QUESTIONING: Puritans Rule!

I am speaking very loosely indeed on this one, as the situation is in early days, and more will emerge, no doubt, of details that will skew the whole picture one way or another. Probably both.  

David Petraeus did a bad thing, he cheated on his wife, a thing to deplore.  Not an unusual thing, not among husbands, not among leaders of nations, not in the history of the world.  Pretty damn common, actually, and it was a very common thing to do. A very human thing to do.  

David Petraeus has served this country well, he is a man of greatness, in many ways. His contributions to American, to the world, perhaps, have been of note, both in his military service, and his work heading the CIA.

Only in America, this nation that grew from some life-hating seeds of Puritan ethics and judgementalism, does such a man have to commit professional and political harakiri for this kind of error in judgement.

Clinton did it, then lied and tied the country in knots for a while.  He's doing okay.

Roosevelt did it, and probably everyone around him knew it, likewise, John Kennedy, but the nation only found out years later. The nation handled the news.

A number of politicians in more recent years have had affairs that were discovered, and while some of them walked away from their careers in disgrace, and lost all credibility with their public, others said, simply, Yes, I did it, it was dumb, I was dumb... and held onto their careers.

I wonder--Should this man be dismissed from his post, because of this exercise of deplorable judgement in his personal life? Suspended for a while, maybe, to sort out with his wife and family and himself, to get back on track.  Can we afford to give up one of the leaders who has shown much better judgement in other areas, and kept us on track as a nation? It is not as if we actually know him or his wife or the Other Woman, or any details of the situation.  

A revelation of impropriety may expose many areas of corruption in a person's life. Or it might be a complete anomaly. I am thinking, at this point, anomaly. Time will tell.  

I would not have accepted David Petraeus's resignation quite yet.

CELEBRATING: This Time...

When my daughter woke me this morning with the news of the election results, I felt a literal lightening off my heart.  

I am more than happy, I'm delighted that Americans leaned just far enough my way, that I am celebrating this morning, instead of angry, resentful, disheartened, dismayed...

I'm sorry that so many others are feeling that way today. 

Smart or right or helpful, or not, we have become so tightly polarized to Parties and particular ideas and people, that the day after Election Day is not just an 'oh well' day for those whose causes and candidates lost.  I don't think it is helpful.  On the contrary, we remain angry and polarized for some time, even all the way to the next Election Day.

How do we all, winners and losers, take that gracious step back, and see in clearer focus that one man, one idea, one term or two, cannot destroy this nation? We have so many safeguards, and we have so many voices, so many opportunities to shape our world, and it is ideas and beliefs that impel us one direction or another: there are few absolutes in the world, and even fewer in a society like ours that is founded on freedoms of belief and speech.

Our success as a society and as a nation lies in our ability to work with what we have, whether it is natural, cultural or personal.  We are weakened when we expend our energy fighting against what we have: King Canute stood on the shore all day, ordering the sea to retreat until he prevailed. 

Sure, the tide eventually went out, it always does--but what a waste of a day!

I will try to remember all this, next time the tide turns again, and my guy, my causes don't do so well.

SIGHING: If campaigns could only tell the uncorrupted truth,

If all, or at least the vasty most of us, could see through the blandishments and manipulations, the contrivances and devices made to persuade, designed to trip alarms and get us acting from fear instead of fact...  If only we all knew how easily our feelings and minds are managed, because of the many things we don't know, but think we do... If we could see our own susceptibilities and guard against their exploitation...

But, no.  

I am sure it was the same in Pericles' Athens, and in the Roman Republic: that votes are to be gotten by whatever means, vote and voter are nothing sacrosanct: the process has little truth in it, except that we are, in the end, stuck with reality.

COMMENTING: Vote for Substance

Some of us have committed our votes already, gotten it out of the way. Why wait? I knew long ago that nothing was going to change my opinion of the only viable choice, and subsequent events, words and debates could not influence my vote further.

Some of these things I have asserted before:

No president we ever elect will be perfect or ideal.

No president will ever be best in every arena he or she must enter over the four years of the office. 

Sometimes, we must look most at who we believe will do the least damage, or who has the strongest principles, or the most or least objectionable advisors. We can observe how one may be of greater or lesser influence in the world around us: we may be a large part of a continent, but we are not an island, isolated from all else passing on the planet.

