Fricassee:
- meat, especially chicken or veal, browned lightly, stewed, and served in a sauce made with its own stock. [Dictionary.com]
Heard in conversation with my Arts Editor todaya few days ago. Neither of us were exactly certain of the definition.
You’d think they were an invading army or something.
How would you price one of 200+ Santa’s helpers? Authentic Santa’s helpers, dressed up as the old guy?
Maybe $85,000?
And, of course, they’re, ah, docile, which means … No longer murderous?
That’s the final, implicit question in Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010). A Finnish export, this is the tale of the consequences of a bunch of American miners working a small mountain in Lapland, Finland, home of the Sami, reindeer herders. One morning, a few Sami discover their herd has been slaughtered and eaten, much to their fury. One little boy, Pietari, who with a friend had snuck into the mining camp and seen some of the work, becomes quite worried, resolving to do some research, and it’s December 24th. Losing a herd is no laughing matter.
Krampus and some despicable children.
Source: Wikipedia (“A 1900s greeting card reading ‘Greetings from Krampus!’)
Pietari has some interesting books to use for his research, and soon he’s on to a Santa Claus who’s rather different from the jolly old fellow of old: ram’s horns adorn his forehead, and while he cares little for good little boys and girls, the bad ones, well, it’s the cauldron for them. At least in one drawing. At this juncture, my Arts Editor commented that the picture resembled what little she knew of the pre-Christian demon Krampus, as seen here on the right. Those are presumably bad children. Nice tongue.
Then it’s Christmas morning and Pietari’s father has caught something in the wolf pit trap, and that’s no wolf – it’s a dead, naked old man! At this moment, the neighbor who wears the Santa Claus costume shows up and is drafted into helping drag the corpse into the workshop. See, there’s this little problem: that trap is actually illegal. How to get around this fine point? They don’t know the old guy, so it’s the chainsaw for him.
Except he’s not dead, and they’re not murderers, so they wait for him to recover. Pietari’s not so happy, though, and manages to catch a ride into town with the local cops, who seem to be a trifle grumpy. His father pursues them and eventually catches up, where he learns of mysterious overnight thefts of radiators, stoves, and a hair-dryer. The husband of the owner of the hair-dryer blames it all on Russians, who have nothing so good. This man, who knows English, is recruited as an interpreter, as it’s obvious the old man is a miner.
And where are all the children?
Upon return, the neighbor is found outraged at having his ear bitten off by the old man. Furious, the three men and Pietari charge into the mining camp, but find it abandoned. A radio burps at them: Is the cargo ready? Is Santa Claus ready to fly? Smelling opportunity, they arrange to have the old man ready for delivery.
Sadly for the man who wants Santa to fly, what appears to be a glaive gives him a splitting headache, and, under attack by a passel of old men, the group retreats into a storage facility, where, from a block of ice thirty feet tall, there protrudes a monstrous pair of horns.
Well, this and that occurs, obstacles are overcome, and the story might even be funnier if you’re familiar with Finnish legends – I’m not, so I only laughed a little. But in the end, the group is faced with the problem of what to do with 200+ out of work Santa’s helpers.
For all that we might see the dour Finns classifying this as just a light-hearted romp, I see in it echoes of Ghostbusters (1984), because they share the theme of breaking the dominance of the Gods. These are the ancient, terrifying, brutal gods that rampaged through the lives of the helpless humans, treating them as toys or even treats – except now we must strike the word helpless, for the furious, desperate, resourceful men find a way to destroy a God, committing deicide – and finding a way to profit thereby. It’s the uplift of poor humanity from being the mat on which the Gods wiped their feet to insurgents who challenge for the right to live free of the arbitrary rules and destruction brought on by a mysterious Divine.
That gives the story more than transitory meaning. I felt the balance of the work – the cinematography, acting, pacing, story – were all adequate or more than adequate. I particularly liked Pietari, a steady little boy who sees more clearly than most. This is both tensely well-told as well as fairly amusing. If you’re in the mood for a closely observed few Christmas hours in a foreign land still latched to a foreign mythology, then this story may be for you.
I noticed today a lot of chatter about Oprah Winfrey’s possible advancement of a candidacy for the Democrats’ Presidential nomination in 2020, but I must confess I mostly did not read up on it except for the piece by Kevin Williamson in National Review. It’s easy to write useless puff pieces if you like a candidate – but you may learn more by reading someone opposed to such a Presidency. While Kevin is aware that a compare and contrast with President Trump would not turn out well for Trump, he does have an opening salvo in case of a Winfrey campaign:
Of course she is categorically unqualified for the office. But have fun imagining Republicans making that case in the shadow of Donald J. Trump, Very Stable Genius™. Oprah’s formal educational attainments are modest, whatever political ideas she has seem to be largely undeveloped, and she has an obvious and regrettable weakness for quacks and cranks of sundry sorts: anti-vaccine nuts, Dr. Oz, doctors who use Tarot cards to diagnose thyroid problems, etc. She is a one-woman public-health menace.
I have no direct exposure to Winfrey. Never watched the show, read the magazine, probably not even seen her movies (she’s made a few), nor have I researched her. Kevin’s remarks are, therefore, contingent in my view, but given that they are a little troubling. I prefer my medicine to be evidence-based, not charisma-based, and so that may be a problem.
Or maybe not. While the history of a politician is of vital importance for evaluation purposes, it’s also important to realize that adults mature and change. It’s possible that a decade or two ago Winfrey was easy prey to the quacks, but today she’s learned of their worthlessness and now disdains them.
But I don’t know.
