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.

A Tale of Two Protests in a Racist Country

Posted on by
Reply

Dakota Access Pipeline ProtestIs there anything that shows the bias and prejudice in our current criminal justice system than, on the same day, seeing the acquittal of an all-white group of men who illegally took over a federal facility and actively encouraged the potential use of violence while peaceful protesters who are defending sacred Indian land that is theirs by treaty get shot and arrested in order to allow big business to build a pipeline through their land?

The Bundy group was treated with kid-gloves and were eventually arrested peaceably. It was a remarkable show of restraint by law enforcement that worked out in the end. But, because it did end so peaceably, it perhaps made it easier to acquit them. Those peacefully protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline have been met with a declaration of a state of emergency by the governor that mobilized the National Guard, allowed the use of outside police forces, and the deployment of militarized police vehicles. This is a stark contrast to the treatment of the Bundy group that occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters.

—m2c4
Two Faces Of American Justice — Bundy Acquittal And Dakota Pipeline Protests

Image cropped from Rally against the Dakota Access Pipeline by Fibonacci Blue. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

James Comey and the Continued Trial By Innuendo

Posted on by
11

James ComeyThe big news yesterday was that the FBI is going to further investigate Hillary Clinton about her email server. The Washington Post was typical of the angle of the coverage, Computer Seized in Weiner Probe Prompts FBI to Take New Steps in Clinton Email Inquiry. I think this is deceptive. Is this actually how the causality works? I think it’s the opposite. I think it’s more like this:

After months of attacks on FBI Director James Comey, he was looking for any reason at all to bolster his reputation in the Republican Party — the party that he belongs to. So when email files were found on a computer used by Weiner’s wife and Clinton aide, Huma Abedin, they pounced. The odds that there is anything here are minuscule.

The whole thing is entirely in keeping of all the Clinton scandals: innuendo and no substance. The FBI hasn’t gone through the files that they found. They don’t even know if the files they have are all duplicates of files they already had. But that didn’t stop James Comey from telling Congress that the FBI would take “appropriate investigative steps.” In a vacuum, that wouldn’t mean much. Less that two weeks before the election, it simply soils Clinton without any way for Clinton to defend herself nor any time for the FBI to finish its new investigation.

Working the Refs

There is a more charitable way to look at all this, of course. After all that Comey has been through, he wants to make sure that he protects himself. But it all comes to the same thing. The Republicans are the masters of working the refs. Thus far, there has been no real story about the FBI’s decision that there was nothing to prosecute Clinton over. But that hasn’t stopped the right wing from claiming that James Comey is absolutely part of some evil Democratic conspiracy.

The media play right along with it. After all, the media were the original referees that the Republicans got so good at working. They are the ones that fold at the slightest hint of disapproval — at least when it comes from conservatives.

But the truth is: the damage is done. All of Trump’s horrendous behavior and incoherent policies are so yesterday’s news. There is a new story out now! And the fact that there is almost nothing known actually makes it worse for Clinton. This, of course, is why the Clinton campaign is demanding that the FBI release any information it has.

James Comey Didn’t Say Anything Important

Comey’s letter basically said nothing. This is the most important part of it:

Although the FBI cannot yet assess whether or not this material may be significant, and I cannot predict how long it will take us to complete this additional work, I believe it is important to update your Committees about our efforts in light of my previous testimony.

In short: I don’t know a damned thing but I’m terrified by you nut-jobs.

This is no way to run a democracy. I suspect that Comey’s banal letter won’t change the outcome of the election. People’s minds are made up. The people who care already “know” that Clinton is guilty of this and anything else you might want to name. But it does hurt her and just adds fuel to the fire of the crazies.

Image of James Comey cropped from his government photo. It is in the public domain.

Short-Term Thinking: The Problem With Republicans

Posted on by
7

Long- and Short-Term ThinkingThe spectacle of Republicans coming up with a new reason for not allowing the late Justice Scalia’s seat to be filled is funny in its way. Greg Sargent summed it up in an article yesterday, Republicans: The Next President Should Fill Scalia’s Seat. Correction: The Next Republican President Should. As he noted, “What’s really striking here is how effortlessly the rationale that Senate Republicans themselves offered — for months and months on end — for not acting on Garland this year has been tossed out the window.” It does show that they lack any kind of base ideology other than the gaining of power so that they can give more money to their rich backers. But more important is that it shows how focused they are on short-term thinking.