The next President will not have nearly the power that we are misled to believe, to fulfill the promises of campaigning: It takes Congress and others working with or despite the President, and the sense or lack of it, of the American people, to determine how our economy will function. A President cannot pass laws alone, or decide all policies alone. 

A body of antipatriots has proven its ability to sabotage the best offerings of a President, standing by its own stated declaration that their entire effort from the day of his election would be aimed at defeating him in the next. 

We are all witness, aware of it or not, that a single truth out of original context, and spoken of by master manipulators, such as the people who 'handle' candidates, and candidates themselves, can become lies.  Lying by misquote, by manipulation of truth, is the hallmark of campaigning, especially by those who lack substance of their own.

Campaigning for office is not the office itself.  Persuading voters to vote for them is a candidate's job, but as we've seen this very week, it is not the job of the office itself. We've seen the President be President when and where we needed him to be. His choice in that matter, to drop the campaigning in order to do the job that is his for at least one more week, shows what we can count on in the future.

We have spent four years training a man of integrity, to do the job, we have some notion which way he will jump on a problem. And many of the things that are not as better as we'd wish them to be, were never in his power to make that much better. He announced from the beginning the intent to be everyone's President, not just his own Party's, and that in itself was refreshing.  He did not appreciate, I think, just how cemented-in-place were the partisans he had to deal with, how much power they had, to sabotage, create obstacles, and lie, without accountability.

From a lame field of dogmatic irrationalists, America was offered... one of them.  Not one in that field has the capacity or qualifications to be President.  That candidate has been 'handled' this way and that, to appear qualified, to appear truly willing and able to represent the whole American public.  And a lot of people--about half of the voting citizenry, it appears--are buying into it, because it is so much what they want to be true.  

If that candidate wins, he truly will represent this nation which seemingly and appallingly is passing from a democratic republic that we call Democracy, to a land of Idiocracy, where ignorance is celebrated, science and knowledge are despised, and entertainment inspires more votes than political realities.

Yes, I voted for Obama.  There is no other rational choice. 

I am not a Democrat.  If the Republicans ever put up a rational, capable candidate with integrity and substance, he or she just might get my vote. But this time... they have not done that. Not even close.

PONDERING: Why Vote?

I have been thinking about why I still get passionate about my electoral choices, and what really does matter, with who we elect to high office. Some say it won't make any difference, one is the same as the next.  But it does matter.

Whoever is President gets to shape the Supreme Court, should any vacancies occur.  That can matter.

The President speaks to the rest of the world, establishes, and maintains the presence and image of this nation among other nations.

The President makes decisions that shape our course into the future, and into history.

Who is President can shift the balances of our potentials as a nation: whether we will remain competitive in the sciences, for instance, with the rest of the world, and in other areas of education: the past 50 years, while we have rested on our laurels as walkers-on-the-moon, assuming that our scientists would keep us first, the educating of the next generations of scientists have been sliding, and we are no longer first, whether we know it or not.

Who will we go to war with next, and for what?  When will we bring our fighting troops home?  How will this nation reward those soldiers, when they come home wounded, exhausted, mentally and emotionally battered? The President will decide a lot of what kind of nation we will be, and choose what battles we fight, in the world and at home.

We have had fools for President before.  The history of the Presidency can supply a list of flaws and blind-spots and misguidance from its very beginning.  In every election season we have had idealists, crooks, visionaries, puppets, fanatics, dreamers, hard-headed, large-hearted candidates... and some of them, we've elected, and the nation has survived.  But survival is not what it's about: It is about what and who we are, what we stand for, what we strive for, what we allow and what we don't.

And I think most of us who are passionate about who's running and who wins, who takes on the challenges and uses his (or her) truths and beliefs to shape the national path, we care about those things. 

No President will ever be the best person for the job, in everyone's eyes.  We don't need perfection. We don't even need the same qualities all the time. The job isn't the same from season to season, so we need one who can adequately answer the needs of the immediate and foreseeable times.  We don't need perfect answers, either, for that matter: We need steps in the most positive direction. We need someone we can trust...  Not to be unchangeable, but to not lie to us.

We need a President who is likely to get us into the least amount of trouble, as well as one who can get us out of the troubles we are already in.

