Lollapalooza is a travelling tour of singers of alternative, punk, and assorted indie music. It's been around nearly twenty years, and has given rise to imitators in other musical genres.
The closest thing I'm aware of in the software industry is No Fluff, Just Stuff (or NFJS, for short), where a band of speakers, typically consultants and technical book writers, discuss the software topics of the day. This may sound deadly dull, but it's for software developers, it's quite interesting.
Where does the strange name come from? It almost has a porn flavor to it, which ought to make it the "butt" of jokes. It is a reactionary title, suggesting many similar conferences are merely there for big software firms to sell something to attendees. They avoid such direct selling, though certainly, there's indirect selling as the speakers can present themselves as consultants, even as they don't talk about it themselves. And, they can kinda push their own books or books from friends.
This "tour" grew out of Jay Zimmerman's JUG (Java User's Group) somewhere in Colorado, so there's going to be some bias. In particular, NFJS doesn't do Microsoft. There's no C#. There's no ASP. It's not that the speakers are entirely against the idea, indeed, some do C# consulting. However, it's not exactly Java either.
The list of topics are typically: Java, Hibernate, Spring, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Groovy, agile methodology. Agile methodology breaks down into Scrum and XP, leaning more to Scrum, but also encourages unit testing and TDD (test driven development).
The event lasts three days, a Friday afternoon and early evening, followed by 9-5 on Saturday and Sunday. The strange schedule means attendees typically give up a weekend, but it tends to work out better as more companies are willing to have their employees miss half a day, rather than miss three days.
Because speakers are kept around based on how the attendees like them (they fill out surveys and such), the talks are typically uniformly very good. I've attended three NFJS, and I do it, even though it rarely covers technical topics that affect me directly. I do it partly because I want to see what the rest of the software world is doing and thinking. To be fair, NFJS is at the bleeding edge, and part of their efforts is to direct the way Java server side code is done. They, I feel certain, did as much to popularize Ruby on Rails as anyone, especially with dynamic speakers like Dave Thomas.
Having been to three of them, I have some criteria that I use to decide how good a talk is. First, the speaker is engaging. It helps to like a speaker and to have a speaker with energy. Perhaps the two guys that best fit the bill are Scott Davis and Venkat Subramaniam. It's not a must. For example, Neal Ford is still quite good without having the same energy. Dave Thomas is funny, and while he seems to be somewhat less personable, he is nonetheless an engaging speaker.
The second criteria is that the speaker knows their subject, and some are outstandingly good at this, especially Neal Ford. He seems to know a ton about a lot of things, and it's really difficult to stump him. The guys are generally quite well prepared (the downside is there are no women speakers on tour, and few women attendees). The third criteria is a certain "wow" factor, and by that, I mean, you get something out of the talk that you wouldn't if you read a book or the Internet. The speaker has some insight or does something particularly cool.
I'll give you an example. I once attended a talk on Java myths about the garbage collector, and it's just the kind of talk you can't find elsewhere. It may seem like the dryest topic ever, and yet, a Java developer has to deal with the garbage collector.
He said that many people try to create objects outside of loops, because they feel the garbage collector will kick in, and slow things down. He said while this used to be true, using objects for a short amount of time, say, the time in a loop, is almost free. Java reclaims such objects very quickly. Indeed, the longer you hold an object, the longer it takes for Java to reclaim it (really, the JVM). It's optimized to get rid of short-lived objects quickly.
Or, Java objects with finalizers are not garbage collected unless it absolutely has to. The problem, apparently, is that a finalizer can resurrect the object, and the JVM doesn't want to deal with it. This can kill performance.
You can hardly get this kind of information anywhere else, and yet it feels highly relevant.
I ignore some topics completely, like Spring, Hibernate, and Tapestry. I favor language talks and agile talks. This year, the emphasis was on Groovy, a scripting language for Java. Unlike, say, JRuby or Jython (which no one seems to work on anymore), Groovy was built with Java in mind, so it does things that the JVM can handle. It runs slower than Java since it uses a bit of reflection, but is not held down trying to be faithful to an existing dynamic language like Ruby or Python. Scott Davis gave two good talks on Groovy, then Grails, which is the Groovy version of Rails.
I also like listening to agile talks, but they almost always fail on one additional criteria I have for talks, which, interestingly enough, comes from Dave Thomas (a regular NFJS speaker). One of Dave Thomas's best talk is non-technical, at least, from a software POV. In particular, he talks about different levels of expertise from novice to expert. A novice needs to be told very precise things to do. The example given is a cookbook recipe. How much is a pinch of salt? Is it half a teaspoon? A quarter? A beginner won't know, and wants details to the last step.
A good talk of the sort NFJS should do this, even if the talk is about agility.
I'll give you an example of one kind of talk I've seen several times which drives me completely nuts. Because there are plenty of agile speakers, there's a huge emphasis on unit testing even to the extreme of test driven development (TDD). Each speaker I've heard (at least two), tells you how wonderful unit testing is, why you absolutely have to have it, how it saves you time, how you can convince people to use it, and so forth.
But have they ever, ever demonstrated how to download JUnit? I know, it should be easy! We're all "experts", aren't we? Well, no. This is why we attend NFJS. First thing, tell us the website to download JUnit. Tell us how to install in Eclipse. Tell us how to run it command line. Then, come up with something to do TDD.
And pick something with, say, a database. Something real. Most people eventually have issues such as "I'm not just manipulating plain old objects--I have a webpage, or a database, etc". Code that up.
There are some extremely practical issues. For example, how do I get cruise control to run the unit test automatically? Where do I place the unit tests?
The advice reminds me of those people who say "don't prematurely optimize". Profile, baby, profile! And then what? And then they don't profile. Download a profiler. Run it. Tell us how to interpret the results. Tell us how to make intelligent decisions from the profiler. If we're novices, we can't even profile!
Or, running a Scrum. I sat through a talk which had good ideas. The speaker was pretty good, even. He talked about user stories, but didn't demonstrate actual user stories, which, to my mind, is a bit of a deal breaker. It's like going on a vacation and talking about it, but not having any pictures to show. In the end, when you hear high level details, you don't get a sense of where things go wrong and why.
And there's one thing that bothers me about agile talks. It would be nice to figure out whether it really works. Do people meet deadlines? Do you actually schedule things differently? How important is it to hire an agile coach to tell you what to do? This is the part that treads between what NFJS does and what it wants to do. It wants to avoid overt selling. That's fair. But if agile coaches feel they are necessary to make that transition, maybe they should say so. I understand how self-serving that is.
Let me run through some of the talks I liked. I sat through a lot more of Neal Ford's talks, and they're uniformly good. He covers a gamut of topics from JRuby to Groovy to tools that help you be more productive as a programmer. Now, I recall who he reminds me of (looks-wise). Bobby Riggs. Anyway, excellent speaker.
Also liked Scott Davis. Scott does a few things pretty well. First, he always seems really happy. Then, he always says how wonderful your question is. Even if it's not, you tend to feel good about asking questions, and that seems like a good goal for a speaker. He also manages to do a few things that are beyond the trivially basic stuff so you feel you're getting value listening to his talks.
I liked both David Hussman and Nathaniel Schutta as speakers, but the quality of the talks weren't as good because neither had much takeaway. Hussman, for example, didn't walk through an actual agile session from story cards to schedule planning. True, the talk was about agile requirements, but he didn't come up with any requirements either. This is where you can shine as a speaker. Invest the time to find an example that isn't too arcane (maybe requirements for keeping track of various tasks done by a development team) so everyone can understand it (so no Hibernate or specific technologies like that), so that people have some sense of how to apply it in the real world.
Similarly, Schutta gave compelling reasons to test, but there are plenty of practical steps needed to add unit testing to one's life, from downloading and installing JUnit, to deciding how to organize the test code from the real code. I've seen similar talks by Jared Richardson, and this step is also missing from his talk. That's one more step someone has to take to figure stuff out, and that's one step that a speaker could do for you.
Ideally, if there was an Internet connection (I'm surprised there isn't even Ethernet wired to the place), they could download and demonstrate how to do the installation.
I kinda wish Jared would be given a talk that has more code in it. He tends to give the agile talks, and I feel the agile talks tend to be weak as a group, partly because it takes more work to demonstrate the principles as I'd like to see them. He's written some stuff related to Ruby or some such, so I'd get a better sense of how Jared covers material that involves examples if he covered talks with them. Alas, he's told what to talk about (not surprisingly).
Here are some suggestions I'd make. For agile development, I think it might be worth trying to run a one-day (well, 8 hour) session with desktops or laptops set up (the logistics would be admittedly horrid) and going through an agile development compressed into a single day. "Scripts", i.e., giving people lines to say so they can play-act would be helpful.
I'd like to see some talks given to real basics, like database technology, as well as talks on pie-in-the-sky ideas like Haskell or O'Caml.
I had thought Blogger had killed this post, and was made, because it is supposed to be automatically archiving it as I type. It turned out that it did archive it, but I couldn't see it right away. They still need to fix that.
Anyway, as negative as I sound, the weekend is always great because it gets me to think about ideas, even if I don't always take the steps of doing it myself.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Ironic Parody
A few years ago, Alanis Morissette wrote a song called Ironic, which was criticized for lacking irony, even though, there is some in the song.
She recently did a video based on the Black Eye Peas song My Humps, which isn't likely to win any awards for its lyrics. The song, as far as I can tell, is about a woman who has abundant physical traits, and uses it to her advantage, getting guys to waste their money and time on her.
Alanis's video was a parody, or so she says. Alanis has picked another word that's hard to grasp. When I saw parody, I expected it to be funny. Wikipedia says parodies don't have to be funny. They can ridicule as well.
To be honest, I didn't find Alanis's video all that funny. And that was because I set myself up thinking it would be funny. Now, she is poking fun at someone, which is herself. She's rewritten the song as if she had written it, and made a song which is crass, into one that is a bit about pathos, as if she's trying to win men's affections, but at the same time, can't deal with it either. Where as Fergie (as I gather is the name of the female singer in Black Eye Peas) is trying to be crass, Alanis is an angsty woman. She wants love. She doesn't want it. And in a sense, she pokes fun at herself, while wringing how pathetic the character is.
But just to show she's not taking it that seriously, she laughs at the end, realizing that maybe people don't really want to see a downbeat performer telling you how awful their life is, and maybe it is all a show.
It's pretty heady stuff for something termed a parody, and really, makes more fun of herself, while bringing a level of enlightenment that the song originally didn't have.
It's perhaps no surprise the video has been seen by many. And I'm beginning to see some of its appeal.
But was she really on You Can't Do That on Television?
She recently did a video based on the Black Eye Peas song My Humps, which isn't likely to win any awards for its lyrics. The song, as far as I can tell, is about a woman who has abundant physical traits, and uses it to her advantage, getting guys to waste their money and time on her.
Alanis's video was a parody, or so she says. Alanis has picked another word that's hard to grasp. When I saw parody, I expected it to be funny. Wikipedia says parodies don't have to be funny. They can ridicule as well.
To be honest, I didn't find Alanis's video all that funny. And that was because I set myself up thinking it would be funny. Now, she is poking fun at someone, which is herself. She's rewritten the song as if she had written it, and made a song which is crass, into one that is a bit about pathos, as if she's trying to win men's affections, but at the same time, can't deal with it either. Where as Fergie (as I gather is the name of the female singer in Black Eye Peas) is trying to be crass, Alanis is an angsty woman. She wants love. She doesn't want it. And in a sense, she pokes fun at herself, while wringing how pathetic the character is.
But just to show she's not taking it that seriously, she laughs at the end, realizing that maybe people don't really want to see a downbeat performer telling you how awful their life is, and maybe it is all a show.
It's pretty heady stuff for something termed a parody, and really, makes more fun of herself, while bringing a level of enlightenment that the song originally didn't have.
It's perhaps no surprise the video has been seen by many. And I'm beginning to see some of its appeal.
But was she really on You Can't Do That on Television?
Monday, April 23, 2007
Wii Bit Desperate
Many of us will never achieve that nirvana of masculinity: being Chow Yun Fat cool. Even if recent events have placed a damper on dual gun action, we have to admit that Chow Yun Fat is da bomb.
But since this is too much to wish for, most of us are content with not looking too foolish.
In November or so, Nintendo did something very smart. They released the Wii shortly on the heels of Sony releasing the PS3. The PS3 was long awaited. It was expected to hit shelves much sooner than it actually did. Indeed, Xbox was able to release its 360 nearly a year earlier.
And pretty much the PS3 came DOA. Oh, sure, it boasted gaudy graphics, and its HD Bluray built in, and promised ultra-realistic games. Did I care? I'm not a gaming person. Never have been. No PS2. No Gamecube. Not even a Colecovision or an Intellivision, which is pretty old school, if you can remember them. Videos games? Piffle!
And with a price tag of 600 dollars or more, I was not interested, not that I would have been even had it been half the price. Turns out, no one else cared either, except the most rabid fans. Even though supplies were limited, you could get one easily.
The Wii? It cost 250 dollars, less than half the price. You could buy two of them and still had money left over compared to the amount it would take to buy a PS3. Even so, I wasn't sure I really wanted a Wii, not being a gamer.
But then I got a chance to play the Wii, and I said wow, even a video game idiot like me can play this. It was both fun, and exercise. Video games outside of DDR are synonymous with couch potato geekiness. But the Wii seemed pretty cool, even if it lacked high quality graphics.
I had my chance to get it a few months ago, when I went to Best Buy to get a replacement hands-free set (which, by the way, didn't work). They had one Wii left. I declined. At that point, I hadn't played with the Wii, and thought it wasn't for me.
In March, once I had given it a try, I decided to start looking for one.
Bad idea.
Throughout March and April, I think the Wii only shipped once. I wasn't so hooked in to know when it would come out. Web sites are notoriously bad at this information. I relied on an old-fashioned technique. I called the stores. I wasn't about to hang out at stores 6 am every Sunday (when they came out) hoping they'd have a shipment. I'd rather make sure by calling.
And even if I had some idea they might have it, I didn't want to wake up early, or earlier than I would for work. As it turns out, March was a bad time to look. Stores just weren't getting shipments.
After two or three weeks of trying, I stopped heading to Best Buys on Sundays.
I decided on a lazier strategy. I'd call in, see if any were coming in. I was even lazy about that strategy, basically, calling in when I could remember.
Finally, it paid off. I knew, this past Sunday, it would come. I didn't know how many. I also didn't care to wait in line more than an hour or so. I woke up at 7:30 to go to Target, which opens at 8, hoping I could get it, and not wait.
Once I discovered Target had no supply, I ate breakfast, relaxed, then went to Toys 'R Us where there was a long line, but not terribly insane. I had called them earlier, and they had promised a supply.
For some reason, I like lines. You wait in line, hoping to get something. You look forward and wondered how long those poor suckers sat up at front. I felt that, at worst, I'd stand 30-40 minutes, and I'd know whether I'd get in or not. Surprisingly, there were people trying to get in line merely 5 minutes before opening. They still got one too.
I mean, no one really expects Toys 'R Us to carry video games, right? I mean, they do, of course, but you're first thought is Best Buy or Circuit City or some place suitably geeky.
I can't even recall that last time I went to Toys 'R Us. The teen in line, with the long hair, said he hadn't been in the store since he was ten. Ten? When was that? Last year?
But it's fun hanging out in line. I realized, of course, that I wasn't the key demographic for most console games. I was in the group Nintendo hoped to woo. The non-gamer wanting to give video games a try. The other people in line? They were more typical. They played PS2 or Gamecube or one of the handhelds. These were pros, but not so much that they had a Wii already. One guy said he was buying it for a nephew. Nice guy.
When you stand in line, you get to talk to people you'd never see again. I'd want to take their names and pictures and chat some, but well, you know, tis weird. So I had to simply enjoy the fleeting moment of the company. It did seem odd, that the thought I had about the Asian guy in Maryland sweats was "does this guy have a gun?". Even though I know--I know!--that the shootings were an aberration, that you couldn't generalize, heck, I'm Asian! But still the thought ran through my head.
I figured anyone getting a Wii couldn't be that bad, right? Actually, I thought they were all pretty sociable, something Mr. Hui was not, and the thought passed. I noticed the blond kid in the Duke sweatshirt. Ah, Duke. I suppose I would have mentioned the lacrosse thing or asked if he went (he probably had a brother that went or a sister or was just home on a random weekend), but it honestly didn't cross my mind. I just thought that he had Duke, and two other guys wore Maryland (and me as well, but it was a yellow shirt, not red), and there was no riot.
When I got my Wii, at around 10:30, I figured I'd only spent maybe an hour or so of my time at this store, but maybe 3 hours over all since I woke up. Maybe that was desperate, but it didn't feel that way.
Oddly enough, I just wanted a drink, and headed to Applebee's to get one. I really wanted to sleep, though, and the drink was meant to facilitate that. I didn't even want to open the Wii right then. Indeed, I'm sure it will sit a few days before I decide to open it and set it up.
I have to say that I can now saw Wii without laughing.
At least, not too much.
But since this is too much to wish for, most of us are content with not looking too foolish.
In November or so, Nintendo did something very smart. They released the Wii shortly on the heels of Sony releasing the PS3. The PS3 was long awaited. It was expected to hit shelves much sooner than it actually did. Indeed, Xbox was able to release its 360 nearly a year earlier.
And pretty much the PS3 came DOA. Oh, sure, it boasted gaudy graphics, and its HD Bluray built in, and promised ultra-realistic games. Did I care? I'm not a gaming person. Never have been. No PS2. No Gamecube. Not even a Colecovision or an Intellivision, which is pretty old school, if you can remember them. Videos games? Piffle!
