Before
A chronicle of an American life
Archive for Culture
22 January 2011 at 10.03 pm · Filed under Culture, Law school, Random, The law
I’m watching The Pelican Brief (and I’m only 20 minutes in). Two things stand out. First of all, Cynthia Nixon played one of Julia Roberts’ law student friends, which is kind of hot. I guess she got her Sex and The City J.D. by having a part in this film.
Second, I loved — as I always do — the library scene where Julia Roberts rifles through countless dusty old law books, trying to figure out who might have killed the Supreme Court justices. You can feel the drama. Then I thought about it: in the digital age, there is no dramatic dusty old book scene. There’s just Julia Roberts, staring slackjawed at shitty old Westlaw. Hollywood is never going to put together any frantic iPad research sequence. (“Turn it to portrait orientation! Hurry!”) I hate the iPad and all it is doing to the death of print.
20 March 2008 at 5.36 pm · Filed under Culture, Political
I’ve been really sick the last four days, and probably spending more time on the Internet than usual. Nothing is more discouraging than a few minutes at the China Daily website, the English-language “news” site which has become increasingly more professional over the years, and thusly, more dangerous.
The lead story on the BBC News webpage is about severe protests and demonstrations against Chinese rule in Tibet. There, you can read that activists have released graphic photos of dead bodies showing bullet wounds, and that the police have finally admitted to firing shots at some protesters. You’ll also read that riot police raided a monastery, causing 300 monks to run for their lives as police committed acts of “gratuitous violence” and kicked monks in the stomach while they lay on the ground. The phone service had mysteriously been cut. And the BBC’s own reporters noted that there had been severe limitations on their travel and ability to report.
Cruise over to China Daily. The lead story is on the Olympic flame. Click on “China” to get national news stories. The lead story there is “China’s new cabinet maps out working rules.” You have to dig for a story about the crisis, and I found one. 105 Lhasa rioters surrender to police. There, you’ll read that “rioters” killed innocent civilians. There’s no mention of China’s military actions. But, there is a link to a story couple of days old titled, We fired no gunshots — Tibetan government chairman. I wasn’t able to find any article admitting that the government in fact had shot anyone. Rather, I found a humorous and pathetic grab-all story recounting that local religious authorities were decrying the Dalai Lama (who’s won the Nobel Peace Prize), that Tibet’s 1957 military invasion was “peaceful,” and for good measure, that “mobs” stoned a Han Chinese girl’s head without provocation. (The Han are eastern China’s ethnic majority.)
Although China Daily never likes airing China’s own dirty laundry, it always enjoys having a good laugh at the United States — a country where protests against the government usually do not result in death. Some people actually take pride in the fact that this is a country where protesting is legal: a point that seems lost on the site’s editors. Thus, photos of Iraq war protesters are often prominently displayed on the front page, including today. This is pretty typical for the website, but what I found truly bizarre is that the CD has created a special slideshow about Eliot Spitzer. For fans of the absurd, this is not to be missed. What sounds like plaintive Chinese pop music starts up soon into the slides. As the captions peter out, it appears that the editors are simply running out the clock so that they can finish the song. I have asked for a translation.
Also good for a laugh is the commentary, Property boom is here to stay. After the ritualistic paean to Beijing’s “beaming vitality” and the amusingly gushing reference to “millions of skyscrapers being erected” (do the math — even in China, it can’t be millions), the author gets down to business. “Are these sprouting buildings constructed on speculated ground, as property prices have been surging at a pace faster than the average growth in incomes?” The answer is, of course not. Do I even need to spell out the irony here? And tragically, the author has failed to learn his microecon 101, confusingly calling the government to impose “price controls to make housing affordable for everyone” (but China must not “resort to administrative means to rein in housing prices”) while at the same time “subsidizing buyers with cash reimbursement” and cutting deals with developers to cap initial sale prices. Huh? Even Paul Krugman could not get behind this weird a plan, but “the authorities seem to have acknowledged this approach.” And despite the opening reference to China’s glittering array of wealth, the column contains the rare admission that it is “a society where the majority of people cannot afford housing.”
