Waiting for the End of the World

Did you hear that the world might be coming to an end before September 1?

No, this is not a follow up on my post about the Antichrist. It's probably slightly less nonsensical when scientists try to predict the end of the world, but I still think it's largely irrelevant, unless something could be done to stop it.

In this case, it seems, it could be stopped, by not flipping a switch, if you can believe it. There have even been lawsuits and, more importantly, stories in the New York Times. This story even provides for that most enjoyable of American pastimes, rolling one's eyes at lawyers:

On June 27, Overbye reported, again inside the Times A section, that the United States was seeking to dismiss a lawsuit by two worried citizens aimed at preventing anyone from throwing the big switch at the Large Hadron Collider. The government's principal response, I'm sorry to report, wasn't that there's no chance that switching on the Large Hadron Collider will bring about the end of the world, but rather that a six-year statute of limitations has already passed.

As someone with a legal background, this makes perfect sense to me. You go with the argument that is likely to win you the case, and I think you'd be better off arguing the mundane but entirely familiar statute of limitations point than trying to prove that the world isn't going to come to an end if you flip a switch somewhere. It may seem intuitively true, but this is the law we're talking about. Intuition, not to mention truth, has very little to do with it.

But I digress.

The science is anything but simple, but it seems to boil down to the possibility that when this particle accelerator is switched on, it will create a black hole that will swallow the earth whole. (Although, this is apparently not the only doomsday scenario created by the Large Hadron Collider.) More accurately, it is apparently agreed that it will likely create a series of very small black holes, but that these black holes could start devouring things on earth and get bigger and bigger as a result, eventually destroying all of Earth.

(Right now I feel a little like Rob Lowe in that episode of The West Wing with Hector Elizondo and the supercolliding superconductor.)

Rest assured, though, that Brian Cox (no, not him) says it's all going to be okay. I would try and explain what he said so that you, too, could be reassured, but honestly, it made no sense to me. I couldn't even finish reading it, that's how little I understood it. If you want to read it for yourself, click here and scroll to the bottom of the page.

I feel fairly confident the world is not coming to an end, despite not even remotely understanding the science behind it, for a number of reasons. Then again, if it does, oh well. Life goes on. Or, you know, not.

The Nonsense of Predicting Armageddon

Jeffrey Goldberg wonders if he might be the Antichrist.

No, not seriously. At least he doesn't seriously ponder whether he might be the Antichrist - that would just be silly. He does take very seriously this question of trying to identify the Antichrist on the part of evangelical Christians, particularly Jerry Falwell. Luckily for him, even Falwell doesn't think Goldberg is actually the Antichrist:

I asked Falwell if he knew the actual identity of the Antichrist. No, he said. "People might say, it's a certain person, it's Henry Kissinger, like that, but the Lord does not let us know that."

So there's a chance, then, that I'm the Antichrist?

Falwell chuckled a condescending chuckle. "It's almost amusing, that question. Of course not. I know that you're not."

Why?

"The Antichrist will be a world leader, he'll have supernatural powers," he said.

He got me there--I have no supernatural powers. I can't even drive a stick shift.

On a related note, I had occasion to watch the remake of The Omen this weekend. You should know, if you're planning on seeing it, that there's not a single genuinely frightening scene in the whole movie, and that's not at all an exaggeration. It was a beautifully set and shot film, but not scary at all. There were other disturbing things about it, some intentional and others not, but as this is not a film review, I will refrain from stating them and getting off on a major tangent. We'll keep it to a minor one, this time.

The film got me thinking about the whole Antichrist thing, though, in a way I never really have before. I guess you could say I'm one of those Christians who thinks it's a whole waste of time to really think or talk about this issue too much, if at all. To me, if you believe in it, then it is inevitable, and since there's nothing that can be done to stop it, trying to identify who the Antichrist is or when that person might appear seems pointless. To allow another brief, but related, tangent, this is one of the problem with films like The Omen. It can't even be suspenseful because the end is wholly necessary once you accept the premise; in fact, the end is really just the beginning, and it's completely predictable to boot.

Despite this rather obvious fact, much of evangelical life and thought is caught up in discussions of the end times, as they call it. Most believe we are living in it now, and that the rise of the Antichrist is imminent, which is perhaps why there is so much chatter about it. Even Falwell admits that we will not be able to know who that person is until he arrives, though that is where our agreement ends, because it only makes me wonder why he bothers positing that the person will be a Jewish male. That kind of thing only incites suspicion and fear if you aren't willing to go further and actually name names, to narrow the field. But, of course, even if he were willing or able to do that, it would also be pointless, because you can't do anything to stop it. The events as their written in the Bible are a prophecy, which means if you believe it is the word of God, then it is going to happen. This doesn't mean that the words aren't open to interpretation and that there isn't some room for speculation, but the basic fact of the inevitability of it all makes identification of specifics largely irrelevant.

