Category Archives: Uncategorized

That uncomfortable feeling right before the troll eats you –

The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914) is a surprisingly charming story of the Land of Oz, featuring all manner of creatures: intelligent goats, Woozies, Munchkins, and much more of a magical nature. In this tale, we follow the travails of Ojo and Unc Nunkie, a Munchkin and his guardian, who find themselves hungry and resolve to travel to the Emerald City, where there is no hunger. Along the way they meet several odd characters before finding themselves turned into stone; the actual reason for this is obscure, as apparently the film was damaged at this juncture.

Into this terrible event enters the Patchwork Girl, assembled by the wife of the Crooked Magician to his specifications, in order to fetch materials for reversing the accident that has befallen Ojo, Unc Nunkie, and others. Fearless in the face of whimsical Alice In Wonderland like forces, she and an assistant manage to find the fabled ingredients, escape the constrictions of Ozma, and deliver them back to the Crooked Magician.

But just how crooked is he?

A silent effort, the dialog boards are appropriately timed, more or less, and the characters are often quite charming, especially the Woozy. This may not change your life, but it’s fun to see another creation of L. Frank Baum, especially as this is a creation of the author’s own production company.

Perhaps a little confusing, but still a needle under the nail.

Last Fall I covered an observation brought up by health watchers:

Both locally and nationally there have been great concerns expressed about fall, winter, and the flu season that usually accompanies them, as having both flu and Covid-19 would be truly miserable, tough on the hospital facilities, and, incidentally, quite dangerous. But flu is spread through the air, much like coronavirus, and if we’re social distancing, that might put a dent in this season.

And, indeed, the flu season has been minuscule this season, as the AP reports:

February is usually the peak of flu season, with doctors’ offices and hospitals packed with suffering patients. But not this year.

Flu has virtually disappeared from the U.S., with reports coming in at far lower levels than anything seen in decades.

Experts say that measures put in place to fend off the coronavirus — mask wearing, social distancing and virtual schooling — were a big factor in preventing a “twindemic” of flu and COVID-19. A push to get more people vaccinated against flu probably helped, too, as did fewer people traveling, they say.

While there’s also speculation that Covid-19 has physically pushed aside the flu, my suspicion is that we’ve been forced into living a more antiseptic life, and we’re reaping the consequences: fewer bugs to which we’re vulnerable are reaching us.

How that’ll play out next winter depends on how we weigh the benefits of socializing vs the negatives of the flu. But at least this burden on our health system has been alleviated, and is proof of the worth of social distancing and masking.

Or, in other words, We’re just so self-centered and self-important that we’ll blow up the system that gave us power in order to keep power:

A Republican lawmaker wants to allow the Arizona Legislature to overturn the results of a presidential election, even after the count is formally certified by the governor and secretary of state — and even after Congress counts the state’s electors.

The proposal by Rep. Shawnna Bolick of Phoenix contains a series of provisions designed to make it easier for those unhappy with elections to go to court.

Included would be allowing challengers to demand a jury trial and, more to the point, barring a trial judge or an appellate court from throwing out the case, even for lack of evidence, before the jurors get to rule.

That would affect the rules of court procedures that are set up and overseen by the Arizona Supreme Court, on which her husband, Clint Bolick, serves.

But the most sweeping provision would say that, regardless of any other law, the Legislature retains ultimate authority in deciding who the state’s presidential electors are.

And it would spell out that lawmakers, by a simple majority, could revoke the formal certification of the election results and substitute their own decision at any time right up to the day a new president is inaugurated. [tuscon.com]

Perhaps that should be rephrased Voters are just too stupid for words and we’re going to take away their rights if we deem them to make an irresponsible decision!

Yes, King George Queen Shawnna!

I hope – I don’t live in Arizona, nor know anyone currently living there, so I can’t really guess – that local voters will take one look at this proposal to deprive them of their fundamental right to choose their leaders and boost them right out of their seats – not just Bolick, but each and every Republican who votes for or even makes approving noises about this proposed legislation.

And where did this particular idiot grow up, anyway?

Back in 2017, someone came up with an idea for getting rid of the Electoral College without getting rid of the Electoral College:

If you haven’t heard about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, it’s a way to get around the requirement to amend the Constitution in order to abolish the Electoral College. Instead, once the winner of the national popular vote is known, states that are part of this Compact will automatically allocate all of their electoral votes to the winner.