As the Olympics near, we are going to hear more and more about how China is doing for itself. The record continues to be one of shame. And I remind people that it was just 2001 that China’s military captured and interrogated several U.S. airmen after one of their inept pilots caused a mid-air collision. They are not our friends. In the 1980′s, America was obsessed with the prospect of having to surrender our economy to the Japanese, and that was a country we actually got along with. It is a long road from the China of 2008 to the Japan of 1980.
28 December 2007 at 9.44 pm · Filed under Culture, Random
I rarely do this, but I’m simply going to link to a New York Times weblog posting from a commercial pilot. While he doesn’t do a whole lot in the way of positive suggestions for security, he does kick the legs out from under several of the ridiculous security measures currently in place in the US. I was surprised to learn that while pilots and flight attendants must go through the metal detectors, ramp workers and others who have direct access to the planes undergo only sporadic security checks. It’s long, but it’s a good screed and a good read.
Oh God, I’m propagating the blogosphere echo chamber.
12 November 2007 at 5.10 pm · Filed under Culture
I ran across a very surprising article from the Daily Telegraph that the Labour Government in the UK has decided to allow rising ocean levels to consume British villages and farmland in several vulnerable areas. Under a points-based formula, only certain regions will be “defended” against incursions by the sea. The article leaks some of the details from the official analysis.
Not surprisingly, some people are very cross about this, and some Conservative members accuse the government of sacrificing Conservative districts (literally) while shoring up marginal Labour constituencies that were affected by this year’s massive river floods. Whatever; I can’t pass judgment on that.
It is interesting, though, that Britain has the stomach (or lack of backbone, depending on how you feel) to decide what to save and what to let go. In America, we haven’t made many honest decisions about this, except for a few million-dollar cliffs in Massachusetts. We certainly haven’t faced up to certain geological and physical realities in many places where a decision will be inevitable. I’m thinking of New Orleans, of course, but also North Carolina’s Outer Banks, the Florida Keys, and a scattering of Appalachian hollows and river towns. Our course is always to shore up and rebuild on shaky ground, burying our heads in the sand as it washes away around us.
9 November 2007 at 4.24 pm · Filed under Culture, Solely personal
Lately I’ve found the time to read a ton of books in the sort of earthy/environmental vein. That and the impending Florida move have made me just feel a lot “greener.” Let me explain.
When I was growing up, we had all kinds of things in the backyard: apple trees, a cherry tree, a peach tree, grapevines, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries (disgusting), asparagus, tomatoes, potatoes, radishes, carrots, beans, sunflowers, corn, and God knows what else. We had a shed, which my dad built from the ground up to hold all the tools, and a compost pile (a mysterious shaggy creature). We also had some kind of mini-greenhouse on legs, which I think was used to grow herbs. In the front yard we had a huge lilac bush and a ton of flowers.
It’s kind like I’m going through repressed memory therapy here, but I’m just realizing that damn, I grew up with a ton of gardening going on. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. I’m sure I assumed everybody kept a grape arbor in the backyard, if I had even decided to think about it, which I’m sure I hadn’t.
Now I’m thinking that reviving this life would be a great thing to do on my own, but living downtown in a condo isn’t exactly conducive to having a garden and a compost pile. The next best thing is to read about it, so I did.
I went down to the library and picked up Compost, a deceptively small book about composting. The British author says you should actually compost food waste and paper waste in equal quantities — great, because I generate huge amounts of paper waste. I also read The Square-Foot Garden, a classic that eschews the traditional row method of planting in favor of little squares that you never walk on, so as not to compact the soil. (I now am realizing our garden looked like that — another thing I just assumed everybody else did.) For a human perspective, I tried to sift through The 3,000 Mile Garden, a book of sort of gardeny love letters between an Englishman and a Maine cat lady, but it got too creepy. (I tried!) Because it was there (in the gardening section! what a scam the Dewey decimal system was!), I also picked up and devoured Silent Spring, the 1962 classic that helped launch the environmental revolution and crusaded against broad-spectrum synthetic pesticides like heptachlor, dieldrin, and DDT, all of which are now off the market. I read all this stuff in the span of about three days last week, when I should have been studying, then I slept on it. I heartily recommend all these books except the one.
