I've yet to see anyone discuss this in print, and perhaps it's considered indelicate to even raise it; but does anyone else think that the chief obstacle facing this rising young star is the uncomfortable (though completely accidental) similarity between his surname and the first name of a certain well-known member of the FBI's most-wanted list?
The news that Prince Harry is going to Sandhurst is a reminder that, whatever else one may say about the Windsors (and there's a lot one could say), they've never been hesitant about risking their necks for Grandma and Country. No dodgy National Guard exemptions at Buckingham Palace, no ma'am. Prince Andrew was a helicopter pilot in the Falklands War; the Queen's uncle the Duke of Kent was killed on active service in 1942; Lord Louis Mountbatten, Prince Philip's uncle, had his destroyer blown up from under him the year before; and Harry's great-grandpa was at the Battle of Jutland. I'm not sure if this proves anything, but if a certain American dynasty really does intend to establish itself as the nation's ruling house then its scions would be advised to follow H.W.'s example rather than W's.
An interesting take on the problem of global poverty from James Surowiecki at the New Yorker:
"The profit motive, indecorous though it may seem, may represent the best chance the poor have to reap some of globalization’s benefits. Through the years, the poor have received assistance from innumerable government agencies and nonprofit organizations, and they’ve been an exploitable labor source, but they have almost never been treated simply as customers. And that’s a pity, not because the private sector is inherently superior to the public sector but because, in the world we live in, businesses control an enormous amount of skill, manpower, and capital. If you’re a customer, you reap the benefits of all that. If you’re not, you don’t ...
Consumerism, of course, has its pitfalls and is hardly a cure-all. But if companies started trying to sell things to the poor it would have immediate consequences, chief among them a reduction of the so-called poverty penalty. It’s expensive to be poor. Poor people pay more to eat, buy, and borrow, because they have so few choices and so little bargaining power, especially in the developing world. Moneylenders, purchasing agents, and retail stores typically have local monopolies that allow them to gouge their customers. If more companies reach these customers, prices will fall.
There are, as ever, monumental prejudices and impediments to overcome. Executives scoff at pennies. Anti-globalization activists take customerization to mean McDonaldization. Then, you have to contend with the local monopolists who make huge sums of money selling to the poor, and the local government officials who profit from helping keep those monopolies in place. To tap the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, we may have to “save capitalism from the capitalists" ...
Round-up of thoughts on the DVD release of you-know-what:
Greedo and Han shoot more or less simultaneously - for those who care. Personally I never could see all the fuss about this, for whatever subtle points of characterization supposedly hinged on this sequence of gunplay were lost on me (all I saw was a cute but throwaway little Western rip-off).
Jabba's physical appearance in the hanger scene is much changed from 1997 - but it's still just as bumbling and irrelevent. He remains more couch potato than galactic crime lord.
What's with the lousy sound editing? Many people have reported problems with the 5.1 mix, and while our TV is crappy enough that most problems can be attributed to it rather than the disc, I noticed some wobbly distortion at a few key lines (e.g. the Grand Moff's "You would prefer another target, a military target?"). Oh, and there's a terrible what-the-hell-where-they-thinking moment during the escape from the Death Star when one of the TIE-Fighters has a translucent brown box around it; it looks like it's encased in chocolate jello.
And while Lucas was buggering around with so much, why did he leave elements that patently needed to be edited? I introduce Exhibit A, the cantina thug's arm hacked off by Obi-Wan - which looks, exactly as it did in 1977, like a piece of rubber with some tomato ketchup on it.
It's said that quite a high proportion of Britons dream about the Queen (don't know what happens elsewhere in the Commonwealth: Graeme, do Canadians dream about her by proxy, via the Governor-General?). Anyway, it's not something I can remember doing much, but I dreamed about her last night. We were having a five-minute conversation, and I remember it being full of the most sickly-sweet platitudes - I could feel my IQ draining away as I spoke. And the funny thing is that I imagine that's exactly how I'd act if I ever did meet her in real life. It's not that I want to be rude to Her Maj - my mother would never forgive me, for one thing - but she is after all an intelligent grown woman. Why does the presence of her turn us into bashful ten-year-olds? What a strange vision she must have of us all - waving, grinning idiots. It reminded me a bit of the only interesting part of the otherwise very silly Oliver Stone bio-pic Nixon, where one night the President suddenly emerges unannounced and unaccompanied amongst a group of anti-war protestors at the Lincoln Memorial (this is based on a true incident, I think). These kids have come to think of Richard Nixon as their worst enemy, and yet for a few minutes at least his physical presence completely disarms them: they start muttering the same anodyne cliches as anyone in the presence of world celebrity. (If I recall correctly one of them does eventually start half-heartedly haranguing the President, but you can tell he's terrified).
