Nehru's Dam

I opened the UCF main page and there was a survey that wanted to know if I found what I wanted and how to make the site easier to use. WTF? I should have saved a screen capture. I told them to wait until after I used the site to ask about using the site. Don’t ask me if it works before I use it. That’s sort of typical IT mentality. Craft a superb online survey that works brilliantly and doesn’t measure anything. Awesome.

I shouldn’t be so cynical. It was probably set up by some poor aspiring graduate student for an intersnship project. On the other hand, maybe not. You would think with all the hulabaloo about technical savvy around here that the standards would be pretty high. That’s one of the hazards of the internet. In a post about global economic development, I once accused Nehru of building the Aswan dam. Same problem, wrong dam. The worst thing was that nodobdy ever nailed me on it. Maybe nobody ever looked at it. I like to think they don’t have that problem with the UCF main page.

Here's Thinking for You.
Iffy

Hey Sailor, Throw an Aussie on the Barbie

Here’s a revoltin’ development. The father of California sailor girl, Abhy Sunderland, and the Australian government have caught some flack for the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent for rescue when her boat lost its mast in bad weather a long, long way from land. Some people wanted to know why a sixteen-year-old girl was out sailing around the world by herself in the first place when a lot of sixteen-year-old girls can’t even jog around the local park safely. Her father’s reply was something to the effect that kids today are over-protected.

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20100617/00fe1425-8be1-4018-a694-338278951050

Okay. I’ll give you that sailing around the world is a more constructive activity for a teenager than prostitution or dealing drugs, but hey, wait a minute. I have to wonder a little bit about how many teenagers could get entertainment or job training or even food and cancer treatment for those hundreds of thousands of dollars, and if spending hundreds of thousands of dollars for call-in isn’t a kind of over-protection, then I’ve got an oil spill I’d like you to finance. What planet does this guy live on?

There was a time when sailing was a little more essential for personal transportation, and that’s where the expectations of international assistance came from. If Abby got her start sailing as a cabin boy on the Cutty Sark, that might have been a little different culture, but I don’t think that happened. Even then, the only sixteen-year-olds out sailing around the world on their own were probably shipwrecked.

If Abby flipped burgers for the local fast food emporium until she was twenty-one to save up for her yacht, okay. I’d prefer that the Australians used their money for something more productive than intervening with predictably suicidal extremes, but we sort of make that allowance in the case of consenting adults, and I have no problem with sailing for fun and profit, but sailing is like horses and mountain climbing. As casual recreation and motivation for personal conditioning, they’re great, but the practical value is otherwise small in the real world, and heavy involvement with them is a kind of culture of the aristocracy. I’m okay with horses and sailing and climbing. I just have no use for aristocrats.

My personal opinion is that the youngest sailor or the youngest climber or the youngest rider to jump a Clydesdale over the Grand Canyon is just a couple of more jackasses in the world, their parents, and I’m talking extremes here, mind you. These are not accomplishments that inspire the human spirit to the height of achievement. These are accomplishments that point up the impossible gulf between the haves and the have-nots, a gulf that has not been bridged since the days of sailing ships, in spite of our great advances in engineering.

In fairness, of course, it wasn’t an issue until it went wrong. The young Australian who made the record also made a big splash in the press, most likely accounting for some of the Aussie inclination to sympathetic support, but, like Deepwater Horizon, that doesn’t mean the problem wasn’t there. The inevitable is also the nature of risk, but I’m inclined to say that if the California Dreamers want to sail around the world solo, let them wait until they hit twenty-one, or let them swim.

Here's Thinking for You.
Iffy

The Next to the Last Remake of Robin Hood

Yeah, yeah. I know. Robin Hood already went down to "Sex and the City" and "Prince of Persia," but I did this and forgot to post it. Some responsible blogger I be. The Gulf will be cleaned up before I get around to ridiculing any more BP executives for their crude comments, har har. Free oil for all. Bring your bucket and scoop as much as you can carry. I see they sucked up a thousand barrels with their latest hat trick. Damn, you got to give those guys credit for trying.

Russell Crowe does a more convincing accent than Kevin Costner, but he still sounds to me, less English than the CEO for a herd of Leprechauns. If Robin Hood gets any older, they’re gonna have to haul him off to Sherwood Forest in a Senior tour bus. Maybe he can swing by Stonehenge on the way.