That's what we are voting for.  That's why so many of us still bother to vote.

That, and because if we give up the privilege of voting, we give up the privilege of complaining about the results.

HISTORY REDUX: The Infamy of the Borgias

I have finally reached that time in life when I mention a name, a person out of history or even the current events and common knowledge of my own generation, and am greeted with a blank stare, or an almost prideful declaration: Never heard of em!  As if it is some kind of proof of youthful superiority to be ignorant of the Older Generation's icons.

When I was a kid, everyone knew the name and deliciously dreadful reputation of Lucretia Borgia! I mean, she was only one of the most notorious wives out of Renaissance history, a poisoner of numerous husbands and lovers! Right up there, she is, in the annals of Uppity Women, with Elizabeth Bathory, Marie Antionette, and Medea. Oh, yeah, and Livia Augusta, the wife of Augustus, and mother of Tiberias, who was the next Caesar mainly because Mommy poisoned off all the other candidates.  (Since Tiberias was only a stepson of Augustus, and he had a number of better blood kin in mind, this took some doing.)

Isn't popular history titillating?  What does it matter, if it isn't quite true?

Yet, Lucretia (properly Lucrezia, pronounced Loo-cretzia) was not the woman in those stories.  Her own, actual story is  far more engaging, a story of great poignancy, of tragedy and eventually, once freed of the encumbrances of family, personal vindication.

Her father was Rodrigo Borgia, also known to history as Pope Alexander the Sixth.  He was not a good man, he was one of the most corrupt of the Popes, but this can be said for him: He loved his children! Besides Lucrezia, his golden girl, there were Gian and Cesare (pronounced as John, and Chez-ar-ay) who come into the tales of the family, though there were a throng of natural children which Rodrigo happily acknowledged.

The Borgias' reputation has come down through the centuries, popular history painting them as among the most vicious power-gamers in our troubled world. In actual history, Rodrigo and Cesare were the real players, Gian being taken out early (popular history blames Cesare, but historical logic and what evidence there is, suggests someone else murdered Gian.) In 1500 AD, people were not nice, in fact, they were just as not-nice as they are now. Possibly, we judge them harshly by our modern standards, but it may be that the Borgias pushed the limits, even then.

Niccolo Macchiavelli wrote his famous treatise on getting your own way, THE PRINCE, either about or for Cesare, and   in admiration or some form of mockery: opinions vary.

Lucrezia's great flaw was, it has been said by biographers, "a fatal acquiescence." 

But is even that slight redemption fair? 

She was a woman in a society that regarded women as childlike pawns and was herself a huge pawn because of her family's place in that society. As a member of this family, her life was privileged and indulgent: the Borgias made their own rules.  Rumors of incest and illegitmate offspring rose like weeds around a few actual facts. The evidence, though, remains circumstantial.

Possible, even probable, though, is not quite the same as true.  Truth is, we don't know if she gave birth to the son of her father, or if the child's paternity, even maternity lay elsewhere. It would be interesting, if the various Borgia remains could be tested for DNA proofs.  

She was married off at 13, that marriage later annulled by her father's decree, so she could be married more usefully elsewhere, for the family. There are, as always, various versions, but there is the opinion that she loved her husbands while she had them. 

One of them, when she was called upon to give him up, and warned that he was doomed, Lucrezia carried out a plan of her own to warn him away from his planned murder. He fled, but eventually, the Borgia men succeeded, and she was heartbroken when he died. 

Her third husband, the Duke of Ferrara, had to be bribed and threatened, before he consented to the union.  He'd heard things. Lucrezia was 21 then, in1501.  Her father was over 70, and perhaps was looking to his mortality, and her future. Not that it was his plan to die any time soon...

In August of 1503, according to some historians, Rodrigo and Cesare attended a dinner to which they had invited themselves, Cesare providing a gift of wine to the host,  Cardinal Adriano Castellesi. 

This Cardinal was a political problem, and they had ways of clearing such problems: The Cup of the Borgia was a euphemism for death in those days, and there are references to a poison they are said to have invented, called cantarella. It's making involved arsenic and a dead pig.  