And with a price tag of 600 dollars or more, I was not interested, not that I would have been even had it been half the price. Turns out, no one else cared either, except the most rabid fans. Even though supplies were limited, you could get one easily.
The Wii? It cost 250 dollars, less than half the price. You could buy two of them and still had money left over compared to the amount it would take to buy a PS3. Even so, I wasn't sure I really wanted a Wii, not being a gamer.
But then I got a chance to play the Wii, and I said wow, even a video game idiot like me can play this. It was both fun, and exercise. Video games outside of DDR are synonymous with couch potato geekiness. But the Wii seemed pretty cool, even if it lacked high quality graphics.
I had my chance to get it a few months ago, when I went to Best Buy to get a replacement hands-free set (which, by the way, didn't work). They had one Wii left. I declined. At that point, I hadn't played with the Wii, and thought it wasn't for me.
In March, once I had given it a try, I decided to start looking for one.
Bad idea.
Throughout March and April, I think the Wii only shipped once. I wasn't so hooked in to know when it would come out. Web sites are notoriously bad at this information. I relied on an old-fashioned technique. I called the stores. I wasn't about to hang out at stores 6 am every Sunday (when they came out) hoping they'd have a shipment. I'd rather make sure by calling.
And even if I had some idea they might have it, I didn't want to wake up early, or earlier than I would for work. As it turns out, March was a bad time to look. Stores just weren't getting shipments.
After two or three weeks of trying, I stopped heading to Best Buys on Sundays.
I decided on a lazier strategy. I'd call in, see if any were coming in. I was even lazy about that strategy, basically, calling in when I could remember.
Finally, it paid off. I knew, this past Sunday, it would come. I didn't know how many. I also didn't care to wait in line more than an hour or so. I woke up at 7:30 to go to Target, which opens at 8, hoping I could get it, and not wait.
Once I discovered Target had no supply, I ate breakfast, relaxed, then went to Toys 'R Us where there was a long line, but not terribly insane. I had called them earlier, and they had promised a supply.
For some reason, I like lines. You wait in line, hoping to get something. You look forward and wondered how long those poor suckers sat up at front. I felt that, at worst, I'd stand 30-40 minutes, and I'd know whether I'd get in or not. Surprisingly, there were people trying to get in line merely 5 minutes before opening. They still got one too.
I mean, no one really expects Toys 'R Us to carry video games, right? I mean, they do, of course, but you're first thought is Best Buy or Circuit City or some place suitably geeky.
I can't even recall that last time I went to Toys 'R Us. The teen in line, with the long hair, said he hadn't been in the store since he was ten. Ten? When was that? Last year?
But it's fun hanging out in line. I realized, of course, that I wasn't the key demographic for most console games. I was in the group Nintendo hoped to woo. The non-gamer wanting to give video games a try. The other people in line? They were more typical. They played PS2 or Gamecube or one of the handhelds. These were pros, but not so much that they had a Wii already. One guy said he was buying it for a nephew. Nice guy.
When you stand in line, you get to talk to people you'd never see again. I'd want to take their names and pictures and chat some, but well, you know, tis weird. So I had to simply enjoy the fleeting moment of the company. It did seem odd, that the thought I had about the Asian guy in Maryland sweats was "does this guy have a gun?". Even though I know--I know!--that the shootings were an aberration, that you couldn't generalize, heck, I'm Asian! But still the thought ran through my head.
I figured anyone getting a Wii couldn't be that bad, right? Actually, I thought they were all pretty sociable, something Mr. Hui was not, and the thought passed. I noticed the blond kid in the Duke sweatshirt. Ah, Duke. I suppose I would have mentioned the lacrosse thing or asked if he went (he probably had a brother that went or a sister or was just home on a random weekend), but it honestly didn't cross my mind. I just thought that he had Duke, and two other guys wore Maryland (and me as well, but it was a yellow shirt, not red), and there was no riot.
When I got my Wii, at around 10:30, I figured I'd only spent maybe an hour or so of my time at this store, but maybe 3 hours over all since I woke up. Maybe that was desperate, but it didn't feel that way.
Oddly enough, I just wanted a drink, and headed to Applebee's to get one. I really wanted to sleep, though, and the drink was meant to facilitate that. I didn't even want to open the Wii right then. Indeed, I'm sure it will sit a few days before I decide to open it and set it up.
I have to say that I can now saw Wii without laughing.
At least, not too much.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
The Little Piggy Went Wii Wii Wii
This morning, around 7:30, I woke up and realized that I should head to Target, which opens at 8 AM to see if they sold the Wii. I had called Toys 'R Us and Best Buy, both of whom said they would have Wiis, even though it was likely to be crowded.
But Toys opened at 10, and Best Buy at 11. It made some sense to try Target first.
I had planned to go to the one in Greenbelt. It's close by. But then I wasn't sure they would get a supply. It's not exactly the premier shopping area. So I decided I'd head all the way up to Gaithersburg, near where I work, figuring if any place would get it, they would get it.
I got there just after 8 AM, and there were like 3 people standing intently in line. I sorta figured it was my lucky day, but it did seem awfully short. Then, they started buying some Pokemon thing. I realized that they didn't have any Wiis.
So I headed to the office nearby to lookup the location of Toys 'R Us. I had called them earlier in the week, and they said they would get a shipment. But since they weren't open til 10, and it wasn't even 9, I decided to get breakfast.
I really wanted breakfast food, but didn't know where I'd get it. Then, I realized that the hotel next door served a decent breakfast buffet, so I headed over there to get some breakfast. At first, I didn't plan on getting a buffet, but places like this are evil. They charge only a dollar more for buffet than anything else. So you might as well get the buffet. So I did.
After getting creamed chipped beef and a biscuit and eggs and hash browns (twice over), and a waffle, which I didn't complete, I drove to Toys 'R Us, the one in Gaitherburg or Germantown, not the one in Rockville, which I figured would be more crowded.
The line was pretty long and it didn't seem good. An African American fellow standing just ahead said he'd counted about 30 groups ahead of us, so as long as they had 40 or more Wiis, we were good. Someone had heard they had 70 Wiis, so we thought maybe that was good news.
At ten minutes before opening (that is, 9:50 AM), they began to hand out tickets to each of us, and alas, there were enough for everyone in line. Then, they slowly let people into the store. I stood in line with this long-haired guy wearing a "Red Hot Chili Peppers" shirt. He had called his dad saying that he had found the Wii, and there was no need for him to hang out at Best Buy. Another Asian guy was in line with a Maryland t-shirt. A guy in his 40s or so was also in line wearing a Maryland National Champs shirt. A blond kid who seemed like he was in high school, but coulda been in college, was wearing an oversized Duke sweatshirt, despite the warm weather.
We went in, and the line was moving slowly. I was number 39. They were showing the end scenes of The Little Mermaid, which isn't nearly as well drawn as I had recalled, on the small TVs. It took nearly 40 minutes to get there. I bought the extended warranty. I know. It's usually a rip off. Places like that make their money on extended warranties.
I got another Wiimote and another Wiichuck. I decided not to buy a game. And the three or so people I hung out in line who I'll probably not bump into again were getting themselves a Wii as well.
I headed back to College Park, wanted to get a margarita at Applebee's before napping some, but discovered, to my dismay, that they don't serve alcohol before noon. So I went back to my place to get some alcohol on my own, and decided to sleep.
So I got my Wii. Perhaps I'll put it together soon, and play some.
My first game console, ever.
But Toys opened at 10, and Best Buy at 11. It made some sense to try Target first.
I had planned to go to the one in Greenbelt. It's close by. But then I wasn't sure they would get a supply. It's not exactly the premier shopping area. So I decided I'd head all the way up to Gaithersburg, near where I work, figuring if any place would get it, they would get it.
I got there just after 8 AM, and there were like 3 people standing intently in line. I sorta figured it was my lucky day, but it did seem awfully short. Then, they started buying some Pokemon thing. I realized that they didn't have any Wiis.
So I headed to the office nearby to lookup the location of Toys 'R Us. I had called them earlier in the week, and they said they would get a shipment. But since they weren't open til 10, and it wasn't even 9, I decided to get breakfast.
I really wanted breakfast food, but didn't know where I'd get it. Then, I realized that the hotel next door served a decent breakfast buffet, so I headed over there to get some breakfast. At first, I didn't plan on getting a buffet, but places like this are evil. They charge only a dollar more for buffet than anything else. So you might as well get the buffet. So I did.
After getting creamed chipped beef and a biscuit and eggs and hash browns (twice over), and a waffle, which I didn't complete, I drove to Toys 'R Us, the one in Gaitherburg or Germantown, not the one in Rockville, which I figured would be more crowded.
The line was pretty long and it didn't seem good. An African American fellow standing just ahead said he'd counted about 30 groups ahead of us, so as long as they had 40 or more Wiis, we were good. Someone had heard they had 70 Wiis, so we thought maybe that was good news.
At ten minutes before opening (that is, 9:50 AM), they began to hand out tickets to each of us, and alas, there were enough for everyone in line. Then, they slowly let people into the store. I stood in line with this long-haired guy wearing a "Red Hot Chili Peppers" shirt. He had called his dad saying that he had found the Wii, and there was no need for him to hang out at Best Buy. Another Asian guy was in line with a Maryland t-shirt. A guy in his 40s or so was also in line wearing a Maryland National Champs shirt. A blond kid who seemed like he was in high school, but coulda been in college, was wearing an oversized Duke sweatshirt, despite the warm weather.
We went in, and the line was moving slowly. I was number 39. They were showing the end scenes of The Little Mermaid, which isn't nearly as well drawn as I had recalled, on the small TVs. It took nearly 40 minutes to get there. I bought the extended warranty. I know. It's usually a rip off. Places like that make their money on extended warranties.
I got another Wiimote and another Wiichuck. I decided not to buy a game. And the three or so people I hung out in line who I'll probably not bump into again were getting themselves a Wii as well.
I headed back to College Park, wanted to get a margarita at Applebee's before napping some, but discovered, to my dismay, that they don't serve alcohol before noon. So I went back to my place to get some alcohol on my own, and decided to sleep.
So I got my Wii. Perhaps I'll put it together soon, and play some.
My first game console, ever.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Clown, Part 2
OK, now that I have the initial review King and the Clown out of my system, I'll comment on it, again.
Much like Brokeback Mountain, King and the Clown has a few stories going on. Although most reviews are going to point to its gay themes, which are just hinted at--there's no sex, no nudity. Indeed, the sensuality boils down to one rather brief kiss. The raunchiness, as it were, is left to either the skits that the jesters do, or to the king and his queen.
King reminds me of a bunch of other films, from Kurosawa period pieces, to soap operas, to period dramas like Amadeus, especially, the relationship of the king and queen. It's not nearly as serious as films like Ran or other Kurosawa films. It draws more from, say, soap operas, making the action more intimate.
The film also raises class issues, but as much by paying attention to the minstrels as the courtesans. In Ran, there is the clown jester, but all you get from the jester is that he is a jester, loyal to the warlord that has been booted out. You know he is of a lower class, but there's not much made of him. In many ways, he's similar to the many women that throw their bodies at arrows to protect their masters, non-descript.
King pays more attention to the minstrels, who seem much more of a family, then the dysfunctional monarchy (most monarchies set in the past seem to have this issue, with people willing to kill their own spouses, next of kin, whoever). There are Shakespearean elements where the king is going somewhat mad, unable to live to the expectations of his deceased father, who was highly respected. This plays out in a key scene where he has a father son shadow puppet scene, which you realize, rather quickly, is his relation with his own father.
For a long time, Gong-gil, the effiminate male that seems the source of interest for both the leader of the troupe, and the king, is not much of a character. Jang-sang, the leader, is much more interesting. You can see him pout, even as it's not fully established right away, his affection for Gong-gil. Indeed, it's tough to say how well they connect, but it may have to do with the delicate topic of gay romance in Korean films. Gong-gil's role is a bit underdeveloped, which is too bad, because it might establish a reason for why either character is interested in him, other than he makes a genuinely convincing looking woman.
The queen is also a weak character, mainly being jealous of Gong-gil. She has a kind of maternal relationship to the king, who is seen as someone that is trying to be his own man, but has troubles. The queen mainly looks irritated and wonders why the king is so enamored of this guy.
The character actors, who play smaller roles, seem vaguely familiar. At least one of them, I'm pretty sure, is in The Host (well, I can't really find evidence of this).
King keeps its focus on the love story, even as there is a side story of the overthrow of the king. The resolution isn't so simple mostly because Gong gil eventually realizes he is in love with Jang-sang. Eventually, both are content that they are minstrels, even as they've spent a brief time living among royalty.
I liked the film, but can't quite say it is as gripping as The Host. Certainly, the attitudes toward gay themes are a bit naive, but each culture goes through its own stages trying to address this topic. For example, the issue, I think, hasn't been addressed in mainstream Indian films. It has been dealt with, somewhat, in arty films, like Fire by Deepa Mehta (dealing with lesbians).
Well, there you have it. Decent, but not great.
Much like Brokeback Mountain, King and the Clown has a few stories going on. Although most reviews are going to point to its gay themes, which are just hinted at--there's no sex, no nudity. Indeed, the sensuality boils down to one rather brief kiss. The raunchiness, as it were, is left to either the skits that the jesters do, or to the king and his queen.
King reminds me of a bunch of other films, from Kurosawa period pieces, to soap operas, to period dramas like Amadeus, especially, the relationship of the king and queen. It's not nearly as serious as films like Ran or other Kurosawa films. It draws more from, say, soap operas, making the action more intimate.
The film also raises class issues, but as much by paying attention to the minstrels as the courtesans. In Ran, there is the clown jester, but all you get from the jester is that he is a jester, loyal to the warlord that has been booted out. You know he is of a lower class, but there's not much made of him. In many ways, he's similar to the many women that throw their bodies at arrows to protect their masters, non-descript.
King pays more attention to the minstrels, who seem much more of a family, then the dysfunctional monarchy (most monarchies set in the past seem to have this issue, with people willing to kill their own spouses, next of kin, whoever). There are Shakespearean elements where the king is going somewhat mad, unable to live to the expectations of his deceased father, who was highly respected. This plays out in a key scene where he has a father son shadow puppet scene, which you realize, rather quickly, is his relation with his own father.
For a long time, Gong-gil, the effiminate male that seems the source of interest for both the leader of the troupe, and the king, is not much of a character. Jang-sang, the leader, is much more interesting. You can see him pout, even as it's not fully established right away, his affection for Gong-gil. Indeed, it's tough to say how well they connect, but it may have to do with the delicate topic of gay romance in Korean films. Gong-gil's role is a bit underdeveloped, which is too bad, because it might establish a reason for why either character is interested in him, other than he makes a genuinely convincing looking woman.
The queen is also a weak character, mainly being jealous of Gong-gil. She has a kind of maternal relationship to the king, who is seen as someone that is trying to be his own man, but has troubles. The queen mainly looks irritated and wonders why the king is so enamored of this guy.
The character actors, who play smaller roles, seem vaguely familiar. At least one of them, I'm pretty sure, is in The Host (well, I can't really find evidence of this).
King keeps its focus on the love story, even as there is a side story of the overthrow of the king. The resolution isn't so simple mostly because Gong gil eventually realizes he is in love with Jang-sang. Eventually, both are content that they are minstrels, even as they've spent a brief time living among royalty.
I liked the film, but can't quite say it is as gripping as The Host. Certainly, the attitudes toward gay themes are a bit naive, but each culture goes through its own stages trying to address this topic. For example, the issue, I think, hasn't been addressed in mainstream Indian films. It has been dealt with, somewhat, in arty films, like Fire by Deepa Mehta (dealing with lesbians).
Well, there you have it. Decent, but not great.
Women in Computer Science
Having been in academic computer science for a number of years, I can say, at least anecdotally, I know something about the topic.
In particular, a recent NY Times article laments the number of women in computer science. Informally, a colleague and I did some checks and found that there was maybe 20% women in computer science, which is smaller than engineering or mathematics. There's a a book that covers research done on this topic.
Most guys I know would be thrilled if more women were interested in computer science. But there are plenty of things that seem to favor men in the field. First, it takes someone who's a bit obsessive compulsive to be good at computer programming. It's not surprising many CS majors are geeks, who are more accustomed to studying on their own, then interacting with others.
To be good at programming, you need to pay attention to a lot of detail, and be patient enough to spend gads of time trying to debug stuff. Once, I met an undergrad taking his first programming course. He complained he had spent twenty minutes looking for a bug! I almost had to laugh. People can spend days looking for a bug. This kind of fastidiousness is tedious, but some people enjoy the challenge. Still, it's not for everyone.
The real problem with getting good at programming is that it takes times, and lots of it. You make stupid error, then again, then again. Many CS majors recall spending, ten, twenty, thirty, even a hundred hours on a project. Real world projects may take thousands of hours to complete.
Now think of that. Most classes expect you to spend maybe 10-15 hours tops out of class. But programming is best learned if you spend 20-25 hours, and with that kind of number, it begins to interfere with other courses, and it really begins to interfere with sleep. This kind of obsessiveness is mostly associated with video games. More on that later.
Oddly enough, if you look at most CS departments, you find women are from groups you wouldn't entirely expect. Asians. Many women are Chinese, Korean, Indian. Heck, you're more likely to find an African woman than an African-American woman in computer science.
Do you need to be good at video games to be good at programming? Not exactly, no, but the skills to be a good programmer has some similarities to being good at video games. In particular, those who like video games play it for hours. And for some reason, there are more guys willing to do this than girls. Second, many video games have a puzzle like aspect to it, and being able to figure out what's going on with little information is like programming too.