So my real point is that current views, not past views, are the most important in the evaluation process. If she’s forceful in saying she made mistakes and no longer has any use for superstitious rot, then great; if she equivocates and mentions her great experience with a palm reader last week (shades of Nancy Reagan!), then she’s probably a poor choice for President, although still superior to Trump. But allowing ancient history to make a decision for me is undesirable.
And for you.
My Arts Editor points out, as Kevin also notes, that she’s done well going from zero to the wealthiest woman in the world, and while business skills have little application in the governance sector, a keen understanding of how to build a team of experts has a great deal of applicability. Does she understand the difference? The Executive doesn’t need to be an expert in much of anything but assembling proper people to lead the various Cabinet and other positions, a stable temperament, and a keen understanding of the hows and whys of the Executive branch. Has Winfrey studied the subject? Or is she coasting in on her fame?
This is what interviews and debates should uncover.
So we’ll see what the coming months have to show. Personally, I think it’s a little early to start the 2020 campaign, even if Trump had already filed for it before he had even assumed office.
Knowingly or not, Bob Bauer on Lawfare is laying out a strong tactic for Democratic use in the next two elections in nearly all their national races. How so? By elaborating on how the GOP is helping Trump do lasting damage to the nation:
Does it matter if the threatened lawsuit never materializes? A lawsuit is surely worse than the threat of one. Yet the threat, conveyed in the most formal terms by his legal team, is an appalling precedent to have set.
In previous posts, I have suggested that Trump displays a demagogic leadership style characterized by the pathological personalization of his office. Of primary importance are his personal ends and ambitions: those ends justify the use of virtually any means. If to make a point or to inflict a penalty for crossing him, he feels he must climb down from the presidency to threaten litigation and perhaps become a litigant with no apparent concern for the costs to the institution, then that is what he will do. Norms are meaningless to the demagogue, who delights in ignoring them or who views them, as his chief of staff recently affirmed, as an impediment to running things as he would like.
Now the problem might be seen as only Trump’s, a problem to last as long as a presidency in which this most unusual occupant routinely confuses personal whim with official prerogative. One might imagine that democratic norms will not suffer permanent damage, only a temporary bruising until the next president takes office. On a more pessimistic note, what is once done stands a very fair chance of repetition. The presidents who follow Trump may bring to government no more experience and also fall back in running the government on whatever they learned in the private sector pursuits that earned them their wealth and public notice. The “insider-outsider” dynamic of contemporary politics rewards the candidates who profess contempt for government. In their understanding of government, “norms” are simply biases built into the system, the rules by which the insiders set the rules for their own benefit.
The damage to norms may begin with Trump’s personal outbursts and inclinations, but it does not end there. The acquiescence of congressional Republicans in the president’s conduct, which has sometimes risen to active support, elevates the attack on norms beyond an expression of Trump’s eccentricities. Not a single senior Republican member of Congress has raised a question about the president’s use of threats of litigation against political adversary Bannon or media critic Michael Wolff.
Nor have Republicans dissented from the president’s suggestion on Saturday, which he has made before, that the libel laws should be revised to ease the way for politicians to sue their media critics.
The Dems have the raw material: Trump may be leading the way in inflicting damage on the Nation, but the GOP is in full sheep mode right behind him. But they need to keep in mind that the average Joe doesn’t really know much about norms or how the Executive really functions. Much like myself, past tense, most think the President, through his nominees, runs these departments, and who has ever heard of a norm.
Therefore, the Dems need to embark on an educational and then accusatory campaign. First, educate everyone, in a non-partisan manner, on how and why the Executive is structured as it is. Following that – and much harder – will be to explain and justify the norms that Trump and his Party are trampling. Think the refusal to even consider Judge Garland.
If they’re smart, they’ll use multiple media and learning styles. Even the old cartoons which explained the rudiments of American government forty years ago could provide a style for these new lessons.
The trick will be to make them completely non-partisan so that when the Trumpists try to discredit them, the independents will scratch their heads and then dismiss the Trumpists. Hell, if it can be done effectively and honestly, throw Bill Clinton under the bus.
The next step is to put a knife into the chest of the opposing GOP candidates. In the case of incumbents, the Dem ad should ask why the incumbent did not raise a fuss, introduce a bill, or do anything at all to impede the destruction of the American nation. Your Congressperson is supposed to be a strong-willed leader, but instead Trump had his way with them without the least objection! Don’t hesitate to use the sexual innuendo, because it connects to our primitive beings and reinforces the central truth of the GOP in this Congress – irresponsible loyalty to Party and Leader over their loyalty to the United States.
For those candidates who are not incumbents, if they are Tea Party members – and most will be – then simply point out that Trump and the Tea Party are one, and ask why in the world a voter would want to send a Trump partisan to Congress to continue damaging the government of the United States?
Reading Bob’s post, it brought out quite vividly the difference in outlooks of Trump vs just about previous Presidents, and that difference is their view of the Nation’s future. These norms and requirements and laws and all the constraints on the Executive are there to enhance the just behaviors of the Executive, and by so doing, enhance the very future of the United States. That is the point of all these things that frustrate President Trump.
And that is really the point of Trump – not the future of the United States, but his own immediate gratification. He seems to have no conception of a future for anyone but himself, and even that is merely how he compares with those who he conceives of as competitors, whether they’re other real estate developers or previous American Presidents.
And that irresponsible outlook is why it’s important to start dismantling the GOP Government. It’s the first step on the difficult rehab of a Party in steep decline.
Cleaned and sharpened, please.