It would appear that alarm is finally stirring in the shrinking Republican ranks:

The North Dakota state senate has passed a bill that would prohibit any state or local official from releasing presidential vote results until after the electoral college has voted, only the percentages of votes received.https://t.co/cGCxtikqiJ

(deleted prev tweet to fix) pic.twitter.com/Fhs6Onl9cC

— Derek Willis (@derekwillis) February 26, 2021

That’s an interesting approach to negating working around the Electoral College. It’s one thing to have a secret ballot, it’s quite another to keep the results secret. Goodness, the paranoid might think there’s a fix going in!

And while I’m not particularly worried about North Dakota, the influence of which on Presidential results, with three electoral votes currently, is minimal, there may be more to worry about with more populous Republican States which may decide to take the same strategy. For example, Texas has thirty eight electoral votes pending last year’s Census results, and if it were to withhold its results, then the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact may come to nothing.

But the blowback could be something fierce. Along with the paranoid, who will have legitimate reason to question the voting results for their State, how will the losing candidates know if they have a reason to file for a recount? If candidates are notified of final vote totals prior to the state-level counting, which generally happens by early December, how can anyone seriously expect results will not be leaked? All it takes is, say, the New York Post waving dollars around and some staffer – say, a Trump aide hungry for money – will anonymously upchuck that information.

And the lack of transparency will infuriate groups on both the left and the right.

I expect this will become law, and then North Dakota will spend a lot of coin defending it in Court. And losing.

I’m the girlfriend not mentioned in this review! Help me!

Jigsaw (1949) is a salutary tale of corruption and crime in the big city. Crusading reporter and columnist Charles Riggs fixates on the apparent suicide of a small-time printer, writing about it and the man’s links to white supremacist literature.

Then Riggs turns up dead.

Riggs was prominent enough that his murder may merit a special investigation. Assistant District Attorney Howard Malloy happened to know Riggs, and is investigating his death when he runs across a banner for The Crusaders, matching one of the effects of Riggs. Investigating, he discovers it is run by The Angel, a man who helps people in need.

If, perhaps, for a price.

That’s how The Angel operates, and right before Malloy’s eyes Angel makes a phone call, suggesting to someone unknown that Malloy might make a fine special prosecutor. But events become tangled when Malloy runs across Barbara Whitfield, singer and mob dolly, who also seeks to compromise Malloy. Then it’s onward to a party hosted by Mrs. Hartley, whose late husband was a judge, leaving her in a social position of some prominence, and now the suspects in Riggs’ murder are coming thick and fast. Can he even keep track of them? Is the fool really a fool?

And, ticking in the background, is the velvet fist that is The Crusaders, the nationalist smile on the bully boys’ face, xenophobia and power-lust rampant. It functions as a reminder that xenophobia is always a lever for forcing people to do what they shouldn’t.

Which makes the unplanned theft of Crusader plans a real problem for someone, and they respond in the only way they know how.

Tightly plotted, Jigsaw suffers from its black and white characters: either they’re good or they’re bad, with no in-between. It would have benefited from Malloy assessing the offerings of corruption, feeling the temptations of a comfortable, mob-supported position. This lack makes Jigsaw, for all that it was well put together, unmemorable, as I, having seen it only a few days ago, had to look it up to remember the plot. It’s the tension between Easy Street and moral imperatives which brings us memorable characters and stories, particularly those which presage societal changes. That lack made it another B-List movie, which is too bad.

But it was a fun way to while away an hour.

This is from an interview with Harvard sstronomy professor and department chair Avi Loeb, in which he advocates for the importance of anomalies:

I remember attending a seminar at Harvard about ‘Oumuamua and a colleague of mine was commenting to me: “This object ‘Oumuamua is so weird, I wish it never existed.” I was appalled by this because it is completely contradictory to the nature of science, where you’re supposed to search for anomalies because that’s the only way in which you make discoveries. If everything conforms with what you thought, if the future is the same as the past, then, frankly, I would retire very early. You don’t learn anything new. [“Avi Loeb interview: Could ‘Oumuamua be alien technology after all?” Leah Crane, NewScientist (13 February 2021)]

The anonymous colleague speaks to the humanity integral to scientists, doesn’t it? They’re not unemotional automatons, but people who are sometimes caught at a vulnerable moment. This colleague may have been building an elegant theory about the limits on the configurations of astronomical objects, and ‘Oumuamua more or less blew it out of the water. Or he may have just been expressing frustration at the unusual characteristics of ‘Oumuamua.