My guess is that guys are more disposed to be obsessive-compulsive than women. Add to the fact that geeky guys aren't highly desirable by women, and that geeky girls aren't (necessarily) highly desired by men (though geeky men are likely to find geeky girls pretty darn cool).
Indeed, many of the women I knew in computer science tended to gravitate to areas like human computer interaction or artificial intelligence. Many fewer women were interested in the heavy math or heavy coding areas like systems programming or programming languages. Oddly enough, more mathy areas, like algorithms are likely to attract more women.
I found that of the few white women I met in computer science, at least at the undergrad level, many of them were math-inclined. Most of the women were coders, usually were Asian. I don't necessarily think Asian women have that much of an advantage over white American women. I do think, oddly enough, the pragmatic attitudes of Asians living in the US (don't major in English! major in science or engineering) overcomes traditional dislikes of math/science.
What this suggests is that white American parents are more likely to tell their daughters they can major in anything, but tell their sons they should be doctors, engineers, etc. There's some social pressure to this end too.
There are other theories too. Geeks can be sometimes insular, shunning women, even as they later complain they can't meet women, or boys who dominate the use of computers. I've noticed women are more careful programmers, and guys more cavalier about errors. It tends to help, as a programmer, to be somewhat reckless, to code it up even if it goes wrong, and be fearless about finding errors.
Part of our problem, really, is that we simply don't teach programming very well. We know how to teach syntax, but not the thinking process of debugging, looking up stuff on the Internet, and simply thinking about what's going on. It's going to take a while before we can re-think how to teach programming so that it may have greater impact on women as well as men.
Also, it's intriguing how people focus on women in computer science, instead of, more generally, minorities in computer science. There may be some stereotypes involved in that as well, that the field is predominantly Asian and white, and that going for traditionally disadvantaged minorities might be less successful, and that, comparatively speaking, there should be no reason why women, who grow up in similar social economic upbringing as men shouldn't be as successful.
Of course, there are things like "women simply aren't good at computer science" that drive women's groups crazy, but may have some physiological basis. I don't know if that's so or not, but certainly, it's harder getting women interested or any good at computer science. It happens, but numbers aren't where most people would like it to be.
In particular, a recent NY Times article laments the number of women in computer science. Informally, a colleague and I did some checks and found that there was maybe 20% women in computer science, which is smaller than engineering or mathematics. There's a a book that covers research done on this topic.
Most guys I know would be thrilled if more women were interested in computer science. But there are plenty of things that seem to favor men in the field. First, it takes someone who's a bit obsessive compulsive to be good at computer programming. It's not surprising many CS majors are geeks, who are more accustomed to studying on their own, then interacting with others.
To be good at programming, you need to pay attention to a lot of detail, and be patient enough to spend gads of time trying to debug stuff. Once, I met an undergrad taking his first programming course. He complained he had spent twenty minutes looking for a bug! I almost had to laugh. People can spend days looking for a bug. This kind of fastidiousness is tedious, but some people enjoy the challenge. Still, it's not for everyone.
The real problem with getting good at programming is that it takes times, and lots of it. You make stupid error, then again, then again. Many CS majors recall spending, ten, twenty, thirty, even a hundred hours on a project. Real world projects may take thousands of hours to complete.
Now think of that. Most classes expect you to spend maybe 10-15 hours tops out of class. But programming is best learned if you spend 20-25 hours, and with that kind of number, it begins to interfere with other courses, and it really begins to interfere with sleep. This kind of obsessiveness is mostly associated with video games. More on that later.
Oddly enough, if you look at most CS departments, you find women are from groups you wouldn't entirely expect. Asians. Many women are Chinese, Korean, Indian. Heck, you're more likely to find an African woman than an African-American woman in computer science.
Do you need to be good at video games to be good at programming? Not exactly, no, but the skills to be a good programmer has some similarities to being good at video games. In particular, those who like video games play it for hours. And for some reason, there are more guys willing to do this than girls. Second, many video games have a puzzle like aspect to it, and being able to figure out what's going on with little information is like programming too.
My guess is that guys are more disposed to be obsessive-compulsive than women. Add to the fact that geeky guys aren't highly desirable by women, and that geeky girls aren't (necessarily) highly desired by men (though geeky men are likely to find geeky girls pretty darn cool).
Indeed, many of the women I knew in computer science tended to gravitate to areas like human computer interaction or artificial intelligence. Many fewer women were interested in the heavy math or heavy coding areas like systems programming or programming languages. Oddly enough, more mathy areas, like algorithms are likely to attract more women.
I found that of the few white women I met in computer science, at least at the undergrad level, many of them were math-inclined. Most of the women were coders, usually were Asian. I don't necessarily think Asian women have that much of an advantage over white American women. I do think, oddly enough, the pragmatic attitudes of Asians living in the US (don't major in English! major in science or engineering) overcomes traditional dislikes of math/science.
What this suggests is that white American parents are more likely to tell their daughters they can major in anything, but tell their sons they should be doctors, engineers, etc. There's some social pressure to this end too.
There are other theories too. Geeks can be sometimes insular, shunning women, even as they later complain they can't meet women, or boys who dominate the use of computers. I've noticed women are more careful programmers, and guys more cavalier about errors. It tends to help, as a programmer, to be somewhat reckless, to code it up even if it goes wrong, and be fearless about finding errors.
Part of our problem, really, is that we simply don't teach programming very well. We know how to teach syntax, but not the thinking process of debugging, looking up stuff on the Internet, and simply thinking about what's going on. It's going to take a while before we can re-think how to teach programming so that it may have greater impact on women as well as men.
Also, it's intriguing how people focus on women in computer science, instead of, more generally, minorities in computer science. There may be some stereotypes involved in that as well, that the field is predominantly Asian and white, and that going for traditionally disadvantaged minorities might be less successful, and that, comparatively speaking, there should be no reason why women, who grow up in similar social economic upbringing as men shouldn't be as successful.
Of course, there are things like "women simply aren't good at computer science" that drive women's groups crazy, but may have some physiological basis. I don't know if that's so or not, but certainly, it's harder getting women interested or any good at computer science. It happens, but numbers aren't where most people would like it to be.
Much Ado About Wii
I've been, on and off, looking for the Wii for nearly a month, perhaps longer. It was completely scarce in March and most of April. It's supposed to be available Sunday. But you know what? It being so scarce, there are plenty of others looking for it too. I'm told that people are camping out the night just to get an opportunity to buy it tomorrow.
I suppose I should have known better. You would have thought that most people who wanted it would already have it.
Hardly. So, my guess is that I'll struggle to find it tomorrow. But at least the chances are non-zero, rather than zero.
I suppose I should have known better. You would have thought that most people who wanted it would already have it.
Hardly. So, my guess is that I'll struggle to find it tomorrow. But at least the chances are non-zero, rather than zero.
King and the Clown
Some number of months ago, I saw a review for King and the Clown, a film that went on to become one of the most popular in Korea (South, that is. Swimming pools. Movie stars.)
It was, in its own way, the Brokeback Mountain of Korea, though certainly with different themes. Indeed, the only common theme is about gay love, sorta, with the emphasis on the sorta.
I was under the impression the film had a bit of action in it, something akin to Crouching Tiger, but that wasn't at all the case.
But let me back up some. I was skimming what was showing on DC Film Fest. Dave had put the information on his away message, so I looked it up. The one thing I really dislike about film festivals is the sheer number of movies they show. I know, this is supposed to be a bonus, right? You get to see a lot of movies you wouldn't otherwise see.
But, see, I can barely watch movies if I have Netflix where I have all the time in the world to see it. Ideally, there'd be some way I can watch the movie whenever I feel like it, perhaps via Netflix. Sure, they could show it at a theater, but it'd be nice to know I could get the movie whenever I wanted. Distribution of films from film festivals basically suck. And because there are so many movies, I won't be able to reasonably watch a fraction of it. This has to be a bad way to encourage people to watch films.
So I decided to Metro in to watch this film, knowing it would be tight on time. I took the Metro to Tenleytown/American University from my work, which is 8 stops away, so about 20 minutes, plus the time it takes for the train to arrive. This would leave me ten minutes to get to the theater, and that's assuming I could figure out which way to head on Wisconsin once I arrived.
Once I did arrive, there wasn't a convenient map. I should have gone to the local Starbuck's, because they're usually good about directions. Instead, I ask about the worst person possible, which is some Metro attendant. She gladly pointed out the wrong direction, and I walked several blocks the wrong way, before I met an elderly lady, and she said to go the other direction. So I had to back up, and head the other way, nearly as far as I had gone this way. I would have been late had I gone the right way, but I was doubly late going the wrong way. Amazing how major roads never tell you which way is which. It would be extremely useful.
Once I got there, the movie was about half an hour in. The good news is that its run time was nearly two hours, so even as I got in a little late, I don't think I missed a great deal.
At the time I arrived, there was a minstrel troupe which had, as far as I could tell, been picked up the the king, and asked to perform. The routine, being a bit bawdy, and anti-royalty was a bit dangerous to perform, but somehow, it all works out, and the king laughs, and begins to fall for the woman played by a man.
I haven't really seen a Korean period piece, though I've seen Japanese and Chinese ones, and there is some resemblance, from the kind of drumming and singing you'd associate with kabuki. However, there are elements of Kurosawa and/or Shakespeare.
The titular king has apparently taken his position after his father, a highly revered king, has passed away. His father had his mother killed, for some unknown reason. Many of the courtesans are still loyal to the deceased father, while the son seeks to assert his own power. His relationship to the queen (if she can be called that) shows his powerlessness, as she acts like his mother, and he acts like the incestuous son.
The film hits a bunch of topics, from people with privilege (the royal court) and those without (the traveling minstrels), from schemers seeking to take over the kingdom, to the king who falls for the womanly Gong-gil. As it turns out, the leader of the troupe, Jang-sang, is also affectionate for Gong-gil, and he's jealous of the king's attention.
Unlike, say, Thailand, where homosexuality is treated far more openly than other Asian countries, Korea has yet to deal with this issue in films. In its way, it's had to be subtle, much like Brokeback Mountain, but where Brokeback could afford passionate kisses, there's only one innocent kisses, and Gong-gil flitters between being male and female. In many scenes, Gong-gil looks very womanly.
Unlike Kurosawa, this film is a bit more, hmm, what's the right word? Not quite campy. It's not like having the cast of Xena do Lord of the Rings, where you feel the lack of good acting would make it seem like a bad telling, but the queen is petulant, the king unassertive. Compare this to, say, Curse of the Golden Flower, where Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li have a much more magisterial quality, the leads feel like pretenders, with the backbiting of a soap opera, and those were soap opera qualities were criticisms leveled on "Curse".
The film's a bit heavy on the melodrama, but it's not as nasty as "Curse" where scandal upon scandal lead to hard to believe storyline. There's a more innocent touch to this film. Korean film may not be ready to have two strong males (rather than the stereotyped effiminate male) be leads in a gay-themed film, but I suppose that might come soon.
At the time, this film was the highest grossing film in Korea, but that was soon displaced by The Host. The Host is still the better film, but this isn't too bad. I'd give it a B or so for being entertaining, without being outstanding. As usual, Korean films manage to distinguish itself from Chinese and Japanese films, sort of the blue collar version of their Asian brethren.
I'm hoping to catch Time by Kim Ki-duk, who filmed Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring, 3-iron, and Samaritan Girl. Kim is the master of wordless dialogue, with people who find it difficult to communicate, but communicate nonetheless.
It was, in its own way, the Brokeback Mountain of Korea, though certainly with different themes. Indeed, the only common theme is about gay love, sorta, with the emphasis on the sorta.
I was under the impression the film had a bit of action in it, something akin to Crouching Tiger, but that wasn't at all the case.
But let me back up some. I was skimming what was showing on DC Film Fest. Dave had put the information on his away message, so I looked it up. The one thing I really dislike about film festivals is the sheer number of movies they show. I know, this is supposed to be a bonus, right? You get to see a lot of movies you wouldn't otherwise see.
But, see, I can barely watch movies if I have Netflix where I have all the time in the world to see it. Ideally, there'd be some way I can watch the movie whenever I feel like it, perhaps via Netflix. Sure, they could show it at a theater, but it'd be nice to know I could get the movie whenever I wanted. Distribution of films from film festivals basically suck. And because there are so many movies, I won't be able to reasonably watch a fraction of it. This has to be a bad way to encourage people to watch films.
So I decided to Metro in to watch this film, knowing it would be tight on time. I took the Metro to Tenleytown/American University from my work, which is 8 stops away, so about 20 minutes, plus the time it takes for the train to arrive. This would leave me ten minutes to get to the theater, and that's assuming I could figure out which way to head on Wisconsin once I arrived.
Once I did arrive, there wasn't a convenient map. I should have gone to the local Starbuck's, because they're usually good about directions. Instead, I ask about the worst person possible, which is some Metro attendant. She gladly pointed out the wrong direction, and I walked several blocks the wrong way, before I met an elderly lady, and she said to go the other direction. So I had to back up, and head the other way, nearly as far as I had gone this way. I would have been late had I gone the right way, but I was doubly late going the wrong way. Amazing how major roads never tell you which way is which. It would be extremely useful.
Once I got there, the movie was about half an hour in. The good news is that its run time was nearly two hours, so even as I got in a little late, I don't think I missed a great deal.
At the time I arrived, there was a minstrel troupe which had, as far as I could tell, been picked up the the king, and asked to perform. The routine, being a bit bawdy, and anti-royalty was a bit dangerous to perform, but somehow, it all works out, and the king laughs, and begins to fall for the woman played by a man.
I haven't really seen a Korean period piece, though I've seen Japanese and Chinese ones, and there is some resemblance, from the kind of drumming and singing you'd associate with kabuki. However, there are elements of Kurosawa and/or Shakespeare.
The titular king has apparently taken his position after his father, a highly revered king, has passed away. His father had his mother killed, for some unknown reason. Many of the courtesans are still loyal to the deceased father, while the son seeks to assert his own power. His relationship to the queen (if she can be called that) shows his powerlessness, as she acts like his mother, and he acts like the incestuous son.
The film hits a bunch of topics, from people with privilege (the royal court) and those without (the traveling minstrels), from schemers seeking to take over the kingdom, to the king who falls for the womanly Gong-gil. As it turns out, the leader of the troupe, Jang-sang, is also affectionate for Gong-gil, and he's jealous of the king's attention.
Unlike, say, Thailand, where homosexuality is treated far more openly than other Asian countries, Korea has yet to deal with this issue in films. In its way, it's had to be subtle, much like Brokeback Mountain, but where Brokeback could afford passionate kisses, there's only one innocent kisses, and Gong-gil flitters between being male and female. In many scenes, Gong-gil looks very womanly.
Unlike Kurosawa, this film is a bit more, hmm, what's the right word? Not quite campy. It's not like having the cast of Xena do Lord of the Rings, where you feel the lack of good acting would make it seem like a bad telling, but the queen is petulant, the king unassertive. Compare this to, say, Curse of the Golden Flower, where Chow Yun Fat and Gong Li have a much more magisterial quality, the leads feel like pretenders, with the backbiting of a soap opera, and those were soap opera qualities were criticisms leveled on "Curse".
The film's a bit heavy on the melodrama, but it's not as nasty as "Curse" where scandal upon scandal lead to hard to believe storyline. There's a more innocent touch to this film. Korean film may not be ready to have two strong males (rather than the stereotyped effiminate male) be leads in a gay-themed film, but I suppose that might come soon.
At the time, this film was the highest grossing film in Korea, but that was soon displaced by The Host. The Host is still the better film, but this isn't too bad. I'd give it a B or so for being entertaining, without being outstanding. As usual, Korean films manage to distinguish itself from Chinese and Japanese films, sort of the blue collar version of their Asian brethren.
I'm hoping to catch Time by Kim Ki-duk, who filmed Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring, 3-iron, and Samaritan Girl. Kim is the master of wordless dialogue, with people who find it difficult to communicate, but communicate nonetheless.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Mary Had a Little Lamb
The shooting spree at Virginia Tech have lead people to wonder whether something more could have been done. When a parent is possibly grieving for their child, there is a sense that something more could always have been done. When 9/11 occurred, people try to place blame on someone. Somehow, we had to forsee this, and if we didn't, we have to try harder.
But Virginia Tech's official reaction was perhaps no stranger than any other.
Two events occurred on the University of Maryland campus that had similar overtones. In the one case, an applied math graduate student, a recent graduate of the electrical engineering department sent threatening notes to a department, and the reaction was to have police cars near the building where he might come if he were to take action.
Yet, classes were not canceled. Things went on as usual. Eventually, he was arrested at his mother's house, where he had stashed guns. The details may be incorrect, but the general story and reaction was basically what happened.
Another incident. This time, a boyfriend (alas, also Korean) goes up to his girlfriend, shoots her in the head, then kills himself. Miraculously, she survives, though she is left blind by the shot. Again, nothing much happened on campus. It was determined that the girl's boyfriend (or perhaps ex, at that time) was already dead, and there was no additional reasons to lock down campus.
And this was basically the reaction the police at Virginia Tech had. They thought it was an unhappy boyfriend, and had no reason to think a shooting spree was about to occur.
Now, Mr. Hui, I'd imagine, did not intend to do the first shootings, because too many things could go wrong afterwards, unless he somehow imagined that the police would be so occupied with this, that he would have more chances to carry out his gruesome task. Everyone second guesses the police for not shutting down the campus, and yet, if you put yourself in Mr. Hui's spot, dreadful as that is, it made no sense for him to do what he did early that morning, if he were intent on doing what he wanted to later.
