A good example of how the chickens are coming home to roost for the Democrats: A Boston Globe article on heavy-handed GOP government governing mentions, but doesn't fairly examine, the Democrats' use of intragovernmental rule-making as the seeds of their current predicament. The article is also a very good example of the kind of legislative judo that the Dems are going to have to use to get the upper hand again. Then again, it could be read as a warning that for the country to get good government, both parties are going to have to swear off this kind of nonsense or eventually we'll get a party so in charge that they change the rules to prevent any opposition whatsoever.
| Pork | Responsible Government |
Yale students at The Game trick Harvard fans into holding up this sign:
More info on the prank.
And, in other sports news, apparently the Crusaders (the fundamentalists, that is, not a team) don't mind if gays make out at baseball games -- as long as they're American League games:
"Do you want to take your children to a National League baseball game for instance and have homosexuals showing affection to one another? I don't want my kids to see that," [Gary Cass] said.
| Yale | Harvard | Football | Pranks | Baseball | Religious Right | Crusaders | LGBT |
Match the "percentage of voters citing moral and ethical values as their prime concern" with the year of the election:
1) 22%
2) 35%
3) 40%
a) 1996
b) 2000
c) 2004
The answer is here.
|
Using some of these methods, I believe that we've made it a bit harder for spammers to take Ish down. After some thought, I decided not to implement a CAPTCHA to separate the bots from the carbon-based commenters. There's an easy-to-implement plugin that would require commenters to input a code based on a picture to prove that they're human. But if you're vision impaired, or using a non-graphical browser, you're prevented from using it. Trip has championed accessibility, here and elsewhere, and I believe that we should do our best to make the web open to all. So no CAPTCHA yet. (Yes, there are some versions of this test that include an audio option, but not this plugin.)
So we'll see how these new changes work. Let me know if they give you trouble, OK? Thanks for your patience.
| Spam | Movable Type | Turing Test | Accessibility |
Ishaddicts may have noticed that we weren't here over the weekend. Our site was hit by spambots -- over 1000 spam-filled comments filled up the blog before our server shut down. So we're taking Ish offline temporarily while we implement a few solutions.
You may ask yourself, why do they bother spamming comments on blogs? Do they really expect us to visit their sites? The answer is no. These spammers have figured out that by making a comment on a blog, they are creating a link from the blog to their site, thus increasing (by some tiny amount) their Google rank. Repeat 10,000 times, and they'll show up slightly higher on a search for "texas hold em" or "credit mortgage" or some of the more salacious sites that have seen fit to hijack our beloved Ishbadiddle.
We've been running mt-blacklist for a while, which has helped cut down on the amount of spam (and made it easier to clean up after attacks) but it's clearly not enough. There are some other tricks up our sleeve, though, so rest assured we will be back soon.
| Google |
The Crisis of Legitimacy: America and the World by Robert Kagan, on the relationship between Europe and the US in a post-Cold War world, is instructive reading:
It is difficult not to conclude, therefore, that when Europeans and American critics call the war in Iraq unilateral, they do not really mean that the United States lacked broad international support. They mean instead that the United States lacked broad support in Europe , and more specifically, in France and Germany . The Bush administration was "unilateralist" not because it lost the support of Beijing , Brasília, Kuala Lumpur , Moscow , and dozens of other capitals but because it lost the support of Paris and Berlin .
In the end, what Washington 's critics really resented was that it would not and could not be constrained, even by its closest friends. From the perspective of Berlin and Paris , the United States was unilateralist because no European power had any real influence over it. From this perspective, even with a hundred nations and three-quarters of Europe on its side, the United States might still have lacked legitimacy. Today's debate over multilateralism and legitimacy is thus not only about principles of law, or even about the supreme authority of the UN; it is also about a transatlantic struggle for influence. It is Europe 's response to the unipolar predicament.
Kagan concludes that Europe is standing up to the US -- but that it may be a very dangerous tactic.
| United Kingdom | Europe | United Nations |
Josh Marshall has been all over the story; you can get a running total of who voted for the DeLay "Get Out of Jail Free" Rule, and who voted with the Shays Rebellion, over at The Daily DeLay.
