Author Archives: Frank Moraes

About Frank Moraes

Frank Moraes is a freelance writer and editor online and in print. He is educated as a scientist with a PhD in Atmospheric Physics. He has worked in climate science, remote sensing, throughout the computer industry, and as a college physics instructor. Find out more at About Frank Moraes.

Ants, God, and E O Wilson

Posted on by
Reply

E O WilsonThe great biologist E O Wilson is 85 years old today. He is controversial because of his work in sociobiology. This is the idea that social behavior is evolutionarily determined—at least in part. This comes out of his study of ants and their social behavior. It seems to me that rejecting this idea is a very typical kind of human error of thought. It is the idea that somehow humans are special and thus in some sense a quantum step removed. I realize that when people like Stephen Jay Gould argue against it, they are making a more sophisticated case. But I still just don’t see the big deal here.

I’m more interested in Wilson’s ideas about religion. He claims that the three forms of religious believe are, “Marxism, traditional religion, and scientific materialism.” This is the kind of thing that drives atheists crazy. But that’s just because they don’t really understand what he’s saying. What we are talking about are belief systems. Although I count myself an atheist, it does bug me that most atheists don’t seem to understand that scientific materialism is a belief system. The problem is that after hundreds of years of rationalist thought, it is now like the air: we don’t even know the assumptions we are making.

Even more frustrating is that most theists are also scientific materialists—at least in the sense that they see God as something outside of this reality. And this brings us to Gould and his idea of non-overlapping magisteria—that there is no crossover between religion and science. The New Atheists seem to hate this idea, and I really can’t understand why. What I think is going on is that atheists have a strong tendency to argue against the most primitive forms of theism. (Theists do exactly the same thing to atheists.) Wilson does a lot of talking to religious groups about the partnership of science and religion.

Personally, I think that’s a hard one. I agree with it in theory. The problem is that religion has become so much a commodity and Americans have accepted such pathetic and childish answers to theological questions. I don’t see how you have an adult conversation with people trained to think so childishly. The other side of this is that the atheist community has no interest in having such a partnership. Most of them hold the equally childish view that traditional religion will be wiped out and replaced by scientific materialism. That will never happen.

Wilson thinks this is because of the way that the species evolved. There is much to that. Humans need to create narratives and they are going to create them whether there is a narrative or not. But I think the problem is even more fundamental than this. There is a paradox of existence. It is mathematical in nature. We will never unraveled it because of our parochial nature. It is perfectly fine for the materialists to just ignore that paradox. But there will always be people who find that paradox upsetting and who want answers. Not only are these people not going away; they will always be a large majority.

So I’m with Wilson: let people have their myths and their tribes and their “answers” to the great riddle of the universe. And let us all work together for a greater society. Scientific materialism can be a cold way of looking at our fellow humans—it can easily lead to rearing children in boxes. And regardless, look at the libertarian-atheist connection. Religion can be humanizing, precisely because it presents the fiction of the specialness of humans. It doesn’t matter to me that people are wrong. If we can create a more perfect society, I’m for it. And I’m afraid those atheists who think religion will go away are not being very scientific about that idea. It is a matter of faith. I don’t share that faith. Wilson has done a lot of scientific study on the issue and he doesn’t see religion going away. I think we should take him seriously. And we should get on with the business of making life better for all humans.

Happy birthday E O Wilson!

Afterword

You may be thinking, “This guy hates theists and atheists! Doesn’t he like anyone?!” Yes I do: I like smart and thoughtful theists and atheists. There just aren’t a whole lot of them around. It’s not too surprising that I feel this way, because I am kind of in the middle in the sense that I am like the theists in that I find the paradox upsetting but I’m like the atheists in that I expect no answer.

Mike Lee’s “Busy” Year

Posted on by
Reply

Mike LeeDerek Willis over at The Upshot had a little fun at Congress’ expense, Do-Nothing Congress? These Members Did Something (Annual Reports). Since Congress doesn’t really pass any legislation and since earmarks are gone, it’s hard for our representatives in Congress to show that they’ve actually been working. So some of them are producing yearly reports.

Actually, I’m not against this at all. Reports are useful. For example, most Californians don’t know that our Senator Boxer is the chair of the Environment and Public Works committee. So it’s good to let the people know what these people are doing. But in a great example of professional level snark, Willis wrote, “Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, was among the members of Congress who wrote an annual report to detail his activities. At 357 pages, it included all his tweets from 2013.”

Of course, that’s not all that Mike Lee has been up to. After all, since 2009, he’s only tweeted out 2,763 such delights as this:

What does he fill up all those pages with? Well, for one thing: letters. Not ones he wrote, of course. Ha! That would be too time consuming. Ones he signed. (That can be exhausting depending upon the weight of the pen.) For example, he signed, “Letter to President Obama on the Russian Adoption Ban” (May 31, 2013). And that was just him—and 153 others. But still.