No sooner does my Keystone State bulletin hit the Horizon front page than the Prez descends on nearby King of Prussia (presumably after the stump speech he can pick up some shower curtains for Laura); and on Friday Senator Kerry is addressing a Penn crowd some 30 minutes' walk from my home. It's not the most convenient day, but I'll see if I can make it down there and report back.
In Honour of this Great Day when the original Star Wars films finally arrive on DVD in all their re-edited, ahistoric glory, a reminder of how art imitates art / politics / life (delete as applicable)...
Brian Michael Bendis is the best, indeed the coolest writer in mainstream comics today. His version of Daredevil is like The Sopranos in comic book form. But Bendis got his start in the independent comic scene. How did he make the jump between the two? Bendis gives the answer in a comic strip commissioned for the New York Times business section.
(Yes I know all my latest postings have been about comics. I'm a Canadian with little to say about the upcoming US election...)
As the only Horizon regular who is also a resident of a battleground state in this here upcoming election (not that I can vote, mind), here is a Pennsylvania update for you locked-and-loaded CA and TX types.
If you think it might be cool or fun to live in a swing state, where your vote actually matters and candidates pander shamelessly to you—well, it is, sort of ... James Carville famously defined Pennsylvania as "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with Alabama in between." Even if that formulation isn't strictly true—much of the state is more like Kentucky than Alabama—it still basically works. The Democrats get the big cities while the Republicans get the middle of the state. The only wild cards are the Philly suburbs, with large numbers of Republican-registered moderates and the industrial southwest, where blue-collar Democrats tend to vote Republican when nobody's looking ... this time, it looks like neither candidate is going to win the presidency without us. And that feels kind of good, but also kind of scary.
Bush and Kerry's World War II records scrutinised.
Says here that the late Johnny Ramone admired Ronald Reagan.
Could somebody please explain this?
If you spent your formative years a) in the 1980s and b) reading comic books, then you'll know what Pacific Comics is. Pacific Comics was one of the very first 'independent' comic book publishers to embrace the mass market sensibilities while at the same time catch the wave toward venerating particular artists by showcasing their work and giving them creators rights that DC and Marvel would never do.
This article chronicles the rise and fall of Pacific Comics. The actual running of the place was about as anarchic as I thought it was back then (though I was too naive in 1983 to ever envisage Neal Adams smoking a giant-sized doobie).
I was just entering high school as Pacific Comics (and its longer-lasting competitor First Comics) exploded on the scene, so it's very nostalgic. And for added nostalgia I bought Pacific's one-issue Jim Starlin extravaganza Darklon The Mystic for 50 cents last week. I know now why I never listened to Rush as a teenager-- I was taken care of in the ponderous mysticism and pretentious angst department already.
Yes, it's another contest alert: describe Planet Earth in 264 words and possibly win a digital radio.
What appears to be Roger Ebert's entire catalog of movie reviews dating back to the late 1960s is now thankfully free and online, and I thoroughly recommend a browse. As just one example, here is his take on 1979's The Deer Hunter, which I saw recently in full for the first time and which I think he rightly calls "one of the most emotionally shattering films ever made". The scene right at the end of the movie where the surviving principals sing God Bless America is truly remarkable - somehow ironic and sincere all at the same time.
As someone who dislikes the term political correctness and doesn't think that it's running wild or gone mad or whatever the current formulation is, I am occasionally frustrated by people who seem determined to prove me wrong. I refer in this case to the retrofitting of the LA County Seal, now shorn of its embarrassingly doctrinaire (though tiny) cross in favor of more "inclusive" imagery, on pain of ACLU writ. The poor old goddess Pomona has taken a hit too, presumably because of fears that subtle pro-fruit tree propaganda was creeping into the local school system. In place of the old cross, which used to stick out of the Hollywood Bowl (which was admittedly an odd juxtaposition, but never mind), there's a little picture of the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel - but so carefully angled so as to make it more or less indistinguishable from the average Walmart.
