The Sonian

Iran's Terrible Comedy

2006-06-07T02:49:00.000-04:00

I certainly hope that Stephen Colbert and others have been skewering Iran for its (unintentionally) hilarious nuclear quest. Has anyone in the media noted how silly Iran has come across, even as it wants the world to know how big and bad it is? Its leaders gloriously proclaim its superior missile systems--which display heretofore unknown capabilities!--but which are likely conventional Soviet designs and are launched from creaky warships. They gloriously proclaim its nuclear energy program, but are undermined by supposedly serious video of men in white jumpsuits banging on white oil drums while some others engage in classic industrial rituals like stirring and ladeling molten goo. The media and the politicians interpret these and other videos as evidence of a crisis; I see them as worthy of youtube.com play. The only thing this public relations campaign is missing is a qualified spokesman, such as Homer Simpson, who might explain the complex procedures involved in constructing nuclear energy.

The government has wisely brought the people into the act, too. They have been spotted in the streets, dancing happily, waving shimmering cigar cases of "uranium" above their heads, joyful that Iran has joining the Club of Nations. After all, just last week they discovered "nuclear fusion." It seems like every two weeks their little nation makes some critical advance; look back a little ways to the beginning of this latest crisis (really, Ahmadinejad's election) and Iran would seem to have made unbelievable technological advances even while under distracting diplomatic pressure .

I can't help but laugh every time Iran comes on the news because its rhetoric is so embarrassingly childish and its propaganda campaigns so ham-fisted. Perhaps I've only seen the highlights, and perhaps I haven't seen enough evidence that Iran is actually anywhere close to producing nuclear technology, or that it's actually stupid enough to take this charade far enough to endanger its own existence. The reason I say that is because Iran is getting exactly what it wants out of this episode. Iran knows that they and only they can "solve" this situation, and they can do it completely on their own terms. They can spurn every offer (and they already have turned down many), take a travel ban, endure the sanctions hit, even lose some ambassadors, and know that each rejection will gain them more concessions when they finally agree to agree for real. At this point, Iran, far from getting flogged for its calculated aggression, is being rewarded. We have underestimated Ahmadinejad and overestimated Iran's capability and intent. I'm not saying that we shouldn't worry a little about Iran or the rhetoric of its latest ruling troupe. I simply want to congratulate the little country because they have played the diplomatic game magnificently by manipulating the West's irrational fears like probably no other nation could. Good for them. So am I wrong to have a little laugh about it?

R

not so bad

2006-05-28T01:16:00.000-04:00

Hey all,

Life is not so bad here. I have one room in a 3-room trailer that i share with a captain, so it's small. But I have A/C and a mattress, so I'm pleased. Here in Tallil, in contrast with Kuwait, most of the buildings are permanent or semi-permanent (many Saddamm-era). So we work in real offices, and if it werent for the long hours, it would actually be easy to forget where we are. Partly because we have all the amenities you have in any other garrison in the rear--PX, free phones and internet, game rooms, gym, fast food, free laundry, generous chow hall, etc. That and it's pretty quiet here. We're in the south-east of the country, away from the hot spots. Attacks in our area of operations occur daily, but they usually are not serious., and attacks on our camp are very infrequent. All these things make life fairly stress-free.

My bosses will, however, try to keep me on my toes. They've already put me in a position not slated for 2LTs. I'm daytime Battle Captain in our Tactical Operations Center. Any serious incident that occurs in our AO or to any of our subordinate units comes through me, and I have to file it and send it up to higher. We have two briefings a day as well, so my job also is to keep the brigade commander and others in the TOC informed about what's going on. I've only been on the job a few days, so I'm still a novice; however, i think its gonna be a lil exciting because my section is the nerve center of the brigade and I'm in the center of it all. Since the TOC is running 24/7, I have to pull 12 hour days 6 days/week. At some point I'm gonna hate my job, but I think I can handle 4 months.

Just thought you all would like to know what I'm doing. No, I'm not going out on convoys, but we'll see about that :-).

Keep it sleazy,

R

Time for a vacation

2006-05-10T06:59:00.000-04:00

Just about the time some of you are thinking of going somewhere for the summer, I'm headed on a journey of my own. I am scheduled to fly tonight to Kuwait, and then hopefully later in the week, on to Iraq. My bags are packed and this is my final message before I go. I intend to keep a journal, and I also hope to share some of my thoughts and experiences with you all in this forum. Don't expect anything exciting, however. Perhaps fortunately for me, it looks like I will fill a staff position until my expected return at the end of September. So take care, guys, and I hope to see some of you guys soon after I return.