There are also a number of press releases. For example, would you believe that Mike Lee introduced a Balanced Budget Amendment? Who would have thought? Probably the reason you didn’t hear about is because it didn’t go anywhere because its purpose was the same as most of what Mike Lee does: publicize Mike Lee and what a great guy he is. Everyone loves the idea of a balanced budget. The fact that it is a terrible idea is why we haven’t enacted one.

Lee also has a lot of “reactions.” Like on 26 Jun 2013, he was “disappointed” that the Supreme Court didn’t understand that fags getting married was gonna ruin it for all the good God fearing straight couples around. He also sponsored measures like S 1616 that was, “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance.” That’s as far as it got, but you know: that’s about as far as Mike Lee ever gets. Did I mention he hates fags?

After about a hundred pages of that, we get to the sexy stuff: Constituent Outreach. That’s where we learn in one nifty info graphic that Mike Lee provided 81,089 written responses. If you’ve ever asked for a response from a representative, you know that these are written by computers. His “mobile office” visited 29 counties. He sent 5,850 letters to Boy Scouts, which I don’t think has anything to do with the Boy Scout pedophilia scandals. He had 629 meetings with constituents. I wonder: does that include lobbyists? Because if it does, that’s probably 621 lobbyist meetings and 8 meetings with actual voters. But I’m cynical.

A total of 311,544 “mail” was received. What does that mean? I don’t know. It must be mostly email messages. And I doubt it matters. But what does matter—and it matters a lot—is that Lee has distributed 1,150 servings of Jell-O. I have no idea what that’s about, but it creeps me out. I don’t think I will ever again be able to eat that delicious dessert.

And on it goes. It includes letters from constituents who tell Mike Lee that he is doing a hell of a job. And there is one letter from a young child who seems to be about in the third grade. The letter is about how this child would really like Lee to do something about Obamacare. Why? “I am against paying for some else’s insurance.” And you thought the Jell-O was creepy! Even better: Mike Lee’s office does not block the name or address of this poor child who I’m sure is not responsible for the letter. It is rather too specific. What 8-year-old says, “Have a good one!”?

There is also an infographic on media outreach where we learn that his website gets 41,392 average visits per month. That shocked me! That’s about half of the number of people who visit Frankly Curious, which is (you know) a tiny blog. But there were 18 occasions on which editors were so desperate that they allowed Mike Lee to write an editorial. And then it ends with his twitter feed.

There is no conclusion—nothing to wrap up the important work that Mike Lee did last year. Which I think is the proper conclusion. Because having gone through the whole report—page by page—it doesn’t seem like he did much. There is a lot of repetition. For example, press releases at the beginning are shown pretty much unaltered at the end under “media outreach.” After 357 pages, I think Mike Lee is a slacker.

Elvie Thomas and Geeshie Wiley

Posted on by
5

LV Elvie ThomasFor many years, I have been fascinated by the blue duo Elvie Thomas and Geeshie Wiley. They recorded a handful of songs in 1930 that are classics to people like me who love all that old blues music from the Mississippi Delta. (But read on.) In addition to it being really unique in that here you have two great blues singers and guitar players working together, there was the fact that we didn’t know anything about them. And I did look into it. But unlike Robert Johnson who we at least have lots of legends about, there was nothing about these two. But then I found this amazing article by John Jeremiah Sullivan in The New York Times magazine, The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie. It was subtitled, “On the trail of the phantom women who changed American music and then vanished without a trace.”

If you are interested in this music or the period or just the work that ethnomusicologists do, stop reading right now and go read the article. It is fantastic. A great mystery is unraveled right before you. But I will warn you: at the end, you will want more. It is a very long article, however. I’ll give you the lowdown here. And the first thing I should probably do is introduce you to Geeshie and Elvie. Although most people who are into this kind of music would totally disagree, my favorite of their tunes is “Pick Poor Robin Clean.” I also think it is the best introduction to them:

One thing that is most interesting about this whole story is the centrality of Mack McCormick, an ethnomusicologist who knows more about this period than anyone else in the world. From the age of 16, he’s investigated 888 counties in the south. He is now 83 years old with tens of thousands of pages of interviews, photos, and much else documented. It is his life’s work, yet most of it has never been released because, having collected the data he finds himself under the crushing burden of trying to make sense of it all.

What’s interesting to me is that I know of McCormick because I went through a phase when I was crazy for Robert Johnson. I still am as far as his music goes; but I don’t especially care about his life story anymore. And the reason I don’t is because I read an interview with McCormick where he laid out the case that we probably don’t know anything about Johnson. Basically, regionally Johnson was such a star that there were a lot of Robert Johnson impersonators. Not in the sense we think of with Elvis Impersonators, but a lot of blues singers of that time just grabbed the name. So the story of Robert Johnson getting poisoned by a jealous husband? Maybe that was the guy who created those songs we love; and maybe not.

