Some things are impossible to know, but it is impossible to know these things.
I have a day job. So every word of this is my opinion, not that of my employer. This offer IS void in Wisconsin. Except, of course, that some material in this column comes from incoming e-mail; such material is usually reproduced indented and in a serif typeface to distinguish it from the (somewhat) original material.
I shudder to think what my program choices say about me, but my favorite shows were nearly all renewed. I loved Journeyman, and it didn't make it, but Boston Legal (can't get enough William Shatner and Candice Bergen), Eli Stone (also a big favorite of my younger daughter's) and Reaper (my first favorite on the CW since Pinky and the Brain) are all reportedly returning. Woo-hoo!
I decided to list them because one way networks now judge a show is blogosphere buzz. I want these shows to have buzz. Buzzzz. Oh, and did I mention that Merv Griffin's Crosswords has been picked up for another season? Look under "permanent" in the right hand column to find out all about my connection to the show. Watch it! Save it! It's the New Jeopardy!
Dan Grobstein pointed out that Bush in Israel quoted isolationist Sen. Borah as saying, in 1939, "Lord, if only I could have talked with Hitler, all this might have been avoided.'' The quote was used to denigrate Obama's plan to talk to our enemies. There is some controversy about whether Borah ever said any such thing.
So much for politics stopping at the water's edge. Wonder whether Shrub will have the courage to imply Obama is an appeaser in front of an American audience.
Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history. (Applause.)
Elsewhere: One hopes that Chris Matthews will remember how to conduct an interview the next time an alleged government official is on his show: Matthews slams radio host defending Bush 'appeasement' jab. Matthews talked with right-wing radio host Kevin James who defended Bush’s comparison of Obama’s foreign policy position with the appeasement of Hitler. James doesn't know what appeasement means.
And this, children, is why you should pay attention in history class. These guys really do just memorize the talking points, don't they. I mean, even my 8th graders know you should never give an answer if you don't know its meaning.
The same advice might even go for Bush. Does he really want to open the can of worms of who helped Hitler during WWII? Frank Rich suggests maybe not...
In a political speech to the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset), George W. Bush "implied that Mr. Obama would have enabled the Nazis even more foolishly than his own grandfather, Prescott Bush, did in the 1930s when he maintained "investment relationships with Hitler’s Germany," as Kevin Phillips delicately describes it in "American Dynasty."
This must be politically incorrect, or in bad taste, or something, but how about a list of things that are younger than McCain... and then turn the list into a song!
As previously reported by PSACOT, various poseurs (Shrub, Shooter, McCain, Chertoff, Rummy, Condi) purporting to understand "national security" have absolutely no idea what the term means or how to promote, preserve, or protect it:
Domestic Spying Program Could Aid Terrorists, Experts Say
Domestic Wiretapping Could Pose 'An Awesome Risk' to National Security
By JUSTIN ROOD
Feb. 1, 2008—
Although the Bush administration calls it a vital weapon against terrorism, its domestic wiretapping effort could become a devastating tool for terrorists if hacked or penetrated from inside, according to a new article by a group of America's top computer security experts.
Peggy Noonan has intelligent comments two weeks in a row? Who'd have thought it. GOP Falls Apart
After hearing a BBC podcast reference to American ex-pats voting in the U.K., I asked Larry King [now a London businessman--not the CNN Host or the author] for his thoughts. After a little throat-clearing, he let men know what he knows...
There is a ]deep- seated fatalism of the British soul, which as someone said not long ago, means all Brits are not only aware death is a certainty, but are pretty sure it's coming by no later than next Tuesday if you're not pretty damned careful...