(At least some evangelicals also believe that the Christians will not even be here for the reign of the Antichrist, because they interpret the book of Revelation to mean that Jesus will have come back and taken all of the believers with him, which makes all this Christian interest in this subject all the more odd, given that they might not even be here to witness any of it.)

This is one of my biggest, of many, beefs with the Christian community as a whole, this whole focus on reading the signs and trying to figure out when the end will come. It bothers me mainly because this is not the point of Christianity. Instead, Christians should be focused on being followers of Christ. Christ himself said that only the Father knows when he will return, so all this speculation isn't just pointless, it's also unBiblical. Christ didn't preach about the end of days; he preached about love and forgiveness and spreading this message to others. The struggle to walk for God is daily, even for the "best" of Christians, so it really makes me question the spiritual lives of those for whom this is the bulk or even a large part of their time spent on their faith.

I'm not supposed to judge others, and I do try hard not to - though it isn't always easy. I don't necessarily sit here and judge those who choose to put their focus in a place where I believe they shouldn't, but I do think it's fair to point out places where Christians have failed to live up to the standards they should be striving for. Failure is one thing; it, too, is inevitable. But willful blindness is another.

Bad Company

I checked Slate this morning, like I do virtually every morning, and I was greeted with a link suggesting that a night person could become a morning person. Since this is something I would like to do, I clicked on the link.

Then, I read the first paragraphs:

When I told my friends I had found a way to transform myself into a morning person, they responded in one of two ways. The night people leaned in as if I were about to reveal the location of a stash of pirate gold. The morning people simply regarded me with pity and wonder. "I just don't understand why it's so hard," said one friend, a Danish medical student. "I can get up anytime I want."

This sort of smugness is prevalent among morning people, who count among their ranks Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, nearly every American president, and even Jesus. (See Mark 1:35: "And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.") Night people are stuck with psychopaths like Adolf Hitler and Juan Arreola, the guy in Pennsylvania who nearly killed his girlfriend's 2-year-old last year, explaining to a judge, "I'm not a morning person."

Um...okay. I can be a morning person and be like Jesus, or a night owl and be like Hitler. Nice. This makes me want to be a morning person more than ever.

Of course, I really doubt very much that it's ever going to happen. Still, the thought is nice.

This morning, I was going to try and get up to run. But by the time I got myself tucked into bed and managed to drift off to sleep, it was after midnight, and I knew that the 6 a.m. alarm was going to be silenced and changed to 7. And that's exactly what happened.

I will just have to run tomorrow when I can do it in the evening.

Quote of the Day

I don't recommend this approach, but Obama could do what men have always done when it turns out they're really not that interested: nothing. Hillary can have her friends tell him she'd love for him to call; she can try to let him know how great they'd be together. She can wait for the phone to ring ("You gave him my home and cell numbers, right, Lanny?"); and when it doesn't, she can rage that he's immature, or intimidated by strong women, or not ready for a relationship. But then one day she'll find out what everyone, all of a sudden, already knows: He can commit because he's actually chosen someone else.

~Emily Yoffe, advice columnist for Slate's "Dear Prudence," on how Obama can reject Hillary as his running mate

This Post is Not At All About What It Was Supposed to Be About

Slate offers an excellent piece on why you should watch the show Friday Night Lights, if you don't already. When I first started to read the article, I thought, boy, leave it to Slate (and I love Slate, but they can be a bit...you know) to ruin a perfectly good show by going too deep into it. But the author redeemed herself with this:

Jason, the quarterback who is paralyzed, scorns God after his accident. Lyla, his former girlfriend, goes the opposite direction and joins a megachurch. When she tries to hand a flyer about "Christ Teen Messengers" to Tim Riggins, a wayward soul and the town heartthrob with whom she once slept, he gleefully informs her, "I had a three-way with the Stratton sisters." Tim is the Christopher Hitchens of Dillon.

Speaking of Christopher Hitchens, I went to see the Ben Stein movie this weekend. (If you've seen the movie, then you understand that this segue is actually completely natural, for Hitchens actually makes a brief appearance in it, as an expert in atheism I presume, since he certainly isn't a scientist.) For those who haven't heard anything about it, Stein has made a very Michael Moore-like documentary (style-wise, not politics-wise) about intelligent design.

Truly, it plays a lot like a Michael Moore film. That was the first thing that struck me about it. The second thing that struck me, and I say this as someone who is open to the idea of intelligent design as a science (as well as a religious person), is how emotional the film was. The arguments were based almost wholly on emotion and not at all on science. The ID people he interviews all say that there is evidence to back up their claims, and that there are serious flaws with evolution as a scientific theory, yet neither claim is actually backed up. The science of ID is never quite presented, and the problems with the theory of evolution, aside from the fact that it offers no plausible explanation as to how life began in the first place, are not really dealt with either.