R

Coaching from the Couch

2006-03-24T10:16:00.000-05:00

Every March, I become possessed with an excessive, irrational zeal for coaching college basketball. Sure, I feel similarly throughout the year, cursing the calls in every UK game, but something about the NCAA tournament really gets me yelling at the players as much as I do the officials.

Seth Davis, SI's eminent college basketball commentator (and one of the men who helps us get through halftime on CBS), argues that a team's end-game should be different in March than in December. When asked how Gonzaga blew a 17-point lead last night against UCLA, Davis responded:

"Badly. They started slowing it up and working the shot clock with about 3½ minutes to play. And having worked this job, where I get to watch every second of every game in the tournament, that would be the one lesson that I would try to impart on any coach. It might work during the regular season, it might even work in your conference tournament, but it is the kiss of death in the NCAA tournament. You must always be attacking. And it's not even necessarily an orchestrated strategy -- I don't know if that was Mark Few's strategy -- it's just human nature. Clark Kellogg, the master wordsmith, he calls it, "driving with the parking brake on." It's exactly the same thing that happened to Arizona last year in the regional final. And it is very unique to the NCAA tournament."

I might become more of a coach in March, but I don't think my coaching strategy changes in the way Davis would say it should. Sure, March games are always frantic in their endings. Sure, when using clock, teams should still run plays that can set up smart shots. But, I think they should still use as much of those 35 seconds as is possible. The team with fewer points is inevitably going to gain more momentum with a made basket than is the team with more points. The former is going to be hurried, abandoning offensive sets for quick screens and threes, reckless penetration and layups. If their opponent (the winning team) plays in the same herky, jerky way, even if they make baskets, they'll still be losing momentum, comparatively.

The most judicious use of the clock is to take those entire 35 seconds to run a set play. The losing team's anxiety might create mental errors (e.g., switching on screens, playing zones too loosely), that enable the winning team to calmly execute.

As an aside, I think one thing that winning teams allow themselves to do, when trying to burn clock, is to bring their entire offense into the backcourt (in response to great defensive pressure by their excited opponent). Smart passing around the perimeter, though always riskier than letting your point hold the ball for 20 seconds, might be a better alternative in terms of offensive productivity.

Winning on Another Front

2006-03-16T18:52:00.000-05:00

I suppose it was only a matter of time before they decided the "smart" angle was the only one they could really play up. CBS Sportsline.com Senior Writer Gregg Doyel did well, though.

By the way, I hope you guys can figure out the "54th." I'm pretty sure his Davidson career encompassed ours.

Bush v. Science

2006-03-15T14:44:00.000-05:00

Skip's comments about the theocratic right's efforts to stifle birth control in a recent post about the South Dakota Abortion Ban tipped me off to a larger issue -- the way we perceive science is changing.

"Since the Enlightenment," writes Michael Specter for the New Yorker, "scientific enterprise has been defined by an ethic of independent inquiry and by reliance on data that can be observed, tested, analyzed, and repeated. The scientific method has come to shape our notion of progress and of modern life. Science has largely dictated the political realities of the twentieth century." Not many people would disagree -- the atomic bomb, radar, quinine, and dramatic advances in health were in large part responsible for American victory in World War II. Shortly thereafter, the United States began investing heavily in scientific research, offering strong federal funding to American colleges and universities. The result was that the U.S. became a technological superpower.

While any federally funded project is subject to the government's political will and while scientists are no less likely to consider themselves Democrats or Republicans, science was considered in many respects a world apart from politics. "In bringing science into the high councils of government, the presidential indifference to their politics and party affiliations reflected the belief that science and scientists were above politics," wrote Daniel S. Greenberg in "Science, Money, and Politics."

