I hate Norton Security Suite. Don’t buy it. Get Microsoft Security Essentials—it is far better and free.
However, I think this Norton commercial, Grandma was a Hottie, is really good:
But it’s no reason to buy their terrible product.
Last week I read Ha-Joon Chang’s exceptional 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. Frankly, I’m smitten with Chang. Andrea claims I have some kind of man-crush on Paul Krugman. There is no doubt that I am very impressed by this ability to make economics[1] understandable, his insightful explanations of what is going on now, and his breezy writing style. But he is distinctly more conservative than I am. What’s more, he is more in the mainstream of economics and more committed to a lot of its questionable paradigms. Chang is different.
As the title of this book indicates, he discusses 23 myths of economics—free market economics, to be specific. Everyone should read this book, especially conservatives. I have a feeling that most conservatives would find the book compelling, because it shows that a lot of the “free market” rhetoric that is taken for granted on both the right and left in this country is nothing more than mythology. It will provoke that great conservative question, “You mean they’ve been lying to me all these years?!”
In the first chapter Chang takes on the very idea of a free market. He also discusses a repugnant attitude that we see among free market economists that they are just following the facts:
Later as an example showing that people in rich countries are overpaid relative to people in poor countries, he presents bus drivers in Sweden and India. The Swedish bus driver makes 50 times as much as the Indian, but most likely the Indian is actually a better driver given the poor roads and unexpected obstacles like cows. Regardless, who could believe the Swedish bus driver is really 50 times as productive as the Indian?
He goes on to quote Warren Buffet:
Chang especially hates this idea that we live in an information or post-industrial world. Here he provides the example of Switzerland:
One issue close to my heart is this idea that the United States is the richest country in the world. We’re number one! We’re number one! These are the cries of a dying empire. But Chang notes that a big part of this perception outside the United States has to do with our inequality:
What is most impressive about 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism is that Chang goes after all of the counter arguments. Many times while I read it I thought, “Yeah, but…” And the next thing in the book would be an argument that destroyed that counter argument. The book is also highly readable. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Here are the 23 Things:
[1] Economics makes my brain hurt:
[2] This short speech from The Third Man apparently was written by Welles himself instead of Graham Greene. Similarly, in Jaws, the best speech was written by Robert Shaw. You can watch it on YouTube.
This is how I imagine it happened.
Tim Burton’s phone rings. It is Richard Zanuck and he is agitated. “You’ve got to start shooting Dark Shadows. The people at Warner are concerned about a new Twilight picture. They’re ready to pull the plug.”
“The script’s not ready, Dick,” Burton responds. “It’s in tatters. “Seth’s been playing around with different approaches. Today it’s a romance, yesterday it was a comedy, tomorrow it’ll be Gothic horror. We’re just not ready!”
“It doesn’t matter!” Zanuck says. “Just shoot the fucker and we’ll fix it in the editing room.”
Skip ahead a year.
Tim Burton is in Chris Lebenzon’s editing studio. The phone rings and Lebenzon hands the phone to Burton. “It’s for you,” he says. “It’s Dick.”
Tim takes the phone and Zanuck screams at him, “The Warner guys are freaking out. We have to have this film in theaters by the end of next month. All the publicity’s in place…”
“The film isn’t close to finished,” Burton cuts him off.
“I don’t care!” Zanuck says. “Whatever you have: it’ll play, it’ll play!”
At least I hope that’s how it went, because otherwise I can’t explain the mess of Tim Burton’s newest film. I should note that I don’t know anything about the original series Dark Shadows, except that it was my brother’s favorite show and it terrified me when I was five. But I figured that the film Dark Shadows would be something else completely and I entered the theater with high expectations.
The film started off bad, because I immediately sided with the antagonist, Angelique Bouchard, played with much gusto and perverse sexuality by Eva Green. I guess I’m kind of an outcast, but can’t a spurned lover kill a guy’s parents and turn him into a vampire without everyone saying she’s somehow bad? Johnny Depp plays Barnabas Collins, one of these Capitalist Barons who inexplicably exist in our “free market” economy. With all due respect to one of my favorite authors, I have come to despise characters like Mr. Darcy and Mr. Knightley who have the luxury of being noble given that nothing else is required of them.
And so it is with Barnabas. Angelique is in love with him. Barnabas is not so noble that he won’t have sex with her, but he is much too noble to lie to her and tell her he loves her. Instead, he is in love with Josette du Pres, played as the insipid character of male fantasy by Bella Heathcote. Fortunately, she gets killed right at the start of the film. Unfortunately, she floats around as a ghost for the rest of the film.