So life is good. Summer is here, the sun is not only warm but visible for most of the day, and I had a picnic with a pretty girl yesterday. Omar Khayam talked about a jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou, and he just about nailed that down, although he might have included an addendum about stopping after the first jug of wine. But as Oscar Wilde pointed out, anything worth doing is worth doing to excess, and at this point I think I'll leave Omar and Oscar to thrash that out between them and address your actual question:
The role of the American expat in the coming elections. Uh, damned if I know. I haven't voted for an American presidential candidate since 1992. And I'm not (yet) a British citizen, so I can't vote for the locals. I'm slowly reclaiming my political virginity, to coin a wildly improbable metaphor. But as I understand it, the wider role of the expat largely defies analysis, anyway. I hear different numbers about how many Americans live in the U.K., but the one I hear most often is around 200,000. That's undoubtedly more than any other single European country, since living here is like Expatriate 101, the introductory course. You don't have the language issues (or you don't think you do; then you refer to a pair of trousers as pants and everybody giggles nervously, since ``pants'' in Britain always and only refers to underwear). The food is familiar, if your mother never learned to cook very well. More important, London is the banking center of Europe and in some respects the world, so a lot of American banks and brokerages and such have big branches here. They ship over their young Master of the Universe types in car-load lots, to put a little polish on them and show the locals how things are done. The locals regard them balefully, as you might imagine, but the first rule of finance is that for every trade you must have a buyer and a seller, and the second rule is, the man who stands between them and handles the deal can earn a very comfortable living. The Brits have several centuries of experience acting as middlemen, and they'll tolerate Americans if they can make a few quid off them. All of that is largely off the point, to which I now return. People in banking and finance tend to be Republicans. This is because they make obscene amounts of money and they would prefer to keep as much of it as possible. They feel about taxes the way vampires feel about garlic. So, a disproportionately large number of American expats expatriate themselves to the U.K., a disproportionately large number of those are in finance, and a disproportionately large number of the people in finance are Republicans. It's a big bloc of votes. On the other hand, you have a lot of other expats who are here and, more frequently, on the Continent for far different reasons. They are the neo-bohemian, left-over-hippie, spiritual descendants of the Lost Generation of the 1920s. If you could round them all up, they probably would form a larger bloc of votes than the London finance crowd. But the absentee-ballot process more or less requires a certain amount of stability, since you need to have some evidence of the last place you lived and voted in the U.S., and neo-bohemians tend to be rootless and disenchanted, almost by definition. So they aren't really a bloc and a lot of them don't bother voting. Those who do, or at least those I know, lean so far left they're all but horizontal. That makes them Democrats, when they're not off voting for Ron Paul or Ralph Nader or some other wild-eyed spoiler. What that all means, I think, is that the Republican expats and the surly hippie-come-latelies cancel each other out, numerically speaking. Students, of whom there is a very large number doing their junior year abroad may hold the balance of power, and military personnel, of whom there is also a very large number, doing what they hired on to do. And here again, for every art history major hanging out in Florence and learning to drink wine and eager to vote for Obama, you've got a hard-bitten master sergeant whose political inclinations are probably somewhat less dewey-eyed, I think it's fair to say. So, as I said earlier, damned if I know. Handicapping this race is probably harder than most, since we have no incumbent and people in general seem, as the master put it, if not disgruntled, certainly far from gruntled. Expats are no different from other Americans in that respect. How that will play out in November I'd hesitate to say. I do seem to detect somewhat more enthusiasm for Obama than I saw for either Gore or Kerry. Conversely, I think the Republicans are more enthusiastic about McCain than they were for Dole in 1996 or Bush in 2004, although not necessarily than they were for Bush in 2000. And I think I can safely say that if Hillary somehow pulls a rabbit out of the hat and finangles her way to the nomination, a fair number of nominal Democrats will say the hell with it. The leftward crowd here appears to think the first thing Hillary would do with a rabbit is go all Glenn Close on us and boil the poor beast alive. So those are my thoughts, disheveled and rambling as they may be. Sorry, but I really shouldn't have opened that second jug of wine.
Facebook v.