Instead, we are treated to an argument which relies pretty heavily on the Holocaust as a reason to reject Darwinism. Even though Stein takes pains to point out that he is in no way equating all of those who believe in Darwin's theories with the Nazis, when he spends a good chunk of the middle of his movie touring Dachau and discussing eugenics, it is hard to take such denials completely seriously.

It is not wrong to point out these connections. Hitler's extermination of Jews and other "undesirables" clearly had its roots in Social Darwinism, which just as clearly derived from Darwin's original theory of evolution. Darwin himself also certainly had some eugenistic tendencies. But to suggest that evolution as a science should be rejected because some people use those ideas for evil is completely wrong. Science is about truth, not about policy, and while I certainly think there's a problem with science completely rejecting the notion that some sort of intelligent designer could have been responsible for the creation and development of life on earth, there is also a problem with completely rejecting evolution as truth for reasons that have no basis in science.

The film did take great pains to avoid being seen as "religious." The focus is on scientists who posit that ID, as a scientific theory, should be afforded equal weight with evolution, as another scientific theory, or at the very least, that ID should be able to be talked about and studied as a possibility. These people rarely mention religion (though I suspect if you Googled some of their names, you'd find various religious connections), and the film certainly doesn't focus on it much at all, aside from to have a little fun with the various atheists that are interviewed who will seem to go to great lengths to argue that there is no God.

One of the pro-ID interviewees also makes some disparaging remarks about the film Inherit the Wind, which I find odd, since the whole point seems to be that there must be some way for religion and science to work together, or at least for them not to be seen as diametrically opposed (in other words, there must be some way to believe in some sort of god and yet also be a respected person of science), and this is overriding theme of Inherit the Wind.

(As an aside, Richard Dawkins features pretty heavily in the film, as the poster-boy, if you will, for the evolutionist atheist movement. It is not an exaggeration to say that the film wholly conflates the two (evolution and atheism), but since this is a conflation that Dawkins himself would surely agree with (he has stated that his study of evolution has led him to reject the notion that there is a God), perhaps it's not too problematic. I felt a little bad when talking to a friend of mine about the movie because I mentioned a belief that I believed came from Dawkins, when in fact it comes from Peter Singer. So I post my apologies to Mr. Dawkins here. I would ask for absolution, but I understand that Dawkins doesn't believe in it.)

I say all of this as a person who not only believes in God but is a Christian. But I also know that I don't know nearly enough about all of this science to begin to have an informed opinion about the matter. I was hoping the film might just enlighten me a little bit. Unfortunately, it proved to be no better than those it attempted to criticize. Then again, films - even documentaries, these days - are first and foremost supposed to entertain, not inform. And I must admit that I found the film to be quite entertaining, in much the same way that Michael Moore's better films are entertaining, even if they also happen to be a load of hooey.

Anyway...this post was really supposed to be about Friday Night Lights, but I got a little sidetracked. It's a good show and you all should watch it...unlike the Ben Stein movie, which you should feel free to skip, or at least wait for the DVD to see.

Something about McCain

Slate offers a repeat of a McCain anecdote that originally appeared in the New York Times Magazine in a profile by Michael Lewis. It's a pretty good story.

The Best and the Oscars

I was reading on Slate this morning about the Juno backlash, and felt compelled to make a comment or two.

Now, I haven't seen Juno (and I'd much rather see There Will Be Blood if I can ever find the time), so I cannot comment on the worth (or lack thereof) of that particular film, but reading the Slate article did make me want to stand up and defend it - or really, films like it.

In particular, this comment kind of bothered me:

Vanity Fair's Oscar blogger, S.T. VanAirsdale, concedes that he likes the movie just fine but is put off by its nomination alongside heavy-hitters like There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men: "Frankly, I don't want to see Juno within a thousand feet of the Kodak Theater. I want her and her twee champions stopped at the metal detector. I want her turned away for being underdressed."

This seems to suggest that a film has to be "serious" or "artistic" or something other than cute and funny and well-crafted to be considered among the best films of the year.

I just simply don't think this is fair.

Again, I haven't seen Juno. Maybe if I saw it, I would agree. But just because a film isn't "serious" doesn't mean it can't be good. There is room for all kinds of film out there, and there are good, and even great films, among all those different categories. Just because a film isn't weighty and important doesn't mean it can't be appreciated and recognized as being the best at what it's trying to do.

I guess it's the frame of the Oscars that really bothers me. It's one thing, I suppose, to argue that critics should be wary of including such a film on their best of the year lists. I mean, I'm not entirely sure I agree with that premise, but at least you could argue that critics are supposed to see film as art, and thereby their awards should go to things that are arty rather than things that are merely clever fluff. Like I said, I'm not entirely sure I concur with this position, but at least you could argue it with a straight face and I might still respect you, even if I did disagree.

