Have you come here to play Jesus to the lepers in your head?
Happy Halloween. Here’s the trailer to one of the scariest movies I have ever seen.
I know people are split on this one– you either love it or hate it.
Released in 1999, the actors filmed it themselves with a Hi-8 and a 16mm B/W, and managed to capture some truly impressive visuals. With minimal scripting and no special effects, the film plays off the best Hitchcockian idiom that what you can’t see is often much scarier than what you can.
Wendy Button has written speeches for Senators Obama, Clinton, Edwards, and Biden. And she has had enough. Here’s the close to her post…
Has [Palin] made mistakes? Of course, she’s human too. But the attention paid to her mistakes has been unprecedented compared to Senator Obama’s “57 states” remarks or Senator Biden using a version of the Samuel Johnson quote, “There’s nothing like a hanging in the morning to focus a man’s thoughts.”
But thank God for election 2008. We can talk about the wardrobe and make-up even though most people don’t understand the details about Senator Obama’s plan with Iraq. When he says, “all combat troops,” he’s not talking about all troops—it leaves a residual force of as large as 55,000 indefinitely. That’s not ending the war; that’s half a war.
I was dead wrong about the surge and thought it would be a disaster. Senator John McCain led when many of us were ready to quit. Yet we march on as if nothing has changed, wedded to an old plan, and that too is a long way from the Democratic Party.
I can no longer justify what this party has done and can’t dismiss the treatment of women and working people as just part of the new kind of politics. It’s wrong and someone has to say that. And also say that the Democratic Party’s talking points—that Senator John McCain is just four more years of the same and that he’s President Bush—are now just hooker lines that fit a very effective and perhaps wave-winning political argument…doesn’t mean they’re true. After all, he is the only one who’s worked in a bipartisan way on big challenges.
Before I cast my vote, I will correct my party affiliation and change it to No Party or Independent. Then, in the spirit of election 2008, I’ll get a manicure, pedicure, and my hair done. Might as well look pretty when I am unemployed in a city swimming with “D’s.”
Whatever inspiration I had in Chapel Hill two years ago is gone. When people say how excited they are about this election, I can now say, “Maybe for you. But I lost my home.”
…but you have to read the whole thing. This is the kind of disillusionment that follows after of wave of campaigning run like a game of catch-phrase. I’ve had to turn off the news; I cannot stomach the AM frequencies. I know more about Sarah Palin’s wardrobe than I know about Sen. Obama’s association with Bill Ayers. It’s a joke. And this election season has finally worn out its welcome.
HT: Threedonia
“When Doctor Who returns in 2010 it won’t be with me.”
Unfortunate news. I stumbled onto Doctor Who when Christopher Eccleston first had the role. He won my viewership. Tennant won my heart. He’ll be missed.
Note to USA viewers, unless you’ve seen the latest episodes, the article contains a minor spoiler.
(photo (c) BBC)
Jeffrey Overstreet invited readers to email in and try to persuade him how to cast his ballot this year, and he was nice enough to post some of those he received. Skimming over the ones he posted (22 pages in MS Word) I noticed a thread of discontent toward Gov. Sarah Palin, even from those who said they support McCain.
I’ve read a lot of the same material and seen many of the same interviews these guys have and I have to admit that I just don’t get the same vibe. I’ve noticed this thread of discontent in a few places, and in many of those, it reads like pure disdain.
So I wanted to share this brief piece from Fred Barnes at The Weekly Standard.
The money quotes:
Lorne Michaels is the longtime executive producer of Saturday Night Live. Sarah Palin appeared on SNL in mid-October, after which Michaels noted, “Her politics aren’t my politics.” But that wasn’t all he said. “I think Palin will continue to be underestimated,” Michaels told EW.com. “I watched the way she connected with people, and you can see that she’s a very powerful, very disciplined, incredibly gracious woman. This was her first time out and she’s had a huge impact. People connect to her.”
[…]
A media person I know dismisses her as “a journalism graduate of the University of Idaho.” This is pure snobbery. I asked him to name his favorite president of the past 60 or 70 years, and he chose Harry Truman. Truman never went to college but became a pretty good president nonetheless when he succeeded FDR after only a few weeks as vice president.
[…]
Governors who run for national office automatically face questions about their inexperience in foreign affairs. Ronald Reagan did. Bill Clinton did. So did George W. Bush. Had Obama picked Virginia governor Tim Kaine as his veep, Kaine would have been hit with those questions. If McCain had chosen Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty (as he came close to doing), Pawlenty would have faced the same doubts. So the qualms about Palin’s experience are merely par for the course.