Google--pot calls kettle black: be it LinkedIn,
MySpace, Facebook or others of their social networking
ilk, I've always been a little uncomfortable about trusting a third
party with a comprehensive list of all my friends. Even if the
current management of such sites is benign, who knows who they will
sell themselves to next year. Now Facebook is very annoyed that its
users may share their contact information with other sites via Google's
Friend Connect. Since Google only looks at public information that
Facebook offers to everyone through its API, how can there be additional privacy concerns? The
real privacy risk is making your friends list public by using Facebook
in the first place: Facebook's
Glass Jaw, Facebook
flap: Google’s side, How
Google's Friend Connect works, Facebook
Disconnects Google: Protecting Users... Or Itself? or as Yoda would
have said: Begun,
the Data Wars Have.
Games for the
greater good: I am fascinated by the rise of "human
computation", where
humans join together to solve big problems, often attracted by the task
being structured as a game. I have previously mentioned reCAPTCHA and
foldit. Now Luis von Ahn and colleagues at CMU have established a
new
hub for these "games with a purpose" at gwap.com,
see New
games are designed to make computers smarter.
Jon Carroll can sure write a cat column. He starts out rehashing an idea, familiar to his readers as well as to those of Douglas Adams, that we are put here on Earth without an owner's manual, but then he switches it up and makes it into another of his brilliant cat columns. Once again, the finest daily columnist in America.
Lost cat
Jon Carroll
We none of us got a handbook. We arrived on Earth, opened our eyes, noticed there was no handbook, and started screaming. Some years later, for unknown reasons, we decided that everyone else had a handbook...
Phil Proctor, whose work I have loved in every medium since I first heard him with the Firesign Theater 40 years ago, has a guest-star role in the world's funniest rap video as Dr. Proctor the Proctologist.
A friend of mine is being driven crazy by her first office job; she thinks this clip from the movie "Office Space" really says it all, in the section about the TPS report cover sheet that's about 30 seconds in.
There are 4.2 million surveillance cameras in Great Britain, creating the "surveillance society." So, of course, an unsigned band wandered all over Manchester and played, then obtained the tapes with freedom of information requests. I heard about it on the podcast of the Bryant Park Project, the best daily NPR morning news program you're not listening to: In Surveillance Video, Band Rocks Big Brother. While you're there, subscribe to the two-hour daily podcast!
For a guy who refused to believe that CERN is going to create a black hole that will swallow the Earth, my credulity detector went on the fritz when it came to the danger of an accidental releases of the 1918 flu virus, according to Robert Malchman:
I don't know the publication you cite to (it looks kinda eco-nutty), but the article is from 2004, hardly breaking news. Moreover, in 2005, the fruits of the research were published in Science and Nature. http://depts.washington.edu/einet/?a=printArticle
print=928 The EICs of both publications (which, as I'm sure you know, are the most respected in the world) believe the benefits outweigh the risks -- indeed, as one of the authors points out, since many flu strains derive from the 1918 virus, it's unlikely that, even if it did escape, it would wreak the destruction it did 90 years ago.
Dan found this at Salon, from G.K. Chesterton's Heretics:
It may be said with rough accuracy that there are three stages in the life of a strong people. First, it is a small power, and fights small powers. Then it is a great power, and fights great powers. Then it is a great power, and fights small powers, but pretends that they are great powers, in order to rekindle the ashes of its ancient emotion and vanity. After that, the next step is to become a small power itself.
He recently wrote on a subject that was near and dear to my heart when I was collecting comics: Out Of Sorts: A Pile of Comic Books, In No Particular Order. There were no short boxes in my era (1963-1970), so I stored mine horizontally in cardboard boxes without plastic covers. Still, I was able to fund my spending money for my freshman year at MIT with $1,000 worth of duplicates, and I got $800 for a handful that I auctioned in the 1980s. Alas, there was a flood in my parents basement, and the bulk of my collection (stacked oldest comic on the bottom) was destroyed, including issues 1 through 20 of Fantastic Four, X-Men, Hulk, Avengers, Spiderman, Daredevil--basically, every superhero book of the Marvel Silver Age. I loved artist Jack Kirby (and was surprised recently to find he is still alive), one of the most prolific pencillers in all of comicdom.