However, this person specifically says that it doesn't deserve to be nominated for an Oscar among the weightier films. This is just plain nuts, not in keeping with history, and not, I don't think, in keeping with the mission of the Oscars.

Looking back over the history of the Oscars, you will see plenty of films that couldn't be considered high art (or even medium art) being nominated for - and winning - Oscars. Titanic is an example that immediately comes to mind. That film is pure fluff, the acting is hit or miss, and it even has one of the worst screenplays ever written - which you could probably not say about Juno.

Still, I can't say it bothers me that much that Titanic won best picture. Was it the best film of that year, from an artistic standpoint? That's an incredibly subjective measure, but the answer, even from the most ardent supporter of that film, would probably be "no." But it was, inarguably, the biggest movie of the year, and the Oscars, more than celebrating the "best" in film, celebrates the "best" for the industry.

Now, Juno may or may not be the biggest film of last year. But it certainly was a pretty big film, perhaps surprisingly so, and I don't see any problem in the Academy nominating it for Best Picture. I wouldn't even care all that much if it won, though I really don't think that will happen.

And You Thought I Was Mean

So, I was perusing Slate this morning, which I haven't done in a long time, and I stumbled across this pretty interesting article about the primaries and their relevance in picking the nominees. Apparently, it's a two part series, and the one I read focuses on the Republican candidates.

The article is interesting, but that's not why I'm posting it. As I was reading, I came across the following statement:

John McCain's Jan. 29 victory in the Florida primary got him declared the GOP front-runner just about everywhere, from Reuters to Slate. This seems fairly legitimate. McCain now has more convention-bound primary delegates (95) than Mitt Romney (67); McCain beat Romney by a respectable five points, 36 percent to 31 percent; and this was a closed primary (that is, no independents—who tend to favor McCain—were permitted to vote).

On the other hand, prior to Florida, when Romney had 67 delegates to McCain's 38, and three primary or caucus victories to McCain's two, and a personal fortune to draw on for campaign expenses, which McCain lacks, one heard little talk of Romney being the front-runner. There's a simple explanation for this. Romney is a twerp and a fraud, and no one can stand him.

Ouch. And I thought maybe I was a little too harsh in my dismissal of him yesterday.

I do however, feel a little more justified in my dislike of him, though. It's not just Slate, apparently; it's everybody:

Even Romney's former volunteer driver in his 1994 Senate race against Ted Kennedy wrote on the New York Times op-ed page that due to the phoniness of his presidential campaign, "the Mitt Romney I know is sadly unrecognizable to today's voters." A Jan. 24 piece in the New York Times carried the extraordinary headline, "Romney Leads in Ill Will Among GOP Candidates." Romney's fellow candidates don't like him, and neither does the press. The only reason he's made it this far (apart from that personal fortune) is that a sizeable number of conservative Republicans see Romney as the only candidate who can stop McCain, whom they view (with some justification) as a crypto-liberal.

They even say something that I said yesterday, namely that conservatives like him because they don't like McCain and he is their best hope. The only think I disagree with is that those conservatives are justfied in thinking he's any kind of a liberal at all. Because he's not. Being more liberal than Pat Buchanan, or the ambition-fueled construct that Romney has created himself to be in order to become President, does not make one liberal. Ask any liberal (except those who work for Slate, apparently) what they think of McCain, and this will be confirmed for you.

Now, I know that McCain cultivates that image of himself as a maverick and a straight-talker. And I've even known many moderates and a few liberals (prior to his vociferous support of the Bush administration and the Iraq war) to be intrigued by him. But the fact that even he presents himself one way doesn't change the fact that he is a conservative. And I think, if you asked him and it weren't an election year and he could really be completely honest and not risk everything he's been working toward, he'd tell you that he is a conservative.

A Little Too Close to Home

From today's Dear Prudence column on Slate (posted without comment):

Dear Prudence,
We have a fairly tightknit group of married couples who get together every month or so. One of the wives has a single sister who lives in town, and she brings her to some of our events. Sometimes she asks and sometimes she doesn't. The group dynamic definitely changes when the sister is around, as most of us don't know her very well. We all try to make her feel welcome, but things seem odd because she is not married and we only see her during these events. What can be done when this wife says she's bringing her sister to an event I'm hosting, without completely crushing this very sensitive woman?

—No Sister, Sister

Dear No Sister,
What is the nature of these events that one single person throws it all off? I assume you're not all tossing your car keys in a hat and temporarily rearranging your pairings. As a matter of courtesy, your friend should ask anyone who's hosting an event if it's all right to bring her sister. But unless there's a compelling reason otherwise, the answer should be that she's more than welcome. Surely, if she's shown up for a bunch of soirees, you all know her well enough by now to include her in the conversation. It would be one thing if you all found the sister a disruption because she dominated every discussion or sulked in the corner. The only thing you find odd about her coming is that she's not married. Let's say misfortune struck you, and your husband died or you two split up. Would you expect the group to now exclude you because you were odd woman out?