[…]
My advice is ignore the critics who know far less about Palin than she does about foreign policy. A good example is Ken Adelman, who headed the arms control agency in the Reagan administration. Adelman recently endorsed Obama and said he “would not have hired [Palin] for even a mid-level post in the arms control agency.” Well, I know both Palin and Adelman. And Ken, I’m sorry to tell you, but I think there are an awful lot of jobs in Washington that Palin would get before you.
I like Sarah Palin. I feel no shame in liking her, and I won’t lose a wink of sleep if she finds her way to the White House.
This was written in 1995, but I found it timely, considering this is what a particular person running for president has indicated he’d like to see happen.
Money quotes:
If perfection really were an available option, the choice of economic and political systems would be irrelevant. In a world with perfect beings and infinite abundance, any economic or political system–socialism, capitalism, fascism, or communism–would work perfectly.
However, the choice of economic and political institutions is crucial in an imperfect universe with imperfect beings and limited resources. In a world of scarcity it is essential for an economic system to be based on a clear incentive structure to promote economic efficiency. The real choice we face is between imperfect capitalism and imperfect socialism. Given that choice, the evidence of history overwhelmingly favors capitalism as the greatest wealth-producing economic system available.
[...]
The “tragedy of the commons” refers to the British experience of the sixteenth century when certain grazing lands were communally owned by villages and were made available for public use. The land was quickly overgrazed and eventually became worthless as villagers exploited the communally owned resource.
When assets are publicly owned, there are no incentives in place to encourage wise stewardship. While private property creates incentives for conservation and the responsible use of property, public property encourages irresponsibility and waste. If everyone owns an asset, people act as if no one owns it. And when no one owns it, no one really takes care of it. Public ownership encourages neglect and mismanagement.
Since socialism, by definition, is a system marked by the “common ownership of the means of production,” the failure of socialism is a “tragedy of the commons” on a national scale. Much of the economic stagnation of socialism can be traced to the failure to establish and promote private property rights.
So he says according to SciFi Wire (via TrekWeb):
“I can watch the movies again and again and again,” Smith said. “The TV is kind of sacrosanct for a lot of people, but I don’t enjoy it as much as I enjoy the movies. So this one I enjoyed probably the most since I’ve enjoyed, like, Wrath of Khan.”
Kevin Smith’s endorsement, I’m sure, sets the nerds all a twitter, but I am still not convinced. Like I wrote on Overstreet’s blog, early reactions from a few who say they’ve seen bits of the film sound promising, but many of these are the same people that once promised me The Phantom Menace was going to be genius.
Dir. J.J. Abrams is a talented storyteller, and the team he’s assembled to reboot Roddenberry’s baby are some of the best writers working today. I want to believe, really. I am just not there yet.
An new series coming to NBC, Kings will tell the story of David and Saul set in a fictionalized, present day “kingdom” of Gilboa.
“Kings” takes place in a modern-day kingdom named Gilboa, and its shining metropolitan capital of Shiloh. It is ruled by King Benjamin Silas, the nation’s much-loved monarch, who unified several warring territories to found Gilboa many years ago. They have since built a proud and prosperous nation. While not a perfect society, the kingdom is a beacon of hope and idealism.
But the dark clouds of war continue to rumble in the north, where the forces of enemy nation Gath are massing to invade, and threaten to destroy all that King Silas has created…
That is, until a young soldier named David slays a fearsome Goliath tank, rallying the nation… and turning the tide of history.
Color me curious. Bold shades of curious. And file it under “damn, I wish I had thought of that.”
HT, and a little more info: Peter T. Chattaway
I’m reposting this (along with a handful of other things) from the old blog. This is U2’s 2002 Super Bowl halftime performance. And it’s a thing of beauty. Thank you, Bono — you’re a real class act.
I’ve had my frustration with the blatant (and good God, that is not a strong enough word) media bias of the presidential election rattling around in my head for weeks, and the little satire Peter and I put together did a lot to ease the pain.
But Orson Scott Card pulls a Robin Hood with his open letter to the press – he not only nails the bullseye, but he splits his first shot right down the middle. And then he does it again. And again. And again…
And after Freddie Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate’s campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.
If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.
But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an “adviser” to the Obama campaign — because that campaign had sought his advice — you actually let Obama’s people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn’t listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.
You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.
[...]
If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.
Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That’s what you claim you do, when you accept people’s money to buy or subscribe to your paper.
But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie — that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain, and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad — even bad weather — on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.
[...]
Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter — while you ignored the story of John Edwards’s own adultery for many months.
So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?
Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?
Thank you, Orson.
LOST. Season 5.