I have bought only a few dozen comics since I left for MIT in September 1970, and most of those were on the advice of Dern, who maintained his habit farther into adulthood than I did. I just can't find the time--too much else to do.
Acknowledging the Race Chasm. David Sirota looks the race issue in the face. Obama wins white states because race isn't an issue, and he wins black states because he gets 90% of the black vote. What about inbetween? Sirota calls the states with between 7% and 16% black votes the Race Chasm. Since he didn't publish the underling data, I've looked up the Census bureau numbers. Guess which states are in the gap? Kentucky, Oklahoma, Indiana, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio, Texas, New Jersey, Michigan, Florida, Illinois, Arkansas, New York. In short, a perfect list of the battleground states the Democrats must take to win the election.
Tim Russert: So tell us Brian Williams, why did you allow all of these "experts" who were in fact Pentagon flacks to masquerade as independent military experts on the NBC News broadcasts for which you were and are Managing Editor?
Brian Williams: That's a good question Tim. Another good question is why did you swallow hook line and sinker and repeat everything these "experts" and others (for example Dick Cheney) were saying.
Russert: Good question Brian. We'll be right back after these messages.
---
Superdelegates: Threat or Menace?
Self-described "old friend" of McCain who McCain said he took "pleasure" in meeting planned to murder a journalist (though the intended victim was not physically harmed)
Susan Estrich [strategist during the masterful 1988 campaign of former president Michael Dukakis]: Beware What You Wish For. Present for the birth of the superdelegate idea, attacking it still, since she equates "superdelegate" with "middle-aged white guy." Me, I am as big a feminist as you will ever meet (credentials available on request), but I equate superdelegate with "someone who has managed to get himself elected, either to public office or the Democratic National Committee." Who do we want selecting our nominees: wild-eyed radicals (and no, Susan, that doesn't just mean women) or men and women with skin in the game, who want a nominee who both wins and enables them to run successfully for re-election. I liked the idea of superdelegate then, and I like it now.
--
Developing The Green Zone
How much did the taxpayers spend so this officer could work on a development plan? Who decided to let him spend his time on this rather than on fighting enemies or preparing to fight?
Forget the rocket attacks, concrete blast walls and lack of a sewer system. Now try to imagine luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad.
That's all part of a five-year development "dream list" — or what some dub an improbable fantasy — to transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone from a walled fortress into a centerpiece for Baghdad's future.
Why is it that sauce for the Democratic goose is never sauce for the Republican gander? I anxiously await McCain's denunciation. First Hagee (physically embraced by McCain at endorsement speech), now a man who planned a murder (which did not occur): As media pounces on Obama relationships, McCain gets a pass
Shocking: Peggy Noonan almost makes sense. Of course this Bush speechwriter's real agenda is to help the Democrats. Right. Just like Rush. This also just in: fox offers advice coop security advice to hens.
Music and money:
two big wins for big media companies: What
the ASCAP music decision means for consumers and TorrentSpy
ordered to pay $110m.
The TorrentSpy case is especially interesting, that is a lot of money
considering that the company did not sell, host or distribute
copyrighted material. All they do is provide links to other sites. Who
is next, the yellow pages? Google?
Tom Lasusa, one of the most comics-savvy people I know, was kind enough to review Iron Man for me. I saw the film last week as well, and whole-heartedly endorse his view.
Saw Iron Man over the weekend. To be blunt, the hype lived up to the product. I don't think a comic book has been more accurately translated to the screen in...well, ever. Even Batman Begins, which I loved, strays off course in places. Iron Man however manages to keep just about everything from the character's core intact -- which has got to be pleasing to comic fans. At the same time, the story is so easily accessible for anyone, non comic fans can easily get sucked into the story.
