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.

The Revolution Will Be Televised

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The French PenaltyI had a vision of Charles Koch standing handcuffed on a platform. His brother, David, was next to him, on his knees, his head secured in a guillotine. The blade was released and fell with lightning speed. David’s head tumbled to the wooden planks below while blood gushed from his neck.

Looking away, past the limp headless body, I saw that Charles was only at the head of a line, which seemed endless. Some of the faces were familiar, most not. Men and women. I even spotted Melinda Gates. “Hi, Melinda.” And there was poor William Koch. Talk about having to suffer for your brothers’ sins! It seemed wrong to cut off the heads of Melinda and William. Melinda is so pretty and William has that friendly face. It all seemed wrong. I am not violent. I am not vengeful. But we—Homo sapiens—are very violent and vengeful.

I thought of Howard Zinn, who wrote in The Progressive, back in 2003:

There is a basic weakness in governments—however massive their armies, however wealthy their treasuries, however they control the information given to the public—because their power depends on the obedience of citizens, of soldiers, of civil servants, of journalists and writers and teachers and artists. When these people begin to suspect they have been deceived, and when they withdraw their support, the government loses its legitimacy, and its power.

I’ve no doubt my vision will be realized. There is no amount of money or guards or political power that will save the elite[1] from thousands of angry, hopeless peasants. The question is not if, but when and how.

Be assured, however, that I will be there to protect these people. I will say that violence is not the way. I will physically get between the angry and the “Winners!” And also be assured that I will be as impotent in these endeavors as I now am to stop the cruel injustice that leads there.

But I will not shed a tear for them. Any of them.[2]

[1] Amazing how conservatives have managed to redefine “elites” as college professors rather than Presidents and billionaires!

[2] Paul Krugman has an excellent column today, America’s Unlevel Field. In it, he discusses how America is now more class-constrained than Europe and how all the Republican Party talk of evening the playing field is bunk.

True Grit: Post-Art Coen Brothers

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True GritThe Coen Brothers’ True Grit is a huge disappointment. To start, did we really have to make this tiresome film again? To end, did we really have to do it so badly? So unartfully? Have the Coens taken the advice of the Mothers of Invention’s third album: are they only in it for the money?

However, I did like some of the film. Without a doubt, the best scenes in the film are the two between Mattie Ross and Col. Stonehill. In particular, their second meeting is hilarious:

Mattie: You have not traded poorly.

Stonehill: Oh, certainly not! I’m paying you for a horse I do not possess and have bought back a string of useless ponies, which I cannot sell again.

Mattie: You are forgetting the grey horse.

Stonehill: Crowbait![1]

Mattie: You are looking at the thing in the wrong light.

Stonehill: I am lookin’ at it in the light of God’s eternal truth.

Mattie: Your illness is putting you down in the dumps… You will soon find a good buyer for the ponies.

Stonehill: Oh, I have a tentative offer for ten dollars per head from the Pfitzer Soap Works of Little Rock.

Mattie: It would be a shame to destroy such spirited horseflesh.

Stonehill: So it would. I am confident the deal will fall through.

Mattie: Look here. I need a pony, and I will pay ten dollars for one of them.

Stonehill: No. That is the lot price. No, no, it’d… Wait a minute… Are we trading again?

Unfortunately, that is about all that is good about it. However, somehow critics and audiences alike thought it was a great film. Has everyone forgotten when the Coens made art instead of entertainment? Of course, I understand that they have always been uneven. They sandwiched the dreadful Raising Arizona between two excellent films (Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing) followed by the great Barton Fink. But Raising Arizona is not bad for lack of trying. True Grit is a workmanlike film that could almost as easily have been directed by the horrible Jon Favreau. Good job Joel and Ethan: you can make successful tripe with the best of them!

I must admit, however, that I am tired of the Rooster Cogburn form of lovable rogue. He is a homicidal psychopath. Popularly, people have the wrong idea about psychopaths. They don’t go around hurting people willy-nilly. They find ways to manipulate their culture into accepting or even celebrating their propensities. The first thing we learn about Cogburn is that he suffers from constipation. The second thing is that he has murdered 23 people in the previous four years. I do not mind when the main character of fiction is an evil person. I do mind when the creators of that fiction are not aware of this fact. And the Coens are not. To them, Rooster is just a lovable rogue.

