, no matter how noble their advocates’ intentions may have been, collectivist social and economic orders yield disastrous results. Obviously, therefore, noble intentions are no guarantee of success. Libertarianism has never claimed that in a libertarian world order everyone will win and "all must have prizes." In fact, as far as I know, only utopian collectivists and Lewis Carroll's Dodo have made that claim.
But then Carroll, of course, knew he was talking nonsense.
It is a faith to which I also ascribe, although like all but the most zealous of religious fanatics I season that faith with the occasional heresy here and there. Crucially, however, it needs to be noted at the outset that not just any sort of self-interested behavior contributes to the common wealth and greater good. Specialization and trade, voluntary association, bargained-for exchanges, common rules and some sort of enforcement mechanism to address rule breaking are all necessary elements for human society to flourish economically, for the invisible hand to prove, as it were, optimally dexterous.
Most importantly, “self-interested” is not synonymous with “selfish.”
Discussions about selfishness elsewhere on this blog got me thinking about these things. I am no Ayn Rand scholar, nor do I purport to be an Objectivist. Undoubtedly, however, Rand’s followers constitute a significant and vocal segment of the libertarian community. (It’s a non-gated community, after all, noted for its lack of zoning regulations, restrictive covenants or entrance requirements.) Anyway, given that Rand published a collection of essays entitled The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, it should be clear just from the title’s use of the word “egoism” that she or Nathanial Brandon, as the case may be, intended to give the word “selfishness” a special, technical meaning in the overall context of Rand’s worldview.
But selfishness and egoism are two separate things, a fact I assume Rand understood perfectly well when she deliberately invoked the apparent contradiction of selfishness as a virtue for its rhetorical impact. Whatever Rand’s standing as an intellectual and participant in the history of political philosophy, she was also certainly a polemicist with a particular political agenda in opposition to what she correctly perceived as the 20th century’s greatest threat to humankind; namely, the threat of collectivism. You simply cannot read Rand fairly without bearing that in mind.
The important point is that selfishness is a common language concept, not a technical term. Anyone fluent in English knows what it means and knows, more importantly, that it entails a negative moral judgment. Selfishness is by definition a bad thing. It’s using up all the hot water in the shower when others are waiting, eating up all the cookies instead of sharing them with friends or family, and so forth. (Except, perhaps, at the Ayn Rand School for Tots, although Ms. Sinclair couldn’t have really been much of an Objectivist since the first thing she did was violate Maggie's pacifier property rights.)
Selfishness moreover logically entails and presupposes that there is some preexisting community to which the individual belongs and some moral commitment to that specific community. I, for example, live with my family in a household where there is a finite supply of hot water and cookies. If I stand in the shower for an hour shoving one increasingly soggy chocolate chip cookie after another into my mouth until both supplies are exhausted, I am acting selfishly relative to my family. It is less clear that I am being selfish when I buy the last package of cookies at the store, thus depriving the next cookie junkie from his or her fix, or when I purchase the big, heavy-duty water heater for my house. It is less clear, still, that it is properly called selfishness to eat any of those cookies or use any of that hot water knowing that many millions of people across the globe have neither cookies to eat nor any hot water to shower with.
To be sure, there are those who claim that the last is selfish, although the overwhelming majority don’t really believe it based on how they, themselves, actually live. The notion that we as individuals have moral obligations to humanity at large is, to put it mildly, very problematic. The point, in any case, is that we wouldn’t be inclined to call all sorts of behavior like eating a cookie selfish simply because every cookie eaten is, necessarily, a cookie no one else can eat. The morality of sharing does not require splitting my cookie into several billion pieces so everyone can have some.
Egoism, by contrast, is not an ordinary language word or concept. Mothers don’t scold their children for being egoists when they selfishly eat the last cookie. Indeed, if you peruse its Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry you will discover that there is not even a single technical sense of the term.
We pause now while I grind a philosophical axe for a moment. There is a critical difference between, on the one hand, the theory of psychological egoism, the theory that claims it is simply a fact that human beings always and under all circumstances behave self-interestedly and, on the other, ethical or rational egoism. These theories contend that morally right behavior or rational behavior, respectively, simply is self-interested behavior.
These latter may be right or wrong and are certainly subject to criticism, but at least they both admit of the possibility of unethical or irrational behavior. That is to say, the ethical egoist acknowledges that people are capable of behaving other than self-interestedly, she simply argues that they shouldn’t. So, too, the rational egoist doesn’t claim that we always act rationally, i.e., self-interestedly, but only that we should or that it is only when we do that our actions deserve the appellation “rational.”
Psychological egoism, by contrast, obliterates the normative force of self-interested behavior, whether for good or bad. Indeed, it obliterates normative considerations in the same way all strong forms of determinism do: if “ought” implies “can” but one cannot act differently than one does then it is absurd to claim that one ought to have acted differently. Moreover, if all behavior is, by definition, self-interested, then it is a fair question to ask of this non-falsifiable metaphysical theory what sort of substantive claim, if any, it really is making.
Axe grinding concluded, I’m reasonably confident that Rand was an egoist in both the ethical and rational egoism senses. In retrospect, however, it is perhaps unfortunate that she chose to use “selfishness” as a rhetorical device to describe her egoism because it opens both Objectivism in particular and libertarianism in general to the sort of prejudicial criticisms Mr. Hanley recently bemoaned.
In fact, Rand aside, there is nothing at all incompatible about libertarianism and altruism. Not, at least, if altruism is understood not as Rand technically used the term but simply as the opposite of mere selfishness. It is hardly altruistic, in the ordinary sense of the term, to coerce other people to behave in supposedly selfless ways in order to achieve your personal vision of the greater collective good even if that greater good is thereby realized. But it is unarguably immoral to coerce others using that rationale when, in fact, it becomes painfully obvious that the exact opposite results.
Indeed, if we’re looking for a single lesson from the history of the 20th century, we could do much worse than conclude that, no matter how noble their advocates’ intentions may have been, collectivist social and economic orders yield disastrous results. Obviously, therefore, noble intentions are no guarantee of success. Libertarianism has never claimed that in a libertarian world order everyone will win and "all must have prizes." In fact, as far as I know, only utopian collectivists and Lewis Carroll's Dodo have made that claim.
But then Carroll, of course, knew he was talking nonsense.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Democratic ’08 Ticket: O.- B., But No GYN
Two or three semi-random thoughts on Obama’s selection of Joe Biden. First, my son’s intelligence (read: information, not I.Q.) from working this summer on a “Blue Dog” Democrat’s re-election campaign turned out to be entirely accurate. (Note to Self: Remember to listen to son occasionally in the future.)
Second, given Biden’s solidly liberal record, Obama has determined that he does not need to position himself to appear closer to the political middle in order to win. (Yes, I know there are even more liberal Democrats Obama might have chosen, but a quick perusal of the infallible, inerrant and entirely trustworthy Wikipedia entry leads me to the conclusion that a “moderate liberal” is someone who purports to oppose the Castro regime in Cuba.) It suggests, also, that Obama thinks (I think correctly) that he is vulnerable regarding foreign affairs and that Biden will provide additional credibility.
Most intriguingly, however, is that Obama chose a man. Hey, black men got the vote before white women did, too, so he’s just being traditional, right? Seriously, though, and aside from ensuring that Hillary Clinton will now work tirelessly, day and night, to see to it that Obama loses in November, does Obama believe that too much demographic “change we can believe in” is a loser in the general election? Does he believe (I suspect correctly) that liberal white women can be taken for granted come November just as black voters have historically been taken for granted by the Democratic Party? Does he believe that there really aren’t any sufficiently qualified women out there? (Hillary included?)
Finally, does he really believe Joe Biden is the best qualified man not merely to help him win the White House but to serve as Vice President? Nah, whatever else is going on, it sure as hell couldn’t be that. Could it?
Second, given Biden’s solidly liberal record, Obama has determined that he does not need to position himself to appear closer to the political middle in order to win. (Yes, I know there are even more liberal Democrats Obama might have chosen, but a quick perusal of the infallible, inerrant and entirely trustworthy Wikipedia entry leads me to the conclusion that a “moderate liberal” is someone who purports to oppose the Castro regime in Cuba.) It suggests, also, that Obama thinks (I think correctly) that he is vulnerable regarding foreign affairs and that Biden will provide additional credibility.
Most intriguingly, however, is that Obama chose a man. Hey, black men got the vote before white women did, too, so he’s just being traditional, right? Seriously, though, and aside from ensuring that Hillary Clinton will now work tirelessly, day and night, to see to it that Obama loses in November, does Obama believe that too much demographic “change we can believe in” is a loser in the general election? Does he believe (I suspect correctly) that liberal white women can be taken for granted come November just as black voters have historically been taken for granted by the Democratic Party? Does he believe that there really aren’t any sufficiently qualified women out there? (Hillary included?)
Finally, does he really believe Joe Biden is the best qualified man not merely to help him win the White House but to serve as Vice President? Nah, whatever else is going on, it sure as hell couldn’t be that. Could it?
Friday, August 22, 2008
Constant Viewer: The House Bunny
Constant Viewer had never seen or at least never noticed Anna Faris before today, and a quick review of her career to date makes it pretty clear why not. CV isn’t exactly part of the target audience for the Scary Movie franchise, after all, and he simply didn’t notice or remember her from Lost In Translation. Apparently, however, she has a loyal and growing fan base, so CV was a bit disappointed today when he saw her performance in The House Bunny. Okay, so the material was predictable, crudely directed and, worst of all, not all that funny for extended periods of time. CV had read, however, that Faris’s performance shines above this otherwise indifferent movie. Perhaps so, but not all that much above and, frankly, that’s damning with very faint praise at best. Comparisons to Reese Witherspoon’s Legally Blond flicks are pretty much unavoidable in any consideration of The House Bunny, and neither Ms Faris nor this new movie fare well in that comparison. Still, CV would very much like to see her in something better than this mostly failed effort, the sort of movie that might, at most, be worth a viewing from one of those supermarket $1 video rental booths.
"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors ... and miss." *
There shouldn’t be a minimum legal drinking age, although I probably wouldn’t mind too much if it were set at, oh, say, six. If Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the rest of the Uber-Nannies out there want to keep pre-schoolers from bellying up to the bar, well, okay. After all, it’s for the children.
Syndicated columnist and (inexplicably) frequent reason contributor, Steve Chapman offers scraps of arguments against a proposal from an advocacy group called Choose Responsibility to lower the legal drinking age to 18. To date, the proposal has been signed by over 120 college presidents, predictably incurring the irrational wrath of MADD and other quasi-professional scolds.
Chapman’s arguments, such as they are, pretty much boil down to the assertion that many people under the age of 21 are too immature to drink and that more of them will drink and suffer problems as a result. As a corollary, if 18 year olds can buy alcohol, those under the age of 18 are more likely to have more ready access to booze because high school seniors will buy it for sophomores and freshmen, etc.
Here, however, is the money quote from Chapman’s lamentable column:
Mr. Chapman, if you don’t think 18 year olds who vote for Republican or Democratic candidates are imperiling innocent bystanders like me, you obviously haven’t been paying attention.
Seriously, though, there’s so much wrong with this mindset it’s hard to know where to begin in rebutting it. Here, however, is the principal objection:
The mere fact that something is dangerous or harmful to some members of a group is never sufficient justification to prohibit all members of a group from using or having access to it. The fact that some members of group X will abuse access such that members of the general population are harmed is equally insufficient to prohibit all members of that group from having access.
I accept the fact that institutional rights and privileges, e.g., voting, driving on public roads, necessarily involve some sometimes arbitrary regulation. Moreover, I certainly accept the fact that libertarianism is, for the most part, an NC-17 rated show. Children do require restrictions on their liberty for their own good. The question, however, is whether the default agent responsible to impose such restrictions should be the state or their parents. Admittedly, some parents sometimes fail in those responsibilities and the state must then intercede. See, however, the immediately prior paragraph as to why that fact alone does not justify depriving all parents of properly parental authority.
Serving your 16 year old daughter a half glass of wine at Thanksgiving or sharing a beer or two with your 17 year old son as you both watch the game or accepting the fact that your 19 year old college student may well get drunk on campus as opposed to driving off into the woods with friends specifically to go binge drinking, thus creating an even more dangerous situation isn’t an abrogation of parental responsibility. Imposing a universal prohibition to reduce abuse by a few and inadvertently but predictably creating such even more dangerous situations is.
Moreover, effectively arguing that it should be easier for the typical high school student to buy illegal drugs (never mind that they should be legal, too) than a six-pack of beer is, at best, a fairly odd case on utilitarian grounds as to why eighteen year olds shouldn't be permitted to drink. If Mr. Chapman doesn't understand these things, I trust the rest of the good folks over at reason do.
(* - Robert Heinlein)
Syndicated columnist and (inexplicably) frequent reason contributor, Steve Chapman offers scraps of arguments against a proposal from an advocacy group called Choose Responsibility to lower the legal drinking age to 18. To date, the proposal has been signed by over 120 college presidents, predictably incurring the irrational wrath of MADD and other quasi-professional scolds.