Reading some of the followup, you realize that the situation could have been worse. Were it not for two groups of people barricading the room (once after a shooting occurred within the room, and once elsewhere), there would have been more deaths. Indeed, another group was in someone's office hiding, and were it not for the innate curiosity and desire to help, Kevin Granata may have survived. In such harrowing situations, the decision to help others or to save oneself, or to pretend to be dead, or to realize that putting a table against the door would save them, these tiny decisions have measured effects on the extent of the tragedy.
The point, if there is any, is that Virginia Tech's reaction to the situation may not have been inappropriate given the situation at hand, just as those in the Twin Towers were told to stay put in the building, as no one had any clue that the buildings would collapse.
We seek answers, we want better decisions made, but mostly, we do what we think is best under the circumstances.
But Virginia Tech's official reaction was perhaps no stranger than any other.
Two events occurred on the University of Maryland campus that had similar overtones. In the one case, an applied math graduate student, a recent graduate of the electrical engineering department sent threatening notes to a department, and the reaction was to have police cars near the building where he might come if he were to take action.
Yet, classes were not canceled. Things went on as usual. Eventually, he was arrested at his mother's house, where he had stashed guns. The details may be incorrect, but the general story and reaction was basically what happened.
Another incident. This time, a boyfriend (alas, also Korean) goes up to his girlfriend, shoots her in the head, then kills himself. Miraculously, she survives, though she is left blind by the shot. Again, nothing much happened on campus. It was determined that the girl's boyfriend (or perhaps ex, at that time) was already dead, and there was no additional reasons to lock down campus.
And this was basically the reaction the police at Virginia Tech had. They thought it was an unhappy boyfriend, and had no reason to think a shooting spree was about to occur.
Now, Mr. Hui, I'd imagine, did not intend to do the first shootings, because too many things could go wrong afterwards, unless he somehow imagined that the police would be so occupied with this, that he would have more chances to carry out his gruesome task. Everyone second guesses the police for not shutting down the campus, and yet, if you put yourself in Mr. Hui's spot, dreadful as that is, it made no sense for him to do what he did early that morning, if he were intent on doing what he wanted to later.
Reading some of the followup, you realize that the situation could have been worse. Were it not for two groups of people barricading the room (once after a shooting occurred within the room, and once elsewhere), there would have been more deaths. Indeed, another group was in someone's office hiding, and were it not for the innate curiosity and desire to help, Kevin Granata may have survived. In such harrowing situations, the decision to help others or to save oneself, or to pretend to be dead, or to realize that putting a table against the door would save them, these tiny decisions have measured effects on the extent of the tragedy.
The point, if there is any, is that Virginia Tech's reaction to the situation may not have been inappropriate given the situation at hand, just as those in the Twin Towers were told to stay put in the building, as no one had any clue that the buildings would collapse.
We seek answers, we want better decisions made, but mostly, we do what we think is best under the circumstances.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Analyze This
In our desperate need to make sense of a terrible incident, we seek explanation, making sense of what seems senseless. We want to know what Cho Seung Hui was like. What made him do it?
Within a day of the shootings at Virginia Tech, someone had posted a one act play about a guy named Richard McBeef. Hundreds, if not thousands of people have read what presumably only two or three others had before. He's getting instant analysis posthumously, from armchair psychiatrists.
Here's one of the better examples. In it, the author claims the story, which incidentally reads horribly, making little sense, is somehow a story of Hamlet, told in modern times, with names like Richard and McBeef borrowing two other Shakespearean names, though mocking them as well. I suppose, in its way, it's darn clever to weave so many ideas together, and yet the actual execution (as it were) was rather poor.
But beyond that, the blogosphere is ready to respond, and mere moments afterwards. Many have seen it as a statement on gun control, or commented on lack of quick university response, which may or may not have helped (it may simply have switched the venue from a lecture hall to a dorm--indeed, it's puzzling why the first shots were fired hours earlier).
The New York Times recently had some graphics showing the locations on campus, and honestly, I swear I thought it was going to be some sort of 3D flyover, like some first person shooter, in some tasteless re-enactment. Fortunately, it did not devolve into that, but we're pretty close to having the technology to do that, and people are often curious, wanting to replay the event, down to its minute detail.
Justin says I should avoid blog entries like this, that merely gets drowned out amidst the comments of thousands of others.
Within a day of the shootings at Virginia Tech, someone had posted a one act play about a guy named Richard McBeef. Hundreds, if not thousands of people have read what presumably only two or three others had before. He's getting instant analysis posthumously, from armchair psychiatrists.
Here's one of the better examples. In it, the author claims the story, which incidentally reads horribly, making little sense, is somehow a story of Hamlet, told in modern times, with names like Richard and McBeef borrowing two other Shakespearean names, though mocking them as well. I suppose, in its way, it's darn clever to weave so many ideas together, and yet the actual execution (as it were) was rather poor.
But beyond that, the blogosphere is ready to respond, and mere moments afterwards. Many have seen it as a statement on gun control, or commented on lack of quick university response, which may or may not have helped (it may simply have switched the venue from a lecture hall to a dorm--indeed, it's puzzling why the first shots were fired hours earlier).
The New York Times recently had some graphics showing the locations on campus, and honestly, I swear I thought it was going to be some sort of 3D flyover, like some first person shooter, in some tasteless re-enactment. Fortunately, it did not devolve into that, but we're pretty close to having the technology to do that, and people are often curious, wanting to replay the event, down to its minute detail.
Justin says I should avoid blog entries like this, that merely gets drowned out amidst the comments of thousands of others.
Guns N Roses
Here's something amazing. The big topics of news, which in the US is always focused inwards, because we can barely understand Iraq, a war that happens over there, was Don Imus and the Duke lacrosse team. Well, as long you care about sports news, which is really, really US centric, to no one's surprise. It tells you how important sports are to people.
And that amazing thing? Race is more important than guns. A lot more important.
What do I mean by that? People have strong opinions about race, though now it's a matter of free speech vs. the harmony of a particular race, in this case, African Americans, rather than something worse, about the stratification of society and how some people deserve to be in a certain spot in society. Thank goodness that's a fringe discussion at best.
But whenever some tragedy involving guns comes out, something like the Virgina Tech massacre, someone (like Mr. Tony) says that we should serious think about gun control, and yet, there's no one as passionate as Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or women's groups or the Anti-Defamation League all banding together to wage this battle (to use, alas, military terms, as people seem to do all the time).
The difference, I suppose, is that people who like guns really, really like them, even as the arguments made are often simple.
Here are the points that are usually trotted out. The Constitution gives the right to bear arms. People say that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. Also, if there is some bad guy with a gun, he can be stopped by you, who also has a gun. Thus, it moves the idea of defense from the police, which is assumed to be ineffective because there aren't enough of them, to the individual. And further, it assumes that because you are a law-abiding individual, then you will of course, be completely reasonable in your actions. It paints the world into good and bad, and you know you're good, and they're bad.
But this strikes me as pretty simple minded. These advocates can not really point to a country with unfettered access to guns that lives in this utopia. Really, they advocate a form of the Wild West, and believe that's the best way to handle things. What about little kids who can now get access to guns? How do you prevent them from accidentally killing themselves or someone else? Lock up the weapons?
And if you're an advocate of hunting, why do you need complete unfettered access to any gun? That leads to the slippery slope argument. If you restrict one kind of gun, then you can restrict another and another, and pretty soon no one will have guns (isn't that the idea?).
The difference in these arguments is that, with race, few people will publicly say discrimination is a good thing, but many people who like guns are passionate in a way that anti-gun folks are not passionate. Let's face it, people are more passionate when they are under siege. This is why a comment like "nappy-headed hos" gets so much airplay. It insults a group. The group seeks to protect itself. Being anti-gun is not a group that gets insulted, that feels the need for protection. Those who own and use guns are organized. Ultimately, unless those people who are anti-gun are organized and well-funded, those who advocate guns will win.
Even now, with this tragedy, people will say that we should not be too hasty. Unfettered gun access is the solution.
There's all sorts of restrictions you could imagine. For example, only allow a gun of a certain size. Hunting rifles are huge, and hard to wield in a concealed fashion, Arnold Schwarzenegger movies aside.
And for self-defense? Why is it important to have lethal force? It seems that there are plenty of ways to try to incapacitate a person, and that this is worth the lack of certainty of clearly defending yourself. You could imagine tasers (though I think distance would create an issue), some kind of mace gun, tear gas, etc. Indeed, the police have been considering use of non lethal violence to incapacitate the other person.
That such reasonable alternatives are not brought out shows how the arguments are totally silly. The point is people who have guns want to keep them, and arguments of self-defense are almost always ridiculous.
A few years ago, a kid was going to a Halloween party. He was from Japan, an exchange student. Alas, it wasn't exactly Halloween, and furthermore, he went to the wrong house. As he left to find the correct house, the guy yells out "Freeze!", which he doesn't understand, and keeps walking. He shoots and kills the teen. This was a huge controversy in Japan, but barely registered a blip. He was within his rights, according to Louisiana law to kill this kid. This law-abiding individual, were he not to have a gun, would not have been able to kill the kid. And how many thieves did he stop since having a gun? All due to an innocent error.
Mr. Tony was paid a visit by Peter Yarrow, and in principle, if he had had a weapon, he could have killed this trespasser, and there would simply be Paul and Mary. And he may have been within his rights to do so.
The guy who went on a rampage at Virginia Tech? He bought the guns legally. This would, surprise, make him law-abiding. Indeed, gun access is so easy, that it's enough for a first timer to get a gun and carry out violent acts. Unfortunately, a whole class of guns would have to be removed from public use and banned so that even criminals couldn't get easy access to them.
Somehow, though, gun advocates live in this fantasy land. They look at other countries that ban guns and have low murder rate and scream la-la-la, that is different, they are idiots, go America!
Sadly, nothing much will come of this. People will be sad, but it will take a charismatic person of some degree to make a dent in what many people see as an odd fundamental right.
And that amazing thing? Race is more important than guns. A lot more important.
What do I mean by that? People have strong opinions about race, though now it's a matter of free speech vs. the harmony of a particular race, in this case, African Americans, rather than something worse, about the stratification of society and how some people deserve to be in a certain spot in society. Thank goodness that's a fringe discussion at best.
But whenever some tragedy involving guns comes out, something like the Virgina Tech massacre, someone (like Mr. Tony) says that we should serious think about gun control, and yet, there's no one as passionate as Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton or women's groups or the Anti-Defamation League all banding together to wage this battle (to use, alas, military terms, as people seem to do all the time).
The difference, I suppose, is that people who like guns really, really like them, even as the arguments made are often simple.
Here are the points that are usually trotted out. The Constitution gives the right to bear arms. People say that if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. Also, if there is some bad guy with a gun, he can be stopped by you, who also has a gun. Thus, it moves the idea of defense from the police, which is assumed to be ineffective because there aren't enough of them, to the individual. And further, it assumes that because you are a law-abiding individual, then you will of course, be completely reasonable in your actions. It paints the world into good and bad, and you know you're good, and they're bad.
But this strikes me as pretty simple minded. These advocates can not really point to a country with unfettered access to guns that lives in this utopia. Really, they advocate a form of the Wild West, and believe that's the best way to handle things. What about little kids who can now get access to guns? How do you prevent them from accidentally killing themselves or someone else? Lock up the weapons?
And if you're an advocate of hunting, why do you need complete unfettered access to any gun? That leads to the slippery slope argument. If you restrict one kind of gun, then you can restrict another and another, and pretty soon no one will have guns (isn't that the idea?).
The difference in these arguments is that, with race, few people will publicly say discrimination is a good thing, but many people who like guns are passionate in a way that anti-gun folks are not passionate. Let's face it, people are more passionate when they are under siege. This is why a comment like "nappy-headed hos" gets so much airplay. It insults a group. The group seeks to protect itself. Being anti-gun is not a group that gets insulted, that feels the need for protection. Those who own and use guns are organized. Ultimately, unless those people who are anti-gun are organized and well-funded, those who advocate guns will win.
Even now, with this tragedy, people will say that we should not be too hasty. Unfettered gun access is the solution.
There's all sorts of restrictions you could imagine. For example, only allow a gun of a certain size. Hunting rifles are huge, and hard to wield in a concealed fashion, Arnold Schwarzenegger movies aside.
And for self-defense? Why is it important to have lethal force? It seems that there are plenty of ways to try to incapacitate a person, and that this is worth the lack of certainty of clearly defending yourself. You could imagine tasers (though I think distance would create an issue), some kind of mace gun, tear gas, etc. Indeed, the police have been considering use of non lethal violence to incapacitate the other person.
That such reasonable alternatives are not brought out shows how the arguments are totally silly. The point is people who have guns want to keep them, and arguments of self-defense are almost always ridiculous.
A few years ago, a kid was going to a Halloween party. He was from Japan, an exchange student. Alas, it wasn't exactly Halloween, and furthermore, he went to the wrong house. As he left to find the correct house, the guy yells out "Freeze!", which he doesn't understand, and keeps walking. He shoots and kills the teen. This was a huge controversy in Japan, but barely registered a blip. He was within his rights, according to Louisiana law to kill this kid. This law-abiding individual, were he not to have a gun, would not have been able to kill the kid. And how many thieves did he stop since having a gun? All due to an innocent error.
Mr. Tony was paid a visit by Peter Yarrow, and in principle, if he had had a weapon, he could have killed this trespasser, and there would simply be Paul and Mary. And he may have been within his rights to do so.
The guy who went on a rampage at Virginia Tech? He bought the guns legally. This would, surprise, make him law-abiding. Indeed, gun access is so easy, that it's enough for a first timer to get a gun and carry out violent acts. Unfortunately, a whole class of guns would have to be removed from public use and banned so that even criminals couldn't get easy access to them.
Somehow, though, gun advocates live in this fantasy land. They look at other countries that ban guns and have low murder rate and scream la-la-la, that is different, they are idiots, go America!
Sadly, nothing much will come of this. People will be sad, but it will take a charismatic person of some degree to make a dent in what many people see as an odd fundamental right.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Knockin on Heaven's Door
Haiyen Cheng shouldn't have even been there.
Her advisor was out-of-town attending a conference, and had asked her to substitute. She is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science. She was at Norris Hall, site of the Virginia Tech shootings, where 33 people were killed, many in this hall, which is expected to be closed for the rest of the semester.
Haiyen was giving a lecture, when she heard a loud noise, which she thought was construction. Then, she heard the noise some more, which sounded like shots. A student and her went to the door to check what was going on. They peeked out, and saw a guy with a gun, and immediately went back in the room. It was fortunate, the gunman didn't come immediately to the room.
This gave time for some students to suggest barricading the door, so they put a table against the door (which fortunately opened in), and kept the door shut. Meanwhile, everyone stayed low.
The shooter, Cho Seung Hui, knocked loudly on the door, wanting to get in, and then shot at the door several times, and shot a few more times, before eventually giving up. There was some luck that he had no idea why the door was closed (mainly students near the ground leaning against the table, blocking the door) and aimed at hip level or above, and missing potential victims.
Eventually, the police would come in and the people could leave the class.
Were it not for the quick thinking of a few students who were able to barricade the door (computer science majors!), the death toll could have been even higher. While some students wanted to jump out, Haiyen advised against it, since they were high up, and the window was tiny, so the shooter would have had to do some work to get in from there.
Haiyen seemed remarkably calm after just a harrowing incident, and was able to conduct an interview rather lucidly, fortunate that she and her class were able to count themselves as one of the lucky ones.
Her advisor was out-of-town attending a conference, and had asked her to substitute. She is a Ph.D. candidate in computer science. She was at Norris Hall, site of the Virginia Tech shootings, where 33 people were killed, many in this hall, which is expected to be closed for the rest of the semester.
Haiyen was giving a lecture, when she heard a loud noise, which she thought was construction. Then, she heard the noise some more, which sounded like shots. A student and her went to the door to check what was going on. They peeked out, and saw a guy with a gun, and immediately went back in the room. It was fortunate, the gunman didn't come immediately to the room.
This gave time for some students to suggest barricading the door, so they put a table against the door (which fortunately opened in), and kept the door shut. Meanwhile, everyone stayed low.
The shooter, Cho Seung Hui, knocked loudly on the door, wanting to get in, and then shot at the door several times, and shot a few more times, before eventually giving up. There was some luck that he had no idea why the door was closed (mainly students near the ground leaning against the table, blocking the door) and aimed at hip level or above, and missing potential victims.
Eventually, the police would come in and the people could leave the class.
Were it not for the quick thinking of a few students who were able to barricade the door (computer science majors!), the death toll could have been even higher. While some students wanted to jump out, Haiyen advised against it, since they were high up, and the window was tiny, so the shooter would have had to do some work to get in from there.
Haiyen seemed remarkably calm after just a harrowing incident, and was able to conduct an interview rather lucidly, fortunate that she and her class were able to count themselves as one of the lucky ones.
Coward?
I was just reading a Myspace blog. I know. I know. The guy was pissed off that the guy did a cowardly thing and killed himself, thus depriving the public about why he did. He branded the guy a coward.
This is interesting. Cowardice. I recall Bush saying that the terrorists on that fateful day were cowards. Why do we apply a word to a situation that seems far the opposite of cowardice. Because the opposite of cowardice is bravery, and bravery is seen as something positive, and so we don't want to glorify what's going on by asserting how brave these people were. We have no real notion in our English language to say the "brave actions of a lunatic", because bravery and good our put side by side, when they shouldn't.