The Bat (1959) presents a murder mystery involving a small town in which it seems many of the pillars of society are riddled with termites, but the strong-willed ladies will save the day. Mystery writer Cornelia van Gorder has rented a large house named The Oaks during her visit to an unnamed small town (possibly named Zenith, which may be inaccurate but I will assume), and the owner of the house is the local bank’s president and founder, John Fleming. John is on a vacation trip, hunting in the company of the local doctor, Dr. Wells (Vincent Price). One evening he reveals that he’s embezzled $1 million (quite a lot in those days). He intends to kill their hunting guide, and requires the assistance of the doctor to have the guide’s remains recognized as Fleming’s, and also certified as so mutilated that the coffin should be sealed. The Cashier of the bank will be considered to have committed the crime and Fleming will escape with ill-gotten gains.
Dr. Wells seems mysteriously untroubled by this criminal proposition, and speculates on the location of the money. As Fleming had actually build The Oaks, he wonders aloud if the money is hidden at the house. Fleming hears something outside, and opening the door of the cabin, finds the woods are aflame. He turns to warn the doctor, but Wells has sprung into action at Fleming’s distraction, grabbing a gun and shooting the bank president dead.
Zenith has been plagued with a series of murders in which the jugular of the victims, all female, are ripped out. One victim survives long enough to describe a human with no face and claws on his hands, possibly with wings, and so the murderer is nicknamed The Bat. Cornelia’s servants, but for the maid, Lizzie, and the chauffeur, have fled her employ because of stories surrounding The Oaks, and Dr. Wells, returned from his murderous sojourn, wastes little time in reinforcing these concerns, in a most charming way. But Cornelia is no fainting flower, but a forceful tower of good sense and the intelligence that one might expect from a hard-nosed mystery writer. One storm-tossed night, she and her maid receive a fright when the maid sees an outside door open and a clawed hand reach for Cornelia, but the door is swiftly shut and locked, and Cornelia and Lizzie retreat to their bedroom, where Cornelia evidences that she’s locked and loaded for bear.
And so the movie continues, as bodies start to pile up, hidden rooms contain more than you might think, and greed merits its old rewards of disgrace and death. This story plays with evidence and supposition right to the very end, and although I did detect two or three plot holes, the pacing, cinematography, and strong performances by the cast, especially that of Cornelia (Agnes Moorhead) and Dr. Wells makes it possible to miss, or at least disregard, those plot holes as they go flying by.
This is not a cutting edge thriller, nor will it change your life, so I shan’t actually recommend it. But if you’re craving a thriller mystery with some memorable characters, The Bat may be just for you. And it’s available online:
Factotum:
Jake Tapper of CNN’s State Of The Union used it as he cut off Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller to end an interview:
CNN’s Jake Tapper ended a bizarre, contentious filibuster by White House policy advisor Stephen Miller on today’s State of the Union by noting, “There is one viewer that you care about right now and you’re being obsequious, you’re being a factotum in order to please him.”
I wonder if there’s a denigrative sense to factotum.
If you’re in the United States and have been wondering where global warming has gone, I have your answer: it’s in Australia.
Emergency services in southeast Australia are warning people to stay indoors as a dangerous heatwave batters the country, with temperatures so high that the asphalt on some roads has been melting.
The “catastrophic” hot weather caused a 10km stretch of the Hume Highway, near the Victoria state capital Melbourne, to become soft and sticky, causing havoc for motorists trying to enter the city.
Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania have now declared a total fire ban after blazes on the outskirts of Melbourne raged out of control, destroying buildings and threatening lives.
It took a team of 300 firefighters, 50 trucks and three helicopters to tackle one fire in Victoria’s Carrum Downs on Saturday, which threatened dozens of homes.
And another 49 bushfires are said to have been reported across the state – although many were small and easily extinguished – with 400 residencies losing power.
The state’s emergency management commissioner, Craig Lapsley, said hot temperatures had combined with dry weather, strong winds and a wind change to create dangerous conditions. [The Independent]
Welcome to Earth’s climate, a non-linear system in which more and more energy is trapped and running around madly, trying to escape. You can puzzle over these metric values …
Temperatures are expected to exceed 40°C in the southeast, with the country’s Bureau of Meteorology forecasting highs of 45°C in Penrith, 44°C in Richmond and 43°C in Liverpool, with much of the area being rated as ‘catastrophic’ or ‘code red’ by emergency services.
… or you can contemplate your asphalt melting and just take it as a sign that global climate is warming up.
I’ve decided to add a new section on the right side called Recent Keepers, which points to posts I think are particularly well done. Feel free to nominate others using the mail link on the right to me. I’ll probably limit it to five entries and rotate them as they grow old.
In the protests in Iran the GOP may foresee the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but I fear it may be a mirror as described in this WaPo report:
The unnamed woman is one of countless Iranians who say their savings have been wiped out by the collapse of fraudulent businesses and unlicensed credit institutions in recent years. Economists are now pointing to the abrupt closure of these poorly regulated institutions as laying the foundation for the unrest that struck Iran starting in late December.
“Banks are shutting down without any kind of notice, and it’s creating a huge political and economic backlash at a local level,” said Suzanne Maloney, senior fellow on Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution.
Anger over these losses came on top of years of pent-up frustration over a sluggish economy. When the government announced recent price increases and released an austere budget bill, it ignited at-times violent protests that spread rapidly to dozens of cities nationwide. Demonstrators quickly turned their fury on corrupt officials and the Islamic republic as a whole. …
“Most protests in Iran are over economic issues,” Maloney said. “What’s different is that it seems to have tapped into a deep sense of alienation and frustration, that people aren’t just demonstrating for better working conditions or pay, but insisting on wholesale rejection of the system itself.”