Of course, none of the three main characters are without problems. LaBoeuf (well acted by Matt Damon), the character we are supposed to like the least, is a good man in the universe of the film. Mattie is wonderful in her intelligence, but her Old Testament religiosity is abhorrent. She’s a Deuteronomy girl all the way: vengeance is mine!

Even as entertainment, the film fails. Jeff Bridges can barely be understood. After they leave town, the movie is predictable and boring. This I will say, however: at least it doesn’t star that great Academy Award winning actor John Wayne!

Update (8 February 2016 3:30 pm)

I think I was too hard on the Coen Brothers here. But I stand by the main point.

[1] Crowbait is a term from western America in the mid-nineteenth century. It means an emaciated, worn-out horse. Think Don Quixote’s horse Rocinante and you’ve got it. Great word!

Falstaff Dies a Broken Man

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Over at Shakespeare Geek, the question is asked if Falstaff dies a broken man. I respond with my usual love of That Bard:

Beware Welles’ Shakespeare for it is more Welles than That Bard! Welles’ take on Falstaff is quite different from any other I have seen or from what one would take from the text. There is really no buffoon in the character here. Falstaff seems quite intelligent, using what gifts he has to make his way in life.

To answer your question: Falstaff dies a broken man. It is because he is broken that he dies. “I shall be sent for in private,” is said only to save face. But I think it must be remembered that that is all Falstaff has done from the beginning of the film. When last we see him from the rear in long shot, he is hunched over walking awkwardly with a cane. He is tiny as he passes under the arch, but his shadow is enormous. (Very similar to The Third Man.)

Shakespeare was not big on writing pleasant characters. Falstaff, with all his faults, is as close as we get. And even that depends upon the performer. No writer in the history of the English theater has had more and better editors and directors and actors to fix his oh so many problems.

I too consider myself something of a Shakespeare geek, but that doesn’t mean I hold him in that high a regard. In many ways, he is like Orson Welles (although without the excuses—I think Welles did very well given his obstacles). Neither man created a perfect piece of narrative art. Both have loads of brilliant moments, but nothing works completely.

Shakespeare never wrote a decent comedy. The histories are dreadful. He was best at tragedy. Still, Hamlet is a mess: hands down the most over-rated play of all time. Despite the amazing amount of creativity that actors and directors have put into it, it is always un-watchable. I’m kind of fond of Richard III, but I have a real problem with Shakespeare’s constant use of villains who make Sweeney Todd seem realistic. “Since I cannot prove a lover, to entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days”! How many times in his plays do we hear similar speeches by his villains? Richard’s a villain because he’s lame? Don John is a villain because he’s a bastard? Iago is a villain because he was fired? Please!

The most fulfilling play is Macbeth. And I believe it is not over-performed the way others of his plays are because modern artists don’t feel the need to fix it. Everyone is so determined to make Shakespeare into the greatest writer ever (an amazing, but preposterous claim), that they can’t help but try to fix the train wrecks that define his catalog.

As for Welles, at least we do have one perfect and unique film, even if it is a documentary: F for Fake. Most of his other films are quite watchable. In fact, most are quite good. And the scenes that have been released of The Other Side of the Wind are some of the most exciting film I have ever seen.

Prince Hal is a villain. Falstaff is a complex and troubled man who dies broken. And Orson Welles, once again, gives Shakespeare better than he gets.

If the Shakespeare Geek notices the comment, I suspect he will not agree!