And, speaking of our favorite GOP Senators, it seems that Rick Santorum has a leeetle problem. He doesn't actually live in the state he represents. Pesky' has the story.
| Rick Santorum | Tom DeLay | Christopher Shays |
Again, I have to wonder if these scientists have read any science fiction? Any at all? Because if they had, wouldn't they think twice about stuff like this?
Robots to Rid Us of Cockroaches?
It behaves like a cockroach. It smells like a cockroach. It is accepted by other cockroaches. But it is not a cockroach. It is a robot and scientists say its invention is a breakthrough in mankind's struggle to control the animal kingdom. The Sunday Times is reporting on a cool form of robotics, impersonating (inanimalnating?) animals. Leurre is a project on building and controlling mixed societies composed of animals and artificial agents. Within a decade, its inventors believe, it will be leading the unwanted pests out of dark kitchen corners, to where they can be eliminated. Additionally, they say they will soon be using robots to stop sheep jumping off cliffs and to encourage chickens to take exercise. Schematics, tools, and pictures here. Apparently, cockroaches do not wear tinfoil hats, as they are not smart enough to be suspicious of box-shaped circuit boards with an antennae sticking out.
OK. Sure. Introduce robotic cockroaches who will lead the pests out into your living room where they can be eliminated can take over your apartment. Because if having cockroaches is bad, having cockroaches led by a robot can't be worse, can it? Can it?
And, in case that weren't enough, how about this "art" project?
Cockroach-controlled mobile robot system in LA on Friday
On November 19th, 2004 8-10pm at Machine Project in Los Angeles, "Garnet Hertz will be showing his most recent prototype: a cockroach-controlled mobile robot system. The system uses a living Madagascan hissing cockroach atop a modified trackball to control a three-wheeled robot. Infrared sensors also provide navigation feedback to create a semi-intelligent system, with the cockroach as the CPU. This work will be framed within the contexts of intelligence, embodiment, artificial life, the history robotics, and Michael Jackson."
Here it is, a robot being controlled by a "living Madagascan hissing cockroach CPU":
Let's just hope that the French scientists at Leurre never meet up with Mr. Hertz. Because we wouldn't want a robotic cockroach leading an army of roach-driven robots out of the "dark kitchen corners", now, would we?
Oh, sure, you say. I'd never let a robotic cockroach into my home. Or a robot that roaches could control. But a shapeshifting robot that charges itself? With modules that communicate with each other "like biological cells"? Sounds like fun!
ATRON Shape-shifting RobotAccording to the article in New Scientist, "Lund believes modular robots have a role to play on the ground and he thinks they could first find use as home entertainment. 'A new concept in toys - and more advanced than say the AIBO dog,' he says."
This new robot was shown off in Japan yesterday by Danish researcher Hautop Lund. The ATRON is designed to be completely modular, able to reconfigure itself into one of 100 different shapes with corresponding motions, from snake-like slithering to walking to rolling. Each link communicates with the others via an infrared link and is self-powered—they can even help charge a weaker unit but using their shells as a conductor.
Hey, honey, look what I brought home for the kids to play with! A shape-shifting cellular-automata robot! I'll bet we can teach it to get rid of those roboroaches!
Someone alert Stephen Hawking...
| Robots | Cockroaches | Animals | Cellular Automata |
In a strong push to convince Americans that it was not, after all, the concept of moral values that pushed them to victory on November 2, House Republicans yesterday changed an internal rule requiring GOP leaders indicted for felonies to step down. Coincidentally, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay stands a chance of being indicted for a felony in Texas in the context of an investigation of allegedly illegal political contributions. AP story on the stain at 1010 WINS.
| GOP |
Marks the 35th anniversary of the death of Mervyn Peake. I finished Gormenghast last spring -- what an incredible book. Peake was also an illustrator, a poet, and wrote children's books. Some notes from Peake's son are illuminating. I'll leave you with one of his nonsense rhymes:
THE TROUBLE WITH GERANIUMS
The trouble with geraniums
is that they're much too red!