Hearing Downey was cast as Stark was intriguing, because I've always liked him and hoped that he'd get past his personal issues to become the amazing actor I always knew he could be. Seeing the preview stills excited me -- the man looked Tony Stark. Seeing him in the previews all but cemented my hopes. Watching the movie -- there is no doubt that not a single other person could have played this role as effectively as he did.
Director Jon Favreau clearly respected the source material and in doing so, delivered across the board. He gave the cast the ability to write their own dialogue, sent Gwyneth Paltrow various comics so she could get a feel for the dynamic between Tony and Pepper. Citing Batman Begins as inspiration, Favreau chose to take a 'realistic' approach with the film, while at the same time acknowledging that this is a superhero universe, thereby pushing the believability envelope at the appropriate times when it felt like it made sense.
Favreau has already been rumored to helm the all-but-expected (and cleverly alluded to in a post-credits scene) Avengers movie and I can't think of a better choice. By then there should have already have been films of Captain America and Thor. Marvel has already said that they want to keep principal actors in the roles (hear that Warner Brothers with your abomination called "Justice League?") If he maintains the dedication, respect and excitement for that project that he did for Iron Man, then Favreau will have another massive hit on his hands.
Google "Greatest Living American." Steven Colbert, God bless him, Google-bombed himself to the top. "Worst President Ever" produces expectable results, which I don't think had to be Google-bombed into place... Ah, the wisdom of crowds...
| May 8, 2008 Platypus Looks Strange on the Inside, Too
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
The platypus genome is an amalgam of genes reflecting significant branching in evolution, scientists reported.
Dan reports:
I saw Ted Sorensen last night being interviewed about his new book published yesterday. Sounds very interesting. I would have bought a copy and had him sign it if I wanted to get home at 12:30. Sleep won out so I'm ordering it from Amazon.
He's very frail (had a stroke a few years ago) but is still sharp and speaks perfectly clearly. He's an Obama guy. He says that Obama is the only candidate since JFK who reminds him of JFK. New ideas, brings young voters into the process. He thinks that Obama has a chance to change things where the other candidates do not.
Somebody asked him what is his opinion of dubya. After a grimace, he told the story of Senator Sherman's comment about James Buchanan: "The Constitution provides for every accidental contingency in the Executive - except a vacancy in the mind of the President."
Mr. Nixon has repeatedly stated that he intends to carry on the policies of this Administration. Let us hold him to that - because I predict on November 8th the American people are going to reject that tradition. Perhaps we could afford a Coolidge following Harding. And perhaps we could afford a Pierce following Fillmore. But after Buchanan this nation needed a Lincoln - after Taft we needed a Wilson - after Hoover we needed Franklin Roosevelt?And after eight years of this Administration, this nation needs a strong creative Democrat in the White House.
Today our very survival depends on that man in the White House - on his strength, his wisdom and his creative imagination.
We can no longer afford a William McKinley, whose backbone according to Teddy Roosevelt was "as firm as a chocolate éclair."
We can no longer afford a Calvin Coolidge, who caused a White House usher with 42 years service to say: "No other President in my time ever slept so much."
We can no longer afford a Warren G. Harding, who reportedly said he saw no real problem in the Middle East "that the Arabs and Jews couldn?t settle around a table, in the good old Christian way."
We can no longer afford a Ulysses S. Grant, complaining that he didn?t want to be President - he just wanted to be the Mayor of Galena, Illinois long enough to build a sidewalk from his house to the station?
And we can no longer afford a James Buchanan, whose performance caused Ohio?s Senator Sherman to say: "The Constitution provides for every accidental contingency in the Executive - except a vacancy in the mind of the President."
But the facts of the matter are that only a creative national party can provide a strong, creative President. The Republican Party is not a national party. It does not represent all sections, all interest groups, all voters. And that is why - historically and inevitably - the forces of inertia and reaction in the Republican Party oppose any powerful voice in the White House, Republican or Democratic that tries to speak for the nation as a whole.
Theodore Roosevelt discovered that. Herbert Hoover discovered that. And, even before he could become a candidate, Nelson Rockefeller discovered it.