After all this ecological ferment, I’ve decided: I can’t wait to move to Florida so I can grow a garden. Apparently the soil is crummy (either sandy or clayey, and full of nematodes), but you can fix that, and you can grow up to five crops a year because of the wonderful sun, temperatures, and humidity. I also decided I would like to try to never throw anything away, again, ever. According to Compost, you can even compost things like old clothes (they’re cotton, a natural fiber) and cardboard. I already recycle all kinds of stuff, including my cans, paper, electronics, and so on. The only things you really can’t recycle are certain plastics — what else is there to throw out? So, once the move comes, everything’s going on the compost pile or in the recycling. I even researched how to compost meat, which everybody says is a bad idea (rats and flies), and I came across “bokashi,” a Japanese invention involving a sealed bucket, wheat bran, and bacteria, which is a process that anaerobically “pickles” your meat, permitting it to then be composted. Sounds gross, though, to leave a bucket of rotting meat outside, but if it works, why not.
Amusingly, these decisions have led me to realize I’m going to have to live on a lot with some sun and some amount of land, i.e., I might actually have to move to the suburbs or the country (!). Cityboy might go on hiatus for a while. But I think it will be enjoyable to come home, change from the suit into the play clothes, go muck about in the garden for an hour or so, then get a shower and have a refreshing drink while admiring the garden, and have a dinner including vegetables I grew myself. That kind of life should give plenty of time for contemplation. Shouldn’t life be relaxing and innately rewarding?
6 August 2007 at 12.00 pm · Filed under Culture
Greetings from Denver. I have little time to write, so I’ll keep it brief. Kansas is mostly empty. Eastern Colorado is totally empty. The good news is both states let you drive reallllly fast. I have been taking a lot of good pictures, which I’ll try to post today or tomorrow, and it’s been a good visit so far.
That wasn’t really worth reading, was it? What compels me to write today, however, is the news that the New York Times becomes an inch and a half narrower today. (Even here in the American West, my ears are finely tuned to the machinations of the newspapers.) How could they shrink the Times? The whole fun of the Times is that it was essentially a giant tablecloth. Even someone as large as me would have to strain and stretch to read stories in the farthest corners of its pages. Moreover, while other papers got narrower, I always thought I could count on the Times for broad, expansive coverage. The paper is now smaller in size and stature.
21 February 2007 at 10.45 pm · Filed under Connextions Lofts, Culture, Political, Random, Work life
Here it is, the famous boldface names entry. Enjoy!
This was the first year in a long time I haven’t been able to issue my usual “Declaration of Spring” to my former counterpart Brian Foster at Nationwide in person. However, the digital version will have to do. Therefore, Brian, it is now Spring! (For the uninitiated, I always decide it’s spring ridiculously early, then complain to people that they’re still wearing their coats. This is to compensate for all the weeks where people tease me about what I’m wearing. Even when it gets back down to zero, I steadfastly maintain that spring has arrived. It’s part of my English stubbornness.)
Yesterday I re-watched The Fog of War, the Oscar-winning documentary about Robert McNamara. It’s surprising how much of that movie is applicable to today’s current Iraq conflict. Based on some of the statements, I doubt McNamara would want to be involved in our war. The most salient part, I thought, was when he told the story of meeting the North Vietnamese at a dinner in the 1990′s. McNamara explains that from the American perspective, the Vietnam War was a cold-war conflict we fought as a proxy. But the Vietnamese, he said, just saw us as the substitute for the French colonialists. The man he talked to said, “You have to think about the war from our perspective. We were never going to give up!” McNamara said that was a fundamental problem with US thinking about the war. I don’t need to spell it out for you — do today’s Iraqis think we’re colonizers rather than liberators?
Speaking of Oscars, I’m still trying to figure out what to wear to local celebrity Kevin Wood’s Oscar party this Sunday. We’ve been told to wear something from the movies, and since my mom threw out my tiara in 1996, I cannot go as The Queen. I hate these costume parties. I always was the person going to Halloween as a fifth-grader or “someone who does not celebrate Halloween.”