What I didn’t know was that this was just one small part of McCormick’s work. And in an interview with John Jeremiah Sullivan, McCormick revealed that he had interviewed a woman near Houston, TX in 1961 by the name of LV Thomas who used to be a professional blues musician. Through a lot of twists and turns, we learn that LV was in fact Elvie. She had always lived in Houston, so she wasn’t from Mississippi at all. Even though Geeshie is now the more famous one, Elvie was the veteran. Four years ago, I wrote a short article complaining that not only did Wikipedia not have a page on Elvie Thomas, when she was mentioned on the Geeshie Wiley page, it claimed she was a man! That should give you some idea of just how exciting this new information is.

Apparently, Wiley’s real name was Lillie Mae. It was LV who gave her the nickname Geeshie, which was slang for something like a country bumpkin. Geeshie seems to have come from Louisiana originally—or maybe even Mexico. She was in her early 20s when the recordings where made whereas Elvie was almost 40. So the power structure seems pretty clear. After those recordings, it seems they worked together for another four years when LV found God and decided that her music days were Satanic.

But the most interesting thing is that LV was a lesbian. I don’t know if that was why she was hiding in the church. Baptists have lots of funny ideas about the world. Regardless, one year after the recording was made, Geeshie murdered her husband—stabbed him in the neck. But we know she didn’t go to jail for it, because she and LV continued to perform together for three years after that. What’s more, in 1961, LV indicated that she knew where Geeshie was—west Texas, supposedly. It is speculated that Geeshie could have gotten off by claiming self-defense. She and her husband were black and the authorities didn’t much care regardless.

This raises all kinds of interesting questions. Could LV and Geeshie have been lovers? Did Geeshie kill her husband because he found out about their affair? Did LV find God after Geeshie dumped her? There are too many great novels that could be written with the fragmentary information that we have. But what’s most frustrating is that McCormick did another interview with LV during which she was apparently more forthcoming. And we don’t know at all what she said. (McCormick seems to be a bit difficult—but he’s allowed.)

At least for now, we have the music. Here is Geeshie singing the blood curdling “Skinny Leg Blues”:

And here is Elvie singing the strangely titled “Motherless Child Blues”:

Oh, one last thing. We do now have one picture of LV Thomas when she was in her 80s. That’s what’s at the top of this article.

Conservatives Think Communism Is One Election Away

Posted on by
Reply

Paul WaldmanPaul Waldman asked a great question over at The Plum Line today, How Much Does Right-Wing Rhetoric Contribute to Right-Wing Terrorism? He’s very careful not to ruffle any feathers by claiming that people like Michele Bachmann are actually culpable, “But what I am saying is this: there are some particular features of conservative political rhetoric today that help create an atmosphere in which violence and terrorism can germinate.” He goes on to talk about the “fetishization of firearms” and the idea that Obama is turning the United States into a totalitarian dystopia.

I don’t think the firearms are the problem—I think they are a symptom. He’s closer to what’s going on in the second of his reasons. There is a very big problem on the right that when the Democrats are in control, those on the right act like a revolution has taken place. When Bush the Younger was elected, liberals were very unhappy. But the reaction of liberals was not, “This is the end of America as we know it!” It was more along the lines of, “Well, this is going to make things worse.”

I want to be clear on this distinction. I like political extremists because I like people who care about politics, even if they are total idiots. Libertarians and socialists alike have a whole bunch of stuff that they don’t like about the current state of governance in this country. Neither of them are particularly well served by either party. But people on the left don’t flip out and say that just because a Republican is in the White House it is the end of the 40-hour work week. But people on the right do flip out and say that just because a Democrat is in the White House the black helicopters are coming to kill your children.

Waldman provided an excellent example of this. Senator Ron Johnson, about as mainstream a guy as the Republicans have, said of Obamacare, “So we’re going to the Supreme Court, begging them please, please allow us this one last shred of freedom.” Of course, I think Waldman was being way too charitable when he said that Johnson was speaking metaphorically. I don’t think Johnson or any of the people who talk this way really know what they think. They just have this automatic reaction that any liberal policy is the end of freedom. Their precursors said the same things about Social Security and Medicare and unemployment insurance and the minimum wage and the 40-hour work week and just about any other policy you can think of that is now uncontroversial.

Years ago, I was confused when conservatives would talk about the “liberal media.” This was long before Fox News. Eventually I realized that to them, “liberal” simply meant “not conservative.” So it is very basic to the way conservatives see the world that when a Democrat is in the White House it must mean that there has been a Soviet style takeover of the country. Now, they would claim that when a Republican is in the White House, the country is at best just treading water. But that’s just apologia. The truth is that the far right calm down completely when the Republicans are in charge. Waldman explained:

In our recent history, every election of a Democratic president is followed by a rise in conspiracy-obsessed right-wing populism. In the 1960s it was the John Birch Society; in the 1990s it was the militia movement shouting about black UN helicopters, and during the Obama presidency it was the Tea Party.