Chapman’s arguments, such as they are, pretty much boil down to the assertion that many people under the age of 21 are too immature to drink and that more of them will drink and suffer problems as a result. As a corollary, if 18 year olds can buy alcohol, those under the age of 18 are more likely to have more ready access to booze because high school seniors will buy it for sophomores and freshmen, etc.
Here, however, is the money quote from Chapman’s lamentable column:
Why permit 18-year-olds to vote but not drink? Because they have not shown a disproportionate tendency to abuse the franchise, to the peril of innocent bystanders.
Mr. Chapman, if you don’t think 18 year olds who vote for Republican or Democratic candidates are imperiling innocent bystanders like me, you obviously haven’t been paying attention.
Seriously, though, there’s so much wrong with this mindset it’s hard to know where to begin in rebutting it. Here, however, is the principal objection:
The mere fact that something is dangerous or harmful to some members of a group is never sufficient justification to prohibit all members of a group from using or having access to it. The fact that some members of group X will abuse access such that members of the general population are harmed is equally insufficient to prohibit all members of that group from having access.
I accept the fact that institutional rights and privileges, e.g., voting, driving on public roads, necessarily involve some sometimes arbitrary regulation. Moreover, I certainly accept the fact that libertarianism is, for the most part, an NC-17 rated show. Children do require restrictions on their liberty for their own good. The question, however, is whether the default agent responsible to impose such restrictions should be the state or their parents. Admittedly, some parents sometimes fail in those responsibilities and the state must then intercede. See, however, the immediately prior paragraph as to why that fact alone does not justify depriving all parents of properly parental authority.
Serving your 16 year old daughter a half glass of wine at Thanksgiving or sharing a beer or two with your 17 year old son as you both watch the game or accepting the fact that your 19 year old college student may well get drunk on campus as opposed to driving off into the woods with friends specifically to go binge drinking, thus creating an even more dangerous situation isn’t an abrogation of parental responsibility. Imposing a universal prohibition to reduce abuse by a few and inadvertently but predictably creating such even more dangerous situations is.
Moreover, effectively arguing that it should be easier for the typical high school student to buy illegal drugs (never mind that they should be legal, too) than a six-pack of beer is, at best, a fairly odd case on utilitarian grounds as to why eighteen year olds shouldn't be permitted to drink. If Mr. Chapman doesn't understand these things, I trust the rest of the good folks over at reason do.
(* - Robert Heinlein)
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Nibble, Nibble, Little Mouse! Who's That Burglaring My House?
Leda Smith heard someone breaking into her home, so she found the revolver kept by her bed, confronted the burglar and forced him at gunpoint to call 911. Then she and the seventeen year old intruder waited until the state police arrived to take him away.
Leda Smith is eighty-five years old.
Leda Smith is eighty-five years old.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Ezra Levant Update
Back in January, I urged readers to check out the blog of Canadian journalist Ezra Levant. Levant was subjected to a year-long investigation by the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission following a complaint by the Edmonton Council of Muslim Communities over his publication in the Western Standard of the Danish Muhammad cartoons that had so many other publishers cringing in fear. I'm happy to report that the complaint has finally been dismissed and, as a friend at a forum site I frequent said, Canadians are at least tentatively embracing free speech.
As can never be noted too often, speech about which we already approve doesn't need legal protection.
More to the point, I would refer readers again to Mr. Levant's web site and specifically to his taping of the complaint hearing interview available here. I will repeat what I said originally: Levant’s responses to the bureaucrat seated across the table from him during the taped hearing is precisely how free people should deal with government officials under such circumstances.
Congratulations, Mr. Levant.
As can never be noted too often, speech about which we already approve doesn't need legal protection.
More to the point, I would refer readers again to Mr. Levant's web site and specifically to his taping of the complaint hearing interview available here. I will repeat what I said originally: Levant’s responses to the bureaucrat seated across the table from him during the taped hearing is precisely how free people should deal with government officials under such circumstances.
Congratulations, Mr. Levant.
"Who Can I Sue?"
Soon, you'll be just a mouse click away from the answer!
I have very conflicted feelings about this sort of thing. Feelings, I might point out, that are not widely shared by my fellow libertarians, the majority of whom I believe fail to appreciate the value in principle of a rigorous and easily accessible civil litigation system.
Still, there is no denying that the system as it is currently structured and operated is in dire need of reform. I have no problem with lawyer advertising (its frequent tackiness aside) or with the actual (and actually harmed) plaintiffs acting as unofficial attorneys-general and, when appropriate, winning punitive damages judgments far in excess of their actual damages. I do have a hard time accepting the plaintiffs' bar (aka, trial lawyers) reaping 40% of those judgments, and don't even bother with arguments about how speculative these lawsuits are and how much risk these law firms undertake. Such firms rarely take clients on a contingent-fee basis unless they have already determined that the likelihood of a settlement or judgment in their client's favor is good.
There's gotta be a better way, though I admit to not knowing what it is. Meanwhile, "Who Can I Sue," websites do not strike me as a step in the right direction.
I have very conflicted feelings about this sort of thing. Feelings, I might point out, that are not widely shared by my fellow libertarians, the majority of whom I believe fail to appreciate the value in principle of a rigorous and easily accessible civil litigation system.
Still, there is no denying that the system as it is currently structured and operated is in dire need of reform. I have no problem with lawyer advertising (its frequent tackiness aside) or with the actual (and actually harmed) plaintiffs acting as unofficial attorneys-general and, when appropriate, winning punitive damages judgments far in excess of their actual damages. I do have a hard time accepting the plaintiffs' bar (aka, trial lawyers) reaping 40% of those judgments, and don't even bother with arguments about how speculative these lawsuits are and how much risk these law firms undertake. Such firms rarely take clients on a contingent-fee basis unless they have already determined that the likelihood of a settlement or judgment in their client's favor is good.
There's gotta be a better way, though I admit to not knowing what it is. Meanwhile, "Who Can I Sue," websites do not strike me as a step in the right direction.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Patent Nonsense
One of the things that distinguishes intellectual property from the more intuitively obvious tangible variety is that the very notion of intellectual property requires a justification in the sense that tangible property almost never does. Utopians of one variety or another have tried, almost always with disastrous consequences, to abolish the institution of private property, but as far as I know there has never been a society that has denied the existence or necessity of property rights of any sort at all. Typically, their alternative has been to assert some sort of collectivist or communitarian ownership; but while it may be that the clan or the tribe “own everything in common” or the “people (collectively) own the means of production,” woe be any rival clan or tribe or people who happen by and start asserting similar property rights in the same stuff. Wars have been known to start that way even in utopia.
The obvious thing about tangible property is that, being stuff, it’s there whether we call it property or not. That is, whether ♫ This land is my land (or) this land is your land ♫, this land is here whether we say so or not, let alone whether ♫ This land was made for you and me. ♫ And so are its flora and fauna and minerals and water running through it or beneath its surface, etc.
How human society has gone from the realization that the world is filled with stuff to the notion that some of it is our stuff (or your stuff or, most importantly, my stuff) is an interesting topic, but not one with which I wish to concern myself here in any detail. If you care, I’ll merely note in passing that I reject all “natural right” theories of property, personally, especially including the so-called Lockean “labor + stuff = property” theory.
Still, I constantly run across fellow self-described libertarians who believe in one sort of natural rights theory or another and a fairly large number of them believe that their theory justifies the notion of tangible personal property (whether, forgive the legalism here, real or chattel) but not intellectual property. Intellectual property – by which I mean here the usual unholy trinity of patents, copyrights and trademarks – is on this account the equivalent of a state enforced and, worse yet, state created monopoly. To which I respond:
Yes, that’s true. Exactly like the state-created and state-enforced monopoly any owner of any sort of property whatsoever enjoys versus any non-owner. To be sure, the land would still be there with or without a state enforced legal system, but it wouldn’t be anyone’s property. Not in anything like the sense we mean by property now, that is. All of our philosophical twaddle about what should or shouldn’t or can or can’t be deemed property aside, the ownership of a patent or trademark is no different from the ownership of an automobile or a condominium. They are all creatures of the state or, more specifically, of a state enforced legal system one of the principle justifications for is the sorting out of competing claims over the same resources.
Ah, say my opposition, but land and the stuff we find and trap or kill or take and make new stuff out of on the land (and sea) are quintessential examples of real resources; namely, natural resources. Patents and trademarks and copyrights are mere fictions.
I agree. But they are highly useful fictions, and if my libertarian confrères would get off their pseudo-Kantian high horses about absolute right and wrong and concentrate instead on the far more useful questions of pragmatic good or bad, I think they’d be more inclined to agree with my perspective. Which is as follows:
(1) The state of the law of intellectual property is in need of serious reform, but (2) we would all be better served by, for example, a reformed law of patents than by the entire abolition of patents. For you theorists, I will add (3) there are no serious theoretical reasons, ethical or otherwise, precluding us from, as it were, saving the baby even as we throw out the dirty bathwater here.
By way of giving an example of the sort of unnecessary and counterproductive infanticide I have in mind here, let me quote extensively from a recent Kevin Carson piece over at Art of The Possible. Carson makes his point by quoting a commenter there, and because I am too lazy to edit extensively I will do the same, as follows:
Okay, so let’s clear the air here a bit. In the first place, whatever may be the truth about the claim that “[p]atents are often justified by the allegedly high cost of developing drugs,” the better question is whether we will have more and better drug research and development with patents or without them regardless of whether those patents go to “big pharma” or to “small start-up firms.” That is, we shouldn’t really care who the incentive of profitable patent rights is spurring on to do research, and that is true whether such research is on cancer drugs or toe fungus drugs.
If Mr. Carson or his commenter believe that there are better ways to encourage such research, they should by all means argue for them. I, however, know of no better incentive than self interest and until I am shown fairly compelling evidence to the contrary, I am not inclined to believe that removing the profit motive from drug research is likely to produce a better, more readily available or affordable pharmacopeia.
Now, that said, no one bothering to read this far should leave thinking I’m an apologist for the pharmaceutical companies. Their successful efforts some years back to retroactively extend the life of patent protection (and similar so-called “reforms” in copyright for the entertainment industry) constitutes nothing more than massive theft and the politicians who voted for such theft should all be horsewhipped. They all created and / or invented whatever they did when the state of the law provided a certain term of proprietary rights and they should enjoy the benefit of that bargain, but nothing more. If the case could be made for patents or copyrights of longer duration, whether for drugs or novels or whatever, fine. But such revised laws should take effect only prospectively. Retroactive extension deprives the public (you and me) of our rightful future expectations with regard to these properties, future expectations we have been paying for throughout the life of the original patents or copyrights. Moreover (okay, go ahead and get back on your Kantian high-horse for a moment here), fair’s fair and a bargain is a bargain.
I don’t deny that the current state of patent law should be extensively reformed (starting with repealing the patent extensions granted “big pharma” in the recent past). It is also true that, to use Mr. Carson’s phrase, patents “distort the market ... [skewing it] toward where the money is.” But, ignoring the emotive connotations of “distort,” it is true of all property schemes that they provide incentives toward certain sorts of behavior and against others.
Perhaps the current system does encourage gaming of sorts which we want to discourage, instead. Perhaps we permit new patents on new drugs that are too closely similar to previously developed drugs. I say perhaps. In fact, I don’t know whether it does or not. The point, however, is that there are all sorts of ways of changing the existing system short of simply abolishing it.
And replacing it with what? The milk of human kindness as a spur to research or, what I fear is the real intended replacement, more massive government control and funding?
Do you want more invention and innovation or less? Do you want more creative works of art or fewer? Those, I think, are the critical questions in any useful discussion of intellectual property. And at the risk of repeating myself, details aside, I know of no better means of getting more of both than by encouraging self-interest through the creation of private property interests in the fruits of such invention and creativity.
Do you?
The obvious thing about tangible property is that, being stuff, it’s there whether we call it property or not. That is, whether ♫ This land is my land (or) this land is your land ♫, this land is here whether we say so or not, let alone whether ♫ This land was made for you and me. ♫ And so are its flora and fauna and minerals and water running through it or beneath its surface, etc.
How human society has gone from the realization that the world is filled with stuff to the notion that some of it is our stuff (or your stuff or, most importantly, my stuff) is an interesting topic, but not one with which I wish to concern myself here in any detail. If you care, I’ll merely note in passing that I reject all “natural right” theories of property, personally, especially including the so-called Lockean “labor + stuff = property” theory.