Did they attempt to poison their host, with a great disregard for all the other guests, as well?  Or did they all just get sick from a bug that was going around? That's also a theory many historians cleave to.  The known item is that everyone got sick, and some went home and died.  The host survived the illness, living another 16 years.

Within a few days' time, Rodrigo was a fascinatingly disgusting corpse, and Cesare, bed-ridden for some time, was too weak to protect his own interests, so lost his position of political and social power, eventually spiraling down to a sordid end.

Lucrezia, by all accounts much loved by both her husband and the people of Ferrara, lived until 1519. She died at 39, of a difficult childbirth, and was mourned as The Good Duchess.

COMMENTING: Obamacare, Another Helmet Law

Someone in DC is trying to tell ME, an American, what to do!? String 'im up!

Okay. Fine. It's grand to be an American, to be a citizen of a nation built on freedom of speech, freedom of belief... probably the greatest degree of personal freedom in the world. We, in America, have the best chance of long, healthy life, the greatest personal liberty to do and be nearly anything we want, and happiness—material, consumer, entertainment joy--delivered non-stop, never mind having to pursue it. 

Our sense of entitlement to all these things is enormous. It's The American Way!

So, when someone tells us that we must buy health insurance, what an outcry is heard in the land!

But the fact is, it is not just about a personal freedom or choice. It is a community, not a personal matter. Every time an uninsured person uses an Emergency Room for their only health care, the community pays for it.

Every time someone who has not been able to afford regular health-care becomes so ill that hospitalization is the only option, the community pays for it.

We have to earn and pay for a driver's licence in every state; we pay business licence fees and taxes to run a business in most communities; we are answerable to the community to obey laws, whether they suit us or not. We are not absolutely free even in America, to do and be whatever we want, at the cost of community stability.

So, yes, this is another: a law, a tax, a mandate, right up there with helmet laws, an imposition on the individual right to risk their own health and life.

Sure, who does it hurt, to decline to wear a helmet while you hurtle down the highway at 80 mph? It's your brain, your pain. Right? My son and his friends, here in Colorado, see someone riding without protection, and sneer, “Organ-donors.” 

Okay, well, that's practically a service to the community, right?

But someone has to clean the brains off the street. Someone has to pay the cops and emergency responders, and the coroner. And someone, whoever was driving the other vehicle, has to live with the trauma of the involvement with causing a death. Maybe the 'victim' has no mother or father, no siblings who care, no friends to be devastated by the death, but there are people, real people who are affected by it, whose lives are altered.

You can choose to not care, you can impose your irresponsibility, you can just let someone else pay your bills. There are, sadly, those kinds of Americans, too.

RANTING: Stupidity is underrated...

...as one of Nature's best tools of natural selection and of population control.

Without stupidity, no one would smoke, tail-gate, or tease bears.  No one would destroy themselves with drugs or fast-food, or starve to death playing solitaire on the computer.

The world would be way more crowded if all the people who are intent on stupidcide got smart all at once.

Luckily, that doesn't look like happening any time soon.

Burning

US embassies in the nation of Islam are burning.

In the United States, right and left are disavowing the film that has set that mad dragon rampaging.  Yet, the dragon swoops and roars and burns.

In the Unites States, there is outcry against the  utterly inane, self-serving fools who poked the dragon with a sharp stick, and pissed it off.  How could anyone be so stupid, so delusionally self-righteous, so blind to the risk to others?

We get this same outcry against Nazi and KKK parades and rallies, and any kind of demonstration of things that generally have long ago been marked "Evil" and for which we as a maturing and responsible society have abandoned any consideration of legitimacy or tolerance.

And yet... perhaps the greatest strength of this nation, the United States of America, is that one essential of liberty: freedom of speech.  

That Constitutional freedom guarantees the right to say any damn thing, to make any declaration, publish any manifesto no matter how mad, no matter how unpopular, to anyone in this country, and even outside it, the policy of tolerance of outrageous ideas and ideals often seems to be official policy.

Nations in which freedom of expression does not exist, don't understand it.  They just don't comprehend that any American's opinion that gets blurted out, that America tolerates it, without necessarily agreeing with it.  If one fool American throws out into the world something vile and absurd and provocative, of course people of reasoning wit in any culture can see it for what it is.  But those who are looking for an excuse, or simply don't get it, will hold all of the United States responsible and accountable for that one bit of malicious, personal stupidity.  