Now, I admit that it might have been more constitutionally convenient if the Mission San Gabriel had been a community outreach center, or perhaps a combo sauna-health club, but the fact remains that it was a Christian church; and if one thinks that it's important enough to Angeleno history to feature on the county seal, then it seems mildly insulting (to the public's intelligence more than its religious sensibility) to pretend otherwise. There comes a point at which the noble desire to defend America's non-sectarian tradition becomes mindless pedantry, and this strays well on the side of the latter, I think.
...According to the American Animal Hospital Association's Ninth Annual Pet Owner Survey, about 65 percent of pet owners sing and/or dance before their pets...This and much more per the San Francisco Chronicle last month.
Does sixty-five percent really sound right, even if we presume that's a U.S.-only figure?
Personal evidence: I grew up with collie dogs and one cat, can't remember singing to them, can however remember dancing with (but not for) one of the collies. Recently, however, we've adopted a small stray tabby, named her "Edwidge Sparklycat," shortened the name to "Edgie," and given her a theme song. It goes "Edgie cat/you been makin' me crazy..." using the tune and selected lyrics from the Beatles' "Honey Pie."
Not aware of other Singing To Pets in my family, though we did have one case of Singing By Pets. One of my paternal great-aunts had a dog named Falla, after FDR's dog. She claimed Falla could sing along when Guy Lombardo And His Royal Canadians were on TV. I'm not sure anyone else called it singing.
OK, that's my share of embarrassment. Who'll go next?
I've been reading Edward Gibbon's Memoirs in bed lately, and letting the ponderous eighteenth-century prose put me to sleep. Gibbon comes across as more of a smug twit in his memoirs than in the bits of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that I've read, which I suppose is appropriate for the genre. Still, this passage caught me completely off guard:
From a blind idea of the usefulness of such abstract science, my father had been desirous, and even pressing, that I should devote some time to the mathematics; nor could I refuse to comply with so reasonable a wish. During two winters I attended the private lectures of Monsieur de Traytorrens, who explained the elements of algebra and geometry, as far as the conic sections of the Marquis de l'Hopital, and appeared satisfied with my diligence and improvement. But as my childish propensity for numbers and calculations was totally extinct, I was content to receive the passive impression of my Professor's lectures, without any active exercise of my own powers. As soon as I understood the principles, I relinquished for ever the pursuit of the mathematics; nor can I lament that I desisted, before my mind was hardened by the habit of rigid demonstration, so destructive of the finer feelings of moral evidence, which must, however, determine the actions and opinions of our lives.
There's tons of criticisms to be made about this historical analogy, but couldn't the subs at Frontpagemag.com at least learn to spell Clem Attlee's name right?
Brave (of a kind) it might be, but there strikes me as something ersatz about the planned recreation of Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 Kon-Tiki voyage by a team including his grandson. The original voyage was intended to prove Heyerdahl's theory - which is no longer taken very seriously - that Polynesia could have been settled by trans-Pacific migrants from Peru; as such, his raft was only equipped with technologies appropriate to the period. The new expedition boasts satellite navigation, solar panels, and Internet connectivity; it will, in other words, prove absolutely nothing, except perhaps that it's possible to check your Netflix account from a plank of wood in the middle of the ocean. The self-conscious artificiality of the stunt reminds me of the ill-fated Millennium Stone project, although hopefully the ending in this case won't be nearly so - aquatic.
A Slate sojourn down to the Wigan Pier Experience.
A while back Ben was complaining about UK adjectival-noun plurals filtering into American English, as in "games mistress," "bribes inquiry," etc.
Well, I've just spotted this usage in an official federal document for the first time. A HUD Notice of Funding Availability issued in August says: "Demolition grants applications will be accepted until September 17, 2004." Of course, that "s" in "grants" might be an ordinary typo, but it might also be evidence of increased Britishisms usage in the U.S.
[UPDATE: Whaddayaknow, here's another, also from the Federal Register in August. The Comptroller of the Currency has an announcement about a "lending limits pilot program."]