This is nothing new. Remember the last debt ceiling rise? John Boehner sacrificed his political career (not much of a sacrifice, but still) in order to get the debt ceiling raised. Paul Ryan just became Speaker of the House. So the Republicans used that as cover for doing this. But in 2017, what will the Republicans do? It’s always short-term thinking with them. They just want to get through the next term — and sometimes just the next day or two. It’s really amazing to watch.

Long History of Republican Short-Term Thinking

But we can go back much further to see the short-term thinking of the Republicans. Their entire strategy to gain power is based on white Christian resentment. And this made sense during the years of Reagan and the elder Bush. But even at that time, they should have known that they needed to start pivoting. They haven’t. It took them until after losing the 2012 election to even think about serious outreach to Latinos. But there are two important things about that. First, that was all about immigration reform — something their rich donors want. Second, they did nothing about it.

The truth is that they are unwilling to risk upsetting their rabid but declining base. Again: it’s short-term thinking. If ever they had an opportunity to sacrifice the short-term for the long-term, it was this election. But instead, they clung on to the hope that they could win the presidency. They really seem as though they think that if they can just get control of Washington for 4 years, they can enact everything they want and the future will be saved. Just four years and they can roll back all that horrible (Popular!) legislation from the last 80-odd years and finally America will be its True Self.

Do Republicans Even Have a Long-Term Plan?

It really isn’t clear what the Republicans want to do beyond rolling back the New Deal and Great Society — allowing ever more money to be funneled to the rich. I suspect that they don’t actually have any other ideas. Even conservative intellectuals seem focused on what’s supposedly wrong with liberal policy rather than what is right with conservative policy. (There might be a reason for that!)

There is something infantile about Republicans. You probably know about the Marshmallow Challenge. It’s a test given to children to see how long they are willing to put off immediate reward to get a greater one. (See Alfie Kohn on the problems with the test.) Something similar is going on with the Republicans. They aren’t willing to accept even the smallest amount of pain to look out for the long-term health of their party. It’s short-term thinking — always.

It’s an America Problem

But maybe the real fools are the Democrats. The truth is, the American people don’t seem to notice. Imagine if Donald Trump became president and tanked the economy. In 2020, the Democrats would likely regain power (assuming things hadn’t stabilized). But we would be at another (worse) normal. And if the economy went into recession in 2024, the thoughtful American voter would put the Republicans back in power. It isn’t just the Republican Party that suffers from short-term thinking.

Image cropped from Thinking Work Man Face by Geralt. It is in the public domain.

Greg Mankiw: Lost in Theory, Counting Money

Posted on by
4

Nathan Robinson on Greg MankiwEconomist Gregory Mankiw is very pleased to have been gouged by a scalper, he informs us in a recent New York Times column. Mankiw recently went to see the Broadway musical Hamilton, and paid the going rate for a ticket: $2,500. Yet he was far from dismayed at having paid this extraordinary sum. In fact, he describes those who object to price-gouging as “pernicious.”

That’s because Mankiw adopts the standard economist’s view on exorbitant prices for goods: where the layman sees gouging, the economist sees the sublime operation of the law of supply and demand. As Mankiw says, “terms like ‘scalping’ and ‘price gouging’ are pejoratives used to demonize those who resell tickets at whatever high prices the market will bear.” …

He gives a parallel example. In 2009, Jay Leno decided that what unemployed auto workers needed the most was free tickets to a Jay Leno concert. So he gave them a bunch of tickets, which many of them promptly tried to sell on eBay for $800 each. Leno was horrified. But Mankiw thinks Leno should have been pleased…

The free market reveals what each individual values, and how much they value it. If I keep my Jay Leno ticket, rather than selling it, it is because I value the experience of seeing Jay Leno more than $800. If my coworker sells his ticket, it is because he prefers the money. Everyone gets what they want the most, as the market efficiently satisfies our preferences.

Yet when economists tell this fable, they neglect a single crucial fact: some people are wealthier than other people. The reason Mankiw loves price hikes is that they don’t affect him, because he has so much money that he doesn’t really care what price he pays for a Hamilton ticket. Wealth confers the ability to jump to the front of the line, bypassing those who may want to see the show far more but who have less money to spend on theater tickets…

The situation surely differed depending on the unemployed workers’ personal finances… In each instance, the outcome does not reflect how much the workers want their tickets, but how financially desperate they are. Thus what Mankiw sees as a measure of preference is in fact largely a measure of hardship. Economic outcomes aren’t a product of what people value, but how much money they have to throw around.