The trouble with my toast is that
it's far too full of bread.
The trouble with a diamond
is that it's much too bright.
The same applies to fish and stars
and the electric light.
The troubles with the stars I see
lies in the way they fly.
The trouble with myself is all
self-centred in the eye.
The trouble with my looking-glass
is that it shows me, me;
there's trouble in all sorts of things
where it should never be.
(from A Book of Nonsense.)
Speaking of poetry, did you know we have a new Poet Laureate? What is it with insurance men and poetry, anyway?
| Poetry |
More news for those who think the country is divided into Red and Blue Country. I offer you the following map:
Click for full-sized version. Counties are shaded according to the 2004 electoral votes. White dots indicate the home towns of soldiers who have been killed in Iraq, as of 8/04.
I realize, of course, that more populated areas are going to produce more soldiers, and that they also tend to vote Democratic. What you'd really want is a correlation of voting trends and fatalities on a per-capita basis, if you were trying to prove something. I'm not. I just want you all to realize, when looking at this map, that we are all Americans.
Related: interviews with New Yorkers signing up for the Army last week. Via the morning news.
Made (rather quickly) by adding this map and this map. The projections are slightly different, so the matching isn't exact, but it's pretty close.
| 2004 Election | Iraq | War | New York City | One State Two State Red State Blue State |
Again, because I got tired of typing it, there's a new shortcut for creating Amazon links to books music etc., and another one for Ishbadiddle Subjects.
<amazon>1931498717:Don't Think of an Elephant</amazon> will now code to Don't Think of an Elephant. The first part should be the ISBN (or the ASIN, the 10-character ID assigned to every item in Amazon), then a colon, then the title. Don't forget the end tag!
Similarly, <subject>Lists</subject> will automagically become Lists , which links to the index of posts on "Lists".
Finally, I fixed the problem where long URLs left in the comment box would go "out of bounds." They now break at 30 characters.
Boring "here's how it's done" stuff below the fold.
Continue reading "New Shortcuts" » |
New York City Transit Museum. Click for full-size photo.
| Brooklyn |
That's all for today!
| Greg Pak | Plagiarism | iPod | MP3 | Open Source | Magic | Occult | Language | Reference | English | Poetry | Sports | Baseball | Math | New York City |
Grant McCracken, over at This Blog Sits at the, has a great series of Advice to Democrats. In his latest, he recommends that in order to bridge the Culture Divide "we propose the 20 cultural documents that one side should master in order to 'get' what the other side is saying." The first Blue document he recommended was Duck Soup. I proposed setting up a Right and Left double feature -- call it the Purple Film Festival. For instance:
Left Movies: To Kill A Mockingbird
Right Movies: The Searchers
So what else would be in the Purple Film Festival? Any thoughts?
| Marx Brothers | John Wayne | Lists |
Sounds good, right? I mean poverty is a breeding ground for disaffection. And spreading freedom means that disaffected groups will use ballots not bullets. It's a theme that's come up time and again, from both sides of the aisle, when we talk about the War on Terror and our need to get to root causes.
But is it true? Not according to Harvard prof Alberto Abadie. In particular, he found no link between a nation's poverty and terror. Also, while "very free" countries had low risk of terrorism, "not at all free" countries also had low terror risks. In his own words:
This article provides an empirical investigation of the determinants of terrorism at the country level. In contrast with the previous literature on this subject, which focuses on transnational terrorism only, I use a new measure of terrorism that encompasses both domestic and transnational terrorism. In line with the results of some recent studies, this article shows that terrorist risk is not significantly higher for poorer countries, once the effects of other country-specific characteristics such as the level of political freedom are taken into account. Political freedom is shown to explain terrorism, but it does so in a non-monotonic way: countries in some intermediate range of political freedom are shown to be more prone to terrorism than countries with high levels of political freedom or countries with highly authoritarian regimes. This result suggests that, as experienced recently in Iraq and previously in Spain and Russia, transitions from an authoritarian regime to a democracy may be accompanied by temporary increases in terrorism. Finally, the results suggest that geographic factors are important to sustain terrorist activities.The article is available here for you policy wonks. But here's the money shot:
Risk of terror increases as you go up the y axis; freedom decreases along the x axis. Click to embiggen.