Angelique locks Barnabas in a coffin where he is trapped for 197 (?) years when some workers dig him up and release him. It is now 1972 and much hippy hilarity ensues. It would probably take me a couple thousand words to describe what next happens because the film bounces around more or less randomly. Let me provide just a few of the plot elements:
This is all over the place, hung on the spine of the main story, itself completely disappearing from the film for ten minutes at a time. That story: the fight between Barnabas and Angelique. And this too is very poorly constructed. However, and this is important: Depp and Green light up the screen when they are together. It is just a shame that they have so little to do.
Having said all of this, I’d like to see it again some time. The film is a mess. It could so easily have been good. But even still, it is playful. Johnny Depp is always fun to watch. The film is good looking. The special effects on Angelique were quite impressive. And there are isolated scenes that really work.
But The Raven was ten times as good with one-sixth the budget.
Update (Less Than an Hour Later)
Despite myself, I seem to be writing what are more or less film reviews recently. I am sorry about this. What’s more, I seem to have really missed the mark on this film, because I agree with most of the people who “reviewed” the film. There is one thing that I talked about—and was the thing I thought most about while viewing—that no one touched upon: its repugnant treatment of class.
When Barnabas is first released, he kills all of the workers for the favor they did him. Later, after learning about love from a group of hippies, he kills all of them for the favor they did him. He also kills the doctor for the sin of trying to become a vampire. The only one who notes the hypocrisy of this is the evil Angelique. There is a kind of droit du seigneur element to all this: Barnabas is above the law because of his position (as Lord rather than Vampire, but it hardly matters).
What’s more, Angelique’s story is entirely about class. She is a servant and I gather that this more than anything is why Barnabas cannot love her. After she buries Barnabas, she goes on to be successful in business, almost completely taking over the industry that the Collins family once controlled. The set up here is classically British: the vulgar peasant getting above her station and eventually getting her comeuppance. (See, for example, one of my very favorite films: Gosford Park.)
Am I over thinking this? I tend to think not. Humans are storytellers. And one of the most profound uses of storytelling is social control. Just look at the Bible! I don’t think that Burton was setting out to make a film that told working people to know their place. But it is certainly the case that neither Burton nor Seth Grahame-Smith[1] are great thinkers. They soak up the intellectual environment in which they live. If they thought about it, they might see the repugnant ideas they push. But they never do think about it.
[1] It should come as no surprise that Grahame-Smith is best know for the “novel” Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Lots of politics today. Matthew Yglesias asks a very smart question, “If the unemployment and inflation rates were reversed, would the Fed do something about it?” You see, the Federal Reserve has a double mandate: minimize inflation and maximize employment. Right now, the inflation rate is less than 2%—far less than its historical level. The unemployment rate is over 8%—far more than its historical level. And yet the fed does… Nothing!
Yglesias asks if the Fed would do something if unemployment were less than 2% and inflation were over 8%. And the answer is, “You bet your second house in Nantucket!” However, Yglesias doesn’t explain why this is, probably because he doesn’t want to soil his reputation as a thoughtful political observer. I have no such reputation to soil, so I will tell you.
Bennie and the Feds aren’t doing anything because the current situation is great for them and all of their friends. You see, if you are wealthy and have lots of cash, inflation is terrible. You money loses value. If you are poor and in debt, inflation is great. Your debt gets reduced without even paying it down.
Similarly, if you are rich and own a company, high unemployment is great because you can get the best workers for the lowest prices. But if you are poor and unemployed, high unemployment is terrible for obvious reasons.
Bennie and the Feds are not doing the job they are paid to do. They are supposed to maximize employment and minimize inflation. Yet all they do is minimize inflation. They should be fired.
Melissa Harris-Perry—who is Beautiful, Intelligent, Learned—had a nice segment on her show last weekend. She discusses this idea that a business career is a great (or even) good background for someone becoming the POTUS. It is a good discussion:
One thing that isn’t discussed is an idea that Paul Krugman has been hammering on for years: running the country is totally different from running a business:
This makes a huge difference. A businessman can slash his workforce in half, produce about the same as before, and be considered a big success; an economy that does the same plunges into depression, and ends up not being able to sell its goods. Nothing in business experience prepares one for the paradox of thrift, or even the inflationary impact of increases in the money supply (which is real when the economy isn’t in a liquidity trap.)
The fact is that I understood that when I was child. We Americans are so vested in the romantic hero archetype that we just can’t see the world as it is. And we are paying a very high price for this.