In the Clinton years, it looked like there might well be active revolt by the militia movement. But then Bush was elected and: poof!

Democracy is about a lot more than voting. It would not be a democracy if every time a different party got control the the government everything changed. There is no government for four years and then the government owns everything for the next four years. Democracy depends upon a certain level of consistency. And the conservative elites understand this, because they have been hugely successful at slowly moving this country to the right such that when the liberal party proposes healthcare reform, it does it in the most conservative, market-based way possible. But the conservative base does not understand this.

Again, we must come back to the pernicious effects of the DLC and the Democrats’ move to the right on economic policy. This has given those on the right the idea that socialism is capitalism with a tiny amount of government regulation. This is the great threat that our democracy faces, because both sides need to see the full extent of possible political debate. But on economic issues the Democrats now occupy the position that just four decades ago was considered center right. So the conservative base thinks that “far left” is defined as whatever the Democrats think. Thus something like Obamacare that is a tiny step to the left is socialism.

So the right is very confused. But they have good reasons for being confused. And the only way out of this mess is for the Democratic Party to play its proper part in our two party system and move to the left. Sadly, this can’t be done too quickly. It took as 30 years to get into this mess, it will take another 30 to get us out of it. As it is, I wouldn’t rule out armed rebellion by right wing groups who think that the end is nigh. But the critical issue that that Democrats have to learn what Republicans have long know: it isn’t about winning elections; it’s about controlling the debate. We need to greatly expand the debate. The world is out of control when Bill O’Reilly receives no ridicule for saying Dana Milbank is from the “far left.” That’s a world in which you’ve got Charles Krauthammer on the left, Milbank on the far left and Paul Krugman in hell as the Prince of Darkness. And that’s just crazy, especially when you consider that Paul Krugman isn’t all that liberal.

Revelation Predicted Muhammad?!

Posted on by
Reply

Obama the Anti-ChristI just happened upon an email that has apparently been bouncing around since before Obama was even elected president, The Book of Revelation Describes the Anti-Christ as Someone With Characteristics Matching Those of Barack Obama. I know, I know: crazy right wing conspiracies are nothing new. I suspect there were people claiming that every president, regardless of party, since Roosevelt (pick one) was in fact that anti-Christ. Revelation may have a terrible track record, but the track record of the prediction that people will make nutty predictions based upon Revelation is solid as the law of gravitation.

But some of these things are just too delicious. Anyway, there is only one part of this that I love. Here it is:

According to the Book of Revelation the anti-Christ is: a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal… [Note: I removed a number of grammar, spelling, and other errors from that quote; no need to make the people look any worse than necessary.]

Okay, let’s think this through a little bit. The Book of Revelation was written somewhere around the year 95 AD, at the end of the first century—just like much of the New Testament. Muhammad was born sometime in the late sixth century. So it would be pretty amazing if the Book of Revelation really mentioned anything about Muslims. I mean, if it did, everyone would be in agreement that Revelation really does predict the future.

And what does it mean to be of “Muslim descent.” I understand that one can be “racially” Jewish. But Islam isn’t like that—especially for Kenyan Muslims. Of course, this is entirely typical of right wing extremists. Remember the guy who hated Muslims so he killed six people at a Sikh temple? The level of religious ignorance in this country is staggering. We really ought to have religion taught in school, but unfortunately, most people who agree with me don’t want comparative religious studies, they want Christian indoctrination.

Remember when Phil Robertson pronounced that non-Christians were just violent? I wrote, Why Would Anyone Think Jesus Makes You Non-Violent? He even said something that I thought was hilarious: Nazis didn’t have Jesus, even though they were explicitly Christian. But as I noted in the article, “But what about Jainism?” The Jains are the most non-violent people in the world. They literally won’t hurt a bug. Yet most Americans would see them as the same as Muslims: one of those foreign religions.

Now, I know: the Book of Revelation is a wacky bit of literature that seems like it was written by someone having a bad LSD trip. And like Nostradamus’ writing, you can read anything you want into it. But I still think it is funny as hell. Why not just claim that it says the anti-Christ will be the first black president of the United States? “You know, the one that talks pretty?!”

Given the very real economic issues that face this country, I find these kind of unhinged rantings amusing. But in the grand scheme of thing, they are dangerous. I’ll be writing more about that later today.