—Prudie

Not Much to Say about Ahmadinejad

I'm sure all of you are aware that yesterday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in New York and spoke at Columbia University. I say I'm sure because, if you're reading this, you (1) are a sentient being and (2) probably have at least stumbled upon a news site at some point in your internet surfing over the past couple of days.

And this has been pretty big news.

I must admit at the outset that I wasn't too engaged with this story. I mean, I knew it was going to be happening, but it was only a vague concept in the back of my mind, until yesterday, when it suddenly became very real. I must say that it made me a little glad (though also maybe a little sad) that I don't live in New York anymore. I can only imagine what a madhouse it must have been. And that's something that I'm not sure news stories can manage to effectively get across.

Anyway, there has been tons of thoughtful blogging on this subject, so I'm afraid I don't have anything to add that hasn't already been said, and better. My initial reaction to such news is to feel outraged that such a travesty could have occured. How dare Columbia invite such a vile man to speak, because all it does is lend credence to his crackpot, yet dangerous, ideas, as if they are suddenly worth hearing.

And I do still kind of feel that way. I certainly feel he is both vile and dangerous, and if I were in charge of inviting people to speak at Columbia University, his would not be a number I would call. Then again, in providing him with a platform to air his views, one which opened them up to criticism and inspection in a way that they aren't normally, is probably only bad for him and good for everyone else in the long run.

As I said, though, there is much more out there much more interesting to read on the subject than this. For thoughts that are virtually identical to my own, see Anne Applebaum's piece for Slate on why Ahmadinejad wanted to speak in the the first place. Also from the serious side, you should really check out Gail's thoughts as well as her pretty comprehensive reaction round-up post.

For some lighter fare, which might just be necessary in the let's-laugh-so-we-don't-cry kind of a way, check out Slate's low concept version on Ahmadinejad's itenirary while in New York. Jeff Ellis offers some biting, tongue-in-cheek commentary as well.

Will Gore Run?

Christopher Hitchens speculates that if Gore is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize next month, that he might just (and probably should, if it's to mean anything at all) throw his hat into the already incredibly crowded pool of candidates.

In the process, he also makes it sound a little like he doesn't think it's such a bad idea at all.

My view is a little less sanguine. Then again, to echo Ross Douthat's thoughts on the possibility Newt Gingrich will also enter the race, I say why not?

(As to Gore, that is. As to Newt, I'd have to say why? Honestly, Gingrich is dead politically.)

I don't really have all that much of a problem with Gore anyway. It seems after 2000, he was all over the map for a while, but lately he does seem to have pulled it together a bit. I very nearly voted for him myself in 2000 (though I will say I was kind of different then, politically speaking). In fact, I planned on voting for him, but the more I saw of him, the less I liked his pomposity. I expect my politicians to be a bit on the arrogant side, perhaps even obnoxiously so, so the fact that it proved to be a turn off for me means it must have been pretty bad.

There's probably no way I could support a Gore candidacy this time around, but hey, I've kind of got to wonder why the guy isn't running. I mean, even Kerry gave it some fairly serious consideration before deciding against it, right? And Gore, to my mind, is likely to be a much more viable candidate than Kerry would have been.

I'm thinking it probably won't happen, though. But I have, on occasion in the past, been wrong, so it's just as likely that it will. I won't, however, be holding my breath.

Mid-Week Links or: That's All I'm Good For

Sorry for the lack of posting. It's really been a not-so-great couple of weeks here in the land of me. And this week, I haven't even had anything good happen to balance out the bad, which has made it much worse than last week.

Why so bad? Well, there's (to give you a preview) a sticky situation with a friend, a majorly disappointing and depressing realization, a return trip to the dratted dentist, and a minor car accident which happened on my way to doing something I was really looking forward to, to help bring me out of the funk I've been in, and which I ended up missing because the police took forever to show up. And my right leg continues to give me trouble as I continue my struggle to become a runner.

Since I'm in a pretty foul mood and don't feel much like blogging, and trust me when I say you wouldn't want to read what I have to say when I'm in a really foul mood anyway, I thought I'd just provide some links. Hopefully, I can return to my normally quite cheery disposition soon enough.

First of all, the Mets are in the middle of a late season collapse. They are my favorite baseball team, so this is sad news, fitting in with the them of the suckage of my life. But since it sucks much more for the Mets themselves than it does for me, since I'm really a peripheral fan, it's not dwelling on or contributing to the funk.

Terry Teachout blogs about opera going suburban in Atlanta. Really, it's more about the issues regional opera companies are presented with in trying to maintain an audience, and I found it to be pretty interesting.

Chris links to a pretty funny IMdB message board post about things learned from the film Red Dawn.