—Nathan Robinson
Do Economists Actually Know What Money Is?

Image cropped and altered from one at Robinson’s Twitter account. Licensed under Fair Use.

Aboriginal Sex Worker Playing Cards

Posted on by
6

Aboriginal Sex Workers Playing Card: People with HIV are still our mobWhen I was in Mexico, I was forced to take a long walk in heavy humidity in order to have lunch with a group of humans I didn’t know. Not exactly my idea of a good time. On the way back, we stopped at a hotel gift shop. It was air conditioned. (Fun fact: I know only three phrases in Chinese and one of them is for “air conditioning.”) But to my delight, I found a pack of playing cards. This being Mexico, it was not a new pack of cards. And it wasn’t from Mexico. It was the Play Your Cards Right! deck created for aboriginal sex workers in Australia.

According to the package, “This project was developed by South Western Sydney, Western Sydney and Wentworth Area Health Services, Daruk Aboriginal Medical Service and Tharawal Aboriginal Corporation and funded by NSW Health Department.” The link above states that they were developed by “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youths aged 16-25 years.” The face cards feature nice images of the “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.” And most cards have helpful advice like, “Injecting methadone wrecks your veins.” Some might mock this. I think it is a wonderful tool to help improve public health.

Why Aboriginal Sex Workers?

Aboriginal Sex Workers Playing Card: People with HIV are still our mobAt first I wondered why it was focused on Aboriginal sex workers. Then it hit me: because they are poor. That’s not to say that there aren’t other reasons for it. But most people end up in the sex trade because they don’t have better options. And it makes me despair for humanity. Those peoples who were invaded centuries ago still suffer from those acts of war. Socially, we might have grown so that we see that such plundering was wrong. But we refuse to do anything that would set things right. Our focus on property and the myth of meritocracy make us think that it would somehow be wrong to make restitution for our bloody history.

But the world is the way it is. And good people do what they can. I think these playing cards are fantastic. People use playing cards. And so information can be transmitted in a very friendly, unthreatening way. It’s certainly the case that drug addicts and sex workers often depend upon folk wisdom from other drug addicts and sex workers. And often it isn’t the best information. So I think this is just great.

Playing Cards

The cards were originally released in 2005. But as recently as last year, Illawarra Interagency reported, “The popular resource Play Your Cards Right! has had another print run and HARP have plenty to give away.” So people want the cards. I haven’t found any studies or anything about how successful they have been at educating Aboriginal sex workers. But it seems like a good (And cheap!) project.

In 2003, a similar set of cards were put out that focused on drug users. You can see an image of them at My Playing Card Collection. The owner of that site, Virginia Russell, says, “They look to me as though they are an adaption of an originally African design. The face cards don’t look Aboriginal at all.” I trust her. For one thing: I looked at them. For another: she knows a lot about playing cards! It’s nice that Play Your Cards Right! was produced by the Aboriginal community itself.

Pictures of the Play Your Cards Right! cards were taken by me. Images licensed under Fair Use. (But they may be in the public domain anyway.)

The Yale Record Doesn’t Endorse Clinton

Posted on by
4

Yale Record Doesn't Endorse ClintonIn its 144-year history, The Yale Record has never endorsed a Democratic candidate for president. In fact, we have never endorsed any candidate for president. This is, in part, due to our strong commitment to being a tax-exempt 501(c)3 organization, which mandates that we are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

This year’s presidential election is highly unusual, but ultimately no different: The Yale Record believes both candidates to be equally un-endorsable, due to our faithful compliance with the tax code.

In particular, we do not endorse Hillary Clinton’s exemplary leadership during her 30 years in the public eye. We do not support her impressive commitment to serving and improving this country — a commitment to which she has dedicated her entire professional career. Because of unambiguous tax law, we do not encourage you to support the most qualified presidential candidate in modern American history, nor do we encourage all citizens to shatter the glass ceiling once and for all by electing Secretary Clinton on November 8.

The Yale Record has no opinion whatsoever on Dr Jill Stein.

—The Editorial Board of The Yale Record
The Yale Record Does Not Endorse Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton by Gage Skidmore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Multiplying Even and Odd Numbers

Posted on by
8

Odd NumbersI hope you will forgive me for writing about math today. Last night, I was lying in bed thinking about the numbers 7 and 11. I had been listening to a podcast with Ezra Klein and Molly Ball. Ball had mentioned that the number of white Christians in the United States had gone from (I think!) 54 percent when Obama came into office and that it was 47 percent now. Klein must have misheard her, because he later referred to it being an 11 percentage point drop. But that was why I was thinking about the two numbers — 7 percentage points is the actual number.