Which is not to dispute the importance of anomalies. They are, of course, of paramount importance; the resolution of same can lead to Nobel Prizes for physical scientists, or at least to the solution of irritating bugs for us software engineers. I suspect all good scientists love a good anomaly, at least on their non-bad days.

In this interview Loeb defended his suggestion that ‘Oumuamua might be an artifact of an alien civilization, based on its novel shape and how its trajectory didn’t precisely follow that projected by standard physics theories. This certainly makes some sense, at least in the absence of a credible theory for the natural formation of objects exhibiting what we seemed to be seeing from scans of ‘Oumuamua.

And, yes, I have fantasies that we’d actually gotten a good, closeup visual on ‘Oumuamua.

Travelator:

You are in a bit of a rush to catch your plane, which is leaving from a remote gate in the terminal. Some stretches of the terminal have moving walkways, or travelators, and others are carpeted. You always walk at the same speed, but travelators obviously boost this. [“#100 Late for the gate,” Rob Eastaway, NewScientist (13 February 2021)]

I’m not talking computer networks, either, but the far more difficult to evaluate biological, or ecological networks. How are they best evaluated? Consider this comment on a fishery:

Sustainability also often fails to take into account wider ecological factors. The langoustine fishery in the Firth of Forth in Scotland, for example, is sustainable, but only because so many other species have been fished to extinction and the langoustines no longer have any natural predators, says [Daniel Pauly at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver]. [“Is there any type of fish you can actually eat sustainably?” Graham Lawton, NewScientist (13 February 2021, paywall)]

This strikes me as an example of mistaken metrics. Sure, the one fishery is doing great – at the expense of all the rest. Omit that latter information, though, and the advocate for higher fish limits may win his goal, but at the expense of critical intellectual honesty.

Pauly illuminates another problem, this having to do with proxies:

You also have to consider that fishing vessels are more powerful than they once were, says Pauly. “Even though the biomass has declined, they are able to compensate by finding the few fish that remain, and being able to operate where old trawlers would not be able to,” he says. “The fact that our trawlers maintain catches is not an indication that abundance has remained the same.”

In this case, the proxy is the size of the catch indicating the size, or health, of the population. It’s flawed because the operationality of gathering that data has changed. Again, those trying to make a point in an argument that omits this key information are committing a type of intellectual fraud, if they do so deliberately.

My current preference for a measurement of the health of the oceanic network is biomass as it changes over time, along with some sort of measure of diversity, undefined. This, of course, is damn near impossible to measure:

“Many countries do not have research ships to go to sea and monitor the stocks,” says Manuel Barange, director of the FAO’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Policy and Resources Division. Even when they do, the science is challenging. It requires an estimate of the total biomass of a species within a huge geographical area, and then an assessment of whether that is enough to support the maximum sustainable yield. The margin for error is so large that a stock is considered sustainable even if it is 20 per cent lower than needed for the maximum sustainable yield.

Competition and evolution mean, of course, that fisheries will go up and down and extinct without human interference. These facts make the jobs of ecologist and environmentalist a little more tricky, as the argument cannot be “Oh it’s way down;” the argument must be formulated in terms of long-term human impact of the diminution of a fishery.

Regardless, we rarely eat fish here, with just an occasional visit to the fish ‘n chips joint down the street. As their chips are quite average at best, we have to be in the mood for the battered, deep-fried fish in order to go. I’m fortunate in that I generally don’t like fish at all, so I’m not tempted to indulge; my Arts Editor likes the occasional bit of salmon. Oh, and there’s that dratted fish oil pill that, upon digestion, issues minty-fresh burps. Repulsive.

A flight of fancy:

This has been causing bewilderment. It showed up at the CPAC meeting this weekend, reportedly:

Yep, that’s a statue of former President Trump. Assuming this isn’t a really cool hoax, it’s worth taking a quick moment to understand the elements of this statue.

First, it’s a bit bigger, I think, than life-size, emphasizing Trump’s dominance of the conservative scene these days, and playing to his fantasies concerning superiority. At 6’4″, he’s accustomed to being the biggest guy in the room, especially at his age.

But it does have a goofy grin. I look forward to hearing readers’ commentary on that. Perhaps it’s a reflection of the marketing and charisma chops that some believe he has.