Now, however, science and politics seem to be in competition. The most glaring example is stem cell research. The enormous potential benefit of developing stem cells (those that do not yet serve a particular function and that can turn into any tissue or organ in the body -- described as "blank checks" by some) seems undeniable, yet the extreme right's seemingly unfounded moral reservations have put research in a chokehold. Bush's famous description of embryos as "snowflakes" each "with the unique genetic potential of an individual human being" doesn't quite do it for me. While on its face, his statement is true, it does not address the issue that blastocysts, in effect hollow balls of a hundred or so stem cells, don't have nerves or any human qualities. Moreover, as it stands, embryos left over at in-vitro-fertilization clinics are off limits to researchers. While this moral debate will rage for some time to come, scientific progress will slump. [By the way, if abortion is legal, why isn't most stem cell research?]

Stem cell research is but one area of exciting scientific progress stifled by the Bush Administration. White House support for intelligent design is outright embarrassing. A year ago, Bush signed the bill that would require that Terry Schiavo's feeding tube be reinserted. Thankfully, the Supreme Court didn't waste their time on the case and an autopsy confirmed that she was unaware of her condition and incapable of recovering. Merck's application for a cancer-curing vaccine is currently in the air as it protects against human papillomavirus, the most common sexually transmitted disease in the country. (Note: certain strains of HPV cause cancer). Religious conservatives argue in opposition to its approval that there's no need for the vaccine where it's completely preventable with abstinence. "More kids would have sex," they whine. They utter the same cry at condom education in schools. Unfortunately for them, studies show no difference in sexual activity between groups who are so educated and those who are not, or those who are made to undergo "abstinence 'til marriage" programs. By the way, as it stands, government policy requires 1/3 of HIV-prevention money to go to these abstinence programs.

I've got to cut this short, but it's easy to keep on going.

The United States is falling rapidly in science education as well. Sure, Bush acknowledged the need to educate more scientists in order to remain competitive with the rest of the world (stating, ever so eloquently, that students shouldn't think of researchers as the "nerd patrol"), but he isn't doing much about it.

Oh yeah, Bush's scientific-spending increase proposals for 2006 devote 97% of the increase to weapons development and space-exploration vehicles.

Does America really fear progress?

Reaction to the Supreme Court's Decisions Re: Race and Higher Education

2006-03-14T13:19:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reported today that "colleges and universities nationwide are opening to white students hundreds of thousands of dollars in fellowships, scholarships and other programs previously created for minorities." [Article].

These institutions are largely responding to the pressure of the Education Department, the Department of Justice, and conservative advocacy groups such as the Center for Equal Opportunity. Such pressure is, to a great extent, founded on the Supreme Court's decisions in two 2003 cases involving the University of Michigan and the changing composition of the Court.

In Gratz v. Bollinger, a caucasian applicant's class action challenge to Michigan's continued use of race as a factor in undergraduate admissions succeeded. Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the majority, held that the University's policy of automatically distributing 20 points, or one-fifth of those needed to guarantee admission, to every single "underrepresented minority" applicant solely because of race did not comport with the Equal Protection Clause. The Court held that the policy was not narrowly tailored to the asserted compelling state interest in achieving educational diversity.

The implication (that a school can use race as a factor in undergraduate admissions so long as the policy is a narrowly tailored means to support a state's interest in diversity) was supported in the Court's decision in Grutter v. Bollinger. Here the Court upheld the use of race as a factor in admissions to Michigan's law school because there was found to be a "highly individualized, holistic review of each applicant's file." [By the way, I think this finding is garbage unless one considers an LSAT score to be, in and of itself, a "highly individualized, holistic review" of an applicant].

In response to these decisions, colleges seeking to the limit their liability in the likely event that these issues will be revisited by the Roberts Court, have opened up once exclusively minority scholarships and done away with or modified other minority programs.

What should be made of this issue? Personally, I find myself wanting to wear both pairs of shoes. Through my work in a college Admissions Office and my experience in the law school admissions process, I grew unhealthily skeptical of the current implementation of affirmative action measures in higher education. At the same time, I consider diversity to be of monumental importance, particularly at the graduate, post-graduate, and professional levels. As far as I can tell, it's the best (and only?) way to defeat stereotypes.

The Davidson Faithful

2006-03-13T11:15:00.000-05:00

March Madness no longer looms. It is here. And, following Jimmy V's ever-stirring vernal motto, those of us fortunate enough to have graced Davidson's campus musn't give up, we musn't ever give up. Let this blog entry, then, stand as the only testament to Davidson's capacity to win a basketball game on Friday, March 17, at 12:15 in Dayton, Ohio.

Though we're no longer Graced with the luck of the Irish, this Davidson team will prevail this Saint Paddy's Day. Let's look at who they have to beat.