Bravery, in its essence, is overcoming fear. And while a guy with an automated weapon probably didn't fear too much, he must have feared he would not live the end of the day, and was willing to do it anyway. A hero? Hardly. A kind of bravery? Yes, a kind. But not a commendable form of bravery. And so we lack a word for it, and so we call it cowardice.
Cowardice is hiding from action, too scared to do anything. Cowardice may have saved some lives in this tragedy, people who, in a moment of abject terror, hid, unable, unwilling to give their lives to save others. These aren't trained soldiers, and so we can't expect people whose parents would advise cowardice every time if it meant they could see their sons and daughters again. And in this senseless acts, there were those who did sacrifice themselves for others, even as their academic life gave them no inkling that they would feel bravery, and in this case, an overcoming of fear to do something good for others.
I agree with Bill Maher in this case. We use cowardice because we can not think of a word to describe what happened. and we want to insult the people, degrade them, even as they can't hear what is being said, so as to demean the action for any future individuals, who might somehow, perversely, see such actions as brave. If they somehow get it in their head that it is beneath them to behave this way, I suppose the word will have its benefit. But it's hard to say that people of their right mind actually reason this way when such acts occur.
Words can be so limiting sometimes.
This is interesting. Cowardice. I recall Bush saying that the terrorists on that fateful day were cowards. Why do we apply a word to a situation that seems far the opposite of cowardice. Because the opposite of cowardice is bravery, and bravery is seen as something positive, and so we don't want to glorify what's going on by asserting how brave these people were. We have no real notion in our English language to say the "brave actions of a lunatic", because bravery and good our put side by side, when they shouldn't.
Bravery, in its essence, is overcoming fear. And while a guy with an automated weapon probably didn't fear too much, he must have feared he would not live the end of the day, and was willing to do it anyway. A hero? Hardly. A kind of bravery? Yes, a kind. But not a commendable form of bravery. And so we lack a word for it, and so we call it cowardice.
Cowardice is hiding from action, too scared to do anything. Cowardice may have saved some lives in this tragedy, people who, in a moment of abject terror, hid, unable, unwilling to give their lives to save others. These aren't trained soldiers, and so we can't expect people whose parents would advise cowardice every time if it meant they could see their sons and daughters again. And in this senseless acts, there were those who did sacrifice themselves for others, even as their academic life gave them no inkling that they would feel bravery, and in this case, an overcoming of fear to do something good for others.
I agree with Bill Maher in this case. We use cowardice because we can not think of a word to describe what happened. and we want to insult the people, degrade them, even as they can't hear what is being said, so as to demean the action for any future individuals, who might somehow, perversely, see such actions as brave. If they somehow get it in their head that it is beneath them to behave this way, I suppose the word will have its benefit. But it's hard to say that people of their right mind actually reason this way when such acts occur.
Words can be so limiting sometimes.
Virginia "Tech"
A few years ago, I was attending a traditional Vietnamese engagement ceremony. It basically involves the would-be groom with several of his male friends making a kind of pilgrimage to the home of the would-be bride (her parents), and typically a father of the would-be groom, who asks permission for his son to marry the daughter of the father of the would-be bride. You know, dad asks permission of other dad. Very traditional.
The Vietnamese share some of their traditional roots with other Asian cultures, where ancestor worship is still common. Even here, there is a bit of the technology of the time. A black-and-white photo of a grand parent, or a great grand-parent, looking approvingly on in the process.
The ensuing tea ceremony felt very traditional too. However, the moment was being preserved for posterity. Digital cameras came out. So did digital camcorders. Traditional events being captured on the latest consumer digital electronics. Bits for posterity.
A bit of modernity also sprouts its head in tragedy, as many people, flying on that fateful day, some six years ago, used cell phone technology and called down to loved ones, scared, fearing the worst, sending their best. Over modern electronics.
Traditionally, we've let our media outlets try to gather information for us, disseminate it via newspapers. The events at Columbine were recent enough that we could have seen some of it on the Web, but the Web was only a few years old then, not nearly as popular as it is now. These days, we can get updates by going to our favorite news website, and get information as it unfolds. Of course, live TV news broadcasts have always done well in such situations, trying to give around-the-clock coverage.
But, there's a new way now. A cell-phone recording of the events was made public mere hours after the incident. Its herky jerky movements of a student running around recording events as it unfolded. Then, students getting on the Facebook pages, their MySpace pages, trying to create their own underground news source. The many students outweighing the few journalists, and even as they lacked some information, such as police reports, they could find out who was in class, who made it, and guess at maybe who didn't.
Even in tragedy, our compulsion is to know, to capture these events, to make sense of it, to disseminate. Now it can be done outside the realm of traditional news media. The facts less certain, but details more abundant. Early warnings. Early information. A passionate curiosity on a college campus using the most modern forms of communication to understand a senseless act.
The Vietnamese share some of their traditional roots with other Asian cultures, where ancestor worship is still common. Even here, there is a bit of the technology of the time. A black-and-white photo of a grand parent, or a great grand-parent, looking approvingly on in the process.
The ensuing tea ceremony felt very traditional too. However, the moment was being preserved for posterity. Digital cameras came out. So did digital camcorders. Traditional events being captured on the latest consumer digital electronics. Bits for posterity.
A bit of modernity also sprouts its head in tragedy, as many people, flying on that fateful day, some six years ago, used cell phone technology and called down to loved ones, scared, fearing the worst, sending their best. Over modern electronics.
Traditionally, we've let our media outlets try to gather information for us, disseminate it via newspapers. The events at Columbine were recent enough that we could have seen some of it on the Web, but the Web was only a few years old then, not nearly as popular as it is now. These days, we can get updates by going to our favorite news website, and get information as it unfolds. Of course, live TV news broadcasts have always done well in such situations, trying to give around-the-clock coverage.
But, there's a new way now. A cell-phone recording of the events was made public mere hours after the incident. Its herky jerky movements of a student running around recording events as it unfolded. Then, students getting on the Facebook pages, their MySpace pages, trying to create their own underground news source. The many students outweighing the few journalists, and even as they lacked some information, such as police reports, they could find out who was in class, who made it, and guess at maybe who didn't.
Even in tragedy, our compulsion is to know, to capture these events, to make sense of it, to disseminate. Now it can be done outside the realm of traditional news media. The facts less certain, but details more abundant. Early warnings. Early information. A passionate curiosity on a college campus using the most modern forms of communication to understand a senseless act.
Elephant
George Bush is quagmired in low ratings, as the public wonders if he can handle anything right in his presidency. The firing of 8 US attorneys for political reasons has Alberto Gonzales under a firestorm. Paul Wolfowitz, head of the World Bank, appears to have given his girlfriend a cushy job at the State Department. Iraq casualties continue to mount.
But where did it all begin? It began, of course, on 9/11, when the twin towers and the Pentagon were attacked. What was the reaction? Initially, confusion, terror. How could such a thing happen on US soil? Then, as Americans are wont to do, we needed to assign blame. Who was at fault? At the time, I had thought of Al Qaeda. After all, how many terrorists groups did you know? And it was them.
And then the US had to do something, for it seemed far worse to take inaction, to show you had no control over the situation. We had weapons. We wanted to use it. Even as some preferred caution, and actually advised us to do nothing, it was considered very Jimmy Carter to be ineffectual. The US had to attack, had to send a message, had to show that it could "protect" its people by attacking others. It was initially Afghanistan, then inexplicably, Iraq, and the war against terror become a national policy to replace a meandering policy. It became a way to define a presidency.
The tragedy at Virginia Tech also engenders similar feelings of confusion and terror, but there's no easy enemy to pick at. Almost always, incidents such as this are due to actions of someone very distressed with their own lives, and willing to do great harm before invariably, they lose their own lives either by their own hand, or the hands of police who try to stop him.
In this day and age of instant messaging, people were already positing a solution to the problem, and of course, it doesn't take long before the gun nuts trot out their theory.
It wouldn't have happened if the students had guns.
It's a vision of the Wild West, where everyone had a gun (did they really?), and they could protect themselves.
Of course, the gun nut theory is built on a few tenuous assumptions. First, if guns are outlawed then only outlaws will have guns. Hmm, many countries seem to work pretty well with guns outlawed, having murder rates far underneath the US. But of course, they're weird. The US is far crazier, and such a strategy would only harm God-fearing citizens who need a few weekends killing deer with semi-automatic assault rifles.
But I digress.
Second, everyone else who had guns would be honest and law-abiding, and furthermore, be able to have their gun conveniently with them so they can take the law into their own hands making decisions that are more sound than trained police. There would, of course, be no accidents, no acts of rage. And if someone did get killed, well, it's the Wild West, and this is the price we pay for each person to have a gun, and of course, bring it into a classroom, which most universities would say "of course, bring in a gun, don't worry about the assignment that prof. is going to assign you that will ruin a weekend you had planned with the girlfriend for a few weeks, because your integrity will prevent you from doing anything, and besides the prof. would just as soon pop you for even looking the wrong direction".
Ultimately, the answer is going to, as usual, be neither extreme. There's far more likelihood that guns would get banned than we go to the Wild West, and yet, for every clamor to ban guns, powerful lobbyists will look the other way, present their theory of why our freedoms our being taken away, yadda, yadda, yadda. And in the end, we'll be where we are today, so parents can become even more paranoid.
The response to 9/11, to visit violence upon those we suspected caused the terror, even as those most directly responsible are no longer around to go to trial, was considered a necessary act, a very masculine act that suggests an eye for an eye, lest ye be considered a coward.
And yet there is no luxury, perhaps thankfully, for such a response. What do you do in this case? A reasonable response, one that most countries except ours would embrace, would be to respond with peace, to make it difficult for anyone to get a gun, a tactic that seems to work well with many countries, but which would take something that makes a guy like Bobby Knight or Dick Cheney happy. Owning their own guns. Going out hunting.
The voices that clamored for Imus to get fired are, unfortunately, not likely to be strong enough. While the less progressive among us might grumble about what happened to Imus, we, as a country, aren't ready, at least, publicly, to undo what the civil rights fought so hard for, namely, a bit of dignity for all of us. But people are still willing to fight for their guns, and as incidents like these occur, they'll be some explanation that claims that more guns would have prevented this, and would have conveniently ignored how more guns would cause more random killings, as they would somehow be the justifications of law-abiding folk.
It will be interesting to see if the response to this tragedy results in more than simple lamenting of youth (and adults) whose lives were given needlessly, while the rest of the country wanted answers, wanted to know who was killed and why the person did it, and by the way, could you consent to an interview, did you know anyone killed, did you see anything? The morbid curiosity, the sight of a shocked student body, and the usual response to an unusual problem.
But where did it all begin? It began, of course, on 9/11, when the twin towers and the Pentagon were attacked. What was the reaction? Initially, confusion, terror. How could such a thing happen on US soil? Then, as Americans are wont to do, we needed to assign blame. Who was at fault? At the time, I had thought of Al Qaeda. After all, how many terrorists groups did you know? And it was them.
And then the US had to do something, for it seemed far worse to take inaction, to show you had no control over the situation. We had weapons. We wanted to use it. Even as some preferred caution, and actually advised us to do nothing, it was considered very Jimmy Carter to be ineffectual. The US had to attack, had to send a message, had to show that it could "protect" its people by attacking others. It was initially Afghanistan, then inexplicably, Iraq, and the war against terror become a national policy to replace a meandering policy. It became a way to define a presidency.
The tragedy at Virginia Tech also engenders similar feelings of confusion and terror, but there's no easy enemy to pick at. Almost always, incidents such as this are due to actions of someone very distressed with their own lives, and willing to do great harm before invariably, they lose their own lives either by their own hand, or the hands of police who try to stop him.
In this day and age of instant messaging, people were already positing a solution to the problem, and of course, it doesn't take long before the gun nuts trot out their theory.
It wouldn't have happened if the students had guns.
It's a vision of the Wild West, where everyone had a gun (did they really?), and they could protect themselves.
Of course, the gun nut theory is built on a few tenuous assumptions. First, if guns are outlawed then only outlaws will have guns. Hmm, many countries seem to work pretty well with guns outlawed, having murder rates far underneath the US. But of course, they're weird. The US is far crazier, and such a strategy would only harm God-fearing citizens who need a few weekends killing deer with semi-automatic assault rifles.
But I digress.
Second, everyone else who had guns would be honest and law-abiding, and furthermore, be able to have their gun conveniently with them so they can take the law into their own hands making decisions that are more sound than trained police. There would, of course, be no accidents, no acts of rage. And if someone did get killed, well, it's the Wild West, and this is the price we pay for each person to have a gun, and of course, bring it into a classroom, which most universities would say "of course, bring in a gun, don't worry about the assignment that prof. is going to assign you that will ruin a weekend you had planned with the girlfriend for a few weeks, because your integrity will prevent you from doing anything, and besides the prof. would just as soon pop you for even looking the wrong direction".
Ultimately, the answer is going to, as usual, be neither extreme. There's far more likelihood that guns would get banned than we go to the Wild West, and yet, for every clamor to ban guns, powerful lobbyists will look the other way, present their theory of why our freedoms our being taken away, yadda, yadda, yadda. And in the end, we'll be where we are today, so parents can become even more paranoid.
The response to 9/11, to visit violence upon those we suspected caused the terror, even as those most directly responsible are no longer around to go to trial, was considered a necessary act, a very masculine act that suggests an eye for an eye, lest ye be considered a coward.
And yet there is no luxury, perhaps thankfully, for such a response. What do you do in this case? A reasonable response, one that most countries except ours would embrace, would be to respond with peace, to make it difficult for anyone to get a gun, a tactic that seems to work well with many countries, but which would take something that makes a guy like Bobby Knight or Dick Cheney happy. Owning their own guns. Going out hunting.
The voices that clamored for Imus to get fired are, unfortunately, not likely to be strong enough. While the less progressive among us might grumble about what happened to Imus, we, as a country, aren't ready, at least, publicly, to undo what the civil rights fought so hard for, namely, a bit of dignity for all of us. But people are still willing to fight for their guns, and as incidents like these occur, they'll be some explanation that claims that more guns would have prevented this, and would have conveniently ignored how more guns would cause more random killings, as they would somehow be the justifications of law-abiding folk.
It will be interesting to see if the response to this tragedy results in more than simple lamenting of youth (and adults) whose lives were given needlessly, while the rest of the country wanted answers, wanted to know who was killed and why the person did it, and by the way, could you consent to an interview, did you know anyone killed, did you see anything? The morbid curiosity, the sight of a shocked student body, and the usual response to an unusual problem.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Urban BBQ
I ate at Urban BBQ with Dave today. I decided to get a half-slab of ribs plus two sides and beer. This cost a lot, though pretty much anything at Urban BBQ costs a bit. By that, I mean it's pretty easy to spend ten dollars, and I spent nearly twice that.
First, the good stuff. The gravy on their mashed potatoes and gravy is fantastic. Best ever, I'd say. Their collard greens was fine, rather leafy. Yes, I like eating southern veggies and collard greens qualifies.
The ribs? I dunno, a bit messy to eat, and could have been better. I can't say I'm a true rib connoisseur, but I do like getting it when I can. It just helps to find the actual ribs.
I've decided I really can't stand Yeungling draft. It always tastes a bit skunky to me. I think it's bland American beer next time, either Miller or Bud.
Sometimes I think I should just do sides. They aren't too expensive, and they're pretty tasty. I feel bad not getting something bbq'ed though, so I may not be able to commit to that.
Even though Urban BBQ is a tighter fit than Urban Burger, I like the variety and ambience better, and I also like its location better too.
First, the good stuff. The gravy on their mashed potatoes and gravy is fantastic. Best ever, I'd say. Their collard greens was fine, rather leafy. Yes, I like eating southern veggies and collard greens qualifies.
The ribs? I dunno, a bit messy to eat, and could have been better. I can't say I'm a true rib connoisseur, but I do like getting it when I can. It just helps to find the actual ribs.
I've decided I really can't stand Yeungling draft. It always tastes a bit skunky to me. I think it's bland American beer next time, either Miller or Bud.
Sometimes I think I should just do sides. They aren't too expensive, and they're pretty tasty. I feel bad not getting something bbq'ed though, so I may not be able to commit to that.
Even though Urban BBQ is a tighter fit than Urban Burger, I like the variety and ambience better, and I also like its location better too.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Where Have You Gone, Mr. Robinson?
April 15th was the 60th (not 50th, as I mentioned earlier) anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the race barrier in major league baseball, when he became the first African American to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
This was not something Jackie Robinson could have done by himself. He was selected partly because he was an excellent player, partly because he had the kind of demeanor to put up with the kind of racism of its day. He opened up baseball so people of all backgrounds could play.
These days, 40% of players in MLB are non-white. Only 8% are African American, which is far smaller than football or basketball.
People claim that one reason that baseball has such few African Americans is because of the lack of role models in the sport. What they mean, of course, is the lack of very successful role models. I'm sure baseball has plenty of role models that are African American. Players who work hard, have successful careers, have personalities that kids could emulate. But they aren't the top 2-3 players in the game, and for some reason, we need winners, superstar winners to entice kids. Sad, but true.
Thus, many are inspired by Michael Jordan since he was the dominant player of his day, but not, say, Vinnie "The Microwave" Johnson of the Pistons, or certainly not Mark Price of the Cavaliers, players who might have been likable role models, but well, they have to win too, don't they?
In any case, personally, I don't think that's the reason why African Americans have left baseball. Let's face it. Baseball is a slow game. How often do players do anything in the game? How often does a player come to bat? 4-5 times a game? And how much do they do out in the field? Pitchers? Play only once every few days.