The Good Christian

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Jesus Wanted PosterI don’t hate Christians. I have little tolerance for stupid Christians. In fact, my spiritual beliefs[1] fit in rather well with New Testament dogma. Unfortunately, David Byrne[2] was far more profound than almost any Christian I’ve met when he wrote, “Heaven is a place where nothing happens.” One Christian I like is Bruce Cockburn, who you may remember from his hit in the late 1970s, Wondering Where the Lions Are. That’s a take on the Roman’s feeding the Christians to the lions. Every time I’ve seen him do the song (well over a dozen times live), he shows such joy in doing it. I think the idea is about sacrificing. I don’t know if he really believes he is going to heaven, that place that doesn’t actually exist, or if he is of the Terry Eagleton school of Christianity, which has everything to do with politics and almost nothing to do with God. I tend to think the latter, because Cockburn is a smart guy. Certainly it is the case that he has spent his whole life working to make the world more just, forgiving, and above all, humane.

Here is Pacing the Cage, which he told me, “It’s about feeling trapped.” As I often say, artists should never explain their work because they usually don’t get it. Sure, it is about being trapped. But it’s about a lot more than that. I could go on about learned helplessness and things like that, but it’s better to listen to a master:

[1] As Denys Turner speaks about beautifully, there is only one question: why existence? It is a profound question and one that gives me great pleasure because I like mystery. It is a thrill and a gift to be alive and to wonder about the universe and eternity. But it is hubris to think that you matter in a cosmological sense. We do not exist, then we exist, and then we do not exist. That’s it. I’m with Carl Jung when asked, “Do you believe in God?” He responded, “I don’t need to believe; I know.” But “God” is a very bad word for what I know, because of the way almost all religious people define the term, which is utterly at odds with my own.

[2] When I was young, I loved Talking Heads. Their first album was good and the next three were great. And then there was Speaking in Tongues which was okay, the way a sunny day is on the edge of a hurricane. Bad things were coming. Stop Making Sense was a live album — not bad, but it’s hard for me to be objective since I saw them on that tour twice. Then the ax fell: Little Creatures was released and I knew (to quote Beckett) beyond all doubt that David Byrne was a sham. The great music of Talking Heads was due a lot to Byrne, of course; but it was also due to Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison (pity the man who had to put up with the delightful but crazy Jojo), and especially Brian Eno. And given that all indications are that Byrne was and most likely still is a complete jerk, I can’t listen to any of those three great albums without some sadness. Here’s Heaven from Stop Making Sense:

Notice a little trick here. Only two people on stage. Weymouth doesn’t have a mic. Who is singing backup on the chorus? It sounds like Byrne (I don’t think they had the autotune software for doing background singing live back then), but it could be someone off stage. Regardless, it strikes me as a little disingenuous. If you’re going to slowly build up your band, then really do it. Otherwise, you’re nothing more than The The or Howard Jones.

The Evil Philosophy of William Lane Craig

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Andrea’s been writing a bit about religion recently. Just yesterday, she wrote Speaking of Jesus… about the vile practice of Christians trolling for converts at hospitals. And before that, she created a hilarious cartoon (for want of a better term) Jesus is getting pissed. Even before that, however, I had been doing a lot of atheist research and reading what people such as Robert M. Price and Richard Carrier have written on the subject. Today, Sam Harris is probably the most famous of these public atheists. Frankly, I don’t think he is quite of the intellectual caliber of Price or Carrier (which is not to say he isn’t brilliant). But I don’t think anyone comes close to him in laying out the atheist case and arguing against religious dogma—especially Christianity. He is an American treasure as I think you will see from the following video clip (of very poor quality, but it’s the content that counts).

Speaking of Jesus…

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As a one-time missionary (Believe It or Not!), I have legitimate reasons for my mild contempt toward evangelical religions in particular. It’s a simple and uninspiring tale of a young woman with low self-esteem trying to fill a void with a belief. (Spoiler alert! It didn’t fit.) After years of careful observation of Baptists in their native habitat and much rational contemplation, she abandoned the excruciating anxiety of living under the faith vs. works conundrum. She chose instead to stoically face a cruel and random universe, armed only with her cynicism and doctor-prescribed meds. Anyhoo, one result of this voyage of nonbelief is that things like this tend to irritate me:

death.jpg

heaven_or_hell.jpg

map_to_heaven-2.jpg

Click on the images if you care to read the text of these pamphlets.