The Buckeyes of Ohio State are strong. They finished the season with a 25-5 record, a Big Ten regular season title, and a close loss to Iowa in the Big Ten Tournament Championship. They've also got experience in the form of three fifth-year seniors and a junior college-transfer senior. They may be dumb, they may be injury-prone, but either way, they've played a ton of games. One of those fifth-years is a 260 lb. bad-/fat-ass by the name of Terence Dials who led the Buckeyes in both scoring and rebounding this season. While he might pose problems inside, the Buckeyes don't really have anyone else of such stature. Moreover, they're not exactly deep. Sure, they've got nine guys who average 9 or more minutes per game, but seven of those guys really play the bulk of the minutes. In other words, get them in foul trouble, particularly Fatty, and we, ranked seventh in the country in free throw shooting, have ourselves a game.

Ohio State relies on the three to a great extent. Without good perimeter shooting, the Buckeyes' opposition doesn't have much reason to get off of Dials. That said, the Buckeyes have had good perimeter shooting all year. As a team, they make just over 36% of their attempted three pointers, and have great shooters in Foster, Butler, and Sullinger. However, being a Kentucky native and avid UK fan, I know as well as anyone that good shooters can have off-nights. Let's hope the 17th is one of them for the Buckeye guards.

The Big Ten was extremely competitive this year, as evidenced by the fact that even its best team lost four games to conference opponents (Iowa, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan State, and Indiana). [Also note what Iowa did to beat Ohio State twice: got the Buckeyes into foul trouble, shot smart threes, played tough perimeter defense (OSU shot an abysmal 6-28 in the Big Ten Championship), and got on the glass]. While Ohio State didn't lose a non-conference game this year, their toughest challenge came in a two-point victory over LSU. Beyond that, their most notable win was a close (seven-point) one against St. Joe's. Davidson beat St. Joe's by six.

If nothing else, we can play the moral angle. The NCAA Infractions Committee let the Buckeyes off this year, allowing them a post-season. They won't be so lucky these next few years. While Gene Smith, the OSU Athletics Director, was breathing a sigh of relief, all sorts of good news came out of Davidson this year: just look at the website.

Irrelevant arguments aside, Davidson's a very capable team. For starters, we're one of experience -- seven seniors, five of whom are in the top six in average minutes played. We've got bona fide stars in Ian Johnson and Brendan Winters. We've got a high-powered offense (we're ranked 26th in the nation in points-per-possession). We've averaged 37.3% from beyond the arc. We've got quality wins over UMass, Missouri, and St. Joe's (sorry Skip, I don't think our Princeton win can really be considered a quality one). We trashed UT-Chattanooga in the Southern Conference Championship. We played Charlotte to the last basket in a double-overtime thriller.

So, umm, alenda lux ubi orta libertas and, umm, permissum Wildcats lucror.

The End of Stereotypes

2006-03-11T19:12:00.000-05:00

I'm not quite sure why the last poster decided to adorn his screed with a picture of a 'Native American Republican' certificate. I do not know who created this piece of electronic art or what his intentions are. For all I know, the picture represents a genuine document which purpose is earnest and self-evident. However, I do question the rationale by which the poster chose this picture to suit his argument.

Is it an attempt at humor or is it an illustration of his argument, or, yes, it's this: it furthers the poster's implication that certain populist politicians (primarily Republicans), have primarily sinister (read: protectionist, nativist, triumphalist, anti-Muslim) motives. It is these hacks who in previous posts on this same subject have borne the brunt of the poster's wrath.

I don't seek to engage the poster on this argument, especially in relation to this subject, especially because I don't give two shits about it. However, I think the pathology that this poster evinces is one I sadly encountered earlier this evening, as I concluded another session of shit-time reading with the dregs of the February GQ.