Still, I constantly run across fellow self-described libertarians who believe in one sort of natural rights theory or another and a fairly large number of them believe that their theory justifies the notion of tangible personal property (whether, forgive the legalism here, real or chattel) but not intellectual property. Intellectual property – by which I mean here the usual unholy trinity of patents, copyrights and trademarks – is on this account the equivalent of a state enforced and, worse yet, state created monopoly. To which I respond:
Yes, that’s true. Exactly like the state-created and state-enforced monopoly any owner of any sort of property whatsoever enjoys versus any non-owner. To be sure, the land would still be there with or without a state enforced legal system, but it wouldn’t be anyone’s property. Not in anything like the sense we mean by property now, that is. All of our philosophical twaddle about what should or shouldn’t or can or can’t be deemed property aside, the ownership of a patent or trademark is no different from the ownership of an automobile or a condominium. They are all creatures of the state or, more specifically, of a state enforced legal system one of the principle justifications for is the sorting out of competing claims over the same resources.
Ah, say my opposition, but land and the stuff we find and trap or kill or take and make new stuff out of on the land (and sea) are quintessential examples of real resources; namely, natural resources. Patents and trademarks and copyrights are mere fictions.
I agree. But they are highly useful fictions, and if my libertarian confrères would get off their pseudo-Kantian high horses about absolute right and wrong and concentrate instead on the far more useful questions of pragmatic good or bad, I think they’d be more inclined to agree with my perspective. Which is as follows:
(1) The state of the law of intellectual property is in need of serious reform, but (2) we would all be better served by, for example, a reformed law of patents than by the entire abolition of patents. For you theorists, I will add (3) there are no serious theoretical reasons, ethical or otherwise, precluding us from, as it were, saving the baby even as we throw out the dirty bathwater here.
By way of giving an example of the sort of unnecessary and counterproductive infanticide I have in mind here, let me quote extensively from a recent Kevin Carson piece over at Art of The Possible. Carson makes his point by quoting a commenter there, and because I am too lazy to edit extensively I will do the same, as follows:
2) Eliminate drug patents. Patents are often justified by the allegedly high cost of developing drugs. But as frequent AoTP commenter quasibill observed, the main source of the expense is not developing the version of the drug that is actually marketed, but gaming the patent system. He challenged the popular misimpression, encouraged by smarmy drug company ads,that what big pharma is researching is cancer meds. It’s not. In the rare instances that big pharma produces and markets such medicines, it has purchased them from small start-ups that themselves are the result normally of a university laboratory’s work. When big pharma cites to billions of research costs, what it is talking about is the process whereby they literally test millions of very closely related compounds to find out if they have a solid therapeutic window. This type of research is directly related to the patent system, as changing one functional group can get you around most patents, eventually. So you like to bulk up your catalogue and patent all closely related compounds, while choosing only the best among them, or, if you’re second to market, one that hasn’t yet been patented.
This work is incredibly data intensive, and requires many Ph.D’s, assistants, and high powered computers and testing equipment to achieve. But it is hardly necessary in the absence of a patent regime. In the absence of patents, (and of course the FDA), you could just focus on finding a sufficient therapeutic window, and cut out the remaining tests.
Patents also grossly distort the market, leading drug companies to focus most of their research on “me too” drugs that tweak an existing formula just enough to enable it to be repatented, and use it to replace the older version that’s about to go generic. Then the drug reps hit the hospitals and clinics, drop off some free samples and pamphlets, and (most M.D.s relying on drug industry handouts for their information on drugs that come out after they leave med school) the “me, too” drug becomes the new standard form of treatment.
The license cartels and drug patents are two examples of essentially the same phenomenon: First, the government creates a honey pot by enforcing a monopoly and making particular forms of service artificially lucrative. Then the market skews toward where the money is, as practitioners adopt the more lucrative business model and crowd out affordable alternatives.
Okay, so let’s clear the air here a bit. In the first place, whatever may be the truth about the claim that “[p]atents are often justified by the allegedly high cost of developing drugs,” the better question is whether we will have more and better drug research and development with patents or without them regardless of whether those patents go to “big pharma” or to “small start-up firms.” That is, we shouldn’t really care who the incentive of profitable patent rights is spurring on to do research, and that is true whether such research is on cancer drugs or toe fungus drugs.
If Mr. Carson or his commenter believe that there are better ways to encourage such research, they should by all means argue for them. I, however, know of no better incentive than self interest and until I am shown fairly compelling evidence to the contrary, I am not inclined to believe that removing the profit motive from drug research is likely to produce a better, more readily available or affordable pharmacopeia.
Now, that said, no one bothering to read this far should leave thinking I’m an apologist for the pharmaceutical companies. Their successful efforts some years back to retroactively extend the life of patent protection (and similar so-called “reforms” in copyright for the entertainment industry) constitutes nothing more than massive theft and the politicians who voted for such theft should all be horsewhipped. They all created and / or invented whatever they did when the state of the law provided a certain term of proprietary rights and they should enjoy the benefit of that bargain, but nothing more. If the case could be made for patents or copyrights of longer duration, whether for drugs or novels or whatever, fine. But such revised laws should take effect only prospectively. Retroactive extension deprives the public (you and me) of our rightful future expectations with regard to these properties, future expectations we have been paying for throughout the life of the original patents or copyrights. Moreover (okay, go ahead and get back on your Kantian high-horse for a moment here), fair’s fair and a bargain is a bargain.
I don’t deny that the current state of patent law should be extensively reformed (starting with repealing the patent extensions granted “big pharma” in the recent past). It is also true that, to use Mr. Carson’s phrase, patents “distort the market ... [skewing it] toward where the money is.” But, ignoring the emotive connotations of “distort,” it is true of all property schemes that they provide incentives toward certain sorts of behavior and against others.
Perhaps the current system does encourage gaming of sorts which we want to discourage, instead. Perhaps we permit new patents on new drugs that are too closely similar to previously developed drugs. I say perhaps. In fact, I don’t know whether it does or not. The point, however, is that there are all sorts of ways of changing the existing system short of simply abolishing it.
And replacing it with what? The milk of human kindness as a spur to research or, what I fear is the real intended replacement, more massive government control and funding?
Do you want more invention and innovation or less? Do you want more creative works of art or fewer? Those, I think, are the critical questions in any useful discussion of intellectual property. And at the risk of repeating myself, details aside, I know of no better means of getting more of both than by encouraging self-interest through the creation of private property interests in the fruits of such invention and creativity.
Do you?
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Constant Viewer Ponders The Movie Business
Not so very long ago a movie had to gross $100 million to be considered a bona fide summer blockbuster. Today, however, $200 million is the new $100 million and a movie that grosses a mere tenth of a billion doesn’t even hit the top 400 all-time domestic grossing movies. That’s not adjusting for inflation, by the way. Gone With The Wind grossed a mere $198 million dollars, but, hey, they were 1939 dollars and a dollar bought just a teeny bit more back then. (In round inflation adjusted numbers, GWTW grossed around $1.5 billion.)
The summer of 2008 has had its fair share of blockbusters, in any case, even at the new $200 million threshold: Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, Hancock, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Iron Man and The Dark Knight, the last three having already grossed over $300 million each and several, especially including The Dark Knight, still raking in the box office cash.
The interesting question to Constant Viewer at this point is how far The Dark Knight can go. Obviously, it’s got sprinter’s legs, having beaten Mummy III this weekend and stayed in the #1 slot in its third week out. But, let’s face it, Mummy III is probably the weakest of this summer’s big movies. Still, earning so far just $5 million shy of the $400 million mark, The Dark Knight now ranks 8th all-time in domestic gross, probably marking the first time Warner Brothers has had a film in such rarefied company since Bogart. (Okay, CV just made that up. Basically, however, aside from the Harry Potter franchise, WB hasn’t exactly been a major player for a long, long time. And CV has the handfull of Time-Warner shares to prove it, too!)
This isn’t going anywhere, in case you were wondering. CV simply finds the business of show business, the industry part of the film industry, interesting in and of itself. So when a movie like The Dark Knight comes along (and CV actually plunks down the purchase price of a ticket twice for it!) he wonders just how big it might end up being.
One thing’s for sure. The Dark Knight is not going to come anywhere close to striking range of, oh, say, Titanic. Here’s a Box Office Mojo page devoted to comparing the two, together with Shrek 2 and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace just for good measure. Notice that Titanic (a) didn’t open all that big, but (b) ended up with a domestic gross of over $600 million. That makes it the biggest PG-13 movie and roughly the fifth or sixth highest (inflation adjusted) grossing movie of any sort, period. Why was it so big?
Because it was a romance men didn’t mind going to see. Or it was an action / disaster movie women didn’t mind going to see. Take your pick. But the next huge, history making movie isn’t likely to involve superheroes or animated characters of any sort and it won’t have to be rated PG or G, either. Somewhere in Hollywood someone is studying Titanic and figuring out that romantic adventure, not romantic comedy, is where the money’s at. At least that's Constant Viewer's best guess. Now, if only he could figure out a cleverly tragic, romantic way for the hero to die in front of his lover in the last act of his screenplay!
The summer of 2008 has had its fair share of blockbusters, in any case, even at the new $200 million threshold: Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, Hancock, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Iron Man and The Dark Knight, the last three having already grossed over $300 million each and several, especially including The Dark Knight, still raking in the box office cash.
The interesting question to Constant Viewer at this point is how far The Dark Knight can go. Obviously, it’s got sprinter’s legs, having beaten Mummy III this weekend and stayed in the #1 slot in its third week out. But, let’s face it, Mummy III is probably the weakest of this summer’s big movies. Still, earning so far just $5 million shy of the $400 million mark, The Dark Knight now ranks 8th all-time in domestic gross, probably marking the first time Warner Brothers has had a film in such rarefied company since Bogart. (Okay, CV just made that up. Basically, however, aside from the Harry Potter franchise, WB hasn’t exactly been a major player for a long, long time. And CV has the handfull of Time-Warner shares to prove it, too!)
This isn’t going anywhere, in case you were wondering. CV simply finds the business of show business, the industry part of the film industry, interesting in and of itself. So when a movie like The Dark Knight comes along (and CV actually plunks down the purchase price of a ticket twice for it!) he wonders just how big it might end up being.
One thing’s for sure. The Dark Knight is not going to come anywhere close to striking range of, oh, say, Titanic. Here’s a Box Office Mojo page devoted to comparing the two, together with Shrek 2 and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace just for good measure. Notice that Titanic (a) didn’t open all that big, but (b) ended up with a domestic gross of over $600 million. That makes it the biggest PG-13 movie and roughly the fifth or sixth highest (inflation adjusted) grossing movie of any sort, period. Why was it so big?
Because it was a romance men didn’t mind going to see. Or it was an action / disaster movie women didn’t mind going to see. Take your pick. But the next huge, history making movie isn’t likely to involve superheroes or animated characters of any sort and it won’t have to be rated PG or G, either. Somewhere in Hollywood someone is studying Titanic and figuring out that romantic adventure, not romantic comedy, is where the money’s at. At least that's Constant Viewer's best guess. Now, if only he could figure out a cleverly tragic, romantic way for the hero to die in front of his lover in the last act of his screenplay!
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Constant Viewer: The Mummy: Curse of the Dragon Emperor
The Mummy: Curse of the Dragon Emperor is not, rest assured, a French movie. In fact, it is in many respects an anti-French movie. It’s dumb and it knows it’s dumb. It may even be a little proud of how dumb it is as it revels in over-the-top action scenes and dazzling special effects. None of its characters have anything like an introspective or existential identity crisis or, for that matter, would know it if they did. There’s never a moment when the viewer has any reason to suspect that the writers or director or cast seriously thought “Oh no! We can’t do that! It would be too preposterous. The audiences will never buy it!” Nope, Mummy III knows it's all about the cheap thrills and delivers them up by the pallet load.
Brendan Fraser is the poor man’s Tom Hanks, assuming Hanks was dumb enough to try his hand as an action hero, eminently likable in large measure precisely because he’s an everyman type and not an action hero type. That he’s made a fairly nice film career playing against that obvious fact only goes to prove, as William Goldman so deftly put it, that in Hollywood nobody knows anything.
Jet Li makes a fine bad guy here and the rest of the cast are likewise as plausible as you’re likely to find in so implausible a movie. It’s all Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Lost Horizons meets every CGI battle scene made in the last ten years meets every zombie movie made in the last 20 years, and if the comedic touches sometimes wander into farce territory at least there’s not a single scene where someone languorously smokes a cigarette wondering what it’s all about.
In passing, you might wonder why on earth Mummy III and so many other movies in the last five or ten years have been centered in or at least had a major scene or two shot in China. There are no Chinese mummies, after all. Are there? Well, whether there are or not, this much is clear. There are a whole hell of a lot more Chinese than Egyptians and nowadays, unlike back in the old Red China days, more and more of them go to the movies or rent or buy DVDs. And here you round-eyed devils thought you were still the target audience!
------
In response to a few comments from CV’s loyal readers about his recent evisceration of French filmmaking, it should be noted that CV’s theory of movie reviews is that it’s just practical emotivism. You find a reviewer whom you discover yells "Boo!" at the same movies you dislike and "Hurray!" at the same movies you like or even vice versa and then you've got a fairly reliable guide to help you pick what to see. Of course, it has to be tarted up a bit, but there's really nothing more to it than that.