It’s made to look like it’s made of gold. It’s easy enough to write that off as a tribute to his well-known love of wealth, but I think exploring this aspect will add some insight. Readers will recall that Trump grew up in the  prosperity church of Norman Vincent Peale, and that his key constituency is the evangelical community, which contains much or all of the prosperity church community. In prosperity churches, the more wealth you have, the higher your social prestige, so this is just what you think it is: a signal to that community that Trump is so fabulously rich that he might as well be a Saint and sup next to old St. Pete.

Seriously.

Next, we get to what some observers interpret as shorts, but I think is underwear. This flaunting of male sexuality is, according to those studying Christian Nationalism, typical of the specimen, clinging to a sexual stereotype from the 1950s: Him big he-man. Nevermind that he skipped military service, of course. His sexual depravities have only reinforced his position with the Christian Nationalists.

And, finally, those anomalous sandals. Has there ever been a picture of Trump in sandals? Well, I do not have exhaustive knowledge of him and his footwear, but it seems unlikely.

But they do remind me of a movie: The Ten Commandments (1956). This is the archetypcal Hollywood Christian historical blockbuster, and a very good movie – I’ve watched it several times, although not since I started writing movie reviews. And what’s the common footwear in that movie? Sandals. I believe these are a reference to the religious history of Christian Nationalism, no matter how blurry a reference that might be for a prosperity church member to make. It’s a reminder of the tie between Donald Trump and God that has been alleged by the more desperate of the power-hungry.

This is all about reinforcing the bond between Trump and his most fervent admirers, the marks that he’s conned, is conning, and will continue to con for the foreseeable future. It’ll be interesting to hear how much of a legend the statue becomes post-CPAC.

For the LotR geek in me.

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on President Trump regarding the January 6th Insurrection:

There’s no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people that stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president. [The Hill, February 13th]

And yesterday?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Thursday that he would “absolutely” support former President Donald Trump if he won the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. [NBC News]

Just excess partisan loyalty?

“My point is what happened in the past is not something relevant now. We’re moving forward,” McConnell told Fox News in response to a clip of his scathing speech last month that torched Trump for feeding “lies” to the mob of insurrectionists and “provoked” them to attack the Capitol. [TPM]

It may be amazing, but, keeping in mind that analyzing the past to forecast the future leads to that hated, by Republicans, term expertise, it’s not shocking. McConnell realizes that if he acknowledged that yesterday matters, then he’d be admitting that hobgoblin of people who know how to get things done, and he can’t have that.

Because he, and his ilk, don’t know how. Indeed, they preach that their voters and allies are perfectly OK; by admitting experts who would change things, they would be telling those constituents that change was coming.

And that’s not really acceptable for those old, conservative voters.

Sure, McConnell is also trying to thread a needle of disliking Trump while remaining attractive to the Trump cult, but whether or not he can make it work depends on how Trump treats McConnell.

All in all, it’s too bad. McConnell had initially said the right thing, but now he’s fallen back in the ditch. This transactional way of doing things works OK in the private sector, so long as the transactions are positive, but refusing to learn from history marks people doomed to failure. That’s where McConnell is heading, and I don’t think he can change course.

These Gods are Art Deco. How about your’s?

She (1935) is an early adaptation of the novel of the same name by H. Rider Haggard. She is hundreds of years old, lonely for him. He, Leo Vincey, is a continent or more away, but once told the flame of Life is flickering in the Arctic wastelands, he and his late uncle’s assistant, Professor Holly, are on their way to investigate, or at least to warm their hands – so to speak. Thus begins the adventure, leading through the tundra, introducing us to the Siberian natives before the Soviets took over – and another culture. Soon, her power will draw Vincey, the descendant of her late husband, to her. Or is he -?

The theme of this movie is the folly of grasping after what will burn our fingers. Literally, in fact: the late uncle dies from radiation poisoning. On the adventurers’ way, they run across a wayward Englishman named Tugmore and his adopted adult daughter, Tanya, sheltering from the winter’s cold. Convinced to guide Vincey and Holly into the mountains where an old journal claims the Flame exists by promises of gold, Tugmore’s aggressive but short-sighted pursuit of the yellow metal brings death down upon him, even as he stares at his fortune. In the caves of the savages, Holly nearly loses his life to an obtuse curiosity, his grasping after knowledge, assuming his learned position will protect him from consequences, nearly his undoing. Vincey’s driving ambition and desperate need keep him lurching forward, always open to the new experience. Tanya provides the voice of sanity, which, in this swirl of madness, makes her the leading lady in a drama which will bring her career to an abrupt end.