Note that last phrase in the abstract though -- "geographic factors" are important to sustain terrorist activities, namely mountains and jungles. The conclusion is obvious: eliminate mountains and jungles, and you eliminate where terrorists hide! Someone write a contract to Halliburton, stat.
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At SF Liberal's suggestion, I bought a copy of George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant. He's a linguist, and demonstrates how the right wing uses language to frame the terms of the national discourse. I highly recommend you buy it -- actually, you should buy two, since they're only ten bucks a pop and you'll probably want to lend a copy out right away.
In reading his book, I began thinking about reframing the progressive agenda. What would this look like? What themes would resonate with America? As Lakoff points out, it's not a question of reframing particular issues, although that is important. What is paramount is reframing the progressive identity. He points out that people tend to vote their identity, even if that vote is contrary to their own self-interest. So how do we frame the progressive identity?
This framing is implied in my Ten Steps for Taking Back the Country (see in particular points 7, 8, and 9). I believe that reframing the progressive agenda must appeal to American evangelism -- the belief in our nation's special destiny, the spiritual nature of the American dream. I say this not because I cyncially believe that we should manipulate the masses by using the language of patriotism and religion. I say this as a religious man with a fierce love of my country, and because my progressive values stem from both my patriotism and my faith.
"The American Covenant" contains a number of ideas and ideals I've had for years, but just never expressed in one place: the devaluation of citizenship, the importance of covenants. The customer / contract / covenant paradigm I developed in response to an organizational behavior class at HBS which took the rational actor theory as more or less gospel -- in other words, that ignored covenants. Max DePree also writes about the importance of covenant relationships in business. There's some Martin Buber thrown in for good measure.
I googled the phrase "American Covenant" after writing this and discovered that it was the theme Of LBJ's inaugural speech. I guess there really is nothing new under the sun.
Having written it, I'm interested in your thoughts. What works? What doesn't? Does it support the progressive agenda, or is it dangerously vague? And will it play in Paducah?
Also, one of Lakoff's points is that the conservative movement doesn't merely use language. They have an infrastructure to spread that language -- think tanks, media. So it's not enough to just write this stuff. That all being said, here it is.
| George Lakoff | American Covenant |
I'm really pissed off at all the coverage of Arafat's death, all of which totally glosses over his
terrorist career, the climax of which occurred in the past four years.
Among other things it has been proven that Arafat funded suicide
bombings (sometimes using EU money, by the way), applauded them (he
sent money and congratulations to the father of the guy who blew
himself up at the Dolphinarium), and either refused to arrest the most
notorious Hamas bombers or, having arrested them because of intense
Israeli/US pressure, set them free in 2000 so that they could do their
work. In other words, he's directly responsible for suicide bombings
and connived to ensure that other bombers could murder again. And they
did. Over and over again until finally assassinated by Israel (raising
universal criticism and UN protests!).
Examples:
Rahman Hamad organized the bombing of the No. 5 bus in Tel Aviv in
1994, which killed 24 people. Under Israeli pressure, the Arafat
arrested him but then let him go. He then planned and dispatched the
bomber in the attack on the Dolphinarium disco, and he killed two boys
at a gas station in Neve Yamim in 2001.
Mahmud Abu Hanudeh was the ringleader behind the Mahane Yehudah and
the Ben Yehudah blasts of July and September, 1997. Though on Arafat's
most-wanted list for his actions, he sheltered under Arafat's nose
until 2000, when Israeli troops besieged his village and tried to
arrest him. Three IDF soldiers died in the attempt, and Hanudeh
escaped Israel's net by turning himself in to the PA's police. Arafat
released him soon after.
And then there are the wars he caused in Jordan and Lebanon, and the
countless cross-border raids and reprisals that he instigated...
Read more below
Continue reading "The Death of Arafat: Let's Keep the Record Straight" » | Israel | Middle East |
There are three basic relationships in society.