These numbers are interesting in that they are consecutive primes. And being so, they hold a certain fascination for me. But it got me thinking about the number 9. Nine is not a prime, since it reduces to 3×3. And then something occurred to me that I’d never thought about before: two odd numbers multiplied always create an odd number.

I know this is obvious, but since when has that ever stopped me? Why is it that odd numbers multiplied are always odd?

Multiplying Even Numbers

Let’s start with an easier question: why are even numbers multiplied always even? That’s almost definitional. An even number is any whole number divisible by 2. So if you have two even numbers x and y, you know that both x/2 and y/2 must be whole numbers. Thus, for example:

2×(x/2)×y

Note that it doesn’t matter if y is even. Thus: an even number times any number will be even.

Multiplying Odd Numbers

Looking at two odd numbers is more interesting. Or I think it is. Let’s stick with our variables above. Now we have two odd numbers: x+1 and y+1. If we multiply them, we get the following:

(x+1)×(y+1) = x×y + x + y + 1

Given that x and y are even, we know that x×y is even. So we have: even plus even plus even plus one. The whole thing doubles back on itself: we defined our odd numbers as evens plus one. And that’s what we get here.

Using Addition

Another way to think about it is via addition. This is the way that ought to come more naturally. Multiplication is, after all, just addition. Four times three is just 3+3+3+3. Sadly, math is usually taught so badly that people don’t think in this way. So people end up thinking that addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are four different things when they are all just one really simple thing: addition.

Thinking in this way, (x+1)×(y+1) would be the number y+1 added x+1 times. I would show you how this all works with a series, but doing so requires more typesetting ability than I have here. But think about it. If you add an odd number an even number of times, you will get an even number. So when you add that odd number one more time, it makes the even number odd.

The beautiful thing about math is that this is all intuitive. I didn’t have to work out the steps in my mind. It all looks awful on the page. In the mind, it’s comforting. Of course, I did have to get out of bed. I figured if I didn’t write down the idea, I would forget to write this article. Then wouldn’t you all be sorry…

Image cropped from Odd numbers : Even numbers by Graham Horn. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Amanda Glaze on Evolution and the Nature of Science

Posted on by
13

Amanda GlazeResearch shows that people in the South are 84 percent less likely than their counterparts in other parts of the country to learn about evolution, or to learn about it in a way that is accurate. Similarly, studies such as my quant study in preservice teachers and Laura Rissler’s study of undergrads in Alabama show that religiosity is a strong negative factor that impacts acceptance of evolution.

When looking at other studies in the United States, mostly done in places in the Northeast (Indiana, New York), the levels of acceptance are quite low overall. However, the South boasts a population that is more closely aligned with the literal interpretation of Genesis (including creationism and Young Earth Creationism) that many cite as their reason for rejecting evolution. It also tends to show a higher impact of religious beliefs as a predictor of acceptance or rejection of evolution compared to other locations…

What bothers me is the lack of understanding about what science actually does.

Science doesn’t consider God as a possible answer to any question whatsoever because God is a metaphysical construct and thus not part of the physical world. And science by definition cannot consider anything metaphysical or supernatural as an explanation.

Science is not out there trying to disprove the existence of God — we can’t even consider that.

I really don’t care what people believe as long as they understand the science.

—Amanda Glaze
Teaching Evolution in the South: an Educator on the “War for Science Literacy”

Image cropped from Amanda Glaze’s on her Twitter account. Licensed under Fair Use.

Christopher Marlowe Co-Wrote Henry VI

Posted on by
8

Christopher MarloweElizabeth brought my attention to this article, Christopher Marlowe Officially Credited as Co-Author of Three Shakespeare Plays. The plays in question are the three parts of Henry VI. And the official source is The New Oxford Shakespeare: Modern Critical Edition. This is interesting, but hardly surprising.

One of the editors The New Oxford Shakespeare is my favorite Shakespeare scholar, Gary Taylor. And Taylor has been trying to take the air out of “the bard” for most of his careers. In his book Reinventing Shakespeare, he spends a chapter mocking the idea that Shakespeare is a singularity — “The greatest writer of all time!” And he implies that Shakespeare may not even deserve being called great. (When pressed on the issue, he generally concedes — probably just because it is a silly question to argue about.)