But basketball? You're in every play, on offense, on defense. The only time you're out is if you suck, you're injured, or you're resting. Otherwise, a top player can be in every play. Football is a little worse, but if you're on defense, you're in every play. If you're a running back, you can be a huge part of the offense. If you're a quarterback, you initiate every play.
Simply put, you do that much more in either sport than baseball. Gilbert Arenas can get of 30 shots in a game. Even a so-so player can take 10 shots a game, or do things like rebound that help a team win.
So I don't think it's just about the lack of role models. It's that basketball and football are flashier sports that involve the players that much more often, and that, along with the incredible money, has to have some appeal to young players.
This was not something Jackie Robinson could have done by himself. He was selected partly because he was an excellent player, partly because he had the kind of demeanor to put up with the kind of racism of its day. He opened up baseball so people of all backgrounds could play.
These days, 40% of players in MLB are non-white. Only 8% are African American, which is far smaller than football or basketball.
People claim that one reason that baseball has such few African Americans is because of the lack of role models in the sport. What they mean, of course, is the lack of very successful role models. I'm sure baseball has plenty of role models that are African American. Players who work hard, have successful careers, have personalities that kids could emulate. But they aren't the top 2-3 players in the game, and for some reason, we need winners, superstar winners to entice kids. Sad, but true.
Thus, many are inspired by Michael Jordan since he was the dominant player of his day, but not, say, Vinnie "The Microwave" Johnson of the Pistons, or certainly not Mark Price of the Cavaliers, players who might have been likable role models, but well, they have to win too, don't they?
In any case, personally, I don't think that's the reason why African Americans have left baseball. Let's face it. Baseball is a slow game. How often do players do anything in the game? How often does a player come to bat? 4-5 times a game? And how much do they do out in the field? Pitchers? Play only once every few days.
But basketball? You're in every play, on offense, on defense. The only time you're out is if you suck, you're injured, or you're resting. Otherwise, a top player can be in every play. Football is a little worse, but if you're on defense, you're in every play. If you're a running back, you can be a huge part of the offense. If you're a quarterback, you initiate every play.
Simply put, you do that much more in either sport than baseball. Gilbert Arenas can get of 30 shots in a game. Even a so-so player can take 10 shots a game, or do things like rebound that help a team win.
So I don't think it's just about the lack of role models. It's that basketball and football are flashier sports that involve the players that much more often, and that, along with the incredible money, has to have some appeal to young players.
Doctor in the House
Saturday, I watched 3 episodes of House from Season 1 and then two more today, also from the same season.
I knew little about the show except there's a doctor named House who's a bit irascible, and that he's a pretty bright doctor, requiring a cane to move around. Other than that, not so much. I also knew people liked this show.
Having now seen five episodes, the structure of the show seems rather repetitive. House is not what you'd call a people person. He has three assistants that work underneath him: Eric Foreman (which, as my brother points out, is also the name of the guy Topher Grace plays in That '70s Show, though his name is spelled Eric Forman) who is African American. The backstory you get from him is he was once arrested for stealing, but otherwise has had an outstanding medical school career.
There's Dr. Allison Cameron, who everyone notices is beautiful (though, really, as with many shows, the entire cast is "beautiful"). She's allegedly troubled in some fashion which House points out because she's too beautiful to be a doctor (thus, she must have some personal issues she's dealing with), and Dr. Robert Chase, whose Australian and has a crush on Allison.
Basically, the show starts off with someone getting sick, then the four doctors hypothesizing what may be wrong, then attempting some treatment, which typically fails, often leading to seizures, then another treatment, which also typically fails, before finally stumbling on the right one.
As with many more recent medical dramas and their ilk, House is willing to show stuff that is not for the squeamish. Characters convulse. In one episode, a woman's neck is slit so she can breathe from it, when it has closed up unexpectedly. There's a bit of implied nudity from breast exams to washing of patients. And, as House likes to point out, people lie, making diagnosis that much harder.
House usually has an additional patient or two whose malady is not as mysterious, and he often grumbles that he has to see them, even as they sometimes give him ideas about the malady du jour. The patient often sees House very late, so they wonder who the heck he is, and why he's so surly.
Invariably, his assistants seem to go on the wrong track, and House figures it all out at the end. My brother wonders why he bothers having assistants at all if they seem to never get it right.
The person who's sick tends to be young, sometimes very young (teens), and rarely fat or old (unless it's a side character).
Why is this show successful? I suppose there's something appealing about a mystery, which is why CSI is popular too. It can't be good for hypochondriacs because everyone always has some life-threatening disease and has convulsions. Innocent things can cause the worst outcome.
There are two other side characters: Dr. James Wilson, played by Robert Sean Leonard, who seems a bit young for his role, who plays a colleague that House hangs out with and talks to, and Dr. Lisa Cuddy, the hospital administrator that seems to harass House and get him to do what he considers tedious clinical work.
The other reason the show works, I suppose, is that House is not a likable person. Well, he's curmudgeonly, meaning, in his odd way, he does mean well, even as he's blunt and to the point. He lacks people skills, but is not so irritating that you can't stand him. You begrudge him his skills, and that in his own way, he is trying to help people out.
I find it hard to believe the hospital rooms have so much glass with so little privacy, or that the closest relative or spouse are always sitting in the room, even as emergencies are happening.
There's one other thing they do that's a bit odd, which is to use CG to go into the body, and dramatize what's going on inside.
Justin says the show would be better if each episode wasn't so self-contained, if there were patients that would appear over many shows. I think they might also do well to have some more personal background. Do any of these doctors have a life outside the hospital? They seem way too ideal, spending hours in the lab, hypothesizing this or that, and occasionally going to people's empty houses to investigate for anything out of the ordinary like assistants to Miss Marple, herself too elderly to do any real investigation on her own.
My guess is they don't stray too much from the formula. If this is true, then watching back to back episodes is an awful way to see it, because it's the same thing over and over and over again. You find shows like Lost or 24 easier to follow because it's not so self-contained.
So, the mystery factor, good looking people, curmudgeonly but likable guy, illnesses that seem untreatable but are after a bit of experimentation, and the gore factor of needles and convulsions combine to make a show that's engaging for any one episode, but somewhat tiresome over time. It's a formula though, that for many, appears to work.
I knew little about the show except there's a doctor named House who's a bit irascible, and that he's a pretty bright doctor, requiring a cane to move around. Other than that, not so much. I also knew people liked this show.
Having now seen five episodes, the structure of the show seems rather repetitive. House is not what you'd call a people person. He has three assistants that work underneath him: Eric Foreman (which, as my brother points out, is also the name of the guy Topher Grace plays in That '70s Show, though his name is spelled Eric Forman) who is African American. The backstory you get from him is he was once arrested for stealing, but otherwise has had an outstanding medical school career.
There's Dr. Allison Cameron, who everyone notices is beautiful (though, really, as with many shows, the entire cast is "beautiful"). She's allegedly troubled in some fashion which House points out because she's too beautiful to be a doctor (thus, she must have some personal issues she's dealing with), and Dr. Robert Chase, whose Australian and has a crush on Allison.
Basically, the show starts off with someone getting sick, then the four doctors hypothesizing what may be wrong, then attempting some treatment, which typically fails, often leading to seizures, then another treatment, which also typically fails, before finally stumbling on the right one.
As with many more recent medical dramas and their ilk, House is willing to show stuff that is not for the squeamish. Characters convulse. In one episode, a woman's neck is slit so she can breathe from it, when it has closed up unexpectedly. There's a bit of implied nudity from breast exams to washing of patients. And, as House likes to point out, people lie, making diagnosis that much harder.
House usually has an additional patient or two whose malady is not as mysterious, and he often grumbles that he has to see them, even as they sometimes give him ideas about the malady du jour. The patient often sees House very late, so they wonder who the heck he is, and why he's so surly.
Invariably, his assistants seem to go on the wrong track, and House figures it all out at the end. My brother wonders why he bothers having assistants at all if they seem to never get it right.
The person who's sick tends to be young, sometimes very young (teens), and rarely fat or old (unless it's a side character).
Why is this show successful? I suppose there's something appealing about a mystery, which is why CSI is popular too. It can't be good for hypochondriacs because everyone always has some life-threatening disease and has convulsions. Innocent things can cause the worst outcome.
There are two other side characters: Dr. James Wilson, played by Robert Sean Leonard, who seems a bit young for his role, who plays a colleague that House hangs out with and talks to, and Dr. Lisa Cuddy, the hospital administrator that seems to harass House and get him to do what he considers tedious clinical work.
The other reason the show works, I suppose, is that House is not a likable person. Well, he's curmudgeonly, meaning, in his odd way, he does mean well, even as he's blunt and to the point. He lacks people skills, but is not so irritating that you can't stand him. You begrudge him his skills, and that in his own way, he is trying to help people out.
I find it hard to believe the hospital rooms have so much glass with so little privacy, or that the closest relative or spouse are always sitting in the room, even as emergencies are happening.
There's one other thing they do that's a bit odd, which is to use CG to go into the body, and dramatize what's going on inside.
Justin says the show would be better if each episode wasn't so self-contained, if there were patients that would appear over many shows. I think they might also do well to have some more personal background. Do any of these doctors have a life outside the hospital? They seem way too ideal, spending hours in the lab, hypothesizing this or that, and occasionally going to people's empty houses to investigate for anything out of the ordinary like assistants to Miss Marple, herself too elderly to do any real investigation on her own.
My guess is they don't stray too much from the formula. If this is true, then watching back to back episodes is an awful way to see it, because it's the same thing over and over and over again. You find shows like Lost or 24 easier to follow because it's not so self-contained.
So, the mystery factor, good looking people, curmudgeonly but likable guy, illnesses that seem untreatable but are after a bit of experimentation, and the gore factor of needles and convulsions combine to make a show that's engaging for any one episode, but somewhat tiresome over time. It's a formula though, that for many, appears to work.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Sticks and Stones
I'm one of those guys who believes, on the whole, political correctness, a term coined sometime in the 80s, has been pretty good. Almost as fast as it became a phrase people used, it was derided. Indeed, it's become pretty PC to say you're not PC. Indeed, how many people claim they are proud to be politically correct.
Not many.
Most, in fact, claim to be politically incorrect, even as they might benefit from political correctness. Why do people say they're not politically correct?
The answer is that PC, as admirable as the idea may be, seeks to handcuff people (metaphorically), and people don't like to be handcuffed. The place most likely to be PC are universities. PC is pretty simple. You don't discriminate based on groups, whether it be race, gender, or sexual orientation. The university is meant to create an inclusive environment, and having speech or actions that demean or stereotype traditionally discriminated groups and creates discord, and thus, universities are against it.
PC is, of course, anti free-speech, but people seem to say that's OK. Free speech is an abstract concept that claims words do not hurt, and can be fought with other words. And yet, as this Don Imus flap has shown, political correctness is very much alive. You could, say, get Mike Wilbon to say "I ain't PC!", but in his railing against Imus, who he says is full of hateful speech, he is being completely PC. PC is pretty much about not saying the wrong things.
Indeed, when Tim Hardaway said he disliked gays (a lot), Mike Wilbon wrote a column saying Hardaway's attitudes were wrong, and even cited moderately conservative Charles Barkley to back him up. Wilbon wasn't exactly saying that Hardaway couldn't say what he said, but he did point it out as ignorant.
Unlike universities, real life can't enforce political correctness. The only way it gets handled is through lots of public discourse. Thus, Imus being discussed on sports shows ad nauseum.0th a
Now, this brouhaha has been "big news", yet, it really hasn't. I read reddit regularly, and the Imus comments have not even made it anywhere. To be fair, the reddit audience is pretty specific. It's geeky. It's left-leaning. It doesn't care about Imus or sports. They'd rather upmod an article about the abuses of Alberto Gonzalez and Paul Wolfowitz then care about Don Imus and his comments on the Rutgers women's team.
I've been blogging about this the past few days, and if you're completely bored, it may be because I ramble at length. But it may also be because you don't care, and yet, this discussion on sports radio has been huge, much more so than the Tim Hardaway comments which idiots like Dan Patrick, who probably somewhat agree with Hardaway, dismiss by comparing him to Jackie Robinson (whose 50th anniversary of being in the MLB, by the way, is this weekend, April 15th).
The Imus scandal occurred at the same time that the charges to the Duke lacrosse players were dropped, and while sports commentators were quick to criticize Mike Nifong, the district attorney for splashing this issue all over the papers with no real evidence.
Indeed, I'd say the Imus issue had far more play than the charges being dropped against the three lacrosse players.
Let's step back and compare the two, because the two shouldn't even be in the same breath. On the one hand, Imus calls the Rutgers women basketball players "nappy haired hos", a term considered racist, and yet, everyone has copied it over and over, and so it can't be so horrific. On the other hand, a woman accuses three Duke lacrosse players of rape.
The Rutgers women, at worst, are mildly peeved, but at best, they're getting plenty of support from people who didn't even know they existed.
The Duke guys? This has to be the worst year for these three players, even as they felt they were found innocent of the charges, and worse, these accusations were discussed and reported nationally for weeks on end. People were already to declare the Duke lacrosse players guilty, without any more information. They have some luck that their parents are rich and can afford million dollar lawyers.
These accusations can be devastating. I am currently listening to This American Life. Do you know Ray Buckley? He was trying to run for chair of the Democratic party in New Hampshire, or some such? He had been in politics all his life, thrilled when the Democrats took over Congress, and wanted to be chair where he could continue to help Democrats.
But a bomb dropped. Steve Vallaincourt, who hates Buckley, accuses him of having kiddie porn, realizing that no politician, especially a governor who is supposed to be tough on such issues, could ignore. Now, there's some history. The two are gay. The two used to be roommates. It's been argued that Vallaincourt is jealous of Buckley's success, but Vallaincourt, if he is, is very clever and strenuously denies it, saying he's doing this because he has no choice, that people need to know, though he lacks any evidence.
This accusation takes a life of its own, and Buckley has to fight these accusations as investigations go on. Buckley is devasted, his life upturned, even as he claims innocence. After the investigation, which takes weeks, he is eventually found innocent. Now apparently, Buckley was a bit vulgar and when he was young, he would act silly in front of friends, and this was taped, and Vallaincourt had this video put on YouTube, and then told someone who wanted Buckley to step down for this chair position. You have to feel this is the spat of a lifetime, with Vallaincourt professing all sorts of innocence, but where you feel he is deeply jealous and is doing everything he can to sling mud on Buckley. It's too weird to believe.
Much like the Duke players, Buckley comes out OK. His supporters do vote him as chair, and yet, he's guarded and is afraid to say anything.
Think about it. Imus is being cruficied, well, partly for a body of work, for spewing out hate, and realize he's merely being accused of racism, which is pretty serious, but recall Imus also lashes out against pretty much everyone. Being a equal opportunity hater is, as is pointed out on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me", is what Imus does. In many ways, his comment is just the straw that broke the camel's back.
But his comments are nowhere near the kinds of accusations that were made on the lacrosse players, than indiscriminate accusations hurt far more.
In a story from Australia, Patrick Waring, 15, was accused of rape, and was recently acquitted of charges. Australian prisons don't seem much better than American ones, so his experience in jail was awful. Of course, you hear the flip side of the stories all the time. In India or Pakistan, some girl who is raped gets stoned, accused of instigating the matter, and the men, unable to control their primal urges are somehow blameless. Such atrocities are horrific, but the flip side is awful. And all of this makes what Imus says sadly insignificant.
Now, to be fair, what he said and what this gives license people to do are different things. This is the slippery slope idea. If you say it's OK to say racist things, then you will say it, make fun of people, and possibly worse. Prevent them from having jobs, make people think that the individual can have his or her merits judged on racial or cultural stereotypes, and so forth. The effect, while far less overt, is more insidious because it affects many people. Thus, it's more like a cancer than a broken leg.
But I suspect the reason Imus got more airplay is that rape accusations are so far away from the norm that people don't even think about how that would be like, how horrendous the accusations are, and just treat this as some sort of crazy frat boy thing gone wrong, or some crazy stripper trying to get money or something. Most people, on the other hand, have had to think, overtly or otherwise, about comments related to race or gender, and decide certain comments shouldn't be said, and they have far more opinions on matters of race and PC than on accusing people of alleged crimes in the national public.
Not many.
Most, in fact, claim to be politically incorrect, even as they might benefit from political correctness. Why do people say they're not politically correct?
The answer is that PC, as admirable as the idea may be, seeks to handcuff people (metaphorically), and people don't like to be handcuffed. The place most likely to be PC are universities. PC is pretty simple. You don't discriminate based on groups, whether it be race, gender, or sexual orientation. The university is meant to create an inclusive environment, and having speech or actions that demean or stereotype traditionally discriminated groups and creates discord, and thus, universities are against it.
PC is, of course, anti free-speech, but people seem to say that's OK. Free speech is an abstract concept that claims words do not hurt, and can be fought with other words. And yet, as this Don Imus flap has shown, political correctness is very much alive. You could, say, get Mike Wilbon to say "I ain't PC!", but in his railing against Imus, who he says is full of hateful speech, he is being completely PC. PC is pretty much about not saying the wrong things.
Indeed, when Tim Hardaway said he disliked gays (a lot), Mike Wilbon wrote a column saying Hardaway's attitudes were wrong, and even cited moderately conservative Charles Barkley to back him up. Wilbon wasn't exactly saying that Hardaway couldn't say what he said, but he did point it out as ignorant.
Unlike universities, real life can't enforce political correctness. The only way it gets handled is through lots of public discourse. Thus, Imus being discussed on sports shows ad nauseum.0th a
Now, this brouhaha has been "big news", yet, it really hasn't. I read reddit regularly, and the Imus comments have not even made it anywhere. To be fair, the reddit audience is pretty specific. It's geeky. It's left-leaning. It doesn't care about Imus or sports. They'd rather upmod an article about the abuses of Alberto Gonzalez and Paul Wolfowitz then care about Don Imus and his comments on the Rutgers women's team.