Finally, no entry would be complete without a shout out to Jim Fields, who gave us his old bread maker as a last resort in the carb wars. We now turn out oddly-shaped loaves of bread every week. Things are so good these days.
6 January 2007 at 10.36 pm · Filed under Culture, Funny stories, Work life
This weekend, I’m on vacation in the suburbs. This is because the Aged Parents are both out of town and somebody must watch the dog. So Arnie and I are here, rattling around in this house which is extremely large. First I have to point out that if it weren’t for the dog, we wouldn’t need to be here, but that’s also true in a physical sense because if it weren’t for the dog door, we couldn’t be here. That’s right — your host is smaller than he thought. Nobody left us a key that worked.
So, we’re out in the sticks, bathing with well water, watching satellite TV, and generally enjoying ourselves. I got really bored and decided we should head up town for a bite. Apparently there’s a new Italian restaurant by the Speedway and we’re supposed to try it. So we get in the car and drive there. Now, I’d lolled around reading all day, the dog needed washing, and the next thing you know you haven’t eaten all day, so I’m real hungry. But it’s only six-fifteen, right? Should be no problem getting a table. The wait was “an hour plus.” So we head over to Chipotle — I’m famished, let’s get a quick fourteen hundred calories and be done with it. Couldn’t even find a parking spot. Finally we go to a Mexican place and still have to wait half an hour.
“What’s with all the busy restaurants?” I asked this lady. She muses, “Oh… you know… people just want to eat… Must be the holidays…” Huh? The funny thing was, when we left at the wee hour of eight p.m., there were empty tables and no line. It’s like Florida here!
In other suburban news, I also gotta show you the photo of a car I parked behind last month. This was in Westerville, but since I have the CITYBOY license plate it was terribly disconcerting. No pee was found on my car.
Finally, as an update from 2005, I’ve learned from a commenter on this web log, that the Blues Station, which spammed me a year and a half ago, has closed. Folks, John Kerry learned this lesson the hard way: don’t mess with a blogger! (OK, I’m kidding — even I don’t believe that, plus, I still hate the word blogger.) Let’s hope the “dying art form” finds a new home. The commenter blames the smoking ban, but I blame parking, really.
8 December 2006 at 9.43 pm · Filed under Culture, Technology
(Testing, testing, 1-2-3… is this thing on?)
Sometimes I love The Open Source Community and sometimes I don’t. Right now I am kind of mad at them for being so stupid.
The Firefox people have complained that other free, open-source projects including Firefox should agree to the Firefox terms. Under their terms, the code is totally free (“free as in freedom”), but the name and logo are property of Mozilla, so people have to license them correctly.
For whatever childish reason, the other people who are distributing Firefox refuse to sign on to these terms. It’s probably because copyrights are the devil’s spawn and anyone using one will have their hands turn black and fall off due to the sheer evilness. No, we should all be living under a Berkeley-style people’s republic with “copylefts” giving us all rights to everything.
So, it has come down to this: two open-source camps, one providing operating systems like Debian and Ubuntu, and the other providing a great web browser like Firefox, can’t work out their differences, and the solution is to rename Firefox. To… Iceweasel. Oh sure, the weasel was randomly chosen, has nothing to do with the weaselly tendencies of the Firefox people or their lawyers. And they’re already hard at work, wasting peoples’ time creating proposed icons for the new project. (My favorite weasel is shown here.)
As hard as it is to get people to consider alternate operating systems, why do we need to confuse them with these stupid little battles? Why are we expending precious energy making “new” things that actually don’t do anything different? And why do we keep choosing ridiculous names for products?! (I’ll never forgive the people who named their Image Manipulation Program “the GIMP.”)
By the way, I’m back. I’m sorry I’ve been away so long! A lot has been happening, which I’ll tell you about in the next posting.