English history seems fairly well resigned to the idea that Richard Lion Heart was only one of a nominally dedicated and more or less despotically inclined tribe of tyrants strewn across northern France by the careless proclivities of Henry the Second, an inconvenient truth for the fairytale version that put Robin Hood in the forests of Nottingham to resist the depredations of evil King John and his spineless lackey, the Sheriff of Nottingham, anticipating the return of noble Richard from the crusades to put everything right.

The truth more likely seems to be that Richard was no more noble or concerned than any of his immediate friends or relations, if he ever returned to England at all. Beyond this somewhat isolated and perplexing concession to the historical validity of Richard’s probable rottenness, Ridley Scott’s narrative plays just as fast and loose with events as any fairytale, condensing decades following Richard’s crusade into a matter of weeks, and eliminating another inconvenient gap between his return and messy demise from gangrene several years later.

One flagrant irony of the fairytale version is that the occasion for imposition of oppressive taxes by heartless King John was the ransom of Richard from the Austrians, who were royally (so to speak) pissed off after Richard steamrollered a couple of their allies on his way to the crusade. The crusade was largely a PR effort to get past some youthful exuberance that eventually antagonized most of Europe, including his father, although, as the Austrians soon realized, his behavior in the course of the penitentiary expedition left something to be desired also, including the execution of two thousand Muslim prisoners who got to be inconvenient.

In the end, there didn’t seem to be much joy about the prospect of Richard’s return, and why the English bothered to pay the ransom at all is somewhat unclear except that unlike California, at the time it was sort of a national insult to have an Austrian calling the shots. I’m still not sure I want California enough to pay Arnie for it either. Maybe we have moved beyond that mentality, or maybe we should just let the Austrians have California, but nobody in England seemed much inclined to pay for the return of Richard, which explains why they resented John’s taxes, although Richard did repay their generosity later by taking over half of France.

After an opportunistic adolescent crossbowman skewered Richard from the ramparts of a recalcitrant French castle under siege while he was in the middle of an inspection tour, infection finally eliminated the Lion heart a couple of weeks later, and things got back to more normal feudal despotism. The king’s commander of mercenary guards hanged the garrison of the castle, flayed the marksman alive, and the oppressive taxes went back where they usually go, to support oppression.
Ridley Scott, however, dispensed with the whole ransom business and took out Richard in the course of a dramatic charge to the castle gate on his way back from the crusade. What he wanted the castle for wasn’t clear, and I sort of got confused at that point. Robin and his band of Merry Men were under arrest for an excess of merry, and the death of the king gave them an opportunity to split.

Meanwhile, back at Le Ranche, King Phillipe of France plots with Godfrey, another opportunistic royal connection of some sort, against the English Crown and loyal Chancellor Marshall, another throw-ahead to twenty years later, when Pillipe actually intervened in English civil wars until Willikin of the Weald whipped his ass, but those guys are pretty much a whole new operation. From there it gets kind of complicated.

In any case, Phillipe contracts with Godfrey to take down Richard on his way out of Dodge (France), not realizing Richard has already bought the farm. Richard’s outfit, packing the King’s crown as confirmation of the event, shows up on schedule, and Godfrey’s sword slingers ambush them at the passe. From the mortally wounded Robert Locksley, Godfrey learns the news about Richard, but at that point Robin Longstride and his Merry Men on the lambe turn up to wrecke the party. The English archers massacre the French hit-squad and recover the King’s crowne. Godfrey runs for his life, barely escaping back to England with a gash across his face from Robin’s parting shot.

Robin finds Robert Locksley, still dying, and reluctantly promises to carry Robert’s sword back to his father in Nottingham to reconcile their family feud. Robert finally gives up the ghost, and the Merry Men decide the only way to get Richard’s crown back to London without getting hanged for their trouble is for Robin to assume Robert’s identity. I didn’t totally follow that one. Something to do with the crown. Robin manages to ditch the crown with the queen mother, and the now unopposed King John replaces Loyal Chancellor Marshall with the scheming Godfrey to put down the restless barons in the north.

