Thoughts on War

I haven't posted in a while - sorry. But I saw this passage in the NYT today, and... well, I can't really describe how I feel, except that none of the feelings consist of anything related to "cheery".

The sight was not that unusual, at least not for Mosul, Iraq, on a summer morning: a car parked on the sidewalk, facing opposite traffic, its windows rolled up tight. Two young boys stared out the back window, kindergarten age maybe, their faces leaning together as if to share a whisper.

The soldier patrolling closest to the car stopped. It had to be hot in there; it was 120 degrees outside. “Permission to approach, sir, to give them some water,” the soldier said to Sgt. First Class Edward Tierney, who led the nine-man patrol that morning.

“I said no — no,” Sergeant Tierney said in a telephone interview from Afghanistan. He said he had an urge to move back before he knew why: “My body suddenly got cooler; you know, that danger feeling.”

...

That morning in Mosul, Sergeant Tierney gave the command to fall back. The soldier who had asked to approach the car had just time enough to turn before the bomb exploded. Shrapnel clawed the side of his face; the shock wave threw the others to the ground. The two young boys were gone: killed in the blast, almost certainly, he said.

The person who uses children and destroys them in the process of war is worse than a criminal. Worse than a murderer.

Movies and the Recession

Often I say that the movie industry isn't making enough movies to stay up - my parallel, of course, is from the fifties when movies exuded from every cultural orifice - at least, that's how I imagine it. So admittedly I have no factual basis for my claim that movie studios are more profitable and more imaginative when they are actually making more movies.

I mean, it makes sense - if you have a larger slate of films for any one year, you are more likely totake a risk - you'll lose less money if it's 1/10th of your potential revenue stream for the year, instead of 1/5th. Also, you'll overspend less - there have been so many awful movies with overwhelming budgets - movie studios will moderate more on their budget, and thus you'll end up with more imaginative movies, since directors and producers will have to think in unique ways to get more bang for the buck.

Well, I'm not completely crazy - a study recently proved me right! So HA.

Kings

Some of you may know that I am a HUGE fan of the NBC show Kings. I recommend you all see it. Kings, to me, is better than any show I have ever seen. It is compelling melodrama, intelligent, with great character development and political intrigue. If you watch it, tell me so that I can enthuse and discuss happenings with you.

Of course, NBC is canceling it after only one season, because they're dumb. If you get a chance to watch the show, please do. Nothing will make me sadder re. the future of TV if they cancel this series.

My ranking of my favorite (currently running) tv shows...

Kings

How I Met Your Mother

True Blood

House

Eureka

OH! And just so you know, Kings is better than Buffy. Yes, I just said that.

Goldman Sachs

From the NYT:

Financial firms, we now know, directed vast quantities of capital into the construction of unsellable houses and empty shopping malls. They increa sed risk rather than reducing it, and concentrated risk rather than spreading it. In effect, the industry was selling dangerous patent medicine to gullible consumers.

Goldman’s role in the financialization of America was similar to that of other players, except for one thing: Goldman didn’t believe its own hype. Other banks invested heavily in the same toxic waste they were selling to the public at large. Goldman, famously, made a lot of money selling securities backed by subprime mortgages — then made a lot more money by selling mortgage-backed securities short, just before their value crashed. All of this was perfectly legal, but the net effect was that Goldman made profits by playing the rest of us for suckers.

My mother, who knows what she's talking about, has said that beyond this, Goldman, through strategic placement of insiders and "respected experts," has been placed in a position to benefit from every policy regarding the health of the economy in the last 4 years. Goldman profits, the American people suffer.

How to Qualify for the WPA Theatre Project

An excerpt from Arthur Miller's autobiography, Timebends:

To join the WPA Theatre Project it was necessary to get on the welfare rolls first, in effect to be homeless and all but penniless. And to get the bureaucratic process started I had brought my father to the Welfare Department's requisitioned old warehouse near the Hudson River, where we put on a fine scene of parental indignation against filial rebellion. The welfare worker looked on as we demonstrated why I would never be allowed to sleep in my family home, and simply sighed and judged the performance adequate, without necessarily believing anything more than our economic desperation. The final step was to be an unannounced visit by an inspector to see whether I actually lived in this address with people who were unrelated. My alleged cot, on which I had never slept, stood under a window here, and my winter overcoat hung on a hanger hooked over a gas fixture on the wall. A nice touch was the pair of sneakers placed under the cot, for by this time I was down to one pair of leather shoes.