This amazing graph is taken from The Rachel Maddow Show. It is based upon work from the two academics listed on the graph. The bottom chart is the distribution of income that Americans think would be right. The yellow line is the top 20% of earners, the orange line is the next 20%, and so on. The middle chart is the distribution of income that Americans think is what we have. And the top chart is the actual distribution of income. So Americans think income inequality is far better than it really is, but even with that distorted view, they would like the economy to be even more equitable.
I just read Jerzy Kosinski’s novella Being There. Its studied deepness is strangely compelling.
The book is very short: 140 pages with loads of white space. I’m a slow reader, but I think it took me less time to read it than it had taken to watch the filmed version.
The film is very true to the novella. At least it is in terms of plot. The film hits the satire harder than the book. And the book is, of course, much more clear because the reader is inside Chance’s head.
The only important plot difference is that the ending in the book makes much more sense. The movie ends like this:
In a conversation with karl, I had said that I liked vague endings (which is true) and I gave Being There as an example (it isn’t). The ending of the film now strikes me as tacked on as though the producers were trying to tie down the ending: see, he’s Jesus. Or some other hero who will save us all. Chance is anything but.
The book ends much more satisfyingly. Chance is at a high toned party:
It wasn’t until I read this paragraph that I understood what the title Being There meant—maybe because I’m slow. Chance is the only one in the novella who is operating always in the present tense. Most of the book is spent with him problem solving: doing what must be done to keep the meals, lodging, and TV going. Unlike in the movie, he has no interest in being a gardener; that was just what he used to do for a living. Now, people are asking him questions about any number of complex issues and he answers as best he can with the only knowledge he has: gardening and TV watching.
There is one scene that is in the movie, but isn’t particularly important. A publisher asks Chance to write a book. Chance tells him that he can’t write. He goes further and tells him that he can’t even read. The publisher, like everyone else in the film, hears metaphor in everything Chance says. That’s good satire, but it has much greater meaning in the book. Chance specifically does not admit to being illiterate to his benefactors, the Rands, because he remembers that illiterate people on TV are looked down upon. He has no problem offering this information to the publisher because the publisher has no effect on securing his living.
Another problem with the film is the role of Dr. Robert Allenby. He is a very minor character in the book. In the film, he is the only person who figures out that Chance is just a gardener. In the book, no one figures it out. In fact, no one can figure it out. Chance is like a cube that sneaks into flatland. Everyone is too busy making sense of a chaotic world; they can’t even see this chaotic world now, if they ever could.
When I first watched the film as a kid, I wondered if Chance would really go on to be president. And I wondered about the fact that he has no documentation and what this would do to his chances. No such thoughts occur when reading the book. It is clear very early on that unless he is kicked out of the Rand house, he will continue to eat his meals and watch TV. And that’s it. He did go on TV once, but that seems to be because he wanted to see what happened to his body and if he would split into two people: the normal person and the TV person. After that, many people want him on TV but he says no to them all.
There are other aspects of the novella, of course. There is our lionization of TV celebrities. There is our tendency to talk around each other. There is our admiration of the unknown. But mostly, the book works because it distills our shared desires. At heart, we are all Chance, but in practice, we are everybody else.
When I was a kid, I loved John D. Fitzgerald’s The Great Brain series. So I thought I would revisit it to see if I had any taste whatsoever when I was a youngster. I couldn’t find the original The Great Brain nor my favorite, The Great Brain at the Academy. But I did find More Adventures of the Great Brain.
For those of you who do not know these books, they tell the story of the Fitzgeralds, a Catholic family living in Utah around the turn of the 19th century. The star is Tom (TD), the middle child, who is a very smart con artist. Most of the books are told in the first person by the youngest, John (JD). The books are highly episodic with a vague story arc. Think Cannery Row.
I am pleased to report that at least this book is very good. I suspect that when I was younger I found them a good deal more clever than I do now. But they strike me now as far more charming that I thought they were. I’m surprised they aren’t more popular today. They will certainly appeal to smart kids—or at least kids who think they’re smart.
Update (23 June 2012)
I was wrong, all of the Great Brain books are written from little John’s perspective. I just got The Great Brain at the Academy and it is told as though J.D. is learning all about what happened from Tom’s letters and then telling the reader.
Brad Plumer over at WonkBlog is writing about activists calling for an end to the $775 billion per year spent to subsidize the oil, gas, and coal industries. In the United States alone, it is over $11 billion per year. It really is shocking, because these industries are hugely profitable.
Contrast this with the conservative freak out over a half billion dollars lost on the investment in Solyndra. Leaving aside the fact that the government is supposed to invest in risky industries that aren’t well supported by the private sector, the amount of money is tiny compared to what we give to rich fossil-fuel companies. Subsidies for nuclear power are similarly huge.