Meanwhile, back at the Manse, Locksley’s wife Marion dodges tax collectors and unsympathetic catholic clergy while Robert gallivants around the world on Richard’s mission of mayhem. The ineffectual (as usual), Sheriff of Nottingham appears briefly. Things look up a bit when the laid-back Friar Tuck takes over the local church gig with a bee-keeping business and mead-brewing on the side, a happy combination. Eventually, Robin comes around with the sword, and Robert’s father wants to go ahead with the scam to help protect the estate. Marion isn’t too keen on shacking up with the impostor, but Robin sleeps on the floor with the dog, so it works out. Probably one of the best scenes in the movie, maybe because it’s so predictable, is Robin instructing the Merry Men to call him Sir Robert. It turns out that Walter Locksley was tight with Robin’s rebellious father back when cantankerous King Henry infringed on everybody’s rights, so Robin is really the heir of the struggle for truth and justice, for whatever that’s worth. I’d rather have the castle.

Are you still with me? Phillipe sends a French posse to help Godfrey stir things up by extracting John’s exorbitant taxes from the barons, hoping they can capitalize on the conflict to invade England. The French posse attacks the Locksley estate, trapping everybody in burning buildings and preparing the usual indignity for Marion. Godfrey executes the valiant Walter Locksley, but Marion proves more problematic, and with the help of the poachers holds off Godfrey and the French until Robin arrives at the last minute, leading the barons‘ cavalry.

King John realizes Godfrey is in cahoots with Phillipe and agrees to lay off the barons. The united English ride to meet the French invasion at the beachy margent of the sea. Marion slips into a comfortable suit of armor and gets in a couple of whacks at Godfrey before Phillipe decides things are going badly and calls off the invasion. John however, burns the agreement with the barons as soon as the threat is over, and Robin, as a rebel baron, is now an outlaw.

Guess where the Senior Center bus is headed? You guessed it, Sherwood Forest. Do you smell a sequel, or does Kevin Costner just take over here?

Phillipe tried to intervene a couple of times in English civil wars. Willikin of the Weald actually defeated the French invasion that turned back from England twenty years later. As a real guerilla leader in the forests of Southern England, Willikin may be a more intriguing character than Robin Hood. Nobody seems to know what degree of reality Robin Hood involves. Maybe that’s the attraction in an age of electronic identity. How authentic does it have to be?

After the casual adaptation of history for the film, I hardly care about the authenticity of a lot of details though. The characters had accents. What kind of accents they had, I could not tell you for sure. They could have been Canadian for all I know. Nobody pulled their arrows with their thumbs as far as I could see. I don’t know how hard it is to climb on a horse in a suit of chain mail, so that didn’t bother me.

The buildings had a kind of Elizabethan Faire quality about them, suitably rustic although somehow sanitized. There was some nice photography of interiors, like Dutch Romanesque (assuming there is such a thing) painting, although I wouldn’t characterize the filming as just gorgeous. I had some doubts about whether the landing craft for the amphibious invasion would have really gotten anywhere propelled by oars with that kind of draft, but on the other hand, what do I know about rowing a boat load of horses over the English Channel in the Middle Ages? I’ll suspend some disbelief in the interests of free enterprise. What the hell? It works for BP and Bank of America.

I wouldn’t call any of the performances brilliant either. Russell Crowe has an artful ability to understate lines, although that sometimes combines with conservative physical motion to create a sense of plodding momentum. In the scenes with Marion, for instance, she reinforces her reactions with indecisive movements. Crowe either transitions predictably from one required state to the next, or remains relatively static. Much of the action depends on inference from effects of the camera, as in the ambush scene with Godfrey's raiders, or later when the French invasion force reaches the shore.

King John is annoying, not because the character has annoying qualities, but because he is played with a kind of mysterious antagonism that never really goes anywhere. Yes, he is something of a self-interested manipulator, but so are we all. Why the apparent insinuation that there is something going on in his head we don’t understand? The French Princess is a promising character, but nominal. My favorite character as usual was the intractable villain, Godfrey, who is evil for no other apparent reason than ambition, which makes him rather one-dimensional, but it is at least a joyful one-dimensionality.

There are enough swords and sieges to give the film a respectable violence quotient, but this isn’t really an adolescent action fantasy. Another thing Crowe can do is look sad and weary. As a middle-aged romance, the characters of Marion and Robin are played for what they could have been, a pair of fatigued survivors with histories in a world of unpredictable loyalties and demands, what to an extent could be characterized in Clint Eastwood, baby-boomer terms as the Castles of Nottingham County. Is it worth a sequel? Ask Clint Eastwood, but maybe what the real target audience wants to see is one more complicated, redemptive romance.