But, in the end, She herself succumbs to her grasping ways. Seeing a new start in the descendant of her old love, or perhaps a way to prove she isn’t mad, She seeks to overcome his hesitancy and affections for other women by bathing, once again, in the light of Flame of Life, thus proving its virtue and safety.

This doesn’t go so well.

It’s all a bit silly, as everyone’s motivations are unnuanced. We see the scientist driven by, well, science, the adventurer after a fortune, unalloyed autocracy, the faithful high priest. Why can’t Tanya show at least some curiosity about eternal life? Vincey lose his curiosity for a moment? Tugmore consider donating to a fund for cold Siberian natives?

But there’s no time for boredom, on the other hand. If someone’s not in imminent danger of dying, just wait a moment, it’ll come. Throw in some fairly nice sets for the era, excellent cinematography, mediocre audio, and you won’t come away changed by the experience, but you may be entertained.

Brad Heath:

Ex-girlfriends are hands-down the government’s most indispensable crime-fighting technique.

Motivation?

Follow the link to see humanity’s best going up against a typical … insect.

Vox reports on possibly dangerous actions on the part of Trump ally Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI):

One of the Republicans who pushed “the big lie” about the 2020 election — namely, that President Joe Biden’s victory was illegitimate — used the first congressional hearing about the violent January 6 attempt to overthrow Donald Trump’s loss to amplify a fantastical conspiracy theory aimed at exonerating Trump and his supporters from any responsibility.

That senator — Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — used his questioning time during Tuesday’s Senate hearing to read excerpts from a January 14 article published by the Federalist that argues “agents-provocateurs” and “fake Trump protesters” were behind the assault on the Capitol, rather than actual Trump supporters, as was the case.

Is Senator Johnson not aware that many of those same protesters are furious at being labeled antifa and agent provocateurs by Trump allies? And that they have a strongly documented history of violence?

Senator Johnson often seems to be living in a bubble all of his own, feeding only on right-wing approved propaganda, but this sounds simply downright personally risky to me. A word to this wise, Senator Johnson – don’t believe your own side’s propaganda. And don’t piss on your own allies. They hate that.

And we’ve already seen what hate can motivate these folks to do.

I see that the conservatives – if that’s what they are – have mostly decided to shut their eyes and sing la-la-la loudly. CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) leads the way:

Top Republicans are split on President Trump’s first post-presidential appearance at a key meeting of conservatives in Florida this week.

“I don’t believe he should be playing a role in the future of the party,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney told reporters Wednesday.

Trump is slated to speak at the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, also known as CPAC, which is meeting in Orlando between Thursday and Sunday.

TRUMP REPORTEDLY TO USE CPAC SPEECH TO ASSERT CONTROL OF GOP, MAKE CLEAR HE IS ‘PRESUMPTIVE 2024 NOMINEE’

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican and Trump ally, did not hesitate when a reporter asked whether Trump should be speaking at CPAC.

“Yes, he should,” McCarthy said. [Washington Examiner]

Cheney is well known to be a far-right Republican, so her dissent is at least refreshing. But between GOP Members of Congress signing on to the Stop The Steal campaign, as noted by their objecting to the the counting of the ballots in the Electoral College (that would be 147 of them) on January 6th, 2021, and the subsequent refusal of House Members to vote for impeachment of President Trump, and Senate Members to vote for conviction of President Trump, for the Insurrection which occurred on the same date, with only a few shining examples, such as Cheney, counting as exemptions to the general moral depravity of the Republican Party, it’s safe to say the Republicans refuse to take the public business of the Republic seriously.

Take, for example, Erick Erickson, a far-right pundit who has punctuated incidents of sanity, but today seems to have lost it in his eternal quest for moral equivalence:

The bulk of the American people are not politically engaged like you and me. What they see, are a bunch of jackasses on one side and a lot of conservatives who have concluded they too must behave like jackasses. I suggest conservatives not act like jackasses and not conclude nice guys lose. In fact, if you look at November and get past they [sic] mythology of the stolen election, it was the jackasses who lost. The voters rejected Donald Trump and wide range of Democrats who supported the insane policies of the left most Americans find contemptible.

Does Erickson mention the Insurrection even once?

No.

It doesn’t figure into his political calculations. It doesn’t figure into his moral calculations.

It’s a refusal to engage with the fundamental authoritarian tendencies of the right that have run out of control at the behest of the man-child and former President.

