December 2004 Archives

There has been a debate raging in my head for a while now over a critically important issue. Having discussed it with my family and getting their input, I feel it is time to reveal my decision. But first let me explain what exactly I have been thinking about. How do I want the diminutive of my name spelled? Larsie or Larsy? It’s a tough choice, I know, and it has been a long road figuring it out.

My sister, Kjirsten, says that it should be Larsy since that is how our mother spells it and she gave me the name after all. I think it should be Larsie, but not for any good reason at all, except it seems to make more sense. In the end maternal prerogative won out: Larsy.

Just thought you would like to know.

George Orwell on the public discourse of important issues:

Within any important issue, there are always aspects no one wishes to discuss.

A friend posted this link on blog, under the word “classy.” The link points to an article describing the travails of young woman who tried to wear a confederate flag-themed dress to her senior prom. I can only assume, coming from this person, that Dave meant to imply that wearing the dress was tacky. I’m not convinced, but the bigger question is what right do the school officials have to decide that her tackiness precluded her attendance at the dance. Is wearing the rebel flag a violation of the dress code at the school or the place the dance was held? How many sleeveless and strapless dresses were in attendance that night? How much cleavage was exposed? How many backs were open to view? All of these things are in violation of the dress code at my high school and all were well represented at my senior prom.

I have seen a picture of this dress and it is an impressive piece of work and so not offensive I am shocked at the ruckus it caused. What seems to be the problem here is a group of school officials scared to get sued by someone overly-sensitive to the symbolism that the flag could hold, but does not necessarily. The confederate flag is not a swastika or a white hood and robe, it is the flag of a short-lived country that happened to hold slaves. Should we also ban the flags or symbols of any country that has a sour past? British flags or Portuguese ones? How about the Soviet flag? How about let’s all calm down a little bit, it’s just a dress.

Susan Sontag died today. She was a “writer and a social critic.”

From her obit in the New York Times:

Trained in literature and philosophy, Ms. Sontag was a master synthesist who tackled broad, difficult and elusive subjects: the nature of art, the nature of consciousness and, above all, the nature of the modern condition. Where many American critics before her had mined the past, Ms. Sontag became an evangelist of the new, training her eye on the culture unfolding around her, a radical stance at the time.

A Japanese scientific institute (AIST) has produced an animation of the Sumatra earthquake-induced tsunami. It is spectacular and frightening at the same time. Check it out.

The 40th Anniversary of Mary Poppins is coming up and for the occasion Disney wil be showing a digitally remastered version on TV. In today’s new York Times there is a write-up about the movie but I have not yet been able to figure out what i sth epoint of it.

According to the Times Mary Poppins is not a nanny but a hippie who ignores her charges, meddles with the family, hangs out with her boyfriend during work, and then disappars without a trace, leaving behind a mess of lives. Somehow it seems that the film’s ’60s flair makes it further offensive, as it is “really” supposed to be set in 1910.

A sample:

Mary’s first shortcoming as a nanny, in fact, is that she ignores the lady of the house, Mrs. Winifred Banks (Glynis Johns), with whom she never shares a significant scene. She evidently doesn’t take Mrs. Banks’s political activism seriously. Mrs. Banks is a saucer-eyed, doll-faced “suffragette,” copiously satirized, whose opening number is about the silly thrill of feminine civil disobedience. “She was carried off to prison!” she trills, of a friend. “Singing and scattering pamphlets the whole way!”

The movie does dramatize the unavoidable proximity of middle-class children to the kind of demimonde types - hippies, hobos, loners - who disproportionately get involved in children’s entertainment. But the makeshift populist politics of the movie, in which the working-class figures enlighten the others and then discreetly vanish, come in second to its hallucinatory aesthetic: the combination of live action, music-hall numbers, animation, stop-action, stop-motion, wirework, Disney’s elaborate audio-animatronics, and set design that combined images from Monet and Broadway’s candy colors.

I have never read a move review (if that wat it was intended to be) that so thoroughly removes the imagination and whimsy from the moviegoing experience only to replaces it with analytical trash psychology.

The image of the last drops of a Diet Coke.

