Support Google, Freedom and stimulate the economy too!

Here's some delicious irony.

Anyway, if Google holds firm with their plan to un-censor searches in China. everybody, please go do some Google searches, click on an ad, and buy something made in the USA that you need.  It will support Google, support freedom by keeping pressure on the totalitarian Chinese government, and maybe help stimulate the U.S. economy.

There's a Joke in here somewhere...

The Jan 2010 Irish Herald's lead article is titled "Harshest Budget in Living Memory", and describes the difficult budget decisions that must be made to more or less balance the Irish budget for 2010.  There are budget cuts totaling $6 billion, which is still less than 20% of the estimated budget deficit of $32 billion.  These cuts affect salaries and welfare.  There are increased taxes.  It sounds reminiscent of the California budget mess.  But, every cloud has a silver lining.

"(Finance minister) Lenihan sounght to offer one boost to public morale by cutting taxes on beer, wine, and liquor."

Apparently, there is a bit of supply-side economics here too to boost the economy:

"...sales in pubs and liquor stores represent an exceptionally high percentage of its (Ireland's) economic activity"

Worst Letter of the Year

The year is still young, but a letter to the editor in the Jan 5th San Jose Mercury News sets a high standard for historical ignorance.  Scroll down to read:

"Peace is possible only with justice

In Mercury News letters to the editor, the Israeli blitzkrieg against the Palestinians continues...

You can safely ignore the rest of his letter; it's just self-praise followed by nine rhetorical questions, devoid of facts or cogent arguments.  But that looks good compared to the flaws in the tiny fragment presented.


   "Peace is possible only with justice"


This sounds nice, but it historically false.  There was a long period of peace during the time of the Roman Empire.  There was a hundred year period of European peace starting 1814 after the Congress of Vienna.  Neither period is especially known for "justice".  Strike one.


   "In Mercury News letters to the editor, the Israeli blitzkrieg...


The letter writer is criticizing previous letters.  As noted before, he never addresses any specific points.


Instead, he attempts an impossibly long leap of logic and metaphor to link a letter to the editor, part of our freedom of expression enshrined in the Bill of Rights, to blitzkrieg, an act of war which features concentrated armored spearheads, including "terror elements", and infamous bombings of civilian cities.   Strike two.


   "...continues..."


Blitzkrieg means lightning-war.  By definition it is short and swift.  It does not "continue".  Strike three.  


Three major flaws in less than two sentences.  That's why it's my early nominee for Worst Letter of the Year.

Left Wing Firebrand has Feet of Clay

U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, Democrat from Florida, received recent fame thanks to his stinging (and some would say crude) criticisms of Republicans.  Progressives like his "guts".

While Grayson can dish it out, telling former V.P. Dick Cheney to"STFU", he can't take it.  As one might expect, his opponents have opened their own camel-cased web site, MyCongressmanIsNuts.  In a move out of the Chinese Communist playbook, Grayson has asked Attorney General Eric Holder to prosecute and imprison the critic, based on the technicality that the owner of the website isn't one of his constituents, therefore she can't claim him as "my" congressman.  Even though, in their "About Us" page, they say only that they are from Central Florida.

Similarly, Al Franken isn't "my" Senator.  But when he runs roughshod over Senate tradition and ends up casting the critical 60th vote for Health Care Reform, he is my Senator.  (for the record, I'm not sure what I think of the health care bill, and who knows how it will end up after the House and Senate get together anyhow.)

In any case, if some dubious technicality is the basis for five years in jail, better read that Cap and Trade bill and the Health Care Bill very carefully.  Though 5 years is only half what you'd get in China for "subversion".

It's Official, the At The Movies Guys are idiots

Neither Michael Phillips nor A.O. Scott picked any Lord of the Rings movie in the top 10 of the last decade.  The movie that I, and their viewers, picked as number one.  What did they pick as number one?

A.O. Scott picked WALL-E.  A very good movie.  But even my wife, who loves cute animated films, dropped her jaw at this pick.  We will have to rent it again to see.