Whales are Awesome

Please read the NYT Magazine article on whales - it's available on the NYT mainpage. It is completely blowing my mind (pun intended, although it's bad).

One quote that totally made me gasp, was this:

Whales display an incredible degree of coordination and cooperation in their efforts. Aaron Thode, an associate research scientist from the Scripps Institution, who was in Baja doing acoustical studies of grays, told me of another project he is involved in, using the latest research tools to gain insights into how whales perceive the world. He showed me an extraordinary video of sperm whales pilfering catch from fishermen’s lines in Alaska, 50-foot-long, massive-jawed behemoths delicately snatching a single black cod from a longline’s dangling hook, like an hors d’oeuvre from a cocktail toothpick. Fishermen are currently losing 5 to 10 percent of their yearly haul and fear the problem could become worse because whales who have mastered the technique are busily teaching it to others. The news seems to be rapidly spreading, as reports of similar fish-snatching are coming in from fishermen all over the world.

Some funny things I found...

Or rather, just interesting. First, the finalists for the annual "bad first sentence in a fake novel" competition! My favorite is the winner in the "Detective" novel category:

She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida - the pink ones, not the white ones - except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn't wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren't.

Next up, an article to make my peacenicky side really happy: Humans aren't innately coded for war! Violence is not inevitable. My favorite quote:

The first clear-cut evidence of violence against groups as opposed to individuals appears about 14,000 years ago, he says. The evidence takes the form of mass graves of skeletons with crushed skulls, hack marks and projectile points embedded in them; rock art in Australia, Europe and elsewhere depicting battles with spears, clubs and bows and arrows; and settlements clearly fortified for protection against attacks (see "The birth of war").

War emerged when humans shifted from a nomadic existence to a settled one and was commonly tied to agriculture, Ferguson says. "With a vested interest in their lands, food stores and especially rich fishing sites, people could no longer walk away from trouble." What's more, with settlement came the production of surplus crops and the acquisition of precious and symbolic objects through trade. All of a sudden, people had far more to lose, and to fight over, than their hunter-gatherer forebears.

And finally, why on earth is the WSJ starting up an arts and culture section? The timing makes no sense to me. But, they have their reasons. Apparently business-centric papers are just as awful at making money as the NYT. So the WSJ is looking to poach some more general-interest readers. Good luck? Maybe? A quote:

“The Journal is making a very smart decision by focusing on New York,” said Pia Catton, the former culture editor of The New York Sun, which the chattering classes were known to praise for the sophisticated alternative it provided to The Times. “There is so much going on in New York, and it sets the tone for the rest of the country.”

(Ms. Catton herself has recently moved to Washington, D.C., to become an editor at Politico.)

“The Times has gone wrong by covering arts nationally and casting the net so wide that they aren’t focused on New York anymore,” she said.

Times culture editor Sam Sifton, reached for comment, would only say: “We’re extremely proud of our culture coverage and confident it can stand up to competition.”

Politico says nothing new

in this article, which is a good summary of the current status of arts policy, if nothing else. I restate my points:

Michelle is not a sufficient advocate for the arts. Neither are Landesman or Leach separately. There needs to be one person who organizes our attitudes towards culture in this country.

The Practical Guide to Help Spurned Political Wives Survive Old Problems in the Era of New Technology.

Although I know many people who (intensely) dislike Maureen Dowd, I believe that this op-ed of hers is hilarious, timely, and perfectly executed.

6. No matter how revolting your husband’s behavior is, don’t be passive-aggressive in public. Refrain from making any remarks that have a veneer of dignity but derogatory subtexts that sound like: “We’re trying to reconcile but it’s going to be tough because he has irreparably damaged my children” or “He has no integrity and I want my kids to have integrity” and “Sure, I’d like to give him a chance if he weren’t such a sleazeball.”

geniuuuusssss - I want to write a play about this. Or see one. Or act in one. Someone, please write it for me.