Note “poorly regulated.” It’s been an under-reported item that the Trump Administration has been busy loosening regulations, often or always with the justification that they a wet blanket on the economy. My worry stems from the Great Recession, which I (and a number of economists, who are far more credible than myself) believe was triggered through regulation loosening, including the repeal of the old Glass-Steagall Act contained in the U.S. Banking Act of 1933.
If we were to suffer a repeat of the Great Recession of 2008, would we once again hunker down and wait it out? Remember, when the Bush Administration rendered aid to the financial industry, that generated a lot of outrage and arguably contributed to the Obama victory and the brief Democratic dominance of Congress. Is it enough that the politicos can be voted out, or would we be facing our own set of protests over the mismanagement of the economy? After all, for the little guy (being one of them), the economy runs on what might loosely be called honor, the understanding that transactions are honest & etc. But the actions of bankers and insurance (such as bailout recipient AiG) execs were perceived, and perhaps were, less than honorable: monster bonuses in the face of miserable disaster, running companies right into the ground (see Lehman Brothers), and other such activities, often seen as execs enriching themselves at the expense of the hard-working little guy. Just voting out the arrogant assholes in the GOP might not be soon enough, visceral enough.
We could see our own set of riots if an economic crash was seen to be a result of Trumpist greed.
Parasomnia:
To see if unusual physical movements in our sleep, known as parasomnias, could correspond with us replaying things we’ve learned, researchers have started studying some of the more animated human sleepers – from those who let out light grumbles or sit up in bed, to more extreme cases when people eat, drive or even have sex while asleep. [“Night exercises: The intense workout we all do in our sleep,” Michelle Carr, NewScientist (9 December 2017, paywall)]
In NewScientist (9 December 2017, paywall) Fred Pearce reviews Replenish: The Virtuous Cycle Of Water And Prosperity, by Sandra Postel, an environmentalist whose main concern are the world’s rivers. I, of course, have the gall to actually comment on what I read in the review, rather than read the book. Fred is doubtful of Postel’s thesis, which is …
At individual and civic levels, we use water with staggering inefficiency. It flows through our fingers. We could do things much better, [Postel] argues, if only we stopped treating it like a birthright that falls from the sky and more like a precious resource that sustains all life on Earth. “The water cycle is broken,” she writes. “But one river, one wetland, one city, one farm at a time, we can begin to fix it.” …
But for all her language about sharing and stewardship, Postel ultimately finds environmental salvation in the power of the dollar. She wants water to be owned, so it has a value to individuals and corporations. If they own and trade it, her argument goes, they will also safeguard it and use it well.
Her book focuses on examples where capitalism nurtures water. Most are in the US. She finds that water markets from California to New England deliver the precious resource to those who derive most economic value from it – almond farmers in California, city dwellers in New Mexico’s deserts or salmon fishers in the north-west.
I think Fred has good reason to harbor doubts, although my reasons may differ from his. Postel’s thesis is the classic libertarian position, which posits that resources which are privately owned will be nurtured and conserved by the owners, who wish to profit from those resources over the long-term. By contrast, publicly owned – or unownable, if I might coin a term – resources are subject to the tragedy of the commons, for there is no self-interest restraints on the harvesters of the resource, resulting in the plunder of the resource, even if it’s a renewable resource. Just think of the collapse and continued failure of the various fisheries around the world.
The problem with the libertarian position is its assumptions of the applicability of the ownership model, the rationality of the owners, the transmission of perfect information, and the correlation of private interests with the public good.
The Nile draws its water from three long rivers – the White Nile, Blue Nile and the Atbara, which flows from North-West Ethiopia to the Nile in East Sudan. The longest river in the world, the Nile stretches 6,650 kilometres and passes through eleven countries: Burundi, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The volume of the Nile’s annual flow is 84 billion cubic metres. [Future Directions International]
The suggestion that an ownership model could be applied here appears to be risible. Many countries have claims on the contents of the Nile – how does one apportion it in a private ownership model? And then make the apportionment stick without conflict?
Here’s the real problem for me: I don’t have a suggested solution to offer as an alternative. I read enough libertarian thought on these sorts of things that I can see the problems with it, so I don’t really trust such suggestions. But in a world where natural resources are not equal to the task of feeding, watering, and clothing the human and non-human living creatures on it, I wonder if the only solution is going to be a reduction in the human population, probably through some ruinous and tragic mechanism, until those who are left will once again find Earth to be a bounteous world from which the essentials of survival may be extracted with little impact on the environment.
I’ve talked about the importance of rivers before here, where there has been proposals, some approved, to give rivers legal rights. Connected to this is the American Indian belief that rivers are sacred (looking through this link, I have a lot of suspicion about the historicity of their assertions, so take this link with a few flecks of salt). As an agnostic, I can’t say I much like the intellectual background of the assertion, but as a functional part of their society, it seems likely (I haven’t studied this) that this should keep a critical part of their ecological support system in a near-optimal condition. That is, rivers do not generally deliver additional benefit to humans or other creatures through the addition of pollution, so by marking them as sacred and thus implying a punishment, divine or in the real world, for those who substantially damage them, they’re relatively safe-guarded against self-interested mismanagement. I suspect that a comparison would suggest this is more effective than private ownership or the granting of “rights” by governments.
And, oh yes, I do feel the irony. I suspect it means our secular models of optimal societies are incomplete.
Both of these characters were wasted. Or perhaps they ARE wasted.
While The Living Ghost (1942) has many elements of a classic mystery, such as the missing wealthy man, his second wife and jealous daughter by the late first wife, various friends & relatives, servants, and the big mansion, it’s missing one vital element – a strongly written investigator role. Walter Craig is the missing banker, who entered his bedroom but never made it to the actual bed. After some futzing about with the police, one of the relatives suggests they bring in a private investigator, a man he knows who used to work for the prosecutor’s office and was one of their best. His name is Nic Trayne.