These pearls of Good News were carefully and conspicuously placed on the visitor check-in desk of the New Jersey hospital to which my mother-in-law had just been admitted. My husband and I were a little worried—his mother had suffered a major stroke only hours before and been airlifted from her local hospital to this one. You can imagine the sense of peace and comfort that washed over me when I read, “Death: It Happens Every Day”. What a compelling yet reassuring title. And it was only the gateway to a tiny trilogy of enlightenment! I had to have them—a voice was urging me, “Take these My child. Please”. (The voice was mine—I often think to myself.) So I stuffed the bits of Biblical condensation into my purse. I couldn’t bear the thought of them being carelessly tossed into a convenient recycling bin. If anyone were to deliberately throw them into the trash, or worse yet, burn them, I wanted to make sure it was done right. As it turns out, these tiny pieces of Western religion have become the pithy souvenir of the only time I’ve ever watched a loved one die.

Published by Fellowship Tract League, which happens to be a Baptist endeavor, these pamphlets have had a powerful impact on my life. Maybe I should let the Fellowship Baptist Church know that their pamphlets have removed any possible doubt I may have had that there is a god, while their logo has proven that it doesn’t take talent to get work from people who can’t tell their ass from a hole in the ground. It’s like a Rorshach test: is it a pitcher (jug perhaps?) inside a hamster ball? Is it a poorly drawn silhouette of a rodent in a hamster ball?Is it a globe with all the continents smooshed together by God’s love? Like God Himself, graphic designers work in mysterious ways.

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Please do not misunderstand me. I am in no way mocking a true personal belief in God (or ethnic equivalent). My mother-in-law was a devout Catholic and she drew considerable comfort from her beliefs. Just as I would never have tried to dissuade her from her convictions, she never once criticized or condemned me for my views. She never tried to get me to go to church, although I am sure she prayed for me everyday. For that kind thought I am grateful. However, had she been born into a different belief system, I know she would have been the same generous and kind person. Her faith did not define her and it did not create her. If there is a heaven, and for her I hope there is, I know that she was welcomed—not because of the church she attended, but because of the person she was. If everything she was died with her, I know that she will never again suffer and will always be loved by those who knew her.

That being said, I think that Catholicism—as an entity—and every other known religion that ruthlessly indoctrinates their followers and aggressively proselytizes the ignorant, are a blight on humanity. The fact that the dispenser of these tracts would attempt to take advantage of people, who were very likely emotionally fragile, was insensitive and utterly lacking in empathy. If you really want to be a positive ambassador for Christ, show some compassion. WWJD? Not be a dick.

Bad Blog Quoting

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BlogMy favorite blog just happens to be on economics. It is Paul Krugman’s The Conscience of a Liberal. There are several other economics blogs that I read regularly. I am very fond of Robert Reich’s site, although it isn’t really a blog. There are three other blogs that I regularly read: Dean Baker’s Beat the Press, Brad DeLong’s Grasping Reality with the Invisible Hand, and Mark Thoma’s Economist’s View. Despite what I’m about to say, they are all excellent.

I read these guys for two reasons:

  1. They are way smarter than I, and (with all due humility, which is not much) that’s saying something.
  2. Economics makes my little physicist brain hurt.[1]

The Solo Quote

Some of this blogging is a waste, because they all read and quote each other (except for Reich, who, as I said, isn’t really blogging). The worst offender is Brad DeLong because he will often quote entire articles of other people. In these cases, he adds nothing. Okay, not nothing. He tells me about the existence of someone else’s work. But this isn’t the way to do it. Especially in DeLong’s case, he often quotes very long articles. This is unethical, because if the reader wants the whole article, he should go to the original site. It is also a waste of time. For example, in JOSEPH GOEBBELS LIVEBLOGS WORLD WAR II: JANUARY 4, 1942, he quotes the entire original article. Instead, he could have just provided a link and the title (which he neglects), which tells what the article contains and whether it is worth the reader’s time: Goebbels’ Plea for Clothing for Troops on the Russian Front & Hitler’s Proclamation (December 20, 1941). It would also be nice if DeLong would add a paragraph to explain why we might care.