In it, Devin Friedman goes 'undercover' to the country's most elite country clubs. His inability to write anything about these "unbelievably white," "snooty," and "exclusive" clubs that does not radiate with contempt or revel in seeing his stereotypes fulfilled is incredible. Actually, it's not incredible. It's typical. Critics and iconoclasts of all sorts have, over the last 40 years, successfully destroyed what they saw as society's establishment by creating, and then mocking, popular stereotypes--some outlandish, some so life-like that the only reasonable conclusion to be made is that their objects, God help them, probably were deserving of some ridicule. These stereotypes were readily absorbed into popular culture, largely through movies and television. Such is the aversion nowadays to actually fulfilling or appearing to fulfill one of these long-running stereotypes, that it can be said that there is conformity to not conform (I would argue that there is a strong societal aversion to avoid ALL stereotypes, not simply the outmoded ones). This, despite the fact that conformity (widespread cultural similarites in style, speech, and mores) in the pre-1960s sense no longer exists and a similar type of cultural conformity likely never will again.

Yet so caught up are some people in certain stereotypes. It seems like so many in the media are determined to find out the last few hangers-on, still clinging to a more friendly past. I must admit, 'The end of an era' is a great stock theme in journalism. It is a little bit fascinating to see who's hanging on, what technology is still being utilized, which formulas are still being stubbornly conjured. So I concede, this investigation of the retrograde past can be motivated by curiosity; it can also be motivated by smug judgment. The Friedman piece falls somewhere in between (I think the same can be said about people's thoughts on the Augusta National controversies).

Friedman is so intent on identifying the "racist" and "classist" bogeyman of the American past that he feels he needs to penetrate the leafy redoubts of this amorphous gentleman. Like an ornithologist searching for his prized specimen: "It is one of the most purely preserved East Coast Wasp institutions in existence today." His hunt for atavistic treasure doesn't yield much in terms of vivid descriptions of appearances. It does, however, find a lot of reserve and even standoffishness on the part of the members. Reserve, a natural symptom of good breeding, can often naturally be found in country club environments, the author explains. However, it is indicative of another thing: a loathing of the Other, and a desire to maintain high standards of decorum. In other words, "obliteration of the outside world." And the outside world contains Jews, blacks, and women.

The author tries so hard not to explicitly say, "These people have got to be racist." Yet he doesn't even try to explain how a couple of predominantly Jewish clubs made it into his article. In fact, what an excellent experiment it could have been to approach these clubs as well, to see whether he would have felt any more welcome, or at ease, there.

On the whole, the article is disappointing, with its intent more to belittle our country's old-money elite than to satisfy our wonder about how they live behind the gates and the curtains (which, again, I admit probably would be fascinating, because Architectural Digest just doesn't quite do it). It completes some of the club members' words and actions with some nice leaps of logic that leave little question of the writer's agenda. And it nicely conforms to the assumption that where diversity ain't, evil must lurk ("What transactions occur within? I only know what the movies would have me imagine.")

What is ironic is that the staid, New England WASP scion in our minds hardly yet exists. If he does, he is old. But he doesn't need to look or act old--or at least as we'd like to define him. Even G.H. Bush dresses a lot like his son. No one wants to fulfill a stereotype. Today, even rich people blend. They want to blend. It's cool to blend. In a culture where no one is willing to look like a stereotype, conformity rules. Rich men must resort to subtle tip-offs, such as the quality of stitching on a shirt or jacket, recognizable only to the culturally aware, as the only way to assert his status. And yet we still send reporters to exclusive hideaways and expect them to report that they only see suits and ties and evening dresses; or ascots, pocket squares, fans, and flasks? No one wants to fulfill a stereotype! And in this day and age, how long do you think it takes to create a stereotype? How quickly does fashion discernibly shift, because of this (see Details' craven "Gay or..." series).

I have now determined that the poster's use of the 'Native American Republican' display was an attempt at humor. It trots out the old bogeyman that we know and love. Ooh, it's so easy! Sure, there are still some 'nativist' Republicans around; but many have left for third parties; others have been transformed by the incredible wealth created by our economy in the last ten years. The calls of xenophobia and paranoia that have accompanied the ports deal may be justly deserved, but these epithets should be aimed at the actual actors in this episode, and the prominent ones are not extremists, nativists, or racists and they are a mixture of Republican and Democrat.

I still wonder why the 'conservative white Republican' image still strikes terror in some. Regardless, I think that the only irony in this story is that, judging from the descriptions of some of the clubs in the GQ piece: some of them are dominated by...Democrats. I'm sorry, but people just don't want to fulfill stereotypes.

R

Dubai Ports Scandal: An American Disgrace

2006-03-10T15:44:00.000-05:00

That the Dubai Ports scandal came to this is sad and it reflects poorly on everyone involved.