But the Democratic Party is a national party - it believes in strong leadership - and, with your help, we will give the nation that leadership in January 1961.
Once again this year, I rode in the Diabetes Tour de Cure in the Napa
valley, at the
suggestion of my daughter, whose firm fields a large team every year. They are nice
enough to make me an honorary member of their team, complete with jersey.
I came up early--Friday after work--for a little unwinding time. I had a
lovely prime rib at the Trancas Steak House, which they were nice enough to cut
in half for me (prime rib and baked potato), for purposes of portion control
and to provide me with a lunch for Saturday. It was cool and windy at sunset,
but I ate outside because it was quieter. As you get older, you appreciate
quiet. When the Chronicle recently rated SF restaurants for quiet, Vicki and I
downloaded the list and sorted it so we'd have a list of the quietest
restaurants. Anyway, I could not help but think that 60 and windy was perfect
weather for a bike ride. Alas, Sunday's prediction is for a high of 80. I have stopped
looking at the prediction for two reasons: first, it is hardly ever right, and
second, there's nothing I can do about it. Because I now sunburn very easily, I
have to wear long sleeves and long pants regardless of the temperature, and
there's nothing I can about the weather, so why borrow trouble (as my wife
often asks).
I saw two movies, Harold and Kumar
Escape from Guantanamo Bay and Baby
Mama. Both were as funny as my younger daughter had insisted.
M decided not to join me Friday night; instead, she spent the night
frolicking with friends in San
Francisco. A long bath and a quiet read after the
movies put me in bed late, but what the heck, I had time to nap.
We dined Saturday night at the vegetarian Ubuntu Napa, which, according to
the New York Times, is the
second-best restaurant in the United States outside of New York City (with a
few caveats; you can look up the review yourself). We had almonds dusted with
sea salt and lavender sugar as an appetizer, followed by peas in a consommé of
pea shells, dusted with white chocolate and nuts. I think you get the idea. I
even ate the beets and the asparagus, and as anyone who knows me will tell you,
I never eat beets and asparagus. I
liked the pickled rhubarb so much I asked for more--and I got more. Also, since
I love avocado, they added it to a dish that normally does not include it. They
served us their signature dish, cauliflower cooked in an iron pot. You'd think
it was stuffed with cheese, but we were assured they achieved the effect with
cream and pureed cauliflower. Fresh local strawberries on brioche were the
dessert. It was $54 each for the tasting menu, but the food was amazing. The
wine list was impressive too. The interior is high-ceilinged and spectacular,
but noisy for my taste, so we ate outside on a lovely spring evening. The mean
took 2.5 hours, and was worth every minute of time and penny of money. The wine
list, by the way, was to die for.
Then Sunday morning, off for the ride. Not a race, but a ride. Fifty miles,
up Highway 29 and back down the Silverado Trail. Rest stops about every 12
miles. We did it in 3 hours 50 minutes, including rest stops. That is a pretty good
pace--about 12 miles per hour. I ate lunch in the tent of M's employer, and, as an honorary member, sat in on the team picture.
M is one smart cookie--she suggested in advance that we arrange for massages
after the race. We kept the room for Sunday night, even though we were both
going home Sunday evening, so we'd have a place to rest and change after the
race. It was great!
Music:
there was good news and bad news in the "RIAA v. Howell" case. U.S.
District Judge Neil V. Wake reversed his earlier ruling: Judge
Says Music Sharing Doesn't Necessarily Equal Infringement, Judge
rejects claim RIAA previously won and More
on the RIAA's latest loss.
OK so merely making files available to share, the default functionality
of Kazaa, is not a crime. Thank goodness for a return to sanity. But
the judge also ruled that the download of such files by the authorized minions of the RIAA
proved infringement: Despite
Blogosphere Reports, RIAA Retains Legal Muscle Under Howell Decision.