Cracked.com offers a list of five lingering questions from season 1 of Heroes and offers some modest, if not entirely serious, predictions of how they will be resolved in season 2.

Emily Yoffe takes on golf as the Human Guinea Pig for Slate.com and finds the darkness, as well as the dark humor, within.

If you didn't watch the Emmys, like me, then you might enjoy Jeff Ellis' random thoughts on the Emmys. It's almost like being there.

Also related to Emmy, Litwit writes her own Emmy acceptance speech, and once again, she lives up to her name.

McSweeney's offers a piece on Thomas Kinkade's experimental period.

Finally, Gail offers an interesting post about the struggle between Jewish assimilation and traditionalism. She talks about it in the community at large, which I found quite informative, and also talks about her own personal experience, which I found enlightening.

Faithful to a Fault

I'm sure everyone's heard by now that Alberto Gonzales is resigning his post as Attorney General.

I don't know if insiders or those more in the know than I am saw this coming. I was at least a little surprised by this. I know there's been a lot of scandal and problems surrounding the AG's office during Gonzales' tenure, but I guess I just had it in my head that it couldn't be too impactful on a late 2nd term administration. Guess I was wrong about that.

It's more surprising for a different reason though, and that is because of the President's almost pathological sense of loyalty, mixed with a healthy dose of cronyism. I was struck yet again by this thought, as I have been periodically throughout Bush's administration, when reading about the departure of Gonzales:

Gonzales sent a letter to President Bush on Friday stating his intention to step down, a senior official told NBC News, but the president did not accept it and instead invited Gonzales to his Texas ranch to talk about it.

That meeting did not change Gonzales' decision, a source said, and Bush on Monday said that he “reluctantly accepted his resignation.”

I have no idea whether all of that is true or not, or whether it's just spin put on the resignation to make it all look better for the administration. If it's the latter, I'm not sure it works, for when your approval ratings are in the mud, and you've got a controversy surrounding the guy who is resigning, then I'm not sure your best course of action is to make it seem like you didn't want him to go, which makes it seem like you think everything is hunky dory, which makes you look bad.

More likely it's some sort of spin on what is fundamentally truth. Reading that description, I have absolutely no trouble believing that the events played out pretty much the way they are described. Bush is reluctant to accept political realities when it means letting his friends and longtime advisors go, and this just strikes as yet another example of that. It reeks of that particular sentiment of the President's which might be nice to have in a personal friendship, but is potentially disastrous in a President, or really in most any professional setting.

Speaking of low approval ratings, Slate had an interesting video about that subject and what it means for how Bush will go down in history in a ranking of Presidents:


Only time will tell on that score, as the video makes pretty clear (in a much more balanced fashion than I would have expected from the not-at-all-Bush-friendly Slate), plus it's pretty funny.

UPDATE: John Dickerson frames the Bush problem a bit differently (when it comes to refusal to let people go), noting another pathology of the President's, namely his unwillingness to admit when he's made a mistake.

Friday Funnies: August 24, 2007

From Gawker, a piece making fun of the recent scientific pronouncement that the problem of obesity may be viral, at least in part.

From Slate, this isn't really a humor piece (it's about the quest for a durable yet stylish reusable water bottle), but several parts of it caught me off guard by making me laugh, so I though I'd include it here.

These American Voices segments are quickly becoming my favorite part of reading The Onion. I love that they use the same photos over and over again. Anyway, here's the one that made me laugh out loud and dash right on over here to blogger to be sure to include it in my humor round-up. It was the first quote that did it:

Wal-Mart Shoplifter Crackdown

Citing "shrinkage" as a factor in recent poor performance, Wal-Mart is instituting a number of anti-shoplifting policies, including prosecuting...

Also from The Onion...well, I think I'll just let this one speak for itself:

Hard To Tell If Wikipedia Entry On Dada Has Been Vandalized Or Not

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND—The Wikipedia entry on Dada—the World War I–era "anti-art" movement characterized by random nonsense words,...

From Overheard in New York, the following gems:

If You're Not Over Yourself at 30, We're Not Friends Anymore

Chick: Before this summer, the last time I was in the city was winter break. Ben*'s fraternity was having a networking reception here and I came along as the trophy girlfriend, I guess.
Guy, coughing: Excuse me while I choke on all the WASP in that sentence.

--Penn Station

Overheard by: Evie

via Overheard in New York, Aug 21, 2007

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, Honey!

Girl #1: Yeah, I guess I should have seen it coming. I mean, he bought himself like every season of the Gilmore Girls. Nothing straight about that.
Girl #2: My boyfriend likes the Gilmore Girls.
Girl #1. Oh, well, yeah... I mean, it is a pretty good show.
Girl #2: He really has the hots for Lorelai.
Girl #1: Yeah, okay.