Personally, I think it is mostly excuse.  The leaders of the mob know better:  They count on the ignorance and emotional volatility of the mob to do the work they want done, knowing full well what the truth is, but finding it more useful to bellow out the lie.  They will not be appeased, no matter what the American government does about this particular provocateur, because they want the excuse more than they care about the truth.

The truth is, even in America, even with this huge blanket of protection over the right of free expression, there are limits: No one has the right to cry, "Fire!" in a crowded theater. No one has the right to use their freedom of speech to incite physical threat or harm to anyone else.

What happened in this latest incident not only caused deaths, it was predictable that it could.    It was done to provoke that dragon, to yank its beard and blow it a raspberry. 

On that basis, in my opinion, the author of this latest outrage should be prosecuted to the very fullest extent of American justice, regardless of whether other nations respect it or not.

Why I Unfriended FaceBook

This was excerpted from a conversation I had with someone who wondered why I dropped my Facebook account a few months ago, besides agreeing with Betty White's assessment, that it is simply "a colossal waste of time!"


Facebook. I like it less and less every day.

For one thing, it smacks more and more of a trend in our society towards Big Brotherliness which I find alarming. The more we publish of our lives, our personal stuff, the more vulnerable we are to anyone--government or rogue hacker, commercial or criminal predator...  All we do electronically leaves a trail that diminishes privacy and security. It was not worth worrying over Facebook's role in that while not actually making much use of it, as, in fact, I wasn't.

If you are on FB, everyone assumes you are on it all the time. As I wasn't, I missed things only offered there.

It is a great shortcut to get information out there--but like mass mailings, there's no way to be sure that the information gets received. Senders seem to forget that: If you want to be sure that someone knows what you want them to know, you have to actually tell them! Facebook becomes a substitute for actually communicating with people: electronic connectivity becomes a force for human disconnection.

We are making life so technically convenient, that we are losing  much actual human connection. Sure, we go faster, to more places, and get more things done in a day.  We are entertained and stimulated every moment we are not actually asleep. We can be in almost continual, trivial contact with friends, relatives, and total strangers we 'like' and call 'friend.' We don't have to even stand up to go shopping.

Who appreciates silence any more, or true down-time? Hell, we don't have time for down-time! We never have to be alone with ourselves: We never have to talk to just ourselves.  And when connectivity fails, those who live their lives by it have not developed the resources to be alone with themselves.

I don't think such social, technological paradigm shifts as 'social media' are a bad thing, I am just looking at what we are giving up for this one, at how we are giving those things up without even noticing: it isn't actually a conscious choice, but an induglence in things like... unthinking reaction, impulse and gratification all with a flick and a click: Behaviors and mindsets of childhood.

This is not only dumbing-down but also younging-down American society.  
If we are going to fulfill the responsibility of elders to the young, then we have to show them what consciousness looks like, and teach critical thinking, nurture insightfulness.  We need to demonstrate appreciation for Time, and its part in shaping our experience of the world, of life. We need to encourage our children--and our own inner-children--to find interest in real things, not just the superficial glamour sprayed out by the entertainment industry.

We need to keep the fun and the useful and the needful in proportion and balance.

Imagine a diabetes of the spirit, of society, where the system no longer knows how to process all the sweets dumped into it, and yet craves ever more, because real hunger is never satisfied.

Imagine a community of millions herded into handy locations, for the convenience of those who feed off the unaware, the ignorant, the innocent.

Now, imagine being part of the solution instead of part of the problem.



That is why I unfriended Facebook.



　

Comments Are Welcome

It's all very well to have a soapbox to stand up on in the marketplace, and declare opinions, rant and provoke.  I, like anyone in this land of free speech and market places, revel in the box and the opportunity to let out my voice.

What really makes it stimulating, is the the engagement with the passers-by who pause to listen, and are moved to respond or rebut.  I love discussion!

Comments are welcome, agreeing with me or not.

(Fair warning: I won't debate whether the Earth is really flat, or if we actually landed on the Moon, or evolution.)

SINGING: ...Long time passing...

Where have all the heroes gone?

Since the passing of Neil Armstrong, people have been mourning not only his death, but the loss of an American hero.  I’ve heard people asking, “Who are our heroes today?”