Mark Thoma does the same thing, but even more often. It makes matters worse that he often quotes entire articles that I have already read. This is surprising, because Thoma also provides daily lists of articles worth reading.

Quoting is Great

I am all for bloggers quoting other bloggers. But it is important to add value. All of these men have a lot of value to add. But they error when they just transmit someone else’s writing. If it is important enough to quote, it is important enough to expand.

[1] In general, I don’t think Monty Python is that funny. Compared to That Mitchell and Webb Look or Fry and Laurie, they are downright pathetic. But they do have their moments and “My brain hurts!” is one of my favorite catch phrases.

The Gift That Keeps on Killing

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VietnamThis picture is probably more responsible for turning the tide against the Vietnam War than any other, including the infamous photo of Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation.[1] Like most people, I’m not too fond of guns. True: I would rather be killed by a bullet in the head than flames covering my body. Also true: guns don’t kill people, bullets kill people. But it is a whole lot harder to set someone on fire than to shot them. Similarly, a bullet thrown is relatively harmless.

In order to buy a gun in the United States, you must submit to a background check. The FBI performs those checks, so they know how many people are buying guns. Well, kind of. There are three things that complicate matters:

  1. Not all background checks pass. A whopping 1.3% of checks fail. Only 98.7% of gun buyers are allowed! What an outrage!
  2. The background check only applies to the person, who may buy more than a single gun. Many more.
  3. Many people buy guns at gun shows where background checks are not performed

All this means that the total number of background checks is a fair estimate of the number of guns sold in the United States. But if it is wrong, it is low; there are almost certainly more guns sold than background checks requested. So how many guns are Americans buying? According to Opposing Views, last year (2010), the FBI processed a record-breaking 14,409,616 background checks. This year? With a week left, the FBI processed a new record-breaking 1,534,414 requests!

Why is this? Could it be that crime is on the rise? Not according to the FBI:

Crime

The issue seems to be gift giving. The two days with the most gun sales were both this year (again with a week left in 2011, so who knows). On December 23, there were 102,222 background checks processed. But that’s nothing compared to Black Friday this year when there were 129,166. “Merry Christmas! Now go honor of Price of Peace by killing something!”

Americans are just crazy.

[1] For those interested, here is the photo. Be warned: it is horrific. I first saw the picture over 30 years ago and it still haunts me. The great and unfortunately late (he died a couple miles from me due to the bad driving of a graduate student) David Halberstam wrote:

I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly.[2] Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think … As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.

[2] Halberstam was a great man, but he is wrong. Human beings who have been doused with gasoline burn surprisingly quickly. In general, human beings burn rather poorly because of their high water content.

Reality TV Not So Real

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Fear FactorI hate reality television for a number of reasons. The first is a worker’s complaint: there is far less use of writers. (But don’t kid yourself: reality shows use writers just as game shows—which are just the oldest form of reality shows—use writers.) Another complaint is that all reality shows depend upon producers working behind the scenes to enhance the reality. Thus: reality shows are anything but reality. Yet another problem is that despite the writers and the producers, very often nothing actually happens on these shows. And thus they depend upon the editing and music departments.

Voice-over with low, somber strings. “Will Tim’s right testicle fall off?” Close-up of Tim. “Ouch!” he exclaims. The strings build. “Find out when we return.”

Or something like that.

I have long wondered why people would publicly humiliate themselves by going on reality shows. Friends have suggested that the real attraction of participating in these shows is the money. But they think this because they don’t understand that acting is a winner take all market—one in which those at the top make huge amounts of money but the rest make very little. To give you one example, when Robert Downey Jr. was down and out, he was paid only a half million dollars to star in the first Iron Man film. But after the success of that movie and Sherlock Holmes, he was paid $12.5 million for Iron Man 2 (a much worse film).

How much do people get paid for being on a reality show? According to AskVille [Amazon link dead], participants make between $750 and $5,000 per episode. For fulltime shows where the cameras are around all the time, the pay is normally $750 to $900 per week. Obviously, these people are not getting rich. Stars get paid more, of course. Donald Trump got $100,000 per episode for the second season of The Apprentice.[1] Celebrities on Dancing With the Stars can make up to a quarter million dollars if they last all the way to the end. In general, stars (and that’s pretty broadly defined these days) make between $10,000 and $25,000 per episode of any given reality show.