La Chanteuse Barbara

Posted on by
4

BarbaraOn this day in 1930, the great singer-songwriter Monique Andree Serf, better known as simply “Barbara,” was born. She was a French Jew who had to hide out during the Nazi occupation of the country, and overall had a pretty bad childhood. She later became a cabaret singer. But it was not until she started writing her own longs that her career really took off. According to Stephen Evans at the BBC, her song “Goettingen” was more important in reconciling Germany and France after World War II than Charles de Gaulle’s 1962 speech in Ludwigsburg. I’m not that fond of the song—it’s kind of theoretical with lines like, “Mais les enfants ce sont les memes, a Paris ou a Goettingen” (“But children are the same, in Paris or in Goettingen”).

Barbara was at her best when she was being extremely personal—and that was most of the time. No one can make me cry as easily as she can. It isn’t just the writing. Her cool delivery makes it all seem so factual—like she’s saying, “I’m just telling you what happened.” There is also the sense that she is on the verge of losing it too.

But as is typical of a chanteuse, her songs told complicated, even deep, stories. A great example of this is her song “Nantes,” about coming to see her estranged father before he dies and arriving too late. This is not a great recording, but it is the only one I could find with English subtitles (although they aren’t very good subtitles). Prepare to be affected:

Happy birthday Barbara!

Ultimately Obama Will Be Judged on the Economy

Posted on by
3

Obama HopeJonathan Chait has published a nice little pick-me-up for discouraged Democrats, Obama Promised to Do 4 Big Things As President. Now He’s Done Them All. The four big things are: economic recovery, healthcare reform, climate change, and education reform. Barring the courts interfering with the new power plant regulations, he has done major things on all of these.

Chait rightly points out that one can complain that he didn’t do enough (if you’re on the left) or he did the wrong things (if you’re crazy). But you can’t deny that he has accomplished a lot. The “hapless mediocrity” meme on the right ought to be dead. And I’ll go further than Chait in one way, I think that Obama did all this despite more resistance than any president has ever faced. So yeah, Dodd-Frank is a really weak law and not even close to what we need. But given the Congress that he had, we should be impressed with what we did get.

There’s one thing that I disagree with Chait about, “What’s no longer possible is to imagine that historians will look back at Obama’s presidency and conclude not much got done.” He’s basing that statement on the fact that Obama did what he said he was going to do. But that isn’t how presidents are judged. To be honest, the way historians judge presidents are no less fickle than the way the people judge them. The only difference is that historians have a longer list of presidents to judge.

And how do the people judge presidents? On one thing: how the economy was when they left office. And in that regard, I think that Obama will do okay. But he won’t be remembered like Reagan and Clinton are remembered. They are both remembered well because the economy had been struggling when they came into office and it took off midway through their presidencies. The fact that neither president really deserves any credit for this—that it was was just dumb luck—doesn’t really matter. If the economy continues to improve, Obama will be remembered for that. Otherwise, I don’t think it much matters.

Think about Richard Nixon. I know he’s a special case, but the man did start the EPA. Do normal people even know that? Is he given much credit for it? I know that Obamacare is a big deal, but the way the law was created, it was designed to not seem like a law at all. More people will get Medicaid. Most won’t know whether they would have qualified before or not. The exchanges and the subsidies will just become part of what everyone does and no one will think about it. Healthcare inflation has been reduced? Hooray! That means once Republicans get back into power, they will have more money to waste on tax cuts for the rich and their beloved crony capitalism.

In the end, Obama will be judged on the economy. And there really were things that he could have done to make things a lot better. But to do that, he needed a willing partner in Congress. He didn’t have that, even when Congress was controlled by the Democrats. And I’m not sure Obama himself understood the economic situation correctly. So if the economy continues to improve, history will say he was a pretty good president—maybe even a damned good president. But just like with Reagan and Clinton before him, it won’t actually say anything about him.

Support James Risen and Press Freedom

Posted on by
Reply

James RisenNormally, I do not go in for pure advocacy, but this really struck me. Even after Attorney General Eric Holder said that no reporters would go to jail for not revealing a source, it looks very much like The New York Times reporter James Risen is set to go to jail for not revealing a source. This is yet another one of those cases where the government is using the Espionage Act of 1917 against pretty much everyone. In this case, it is ex-CIA agent Jeffrey Alexander Sterling. The information that he revealed to Risen was so important that no one seems to know what it was. Was Sterling a pissed off ex-employee? Sure. Was he also a whistleblower? Based upon the content of State of War, he definitely was.

Of course, we live in the country where you go to jail simply because you piss off the wrong people. The government doesn’t need Risen to testify in order to throw Sterling in jail. It is just an act of government intimidation of the media. (Given how accommodating the media are to the government, I don’t see the need.) This is exactly the kind of thing that used to make me so angry about the Bush administration. It’s even worse with our current president. We all thought his being a constitutional law professor would make him uphold the Constitution more. But it’s turned out that he just uses his knowledge to get around it.

Anyway, Roots Action has a petition that I really think you ought to sign, We Support James Risen Because We Support a Free Press. I’ve signed it and I rarely sign petitions. So please, go over there. This is kind of important. Hopeless, I suppose; but important.