And what’s he doing now?
Why, he’s a professional listener. People who want someone to non-judgmentally listen to them pay $2 a session. He dresses up in a silly get-up, empties his mind, and has mastered an art that this reviewer has also mastered – the helpful grunt. For me, it goes like this – Oh, hi, you have a problem? Tell me about it. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh – Oh, you figured it out? Glad to be of help. Come back any time.
I think he has the pelt of an albino beaver on his head.
Although I must say Nic is better dressed than I.
And it’s an interesting and creative manner for adding color to a plot that might otherwise blend into all the other stories that use the other elements. The problem is that Nic, a former investigator, comes across as a scatter-brain. Do I find a scatter-brain credible as an investigator? No, and I’ll tell you why. To my mind, an investigator has to take in a number of facts, often unconnected on their face, classify them as to their criticality to the problem, and, keeping them in mind, construct a story that connects the facts and points to some conclusion. This alone suggests a mind that doesn’t leap like it’s been hit by an over-powered electrode every time someone opens their mouth. An investigator often also has to work under pressure, whether it’s time, danger, or some other factor. It’s almost enough to just have the rock-solid guy with a cig hanging from the corner of his mouth, uncaring about the world but for solving his client’s problem; it approaches genius when you see an investigator such as Sam Spade, clearly affected by a woman, still complete the investigation, sweating yet devious, and putting all the guilty away – including the dame. See The Maltese Falcon (1941) for a masterful example.
BUUUUT to return to the unfulfilled potential of The Living Ghost, although Nic initially demurs the thought of returning to investigation, the daughter, Billie, turns her wiles and intelligence loose on him and he soon succumbs – although he quickly admits he’s fully aware of her strategy. This appears to signal an interesting mind behind the silly mask of Nic – but it only really comes through once more.
Continuing onward, the missing man soon reappears in his own house – but incommunicado. He’s “cortically paralyzed,” a condition that may only be artificially induced using anesthesia and special medical gear. The police find that just such gear was delivered to a nearby house, purchased for rehab recently, and off Nic – and Billie – go to investigate. At this point, the ineffectuality of the lead character is compounded, because when Nic convinces Billie they’re trapped in the basement, she confesses her love for him, he gets in some necking time, and then admits it was all a trick. Chaos ensues, but they do find the medical gear, along with a bonus of some experimental subjects wandering the hallways.
Why did she fall for him? Beats the shit out of me. Either you write it off as one of those crazy dame things, or you condemn the scriptwriter to 20 years in the third circle of Hell. Personally, I vote for the latter. It really was jarring to see this bright, vivacious woman falling for this scatter-brain. (For those who wonder about me, I’m vague. Or so my Arts Editor tells me.)
Back at the house, and this is probably out of sequence, but one of the female relatives is a real whack-job, to the point where another relative says she’s been a member of every cult he’s ever heard of. She puts on a really good performance, suggesting that Nic is in mortal anger – and then we never see her again. So what was that all about? Just color? I was sad when she never reappeared. Especially when her eternally picked-on husband ends up dead in the garden, where incidentally Walter, the cortically paralyzed man, magically appears, manipulated to show up for reasons unknown. Maybe the TV editor decided to remainder her.
Eventually, Nic gathers everyone up for the classic big reveal, but with a twist. The realtor who sold the property housing the medical gear never met the buyer, but talked to them over the phone, so Nic arranges to have everyone record their voice on a wax record for later analysis by the realtor – but it’s a trap. Nic is ready and waiting when one of the friends shows up to kill him with a knife, and when the second wife rolls in to finish Nic off, the jealous daughter is ready and waiting and takes her down. So we learn that if Walter Craig, the wealthy banker, had died, the estate goes to the daughter – but if he’s incapacitated, the second wife takes over and can drain the estate.
So we have credible motivations, some fairly lively if not entirely vivid characters (the realtor is a real hoot and almost worth the price of admission alone), some of whom are wasted, and one investigator who shows some smarts in trapping the guilty, but is so … so … goofy that they might as well have substituted Gomer Pyle and achieved about the same effect.
And it’s not a good one.
This movie is fairly unusual for me, personally, in that it actually induced an urge to correct it. I really want to replace Nic the Investigator with someone more … substantial. He’d still need to be quirky, but something that didn’t annoy me. Maybe intrigue me. Hint at past wrongs, perhaps. The whole “professional listener” thing need not be discarded, but could be a signifier of some observation of criminals and victims over the years. And perhaps gives Billie, who needs more work herself, an actual reason to take a romantic interest in him.
Make him a real person.
Well, it won’t happen, but that’s how I feel after watching it.
BTW, I see it’s online. Maybe it’s better than the TV version we saw, but I’m not going to take the time to find out.
Ever wonder how to find ancient shipwrecks in deep waters? Turns out you follow the breadcrumbs:
Institute for Exploration / Ocean Exploration Trust
[Ben] Ballard says the Mediterranean seabed probably holds thousands of wrecks from the last few millennia. Still, individual boats are hard to find. In order to discover them, the researchers followed ancient trash trails.Ancient mariners often cast large clay jars called amphorae into the sea after using up contents like wine. So many were dumped that they can be followed like a breadcrumb trail. [“Wayfarers of the ancient world,” Joshua Rapp Learn, NewScientist (9 December 2017)]
Fascinating. They must keep maps of these trash trails, as such data would yield information about trade routes. Nothing obviously out there, though.
When an experiment in blood-letting goes wrong…
Camp.
Camp.
Camp.