So if it isn’t the money, why do non-stars go on reality shows? I think that Will Wilkinson nails it: vanity. And there is a real problem here: it makes us look a lot worse than we are.

Reality TV selects for vain, emotionally volatile extroverts. Fear Factor doesn’t prove that, as a general matter, Americans will eat bugs for money. It proves that Americans who won’t eat bugs for money don’t show up at casting calls for Fear Factor… [I]t does suggest that America contains a huge number of vain, emotionally volatile extroverts.

I still think it speaks poorly of us that we watch this kind of stuff. But it is no worse than the parade of outrage that we get 24/7 on Fox News. Sure, the entertainment providers make matters worse, but there is something deep inside us that wants to gawk at the worst that we are.

[1] With $100,000, I could pretty much retire—that’s the kind of life I lead. But this kind of money shows without a doubt that Trump is lying when he says he is a billionaire. He would have to do The Apprentice for 500 years to make a billion dollars.

Ostentatious Religiosity Should Be Laughed At

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If it weren’t for his ostentatious religiosity, I doubt that anyone would know who Tim Tebow was. So it is ironic that there is such an uproar when there is a little push back against his annoying public displays of religious faith. Bill Maher’s tweet was right on target: “Wow, Jesus just fucked Tim Tebow bad! And on Xmas Eve! Somewhere in hell Satan is tebowing, saying to Hitler ‘Hey, Buffalo’s killing them.'” I mean, what is all that on-field praying all about anyway?

I don’t think anyone really cares about Tebow’s prayers. But they do care about how much positive attention he gets for it. Yeah, the guy is very religious. Do we care? No we don’t. Just shut up about it! And if he were of any other faith, all those who applaud him would be making fun of him. Just like Saturday Night Live:

What’s the Matter with America?

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What's the Matter with Kansas?Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas reminds me of my youth when I was involved with the Rose Bird reconfirmation election. That election was all about the death penalty, and eventually she was removed from office because she had never voted to uphold a death penalty case.[1] This was not, of course, the reason that the power behind the campaign was against her. The Bird court was consistently on the side of individuals and small businesses going up against large corporations. In the end, the little people (the powerless) were manipulated to gleefully vote against their own self-interest in the name of an irrelevant issue. Because the governor at the time was Republican, California got an extremely conservative (pro-business, anti-individual) court.

What’s the matter with Kansas is the same thing that is the matter everywhere: people get confused about what their own interests are. And there is no end in sight. That’s why What’s the Matter with Kansas? is such a depressing read. However, Frank is very amusing as he paints this extended picture of humanity’s decline. Again and again, he writes variations of this sentence that sums up the whole book, “For decades Americans have experienced a populist uprising that only benefits the people it is supposed to be targeting.”

He is never so good as in the last chapter of the book:

Behold the political alignment that Kansas is pioneering for us all. The corporate world — for reasons having a great deal to do with its corporateness — blankets the nation with a cultural style designed to offend and to pretend-subvert: sassy teens in Skechers flout the Man; bigoted churchgoing moms don’t tolerate their daughters’ cool liberated friends; hipsters dressed in T-shirts reading “FCUK” snicker at the suits who just don’t get it. It’s meant to be offensive, and Kansas is duly offended. The state watches impotently as its culture, beamed in from the coasts, becomes coarser and more offensive by the year. Kansas aches for revenge. Kansas gloats when celebrities say stupid things; it cheers when movie stars go to jail. And when two female rock stars exchange a lascivious kiss on national TV, Kansas goes haywire. Kansas screams for the heads of the liberal elite. Kansas comes running to the polling place. And Kansas cuts those rock stars’ taxes.

What’s the Matter with Kansas? is an excellent book. But I can’t recommend it. It tells us what we already know in far more detail than we ever wanted.

[1] Two other justices were removed at the same time: Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin.