I finally got around to watching Samurai I, the first film of the Samurai Trilogy. You may recall that I discovered it while watching the documentary The Cats of Mirikitani[1] where Mirikitani rents the film and watches it—a great symbol of just how much his life has improved. I am always open to a new Toshirō Mifune movie, and what’s more, I’ve been watching any Japanese film I can find recently. Despite the title, however: this is a love story.

The film starts with Takezo (Mifune) convincing his friend Matahachi, to run away to war with him for the glory of it. Matahachi does so, even though he is betroved to Otsu. The war doesn’t go well, and afterward, the two end up hiding out on the farm of a widow and her daughter. Eventually, Matahachi goes off with the mother and daughter and marries the daughter. Good riddance with that plot. This is when the movie starts to get good.

Takezo returns to his village to tell Matahachi’s mother that her son is not dead. This all gets uncomfortable, because Otsu wants to know why he is alive and yet not home, with her, getting married. Meanwhile, the whole village is searching for Takezo who is wanted for treason. Unfortunately for them, Takezo seems to be able to beat any group of up to ten men. In all the comings and goings, Otsu and Takezo slowly fall in love.

The only person who manages to capture Takezo is the priest Takuan, who convinces him to turn himself in—twice! The first time, Otsu helps Takezo to escape. The second time, the priest tricks Takezo into studying so as to control his wild nature, but he convinces the two young lovers that they will be together after his years of study are over.

After Takezo becomes a Samurai (three years later), he is sent on a trip to continue his education. Otsu begs him to take her with him. He says he will, but when she goes to pack, he disappears, leaving here a message: “Soon I will be back. Forgive me.”

It is a beautiful ending. It isn’t all that sad, because this is a trilogy, and I figure they will finally get together at the end of Samurai III. I will let you know.[2]

[1] I can’t see this title without thinking of Bruce Cockburn’s wonderful and horrific The Mines Of Mozambique off The Charity of Night album (sorry, the song isn’t available by itself):

[2] Wikipedia has a synopsis of the film, but whoever wrote it didn’t watch the film very carefully. They seemed to miss the main aspect of the film: the relationship between Takezo and Otsu.

Regular readers know how much I like Aristophanes—at least English translations of him. Over 2000 years before the Elizabethan playwrights, he knew how to write a comedy. And none of them did. I think we have to get all the way out to the Restoration before we get a really good comedy in Great Britain, but don’t hold me to that, that’s just what I think off hand.

If anyone knows a little about Aristophanes, they will know that he wrote Lysistrata. In this play, the title character convinces the other women of the various Greek city states to withhold sex from their husbands to get them to end the Peloponnesian War. It is a brilliant idea that is well executed. What’s more, modern viewers generally find it very enjoyable to watch. And most of all, it is far more evolved in its thinking of women and sexuality than much of the modern Republican Party.

Lysistrata may have been written almost 2,425 years ago, but the Lysistrata ideal is alive and well in the form of the wife of Virginia Del. David Albo. Watch:

Ha cha cha cha!

I have a problem with water faucets.

When I see the blue and red color-coding, I freak out. Right now, I’m setting comfortably at my desk, so there is no problem. The blue means cold water and the red means hot water. As everyone knows.

But when I was a physics undergraduate, I was taking upper division mechanics from Professor Joe Tenn. One day in class, he mentioned that he had been at a health club taking a shower and he noticed the blue and red color-coding. It was strange, he said, because blue light has more energy (per photon) than red light. And so it made sense that blue would indicate hot water and red cold water.

He knew, of course, that red indicated hot water because fire was red. And blue indicated cold water, because—the logic kind of falls apart here—blue stands for water and it is cooling and thus cool. But this didn’t make the faucet color-coding any less frustrating—for him, at least.

The truth is, that when Professor Tenn said this in class, I wasn’t that clear about photon energies and such. Not like now when I have the Planck constant memorized to 6 significant digits, despite myself. Graduate school was when the problem first occurred. That’s when light really became important to me—largely because my entire PhD dissertation was about atmospheric light scattering.[1] That was when I started to think like Professor Tenn had taught me.

At first, there was no problem. But after a while, the “blue has more energy” logic became self evident. Just like the “fire is hot” logic was before. And then my usual meta-logic of “faucets use the logic that is obvious” started to fail me.

Now, I freak out when I look at a faucet. But if I manage to remain calm, I can work it out. But now, my meta-logic is, “Faucets use the logic that isn’t logical.”

[1] Stay tuned for my explanation of why the sky is blue. It is not the standard explanation about blue light scattering more than red. This is true, but that’s doesn’t go very far to explaining the things we see. For that, you need just a little atmospheric chemistry. I promise it won’t hurt. Much.

This is Laura Cantrell. She’s great. But the question is: who does she remind you of? It’s taken me a while to realize that her voice is identical to Suzanne Vega. Of course, she’s a country singer, but the kind we liberals like—people who remind us of Nanci Griffith.

Here first album, Not the Tremblin’ Kind, is uneven; but its highs are great. In particular, the song The Whiskey Makes You Sweeter is a treasure. She gets less country on the next two albums that are probably her best: When the Roses Bloom Again (the title song is in the video below) and Humming by the Flowered Vine. Trains and Boats and Planes is an album of covers and as such is really good. Her most recent, Kitty Wells Dresses: Songs of the Queen of Country Music is a return to her roots, but it doesn’t work very well for me.

Upcoming

I’m working on a few articles, but I’m too tired to actually write them. Anyway, I’m trying to pace myself.

• Confused About Red and Blue on the Facet
• Potato Soup Recipe
• Samurai I: a Love Story
• Racism and Mr. Moto
• What is a WILK?

I was thinking about Arlen Specter this morning.

It all goes back to my often stated observation that the policies of such conservative icons of the past like Ronald Reagan and Dick Nixon would place them well inside the mainstream of the Democratic Party. There is a caveat, however. Politicians operate in the environment in which they find themselves. This is especially true of conservatives. So if Reagan and Nixon were in politics today, they would have far more extreme views than they held when they were in power.

This brings us back to Arlen Specter. Most politicians don’t really believe in anything. I know that’s cynical, but how else do you explain the vast majority of the conservative movement whose members almost never get outside the mainstream of the party? Last year they were in favor of birth control; this year, they stop on a dime and reverse themselves. Specter is an exception.

When he decided to run in the Democratic Party, his views were well inside the mainstream of the party. In fact, they’d been so for a while. I understand why the Pennsylvania Democratic voters rejected him. But he wasn’t just doing a political calculation when he changed parties. He was right when he said, “As the Republican Party has moved farther and farther to the right, I have found myself increasingly at odds with the Republican philosophy and more in line with the philosophy of the Democratic Party.”

What is surprising is that so few Republicans do the same. Despite what it says, the Republican Party is an extremely small tent. The Democratic Party, by contrast, is a big tent; just look at the Blue Dogs. Just look at Arlen Specter, who despite his reputation is still very conservative.

Thought for the day: how is it that Barry Goldwater, so extreme that he almost tore apart the Republican Party in 1965, was to the left of the party just ten years later?

Update

Ezra Klein has a good article this morning:

Of course, Klein falls into some false equivalence too. It is wrong to compare Democratic compromises (e.g. lack of a public option) to Republican wholesale reversals (e.g. opposing their own long-time private insurance healthcare reform). As good as Klein is, he is part of the problem.

Update 25 February 2012

Brad DeLong says much the same thing about Ezra Klein’s article, but better:

I’ve been working on an internet video series called The Post, Post Modern Comedy Hour. It’s kind of a kids’ show for adults. And part of it involves a group of people watching TV commercials. It is one of the best parts of the shows. And thus, it has been bugging me because I don’t know if we can get away with doing this without getting the rights to the commercials. On the one side, I would think the companies who made the commercials would like the extra viewings. After all, people don’t pay to watch commercials; watching commercials is how people pay for otherwise free content. But on the other side, these companies are evil.

Last night, despite myself, I read another Lawrence Lessig book. This time it was Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. It opens with the story of Stephanie Lenz, who posted a 29 second video of her son dancing to Price’s Let’s Go Crazy playing on the radio in the background. This was unacceptable to Universal Music Group, which had the video removed from YouTube and threatened a $150,000 fine.