I've been blogging about this the past few days, and if you're completely bored, it may be because I ramble at length. But it may also be because you don't care, and yet, this discussion on sports radio has been huge, much more so than the Tim Hardaway comments which idiots like Dan Patrick, who probably somewhat agree with Hardaway, dismiss by comparing him to Jackie Robinson (whose 50th anniversary of being in the MLB, by the way, is this weekend, April 15th).
The Imus scandal occurred at the same time that the charges to the Duke lacrosse players were dropped, and while sports commentators were quick to criticize Mike Nifong, the district attorney for splashing this issue all over the papers with no real evidence.
Indeed, I'd say the Imus issue had far more play than the charges being dropped against the three lacrosse players.
Let's step back and compare the two, because the two shouldn't even be in the same breath. On the one hand, Imus calls the Rutgers women basketball players "nappy haired hos", a term considered racist, and yet, everyone has copied it over and over, and so it can't be so horrific. On the other hand, a woman accuses three Duke lacrosse players of rape.
The Rutgers women, at worst, are mildly peeved, but at best, they're getting plenty of support from people who didn't even know they existed.
The Duke guys? This has to be the worst year for these three players, even as they felt they were found innocent of the charges, and worse, these accusations were discussed and reported nationally for weeks on end. People were already to declare the Duke lacrosse players guilty, without any more information. They have some luck that their parents are rich and can afford million dollar lawyers.
These accusations can be devastating. I am currently listening to This American Life. Do you know Ray Buckley? He was trying to run for chair of the Democratic party in New Hampshire, or some such? He had been in politics all his life, thrilled when the Democrats took over Congress, and wanted to be chair where he could continue to help Democrats.
But a bomb dropped. Steve Vallaincourt, who hates Buckley, accuses him of having kiddie porn, realizing that no politician, especially a governor who is supposed to be tough on such issues, could ignore. Now, there's some history. The two are gay. The two used to be roommates. It's been argued that Vallaincourt is jealous of Buckley's success, but Vallaincourt, if he is, is very clever and strenuously denies it, saying he's doing this because he has no choice, that people need to know, though he lacks any evidence.
This accusation takes a life of its own, and Buckley has to fight these accusations as investigations go on. Buckley is devasted, his life upturned, even as he claims innocence. After the investigation, which takes weeks, he is eventually found innocent. Now apparently, Buckley was a bit vulgar and when he was young, he would act silly in front of friends, and this was taped, and Vallaincourt had this video put on YouTube, and then told someone who wanted Buckley to step down for this chair position. You have to feel this is the spat of a lifetime, with Vallaincourt professing all sorts of innocence, but where you feel he is deeply jealous and is doing everything he can to sling mud on Buckley. It's too weird to believe.
Much like the Duke players, Buckley comes out OK. His supporters do vote him as chair, and yet, he's guarded and is afraid to say anything.
Think about it. Imus is being cruficied, well, partly for a body of work, for spewing out hate, and realize he's merely being accused of racism, which is pretty serious, but recall Imus also lashes out against pretty much everyone. Being a equal opportunity hater is, as is pointed out on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me", is what Imus does. In many ways, his comment is just the straw that broke the camel's back.
But his comments are nowhere near the kinds of accusations that were made on the lacrosse players, than indiscriminate accusations hurt far more.
In a story from Australia, Patrick Waring, 15, was accused of rape, and was recently acquitted of charges. Australian prisons don't seem much better than American ones, so his experience in jail was awful. Of course, you hear the flip side of the stories all the time. In India or Pakistan, some girl who is raped gets stoned, accused of instigating the matter, and the men, unable to control their primal urges are somehow blameless. Such atrocities are horrific, but the flip side is awful. And all of this makes what Imus says sadly insignificant.
Now, to be fair, what he said and what this gives license people to do are different things. This is the slippery slope idea. If you say it's OK to say racist things, then you will say it, make fun of people, and possibly worse. Prevent them from having jobs, make people think that the individual can have his or her merits judged on racial or cultural stereotypes, and so forth. The effect, while far less overt, is more insidious because it affects many people. Thus, it's more like a cancer than a broken leg.
But I suspect the reason Imus got more airplay is that rape accusations are so far away from the norm that people don't even think about how that would be like, how horrendous the accusations are, and just treat this as some sort of crazy frat boy thing gone wrong, or some crazy stripper trying to get money or something. Most people, on the other hand, have had to think, overtly or otherwise, about comments related to race or gender, and decide certain comments shouldn't be said, and they have far more opinions on matters of race and PC than on accusing people of alleged crimes in the national public.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Random Topics
There's one thing good about a focused blog, one that is about, say, food, or American Idol, or books, or movies. They stay on topic, so Google Adsense actually has meaningful ads. Mine's rambles here and there, and so it picks up all sorts of odd ads. I'm wondering whether this Adsense is even worth the bother. Heck, splogs do a better job! Indeed, that's what it's supposed to do.
Oh well, until I change my mind, I'll take what oddball ads the thing gives me.
Oh well, until I change my mind, I'll take what oddball ads the thing gives me.
Chip and Charge
OK, enough on the Imus flap. I'm going to move to a topic that has mass appeal to everyone.
Rechargeable batteries.
About two years ago, I bought a Canon A-80 or some camera along those lines. They use AA batteries, either alkaline or rechargeables. Everyone said you had to get rechargeables because they, um, recharge. The other reason is that they last a lot longer than alkalines. Typically, these are NiMH batteries (nickel metal hydride).
Well, I never used the A-80 and eventually gave it to my brother ("gifted him" as the Indians would say).
The batteries lay unused.
Oh, and I bought some battery chargers. But being the geeky guy I am, I needed to find a good battery charger. And wouldn't you know, digital camera review websites have articles on finding a good battery charger. So I bought one for like 40-50 bucks by a company named Maha at Thompson Distributing. The website looks pretty cheap as if it were designed ten years ago, a shade below, say, Newegg, which also, for my money, a bit ghetto (can I say that? OK, how about lacking the clean lines and aesthetics of a well-done website). But they deliver quickly.
Needless to say, since I wasn't using the batteries, I was hardly using the charger. Which means I wasn't using the charger.
They were both gathering dust.
Then, I got braces, and braces must be Latin for mechanical device that claws at any food items. Food gets easily trapped in them. Fortunately, a coworker who has had braces very recently suggested Waterpik, except of course, Waterpik sucks because their design hasn't changed in years.
I bought a Panasonic oral irrigator (as it's technically called), and they only have one kind that they sell in the US. And wouldn't you know it, it uses batteries. Double A's. All of a sudden (not really), I have a need for my battery chargers (and the batteries too).
Except I wanted one for work and one for home. So I needed a second battery charger.
Again, I went to the Internet and found this article. It suggested the Maha MH-C9000 WizardOne Charger/Analyzer, which I got for like sixty bucks. Not only does it charge, but it can also determine how much juice your batteries have, and get them back to life. Now, sixty bucks (plus shipping/handling) is nearly twice the cost of how much a basic model costs at Best Buy. I really didn't plan to get it, but, you know, impulse buying.
What can I tell you?
It is amazing. Until I got this charger, my oral irrigator was draining the batteries within a week. Since I've charged it, which is about a month ago, I haven't hard to go to my other charged batteries. It's lasted a month, and is still going. I'm still waiting for it to lose power so I can switch over to my other batteries.
I'm totally convinced of this as a great battery charger.
If you're looking for one and don't mind shelling out the extra bucks (and why wouldn't you?), then you should do it.
The only downside is that the full recharge can take up to two days. But that's an easy problem to solve. Have more batteries than you need, and always have a fresh one ready to go. The plain recharge takes a few hours, so is comparable to other battery chargers. They say slow charging is best for the batteries in any case.
Now, I must go irrigate.
Rechargeable batteries.
About two years ago, I bought a Canon A-80 or some camera along those lines. They use AA batteries, either alkaline or rechargeables. Everyone said you had to get rechargeables because they, um, recharge. The other reason is that they last a lot longer than alkalines. Typically, these are NiMH batteries (nickel metal hydride).
Well, I never used the A-80 and eventually gave it to my brother ("gifted him" as the Indians would say).
The batteries lay unused.
Oh, and I bought some battery chargers. But being the geeky guy I am, I needed to find a good battery charger. And wouldn't you know, digital camera review websites have articles on finding a good battery charger. So I bought one for like 40-50 bucks by a company named Maha at Thompson Distributing. The website looks pretty cheap as if it were designed ten years ago, a shade below, say, Newegg, which also, for my money, a bit ghetto (can I say that? OK, how about lacking the clean lines and aesthetics of a well-done website). But they deliver quickly.
Needless to say, since I wasn't using the batteries, I was hardly using the charger. Which means I wasn't using the charger.
They were both gathering dust.
Then, I got braces, and braces must be Latin for mechanical device that claws at any food items. Food gets easily trapped in them. Fortunately, a coworker who has had braces very recently suggested Waterpik, except of course, Waterpik sucks because their design hasn't changed in years.
I bought a Panasonic oral irrigator (as it's technically called), and they only have one kind that they sell in the US. And wouldn't you know it, it uses batteries. Double A's. All of a sudden (not really), I have a need for my battery chargers (and the batteries too).
Except I wanted one for work and one for home. So I needed a second battery charger.
Again, I went to the Internet and found this article. It suggested the Maha MH-C9000 WizardOne Charger/Analyzer, which I got for like sixty bucks. Not only does it charge, but it can also determine how much juice your batteries have, and get them back to life. Now, sixty bucks (plus shipping/handling) is nearly twice the cost of how much a basic model costs at Best Buy. I really didn't plan to get it, but, you know, impulse buying.
What can I tell you?
It is amazing. Until I got this charger, my oral irrigator was draining the batteries within a week. Since I've charged it, which is about a month ago, I haven't hard to go to my other charged batteries. It's lasted a month, and is still going. I'm still waiting for it to lose power so I can switch over to my other batteries.
I'm totally convinced of this as a great battery charger.
If you're looking for one and don't mind shelling out the extra bucks (and why wouldn't you?), then you should do it.
The only downside is that the full recharge can take up to two days. But that's an easy problem to solve. Have more batteries than you need, and always have a fresh one ready to go. The plain recharge takes a few hours, so is comparable to other battery chargers. They say slow charging is best for the batteries in any case.
Now, I must go irrigate.
The World According to Jesse
Is this like the umpteenth time I've written about this topic? Must be.
Anytime a racial issue like Don Imus comes up, two names are associated with these events: Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. For a while, it was all Jesse, then Al started weighing in, and his comments were more noticed once he ran for president.
While listening to sports radio last night, I heard several guys who said they were African Americans and said neither Jesse nor Al speak for them. I have no idea how typical that is, or how typical it is for African American sports fans.
To those outside the community, there's a sense that all these two care about is the forward progress of African Americans in society. No problem with that, right? Except that Jesse Jackson leads the Rainbow Coalition that purports to unify across races, religious groups, gender, etc. And perhaps his organization does many of these things, but the only stuff anyone ever hears about his support of African Americans.
Thus, people (like me) are always quick to point out that Jesse and Al never seem to support Latino causes or gay causes or what-have-you. Perhaps they do, but those never make news. Case in point, Jesse Jackson supported the woman who accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape (I had no idea her name was not being mentioned, but apparently it's listed in Wikipedia!). When the charges were dropped, he did not issue a statement either putting down Nifong or the woman involved.
To be fair, it's a delicate issue all around. You don't want to prevent women who have gone through something as serious as rape to be quiet (or men either, for that matter, and they're far more likely to say nothing), but you don't want someone lying about it either. It's suggested that something did perhaps happen to that woman, but when and who and where and under what circumstances?
And the Duke boys weren't exactly exemplars of good behavior. John Feinstein points out that their behavior was already bad, though not heinously bad, but bad enough to warrant comments like "This is a disaster waiting to happen". They were indeed rich kids, because numbers like "millions" and "dollars" were put together regarding legal fees.
But the point is, more people would have more respect for Jesse and Al if they would take up these other cases more often, and yet, there's a sense they would lose their constituency if they did.
Jesse and Al are so marginalized, however, in these kinds of incidents, their names often muttered without appreciation. No other group with the slight exception of Martha Burk and whatever group she is part of has this kind of recognition. Gays, Latinos/Latinas, Asian Americans. Who represents them? The best you can do is get a celebrity to talk about it.
While the vast majority of talking heads appear to support the Imus firing, more than likely, plenty of people disagree with it. Even so, it says something that NBC and CBS would fire Imus, fearing this kind of association, even as it served them well for so long. I suspect many individuals, mostly non African American, find this decision, if they even care about it, more about the PC power of Jesse and Al, even as they may claim Imus was not someone they would have cared for.
Anyway, in another week, it'll all blow over. It is a kind of success, though a tainted one, that shows the power of the race card in the US. And despite the grumblings some may have about how we got here, we're living in a time where African Americans are getting more respect, even at the expense of Jesse and Al being thought of as "idiots".
Anytime a racial issue like Don Imus comes up, two names are associated with these events: Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. For a while, it was all Jesse, then Al started weighing in, and his comments were more noticed once he ran for president.
While listening to sports radio last night, I heard several guys who said they were African Americans and said neither Jesse nor Al speak for them. I have no idea how typical that is, or how typical it is for African American sports fans.
To those outside the community, there's a sense that all these two care about is the forward progress of African Americans in society. No problem with that, right? Except that Jesse Jackson leads the Rainbow Coalition that purports to unify across races, religious groups, gender, etc. And perhaps his organization does many of these things, but the only stuff anyone ever hears about his support of African Americans.
Thus, people (like me) are always quick to point out that Jesse and Al never seem to support Latino causes or gay causes or what-have-you. Perhaps they do, but those never make news. Case in point, Jesse Jackson supported the woman who accused three Duke lacrosse players of rape (I had no idea her name was not being mentioned, but apparently it's listed in Wikipedia!). When the charges were dropped, he did not issue a statement either putting down Nifong or the woman involved.
To be fair, it's a delicate issue all around. You don't want to prevent women who have gone through something as serious as rape to be quiet (or men either, for that matter, and they're far more likely to say nothing), but you don't want someone lying about it either. It's suggested that something did perhaps happen to that woman, but when and who and where and under what circumstances?
And the Duke boys weren't exactly exemplars of good behavior. John Feinstein points out that their behavior was already bad, though not heinously bad, but bad enough to warrant comments like "This is a disaster waiting to happen". They were indeed rich kids, because numbers like "millions" and "dollars" were put together regarding legal fees.
But the point is, more people would have more respect for Jesse and Al if they would take up these other cases more often, and yet, there's a sense they would lose their constituency if they did.
Jesse and Al are so marginalized, however, in these kinds of incidents, their names often muttered without appreciation. No other group with the slight exception of Martha Burk and whatever group she is part of has this kind of recognition. Gays, Latinos/Latinas, Asian Americans. Who represents them? The best you can do is get a celebrity to talk about it.
While the vast majority of talking heads appear to support the Imus firing, more than likely, plenty of people disagree with it. Even so, it says something that NBC and CBS would fire Imus, fearing this kind of association, even as it served them well for so long. I suspect many individuals, mostly non African American, find this decision, if they even care about it, more about the PC power of Jesse and Al, even as they may claim Imus was not someone they would have cared for.
Anyway, in another week, it'll all blow over. It is a kind of success, though a tainted one, that shows the power of the race card in the US. And despite the grumblings some may have about how we got here, we're living in a time where African Americans are getting more respect, even at the expense of Jesse and Al being thought of as "idiots".
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Bye-Bye Imus
Goodbye, Don Imus! CBS canceled Don Imus's show over the uproar of his "nappy-headed hos" comment.
I just read Sally Jenkins's article where she wanted Don Imus to have to attend a women's basketball game and wear a Rutgers "R" to support them, that he should meet the individually and know what wonderful people they are.
This is one of those bizarre cases where you almost feel for Don Imus, but not quite. It's almost like catching Al Capone on tax evasion. Maybe Imus didn't deserve to be on the air, but it seems the wrong reason to fire Imus. Like mud-slinging that occurs in politics, you say enough stuff, and finally something sticks, and this stuck.
I wonder if Sally Jenkins bothered to read the comments Imus made. It's a bit difficult to find the transcripts, but they are there. Or did she assume there was no way anyone could say "nappy-headed hos" without being completely derisive.
Indeed, if you read the transcripts, it seems (though you never know) that Imus did indeed watch the game. And, one of his co-hosts was the one responsible for calling them "hardcore hos" before Imus himself chimes away as "nappy-headed hos". But in the context of the discussion, they seemed to put UT vs. Rutgers as "Jiggaboo vs. Wannabes", that is, the Rutgers team was the "black" team, and UT was the "wannabee" white team. These terms were used by Spike Lee's School Daze which is set in an African American college, and the two refer to competing sororities.
The comments of Imus and his team (and really, mostly his team) suggest that Rutgers were some rough looking women, that you wouldn't want to meet on the street. The accusations go further as they are compared to men, and various professional men's teams. It's clear that calling them "hos" has nothing to do with being whores, per se. The suggestions are more misogynistic than racist, claiming these women are basically guys.
The humor, such as it is, was using tough language, and sounding hip, neither of which was entirely accurate.
One of the women of the Rutgers team said that she felt even worse because Imus doesn't even know the team. What on earth does that mean? She should feel worse if he did know the team and still made the comments! People make all sorts of comments that are derogatory especially because they don't know the person.