First, the Democrats.For a party that claims the civil rights movement as its own, they were awfully quick to trumpet an essentially racist position for political gain.

Second, the Republicans. For a party that claims to support globalization and free trade, they were awfully quick to cave under election-year political pressure.

Third, the President. Yes, he's said all the right things during this particular scandal, but he's as responsible as anyone. He won his election by telling the American public that one Arab, Saddam Hussein, was as bad as another, Osama bin-Laden. How can he expect his fellow politicians not to do the same when they've got an election to win?

Fourth and finally, the barons of Dubai. Yes, they are the victims in this instance, but they could have helped their cause. While the barons of Dubai are our allies in the ways that matter most, they and the other pro-business elite of the entire Middel East have been too silent in the face outrages committed by their neighbors. Americans need to hear them decry suicide attacks by 17-year-old girls, beheadings of journalists, and truck bombings of mosques before we'll trust them with our ports.

Sadly.

What's to say we'd recognize "intelligent" life?

2006-03-09T14:08:00.000-05:00

According to a report by the Associated Press, there may be or may have been life on Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons.

The possiblity arose when NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured images of "icy jets and giant water vapor plumes" near the moon's southern pole.

And, as Smokey the Bear would tell you, where there's water , there's life. Or something like that.

The AP report quickly quells the hopes of sci-fi fans , saying that "If Enceladus does harbor life, it probably consists of microbes or other primitive organisms capable of living in extreme conditions."

Read: There's no Klingons, killer Aliens, E.T.s or towel-carrying hitchhikers on Enceladus. There's no intelligent life for us to beam our satellite TV toward, hoping they'll get as hooked to American Idol as the rest of us.

But my question is: What's to say we'd recognize "intelligent" life on another planet?

Isn't our own consciousness nothing more than our own species's particular mode of survival, borne out of evolution like the rest of our traits?

Isn't our ability to "reflect" nothing more than a way of ordering what's just come to pass?

Isn't what's come to pass mostly the culmnination of irreversible momentum and instinctual reaction?

Consciousness, it seems to me, is the ordering of time. Time is the division of our life span into night and day and revolutions around the sun, our life-demanding source of energy. What if time works differently for other species? What if the interval between light in shade is longer or shorter for them?

Would we be able to communicate with them? Would we even be able to see them?

Our senses are not the limit of what is, they are only the most we can percieve with our understanding of time and space.

Considering these questions, who can even say, for example, that there is not even already "intelligent" life on this planet, beside our own.

Abortion Ban in South Dakota

2006-03-06T16:38:00.000-05:00

The New York Times reports that Governor Mike Rounds of South Dakota just signed a bill meant to ban nearly all abortions in his state.

Abortions will only be allowed in cases where the mother's life is imminent danger. Rape or incest will not be considered justified motivation.

The law is a direct challenge to Roe vs. Wade. Pro-life advocates are hoping the newly constituted Supreme Court will overturn the 1973 ruling.

Aside from the main issue of privacy--how can a government tell a woman what she should or should not do with her reproductive organs?--this moment frightens me because after reading Freakonomics, I feel that the last thing this world needs is more poor, unwanted children.

Crash - the Love Actually of racism

2006-03-06T01:59:00.000-05:00

Getting worked up over the results of an awards show is a pointless endeavor at best. The Oscars are an advertising stunt, a movie industry circle jerk; the ceremony consists entirely of beautiful and/or rich people making inside jokes, impressing colleagues, and giving their friends sloppy reach-arounds while millions of losers watch.

Now that's out of the way, let's discuss this crappy movie and why it won. Out of the five best picture nominees I saw Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Munich and Crash. I would have been satisfied with either of the first two winning; they were both gripping, great acting, great camera shots, great music, awesome screenplays. I'm not a huge movie buff but I left the theater in a daze after both. Munich was flawed but very well-made. On the other hand, I downloaded (uh oh) Crash and could barely get through it. Do a quick Google search and you will find a lot of bad reviews (LA Weekly, Alternet, NYT, Metacritic). The movie is pretentious, heavyhanded, manipulative and preachy; "everyone's a little bit racist" is the kind of sentiment fit for a Sunday morning liberal indoctrination PBS program for 8-year-olds, not an acclaimed feature film lauded for its edginess and cultural relevance. The characters all have both bad and good sides, just like the rest of us! How realistic! The problem is that the contrived storylines these people endure are ludicrous. Matt Dillon's character molests a black woman on a traffic stop and then the day later when she is stuck in a burning car, guess who shows up and saves her? Matt Dillon! The two black thugs/robbers spend their free time philosophizing about racism more intensely and with more insight and intellectual firepower than an Ivy League politics professor. Every character is obviously, openly and insultingly racist, which is an impossibility in a city so dominated by political correctness. I grew up there -- it just doesn't happen. Then, when you think Haggis must have run out of cliches to exploit, a little girl comes in at the end with some everything you need to know you learned in kindergarten bullshit happy ending. Seeing all these different storylines end up so perfectly, so many people remark that they learned something today, so many threads get tied up in a row, gave me bad flashbacks to Love Actually. That's not the kind of connection one generally makes to a Best Picture.