Fisher Price Drill and Spill

Where did they do this survey (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37116587/ns/politics-more_politics/) about offshore drilling that shows “overwhelming” support, and what exactly was the question? Why don’t we get that part of the story? I would believe that an overwhelming majority of Americans are concerned about economic benefit, but I find it hard to believe that spewing oil over half of the U.S. coast will ultimately prove economically beneficial. Perhaps BP can contribute to the economy by employing the homeless to scrub sea shells with toothbrushes, or maybe ocean currents will simply divert the disaster to France.


On NPR, BP’s Irish Guy compared Deepwater Horizon to Apollo Thirteen or fatal aircraft accidents. The argument, I gather, is that we don’t stop doing what we’re doing because things don’t go quite as planned, although even a BP executive with normal intelligence (for a BP executive), might think that the situations aren’t completely equivalent. What was the potential for environmental damage from Apollo Thirteen? Maybe we could speculate that debris from Apollo Thirteen might have eventually hit the sun, causing an uncontrolled solar flare resulting in a burst of energy that might conceivably have penetrated the earth’s atmosphere through a hole in the ozone layer and coincidentally singed off a BP oil executive's eyebrows.


Oh wait a minute. Apollo Thirteen made it back to earth without spilling anything more hazardous than a little oxygen in deep space. No doubt the Irish Guy got the assignment based on the well-documented Celtic ability to keep things in perspective and resist the temptation to immoderate hyperbolation. Regarding aircraft accidents, however, he’s got us there. The North American continent is littered with the remains of hazardous things falling carelessly from the sky, including Russian space stations and Buddy Holly. So far, we haven't stopped breathing to allow for acid rain, although perhaps we should consider it. I’m sure the environmental effect is an indisputable argument to continue deep water drilling unabated, well, pretty sure.

Here's Thinking for You.
Iffy

Hell Boy

Here's Thinking for You
Iffy

Double Exposure

So I been out to lunch, or at least out to conference in Pasadena. EdTech 2010, a compact and energetic academic enterprise. Probably I obsessed, and KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) didn't entirely apply, but education should be a learning experience.



The quest for blogistic legitimacy goes on. I connected with the academic blog of Amit Rai at FSU,
http://www.english.fsu.edu/faculty/arai.htm
who seems to share some common interests (or at least the effects of imperial and colonial modernity interest me) and concern for information fluency, but my brilliant critical comments aren't showing up anymore. I don't know what that means, whether I am technically incapable of posting, or whether I'm just annoying, but it occurred to me that I can put them on my own blog. In cyberspace there's no escape from the critically inconsequential or inadequate. Like George Bush and Al Queda, the intellectual proletariat will hunt you down and find you.

We are neither post-colonial nor postmodern. Neither the colonial nor the modern are ready to concede power or accept responsibility. There are dangerous misconceptions in the implication that we have gotten past either one. Liscensing and the game world are extensions of Fordist factory mentality, incorporation of the individual into the enterprise. According to Donna Haraway, the problem with organic concepts of technology and relations to the body, of becoming, is that integration, or the lack of duality, requires acknowledgement of responsibility, of power-sharing. Duality is necessary to assign responsibility for technology somewhere else. In Benjamin’s case, to something resembling the “inauthentic” or “mechanically reproduced” artifact. In Nietszche’s case, to the rational man, the inherent subordinate to the natural or intuitive man. Perhaps a definitive example, like Don Quixote and the windmill, Heidigger wanted to distinguish technology from more personal industry, invoking an existence for technology independent of individual industry, for the simple reason that accepting the equivalence of technology and personal industry cripples the critical social distinction between the individual and the machine and robs the intellectual activist of the cause. We cannot resist the machine with conviction that transcends human banality if we are the machine. In that case we have to account for our own limitations in the machine. Essentially, technology derives from the personal in the same way Nietszche’s leaves derive from the particular, and like Haraway, we should desire reconciliation with technology, not mastery. We are cyborg, although that also does not mean there is no enemy. The enemy is capital, the mentality that converts a perceived lack of resistance into domination, the mentality that converts needs into subordination, the mentality that appropriates the body as a component of industrial production (Google, for example), and capital is not us. We participate to a nominal extent allowed for purposes of propaganda, but there is no real universal participation in capital. It is an exclusive community. Modernity lives.