There've been several mentions of noir, aka film noir, too, which is of course a French critical invention (film criticism being to movie reviews what prescriptivism is to emotivism). Hollywood just thought it was turning out B-movie gangster stories back then. Then again, Hollywood is almost always oblivious about those rare occasions when it accidentally creates art, too.
The thing about film noir is that it almost entirely contradicts the auteur theory if both are taken seriously. In the first place, these were almost all quintessentially studio movies, not directorial statements of any sort. None of the supposed genre’s directors set out to make a noir movie the way others set out, say, to make a screwball comedy or, for that matter, some socialist or communist writers were in fact trying to promote certain political themes in various post-war movies. (N.B., this isn’t an implicit defense of the notorious Hollywood Blacklist but simply an acknowledgment that some of the writers of that era were, in fact, intentionally polemical.)
These movies were all shot in black and white because, well, duh, just about all cheap movies were shot in black and white in the late 40s and 50s. Their cinematographic technique relied heavily on shadows and skewed camera angles because that was discovered to be a (cheap!) way to build psychological suspense and, frankly, just because it was trendy then in the same way those damned "let's swing the camera around the subject three or four times like an orbiting moon" shots are practically required by law in every movie made today.
Sure, there were a few movies of that era in which the female lead was a conniving vixen leading the poor, gullible protagonist to ruin, but you'd be hard pressed to make that claim about many of the most classic noir movies, e.g., Sunset Boulevard or even The Third Man. Finally, two of the greatest ‘noir’ movies of all time – Blade Runner and Chinatown – fit none of the noir theorists' criteria except the most important one: mood.
The fact is that the film noir genre is a garment that fits few movies of the era very well regardless of how many movies it will more or less badly fit here or there. It is, in the end, a hole that is neither round nor square nor any definite shape at all into which very, very few movie pegs can be fitted easily but just about any drama or movie of suspense can be pounded into with a heavy enough rhetorical hammer. So much for French theory, too.
Brendan Fraser is the poor man’s Tom Hanks, assuming Hanks was dumb enough to try his hand as an action hero, eminently likable in large measure precisely because he’s an everyman type and not an action hero type. That he’s made a fairly nice film career playing against that obvious fact only goes to prove, as William Goldman so deftly put it, that in Hollywood nobody knows anything.
Jet Li makes a fine bad guy here and the rest of the cast are likewise as plausible as you’re likely to find in so implausible a movie. It’s all Raiders of the Lost Ark meets Lost Horizons meets every CGI battle scene made in the last ten years meets every zombie movie made in the last 20 years, and if the comedic touches sometimes wander into farce territory at least there’s not a single scene where someone languorously smokes a cigarette wondering what it’s all about.
In passing, you might wonder why on earth Mummy III and so many other movies in the last five or ten years have been centered in or at least had a major scene or two shot in China. There are no Chinese mummies, after all. Are there? Well, whether there are or not, this much is clear. There are a whole hell of a lot more Chinese than Egyptians and nowadays, unlike back in the old Red China days, more and more of them go to the movies or rent or buy DVDs. And here you round-eyed devils thought you were still the target audience!
------
In response to a few comments from CV’s loyal readers about his recent evisceration of French filmmaking, it should be noted that CV’s theory of movie reviews is that it’s just practical emotivism. You find a reviewer whom you discover yells "Boo!" at the same movies you dislike and "Hurray!" at the same movies you like or even vice versa and then you've got a fairly reliable guide to help you pick what to see. Of course, it has to be tarted up a bit, but there's really nothing more to it than that.
There've been several mentions of noir, aka film noir, too, which is of course a French critical invention (film criticism being to movie reviews what prescriptivism is to emotivism). Hollywood just thought it was turning out B-movie gangster stories back then. Then again, Hollywood is almost always oblivious about those rare occasions when it accidentally creates art, too.
The thing about film noir is that it almost entirely contradicts the auteur theory if both are taken seriously. In the first place, these were almost all quintessentially studio movies, not directorial statements of any sort. None of the supposed genre’s directors set out to make a noir movie the way others set out, say, to make a screwball comedy or, for that matter, some socialist or communist writers were in fact trying to promote certain political themes in various post-war movies. (N.B., this isn’t an implicit defense of the notorious Hollywood Blacklist but simply an acknowledgment that some of the writers of that era were, in fact, intentionally polemical.)
These movies were all shot in black and white because, well, duh, just about all cheap movies were shot in black and white in the late 40s and 50s. Their cinematographic technique relied heavily on shadows and skewed camera angles because that was discovered to be a (cheap!) way to build psychological suspense and, frankly, just because it was trendy then in the same way those damned "let's swing the camera around the subject three or four times like an orbiting moon" shots are practically required by law in every movie made today.
Sure, there were a few movies of that era in which the female lead was a conniving vixen leading the poor, gullible protagonist to ruin, but you'd be hard pressed to make that claim about many of the most classic noir movies, e.g., Sunset Boulevard or even The Third Man. Finally, two of the greatest ‘noir’ movies of all time – Blade Runner and Chinatown – fit none of the noir theorists' criteria except the most important one: mood.
The fact is that the film noir genre is a garment that fits few movies of the era very well regardless of how many movies it will more or less badly fit here or there. It is, in the end, a hole that is neither round nor square nor any definite shape at all into which very, very few movie pegs can be fitted easily but just about any drama or movie of suspense can be pounded into with a heavy enough rhetorical hammer. So much for French theory, too.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Constant Viewer: Tell No One (Ne le dis a personne)
So there Constant Viewer was, standing in front of one of those – gulp! – Art Houses looking for an excuse to eat popcorn. But first, a brief digression.
Lewis Black does a comedy routine about candy corn. You know, the little yellow cones with the orange tips (or is it orange with yellow?) that you still see once in a while in candy dishes among the sort of people who have candy dishes in the Halloween through Thanksgiving season. The routine is, essentially, that candy corn tastes like crap, everyone knows candy corn tastes like crap and yet every year we somehow manage to fool ourselves into believing that maybe this year’s candy corn won’t taste like crap until we taste it and, lo and behold, rediscover that it tastes like crap.
Okay, so an even briefer digression would be Lucy convincing Charlie Brown once again to run and try to kick the football.
Both of which lead CV to the real topic: French movies.
Lewis Black does a comedy routine about candy corn. You know, the little yellow cones with the orange tips (or is it orange with yellow?) that you still see once in a while in candy dishes among the sort of people who have candy dishes in the Halloween through Thanksgiving season. The routine is, essentially, that candy corn tastes like crap, everyone knows candy corn tastes like crap and yet every year we somehow manage to fool ourselves into believing that maybe this year’s candy corn won’t taste like crap until we taste it and, lo and behold, rediscover that it tastes like crap.
Okay, so an even briefer digression would be Lucy convincing Charlie Brown once again to run and try to kick the football.
Both of which lead CV to the real topic: French movies.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Picky, Picky, Picky!
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m already in August Mode, a frame of mind common among Washingtonians, New Yorkers and other pretentious pseudo-intellectuals of my ilk during which time unless, let's say, Obama is caught in fishnet stockings chasing a sumo wrestler or McCain is discovered to actually have spent the Viet Nam war in Canada making macramé bongs while his twin brother Skippy was the real POW, I simply don’t give a rat’s ass about politics. Save it for after Labor Day.
So I was surfing for non-political news earlier today at my usual haunts and ran across this story in Slate about amateur locksmithing.
This happens to be a topic about which I actually know a little something, albeit second-hand, because amateur locksmithing was the hobby of one of my oldest school friends, a fellow who shall remain unidentified despite the statutes of limitations having long since lapsed for his various youthful indiscretions.
Of which there were many. My friend, whom I’ll call here “Jimmy” after a fairly crude lock opening technique, became intrigued as a child with the inner workings of locks and keys and, more to the point, how to open the former without benefit of the latter. As skilled trades go, locksmithing is far more about brains than brawn and Jimmy has a logical mind and a meticulous temperament exactly suited to figuring out puzzles and therefore to picking locks.
By high school Jimmy had also managed to acquire a key cutting machine – don’t ask! – various tools of the trade including illegal lock picks and tension wrenches (more about which below), shims and so forth. He had also, um, ‘borrowed’ locks from schools, churches and other public and semi-public places, dismantling them and discovering in the process how to make master keys to those entire buildings or building complexes.
I hasten to point out that Jimmy had no larcenous intentions in any of this. He simply viewed a locked door or a lock of any sort as a challenge. The fun was all in figuring out how to thwart the lock owner’s desire to keep him out, not in actually entering where he wasn’t wanted. It was, in short, simply a game.
Okay, so every once in a while there were more, um, practical applications of this skill. In the late 1960s, when the suburban youth of America (1) had just discovered the pleasures of marijuana but (2) were convinced that there were millions of ‘narcs” lurking just about everywhere, having a key that could stop the elevator between floors in a local apartment building (not ours!) long enough to smoke a joint and then wait for the ceiling exhaust fan to remove the tell-tale scent before turning the elevator back on was the perfect solution to our privacy problem. Keys to the padlocked chains barring vehicular entry into public parks where a young couple might go parking at night similarly proved handy.
Of course, that was all many, many years ago and my friend Jimmy is now a respected member of one of the learned professions and a disquietingly conservative pillar of his community. My guess is that he doesn’t even smoke pot anymore, let alone take young girls parking.
Woolgathering about my salad days (“Block that mixed metaphor!”) aside, the thing about this amateur locksmithing business is that its opposition is such a classic case of vested interests trying to protect their once largely unchallenged turf and trotting out all the usual and typically disingenuous “public interest” arguments in the process.
Case in point: I could be charged in many jurisdictions with possession of burglary tool over the fact that I have, courtesy of Jimmy, a small lock picking kit I’ve used on countless occasions when I or a friend lost or misplaced a key. At least the way the law used to be written, unless you were a bonded locksmith, such mere possession was sufficient grounds for conviction of a misdemeanor. After all, if you weren’t a real locksmith, what on earth could you possibly want with such implements except to commit a crime? Right?
[Insert “possession of rape equipment” joke here.]
I wasn’t aware that amateur locksmithing was so popular a hobby as the Slate article suggests, but I’m glad to hear it. Truth be told, I misplaced my old pick set a few years ago. Hey, maybe I can just order one online these days! To be sure, there are legitimate arguments in favor of keeping some sorts of information confidential. But knowing how to open a pin-tumbler lock, even a Medeco lock, without having to use bolt cutters hardly rises to the level of legitimate state secret. And as the enthusiasts correctly point out, the first step in building a better mousetrap lies in finding out the weaknesses in the old model. That’s what we call progress.
So I was surfing for non-political news earlier today at my usual haunts and ran across this story in Slate about amateur locksmithing.
This happens to be a topic about which I actually know a little something, albeit second-hand, because amateur locksmithing was the hobby of one of my oldest school friends, a fellow who shall remain unidentified despite the statutes of limitations having long since lapsed for his various youthful indiscretions.
Of which there were many. My friend, whom I’ll call here “Jimmy” after a fairly crude lock opening technique, became intrigued as a child with the inner workings of locks and keys and, more to the point, how to open the former without benefit of the latter. As skilled trades go, locksmithing is far more about brains than brawn and Jimmy has a logical mind and a meticulous temperament exactly suited to figuring out puzzles and therefore to picking locks.
By high school Jimmy had also managed to acquire a key cutting machine – don’t ask! – various tools of the trade including illegal lock picks and tension wrenches (more about which below), shims and so forth. He had also, um, ‘borrowed’ locks from schools, churches and other public and semi-public places, dismantling them and discovering in the process how to make master keys to those entire buildings or building complexes.
I hasten to point out that Jimmy had no larcenous intentions in any of this. He simply viewed a locked door or a lock of any sort as a challenge. The fun was all in figuring out how to thwart the lock owner’s desire to keep him out, not in actually entering where he wasn’t wanted. It was, in short, simply a game.
Okay, so every once in a while there were more, um, practical applications of this skill. In the late 1960s, when the suburban youth of America (1) had just discovered the pleasures of marijuana but (2) were convinced that there were millions of ‘narcs” lurking just about everywhere, having a key that could stop the elevator between floors in a local apartment building (not ours!) long enough to smoke a joint and then wait for the ceiling exhaust fan to remove the tell-tale scent before turning the elevator back on was the perfect solution to our privacy problem. Keys to the padlocked chains barring vehicular entry into public parks where a young couple might go parking at night similarly proved handy.
Of course, that was all many, many years ago and my friend Jimmy is now a respected member of one of the learned professions and a disquietingly conservative pillar of his community. My guess is that he doesn’t even smoke pot anymore, let alone take young girls parking.
Woolgathering about my salad days (“Block that mixed metaphor!”) aside, the thing about this amateur locksmithing business is that its opposition is such a classic case of vested interests trying to protect their once largely unchallenged turf and trotting out all the usual and typically disingenuous “public interest” arguments in the process.