Problems With Split Screens

Posted on by
Reply

FrameupThere are two reasons that I don’t understand anonymous blogging and both of them act as reasons for blogging anonymously. First, I’m a narcissist. Writing is an extension of me and I can’t imagine doing it without getting credit for it, even though I mostly do it to please myself. Second, I’m an idiot who allowed my privacy to be so compromised that I just don’t think anything is still available to be used against me. It’s this second thing that seems to bother most anonymous bloggers. They are afraid that what they write might hurt them at work. That is a sad commentary on life in America.

Let’s think about that for a moment. One of my biggest problems with libertarians is that they have this ridiculous idea that it is only the government who can limit your liberty, “Because only the government has a military.” Or some variant. It’s ridiculous on its own terms. The great innovation in chess over the last many decades have been the hypermodern openings. You see, standard chess theory dictates that you must control the center of the board. But hypermodern theory shows that it is not necessary to occupy the center of the board in order to control it. We’ve seen this with American imperialism where we don’t have to officially own a country to control it. And Walmart doesn’t have to have its own army to control your life.

So I think anonymous blogging is great. But I do wish that anonymous bloggers would provide some information about themselves. And if not that, at least a way to contact them. And if not that, at least a way to comment on their blogging. And this brings to an active little blog, Technology as Nature. I came upon the blog because there were a couple of click-throughs to an article over here. So I went over and checked it out. I assume the author is a man, and he is a pretentious little punk—much like me, but probably a couple of decades younger. But he seems to know what he’s talking about—he agrees with me. In discussing Maya Angelou, he correctly noted that her poetry isn’t very good, but her prose is.

But he asked a question, which cannot be answered because there are no comments on the blog:

Why is 24 the only recent show to have used split screen frequently and successfully?

I don’t know how 24 uses the split screen because I haven’t seen it. I don’t see much television and I’ve specifically avoided that show because I believe it to be torture porn, and as well made as it may be, I don’t want to encourage that. Also, it seems to push the idea that torture works, and that doesn’t seem to be true in the real world. It does, however, say a lot about how we have changed as a culture that in my youth, the fact that a character tortured someone was a bad thing. But let’s put that aside for now.

The split screen is in general a bad thing because it calls attention to itself. It pulls the viewer out of the narrative. And I don’t know of a situation in which it is necessary to tell a story. So it is, as the writer noted in the article, a “stylistic tool.” And as such, a director needs a really good reason to use it. Otherwise, it seems flashy for no good reason. I still see it used, but in more experimental films. Jon Jost used it to great effect in Frameup. In one scene, we see Ricky Lee performing a monologue in front of one of those mugshot backgrounds. On the left, he is looking directly into the camera and on the right, he is seen from the side. I don’t know exactly what Jost was trying to “say” with it, but the effect was electrifying.

Another is Mike Figgis’ Timecode, which I think kind of makes the case for why people should not use split screens. Figgis used the sound editing to clue in the viewer about what is the most important panel to be watching. It raises the question, “Given that cross-cutting has been standard film syntax for a hundred years, why not just cross cut and not inundate me with a lot of narrative that I don’t need?” It’s the equivalent of novels that jump back and forth, chapter by chapter, between two periods. It can be justified at times, but mostly it is just authorial laziness.

The rule should be that you tell the story in the most straightforward way possible. If you use something as flashy as a split-screen it had better be either (1) essential to telling the story or (2) visually stunning. As I said, I don’t see the first condition ever being met. And only people as brilliant as Jon Jost had better try for the second.

Power Abuse by the Power Elite

Posted on by
Reply

Charles J HynesPower concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. — Frederick Douglass

Keep those words in mind. Always. It doesn’t matter how friendly or noble power seems. Power is like the will. Before Obama became president, he seemed like someone who was against the overreach of presidential power. Hell, he still seems that way. Yet his administration has been one of the most abusive of any—just ask John Kiriakou. But that’s old news, I suppose.

Friday, I saw a very interesting article over at Talking Points Memo, Ex-Brooklyn DA Accused of Funneling a Whole Lot of Money to Political Consultant. According to the article, Charles J Hynes used “money seized from drug dealers and other criminal defendants to pay a political consultant in his failed re-election campaign last year.” I just love this because it gets to the very heart of what is wrong with our society. According to the power elite from the 1980s onward, non-sanctioned drug use was so terrible that due process didn’t matter. If the police thought someone was a drug dealer but they couldn’t prove it, they just took his possessions and then it was up to him to prove that he wasn’t a drug dealer.