It’s gotten me thinking, that question. What makes a hero? What makes one like Neil Armstrong? Where are we looking for new heroes?

My heroes are the people who put their personal stuff aside for the sake of a greater need, or a greater purpose than their own.  Heroes are people who set aside even their interest in their own survival, in favor of something they perceive is more important.

What have we been teaching our kids, since the 60s?  There has been some good stuff, some really important stuff, but an awful lot of emphasis has been on personal comfort, personal goals and satisfactions.  This is pretty much antithetical to the creation of heroes.

It is not about morals, conforming to some code of behavior that is, when it comes down to it, a cultural variable rather than a natural absolute of being human.  It is about the culture of selfishness, of 'having it my way' with no thought of greater benefit to the community. It is about celebrating the people who gratify our pleasure, or titillate our schadenfreude: lauding glamour over substance.
 

What are your imperatives in life?  Are they all about you, your happiness, your comfort and gratification?
What would you give them up for? What would you risk them all for?

What would you put your very life on the line for?

What would you give up your hope of happiness for?
 

A lot of us can’t imagine ourselves as heroes until we are in circumstances that demand it, doing what needs to be done, totally forgetting our personal risk. Heroics happen like that, because we have it in us, as human beings, to forget self, and act without self-interest: heroically.

And then there are those who put themselves at risk every day, with conscious intent, with full awareness. Soldiers in a combat zone… law enforcement officers… firemen and emergency responders…  If you ask them, they are not heroes, they are just doing a job.  But they chose that job, and they go out every day regardless of risk, and do what needs to be done.

Those who mourn Neil Armstrong as one of the last American heroes, are not feeling the loss of the hero: It is  Hero on a pedestal that they mourn.  They are looking for the Hero that brings us together as a community to celebrate that we have produced among us, such a one! He must not only have done great things, he also has to be one who can stand up there, and not fall from the height of our expectations.

There are plenty of heroes around nowadays… but precious few pedastals.  Maybe that’s what we need to be wondering about.

PONDERING: The new science of quantum furionics

Lately I am making 'field trips' to Wiki to try to finally get into my brain the basics of quantum science.  My "classic physics" mind, relies on certain truths being stable.  It insists that 'real' requires things to have physical properties and behave in predictable, physical ways.

I am trying to stretch this mind of mine to wrap around things like wavicles and what quanta are, and mathematical bits of information that float around in my mind with nothing to anchor to. 

Examples! Give me examples!  I need concrete examples of things that don't necessarily have to be concrete themselves.  I need analogs...  metaphors...! The slowness of my brain, the stubborness of my mind, clinging to what it knows and believes in this area is so frustrating... 

Is there a wavicle for this... The 'frustron,' to quantize--is that the right use of the word?--frustration?

Frustrons collide with exasperons...  creating a critical mass, resulting in the production of explodium... which emits arghions... wavicles with a distinctive vibration in the range of hearing...  and ackions and gahons whch also make a sound impossible to duplicate. 

My head/brain/mind is flooded with them...  producing the by-product infurions...

COMMENTING: Who Needs Privacy, Anyway?

"Privacy is passe' "

Mr. Zuckerberg, the almost-30 CEO of Facebook, put out that declaration a while back which sounds to me like a sneer at people who still regard privacy as something we should be able to expect in our lives: something to value, and protect. 

As if we who bring up the topic are making too much of an obsolete and essentially meaningless matter.

Ask anyone who has been stalked if privacy is obsolete.

What Zuckerberg seems to be saying, is that no one should be caring about the loss of privacy inherent in participation in so-called 'social media,' that the social convenience outweighs any little thing, like who can tap into it to know all about you.  Besides, if you aren't doing anything naughty, why should you mind if people are watching over your shoulder?

Minimizing a problem surely is easier than solving it.

REVIEWING: "LOVE NEVER DIES"

LOVE NEVER DIES

(This show was presented in movie theaters as a special event: this review is of that event, not the stage production itself, which might come off a little better.)

Some stories should be permitted the graceful exit, never to be dragged down by an inept sequel.

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA was a profoundly moving story when it was first published in the 1800s.  It became a lush and fantastic production, as Andrew Lloyd Webber made it into a showcase for Sarah Brightman's voice, and the movie of the musical was spectacular.