Case in point: I could be charged in many jurisdictions with possession of burglary tool over the fact that I have, courtesy of Jimmy, a small lock picking kit I’ve used on countless occasions when I or a friend lost or misplaced a key. At least the way the law used to be written, unless you were a bonded locksmith, such mere possession was sufficient grounds for conviction of a misdemeanor. After all, if you weren’t a real locksmith, what on earth could you possibly want with such implements except to commit a crime? Right?
[Insert “possession of rape equipment” joke here.]
I wasn’t aware that amateur locksmithing was so popular a hobby as the Slate article suggests, but I’m glad to hear it. Truth be told, I misplaced my old pick set a few years ago. Hey, maybe I can just order one online these days! To be sure, there are legitimate arguments in favor of keeping some sorts of information confidential. But knowing how to open a pin-tumbler lock, even a Medeco lock, without having to use bolt cutters hardly rises to the level of legitimate state secret. And as the enthusiasts correctly point out, the first step in building a better mousetrap lies in finding out the weaknesses in the old model. That’s what we call progress.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Constant Viewer's Summer Roundup
Constant Viewer is sometimes asked why, since he isn’t paid to do so, he occasionally goes to movies knowing well in advance that they are going to defy the laws of physics and simultaneously suck and blow. Collaterally, CV is asked if there are any such movies so far beneath his contempt that even he won’t stoop to go seeing them.
Good questions. Glad you asked.
In the first place,
Good questions. Glad you asked.
In the first place,
Friday, July 18, 2008
Constant Viewer: The Dark Knight
Constant Viewer caught the 12:01 showing of The Dark Knight in a theater nearly filled with some five or six hundred fellow dark knight owls, CV’s 13 year old son included. The theater almost certainly would have been filled but for a second showing some 20 minutes later. CV isn’t venturing any guesses about opening records, especially if you adjust for inflation, but The Dark Knight is a lock for this summer’s blockbuster, no mean feat when you consider the current competition.
Let’s get the accolades out of the way up front here. Christopher Nolan continues to astonish as a director, and no little part of CV’s astonishment is in realizing that The Dark Knight is only his eighth directorial credit. Christian Bale has certainly grown in the part since Batman Begins, a fine movie in which, in CV’s opinion, Bale was its weakest element. CV can’t remember when he didn’t like Michael Caine in anything since the original Alfie and can’t, for that matter, remember anything in which Maggie Gyllenhaal wasn’t an asset, either. Morgan Freeman has one of the most fun lines in the movie in a truely clever scene of attempted extortion and both Gary Oldman’s James Gordon and Aaron Eckhart’s Harvy Dent manage to impress despite all the stiff competition for attention.
And then there is Heath Ledger. Will his Joker earn the late actor a posthumous Oscar? If the voting were held by, say, Election Day, Ledger’s chances would be excellent. But The Dark Knight is still a summer movie, not a ‘serious’ movie, and the Academy has historically been chary about posthumous awards. Nonetheless, Ledger’s performance is simply breathtaking and, as entertaining as Jack Nicholson’s Joker was in the original Batman, this new Joker has to be considered the gold standard against which both earlier and subsequent super villains must be judged.
Ironically, however, the way Ledger’s presence overpowers everything else in The Dark Knight is, given Ledger’s untimely death, the movie's greatest weakness; for CV couldn’t help but be distracted over and over again by the thought that this bravura performance could never be reprised. Imagine, for example, if Anthony Hopkins had died shortly before the release of The Silence of the Lambs.
Of course, you’re going to go see The Dark Knight no matter what CV says even if your girlfriend drags you to Mamma Mia first. Buy the large popcorn and soda, since you’re going to be there a full 152 minutes after the endless litany of trailers. Well, after all, Nolan is reaching for a movie of epic proportions here. And if he just slightly misses, the audience nonetheless was certainly not bored as the second hour came and went with another half-hour ahead of them. In fact, when the credits finally did roll they applauded. And CV, to his mild surprise, joined in.
Let’s get the accolades out of the way up front here. Christopher Nolan continues to astonish as a director, and no little part of CV’s astonishment is in realizing that The Dark Knight is only his eighth directorial credit. Christian Bale has certainly grown in the part since Batman Begins, a fine movie in which, in CV’s opinion, Bale was its weakest element. CV can’t remember when he didn’t like Michael Caine in anything since the original Alfie and can’t, for that matter, remember anything in which Maggie Gyllenhaal wasn’t an asset, either. Morgan Freeman has one of the most fun lines in the movie in a truely clever scene of attempted extortion and both Gary Oldman’s James Gordon and Aaron Eckhart’s Harvy Dent manage to impress despite all the stiff competition for attention.
And then there is Heath Ledger. Will his Joker earn the late actor a posthumous Oscar? If the voting were held by, say, Election Day, Ledger’s chances would be excellent. But The Dark Knight is still a summer movie, not a ‘serious’ movie, and the Academy has historically been chary about posthumous awards. Nonetheless, Ledger’s performance is simply breathtaking and, as entertaining as Jack Nicholson’s Joker was in the original Batman, this new Joker has to be considered the gold standard against which both earlier and subsequent super villains must be judged.
Ironically, however, the way Ledger’s presence overpowers everything else in The Dark Knight is, given Ledger’s untimely death, the movie's greatest weakness; for CV couldn’t help but be distracted over and over again by the thought that this bravura performance could never be reprised. Imagine, for example, if Anthony Hopkins had died shortly before the release of The Silence of the Lambs.
Of course, you’re going to go see The Dark Knight no matter what CV says even if your girlfriend drags you to Mamma Mia first. Buy the large popcorn and soda, since you’re going to be there a full 152 minutes after the endless litany of trailers. Well, after all, Nolan is reaching for a movie of epic proportions here. And if he just slightly misses, the audience nonetheless was certainly not bored as the second hour came and went with another half-hour ahead of them. In fact, when the credits finally did roll they applauded. And CV, to his mild surprise, joined in.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Constant Viewer: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Constant Viewer would think lines like “I’m not a baby, I’m a tumor” would be a whole lot funnier if it weren’t for the fact that countless young women have been taught to treat their unborn children exactly in that manner. Still, in the context of the Troll Market in Hellboy II: The Golden Army it’s a pretty clever line. It’s a pretty clever movie, for that matter, even if director Guillermo del Toro may have spent just a little too much time playing Rock’em Sock’em Robots as a boy.
Hellboy II is, after all, a boy’s movie based on a boy’s comic book. Okay, so as comic book characters go, Hellboy is on the other side of the comic universe from Nancy and Sluggo if for no other reason than he actually is funny occasionally. As is the movie. Ron Perlman reprises his Son of Satan turned government agency good guy (an oxymoron, CV knows) with plenty of the right sort of attitude, which is to say not too damned seriously. The rest of the principals from the first move are back, too, and CV was disappointed only in Jeffery Tambor’s character not being nearly as bureaucratically smarmy as before. As for new team member Johann Kraus, IMDb lists no fewer than three actors participating in what is essentially Robbie the Robot with a case of magical gas. CV notes for his fans, among whom CV is not to be counted, that the Kraus character voice actor is Seth MacFarlane. This explains the gas, at least.
As for the story line, Hellboy and his Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense teammates are called to the rescue when the prince of an ancient magical kingdom attempts to break a truce with humanity by reassembling a crown that will give him control of “70 times 70” supposedly unstoppableRock’em Sock’em Robots Mechanical Warriors. The prince isn’t such a bad fellow, really; he just feels that human beings have taken over too much of the planet. His father and twin sister oppose breaking the truce and a family squabble of mythical proportions ensues. Oh, and there are a couple of love stories kinda, sorta going on in the background, too.
Del Toro obviously has a flare for fantasy yet keeps his tongue firmly planted in his cheek here even as he puts the characters through their more or less predictable paces. Hardly a great film, Hellboy II manages to keep from taking itself too seriously well over ninety percent of the time and settles sensibly for being a fun ride in Summer Movieland.
Hellboy II is, after all, a boy’s movie based on a boy’s comic book. Okay, so as comic book characters go, Hellboy is on the other side of the comic universe from Nancy and Sluggo if for no other reason than he actually is funny occasionally. As is the movie. Ron Perlman reprises his Son of Satan turned government agency good guy (an oxymoron, CV knows) with plenty of the right sort of attitude, which is to say not too damned seriously. The rest of the principals from the first move are back, too, and CV was disappointed only in Jeffery Tambor’s character not being nearly as bureaucratically smarmy as before. As for new team member Johann Kraus, IMDb lists no fewer than three actors participating in what is essentially Robbie the Robot with a case of magical gas. CV notes for his fans, among whom CV is not to be counted, that the Kraus character voice actor is Seth MacFarlane. This explains the gas, at least.
As for the story line, Hellboy and his Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense teammates are called to the rescue when the prince of an ancient magical kingdom attempts to break a truce with humanity by reassembling a crown that will give him control of “70 times 70” supposedly unstoppable
Del Toro obviously has a flare for fantasy yet keeps his tongue firmly planted in his cheek here even as he puts the characters through their more or less predictable paces. Hardly a great film, Hellboy II manages to keep from taking itself too seriously well over ninety percent of the time and settles sensibly for being a fun ride in Summer Movieland.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
May I Misquote You On That?
With a tip of the virtual mortarboard to reason’s Nick Gillespie, we find an interesting report from Andy Guess in Inside Higher Ed of a study by J. Scott Armstrong and Malcolm Wright with the remarkable conclusion that all scholarly papers and what they laughingly call 'studies' and 'research' in all academic disciplines are entirely made up – plucked from out of the old nether orifices, as it were, by so-called 'scholars' who certainly never bother to read the citations or made-up quotations they litter their papers with, knowing full well that no one is ever going to bother to check and, besides, those earlier studies and so forth are just as phony and filled with errors and fabrications as the new stuff, so why bother?
Or something like that.
Or something like that.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
What's Black And White And Red-Taped All Over?
When pondering whether politicians are being disingenuous or really are as stupid as they appear, remember that these two are not mutually exclusive. So when Dallas County commissioners squabble over whether the phrase “black hole” includes racist overtones and requires an apology, the mind reels at trying to discern whether this is a case of race bating on the part of the white commissioner, the black commissioner or both.
The context here was the loss or misplacing of files in the Dallas County central collecting office. White commissioner Kenneth Mayfield called the office a “black hole,” black commissioner John Wiley Price “corrected” Mayfield and called it a “white hole” and then “Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.” (Note to the incredulous: judges are elected in Texas.)
A black hole, the Dallas Morning News dutifully reported for its public school educated readership, is "the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape."
Lest you presume that I, being white, naturally side with Mayfield here, it occurs to me that it may be the case, known to him and his colleagues, that the personnel working at that office are predominantly African Americans, in which case his comment might indeed have been an intentionally elliptical racist innuendo. Of course, that credits the man with significantly more wit and verbal talent than the vast majority of politicians at any level have, but it can’t simply be rejected as a theory. I hasten to add that I know nothing at all about any of these men or about Dallas County’s bureaucracy. I do know something about bureaucratic inefficiency, though, and such knowledge includes the fact that incompetence and indifference are equal opportunity qualities commonly possessed by government employees of all shades. (Wait a minute! When I just said "shade," did I mean... oh, never mind.)
In any case, race bating and posturing, whoever may be at fault here, is a tiresome game. Sadly, however, there must still be a strong market for it among voters, else politicians wouldn’t supply it with such tedious regularity. Personally, I am in favor of politicians acting as idiotically as possible as frequently as possible in public. How else will the public ever come to understand what they (and, perforce, you and I) are paying for?
The context here was the loss or misplacing of files in the Dallas County central collecting office. White commissioner Kenneth Mayfield called the office a “black hole,” black commissioner John Wiley Price “corrected” Mayfield and called it a “white hole” and then “Judge Thomas Jones, who is black, to demand an apology from Mayfield for his racially insensitive analogy.” (Note to the incredulous: judges are elected in Texas.)
A black hole, the Dallas Morning News dutifully reported for its public school educated readership, is "the invisible remains of a collapsed star, with an intense gravitational field from which neither light nor matter can escape."
Lest you presume that I, being white, naturally side with Mayfield here, it occurs to me that it may be the case, known to him and his colleagues, that the personnel working at that office are predominantly African Americans, in which case his comment might indeed have been an intentionally elliptical racist innuendo. Of course, that credits the man with significantly more wit and verbal talent than the vast majority of politicians at any level have, but it can’t simply be rejected as a theory. I hasten to add that I know nothing at all about any of these men or about Dallas County’s bureaucracy. I do know something about bureaucratic inefficiency, though, and such knowledge includes the fact that incompetence and indifference are equal opportunity qualities commonly possessed by government employees of all shades. (Wait a minute! When I just said "shade," did I mean... oh, never mind.)
In any case, race bating and posturing, whoever may be at fault here, is a tiresome game. Sadly, however, there must still be a strong market for it among voters, else politicians wouldn’t supply it with such tedious regularity. Personally, I am in favor of politicians acting as idiotically as possible as frequently as possible in public. How else will the public ever come to understand what they (and, perforce, you and I) are paying for?