22 April 2006 at 10.39 pm · Filed under City life, Culture, Political
Today Arnie and I were riding our bikes through the Deaf School Park, enjoying the topiary garden (unfamiliar? click here to visit the “only topiary interpretation of a painting in existence”), when we came across an equally elaborate but less placid tableau.
A drawn, haggard old white guy, dressed horribly in an ugly, too-warm-looking red plaid long-sleeved shirt buttoned all the way to the top, was sitting on one of the benches. While the upper crust cavorted on the Grande Jatte behind him, three youngish-looking college types used two cameras and two microphones to conduct an “interview.” I have to use quotes around that word because for the whole five or six minutes we were there trying to enjoy the scene, he was continuously and bitterly complaining about the Delaware County Board of Elections and various other “criminals” who had collaborated to throw the 2004 election to George Bush. “Every time I’d call down there, they’d say ‘I only have preliminary results, these could change.’ They sure did!” He didn’t pause to slow down as his ire shifted to various precinct captains who, undoubtedly, must have been in on it too. It was remarkably venomous given the gorgeous temperatures and peaceful setting.
Well, I couldn’t resist giving the college kids a good show and an unscripted moment to include in their documentary as they saw fit, so as we lazily pedaled by I called out, “It’s over! It’s over!” Taken aback but only for a second, the man grunted back, “Yeah, our democracy is over, big deal, right?” I rolled my eyes. (I hope I’m in some new hippie movie!)
What you gonna do. If the election was fraudulent in Ohio, it would have taken the complicity of hundreds of election workers in both parties. Under our laws, the two main parties have equal representation at each county board of elections, and any party representative can challenge the qualifications of any voter. We lost, pal, and most likely fair and square. It’s a beautiful spring day. If you want to do something productive, change your shirt and go stumping for Jim Petro. You still have ten days to make a difference!
11 April 2006 at 7.47 pm · Filed under Culture, Random
Those jerks at HBO have turned down my latest idea for a TV show, which would compete with a certain Sunday night megahit. My show would be called Disparate Housewives. Each woman character would be totally unique.
3 February 2006 at 10.37 pm · Filed under City life, Culture, Funny stories
Just thought I would inform everyone that The Happy Greek, Columbus’ 2nd-best hummus provider, has again taken the prize for slowest possible hummus sale. A phone call to that jocular Mediterranean to order the famous food yielded no clue that the order was going to take a record 26 minutes to be prepared. Allegedly, the hummus is made while you wait. Oddly, though, when you order it at the dinner table it comes almost immediately. Why does this restaurant hate its loyal call-ahead customers, who don’t tie up the limited table space or bother the help?
29 January 2006 at 11.20 pm · Filed under City life, Culture, Funny stories, Random
As you may know, I recently had a few people around for a party and decided it would be a good idea to settle the question: who makes the best hummus in Columbus? Over twenty people voted and I tabulated the results. There’s something for everyone. Go to my Columbus hummus challenge page and see the results.
Also, Sondra commented that my embarrassing videos weren’t available online. I had some filename issues, but they’re resolved now. Help yourself at the climbing page.
28 January 2006 at 12.40 pm · Filed under Culture
Much ado has been made lately over the case of Winfrey v. Frey, the public tiff between the Queen of Pages and the author who fabricated large parts of his criminal history so as to arouse the sympathy of his readers. While I thought the whole affair was a carnival sideshow to begin with, I am pleased that The O had a change of mind and brought James Frey back to justice. While her sheep are hers to command, I’m glad she is herding them back to an appreciation of the truth. It will be interesting to see whose stock rises faster now, hers or his.
Predictably, the evil publishing industry and its media minstrels have been falling over themselves to “debate” the issue of whether nonfiction should be true. I find the whole thing rather distressing, because I believe that books are sacred and not to be trifled with. Call me naive, but the idea of an author, editor, or publisher knowingly permitting outright lies to go into a book offends me deeply.