LOVE NEVER DIES also has some wonderful, extravagant costuming and set-design.  Instead of the Victorian gothic of the original, the makers of this one went to the grotesquerie of 1905 Coney Island.  The supporting cast is equally wonderfully, artfully grotesque, the sideshow elevated to wonder, never sleazy or gross. 

Possibly, A. Lloyd Webber's music is also fine, but I confess, the lyrics were distractingly awful, in my opinion, third rate poetry filled with psychotherapy jargon that failed to actually move my heart, or reveal the psychotic depths of the Phantom, though perhaps they were apt enough in revealing the banal psyches of the other lead characters.

The story is contrived and predictable from the entrance of each character, and seemed to me to be terribly terribly pretentious, as if  enough glamour and self-confidence could pass it off as a thing of real art and true depth. 

I fear money-making, more than art or truth, was behind this effort, and even the much finer elements of costuming, set, and the wonderful supporting cast, don't make it worth even the $18 ticket price for this movie-theater Special Event. The most wonderful packaging can't lift up mediocre content. It by no means lives up to the original PHANTOM...  but leaves only the taste of something trying to make more money off that original amazing and successful spectacle.

So... a lot of people have raved about this production, originally produced on stage in Melbourne, Australia.  I am making a guess that it comes across better on a stage, at some distance, than as close up and intimate as this film makes it.  Makeup for theater requires distance to be effective.  It is a different art from makeup for movies.  And the mics, attached to the singers' hairlines, invisible on stage, are distractingly obvious on film that puts you right on the stage with them.

Seems to me, a lot of miscalculations were made to bring this stage production to the screen. One of the worst is the tedious, self-congratulatory lead-in lecture by Lloyd Webber himself. It is rarely a good idea to wear down your listener with going on and on about how wonderful a child you've made, and a worse one to raise the level of expectations so high that it practically sets the audience up for disappointment.

No, I'm sorry, I don't recommend this. 

  

REVIEWING: BILL NYE, The Science Guy lecture

Bill Nye, Science Guy!

He gave a lecture last April at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs campus.

It was something really refreshing, listening to this wonderfully intelligent, enthusiastic, life-loving man who is near my own age, who refers back to things familiar to me, like the first Earth Day, and the Vietnam draft.  And did I mention, sensible?

His message to the kids is this:  There are problems in the world: find ways to fix them! Don't do less, or use less to conserve--Do more with less.  He wasn't telling anyone, Make the solution... He was saying, Come up with solutions. Come up with ideas, and share them, even if you can't make them yourself. 

Actually, it is his message to all of us, regardless of age: Share your ideas, stimulate awareness: Get out there and change the world! 

He shot down a lot of the common misconceptions that question the value of the Space Program.  He addressed also the politics of denying global warming, pointing out that the petroleum companies pay 'experts' not to prove global warming isn't happening, but to establish doubt about it in the minds of people who aren't trained or educated to know better, to see around the twisting and spinning of the facts. 

The absurdity there is that we have proof that the world is getting extraordinarily warmer, not just a normal fluctuation, but a dramatic rise visible in, as one example, the ice-core samples that reveal Earth's climate going back, literally, thousands of years.  We know what the surface temperatures were; we know--from the prehistoric and historic air within bubbles in the ice--what was in the atmosphere, over thousands of years.  We know enough, to see that what is happening now is significant, and no fad, crazy notion, nor political agenda.

And we know that we have something to do with it, and therefore, that we can influence what is happening with some intelligent and responsible choices.

Bill Nye's message is to make those choices, to get out there, and--change the world!

One young woman behind me griped afterward that he had really been a downer, talking about all those problems... She wanted something to cheer her up.  She didn't hear what he was saying that should cheer us up:  We, ourselves, at any age, any level of experience and knowledge, education and money, WE have the power to make a difference, to make it better, to... quoting him:  "Dare I say it...?  CHANGE THE WORLD!"

__________________

The Science Guy is the CEO of The Planetary Society, invites everyone to visit the site and find out about it.