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Constant Viewer: Mongol
Mongol probably isn’t coming to a theater near you or, if it is or already has, it probably isn’t the sort of movie you’re likely to go see unless you’re already the sort of art house film buff who eschews Hollywood flicks and regularly uses words like "eschew."
But Constant Viewer saw it yesterday and, as Mongolian language movies go, CV would give it a thumbs up (if CV had opposable thumbs like those art house snobs, that is) for beautiful cinematography, excellently choreographed and executed battle scenescomplete replete with splattered blood galore and the sort of epic sweep we don’t see all that much ever since David Lean died.
Mongol tells the story of the early years and rise to power of Genghis Khan and, lest there be any doubt, it is not a remake of The Conqueror, clearly the most grotesquely funny miscasting of John Wayne ever. Besides, Mongol is all about the gentle side of Genghis Khan; Khan the family man, law giver and all around good guy. It’s not The Wrath of Khan; it’s Yes, I Khan! (Now, if only CV could figure out some way to work The 39 Steppes into this review.) Better still, since Mongols are not what you’d call chatty people, this is the rare foreign language movie where there is absolutely zero chance the rare dialog and therefore rare subtitles will distract you.
Mongol is in many respects an old-fashioned movie. There are no surprising twists or turns and no flashy CGI special effects. It is, on the other hand, an entirely craftsman-like film and, as all movies should, it takes you somewhere you’ve almost certainly never been. By contrast, an increasing number of this summer’s movies take you where you’ve already been far, far too often.
But Constant Viewer saw it yesterday and, as Mongolian language movies go, CV would give it a thumbs up (if CV had opposable thumbs like those art house snobs, that is) for beautiful cinematography, excellently choreographed and executed battle scenes
Mongol tells the story of the early years and rise to power of Genghis Khan and, lest there be any doubt, it is not a remake of The Conqueror, clearly the most grotesquely funny miscasting of John Wayne ever. Besides, Mongol is all about the gentle side of Genghis Khan; Khan the family man, law giver and all around good guy. It’s not The Wrath of Khan; it’s Yes, I Khan! (Now, if only CV could figure out some way to work The 39 Steppes into this review.) Better still, since Mongols are not what you’d call chatty people, this is the rare foreign language movie where there is absolutely zero chance the rare dialog and therefore rare subtitles will distract you.
Mongol is in many respects an old-fashioned movie. There are no surprising twists or turns and no flashy CGI special effects. It is, on the other hand, an entirely craftsman-like film and, as all movies should, it takes you somewhere you’ve almost certainly never been. By contrast, an increasing number of this summer’s movies take you where you’ve already been far, far too often.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
New Corn Laws Adam Smith Would Also Dislike*
Diamonds are scarce like every other economic good. Their scarcity, however, is vastly exaggerated by those in the business of marketing them as a luxury. If the cure for cancer were discovered tomorrow, however, and if it somehow required natural, i.e., not man-made diamonds, the demand for diamonds would skyrocket and they would legitimately command an even higher price.
Food, by contrast, is not a luxury but a necessity, at least in its most elementary forms. Moreover, the poorer you are, the more you will spend of whatever your income may be on food and the more vulnerable you will be to any sudden and significant increase in its price. Four dollar a gallon gasoline inconveniences middle-class Americans but a 75% increase in global food prices is catastrophic for poor people around the world.
Which is precisely what an unpublished World Bank study is being reported as claiming.
In the rush to report such things (and, yes, the rush to report such reports), it more often than not occurs that sensational conclusions such as this are not only misleadingly taken out of context but, once the data is actually made available, subsequently shown to be unsubstantiated by that data. That needs to be said here, as well.
Still, whatever the figure may be, whether it is 75% or the laughably and unbelievably small 3% the U.S. government has claimed plant-derived fuels contribute to recent food price increases, it takes no more than common sense (never in large supply, I grant you) and a passing grade in intro economics to realize that a new and large demand for a commodity will at the very least temporarily raise its market price. Moreover, at some point, if that demand continues or, worse yet, continues to grow, suppliers will not be able to meet such increased demand at whatever the former market price may have been.
U.S. energy policy (not unlike U.S. health care policy) is criminally broken. I mean “criminal” in a moral, not a legal sense, and yet the fact that alternative bio-fuels like ethanol are being mandated by our elected weasels in Washington artificially skewing both the energy and the food markets and contributing no end to the misery of the world’s poor probably should be a crime of some sort. It is, in fact, simply a forced redistribution of wealth for nothing more than the ephemeral political advantage of those office holders who temporarily placate their constituencies as a result, never mind the unintended and sometimes tragic consequences others must suffer.
But that is the political reality. Starving people in third world nations don’t vote in U.S. elections, whereas Kansas and Nebraska corn farmers do.
(* Yes, I do in fact know that when Adam Smith first wrote about corn laws the word "corn" was a generic term for grains.)
Food, by contrast, is not a luxury but a necessity, at least in its most elementary forms. Moreover, the poorer you are, the more you will spend of whatever your income may be on food and the more vulnerable you will be to any sudden and significant increase in its price. Four dollar a gallon gasoline inconveniences middle-class Americans but a 75% increase in global food prices is catastrophic for poor people around the world.
Which is precisely what an unpublished World Bank study is being reported as claiming.
In the rush to report such things (and, yes, the rush to report such reports), it more often than not occurs that sensational conclusions such as this are not only misleadingly taken out of context but, once the data is actually made available, subsequently shown to be unsubstantiated by that data. That needs to be said here, as well.
Still, whatever the figure may be, whether it is 75% or the laughably and unbelievably small 3% the U.S. government has claimed plant-derived fuels contribute to recent food price increases, it takes no more than common sense (never in large supply, I grant you) and a passing grade in intro economics to realize that a new and large demand for a commodity will at the very least temporarily raise its market price. Moreover, at some point, if that demand continues or, worse yet, continues to grow, suppliers will not be able to meet such increased demand at whatever the former market price may have been.
U.S. energy policy (not unlike U.S. health care policy) is criminally broken. I mean “criminal” in a moral, not a legal sense, and yet the fact that alternative bio-fuels like ethanol are being mandated by our elected weasels in Washington artificially skewing both the energy and the food markets and contributing no end to the misery of the world’s poor probably should be a crime of some sort. It is, in fact, simply a forced redistribution of wealth for nothing more than the ephemeral political advantage of those office holders who temporarily placate their constituencies as a result, never mind the unintended and sometimes tragic consequences others must suffer.
But that is the political reality. Starving people in third world nations don’t vote in U.S. elections, whereas Kansas and Nebraska corn farmers do.
(* Yes, I do in fact know that when Adam Smith first wrote about corn laws the word "corn" was a generic term for grains.)
Friday, July 4, 2008
Avast, Ye Lubbers! And A Happy 4th To Ye! Yarrrr!
No 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door. But 'tis enough. 'Twill serve. -- Mercutio, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene 1.
Today, as my little way of celebrating Independence Day and my impending 57th birthday two days from now, I marched bravely (well, semi-bravely) into a Claire’s at the local mall and paid a young woman $20 to pierce my left ear. This admittedly trivial bit of fashion news -- news in the sense that when word gets out that geezers like me are getting their ears pierced now, piercing and earring sales will soon plummet -- requires a bit of background information.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Constant Viewer: Hancock
The first thing that must be said about Hancock is that, its misleading trailer aside, this is not a comedy but a serious summer superhero action movie. Okay, so the phrase “summer superhero action movie” probably shouldn’t ever be qualified by “serious.” Still, Constant Viewer thought he’d be seeing something of a send-up of the genre; the superhero equivalent of Last Action Hero (a much maligned and actually very good movie, by the way).
But no, Hancock has its comic moments but most of them are, in fact, on that disingenuous trailer. What you see when the lights go down is the story of a man whose past has been lost and whose present and future, as a result, are in danger of being lost as well. CV isn’t surprised his fellow reviewers have been all over the map about this movie, he really isn’t sure about it, himself.
This much in favor of Hancock can clearly be said. All three principal players, Will Smith, Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman, turn in strong performances in well written, three dimensional roles. (Okay, okay, 3-D by action movies standards, but hey, you know.) Theron’s part is substantially larger than CV expected, a fact which leads to a plot twist that caught CV entirely by surprise. The special effects are fun and it’s actually refreshing to see the ripple effect, if you will, of the typical superhero’s good deed doing.
On the other hand, CV came away thinking that Hancock is a brilliant concept that has been almost indifferently executed. Surely a malcontented alcoholic superhero is a character worthy of more exposition and exploration than he is given here and CV felt almost rushed through Hancock’s rehabilitation so that the movie’s far more conventional story could get going.
Will Smith is an enormous talent with enormous personal appeal. Among his contemporaries, probably only Tom Hanks is as hot and as personable a star. Smith's string of hits since before Independence Day is a simply amazing streak (never mind that CV thought Wild, Wild West sucked), and he’ll probably carry Hancock securely into financial success just on good will alone. Frankly, however, Hancock didn’t come close to the major movie it could or should have been, and that’s a damned shame.
But no, Hancock has its comic moments but most of them are, in fact, on that disingenuous trailer. What you see when the lights go down is the story of a man whose past has been lost and whose present and future, as a result, are in danger of being lost as well. CV isn’t surprised his fellow reviewers have been all over the map about this movie, he really isn’t sure about it, himself.
This much in favor of Hancock can clearly be said. All three principal players, Will Smith, Charlize Theron and Jason Bateman, turn in strong performances in well written, three dimensional roles. (Okay, okay, 3-D by action movies standards, but hey, you know.) Theron’s part is substantially larger than CV expected, a fact which leads to a plot twist that caught CV entirely by surprise. The special effects are fun and it’s actually refreshing to see the ripple effect, if you will, of the typical superhero’s good deed doing.
On the other hand, CV came away thinking that Hancock is a brilliant concept that has been almost indifferently executed. Surely a malcontented alcoholic superhero is a character worthy of more exposition and exploration than he is given here and CV felt almost rushed through Hancock’s rehabilitation so that the movie’s far more conventional story could get going.
Will Smith is an enormous talent with enormous personal appeal. Among his contemporaries, probably only Tom Hanks is as hot and as personable a star. Smith's string of hits since before Independence Day is a simply amazing streak (never mind that CV thought Wild, Wild West sucked), and he’ll probably carry Hancock securely into financial success just on good will alone. Frankly, however, Hancock didn’t come close to the major movie it could or should have been, and that’s a damned shame.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Torture By Any Other Name
I strongly encourage you to read Christopher Hitchens' first-hand account of the experience of waterboarding in Vanity Fair.
When news first broke that U.S. personnel were using this "enhanced interrogation technique," the ensuing discussions broke into two separate questions: (1) are such techniques torture and (2) regardless, are such techniques ever morally justified.
Much to the dismay of my former co-blogger Thoreau, I have steadfastly remained agnostic on the second question, perhaps to the point where the casual reader might have inferred that I was implicitly sanctioning such behavior in our current, endless War On Terrorism™.
No. I was not. I do not.
Nor have I sanctioned or do I sanction the despicable practice of extraordinary rendition in which the U.S. delivers prisoners into the hands of our less punctilious "allies" to be tortured.
I do not, nonetheless, rule out the occasional, exceptional case where the utilitarian calculus is overwhelmingly in favor of taking the risk torture might work versus the more likely harm to come if it is not attempted. Such scenarios are, ex hypothesi, immune to criticisms that they may not or will not work. Sometimes long shots are all you have.
But, as Thoreau has also pointed out repeatedly, the greatest care must be taken to ensure that the exception does not become the rule, that we do not become beguiled by fear into condoning that which is both rationally and morally beneath us as a people.
Returning to the first point, however, I must confess that in my personal, experiential ignorance of such things I considered it at first an open question whether waterboarding did or should qualify as a torture technique. But whatever initial benefit of the doubt we might once have given officials who either denied waterboarding is torture or attempted to hide behind bureaucratic euphemisms has long since passed. (Such officials, it hardly needs to be added, long ago forfeited any entitlement whatsoever to credibility, anyway.)
I have what I think is, under the circumstances, a modest and reasonable recommendation. Anyone who continues to assert or argue that waterboarding does not constitute torture should immediately be afforded the opportunity to experience it first-hand it as Mr. Hitchens did. If, having done so, he continues to wish to assert that waterboarding is not torture, we should consider his opinion for whatever we believe it is worth.
Otherwise -- that is, should he not avail himself of that opportunity -- he should politely but firmly be told to shut the f*ck up.
When news first broke that U.S. personnel were using this "enhanced interrogation technique," the ensuing discussions broke into two separate questions: (1) are such techniques torture and (2) regardless, are such techniques ever morally justified.
Much to the dismay of my former co-blogger Thoreau, I have steadfastly remained agnostic on the second question, perhaps to the point where the casual reader might have inferred that I was implicitly sanctioning such behavior in our current, endless War On Terrorism™.
No. I was not. I do not.