Consider Train to Virar, first in the sense of underlying Western European enlightenment language that determines both the hierarchy and programming of the “top” of the page. What it represents to me, is merged views of a train track and a passenger car interior. Which is on “top” isn’t totally apparent, although there is some sense from the intensity of forms that the car interior is probably in the foreground. Eisenstein, Barthes, Burnett, and Manovich suggest that the power of combining images is such that it cannot be ignored, that we will attempt to make connections between images in proximity, so that making meaning without reference to sources is essentially impossible. To that extent, Stengers’ irrelevance of production is in itself irrelevant, and that's that.

Here's Thinking for You
Iffy

Senatorial Surveytista

http://lemieux.senate.gov/public/?p=NewsReleases&ContentRecord_id=e71996f7-d15c-47bd-9399-f0fb9c3fe489

Not to put too fine a point upon it, Senator Lemieux’s recent survey regarding health care sucks. The results of the survey do not give any clue to the reasons for opposition to health care legislations, and are contradictory considering that the legislation addresses every concern included in the survey. Does 80% opposition make sense if the opponents understood that the legislation addresses the concerns? How does legislation that basically doesn’t go into effect for another four years qualify as a rush job? Does anybody seriously think we won’t be picking at it with tweezers and a magnifying glass for the next four years? How long are we supposed to wait to start doing something? Until everybody agrees on everything? That could be even longer than four years. Or is opposition simply a knee-jerk response to proposals that seem to change existing conditions for people who already feel they have advantages that they are entitled to? If Democrats are ramming this down Republican throats, that seems to suggest that Republicans aren’t willing to open their mouths, even a little bit.

Would somebody please explain to me what insurance it is that is not already regulated, and what insurance premiums are not already increasing? A government program extending availability of insurance coverage to a wider range of individuals will cost money, just as interstate highway systems or missile defense systems cost money to insure increased access and security. Why is that only a good idea if it means I don’t pay?

Like roads and defense, insurance is by nature a socialist project. Insurance pools resources to prevent any one individual from being completely destroyed by circumstances beyond their control. It’s hard to believe anyone who understands the fundamental nature of insurance or realizes that the cost will increase regardless would categorically oppose changes. I don’t particularly see Obama health care as a solution to the problems, but the survey simply invites opposition, it does not reflect the resolution of any issues. What would happen if the survey asked how health care costs should be contained, or how insurance coverage should be extended, for instance, and gave alternatives from Democratic and Republican proposals as the response? I’m not a Democrat, but I suspect Senator Lemieux would be afraid to find out the answers to those questions. The survey seems to say what people want is bi-partisan cooperation, and the Democrats won’t. Who opposes malpractice reform? The Democrats? Think again. Yeah, doctors want to limit recovery for malpractice. Guess who doesn’t? Right, the trial lawyer lobby.

Lemieux’s “predictive modeling” is a study in the ludicrous. Predictive modeling means don’t give credit to someone who probably can’t pay for it. So I have to agree with him there. If people who don’t have insurance don’t get health care, there will be less opportunity for fraud. We already have predictive modeling in the insurance industry. It’s called pre-existing condition exclusions. It means that people with a high risk of need have no resources, but that’s the breaks, right?

Likewise, Lemieux’s video comments make only a superficial kind of sense. He reminds me of Glenn Beck. He has the earnest face of a toddler, and he can speak in coherent sentences without stuttering to repeat the phrase, “money we can’t afford,” which should endear him to any conservative mentality, but his health-care debate “myth-busting” is largely based on restating the obvious as if it somehow means something else, such as increased costs in the Massachusetts health care system. Yes, costs increased, but not as much as other places. Massachusetts residents overwhelmingly approve of the state system, but they’re the wrong color, right? (On the electoral map, that is).

In the end, I can’t argue with Mr. Lemieux. The survey indicates conclusively that 80% of the people opposed to Obama health care legislation are opposed to it. The other 20% are undecided, or obviously misguided and irrelevant. Even I received a copy of the survey, which I did not complete, because I don’t like surveys in the first place, and this one seemed especially misleading. Now I wonder if the reason for sending me a survey was simply that I expressed concern about the timing of the legislation, and might therefore conceivably have been opposed to it, which would explain a lot of things.

Here's Thinking for You
Iffy