A few people are saying that Crash won because of homophobia in Hollywood. I don't buy that, at least not completely. Crash was a film made by a guilty white liberal about racism in Los Angeles, filmed in Los Angeles. The Academy, a group of guilty white liberals from L.A., already a little squeamish about giving top billing to the gay cowboy movie, saw something they knew and liked and voted with their hearts. 20 years from now Crash will be forgotten, known forever as the answer to a trivia question: what beat out Brokeback Mountain? For now it's just the latest in a series of examples proving Oscar's irrelevance.

In all his glory...

2006-03-03T16:11:00.000-05:00

What's the difference between Iran and India?

2006-03-02T14:27:00.000-05:00

India has the bomb and they've had for a while. With President Bush visiting the world's largest democracy, some have once more announced their displeasure about it.

Specifically, they're upset that the United States has signed off on agreement to now allow India to pursue civilian uses of Nuclear technology.

The reason, according to Al-Jazeera, is that "Some US experts feel that the deal sets a bad example for countries such as Iran and North Korea, which have signed the nuclear 1972 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), unlike New Delhi."

What are your thoughts?

Mine center around the fact that we should encourage India to look toward alternative engergy sources and that India, as a free-market democracy, gets a pass where totalitarian states like Iran and North Korea do not.

But again, what do you think?

The Human Condition and Countertop Envy

2006-02-28T13:29:00.000-05:00

Help me, I'm addicted to browsing the Corcoran Group's website.

I can't help it. I live in a tiny, poorly designed, 1 bedroom apartment that's really a chopped studio.

So when I look at photos like the one on the right, it's like taking the oh-so-briefest-puffs of crack--addictive.

I spend hours on real estate websites looking for that elusive one-bedroom apartment with a real living room, a real kitchen, and--gasp!--counter space, all for under 2000 dollars a month.

Those of you who live in the city are now falling off your chairs laughing at my quixotic quest; the rest of you wonder why I don't just buy a house.

What's strange about this obsession is that I should be completely content right now. Mostly, I am. After all, I'm newly engaged and I'm leaving an OK-paying job I don't like for a better paying job I do. And even my apartment is pretty great. It is a one bedroom, not a studio. I can walk to Central Park any time I want. The Metropolitan Museum is only five blocks away.

But still I wonder, how much would a 250K mortgage cost me on a monthly basis? And is Bay Ridge really that far away from everything? How long will I have to put up with a shower that shuts off when someone turns on the kitchen sink? What's it like again to have space for a kitchen counter? A desk?

Dare I ever dream again of not having to walk 2 blocks to do my laundry?

Do owners benefit from a delayed CBA?

2006-02-27T11:20:00.000-05:00

NFL fans want to know: What's keeping the owners and players from agreeing to a new collective bargaining agreement?

It's the money, stupid.

Bet that owners will not sign off on a new CBA until after this year's free-agency period. Why would they?

If things stay as they are right now, the cap for this season will be tighter by about 4 million.

While that means more players will be cut to get teams under the cap, it also means that players looking for new teams will have a smaller pool of money to suck up.

So the agents will just sign their clients to low first year pay-outs that jump excessively in the next few years, right?

Nope. There's another provision in the expiring CBA that says that in this last year, no contracts can be signed that promise more than a 300% jump from one year to the next. Additionaly, all guaranteed money in the new contracts must be accounted for under this year's cap.

All this means that the contracts signed this year by free agents will be smaller than they would be if the CBA were reached before the start of free agency.

So bet that it won't.