Notice that the Tea Party and other conservative apologists get up in arms about a 4.9 percentage point increase in the top marginal tax rate. That is tyranny! That is theft! But when it happens to relatively poor people, well, they just don’t care. And the fact that all it has managed to do with all this totally unconstitutional theft is make drugs more available to users, doesn’t really matter. Because it isn’t about protecting the poor drug addict; it is about taking money from the poor and potential interlopers and giving it to the rich and powerful.

In the case of Hynes, he used the money to try (unsuccessfully it turned out) to stay in power. But this was hardly the first time that Hynes had abused his power. There were a number of high profile cases. A good example was his prosecution of John O’Hara for voting in the wrong district—a form of voter fraud. He was prosecuted because O’Hara ran against one of Hynes’ political allies. There are lots of wrongful murder prosecutions too of course. And there is much else, because in addition to simply being a terrible person, Hynes was a District Attorney: the most powerful position in our legal system. And repeat after me, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

But the use of raw government theft from the powerless—something that pretty much everyone in the power elite thinks is just fine—to illegally try to stay in power is almost too much. But it gets better. The money, taken from poor people, was used by Hynes and given to “widely respected jurist” Barry Kamins. Kamins and Hynes discussed how to attack Hynes’ Democratic primary opponent Kenneth P Thompson. But that’s not all. They also discussed pending cases, which I suspect is totally common, but technically wrong, and morally outrageous.

Kamins’ lawyer’s justification was this, “Joe Hynes and Judge Kamins have been good friends for 40 years and have talked politics for much of that time.” He said other things, but that’s the meat of it. And the fact that he (and probably most people in the power elite) think that is fine is a big part of the problem. I don’t want cops being friends with prosecutors; I don’t want prosecutors being friends with judges. For all of those people, the whole legal system is just a game that they get paid to play. But for the people who get arrested and prosecuted and imprisoned, it is something much bigger.

Jabbar Collins spent 15 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit because of misconduct by Hynes’ office. After being freed, Collins sued various prosecutors:

The lawsuit charged that prosecutors in the district attorney’s office routinely coerced witnesses to testify through illegal threats and intimidation, and that Hynes “maintained a policy, custom and/or practice of deliberate indifference to violations by his employees of the constitutional rights of individuals who were investigated and criminally prosecuted.” In a hearing for the lawsuit, Judge Frederic Block said Vecchione’s behavior in Collins’ trial had been “horrendous” and asked the lawyer for the city, “Hynes hasn’t treated it seriously, has he?” In February 2013, Block denied the city’s motion to dismiss the suit, but said that while Collins could move forward in the suit against New York City, Vecchione and the other individual prosecutors named were immune to prosecution.

Which does get to the very core of the issue in the abuses of the power elite. They get promoted and they make money by abusing the powerless. But when they get caught, nothing happens to them. Collins may win his lawsuit, but it won’t be the people who colluded against him who will pay the price. So it makes perfect sense that Hynes and Kamins thought they were above the law—because they pretty much are above the law. And in the end of this, they will get some minor punishment. But it won’t destroy their lives—not like it did the lives of so many poor people who they prosecuted and punished.

Afterword

I cropped that image of Hynes above so that you could see that American flag lapel pin. I just love that. So patriotic! Like most of the power elite, he loves America! It’s just its ideals and people he’s not so hot on.

A Trip to Hell With Jan Frans De Boever

Posted on by
Reply

Jan Frans De BoeverOn this day in 1872, the great Flemish Symbolist painter Jan Frans De Boever was born. I don’t know much about him, even though he was very popular in his own time. He is probably best know for illustrating French Symbolist writer Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil). Both men were quite interested in the intersection of sex and death. Pretty much all of his work seems like the action is taking place in hell.

You can find a lot of his work online, mostly I think, because there are a lot of goth websites and his work goes along with that. But it’s surprising how little actual information there is about his work. As with my experience with Bernard Frouchtben, the art world is fickle. We know far too much about certain artists and not nearly enough about others. The Wikipedia page of De Boever makes three main points about him: he was arrogant, he became popular in the United States were I think he moved, and his work went out of favor toward the end of his life. That’s not a lot to say about a very productive artist who lived almost 78 years. Compare that master’s thesis Wikipedia provides on Vincent van Gogh.

Some of De Boever’s work shows a real sense of humor, although he was generally interest in the symbolism of his work—he was very interested in literature. I mostly just like the look of his work that is very distinctive. Here is Les Danaides. Danaides were from Greek mythology, “The daughters of Danaus, who at their father’s command murdered their bridegrooms on their wedding night and were condemned in Hades to pour water eternally into a leaky vessel:”

Les Danaides

Happy birthday Jan Frans De Boever!

Casablanca Is Not a Great Film

Posted on by
Reply

CasablancaIn 1992, I went to the Cinema 21 in Portland, Oregon to see Casablanca. It was the 50th anniversary release of the film and the place was packed. I had never seen the film in the theater, so that was very nice. But I remember walking out afterwards, and hearing a guy say, “I never knew it was such a funny film.” That really annoyed me. Most people really do need a bunch of other people around to know that something is funny. It was written by the Epstein twins—some of the best comedy writers of the time. And it is filled with great one liners like when asked what kind of man Captain Renault is, Rick answers, “Oh, he’s just like any other man, only more so.” But I should have been more forgiving; after all, there is that oh very serious ending where Rick says, “Inside of us, we both know you belong with Victor. You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.” And I think that’s the problem, because that isn’t a very serious ending.

This afternoon, I watched the film again. I watch it a lot when I don’t want to think. It’s like candy. But this time, I realized something about it: it isn’t like a Snickers bar; it’s like cotton candy—there’s really nothing to it. Now, this isn’t exactly a sudden realization to me. On director Michael Curtiz’s birthday, I wrote:

To this day, I do not know why the film works so well. Yes, it’s very funny. Yes, it has some of our favorite actors. And yes, it’s great anti-Nazi propaganda from a time when most people didn’t know their full villainy. But there are all kinds of things in the film that normally I would hate. I think Ilsa behaves very poorly at the beginning, not giving Rick any space to be angry when he is clearly way over the legal limit. And then she acts like she’s a schoolgirl. Rich is too clean as the antihero and Laszlo is just too perfect generally.

I added that it was still one of my favorite films. I think I may have crossed some kind of line with it. Because this time it really bugged me. Let me go over a few things.

The flashback scene, which was written by Howard Koch, is really almost unwatchable. It was a mistake regardless. The film could have provided all that information via dialog in the present. It’s almost nine minutes to tell us two things: Rick and Ilsa were lovers in France (which we already knew) and Ilsa stood him up when they were supposed to leave together. It’s lazy writing too. And then the follow-up just makes it worse. Ilsa finds Rick drunk out of his mind, and he is mean to her and bitter. So she spends the next half hour of the film angry at him, when we finally learn what happened. That wouldn’t be so bad if 25 minutes earlier Rick hadn’t apologized and asked her to explain. Rick comes off pretty well in all this, but Ilsa comes off alternatively as spiteful and juvenile. Feminists should hate this film.

Speaking of feminists, are we really supposed to like Renault? Here is the most corrupt man in the world who is a Nazi collaborator. He blackmails pretty young women into having sex with him in exchange for allowing them to get out of the country. And his turn into a good guy suddenly at the end is not convincing. But the worst of it is how Rick plays him to allow Laszlo to escape. Rick’s plan is so pathetic, a child could see through it. And then in the end, by letting Rick go, you know someone else will just get set up for the crime.

I don’t think so. Rick is supposed to be the most noble character in the film, yet he makes all his money swindling desperate people who are fleeing the Nazis. When he quits the business, he sells it to an even more unethical person. He shows a very slight regard to Ugarte when he learns about his impending arrest, but that’s about as far as his care goes for anyone else. He seems to ship Ilsa away with Laszlo more to stick it to Major Strasser than anything (and maybe as a form of suicide). He claims that Sam is his friend but he abandons him.

Other than Rick’s staff—who all seem more like his slaves—there really are no characters to like in the film. And the only acting done in the film is by Peter Lorre as Ugarte. I have always felt that the film took a great hit after Ugarte left—there isn’t much vitality. And his capture always seemed to be a bit too pat, “But we know already who the murderer is.” Please! What’s more, Ugarte is the only major character who is honest. At least he isn’t conning people with a rigged roulette wheel. The only bad things he does is steal from and kill Nazis. In the context of the film, that makes him a good guy.

Other than Lorre, the acting consists of a lot of mugging and thoughtful poses. And that, I think, is what most bothered me watching it this time. Everyone just seems to be waiting around for that moment in the film when whatever is supposed to happen happens. It’s no surprise that the film has never been successfully redone (as remake or just by trying to do the same kind of thing, like Passage to Marseille). It only works because we all agree that we want it to work. It is like watching a play at Boy Scout camp. All our friends are in it, it has some laughs, and it seems like it is about something.

Certainly Casablanca manages those first two, but the last? No. And I think the whole thing being a metaphor for America’s entry into World War II is really pushing it. As I discussed with Ken Burns’ Cold War The War, the idea is a bit pumped up. But regardless, it wasn’t the United States joining up with France. At least we do have some Russian characters in the film, most notably the charming Sascha who seems to be in love with all women. But other than the ugly tourists, there are no English characters in the film at all. What’s that all about?

Don’t get me wrong. Casablanca is a nice and fun film. But it is no more serious than The Incredibles. It should never be held up as a great film. But there is a long history of people holding up what are nothing but passable entertainments as great movie making. Another is The Graduate. And I say that while proudly proclaiming that It Happened One Night and His Girl Friday are great films. But a film just can’t be great when it tries to be serious (And even important!) but is just silly.