--Starbucks

via Overheard in New York, Aug 20, 2007

Finally, from McSweeney's...well, once again there was a ton of funny stuff, but Ralph Nader doing the Hocus Focus was probably my favorite.

And one late addition: Jeff Ellis offers God's thoughts on reality television. Not exactly Biblical, but very funny.

More on Lynch and DV

Dennis Lim has an interesting article on Slate.com about the new-to-DVD Inland Empire which is similar to some of my thoughts, only it's much better expressed than my post on the matter earlier this week:

But Lynch being Lynch, aesthetic concerns presumably outweighed practical ones. Compared with film, video typically looks harsh and almost hyperreal, with a narrower range of colors and weaker contrast, but it's precisely those qualities that Lynch revels in. While a lower-resolution film stock, like Super 8, has a grainy, romantic allure, lower-resolution video, characterized by fewer pixels per inch, merely looks fuzzy. For Lynch, who has likened low-res video to film stock before the emulsion process was perfected, the murkier the image, the more "room to dream," as he puts it. It's no wonder this master of the enigmatic would prize video for its literal lack of information.

The deeper you get into Inland Empire, the more logical the video aesthetic seems. The bleeding colors and the unstable image are a perfect fit for the fugue state that the movie gradually sinks into. Simply put, Inland Empire is the story of a grave identity crisis. The trouble begins when actress Nikki Grace (Dern) lands a part in a hokey melodrama called On High in Blue Tomorrows. As actor merges with character, and film and reality violently intersect, space and time also begin to fissure. One minute we're in sunny Southern California, the next in snowy, old-world Poland.

Compare that with my muddied mess, and you'll see some similarities, I think. I hope, anyway, or else I really should probably quit blogging altogether.

Reading this article does make me want to see the movie again, though, so perhaps I'll go out and buy it this weekend.

The article also features lots of clips, so those who have absolutely no idea what we're talking about can get a bit of a glipse into it.

I have three movies at home now to choose from, though I'm unsure which I'll watch tonight. Probably the one that is shortest.

Wednesday Poetry: August 22, 2007

As promised, I'm here with poetry on a Wednesday rather than the usual Monday. It is not, as I suggested it might be, one of my own poems, though. I did write a poem, but then I found this one on Slate. They post a poem every week. I don't usually read them, but since I was looking for poetry, and I saw something that said "poem," I clicked and I read.

This week's entry is called "A Guide for Spiritual Tourists," and it's by Hannah Faith Notess. So check it out. They also have a feature where you can listen to the author herself reading the poem. I didn't listen to it, but that's a pretty cool added feature.

Starbucks Rant

Slate has an article about the internet's obsession with Starbucks, something which, I must say, I never noticed before (though I did take the Starbucks Oracle test and get surprisingly accurate results).

There was a comment in the article that really struck me:

The debate demonstrates why Starbucks is such a magnet for invective: It's a perfect target for our anti-corporate righteousness, because it's something we all share.

Ah, how true.

Really, though, it just reminds me of one of my main objections to what is otherwise one of my favorite movies, You've Got Mail. For those of you with higher cinematic standards than mine, the movie is about poor, little Meg Ryan who runs an independent children's bookstore that she took over from her mother and how she's run out of business by Tom Hanksand his Barnes & Noble-like corporate bookstore empire opening a store near her store.

Anyway, Meg Ryan's character gets all high and mighty about the whole thing and you, the viewer, are supposed to take her side in the matter and support how she champions the little guy over the man and how she represents the personal touch and knowledgable service rather than corporate detachment and bargain bin prices.

All well and good, right? It would be, except for the fact that Meg Ryan (in the movie) gets her coffee at Starbucks.

I like to think it was meant to be intentionally ironic, or else it was supposed to be a commentary on how even those of us who would want to be concientious and support local and independent businesses over corporate machines can't really help it at the end of the day because corporations are taking over the world. I wouldn't necessarily 100% approve of that message, but at least it would be internally consistent.

I think that's probably just wishful thinking, though.

I used to have a pretty good rant about this. I'd written it up and used to use it as my away message sometimes in AIM when I was in college. I got a pretty good response, which means that the one person who used to IM with me read it and commented back about how she liked it.

It's still a pretty enjoyable movie, one of my favorite of the romantic comedy set. Of course, a lot of my enjoyment of the movie comes from the fact that I'm almost pathologically in love with Greg Kinnear's character from the movie...which, come to think of it, explains quite a lot. About what, I'll never say.

Dashes of the Morning

I was going to watch a movie tonight (Inland Empire should come today, woo hoo!), but instead I think I'll watch this. Thanks to Terry Teachout for the heads up, otherwise I would have missed it.

I did my exercising again this morning. That's three days in a row, for those keeping score at home. It was an especially impressive feat this morning given that I only got about four cumulative hours of sleep last night. It was worth getting up, though, as I think the exercise helped me be more awake than I would have been even with the extra hour. Of course, I'm starting to get a blister on the back of my foot, so I'm going to have to do something about that. In the meantime, I'll invest in some band-aids.