So much for my thinking that I could show short pieces of commercials on a TV in a room. Never mind that the TV screen would likely never take up more than a quarter of the screen. Never mind that both the picture and sound quality would be awful. As Lessig documents over and over in his book, they will do it because they can. They will do it (unconvincingly claiming that it is) for the sake of principal. It is an outrage. As I’ve written many times before, copyright is out of control.

Lessig proposes a plan forward—a way to fix the current system. Unfortunately, I am far more cynical than he is. We are already at a point where artists are worse off than they were in the time of Cervantes and Mozart. I may have to find a patron just to produce a silly, fun, totally inoffensive romp that I want to give away to the world.

I’m late in getting to this. There have been two recent changes to the fast food environment: supposed improvements to french fries and hamburgers.

Burger King

Last December, Burger King changed their recipe for french fries. I was very excited to hear this. For decades, I’ve been trying to understand why Burger King makes such horrible french fries. It is not hard to make good french fries. I can walk into my kitchen right now, cut up a potato, and hot oil it into great french fries. Why couldn’t Burger King even come near this feat? But this wasn’t the only reason I was interested.

I have also spent decades hearing claims from burger joints about how they had improved their menus. McDonald’s has its own think tank! And yet, not once have these places actually improved their—let’s face it—limited culinary offerings. So I was ready for some really bad Burger King french fries!

And I was disappointed. Their new french fries are far better than their old fries. They still aren’t as good as just about every other chain’s fries, but at least now they have a reasonable offering.

Jack in the Box

A month later (I can’t find a link, and I don’t care to do any more searching), Jack in the Box announced that they were improving their line of hamburgers. They were going to put seasoning on them. Barbecue burgers, here we come!

Except, of course, that the Jumbo Jack is hardly a barbecued delight. It’s not a bad burger—especially if you’re really hungry. (I’ve heard the same thing about slugs and grasshoppers.) But the seasoning is very much like putting lipstick on a pig (or Sarah Palin).

And speaking of Jack in the Box, have you seen their new commercial with the guy “marrying” bacon and then “eating the bride”? It’s creepy in a lot of ways. I don’t know what they’re thinking.

Many years ago, This American Life did an episode about things we know that we don’t. In particular, there was a guy (show producer Alex Blumberg) who, when he was a kid, got the idea that Nielsen Families were people named Nielsen. The TV industry used them to gauge the popularity of shows because Nielsen was such a generic name and the people must be middle of the road or something. This, of course, is not the case. Nielsen Families are families with all kinds of last names who take part in audience measurements for the Nielsen Company. But you can empathize with the guy’s misunderstanding. I think we’ve all had some strange notions as children. Most of the time, these get cleared up while we are still children.

Not so for this unfortunate man. While in his twenties, he was having a conversation with a girlfriend and the subject of Nielsen Families came up. He blurted out, “Isn’t it weird that they all have the same last name?” Immediately upon saying it, he realized what his child’s mind could not: they don’t all have the same last names.

This morning, I came upon an article by Geoffrey Nunberg from about a decade ago. It is about the phrase “on the up and up.” I always thought this phrase meant one thing: above board. But apparently, there are a fair number of people in the US and loads outside of it who define it to mean “increasing.” My weight is on the up and up! My debt is on the up and up! My age is on the up and up!

This definition surprised Nunberg:

It isn’t that this other definition is wrong. Definitions do not define words; they (try to) explain how words are used. And frankly, the “increasing” definition makes more sense than “above board.” Not that I’m going to start using this definition; it sounds childish. “Since he went on that diet, his weight is on the down and down”? I don’t think so.

Language is always inexact. As the Nielsen Family example shows, we can miscommunicate because we don’t communicate. In general, I would rather have someone embarrass me once by pointing out a mispronunciation or misusage, rather than letting me embarrass myself multiple times by saying nothing. But it isn’t always that easy. People are fond of telling me I mispronounce “Godot.”[2] And in cases like “on the up and up” both sides can be right.

If “right” is the right word.

[1] Deborah Tannen is a linguist who has written a lot about miscommunication in relationships. Two of her more famous books, which I highly recommend, are That’s Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships and You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation.

[2] “Only in American!” I tell them.