The first is the Customer relationship.
The second is the Contract relationship.
And the third is the Covenant relationship.
A Customer relationship is built on exchange. I give you this, and in return you give me something else. If you repeat the transaction, trust is built -- but either party can always walk away.
A Contract relationship is built on trust. When we enter into a contract, we agree to act in certain ways over a designated length of time. Neither of us can walk away until the contract has ended. Until then we are bound together. Entering a contract requires some trust in the other party, although we have recourse in the law if that trust is broken.
A Convenant relationship is built on faith. When we enter into a convenant, it is for life. A covenant cannot be broken. A covenant demands sacrifice of us, and defines our personal responsibility. Our covenants are often not written down, yet they are embedded in our hearts. Our covenants are our most difficult relationships. Yet they define our society and keep it together. Our family relationships, our community relationships, our spiritual relationships are based on convenants.
To be an American citizen is to enter the American Covenant.
Our Constitution is the living expression of the American Covenant.
Like all covenants, the American Covenant demands sacrifice of us. It defines our personal responsibilities.
Yet the American Convenant is what binds us together as a nation. It is what gives us our destiny as a people. It is the blueprint for the shining city on the hill that together we are building.
In America, we take care of our own.
In America, we stand up for what we believe in: our personal beliefs, our spiritual beliefs, our political beliefs.
In America, we protect our families and our society. We protect the least among us. We fight when we must.
In America, we believe in fairness, in justice, and in our freedoms.
Conservatives want to break the Covenants of our society, and replace them with Customer and Contractual relationships.
Think about it. Why do they use the word "taxpayer" to define our relationship with the government? Unlike a citizen, a "taxpayer" has no responsibility. He pays taxes and that's it. In effect he is "buying" government services. That's why they say "it's your money" when they talk about taxes. It's true that it is your money. But it is also true that it is your society. We, as a society, have decided certain things about the way that we want our national family to be. We want to protect our family, so we fund policeman and soldiers. We don't want to be a society where children go hungry, so we fund food stamps. We fund firemen to put out our fires, and engineers and construction crews to build our roads and bridges, and doctors and nurses to help prevent the spread of disease.
Taxpayers don't do any of these things. Citizens do. We do. That is what your taxes are for -- they go to building the kind of society we want. We often disagree about what government can do and should do, and rightly so. But let us not forget what the government is for -- it is there to act on our behalf, to fufill the American Covenant.
Let me take two specific examples. The first is education. Conservative economists like Milton Friedman want to "privatize" our public education system. (See http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-023.html ). They want to turn public schooling into a free market system, where families can leave failing schools and choose to attend better ones. Over time, the failing schools will close for lack of students, while the better schools attract students and resources.
First, let's think about this practically. In order for the free market to work, to raise up the good schools and eliminate the bad schools, families need to be able to freely choose which school to go to. But choosing a school is not a frequent transaction. You can decide where to buy lunch every day, but you can't decide where to go to school every day. It's simply impractical. At most, you get to decide once a year where to go to school. In economic terms, the "switching cost" is too high. In our framework, it really means that families are entering into a one-year contractual relationship with their school. With customers only able to "opt out" of a bad school on an annual basis, there are just not enough transactions for the market forces to truly reshape the schools. Even on conservatives' own terms, the idea of privatization doesn't work.
Now, let's think about what the public schools are really for. They are part of the American Covenant. If we truly believed that the free market was the best system for education, then society wouldn't pay for education at all. Only families who had school-aged children would pay for schools.
But we as a society, as a national family, realize that there are important reasons why all children should be educated. Public education is an investment in our economic future. Public education is an investment in our society. The public schools are where children from all over the community come together. It is the very kettle of our great melting pot.
To privatize our public schools is to break the American Covenant.
Let me take a second example: Social Security.
Conservatives talk about Social Security as if it were a bank account. You pay in to it, and when you retire, you get your money back.
This is a fiction. The money that the American worker puts into Social Security today does not go into an account with his or her name on it. It goes to pay people who are already retired. It is part of the American Covenant, a covenant between generations. Today's workers take care of today's retired workers. The young look after the old.