It's Thursday, so that means it's time for my second-favorite advice column, Dear Prudence. Here's some of her advice to a person wondering what to do about an emotionally co-dependent boss:

You could also confidentially go to human resources and say that she's in many ways a good boss, and you'd like their advice on how to handle this aspect of her personality—that way, you're both seeking help and establishing a record of this problem.

I only posted this quote because it makes me think of that episode of The Office where Michael decides to help resolve all the employee conflicts dealt with by the human resources officer. Hilarity ensues.

I know I've been a bad blogger lately. I set up all these weekly things to do, and this week, I haven't been doing them. I didn't post a recommendation Tuesday nor any song lyrics yesterday. Look for an upcoming post on Elvis Costello and my love for him which will hopefully rectify both of these oversights. This is why I need structure in my life and my blogging. Otherwise everything goes to pot.

Jeff Ellis has another random thoughts post. I particuarly enjoy when he posts random thoughts about U.S. Presidential history. To understand what I'm talking about, and to learn things you probably didn't know (or maybe you're smarter than me and you did), see #9 on his list.

Charming, but single has an excellent post about three former men in her life. I found the third one especially poignant.

From my new favorite website, a list of the 7 most awkward Law & Order celebrity cameos. I blush to admit I've seen all but one of them (Chevy Chase in the Mel Gibson episode), and after reading the description of that one, I wish I'd seen it, too. Of course, now that Fred Thompson's (unofficially) decided to run for President, if I want to see it, I'll have to rent the DVD with that episode on it.

Speaking of Law & Order, the Wikipedia entry for the show has a very useful chart of all the seasons and the actors that made up the main cast. This chart indicates that Jeremy Sisto and Linus Roache are joining the cast. This pretty much seals it for me: I will actually try to watch the new episodes this season. Hopefully, it won't let me down too badly.

Some Unrelated Things I Want to Say

I just love Terry Teachout, even though I often don't have a clue what he's talking about, and it's because of things like this. Just beaufiful.

I did indeed make it up early this morning to get my exercise taken care of before getting ready for work. And now that I've discovered the wonderful world of podcasts, I was able to enrich my mind as well as my body. The wonders never cease, I know. Still, it's only been two days. When it's been two weeks, I'll be a little more impressed with myself. Still, it felt good. I even thought I didn't want it to end, or I was already eager to get back out there and do more, which is not my normal reaction to exercise I can assure you. So who knows what the heck is going on with me. Maybe I'm sick or something.

I watched United 93 last night. I really thought I was going to cry all the way through it, and when I first started watching, those worst fears of mine seemed to be realized. But after a while, I settled into it and was fine. Emotional, yes, and I certainly did a fair amount of crying, but I was fine. It was actually a pretty good movie, though it's not normally my style of film. The one thing I didn't like was the score, which seemed too oppressive at times, and not in a good way. It was too much for the film, I think. Something subtler might have been in order. But the tension created was really interesting, given that I already knew the outcome. Watching it, it seemed like there was so much time, and then all of the sudden, there wasn't any at all.

Why can't I just do what I always want to with these posts and keep my snippets to a sentence or two? Instead, I have to get all long-winded. Maybe I'm just not cut out for blogging.

I have Inland Empire on the way to me from Netflix. I haven't seen a new David Lynch movie in a while, so I'm looking forward to it. I thought I was going to have to wait to get it, but it only came out yesterday and already they're sending it to me. Woo hoo!

This has to be one of the funniest lolcat pictures I've ever seen. What is that cat doing?

This was probably the most interesting story included in the NPR podcast I listened to this morning, so I thought I'd link to it here.

Also, this story from Slate caught my eye, about baseball stats. I spent a fair amount of time reading it, as well as this article it linked to at Baseball Prospectus, and I spent much of that time fascinated, yet also wondering just what the point of all of it really is.

Tuesday Links

Only Slate could take a study and an article about the numbers of heterosexual partners of men and women and turn it into a discussion of the mathematical principles of mean versus median. Check it out. Just don't ask me to explain it to you. For the original New York Times article referenced, go here.

Jeff Ellis has posted a beautiful poem by his favorite poet, W.B. Yeats. That makes two such people I've known in my lifetime.

Hacking Netflix links to some interesting movie and book related t-shirts. I think the Overlook Hotel one might be my favorite. My family just got back from a trip to visit relatives in Montana, and they got to see the hotel where the movie was filmed.

Those shirts make me think of this other shirt I saw. Before I post the link, though, you need to be warned that it spoils the surprise endings of a bunch of movies (and one book that will be eventually made into a movie), so bear that in mind before you click. I so want to get that shirt, though.

Shifting gears...I wish I'd seen this.