REVIEWING: GAME OF THRONES

GAME OF THRONES

It's several volumes, this tour-de-force of fantasy writing.  It really is a remarkable (and very long: several volumes, epic in scope, wonderfully complex and literary) piece of writing by George R R Martin, and I do recommend it to you. It's about war and love, and the dynamics of dynasty: politics and humanity.

It delves into character, the foibles and follies of human interaction. It twists between the hopes and futilities of human endeavor, and challenges every one of our culture's cherished notions of correctness, honor, and the good intention. Nobility is not rewarded any more than greed or venality.  It is interesting to see what is rewarded.

It is fantasy because it is an author-created world, but it is about people who rely on very little fantasy to get through their complex lives. There is a little magic, a lot of religion of both familiar and exotic nature, and there may be dragons, but they are not the point of the story, only part of its mechanics, its setting, and logic. They are the devices of human beings, being human.

The thing that makes fantasy or even fiction in general worth reading, beyond the sheer escapism which we sometimes crave or even need, is that in the twists and detail, the intricacies of the make-believe, universal truths are revealed.  George R R Martin writes and creates with that kind of depth, that kind of value. After you take it in, reading or watching, you think.

The HBO series is typical of HBO series: it does not shy away from nudity, sex, or impolite language, though these are not out of place in this story, when they appear.  If nakedness offends or upsets, this is not the thing to watch.  If bare skin and sexual behavior are perceived as normalcy, and not a matter for alarm and dismay, then this will satisfy. It has a lot of realism, for a fantasy. 

If you have not yet seen it, there are two seasons to catch up with, before the next one starts, in March 2013.  

REVIEWING: CHIMPANZEE

CHIMPANZEE by Disney

Independent and impressively talented and dedicated film-makers provided the footage of the wild chimpanzees.  Disney organized it and added a lot of anthropomorphic music and narration, but stopped short of a laugh-track.  (Does anyone besides me ever wonder why there are not cry-tracks for sentimental moments? Just to make sure we get the emoting right... )

Disney has long been renowned for it's nature films' photography: in the 50s, one of my most-loved litte folks was Perry the Squirrel.  I was 4 or 5, when that came out.  I had the Golden Book novelization, too.  At that age, the narration and thinking this cute little guy was like me, was just fine.

This time, I'd much prefer that Disney forego the narration and the inapt music track, let it all speak for itself, let the editing of the material tell the story.  Okay, a modicum of hushed, informative verbal input... or a few words  on the screen as preface, or maybe a few lines of subtitling.  But not Tim Allen putting out lame humorous remarks that detract from who and what chimps are, and what their world is like, really.  Maybe if they could have gotten the dryly amused voice-over guy who did THE GODS MUST BE CRAZY...  but they didn't. (That was Paddy O'Byrne, by the way.)

Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield are the photographers credited for what is some astonishing footage: The end-credits go into some proper documentarian detail of the adventure of getting this footage, and I can't help but wonder what ended on Disney's cutting-room floor.  I would eagerly watch a proper documentary, which, if it is ever made, will be truly fascinating, and a far greater contribution to the world of popular knowledge and the hope of understanding. It will have what Disney so deftly removes from most of its product: depth.

Do I recommend CHIMPANZEES?  If you can somehow block the music and narration tracks, absolutely.  If Disney--now they own the rights to the photographer's work-- ever gets its act together to make a real documentary of this astounding footage and the real true story, I will be there to see it. 

This, however, is just sad.

The following link will take you to the New York Times review.  I note the reactions to the film of that reviewer run pretty much on the same lines as mine.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/movies/chimpanzee-a-disney-film-narrated-by-tim-allen.html

HEADLINES: RAPE and FACT-CHECKING

Controversy Over Rape, Abortion Hurts GOP.

Huh... nothing compared to how it hurts women.

I suppose it's all in your priorities.

"We're Not Going to Let Our Campaign Be Dictated by Fact-Checkers"
                                                                        Neil Newhouse, Romney pollster

Damn right!  We don't want to know the truth, we don't want to know who lies to us, who plays fast and loose with reality!

Right?

Heavens forbid, we should check facts ourselves, or face the fact that in a campaign season, everyone lies, and we believe who we want to believe.

So, disdain the journalist who does his/her job, sneer at the 'fact-checker' who questions your campaign's 'narrative,' its convenient and expedient versions of Truth. It's not as if it's relevant or anything.