Everyone should really get off their high horse about feeling good about seeing Imus go. Was he really racist? What does that even mean? That he didn't like African Americans? It's fair to say Imus insulted lots of people, so he was a plain hater, but for the purposes of his show. Next time you criticize some celebrity for their looks, or say what a tramp so-and-so was for wearing some godawful clothing, think about Don Imus. Oh, but you aren't racist. You're just talking about some celebrity, and that's just one person.
Everyone's used this as an opportunity to draw more recognition to themselves. Sharpton, who Imus actually grudgingly liked, weighed in. So did Jesse. Vivian Stringer used her spotlight to speak admiringly of Rutgers's season and how his comments brought their moment of joy down. Tony Kornheiser rightly points out that if no one had brought this issue up, Stringer may never have heard these comments from someone she probably hardly knows, and certainly it had nothing to do with bringing down her achievements. If anything brings down the achievements, it's that men in general won't watch women's college basketball and care enough to believe in Rutgers success.
American Idol goes on every week letting the audience make their own decisions about who they like and who they don't. "Haley has gots to go!" opines Tony. We spend each week making specific comments about people we don't like, comments we'd hold in reserve if "we'd know them better". Wilbon calls Sanjaya a woman, and Tony points out that everyone's so worried about innocent women's basketball players, but Sanjaya, who's like 17, gets bashed by Wilbon each week for being a woman, and Tony to his credit, says Sanjaya is a guy.
Insulting a person is fine, provided the insults are not based on hot words that a group finds offensive? And it's not fine if you're a celebrity, but if you are the average Joe on the street, you can say whatever you feel like.
The hypocrisy is greatest with the folks who sponsored Imus, because Imus has been Imus for so long, and yet the sponsors benefited. CBS benefited. And they knew that having Imus was problematic, but as long as most people weren't railing against him, then they could keep him, especially since they didn't have Stern.
But, you know, this too will pass. Imus has been fired, and another week will go by, and we'll wait for the next issue like this to come about.
Have we really opened up any meaningful discussion? Not really. The parties are split pretty much along OJ lines. African Americans (and women) say get rid of the racist (even as they hardly knew him, and base it on what they heard). Whites are divided, many saying can the guy, even as they are more likely to defend him on free speech, and note that he's probably taken out of context. The analogy to Bobby Knight is quite close, as Knight is both a bully and someone who can be passionately on your side, provided you take his side.
There's something of a perfect storm of this issue and the Duke Lacrosse scandal coming up simultaneously.
Well, Don Imus, I didn't really listen to you before, and can't say I'm sorry you're gone, but you happen to be the guy caught in the maelstrom of a bunch of people serving their own interests, and you're the fall guy.
I just read Sally Jenkins's article where she wanted Don Imus to have to attend a women's basketball game and wear a Rutgers "R" to support them, that he should meet the individually and know what wonderful people they are.
This is one of those bizarre cases where you almost feel for Don Imus, but not quite. It's almost like catching Al Capone on tax evasion. Maybe Imus didn't deserve to be on the air, but it seems the wrong reason to fire Imus. Like mud-slinging that occurs in politics, you say enough stuff, and finally something sticks, and this stuck.
I wonder if Sally Jenkins bothered to read the comments Imus made. It's a bit difficult to find the transcripts, but they are there. Or did she assume there was no way anyone could say "nappy-headed hos" without being completely derisive.
Indeed, if you read the transcripts, it seems (though you never know) that Imus did indeed watch the game. And, one of his co-hosts was the one responsible for calling them "hardcore hos" before Imus himself chimes away as "nappy-headed hos". But in the context of the discussion, they seemed to put UT vs. Rutgers as "Jiggaboo vs. Wannabes", that is, the Rutgers team was the "black" team, and UT was the "wannabee" white team. These terms were used by Spike Lee's School Daze which is set in an African American college, and the two refer to competing sororities.
The comments of Imus and his team (and really, mostly his team) suggest that Rutgers were some rough looking women, that you wouldn't want to meet on the street. The accusations go further as they are compared to men, and various professional men's teams. It's clear that calling them "hos" has nothing to do with being whores, per se. The suggestions are more misogynistic than racist, claiming these women are basically guys.
The humor, such as it is, was using tough language, and sounding hip, neither of which was entirely accurate.
One of the women of the Rutgers team said that she felt even worse because Imus doesn't even know the team. What on earth does that mean? She should feel worse if he did know the team and still made the comments! People make all sorts of comments that are derogatory especially because they don't know the person.
Everyone should really get off their high horse about feeling good about seeing Imus go. Was he really racist? What does that even mean? That he didn't like African Americans? It's fair to say Imus insulted lots of people, so he was a plain hater, but for the purposes of his show. Next time you criticize some celebrity for their looks, or say what a tramp so-and-so was for wearing some godawful clothing, think about Don Imus. Oh, but you aren't racist. You're just talking about some celebrity, and that's just one person.
Everyone's used this as an opportunity to draw more recognition to themselves. Sharpton, who Imus actually grudgingly liked, weighed in. So did Jesse. Vivian Stringer used her spotlight to speak admiringly of Rutgers's season and how his comments brought their moment of joy down. Tony Kornheiser rightly points out that if no one had brought this issue up, Stringer may never have heard these comments from someone she probably hardly knows, and certainly it had nothing to do with bringing down her achievements. If anything brings down the achievements, it's that men in general won't watch women's college basketball and care enough to believe in Rutgers success.
American Idol goes on every week letting the audience make their own decisions about who they like and who they don't. "Haley has gots to go!" opines Tony. We spend each week making specific comments about people we don't like, comments we'd hold in reserve if "we'd know them better". Wilbon calls Sanjaya a woman, and Tony points out that everyone's so worried about innocent women's basketball players, but Sanjaya, who's like 17, gets bashed by Wilbon each week for being a woman, and Tony to his credit, says Sanjaya is a guy.
Insulting a person is fine, provided the insults are not based on hot words that a group finds offensive? And it's not fine if you're a celebrity, but if you are the average Joe on the street, you can say whatever you feel like.
The hypocrisy is greatest with the folks who sponsored Imus, because Imus has been Imus for so long, and yet the sponsors benefited. CBS benefited. And they knew that having Imus was problematic, but as long as most people weren't railing against him, then they could keep him, especially since they didn't have Stern.
But, you know, this too will pass. Imus has been fired, and another week will go by, and we'll wait for the next issue like this to come about.
Have we really opened up any meaningful discussion? Not really. The parties are split pretty much along OJ lines. African Americans (and women) say get rid of the racist (even as they hardly knew him, and base it on what they heard). Whites are divided, many saying can the guy, even as they are more likely to defend him on free speech, and note that he's probably taken out of context. The analogy to Bobby Knight is quite close, as Knight is both a bully and someone who can be passionately on your side, provided you take his side.
There's something of a perfect storm of this issue and the Duke Lacrosse scandal coming up simultaneously.
Well, Don Imus, I didn't really listen to you before, and can't say I'm sorry you're gone, but you happen to be the guy caught in the maelstrom of a bunch of people serving their own interests, and you're the fall guy.
A No-Win Situation
There's something about the firestorm surrounding Don Imus's fall from grace (and one could hardly say he was at grace) that misses the point. Don Imus, on his show, called the Rutgers basketball team a bunch of "nappy-headed hos". The comments were mild enough that I can write it down, and indeed, many newspapers have taken this quote snippet.
Suddenly MSNBC won't simulcast Don Imus. Advertisers are pulling out by the droves.
But the real point, the folks that must be giggling with unbridled delight are folks like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. They realize, at this point in American history, that no one wants to be tainted with the racist brush. Indeed, nearly every person you hear on the issue calls it a racial issue, not a sexist issue. To be fair, coach Vivian Stringer, also points out that these are young women and that they are being objectified by Imus's comments.
But Tony Kornheiser is right. You make these comments about some predominantly white women's college basketball team, and no one will make a stir. It goes to show the ineffectiveness of women's groups to lodge protests. The last significant women's protest was Martha Burk, protesting the exclusion of women from the all-male Augusta Country Club. And what did most announcers say? Shut up. Get out of here. And with no repercussions. Sponsors pulled out for two years and let The Masters pay for its own airing. It shows the near irrelevancy of women's groups to resonate with a public. The advertisers came back, and the announcers were muzzled, told not to discuss Martha Burk if they wanted to host The Masters.
Again, think of the uproar that would occur had Augusta excluded men of color. The "race" card works, and then only if you're African American. What about the "Latino card"? The "woman card"? The "gay card"? Although views are changing, these don't wield the same bludgeon of the race card.
But you have to play it at opportune moments.
The last time it became an issue was a year ago, when the Duke Lacrosse team hosted an ill-fated party, with strippers. One of the strippers claimed she had been raped by two, no three, no all, no three Duke players. Mike Nifong, seeking political office, took the side of the woman, and the issue became rich Duke, versus poor North Carolina Central University, black vs. white, haves vs. have-nots.
The accuser, Crystal Magnum, who was a mother, a student, even a former member of the Navy, describes events that eventually caused the Duke lacrosse coach to be fired. She brought accusations to David Evans, Reade Seligmann, and Collin Finnerty claiming they had raped her.
Jesse Jackson defended Magnum, saying he'd help pay her way through school, even before he heard much of the evidence (or lack thereof). Jackson doesn't seem to have retracted his statements, and decry that this kind of false accusation hurts not only people of color, but most importantly, women everywhere. Rape is far, far, far more serious than a few racial epithets, and so Jackson had some justification in trying to defend a potential victim, but I'm sure he'll issue no comments about this case.
Ultimately, it's about trying to use the power you do have carefully.
Now, even after the charges have been dropped, some will no doubt point to the fact that privileged white boys hosted a stripper party, an event good kids should not do. And that I would completely agree with. They shouldn't have hosted such an event, but then should frats host keg parties? Should there be frats? And no one seems to point out that Magnum was trying to make money as a stripper. Maybe too many Demi Moore movies about stripper moms working to keep their kids fed have made her dilemma seem perfectly legitimate.
Had Magnum been Asian and poor, would that have made a difference? Had she been Latina? Would Jesse Jackson have said anything?
Back to Imus.
There's hypocrisy over Imus too. Just as people blamed Duke lacrosse players for hosting a stripper party, even as this is a far cry from rape, people have said that Imus has said far worse, and yet no one did anything. Why did MSNBC choose this time to let Imus go? Presumably, they thought he was good for ratings. Even as MSNBC and CNN may look towards making themselves more appealing to conservatives, the race card is a powerful one, and brings balance, albeit in abrupt ways.
Imus, in many ways, is a scapegoat. He is one of many people who do what he does, but the criticism stuck. People have suggested he may go the way of Howard Stern, and turn to private listeners. I assume he'll lay low for a while, and try to surface later. But he is 67, and he's been at this a long time. But I figure Imus isn't going to want to give this up.
Do I agree with Imus? No. Do I think he deserves all this firestorm? No. Indeed, the tempest is I believe secondary to the main goal, which is to get people to talk about race, and even as some people privately grumble about this, there are plenty of others talking back, defending the Imus move.
In any case, I believe that unlike most media, that this is not a commentary about Imus, but about racial politics. And to be fair, this is not unlike religious conservative politics which pushes a creationist agenda. And, honestly, although I find the tactics a bit foul, I'd rather have some kind of racial politics like this, although I find it nearly as narrow-minded in its focus as many other politics.
A fellow on the radio claimed that there has only ever been one genocide in history, and that is Hitler's genocide of Jews (let's not forget that he also wanted to get rid of gypsies and homosexuals--but, ah, that would detract from the point, eh?). The Armenian genocide? Not a genocide, according to him. The Darfur genocide? Not a genocide. And so forth.
For whatever reason, advocacy groups feel compelled to stay on message, within their target. Thus, you rarely see Al Sharpton defending white women, or Jewish groups helping out migrant workers. While the narrowness means focus and prevents alienation of the base, it also means that outside observers also see it as narrow. Thus, most people might complain (like me) "Why won't Al Sharpton fight for Asian Americans?" but no one seems to suggest that the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith should help out, say, African Americans.
On the radio, I heard a guy wonder why there aren't any free speech defenders, and I suppose that people generally haven't been discriminated on free speech the way they have through racial epithets, and so the number of passionate people advocating free speech is dwarfed by those seeking justice for racial intolerance.
Which is too bad, because it suggests that everyone is out for themselves, a terribly selfish move that doesn't seek to reach enlightenment beyond what's best for the groups we most identify with.
Suddenly MSNBC won't simulcast Don Imus. Advertisers are pulling out by the droves.
But the real point, the folks that must be giggling with unbridled delight are folks like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. They realize, at this point in American history, that no one wants to be tainted with the racist brush. Indeed, nearly every person you hear on the issue calls it a racial issue, not a sexist issue. To be fair, coach Vivian Stringer, also points out that these are young women and that they are being objectified by Imus's comments.
But Tony Kornheiser is right. You make these comments about some predominantly white women's college basketball team, and no one will make a stir. It goes to show the ineffectiveness of women's groups to lodge protests. The last significant women's protest was Martha Burk, protesting the exclusion of women from the all-male Augusta Country Club. And what did most announcers say? Shut up. Get out of here. And with no repercussions. Sponsors pulled out for two years and let The Masters pay for its own airing. It shows the near irrelevancy of women's groups to resonate with a public. The advertisers came back, and the announcers were muzzled, told not to discuss Martha Burk if they wanted to host The Masters.
Again, think of the uproar that would occur had Augusta excluded men of color. The "race" card works, and then only if you're African American. What about the "Latino card"? The "woman card"? The "gay card"? Although views are changing, these don't wield the same bludgeon of the race card.
But you have to play it at opportune moments.
The last time it became an issue was a year ago, when the Duke Lacrosse team hosted an ill-fated party, with strippers. One of the strippers claimed she had been raped by two, no three, no all, no three Duke players. Mike Nifong, seeking political office, took the side of the woman, and the issue became rich Duke, versus poor North Carolina Central University, black vs. white, haves vs. have-nots.
The accuser, Crystal Magnum, who was a mother, a student, even a former member of the Navy, describes events that eventually caused the Duke lacrosse coach to be fired. She brought accusations to David Evans, Reade Seligmann, and Collin Finnerty claiming they had raped her.
Jesse Jackson defended Magnum, saying he'd help pay her way through school, even before he heard much of the evidence (or lack thereof). Jackson doesn't seem to have retracted his statements, and decry that this kind of false accusation hurts not only people of color, but most importantly, women everywhere. Rape is far, far, far more serious than a few racial epithets, and so Jackson had some justification in trying to defend a potential victim, but I'm sure he'll issue no comments about this case.
Ultimately, it's about trying to use the power you do have carefully.
Now, even after the charges have been dropped, some will no doubt point to the fact that privileged white boys hosted a stripper party, an event good kids should not do. And that I would completely agree with. They shouldn't have hosted such an event, but then should frats host keg parties? Should there be frats? And no one seems to point out that Magnum was trying to make money as a stripper. Maybe too many Demi Moore movies about stripper moms working to keep their kids fed have made her dilemma seem perfectly legitimate.
Had Magnum been Asian and poor, would that have made a difference? Had she been Latina? Would Jesse Jackson have said anything?
Back to Imus.
There's hypocrisy over Imus too. Just as people blamed Duke lacrosse players for hosting a stripper party, even as this is a far cry from rape, people have said that Imus has said far worse, and yet no one did anything. Why did MSNBC choose this time to let Imus go? Presumably, they thought he was good for ratings. Even as MSNBC and CNN may look towards making themselves more appealing to conservatives, the race card is a powerful one, and brings balance, albeit in abrupt ways.
Imus, in many ways, is a scapegoat. He is one of many people who do what he does, but the criticism stuck. People have suggested he may go the way of Howard Stern, and turn to private listeners. I assume he'll lay low for a while, and try to surface later. But he is 67, and he's been at this a long time. But I figure Imus isn't going to want to give this up.
Do I agree with Imus? No. Do I think he deserves all this firestorm? No. Indeed, the tempest is I believe secondary to the main goal, which is to get people to talk about race, and even as some people privately grumble about this, there are plenty of others talking back, defending the Imus move.
In any case, I believe that unlike most media, that this is not a commentary about Imus, but about racial politics. And to be fair, this is not unlike religious conservative politics which pushes a creationist agenda. And, honestly, although I find the tactics a bit foul, I'd rather have some kind of racial politics like this, although I find it nearly as narrow-minded in its focus as many other politics.
A fellow on the radio claimed that there has only ever been one genocide in history, and that is Hitler's genocide of Jews (let's not forget that he also wanted to get rid of gypsies and homosexuals--but, ah, that would detract from the point, eh?). The Armenian genocide? Not a genocide, according to him. The Darfur genocide? Not a genocide. And so forth.
For whatever reason, advocacy groups feel compelled to stay on message, within their target. Thus, you rarely see Al Sharpton defending white women, or Jewish groups helping out migrant workers. While the narrowness means focus and prevents alienation of the base, it also means that outside observers also see it as narrow. Thus, most people might complain (like me) "Why won't Al Sharpton fight for Asian Americans?" but no one seems to suggest that the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith should help out, say, African Americans.
On the radio, I heard a guy wonder why there aren't any free speech defenders, and I suppose that people generally haven't been discriminated on free speech the way they have through racial epithets, and so the number of passionate people advocating free speech is dwarfed by those seeking justice for racial intolerance.
Which is too bad, because it suggests that everyone is out for themselves, a terribly selfish move that doesn't seek to reach enlightenment beyond what's best for the groups we most identify with.
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