Erickson cannot admit that Trump is the product of the current toxic conservative movement, because his very presence, profoundly illegal and immoral conduct, condemns Erickson’s fantasy that the conservatives have some sort of moral supremacy over the Left.

And here’s the real problem for Erickson: the top down nature of the far-right makes it very difficult to get rid of the bad ideas or even the rot. This is self-evident.

The Left is rather less vulnerable to such inflexibility. Oh, sure, they can be stubborn about an idea – but they do seem to learn from failure. Erickson is complaining about this:

Seth Brenzel is a gay, white dad to a biracial child. A parental advisory council, or PAC, unanimously voted to add Brenzel, but the San Francisco School Board — the one that voted against Washington and Lincoln remaining on schools — rejected him for a lack of diversity. …

”He lives in San Francisco with his husband and their young daughter. If approved, Brenzel would have been the only man on the council. According to an online transcript, when prompted a representative of the PAC said, ‘The PAC can have up to 15 regular members and three alternates. Currently, we have 10 regular members and no alternates.’ Currently, the parent advisory council has two African American parents, one Asian American parent, three Latinx parents. One Pacific Islander parent and three White parents. Currently, all of those are women.”

For Erickson, this is a moment of condemnation.

For me, it’s a moment of experimentation. If the results are superior, then Erickson is proven wrong. It it doesn’t, then the Democrats, if not the far Left, will retreat and rethink. That flexibility is what marks the Democrats as probable winners over the next decade. The mid-terms in 2022 will be fascinating as the Democrats pound on all Republican incumbents who refused to vote for impeachment or conviction.

And this is what really made me laugh about Erickson, even as it marks his delusional approach to politics:

Loving your neighbor goes a long way, laughing at the left’s insanity gets us further, and not being a jackass gets us a few steps further with people who vote but are not committed partisans. I think the sooner the right realizes happy warriors win, the sooner we get out of the wilderness and back into power.

I’m sorry, but some dude not being selected for a school board position just doesn’t compete with images of an Insurrection. Erickson may be so buried in conservative dogma that he can’t see that, but I think a lot of independents will hesitate before ever voting for a Republican spouting extremist rhetoric again. Or even just a Republican. Especially in the absence of a sincere Republican Reformation. I have to wonder if Erickson would even agree that a bit of self-inspection is necessary for the Republicans – nevermind their tolerance for rampant lying and political cannibalism we’ve seen over the last five years.

Elections have consequences, and sometimes they are not what are expected.

Possibly the best scene in the movie. Don’t blink, it goes fast.

Oh. Evil Brain From Outer Space (1964). Really?

Nominee: Worst Stage Combat Ever.

Plot? Movie comes with a Warning: Do Not Take Out On A Windy Day, Plot May Blow Away.

Characterizations? We don’t need no steenking characterizations! Just look at what they’re wearing and you’ll know who’s evil!

Frankenstein Movie Nominee: Evil Brain from Outer Space is a 1964 film edited together for American television from films #7, #8 and #9 of the 1957/1958 Japanese Super Giant film series. –Wikipedia

Special Effects: At least StarDude’s cape was blowing in the right direction when he was flying.

Earnest level: Just above zero. At least the bad guys waved their hands about and kicked, albeit half-heartedly.

Little boy alert: Why do all these Japanese movies have this annoying little boy?! – Arts Editor midway through.

Science: No, I won’t even bother.

Listen, if you still want to watch this, go to a psychologist. Or go to the fridge for a beer.

Or both.

But trust me, you can find something better to do with your evening. Please Please Please trust me.

Engastration:

Engastration is a cooking technique in which the cook stuffs the remains of one animal into another animal. The method supposedly originated during the Middle Ages. Among the dishes made using the method is turducken, which involves placing chicken meat within a duck carcass within a turkey. Some foods created using engastration have stuffing between each layer. The carcasses are normally deboned before being placed together. [Wikipedia]

Noted in Max Miller’s The Legendary Medieval Cockentrice. This link is to the point at which Miller is discussing engastration.

Over the years I’ve occasionally heard the following mentioned as an epithet, that is, negatively:

Never let a crisis go to waste.

But I don’t think of it as an epithet. Let’s take the current Texas crisis. Steve Benen notes the reaction of Senator Cruz (R-TX), already exposed for running from the state when the crisis began, whose reaction is not unique within the Texas Republican community:

Rather, Cruz is playing a deceptive political game. Having been roasted for fleeing his state while his constituents suffered, the GOP senator is trying to work his way back into his party’s good graces — not by tackling energy policy in a serious way, but by pretending Republicans’ ideological foes should be blamed for a breakdown they had nothing do to with.