What We Do in the Shadows (2014) is a documentary primarily concerning the existence of four vampires in New Zealand, although we eventually get to meet other members of other groups of the supernatural community. We follow along as the four are profiled insofar as to their pasts, interests, and predilections, as they propagate their kind, and how they struggle with the problems inherent in being a former human, but now a creature immune to the normal vicissitudes of a human body. Friends and family die, no more day-time lunches, dressing for a night out without a mirror, those damn vampire-hunters, that sort of thing.
I think this was very well thought out and very well done, but somehow I never really quite found my way to the proper place to really enjoy it. True, the Procession of Shame had me laughing out loud, and my Arts Editor and I laughed at a few other bits, but giving the lead vampire the stereotypical mannerisms of a gay gentleman was distracting, I think. Although seriously trying to discuss such a choice in the context of a mythological creature has its own set of existential canards, but since it is a story, if of a variety unique to our age, it does make a twisted sort of sense to argue about such artistic decisions.
Then again, I never did get into This Is Spinal Tap (1984) either, so perhaps my sense of humor is somewhat defective. Many other critics liked it, and I can understand why. But it didn’t quite trip my wire, as it were.
Your mileage may vary.
Camp.
Camp.
Camp.
The idea of frozen iguanas plummeting from trees in Miami, as promulgated by many news outlets, including the Palm Beach Post, is probably most interesting for its novelty effect:
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials said iguanas can become immobilized or sluggish when temperatures hit between 40 and 50 degrees.
This morning, it hit 38 degrees at Palm Beach International Airport and isn’t expected to climb out of the 50s today.
While you may see cold-stunned iguanas on the sidewalk or in your backyard, wildlife officials warn they may even fall out of the trees.
But it’s also a reminder that invasive species such as the iguana and another plague on Florida, the Burmese python, are not always invading their version of the Garden of Eden. A geographical area experiencing a weather extreme can end up killing a substantial portion of the invasive species if it lasts long enough, perhaps enough so that humans can finish them off. Unfortunately, this cold snap won’t last that long.
But if a weather extreme could be artificially induced, it might work. I wonder if environmentalists have considered that – at least those that haven’t yet accepted thenotion that species do change geographical ranges as a natural rhythm of the world. The drive to exterminate species alien to a given geographical area is arguably just another management scheme – which doesn’t condemn the practice, but does remind us that managing Nature is a lot trickier than many of us think it might be.
Moderate right winger Jennifer Rubin of WaPo notes that the Trump White House might be in its final days:
As for Dhillon, this actually confirms author Michael Wolff’s ongoing refrain in his tell-all book that White House advisers considered Trump to be mentally and/or temperamentally incapable of doing his job. To continue to enable and defend him, knowing he is not capable of carrying out his oath, is a moral abomination and a violation of these advisers’ own oaths to defend the Constitution and country. Moreover, if Mueller has this information, it is because Dhillon and/or White House counsel Donald McGahn are talking to Mueller. Trump will now know that he is surrounded, in his mind, by disloyal people who are helping Mueller to make a case against him.
The walls are closing in on Trump, at least with respect to an obstruction-of-justice claim. Literally everyone mentioned above may have evidence that incriminates the president. Some of these people will have personal liability and therefore may be ready to cut a deal with prosecutors. The White House is melting down.
Last night I realized I had the impression that the Trump Administration is really facing disaster on just about all fronts.
And, yet, all that Jennifer says, and all I noted above, may not matter. If we’re to believe Gallup (and the Gallup poll has changed from daily to weekly, starting Jan 1, sad to say), Trump has gained in popularity of late – with Trump hitting 40% for the first time in quite a while.
This suggests to me nothing particularly new, just the simple old observation that most folks don’t really know or care what happens in Washington, D.C. I think there are three groups of Americans in this matter: political groupies, who are temperamentally attracted to politics, whether it’s for base reasons of power or intellectual curiosity (I sort of fit into the latter category). A second group, which has been growing rapidly and which I also sort of fit, of those who realize that, although they don’t have much interest in politics, elections have consequences (a Steve Benen aphorism), and so they’ve started educating themselves on what’s going on, and possibly even running for state-level offices. And the third group, which is shrinking as the second group grows, of those who don’t pay attention, who vote based on inertia (“dyed in the wool Republicans“, for example). Many, many people just don’t care, as the entire political process, whether it’s fund-raising, political maneuvers, or writing laws is repulsive, a reaction often reinforced by talk radio. Add in 40+ hour work weeks, interests that have nothing to do with gaining political power (although they may aspire to positions within their hobbies), and the time that it takes to run families, and it’s hard to blame them.
But without popular support, it appears the GOP will not attempt to remove Trump from his seat, no matter how incompetently he’s run this Administration. We may have to simply run him out of town in 2020.
Or not. Trump has a physical examination coming up on January 12th. While it’s not clear to me that this includes a mental health evaluation, if he’s suffered any sort of physical failure, such as a stroke, that might impact his cognitive abilities, that would definitely be grounds for a 25th Amendment removal process, to my non-legal mind. I don’t care how many people, deluded or not, support Trump. If his mind is no longer properly functioning due to physical or mental problems, we need to eject him from the Presidential office. It has nothing to do with disliking his policies and everything to do with the safety of the nation.
If you’re like me, I was initially excited when I read that Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) was going to oppose all further nominations to the Federal judiciary by the Trump Administration. But then I ran across a clarification in the Washington Examiner:
Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado said Thursday he would block all of President Trump’s judicial nominees until the administration reverses its decision to rescind a policy that de-prioritized the enforcement of federal marijuana laws.