On the other hand, it is amusing for bookwatchers to act as though this kind of thing has never happened before, and that’s the main reason for this post. I was reminded by some of the Frey coverage that John Berendt was similarly involved in a controversy over his book, Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil. Not only did I buy this book, it inspired me to take a trip to Savannah so I could see it for myself. Only after I got back did I learn just how much had been made up in his story. This Columbia Journalism Review article from 1998 lists some of Berendt’s sins (not all, I should note, are admitted by him). The most egregious in my mind is the allegation that he did not really start hanging around Savannah until 1985, four years after the murder that is the central event of the story, but there are several other slips and misstatements. Several of these problems, I researched, made it into national newspapers.
I think it is interesting to compare this historical book “flap” (pun couldn’t have been avoided) with today’s. Both authors were embarrassed in the national press. Both prompted a nominal “debate” over the fate of nonfiction. And both sold like a jillion copies. Nothing much changes, it seems.
27 January 2006 at 12.12 pm · Filed under Culture, Technology, The law
I couldn’t help writing a rejoinder to those defenders of Google Book Search and, of course, good old Banks. Because everyone should have the right to own their own content, however, I’ve posted it here on Before. Why should World get all the good material? For those who haven’t been following this storyline, start at Marcus’ original post on Google Book Search, then read my comment, followed by his “redux” second posting.
I’m glad we can open this debate because I think it is a very interesting issue lying at the intersection of the law, technology, and books, which are all topics Marcus and I enjoy. By way of flattery, I should note that Marcus Banks has always been my favorite published book author and I am aware he’s representing himself both as a writer and a reader. Now on to the discussion.
I’m still troubled by some of the arguments advanced in Google’s favor. However nice or wonderful it would be to have every book in the world instantly searchable on the Internet, we cannot ignore the steady policy and laws of all the world’s democratic governments just because somebody would like to have that index.
Marcus claims that because some of the books have “absolutely no commercial significance to the publishers” somehow immunizes Google from abridging the copyright of the publisher or author. Unfortunately, our laws don’t permit an infringer to make their own assessment of a work’s commercial significance and, if they find it to be zero, to use with impunity. Further, I think the fact that the books are scanned shows they do have some commercial significance to Google. And perhaps many of these titles have been out of print for years: as Google clearly plans to demonstrate, these old books have a value that can be unlocked by the technologies of scanning and indexing.
And, since each book does have indisputable value, why should Google be the one to profit from the unlocking of that value? They’re not the author who wrote the book. They’re not the publishers who took a chance and made an investment in the book. They’re not even the libraries who shelled out a few bucks to buy the book. They have no stake in the business of writing books at all. So why should they benefit to the exclusion of the authors and publishers who do? It’s argued that our copyright laws are out of date, so there should be some special exception for the Googles of the world. But inventing a new technology is not some magic wand or shield that, when produced, defeats all claims held by the original creator and owner of a work. The MP3 pirates learned that the hard way.
And I have to disagree that the appropriation of property with no monetary value can’t be “theft” or even just plain wrong. I myself have been a victim of copyright infringement, so I know what it’s like. I posted a rather ridiculous video of myself on my web site scaling down the face of an artificial climbing wall. Months later, I went to the City Center mall and found it was showing on a fifteen-foot-high screen in a continuous loop! This was part of a video advertising all the fun things that might be found in a great downtown (for the record, the rock-climbing happened at Easton). Did my video have any monetary value? No. Did the company that stole my work and aired it thousands of times in a very public forum derive a commercial benefit? Yes — else why do it. Did they have, at the very minimum, the courteous obligation to ask whether they could use it? I think the answer to that is clear.
Google argues it would be impractical for them to ask the author or publisher of each book for the rights to scan the book before including it in their permanent digital archive. Therefore, they’re just going to do them all, copyright be damned. A simple analogy to the physical world points up the absurdity in this logic. Google’s stance is like my saying I can drive my car across the backyard of every house in the neighborhood, because it would just take too long to get permission from each homeowner.
Our system of copyright could not be more liberal. In order to claim the copyright on an original work, all the author has to do is put the word “Copyright” and the year on it. Unlike with patents, there is no central registry that authors have to apply to for permission: we just want to encourage creative endeavors by giving them reassurance that they’ll earn the fruits of their labors without interference. No high-flying tech company should be permitted to swoop in and take that away.
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