Morality has its incentives

2006-02-24T11:00:00.000-05:00

We must stop our torture. We must end our nationalistic outcries against “outsourcing.” We must allow Dubai Ports World to manage our ports because they were the highest bidder.

Because morality has its incentives.

Here’s the deal. There are facists getting fat off of oil in the Middle East and in Africa, and there are those who are willing and able to protect them for a slice of their greasy pie.

China, Russia, and India with their burgeoning economies will get their oil-bargains where they can. We cannot blame them for this. This is what we want and have always wanted them to want and we cannot be two-faced about it. This is a global economy we have wrought and should continue to want.

Capitalism depends on the individual, on individual innovation, on individual consumers. Societies that depend on the individual tend toward democracy and freedom because control hampers commerce.

Also, no one kills their customer. So we with our wealth should continue to buy Chinese, Indian, and Russian.

And Arabian port management.

Because if we don’t, they’ll sell their goods elsewhere. They want to sell to us first because we are rich and free. We promise long term stability. And if we can just get over our racism, nativism, and xenophobia we will fulfill that promise and nations (those things that fight wars) will all but dissolve.

But if we cannot, China, Russia, and India will sell what they can to others who are merely rich, even if only oil rich. And they will not sell port management or toys or cars or call-center services, they will sell arms and diplomatic protection to those who kill, torture, and control their countrymen most effectively. They will sell to those with their bloody hands on the oil font.
They don’t want to. They want to sell to those who are morally superior, those who do not torture, kill, and divide the world into segments of us and the hated them. The morally superior make better customers. The morally superior practice empathy and respect for the individual. The individual in pursuit of happiness innovates, buys, and sells and makes for the best of customers. No one kills their best customer.

Morality has its incentives.

Copy this into a letter to your congressional rep.

2006-02-23T10:44:00.000-05:00

The United States needs to be a city on a hill, a shining example for all the world. Please do not sink to the level of nativism for political support. Please speak out against those who would isolate America in world affairs. Please speak out against those who would make an issue out of Dubai Ports World. Economonic interdependence is a means toward peace and prosperity. You know that.

Dubai Ports World and Facism in the Middle East

2006-02-22T12:03:00.000-05:00

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has got to be loving this.

Last summer, China wanted to buy CNOOC, an American energy company. America's politicians saw an opportunity to bang their national security drums and under threat of legislative action, CNOOC's shareholders eventually went with Chevron's much lower bid.

China, still hungry for oil, paused for just long enough to protest that the American government should stay out of private economic affairs and then went on to partner with Nigeria and Iran, instead.

Whoops. Heh.

Well, who needs mutually assured economic growth when you can lean on mutually assured destruction? When you can alienate your potential allies and give shelter to your enemies? Who needs it?

We need it, but the Mayor of Miami, doesn't agree. Else, why would he send an indignant letter of protest to Washington, exclaiming how distraught and worried he is about national security now that Dubai Ports World of the United Arab Emirates to take over management of six American ports.

Perhaps because one of Dubai Ports World competitors is based in Miami, but probably not.

Now we have Congressmen on both sides of the aisle crying national security foul. Senator Lindsey Graham fretted publicaly about this "outsoucing major port security to a foreign-based company."

[It's an election year maxim. Just like every cigarette takes 7 minutes of your life, every time a politication uses the word "outsourcing" he gets 7 votes.]

The New York Times editorial page shares his concern, "[The Bush Administration] ha been perpetuall willing to sacrifice individual rights in favor of security. But it has been loath to do that same thing when it comes to business interests."

"Business interests" one can hear them scoff, "how common." (And then we hear them whisper to each other, "OK, we've made up for supporting the war now, right?")

But as anyone who's taken a high school history course knows, business interests are security interests. They lead to economic interdepencence and prosperity.

All the while, I can hear President Ahmadinejad cackling. This is better than a cartoon, he howls.

And I've got to get back to work.

A New Blog

2006-02-20T22:48:00.000-05:00

A fresh new group blog has opened. A few summers ago, this group created a dynamic and exciting blog that proved to be a lot of fun, although only until we all lost interest. Hopefully, this blog will last a bit longer.

I know i'm going to regret this, as I have a hard enough time keeping my personal blog current. Anyways, this should make for a good bit of procrastination for the time being. As a law student (you're going to hear me whining about this a lot), I welcome all distractions.