Gardner, whose home state legalized the use and possession of marijuana in the wake of that federal policy, said on the Senate floor he was not happy with the surprise decision, especially after both Attorney General Jeff Sessions and candidate Donald Trump said they would not interfere with states on this issue.
Which is quite the come-down for me. While the marijuana issue is certainly important, the quality of our Federal judiciary is far more important. If Gardner had simply said that the quality of the nominees has been wanting and he would no longer vote for the confirmation of future nominees unless they met the highest standards, then he would have won some qualified praise from myself. I can only say qualified because he’s presumably already voted for those who have already been confirmed.
But as the Examiner’s report indicates, this is nothing more than a political maneuver. It may put Sessions’ nuts in a grinder, which of course I will applaud, but it also implicitly opens Gardner up for counter-maneuvers which may force him to collapse his own maneuvers. After all, this is not based on some moral imperative, the bulwark of successful politics, but simply to serve his own political needs, aka survival (Colorado has legalized marijuana for recreational purposes, and is a position with a great deal of popular support).
And, given the importance of a highly competent and fair-minded judiciary, it should be a moral imperative.
I don’t expect Gardner’s position to hold up over time. Either the Trump Administration will back down in order to continue to sandbag the judiciary, or they’ll find a way to force Gardner to repudiate this position – perhaps by denying aid to Colorado in the face of some disaster.
Gardner is up for re-election in 2020.
Tabby’s Star continues to make news. This time WaPo is reporting that the odd visuals coming from Tabby’s may indicate dust:
Artist’s conception of Tabby’s Star.
Source: Wikipedia
Whatever substance exists between us and Tabby’s Star blocks more blue light than red light, as Boyajian, Ellis, Wright and other researchers reported in a study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on Wednesday. Planets cannot explain the dips. “If you have something that is completely opaque like a planet, you would expect all the colors of the light to be blocked out at the same levels,” Boyajian said. Likewise, the discovery also rules out alien industry.
Dust is one of the few explanations this observation does not eliminate. “The selective absorption of blue light has to point to dust,” Ellis said. “Certainly dust is the culprit.” Very small particles could block blue light’s shorter wavelengths while allowing red light, which has longer wavelengths, to escape.
“It has the typical signature of dust,” Boyajian said.
But the mystery is not over.
Yet even in space dust, there is mystery. If it is dust, the dust cloud has not spread far beyond its point of origin, the authors noted in the paper. A ring of dust around the star would constantly block starlight rather than dim light in bouts.
The artist’s conception, above, suggests a simple ring, which implies the ring is at a 90° angle to us. I wonder if it could actually be a shell or sphere of dust, instead.
Reality is so much more fun than self-delusion, I gotta say. Can’t wait for the next report.
Just a short while after reading about Kim’s speech and its remarks, and writing about it, I ran across this, also from 38 North, by Peter Ward:
In the last few years, the seemingly ever more frequent North Korean nuclear and missile tests have been met with intensifying sanctions. Yet, North Korea’s economic recovery post-2000 has continued largely unabated. This is in part because the North Korean government has made radical changes in the management of its state-owned enterprises (SOEs). While the regime seems to be doing everything it can to keep up Stalinist appearances and Kim Jong Un probably believes that he cannot abandon socialist rhetoric without risking his legitimacy, in reality, markets increasingly play a central role in the lives of ordinary North Koreans. As such, the regime has been adapting to this new reality and moving to co-opt market forces by side-lining the Party in economic management. This is most clearly illustrated by the 2014 amended Enterprise Act, which came to light earlier this year [2017], granting SOE managers broad rights to engage in foreign trade and joint ventures and accept investment from domestic private investors. Institutionalizing market forces seems to be helping to create a better investment climate, and thus spurring growth.
I wonder if they’re learning by observing China, carefully opening up on the economic front while keeping the political world ordered to benefit themselves. But what are the limits? That’s unclear, although Peter concludes with this:
These changes to the SOE laws are the first steps on a long road to economic reform. Private property still is illegal, and the regime will need to figure out how to further expand the rights of de facto private business in order to ensure that recent economic growth is sustainable. Removing the Party, a bastion of the old socialist order, from daily economic life is clearly a step in the right direction, as it allows enterprise management and entrepreneurs to worry less about ideology. At the same time, the nuclear and missile programs mean that the foreign investment the country needs to grow and reconstruct its shattered infrastructure will likely not be forthcoming. These limited but real changes will likely run up against the hard realities that the regime’s foreign policy has created.
Will they be a miniature powerhouse? What about their human rights record? The future of North Korea remains obscure.
It’s always dangerous applying your judgment against artifacts from alien cultures, such as watching a film sourced from another nation, because the tell-tales employed by the movie makers, the short hand and cultural assumptions may or may not be recognized by the viewer.
Such is the possibly the case with Bresson’s Pickpocket (1959), a film considered to be a masterpiece and seminal. My Arts Editor and I found it to be obtuse and, frankly, a little dull. Perhaps, as moderately well-off Americans, we are unqualified to judge this film, as it concerns itself with a young Frenchman, Michel, in post World War II Paris, short of opportunities, his mother dying. What to do? He takes up the old trade of pickpocketing. The audience is introduced to the various skills, which is interesting if accurate. The police may or may not suspect him; frankly, the inspector appears to be less interested in catching him at a crime than in introducing him to the idea of growing up.
Michel is intensely in his own head, torn between his physical needs and the morality under which he grew up; the woman who might have been his girl or even wife, Jeanne, is completely ignored. He may play at philosophical games in which self-recognized supermen are permitted to break the law, but there is little enough to a specious argument. Paranoid concerning the police, he leaves Paris for a couple of years, and admits that while he was successful at crime, he was a wastrel, losing it in cards and to women.