[via curiousLess Photography]

My boss pointed out that, while I whine a lot about the hydrogenated oil in almost every food around me, I drink a Diet Coke every morning for breakfast and don’t bat an eye at the aspartame content. It’s true, I have a selective health initiatives disorder (SHID). H.O. makes me sick but I will eat almost anything else, especially if it’s fatty and full of sugar.

When I preach about H.O. I usually get a variation on the theme: Everything in moderation, I am going to enjoy my life and not stress about what bad things are in my food. What’s funny is that’s my attitude as well (about everything except H.O.). In that spirit here is a good motto from a coworker:

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out, screaming, ‘What a ride!!’

Prince Charles has managed to stick his foot in his mouth yet again. This time a letter he wrote about people whining whenever life isn’t fair, and then making a federal case about it — literally. He was highly indelicate, but his basic premise is sound, if you ask me. Andrew Sullivan manages to make a good case in his defense. Which basically boils down to a few choice points:

The grievance culture does indeed often lead people to claim discrimination when they are merely not being promoted for good reasons. The self-esteem fad does indeed prize confidence in oneself over the harsh measurement of others. Objective standardized tests are highly unpopular among elites, despite the fact that our new elites are largely a product of them.

But learning our own limits is the beginning of wisdom. Some people are simply not as intelligent as others. Some can play the piano brilliantly; others have no clue. I do not regard my own failure to play rugby for the England team as a huge injustice, although my father has yet to recover from it. The world should be glad I am not an accountant. I am not likely to become an Abercrombie and Fitch model. And if I consistently nagged and begged assorted model agencies to hire me, I would have no case. Isn’t that really what the prince was saying?

Charles is right to bemoan the notion that anyone can do anything; and that if they don’t, some injustice is somehow being perpetrated. That injustice is called life.

An open market society with an effective educational system in an economy that increasingly values brain-power over brawn will lead inexorably to greater and greater inequality. And that inequality may be even less tolerable for those at the bottom than in days gone by. We can ameliorate this. But even if we improve the education system, the result is greater efficiency in advancing inequality. Human envy will not die. Neither will differences in human ability. And resentment will grow.

Is there any way out? The only answer, I think, is cultural and morall. We have to decouple the notion of virtue and worth from material success. I don’t think it’s an accident that we see greater emphasis on religious faith and moral values at a time when our economy is increasingly rewarding people on the brutal basis of market worth. It’s a way of correcting for inequality, by reminding people that their dignity inheres in something far more profound than their pay-check or social status.

Mark Simone, WABC radio host.

There are certain things you want to avoid like an aloof Beacon Hill windsurfer with a crazy gypsy wife… I mean, why that didn’t play in the heartland I’ll never understand.

Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean) opposing an attempt to criminalize speech in Britain.

To criticise a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous but to criticise their religion - that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticise ideas - any ideas even if they are sincerely held beliefs - is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. And the law which attempts to say you can criticise or ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed. It all points to the promotion of the idea that there should be a right not to be offended. But in my view the right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended. The right to ridicule is far more important to society than any right not to be ridiculed because one in my view represents openness - and the other represents oppression.

[via Andrew Sullivan]

Last week the President signed a huge spending bill that happened to include a small provision inserted by a Republican congressman from Alabama that requires every federal agency to have a privacy office. The Dept. of Homeland Security already has a chief privacy officer whose job it is to ensure that new technologies and rules comply with existing federal privacy law, like the Privacy Act of 1974.

Maybe things aren’t going to be so bad after all, folks. Hope.

If you’re a guy and use a laptop, you might want to watch out for your bits and pieces. A new study is showing that the heat from laptops combined with awkward posture can raise the temperature around your package. Apparently this type of thing can lead to fertility issues.

[Read more at the Times]

What can ten bucks do? CHeck out Margaret Berry’s piece on The Morning News, “Viture: Ten Bucks”. She has compiled a list of charities and what they can do with your $10.

My personal favorite is Helping Hands, which trains monkeys to help quadriplegics — sort of like seeing eye dogs, but smaller and more human-like.

‘Tis the season, people.