As Corey Robin has written about, conservatives are really only interested in maintaining power structures. So it isn’t that they are against subsidies; they are against subsidies to companies that might upset the interests of those currently in power. Once solar is a hugely profitable, hegemonic industry, conservatives won’t mind showering them with many billions of dollars every year.
I tried to upload a video from Arrested Development to You Tube. It was 22.8 seconds long and it was bookmarked between a screen that read, “Sometimes satire just makes things worse.” And “Now millions of ‘hip’ Americans think Parliament has 3 houses. Maybe it’s because Congress has three houses.”
The scene I took was from the episode “The Ocean Walker.” In it, Michael asks Rita, who is mentally challenged, how many houses are in the British Parliament. She replies, “Seven!” And Michael says, “That does sound about right.” Meanwhile, the narrator claims that the number is three. When I first saw this episode, I didn’t get the joke. Instead, I thought, “Wow, I’m stupid! I thought there were only two.” So I looked it up, and sure enough, I am stupid—not because I was wrong but because I’m so gullible; I’ll believe anything Ron Howard says.
It occurs to me that many people watching the show went away thinking that the British Parliament has three houses. Not only did the narrator say it twice, George Michael, the most earnest character ever created, says it as well.
But that 22.8 seconds of Arrested Development violated Fox’s copyright claim and the video was blocked instantly. (Ever notice how when uploading videos to YouTube, most of the time is spent “analyzing”? I believe that is just checking the video against such claims.) I am certain that what I’ve created falls under fair use. It is an outrage that such a tiny section of video is automatically discounted without thought by YouTube. What’s more, such a policy is bad for Arrested Development itself. Little snippets like this are nothing if not commercials.
So until I get a letter from Fox, the video is provided here. If I can figure out how to embed it directly here I will.
I’ve filed a dispute claiming fair use. Our society is screwed up when the onus of fair use is on the user, but so be it. Temporarily, the video is on YouTube. I am not hopeful for my claim—not because it is invalid but because the copyright law is now so skewed that it is hopeless. I’m looking forward to copyright being expanded another 15 years for the sake of Disney.
For the time:
I should have done this update a long time ago. Fox agreed with my claim and it is up for good, I guess. You could help me a little. The video currently has 7 thumbs up and 6 thumbs down. All of those 6 thumbs down came at the beginning. I think this is because they thought I was criticizing the show, which I’m not. I think this is one of the most brilliant jokes ever. So you could give the video a thumbs up.
You may remember that for Mother’s Day, I posted this really great video Thank You Mom. So I went looking for something similar for Father’s Day. The results were poor. All of the videos celebrating Father’s Day were not only explicitly Christian, they had a very traditional view of fathers.
Even when I was growing up in the middle ages of the 20th century, I could see that the standard line on “dads” was wrong. Fathers were much more involved in the lives of their children than commonly accepted. They were a hell of a lot more involved than the standard line that says that fathers lead by example. This is the “we aren’t reptiles” theory of fatherhood: we don’t eat our young!
The great diversity and fierce attachment of modern fathers shows that men always wanted to be intimately involved in the rearing of their children. The moment that social mores allowed this, men jumped at it. This is one of the best and most enduring results of the feminist revolution.
And this is the text from the supremely silly card I got my father:
To which I added even more silliness. But that’s private.
Happy Father’s Day!
My father seemed to be impressed with Nik Wallenda’s upcoming high wire walk over Niagara Falls. It seems really boring to me. I just can’t see it as much of anything after seeing Man on a Wire a couple of years ago. So I forced my father to watch it. He was very impressed, but still looked forward to Wallenda’s walk.
The main thing I remembered about the film was that while Philippe Petit had all charges dropped against him after his walk between the Twin Towers. His co-conspirators, on the other hand, were thrown out of the country. In fact, there is a remarkable moment late in the movie where a police officer comments on the wire the group had put up, “The rigging outfit itself, it’s magnificent the way he did it.” The way he did it. Well, he didn’t do it. If he had been alone, he could not have done it. The walk required a group of committed people. But in America, all that matters is the guy in front of the camera. No one else matters.
What I most noticed this time is what an asshole Petit is. He treats his friends very badly. And I feel that to all of the people involved there was a feeling that Petit was never really much of a friend. He was a fun and interesting guy to be around. He is a symbol of a great thing they were involved in. But they can’t miss the personal relationship they had with him, because they never had a personal relationship with him in the first place.
I’m glad that people like Petit are around. He makes life interesting. But he doesn’t make it true or deep—even for those who are physically close to him. He is the personification of the lonely man on a wire pretending that he willed the wire from his mind.