The New York Times‘ Jamelle Bouie explained a few days ago, “Faced with one of the worst crises in the recent history of the state, Republicans have turned their attention away from conditions on the ground and toward the objects of their ideological ire. The issue isn’t energy policy; it is liberals and environmentalists…. Amid awful suffering and deteriorating conditions, Texas Republicans decided to fight a culture war.”

And here’s the thing: engaging in honest leadership would benefit his constituents, and the result would accrue to his credit. By standing out from his fellows, he’d increase his chances of winning the GOP Presidential nomination.

And that would be not letting a good crisis go to waste.

Cruz may believe he’s taking advantage of the crisis, but in this case he’s letting it go to waste. You want to be known as a leader? Be one.

And that’s why I don’t consider Never let a crisis go to waste to be an epithet, an insult. There’s just doing your job and being incompetent.

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962) is a Czechoslovakian film that has taken the physics-free, bravado-filled story of Baron Munchausen, and set it to a wildly imaginative, and one imagines labor-filled, variety of sets, composed of film, painstaking line drawings reminiscent of Edward Gorey’s work, and other special effects. These were pronounced to be fascinating by my Arts Editor. Add in an electrifying sound track, and, while the story may not make a lot of sense or carry much thematically, the visuals are crazy enough to be worth the time.

If you’re a lover of stylized visuals in your movies, this is something not to miss.

Some of potentially oldest cave art so far found in Sulawesi, Indonesia:

From NewScientist (23 January 2021):

Each of the three pigs is more than a metre long. The images were all painted using a red ochre pigment. They appear to be Sulawesi warty pigs (Sus celebensis), a short-legged wild boar that is endemic to the island and is characterised by its distinctive facial warts. “This species was of great importance to early hunter-gatherers in Sulawesi,” says Brumm.

These pigs appear in younger cave art across the region, and archaeological digs show that they were the most commonly hunted game species on Sulawesi for thousands of years. “The frequent portrayal of these wild pigs in art offers hints at a long-term human interest in the behavioural ecology of this local species, and perhaps its spiritual values in the hunting culture,” says Brumm.

Or they just liked bacon.

And that’s something about archaeologists interpreting artifacts: they don’t seem to think our ancestors had a sense of whimsy.

Kim Jong Un may be in trouble, according to WaPo:

Kim Jong Un is angry, and he’s lashing out.

North Korea’s last economic plan failed “tremendously,” he complained. And his inner circle lacked an “innovative viewpoint and clear tactics” in drawing up a new one, Kim told the ruling Workers’ Party last month, yelling and finger-pointing at frightened-looking delegates.

His economy minister, appointed in January, has already been fired.

It’s not altogether surprising. North Korea is suffering its worst slump inmore than two decades, experts say. It’s a combination of international sanctions and especially a self-imposed blockade on international trade in attempts to keep the coronavirus pandemic out.

Management through terror can only last for so long. 38 North reports that the use of the country’s propaganda radio channel is mandated:

Kim’s call to improve the third broadcast comes as the country appears to be embarking on a new crackdown on foreign media. In December, the Supreme People’s Assembly adopted the “Law on Rejecting Reactionary Ideology and Culture,” according to state media reports.

The law is a timely example of the use of closed networks by the state.

Details of the law and its penalties have not been disclosed by any North Korean media that can be monitored from overseas. Doing so would highlight the problem of foreign media and culture on the country. Instead, the state is disseminating details to citizens through the weekly propaganda lectures that all North Koreans must attend and, almost certainly, through the third radio network where it can be heard.

Alongside the new law, the state is also responding to the influx of foreign media by strengthening and expanding its own offerings. North Korea is expanding the availability of multi-channel television throughout the country via digital TV and intranet broadcasting. Up to four channels are now available in areas with the expanded service.

One part distraction, one part reinforcement of the importance of Kim.

Is it likely that Kim will abruptly go away? The North Koreans have had many opportunities to rid themselves of the dictatorship, but realistically it seems unlikely. Substituting one dictator for another seems like a waste of time, and the ignorance of the masses of other governing systems makes it unlikely that they’ll suddenly become socialists, much less capitalists.

They remain one of the great conundrums of humanity.