Returning to Paris, Jeanne is now a single mother, just as despairing as before, and he promises to help. But he lets his greed overwhelm his judgment, and is caught in the act and arrested. Now he rests in prison, indulging in the self-indulgence of fatalism. The only person who cares for him is Jeanne, and he finally admits that he loves her.
But why? We couldn’t tell. Motivations were waved at in this film, and while perhaps the French would understand, we did not. It made for a frustrating time. Technically, the movie is well-made, being black and white and well-photographed and observed. The acting was somewhat repetitive. Perhaps his suit, over-large and all he seemed to own, was symbolic of something, but neither one of us could see it without being jarred by it a little bit.
And perhaps it’s just a pet peeve and most folk don’t care, but narration really annoys me. Now, I’ll grant that it worked quite well in the commercial release of Blade Runner (1982), although I also like the Director’s Cut of Blade Runner. But in Pickpocket, it’s an example of the standard error of amateur story-tellers, which is telling, not showing. It left me wondering just how much the story could have been enhanced if he’d just kept his mental yap shut and shown why, in a strongly needed instance, he was falling in love with Jeanne.
Watch at your own risk.
Here I mentioned a report concerning something resembling free markets in North Korea, as reported by CNN. On 38 North, Robert Carlin analyzes Kim Jong-un’s recent speech to the North Korean nation:
Kim specifically mentioned the success of agricultural “work teams.” In effect, that might be an effort to signal public, high-level backing for innovations in agricultural policy, including the “plot responsibility system” introduced several years ago, and credited with keeping up production even in the face of bad weather. Kim also called for the state “to establish active measures to let the socialist responsibility management system prove its real worth in factories, enterprises, and cooperative organizations.” This is not new—it’s similar to a line he took in his 2016 Congress speech—but having it surface again in the midst of more challenging economic circumstances suggests Kim is not prepared to back off from reforms that have, at least to some extent, demonstrated their effectiveness. Overall, the picture is one of tightening ideological discipline while encouraging practical, innovative (obviously within limits) approaches at lower levels.
Seems giving folks a reason to take care of things is working in North Korea.
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However you feel about the recently passed Federal tax change bill, or, for that matter, the failed AHCA, you had to find the process by which they were formulated and debated to be, well, disconcerting – written in secret, subjected to no debate in the case of the AHCA, if I understand properly, and only cursory meetings in the case of the tax change bill. The mad rush to get the bills through Congress and onto Trump’s desk betrayed a fundamental irresponsibility on the part of the Congressional GOP.
So this report in NewScientist (9 December 2017) on the legalization of euthanasia in the state of Victoria in Australia was a reminder that some people know how to legislate:
VICTORIA has become the first state in Australia to legalise euthanasia. The state’s parliament passed the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill last week after more than 100 hours of debate.
And the bill passed. It’s loaded with safeguards:
The legislation includes 68 safeguards to prevent foul play, such as criminal offences to stop vulnerable people from being coerced into ending their lives.
No matter your opinion on euthanasia, or perhaps more accurately legalized suicide, they followed a process, they had a real debate, perhaps some of the legislators actually changed their minds, and they finally passed it. I’d cheer either result, honestly. This is how adults run a country.
I wonder if they take interns. I know a whole bunch of people who could use the experience.
I need a new tie tack right there.
Nightfall (1957) is a suspenseful movie let down by its ending. Set a little after World War II, Jim Vanning is a vet on a street corner, happy to help out a man who needs a light for his cigarette. He runs into a single woman in a bar and strikes up a conversation with her. He gains her address, as his profession is as a painter and she, a model, is always looking for work. Walking her out of the bar, he is accosted by two men, one of whom speaks with familiarity to the woman, who flees at Vanning’s imprecations.
They have guns, so he is persuaded to accompany them to an oil pump, the sort that needs no supervision. There they threaten him and demand he return their money, but he repeatedly, if in a discouraged manner, says he doesn’t know where it is. One of them appears to operate on a plane different from ours, ready to shoot Vanning just for giggles. In a moment of inattention, Vanning stuns them, takes their car, and flees.
Remember the guy who needed a light? We change over to him, and it turns out he’s been tracking Vanning as well. He’s discussing his efforts with his wife – what’s this all about?
Back to Vanning, he goes to the apartment of the woman in the bar and has a beginning of a good yell at her for setting him up, but she claims ignorance. Then his story starts to come out, told through flashbacks, of Vanning and his friend, Doc, on a camping trip, and helping a pair of men who had a car accident near their campsite.
And pulled guns on them.
The plot continues on from here, and it’s not bad at all. Information dribbles out, there are twists and turns, and credible characters are built. Unfortunately, the focus on the two bad guys is too scant to make believable the interpersonal friction which leads to their eventual self-destructive quarrel; too, the carelessness of the good guys was a trifle unbelievable. I found myself wishing they had entrapped the bad guys through cleverness, even though self-destruction is a valid observation of the criminal condition.
Despite the flaws of the ending, this is a solid effort, which I enjoyed.
E. J. Dionne in WaPo remarks on Trump:
But we are past the time when we can believe any of this. Trump is, without question, doing enormous damage to the United States’ standing in the world, and his strategy for political survival is rooted in a willingness to destroy our institutions.
Nowhere else, though, does, Dionne remark on Trump’s enablers in Congress, most notably Representative Nunes, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who supposedly recused himself from the investigation into claims of collusion, and yet reportedly continues to interfere, and Speaker Ryan, who continues to ignore a White House that is dangerously dysfunctional. Impeachments start in the House, Speaker Ryan, and you’re neglecting your duties.
Guess I’m just crabby this morning.