But conservatives want to break that covenant, and turn Social Security into a contractural relationship. That is why they want to give you "your" money back so you can put it into an investment account in the stock market. But "your" Social Security money is already spent. It paid for your grandma's rent, your grandfather's medication, the rent and the heating bills of the now-retired "Greatest Generation." Of course there is the practical question that if we start setting aside money into personal investment accounts, we won't have the money to pay today's retirees. Again, even on conservatives' own terms, the idea of privatization doesn't work.
But fundamentally, they want to break the Covenant between the generations. In the name of higher investment returns.
These are only two examples; the papers are daily full of others. But we do not have to let them happen.
We are all Americans, regardless of our political affiliations, of our state, our ethnic group, our religion, our wealth, our place in society. Today there are those who want to emphasize our differences. In the wake of the election, they call for expatriation, secession, expulsion. They may do so mockingly, but underlying their jokes is a real fear. A fear that the "other side" is so fundamentally different that we can no longer exist in polity, or even in politeness.
This is not the case. We have been through worse national trials. Our "more perfect Union" has been threatened time and again. But time and again, it is our belief in the American Covenant that brings us back together.
Remember the American Convenant. It is the basis of who we are. It is what makes us both great and good. And if we ever cease to be good, we will cease to be great.
| Manifesto | Education | Social Security | American Covenant | Framing |
As a counter to the rising tide of punditry suggesting that "Moral Values" decided this year's election, I want to put forth the theory that I generally rely upon to explain any instance of disagreement with me: Stupidity.
Or, as Ted Rall suggests, the main difference between me and someone from, say, Kansas, is that "We eat better, travel more, dress better, watch cooler movies, earn better salaries, meet more interesting people, listen to better music and know more about what's going on in the world. If you voted for Bush, we accept that we have to share the country with you. We're adjusting to the possibility that there may be more of you than there are of us."
Secretly, many of you agree with me. You don't want to say it, because it sounds unkind to suggest that 58 million people are dumb. But you are thinking it. And you are right.
Continue reading "Them" » | Self-Interest | 2004 Election | GOP | Democrats | Propaganda |
First the Good News: Fallujah will go down in military history as one of the most brilliant urban battles ever. The US military is demonstrating that it has no rivals and cannot be touched. We'll see this proven by lopsided casualty rates and the fact that civilian casualties, though probably high, will be several orders of magnitude lower than in any comparable battle fought in the past. Just think Grozny, what happened to the Russians (die like flies) and what they then had to do to win (kill everyone, blow up everything).
The Bad News: Military commanders have made clear that they think Zarqawi, all the other Bad leaders, and many of the insurgeants themselves left Dodge a long time ago. And they have admitted that because of insufficient numbers they have been unable to prevent their flight. Meaning that the insurgeancy will continue, and it will probably resume in Falluja the moment the USMC pulls out to deal with another city.
The Really Bad News: No one seems to care. Neither the commanders nor the ever-apologetic war bloggers connect the dots between the paucity of soldiers, the strength of the insurgeancy, the strong possibility that the present victory will be pyrrhic, and Bush/Rumsfeld's a) obsession with fighting the war on the cheap and b) pathological unwillingness to aknowledge that they may have done anything wrong. This is Torah Borah all over again. I guess the military commanders can't complain if they wanted to, but I sense, both among them and the war bloggers from whom I get my information, a particular blindness: so enthralled are they by the spectacle of American military prowess that they are incapable of any sort of autocriticism or big-picture thinking. Since ours is the best of all possible militaries fighting the best of all possible battles, everything is beyond reproach, and no apparent mistake is a real mistake. Our own tactical brilliance is blinding us. Here lies the secret to our possible defeat: Hubris.
If we lose this it will be the apologists and not the critics who will have betrayed our troops.
| War | Fallujah |
Es sunnte Gold, und Molch und Lurch
krawallten 'rum im grünen Kreis,
den Flattrings ging es durch und durch,
sie quiepsten wie die Quiekedeis.