Nor have I sanctioned or do I sanction the despicable practice of extraordinary rendition in which the U.S. delivers prisoners into the hands of our less punctilious "allies" to be tortured.
I do not, nonetheless, rule out the occasional, exceptional case where the utilitarian calculus is overwhelmingly in favor of taking the risk torture might work versus the more likely harm to come if it is not attempted. Such scenarios are, ex hypothesi, immune to criticisms that they may not or will not work. Sometimes long shots are all you have.
But, as Thoreau has also pointed out repeatedly, the greatest care must be taken to ensure that the exception does not become the rule, that we do not become beguiled by fear into condoning that which is both rationally and morally beneath us as a people.
Returning to the first point, however, I must confess that in my personal, experiential ignorance of such things I considered it at first an open question whether waterboarding did or should qualify as a torture technique. But whatever initial benefit of the doubt we might once have given officials who either denied waterboarding is torture or attempted to hide behind bureaucratic euphemisms has long since passed. (Such officials, it hardly needs to be added, long ago forfeited any entitlement whatsoever to credibility, anyway.)
I have what I think is, under the circumstances, a modest and reasonable recommendation. Anyone who continues to assert or argue that waterboarding does not constitute torture should immediately be afforded the opportunity to experience it first-hand it as Mr. Hitchens did. If, having done so, he continues to wish to assert that waterboarding is not torture, we should consider his opinion for whatever we believe it is worth.
Otherwise -- that is, should he not avail himself of that opportunity -- he should politely but firmly be told to shut the f*ck up.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Constant Viewer: Wanted
Wanted relies on so many dubious premises to advance its plot that it’s a good think it moves so quickly you never have time to think about it. Between Angelina Jolie showcasing her ink covered flesh in various stages of dishabille and bullets whizzing in various stages of stop action camera work through human skulls, it's possible, if unlikely, that the average viewer might not think to himself “Hey, this is pretty damned preposterous!”
But it is. Never mind all the "who’s killing who right now and how and why" business that makes up the slender thread of a story that weaves its way back and forth from homicides to hot tubs, complete with plenty of blood for the former and tomb-like wax coatings for the latter. These tubs, we are told, speed the healing process our poor hero seems to need just about every five minutes, never mind they also give us an opportunity to see a buck naked Jolie! (Albeit from a distance and it’s probably a “stunt rear” anyway.).
No, far more preposterous is the underlying premise of a thousand year old guild of weavers – that’s right, weavers! – whose, yeah sure, discovery of a secret code in their cloth led them to convert the guild into a fraternity of assassins. (“Uthor, look at this!” “What do you mean? Those are just mistakes in the weaving, you dolt!” “No, look! In binary code it spells out “Kill Sir Aldo!” “Ohmygawd! That’s amazing! There’s just one thing, though.” “What’s that?” “What the hell is binary code?”)
Now, in the hands of, say, Umberto Eco this is the sort of idea that could lead to a soporific 1,500 page doorstop littered with twenty or thirty obscure quotes per page in equally obscure, dead or dying languages. In the hands of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, however, it’s as good an excuse as any for a popcorn flick that after the first reel almost literally grabs the viewer by the throat and never lets go. Okay, so your popcorn might get a little blood on it along the way. It’s a small price to pay for the ride, don’t you think?
Bekmambetov, by the way, also directed the sadly under-viewed but beautiful 2004 Night Watch, a gothic action film well worthy of a rental even if you’re not all that into vampires. Back to Wanted, however, Jolie puts in a satisfyingly sex-drenched performance here and the rest of the casting is very strong and, at least to Constant Viewer, a bit of a surprise. CV’s appreciation of James McAvoy rose appreciably after his work in what was really the best picture of 2007 (the Golden Globe folks were right, the Academy was wrong), Atonement.
But CV wouldn’t have thought of McAvoy as an action flick protagonist notwithstanding his perfect casting as the uber-nebbish cubicle slave we find at the beginning of the movie. Well, CV was wrong and unlike those wimpy film reviewers you’ll find elsewhere he is man enough to admit it. Rounding out the cast we find Morgan Freeman as the head of the assassin’s guild, Thomas Kretschmann as the rogue assassin, Cross, and the recently omnipresent Terence Stamp in a small but important role towards the end of the film. Not a ringer in the lot of them.
If CV were in the star awarding business, Wanted would come in at somewhere around 7 out of 10 stars. (Speaking of which, did you ever wonder why those previously mentioned wimpy film reviewers set up a 4 or 5 star scale and then go and award half-stars? What the hell is a half-star and why don’t they just double their unit of measurement in the first place?) And, of course, those are summer movie stars, not autumn Oscar contender stars, too. Okay, so there are better movies playing right now. But the audience actually applauded several times at the showing CV attended and, let's face it, there are far, far worse movies out there, too. Hey, by all accounts the worst one out there at the moment isn't even directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
But it is. Never mind all the "who’s killing who right now and how and why" business that makes up the slender thread of a story that weaves its way back and forth from homicides to hot tubs, complete with plenty of blood for the former and tomb-like wax coatings for the latter. These tubs, we are told, speed the healing process our poor hero seems to need just about every five minutes, never mind they also give us an opportunity to see a buck naked Jolie! (Albeit from a distance and it’s probably a “stunt rear” anyway.).
No, far more preposterous is the underlying premise of a thousand year old guild of weavers – that’s right, weavers! – whose, yeah sure, discovery of a secret code in their cloth led them to convert the guild into a fraternity of assassins. (“Uthor, look at this!” “What do you mean? Those are just mistakes in the weaving, you dolt!” “No, look! In binary code it spells out “Kill Sir Aldo!” “Ohmygawd! That’s amazing! There’s just one thing, though.” “What’s that?” “What the hell is binary code?”)
Now, in the hands of, say, Umberto Eco this is the sort of idea that could lead to a soporific 1,500 page doorstop littered with twenty or thirty obscure quotes per page in equally obscure, dead or dying languages. In the hands of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, however, it’s as good an excuse as any for a popcorn flick that after the first reel almost literally grabs the viewer by the throat and never lets go. Okay, so your popcorn might get a little blood on it along the way. It’s a small price to pay for the ride, don’t you think?
Bekmambetov, by the way, also directed the sadly under-viewed but beautiful 2004 Night Watch, a gothic action film well worthy of a rental even if you’re not all that into vampires. Back to Wanted, however, Jolie puts in a satisfyingly sex-drenched performance here and the rest of the casting is very strong and, at least to Constant Viewer, a bit of a surprise. CV’s appreciation of James McAvoy rose appreciably after his work in what was really the best picture of 2007 (the Golden Globe folks were right, the Academy was wrong), Atonement.
But CV wouldn’t have thought of McAvoy as an action flick protagonist notwithstanding his perfect casting as the uber-nebbish cubicle slave we find at the beginning of the movie. Well, CV was wrong and unlike those wimpy film reviewers you’ll find elsewhere he is man enough to admit it. Rounding out the cast we find Morgan Freeman as the head of the assassin’s guild, Thomas Kretschmann as the rogue assassin, Cross, and the recently omnipresent Terence Stamp in a small but important role towards the end of the film. Not a ringer in the lot of them.
If CV were in the star awarding business, Wanted would come in at somewhere around 7 out of 10 stars. (Speaking of which, did you ever wonder why those previously mentioned wimpy film reviewers set up a 4 or 5 star scale and then go and award half-stars? What the hell is a half-star and why don’t they just double their unit of measurement in the first place?) And, of course, those are summer movie stars, not autumn Oscar contender stars, too. Okay, so there are better movies playing right now. But the audience actually applauded several times at the showing CV attended and, let's face it, there are far, far worse movies out there, too. Hey, by all accounts the worst one out there at the moment isn't even directed by M. Night Shyamalan.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Constant Viewer: WALL-E
Constant Viewer wishes he could share in the general enthusiasm over WALL-E. Sure, the animation is of the highest quality, the characters are sympathetic, the story is interesting and the film overall is beautifully executed, and yet... yet ...
Herewith the basic story: We trashed Earth so badly 700 years ago that we simply built a humongous spaceship to take at least some folks off on what was supposed to be a five year luxury cruise while machines remained behind to clean up and the ecosystem began to restore itself. WALL-E is one such robot, specializing in scrap metal compacting and stacking and somehow or otherit has kept itself running he has kept himself ‘alive’ all those years, still putting in a good day’s work but then repairing to his ‘apartment’ where he collects humanalia and watches an old VHS tape of Hello, Dolly! Meanwhile, EVE is a probe sent from the spaceship back to Earth. WALL-E is smitten and, as one thing leads to another, close encounters of the mechanical kind ensue.
Perhaps it was that damned video tape that spoiled it for CV. The thought of even a robot still watching Barbara Streisand (let alone Tommy Tune!) seven centuries from now is just too much to take. Okay, so WALL-E didn’t exactly have Netflix service and I suppose it could have been worse; say, a Pauly Shore movie or The Love Guru. But a little bit of whimsy goes a long way with CV and WALL-E dishes the stuff out by the tractor-load. Another thing. Sure it’s a cartoon, after all, and you’ve got to suspend disbelief at least as far as anthropomorphized robots go, but are we to believe [Warning: teeny-tiny spoilers!] that there has been technological progress in the past seven centuries accounting for the vastly different capabilities of WALL-E, on the one hand, and EVE, on the other, especially when both passengers and crew of the AXIOM have literally been waited on hand and foot by robots all those centuries? And given both how detached from physical contact and how blubberous we had become in deep space, where the hell did all those kiddies come from?
Finally, as amusing and even action packed as the thrilling conclusion is, it also stretches credulity even by movie, even by animated movie standards. Let’s put it this way to avoid any further spoilers: there better be a whole hell of a lot more of the prized possession that leads the ship’s Captain to return to Earth than we have any evidence for whatsoever until the Happily Ever After end credits begin to roll. Besides that, as romantic comedies go, CV gives EVE and WALL-E exactly zero chance of sharing in that Happily Ever After. Come on! Sure they''re both robots but otherwise they have absolutely nothing in common. I give them two, three centuries at most before they split up and there’s a bitter divorce and custody hearing in Robo-Court.
Go, take the kiddies. It’s a fun ride and you’ll get your money’s worth. But anyone who tells you WALL-E is as good as, say, Ratatouille or Finding Nemo, frankly has a screw loose.
Herewith the basic story: We trashed Earth so badly 700 years ago that we simply built a humongous spaceship to take at least some folks off on what was supposed to be a five year luxury cruise while machines remained behind to clean up and the ecosystem began to restore itself. WALL-E is one such robot, specializing in scrap metal compacting and stacking and somehow or other
Perhaps it was that damned video tape that spoiled it for CV. The thought of even a robot still watching Barbara Streisand (let alone Tommy Tune!) seven centuries from now is just too much to take. Okay, so WALL-E didn’t exactly have Netflix service and I suppose it could have been worse; say, a Pauly Shore movie or The Love Guru. But a little bit of whimsy goes a long way with CV and WALL-E dishes the stuff out by the tractor-load. Another thing. Sure it’s a cartoon, after all, and you’ve got to suspend disbelief at least as far as anthropomorphized robots go, but are we to believe [Warning: teeny-tiny spoilers!] that there has been technological progress in the past seven centuries accounting for the vastly different capabilities of WALL-E, on the one hand, and EVE, on the other, especially when both passengers and crew of the AXIOM have literally been waited on hand and foot by robots all those centuries? And given both how detached from physical contact and how blubberous we had become in deep space, where the hell did all those kiddies come from?
Finally, as amusing and even action packed as the thrilling conclusion is, it also stretches credulity even by movie, even by animated movie standards. Let’s put it this way to avoid any further spoilers: there better be a whole hell of a lot more of the prized possession that leads the ship’s Captain to return to Earth than we have any evidence for whatsoever until the Happily Ever After end credits begin to roll. Besides that, as romantic comedies go, CV gives EVE and WALL-E exactly zero chance of sharing in that Happily Ever After. Come on! Sure they''re both robots but otherwise they have absolutely nothing in common. I give them two, three centuries at most before they split up and there’s a bitter divorce and custody hearing in Robo-Court.
Go, take the kiddies. It’s a fun ride and you’ll get your money’s worth. But anyone who tells you WALL-E is as good as, say, Ratatouille or Finding Nemo, frankly has a screw loose.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Forget “Taxation Without Representation” — New D.C. License Plates to Read “Money, Guns & Lawyers”
If you are an able bodied male resident of the U.S. between the ages of 17 and 45, are either a citizen or have declared an intention to become a citizen and are not already a member of the Armed Services (including the Reserves and the National Guard), Title 10 U.S.C. § 311 says you are, whether you know it or not, a member of the “unorganized militia.”
The unorganized militia doesn’t include any women nor does it exclude gay men unless Congress bought into the “gay men are sissies” (hence not "able bodied") stereotype back in 1903 when it passed the Dick Act. I know, I know!
I, by the way, served honorably in the unorganized militia without so much as a single blot on my escutcheon – and you have no idea how hard it was to keep my escutcheon blotless all those years – and yet I received nary so much as an Honorable Discharge – and you have no idea how boring an honorable discharge can be -- from those ingrates at the Department of Defense!
But to paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, I didn’t come here to talk about the militia, I came to talk about the Second Amendment. As my co-blogger and famed radio personality Jim Babka has already noted today, the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller is a landmark ruling in the never-friggin’-ending struggle between individual liberties and state control.
At least one friend of mine who shall remain nameless but whose initials are RFC will probably be spending the rest of the day gloating to his many more "progressive" friends. And, indeed, notwithstanding the long, long litany of legitimate criticisms one can level at George W. Bush, lets not kid ourselves into thinking that the decision in Heller would have been the same if a Gore or Kerry nominee were sitting on the Supreme Court right now.
Of course, the reason I began with the business about the militia is because, for those of you who haven’t already memorized the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment reads:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
As you can readily see, the Founders seemed to think there was or should be some sort of connection between keeping and bearing arms and a well regulated militia. Then again, they also seemed to think a comma was required after “militia,” so maybe we shouldn’t always defer to what they thought.
Still, much of the palaver over gun rights since roughly 1791 has swirled around whatever the nexus between militias and individual rights is or should be, and now the Supremes have finally stepped up to the plate, or firing range as the case may be, and answered the mail. (If you like that mixed metaphor, I have many others, too!)
Here, however, is where I feel required to make a few turd in the punchbowl comments. First, as I tried valiantly but vainly to explain some years ago to an otherwise extremely bright and knowledgeable Michigan law professor who shall also remain nameless, the Critical Legal Studies boys and girls had it right, not in their actual politics (which almost universally sucks) but in their understanding that the language of the law is almost limitlessly flexible and that just about any legal result desired can be effected by those with the power to do so.
What this essentially means is that, even before Marbury v. Madison, there are no correct Supreme Court decisions, nor are there or have there ever been any wrong ones either, even including, for example, Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott. They simply are what they are and the wealth of 5 to 4 decisions over the years amply demonstrate that, over and over again, but for the opinion of one person the law of the land could and would have been vastly different. Argue about the morality or the desirability of this decision or that all you want, but save your breath when it comes to whether it was decided "correctly."
Second, never underestimate the power of the state and those who would use the state to do exactly what they want while telling you what to do and what not to do. Remember that when the largely pyrrhic victory against reverse discrimination in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was first announced, the same statists who had originally latched onto the phrase “affirmative action” to justify racial quotas now latched onto Justice Powell’s probably careless assertion that “diversity” was a legitimate state interest. Thanks to Justice O’Connor’s subsequent “reasoning” in Grutter v. Bollinger, equal rights advocates have only twenty years now to try again.
My point – and, yes, I do have one – is simply that the Supreme Court, just like the federal government taken as a whole, has been and continues to be as much a threat to individual liberties as a protector. If you really want to maximize freedom, minimize government.
The unorganized militia doesn’t include any women nor does it exclude gay men unless Congress bought into the “gay men are sissies” (hence not "able bodied") stereotype back in 1903 when it passed the Dick Act. I know, I know!
I, by the way, served honorably in the unorganized militia without so much as a single blot on my escutcheon – and you have no idea how hard it was to keep my escutcheon blotless all those years – and yet I received nary so much as an Honorable Discharge – and you have no idea how boring an honorable discharge can be -- from those ingrates at the Department of Defense!
But to paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, I didn’t come here to talk about the militia, I came to talk about the Second Amendment. As my co-blogger and famed radio personality Jim Babka has already noted today, the Supreme Court’s 5 to 4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller is a landmark ruling in the never-friggin’-ending struggle between individual liberties and state control.
At least one friend of mine who shall remain nameless but whose initials are RFC will probably be spending the rest of the day gloating to his many more "progressive" friends. And, indeed, notwithstanding the long, long litany of legitimate criticisms one can level at George W. Bush, lets not kid ourselves into thinking that the decision in Heller would have been the same if a Gore or Kerry nominee were sitting on the Supreme Court right now.
Of course, the reason I began with the business about the militia is because, for those of you who haven’t already memorized the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment reads:
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
As you can readily see, the Founders seemed to think there was or should be some sort of connection between keeping and bearing arms and a well regulated militia. Then again, they also seemed to think a comma was required after “militia,” so maybe we shouldn’t always defer to what they thought.
Still, much of the palaver over gun rights since roughly 1791 has swirled around whatever the nexus between militias and individual rights is or should be, and now the Supremes have finally stepped up to the plate, or firing range as the case may be, and answered the mail. (If you like that mixed metaphor, I have many others, too!)
Here, however, is where I feel required to make a few turd in the punchbowl comments. First, as I tried valiantly but vainly to explain some years ago to an otherwise extremely bright and knowledgeable Michigan law professor who shall also remain nameless, the Critical Legal Studies boys and girls had it right, not in their actual politics (which almost universally sucks) but in their understanding that the language of the law is almost limitlessly flexible and that just about any legal result desired can be effected by those with the power to do so.
What this essentially means is that, even before Marbury v. Madison, there are no correct Supreme Court decisions, nor are there or have there ever been any wrong ones either, even including, for example, Plessy v. Ferguson and Dred Scott. They simply are what they are and the wealth of 5 to 4 decisions over the years amply demonstrate that, over and over again, but for the opinion of one person the law of the land could and would have been vastly different. Argue about the morality or the desirability of this decision or that all you want, but save your breath when it comes to whether it was decided "correctly."
Second, never underestimate the power of the state and those who would use the state to do exactly what they want while telling you what to do and what not to do. Remember that when the largely pyrrhic victory against reverse discrimination in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke was first announced, the same statists who had originally latched onto the phrase “affirmative action” to justify racial quotas now latched onto Justice Powell’s probably careless assertion that “diversity” was a legitimate state interest. Thanks to Justice O’Connor’s subsequent “reasoning” in Grutter v. Bollinger, equal rights advocates have only twenty years now to try again.
My point – and, yes, I do have one – is simply that the Supreme Court, just like the federal government taken as a whole, has been and continues to be as much a threat to individual liberties as a protector. If you really want to maximize freedom, minimize government.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
On The Road Again
The Atlantic recently posted a fascinating article by John Staddon entitled “Distracting Miss Daisy.” Staddon, who grew up in Great Britain, argues that the seemingly ubiquitous presence of stop signs and speed limits on U.S. roads actually distracts drivers’ attention, conditions them into relying more on compliance than concentrating on actual road conditions and leads, as a result, to more accidents.
These are the sorts of arguments that warm the cockles of a libertarian’s heart assuming, of course, that libertarian hearts have cockles. Staddon reminded me also of the perfectly obvious point – obvious once made, that is – that because seat belts and air bags reduce the “cost” of unsafe driving, drivers will on average be more reckless as a result. This is called “risk compensation,” but it is really just another example of the notion that, in general, the quantity demanded of any good will rise as the price of that good decreases. Lowering the driver’s odds of injury in case of an accident makes the prospect of such accidents that much more “affordable.” (Volvo drivers excepted, perhaps. I am convinced that Volvo’s much touted safety history is as significantly the result of safety-obsessed owners and drivers as it is of the car’s engineering. Compare the likely Volvo buyer with the likely Porsche buyer. I rest my case.)
Staddon also makes the passing comment (no pun intended) that the use of stop signs at practically every secondary street intersection and our inexplicably popular 4-way stop intersections, however egalitarian they may be, waste a great deal of energy. I have no idea whether there are any studies out there to demonstrate our increased fuel consumption as a result, but anything that might cause a policy war between environmentalists and traffic safety fanatics (MADD springs to mind here) should certainly be explored.
The article is well worth a read, but I’m a bit dubious about the extent to which Staddon’s argument springs from anecdotal evidence of his experiences driving in the U.S. and in Britain. I don’t know what the actual accident rate comparisons would be, but my anecdotal experience of driving in the U.K. [insert lame joke about driving on wrong side of the road here] is that the British drive far more slowly than Americans do and that, outside London and its other major cities, there is far less traffic in Great Britain in the first place.
Moreover, driving behavior is at least partially influenced by culture. I lived in Italy for several years and can testify to the fact that neither the presence nor the absence of traffic signs has anything more than an aesthetic effect on Italian roads and highways. Whatever their intended purpose, they certainly don't influence Italian drivers in the slightest. In Germany, where I also lived, there are only two driving speeds throughout the entire nation: too damned fast and too damned slow. Germans are also indifferent to whether traffic signs are posted or not, having had the rules of the road drilled into them with a ruthless efficiency as part of the drivers’ licensing process. Besides, there’s very little crime in Germany, anyway, because ... wait for it ... it’s against the law.
I will pick one semi-major nit with Staddon’s article. He begins with an example from, of all places, my home town, as follows:
Later in the article he continues:
Now, in the first place, I’ve been taking that curve at closer to 50 mph all my life. More to the point, I’ve spent the bulk of my life residing in the People’s Republic of Arlington. I guarantee that, whatever dubious and quite possibly cooked statistics Arlington’sbureaucratic weasels traffic authorities may have dished up, the fact is that those speed limits are set as they are because the “more cautious residents” in one of Arlington’s most affluent neighborhoods simply wanted to dissuade teenage drivers from racing near their million dollar plus homes. Not that Arlington’s totalitarian nanny state Democrats aren’t safety fanatics, mind you. If just two more speed bumps were added to the typical neighborhood street it would become perfectly flat again.
But I digress. Further proof, I suppose, that I shouldn’t drive and type on my laptop at the same time.
These are the sorts of arguments that warm the cockles of a libertarian’s heart assuming, of course, that libertarian hearts have cockles. Staddon reminded me also of the perfectly obvious point – obvious once made, that is – that because seat belts and air bags reduce the “cost” of unsafe driving, drivers will on average be more reckless as a result. This is called “risk compensation,” but it is really just another example of the notion that, in general, the quantity demanded of any good will rise as the price of that good decreases. Lowering the driver’s odds of injury in case of an accident makes the prospect of such accidents that much more “affordable.” (Volvo drivers excepted, perhaps. I am convinced that Volvo’s much touted safety history is as significantly the result of safety-obsessed owners and drivers as it is of the car’s engineering. Compare the likely Volvo buyer with the likely Porsche buyer. I rest my case.)
Staddon also makes the passing comment (no pun intended) that the use of stop signs at practically every secondary street intersection and our inexplicably popular 4-way stop intersections, however egalitarian they may be, waste a great deal of energy. I have no idea whether there are any studies out there to demonstrate our increased fuel consumption as a result, but anything that might cause a policy war between environmentalists and traffic safety fanatics (MADD springs to mind here) should certainly be explored.
The article is well worth a read, but I’m a bit dubious about the extent to which Staddon’s argument springs from anecdotal evidence of his experiences driving in the U.S. and in Britain. I don’t know what the actual accident rate comparisons would be, but my anecdotal experience of driving in the U.K. [insert lame joke about driving on wrong side of the road here] is that the British drive far more slowly than Americans do and that, outside London and its other major cities, there is far less traffic in Great Britain in the first place.
Moreover, driving behavior is at least partially influenced by culture. I lived in Italy for several years and can testify to the fact that neither the presence nor the absence of traffic signs has anything more than an aesthetic effect on Italian roads and highways. Whatever their intended purpose, they certainly don't influence Italian drivers in the slightest. In Germany, where I also lived, there are only two driving speeds throughout the entire nation: too damned fast and too damned slow. Germans are also indifferent to whether traffic signs are posted or not, having had the rules of the road drilled into them with a ruthless efficiency as part of the drivers’ licensing process. Besides, there’s very little crime in Germany, anyway, because ... wait for it ... it’s against the law.
I will pick one semi-major nit with Staddon’s article. He begins with an example from, of all places, my home town, as follows:
There is a stretch of North Glebe Road, in Arlington, Virginia, that epitomizes the American approach to road safety. It’s a sloping curve, beginning on a four-lane divided highway and running down to Chain Bridge, on the Potomac River. Most drivers, absent a speed limit, would probably take the curve at 30 or 35 mph in good weather. But it has a 25-mph speed limit, vigorously enforced. As you approach the curve, a sign with flashing lights suggests slowing further, to 15 mph. A little later, another sign makes the same suggestion. Great! the neighborhood’s more cautious residents might think.
Later in the article he continues:
Which brings me back to North Glebe Road in Arlington. It turns out that the speed signs do perform an important safety function: in wet weather, many drivers had taken the curve too fast; traffic authorities have substantially reduced accidents on the curve by adding the 15-mph warning sign, and they would be foolish to remove it, absent larger changes in American traffic policy.
Now, in the first place, I’ve been taking that curve at closer to 50 mph all my life. More to the point, I’ve spent the bulk of my life residing in the People’s Republic of Arlington. I guarantee that, whatever dubious and quite possibly cooked statistics Arlington’s
But I digress. Further proof, I suppose, that I shouldn’t drive and type on my laptop at the same time.
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