So the RIAA is stealing from itself, with its own explicit
authorization, and yet the lawsuit targets the Howells?! It could
easily be the case that, absent the RIAA's own mischief, no one ever
would have downloaded those songs from the Howell's PC. Another downside of DRM:
say you sell "permanent" licenses to DRM-encumbered media files, does
that imply a long term burden of support? What happens if you get bored
with your broken business model?: Betrayed MSN Music
Customers Deserve More from Microsoft.
Fractal food:
a few months back I ran across the book Making Mathematics
with Needlework and got a copy for my geeky/crafty sister-in-law.
One of my favorites was a crocheted shawl based on Sierpinski's
triangle. I was reminded of that when I came across this recipe for
Sierpinski
Cookies based on the square Sierpinski
carpet. That lead me looking for more and sure enough: triangular
Fractal Cookies. That reminded me of seeing this a long time ago:
Giant
Fractal Pecan Pie, based on the Koch snowflake.
It was inspired by a desire to control the ratio of pie area to crust
length, so perhaps they should have tried the Hilbert curve
instead. But for sheer self-similar beauty, it is hard to beat this
classic natural edible fractal:
the Romanesco
broccoli.
FixMacs Ruminations on the Professional Macintosh Home Office, Small Office, and Beyond. Good stuff about the Macintosh world, interspersed with cogent politics.
(N-Neal Vitale P-Paul Schindler). Stars are out of 5
Bank Job (The) 3 n
Horton Hears A Who 3 p
Leatherheads 3 p
Married Life 3 p
Penelope 3 p
Shine A Light 3.5 n
On DVD
(N-Neal Vitale P-Paul Schindler, no link—DVD only review)
Alvin and the Chipmunks 3 p
Charlie Wilson's War 4 n
Cloverfield 3 p
Juno 4 n
Sweeney Todd 3 n
There Will Be Blood 3 n
Paul's Reading
Sven Birkerts: The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age This collection of essays alternates between hopeful and depressing as it soberly considers the future propspects of the act of reading dead-tree media. In this re-issue, the author admits to succumbing to electronic creation, but clings to reading on paper. A reasonable compromise? I think so. Thoughtful and engaging. 1/07. (*****)
Harry Shearer: Not Enough Indians: A Novel I love Harry Shearer. Always have. Always will. His "Le Show" weekly broadcast is hysterical, his film work is phenomenal, and he is both Smithers and Mr. Burns. How cool is that? This is a great comic novel. You can clearly hear Shearer's comedic voice in the dialog. The plot's a bit thin, and the book is episodic, but it is also hysterically funny, first page to last. (*****)
Khaled Hosseini: The Kite Runner Kite Runner is the story of an Afghani-American coming of age in Afghanistan as well as Fremont, California, it is well-written. Trite but true: it is hard to put down. You want to know what happens next. Vivid descriptions, compelling plot. (*****)
Christopher Buckley: Florence of Arabia : A Novel Christopher Buckley is a great American humor writer. Here, he imagines what would happen if the U.S. tried to teach the Arab women to liberate themselves. Buy it just to laugh at the fake hyphenated names of British characters.
(*****)
E.J. Kahn: The World Of Swope A clever and well-written 1965 biography of Herbert Bayard Swope written by E.J. Kahn: The World of Swope. Swope was probably the single most important editor of The World, which was, in turn, one of the most important New York newspapers. Kahn renders Swope with tub-thumpingly good writing. (*****)
Keith Colquhoun: Killing Stalin Killing Stalin
is an elaborate and imaginative tale of Joseph Stalin's last days.
Was Stalin killed? Even in the Soviet Union, it seems unlikely the event was committed to paper. But perhaps the oral history of a reliable observer... overheard by a journalist at a bar and made into a novel... (*****)
Anchee Min: Becoming Madame Mao Similarities between treatment of Madame Mao and traditional treaatment of imperial concubines is thought provoking. Also: this book makes Mao look like a schmuck. (*****)
Anchee Min: Empress Orchid A good read, and the descriptions make me want to visit the Forbidden City (*****)