Jabberwocky translated into German and 27 other languages. Also she reprints the section of Gödel, Escher, Bach where Hofstader talks about translating sensical nonsense. I still like the French "Il brilgue: les tôves lubricilleux..."
| Language | Poetry | German |
“Never mind where those nukes of Iraq’s is!
Disregard that whole Evildoer Axis!
We the people don’t care-a!
Bush’ll vanquish the terra!
More important, he won’t raise our taxes!”
And three fine others. Via URLDJ.
Anyone care to write more? The comments box awaits your poetic endeavors.
| Poetry |
Kilroy Was Here was the first tape I ever bought. And if you're wondering what Dennis DeYoung is doing with himself these days, apparently he's playing the leader of a Styx cover band in a movie. If it gets more meta my head will hurt.
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In my last post, I started writing footnotes when I thought, shouldn't there be an easier way to do this? Now there is!
<fn>1</fn> will now create 1 . It looks for a corresponding note:
<note>1</note> which now creates 1 . Obviously the numbers (or * or § or ‡ or whatever) have to match for the reference to work. OK, go crazy, kids.
Boring how-it's-done and yes-it-needs-fixing stuff below the fold.
Continue reading "Note This!" » | Movable Type |
The Faculty was this year's Halloween movie -- I'd put it up there as one of Robert Rodriguez's good movies. (As his tend to be either pretty darn good or pretty darn awful, especially his sequels/remakes.) The Faculty is equal parts Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Breakfast Club. Plus, everyone's in it. Even Jon Stewart.
For a follow-up, I watched the also-ran choice the next night -- Hellraiser. I think this might have scared me when I was 15, but in 2004 I couldn't get over the now-cheesy special effects and the sheer eightiesness of it. More icky than scary. It's too bad they didn't stick with the working title, "Sadomasochists From Beyond the Grave."
Speaking of scary, check out this list of 100 scariest movie scenes of all time over at Retrocrush. Points to them for including the creepy giant teddy bear from Akira and Un chien andalou. As they point out, eye trauma features heavily in scary scenes. Plenty of Poltergeist and The Shining in here too, deservedly.
But none of these hold a candle to the scariest thing I've seen on TV lately: Nanny 911.
Some ways back, Jimpy and I were discussing Reality TV, a subject of which he knoweth muchly. "What's the next reality show theme? We've done contests, game shows, voyeurism, makeovers, dating, marriage, and jobs. What's left?" "Parenting," he replied, and proceeded to lay out a brilliant parenting game show scenario which I would share with you, but for the fact that he made me sign a $5 million NDA1 .
Well, Jim is nothing if not prescient. The other night Debbie said to me "there's a reality show I just might have to watch." So, after putting our screaming kids to bed2 , we turned on the TV to watch other people's screaming children. Sadly, it's not a contest show where the worst parents get voted off the island, but rather another makeover show -- British Nanny Eye For the Harried American Parental Guy.3 The Nanny parachutes in, tells the parents what they're doing wrong, and does not take the children on the rooftop to dance with chimney sweeps.
The whole exercise seems to be an excuse for we, the audience -- OK, maybe just me -- to shout "Bad Mother! Bad Father! Baaad Mother!" at the TV screen. As Debbie has pointed out to me on several occasions (and she's a certified feminist, may I remind you), being a Bad Mother is among the worst sins you can commit in America. Infidelity, corporate malfeasance, religious hypocrisy -- these we are all willing to forgive, especially if we are entertained while doing so. But leave your child in a stroller outside a restaurant while you dine? Out come the long knives, the rope, the torch-bearing mob, etc. Pity the children of the parents so exposed on TV.
One more thing -- is it just me, or is the music for all reality shows exactly the same?
1
Not really.
2
They weren't really screaming.
3
With this tortured phrase I hope to put the cliche "Blank Eye for the Blank Guy" to death.
Well, we can hope, can't we?
| Lists | Halloween | Robert Rodriguez | Parenting | Reality TV |
County-by-county vote breakdown, shaded by strength of Republican and Democratic support, sized according to population.
Map by Mark Newman at the University of Michigan, who isn't smoking anything, he swears.