Artists in Perspective

But this is all welcome after a couple of centuries of bardolatry. And what we see is that even minor plays of Shakespeare get lots of performances, while major works are ignored just because they were written by people like Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, Beaumont & Fletcher, Middleton, and on and on. And what we’ve learned over the past few decades is that Elizabethan theater was very much a muddle.

A good example of both the muddle and the tendency to over-praise individual writers is Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. There are two versions of it. There is a short version and there is a longer version that contains humorous bits, mostly involving Faustus’ servant. When the shorter version was considered the better one (broadly 19th century), it was assumed that it was the true Marlowe creation. Then, when people noticed that the comic bits added to the overall theme of the play, people decided that it was the true Marlowe creation. As much as I admire Marlowe, I’ve always felt that the short version was his. He never showed much in the way of comedic talent.

And it isn’t just in the theater. Scholars spent roughly two centuries trying to figure out just what part of Mozart’s Requiem Mass was by the master and what part had been polluted by his student Franz Xaver Süssmayr after Mozart’s death. Eventually, they decided that they couldn’t tweeze out the pure Mozart. The piece is what it is. And it is one of the great works of musical art. That’s all that really matters.

The Power of Collaboration

But we rebel against the idea of collaboration. We want to believe in the Great Artist creating Perfection Itself. But art never works like that. Even my beloved Don Quixote could definitely have been improved with a few collaborators — and an editor!

This is what we now know about Elizabethan theater: there was great collaboration. Plays weren’t owned by their writers. They were written for particular theaters that then owned them. So if a play seemed a little slow, another playwright might come in and punch it up. There were other times when plays seem to have been written in tandem: where some scenes were written by one playwright and others by another. What’s more, comedic scenes may have been improvised and later set down on paper.

Now you may be wondering how we can tell that a play was a collaboration. There are many ways this is determined. One of the oldest is to look at the spelling of words. There were no dictionaries so each writer had their own idiosyncratic spellings. The research that led up to this most recent conclusion is based upon the vocabulary used. One of the papers was co-written by a teach of mathematicians. (Hooray math!)

Did Marlowe Soil Shakespeare?!

Anyway, I’m sure there will be lots of people complaining about this. It still amazes me how much people make a fetish out of Shakespeare’s supposed unequaled greatness. I mean: have they not read Hamlet?! Or The Tempest? Really: any of Shakespeare’s plays? The best ones have much of admire. But they also have at least a fair amount to dislike, which is why the best modern productions savagely cut them.

None of this is a slight against Shakespeare. He was a top Elizabethan playwright. But none of them thought they were creating art; they all knew they were making money. And they produced good and even great work. But I don’t think we can say more than that. I don’t think anyone really needs to see Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet yet again. The more we know about the diversity of Elizabethan theater, the more likely we are to see plays that we haven’t seen before. And that’s a good thing.

Image of Christopher Marlowe (most likely) is in the public domain.

Obama’s Grand Unified Theory of Trump

Posted on by
1

President Barack ObamaI understand Joe Heck now wishes he never said those things about Donald Trump. But they’re on tape. They’re on the record. And now that Trump’s poll numbers are cratering, suddenly he says, well, no, I’m not supporting him.

Too late. You don’t get credit for that. I’m being serious here. Hold on a second. I want to make a point here. I know a lot of Republicans. I’ve got Republican friends, I’ve got members of my family who are Republicans, and they don’t think the way Donald Trump does. I understand that. So I’m not generalizing about all Republicans. But here’s the thing: for years, Republican politicians and the far-right media outlets have pumped up all kinds of crazy stuff about me, about Hillary, about Harry. They said I wasn’t born here. They said climate change is a hoax. They said that I was going to take everybody’s guns away. They said that, when we were doing military exercises that we’ve been doing — forever — suddenly this was a plot to impose martial law. This is what they’ve been saying for years now. So people have been hearing it, and they start thinking, well, maybe this is true.

And so if the world that they’ve been seeing is that I’m powerful enough to cause hurricanes on my own, and to steal everybody’s guns in the middle of the night, and impose martial law, even though I can’t talk without a prompter — then is it any wonder that they end up nominating somebody like Donald Trump?

And the fact is, is that there are a lot of politicians who knew better. There are a lot of senators who knew better. But they went along with these stories because they figured, you know what, this will help rile up the base, it will give us an excuse to obstruct what we’re trying to do, we won’t be able to appoint judges, we’ll gum up the works, we’ll create gridlock, it will give us a political advantage.

So they just stood by and said nothing. And their base began to actually believe this crazy stuff. So Donald Trump did not start this. Donald Trump didn’t start it. He just did what he always did, which is slap his name on it, take credit for it, and promote it. That’s what he does.

—President Barack Obama
Remarks by the President at Rally for HFA and Senate Candidate Catherine Cortez Masto

H/T: Brian Beutler

Image of Obama is in the public domain.

Unfaithfully Yours Summary and Review

Posted on by
14

Unfaithfully YoursI’ve been a fan of Preston Sturges for at least a couple of decades. But that is based on his first eight films. I haven’t seen anything after Hail the Conquering Hero. At least in the old days, it was hard to find the later films because they weren’t successes. So I didn’t go out of my way to find them, even though I owned all of first eight films. But recently in a comment exchange with James, he recommended that I watch Sturges’s 1948 film Unfaithfully Yours.

Thankfully, The Criterion Collection released Unfaithfully Yours on DVD in 2005. And as usual, they did a great job. It includes an introduction with Terry Jones; a group commentary with scholars (always the best for this kind of stuff) James Harvey, Diane Jacobs, and Brian Henderson; an interview with Preston Sturges’ last (fourth) wife; and some other miscellaneous stuff. I haven’t had a chance to check it out in detail.

Plot Summary

The film stars Rex Harrison (looking rather like Preston Stuges himself) and Linda Darnell as his wife. And it is about jealousy. Really: almost nothing actually happens in the film. It is mostly just Harrison getting more and more freaked out by his imagination. He starts as a man totally in love and trusting of his wife. But a seed is accidentally planted and it works on him as well as Iago did on Othello. But things turn out better for Harrison and Darnell.

I can see why Unfaithfully Yours didn’t play at the time. It has an unusual structure. The first half hour is spent with Harrison avoiding looking at the incriminating evidence against his wife that has been created. The next 45 minutes are spent at a concert where Harrison is conducting. Over the course of three numbers, he imagines confronting his wife and her suspected lover. In the first, he murders her and frames the lover. In the second, he’s very understanding — sending her away with a large check. And in the third, he plays Russian roulette with the lover.

The rest of the film shows him trying to realize each of his fantasies. This go hilariously wrong. That’s especially true of his perfect murder plot, which is 15 minutes of slapstick zaniness. Everything works out, of course. Harrison and Darnell end the film just as in love as they started. And hopefully, Harrison is a better man for it. But you have to wonder, given that he is a Preston Sturges character.

Why Unfaithfully Yours Is Better Today

Another reason people probably didn’t like it at the time is that the tone of Unfaithfully Yours is inconsistent. It’s funny throughout. But the fantasy scenes are funny in a different, darker, way. And I suspect that this left a lot of people cold. It also didn’t set them up for the final act that is a comedic tour de force.

But it is exactly the unusual structure and tonal shifts that make the film work so well for a modern viewer — especially one who is familiar with Sturges’ other work. It’s probably good to think about modern superhero films. They are all the same and they all do well at the theaters. If someone created a superhero film that broke with convention, it probably wouldn’t do well. But it would be one of the few films anyone could stomach in 70 years.

I highly recommend the film if you are the kind of person who isn’t wedded to the new releases. Now I think I’ll go watch it again.

It is unclear if the poster from Unfaithfully Yours is in the public domain. I tend to think it is. But even if not, I license it under Fair Use.

Silicon Valley Incompetence Is Easy to Find

Posted on by
Reply

Peter Thiel - Silicon Valley Incompetence[Peter] Thiel did touch on the private sector, touting his native Silicon Valley as an example of a properly functioning community:

“Where I work in Silicon Valley, it’s hard to see where America has gone wrong…

“We don’t accept… incompetence in Silicon Valley, and we must not accept it from our government.”

Of course, even the briefest survey of Silicon Valley reveals a culture that is rife with incompetence, where the basic rules you’d follow running a lemonade stand — taking in more than you spend, for example, or adhering to basic quality standards — are discarded in favor of explosive growth and runaway valuations…

Thiel neglected to mention that Silicon Valley is also in the midst of a serious slowdown, where the bubble inflated by venture capital firms like his own Founders Fund — not Wall Street — shows sign of popping, or at least deflating.

—Sam Biddle
Peter Thiel: I Miss the Days of Strong, Daring Federal Spending

Image of Peter Thiel by Dan Taylor. Licensed by CC BY 2.0.