Michael Phillips picked There Will Be Blood.  This is the kind of movie that critics love, because they can fire their full rhetorical blasts of praise and compare it to another good but completely overblown movie, Citizen Kane.  Check some of the comments, easily available via a cursory Google search:

"a film of Darwinian ferocity, a stark and pitiless parable of American capitalism"

"(director) Anderson is an artful renegade who restores your faith in the harsh power of movies. This is his bloody and brilliant Citizen Kane."

"about Day-Lewis. "Gargantuan" is a puny word to describe his landmark performance."

"epic American nightmare, arrives belching fire and brimstone and damnation to Hell"
 

But Roger Ebert has it right:


"its imperfections (its unbending characters, its lack of women or any reflection of ordinary society, its ending, its relentlessness) we may see its reach exceeding its grasp"

I've seen There Will Be Blood.  In my opinion, it was a movie written and directed with the express purpose of appearing to be "great".  Designed to appeal to critics, arriving with hoopla and Oscar buzz.  But not a great movie.

Best Movies of the Decade

I don't watch "At the Movies" much (since it isn't Siskel and Ebert anymore) but did catch it the other night, and they were counting down the "Best Movies of the Decade".  Since each critic had his own selection, and we were at #2, that's a total of 18 films.  I have seen none of them.  My wife has seen only one of them.  Maybe we are really out of touch.  Several of them I haven't even heard of.  For what it's worth, which isn't much, only one (Million Dollar Baby) won the Academy Award, though several were nominated.

I'm really wondering about their choices next week for the best film.  For them to have any credibility with me, it has to be one of the Lord of the Rings movies.  But these guys are really into filmaking and art - maybe they will be like the the Editors at the Modern Library who didn't even rate Lord of the Rings in the top 100 novels of the last century, instead preferring more "literary" works like Ulysses, Lolita, and Sons and Lovers, while the common people voted for books people actually read, like Ayn Rand, Tolkien, To Kill a Mockingbird, and, in a particularly insightful pick, H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.  Some of the popular votes are dubious and repetitive (there's way too much Ayn Rand and Hubbard), but, all in all, I think they did a better job than the "pros".

So, drum roll please...  Here are my picks for the ten best movies of the last decade

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - my favorite of the three
2. Heaven
3. The Wrestler
4. Walk the Line
5. The Bourne Identity  - again, my favorite of the three, though all were strong
6. Bend It Like Beckham
7. Finding Nemo
8. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
9. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World  (if only for the music)
10. Little Miss Sunshine

Plus a few honorable mentions (the two critics get 20 total)

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 
• The Fountain  this one was weird and ultimately baffling, but had wonderful visuals and tried to be something
• O Brother, Where Art Thou?  it's bonafide!
• The Bank Job
• Legally Blonde  (a guilty pleasure)
  

Is Conspicuous Consumption America's Enduring Legacy?

Noted sci-fi author David Brin argues for this in a recent article and on his blog.  He argues "that the period of Pax America has been generally positive", and considers U.S. policy in the years just after World War 2.

Instead of annexing territory and looting the defeated enemy, (e.g. Franco-Prussian war, Treaty of Versailles) President Truman, Nobel Peace Prize winner George Marshall, and General Douglas MacArthur,developed an unprecedented historical policy of "countermercantilism" to lift up the defeated. 

"the clearly stated intention was for the United States to lift up their prostrate foe, first with direct aid.  And then, over the longer term, with trade."

Before this, normal empires practiced mercantilism, favoring home industry, and using other countries, particularly colonies, as sources of raw materials and as export markets.  The British Empire is a prime example of this, but so were the Chinese, Moguls, Romans and Greeks.

"America became the first power in history to deliberately establish countermercantilist commerce flows.  Nations crippled by war or mismanagement were allowed to maintain tariffs, keeping out American goods, while sending shiploads from their factories to the United States ....

What this amounted to, however, was the greatest aid-and-uplift program in human history. A prodigious transfer of wealth from the United States to Europe, Asia and Latin America."

Now, some of this was done to defeat totalitarian Communism.  Which was also, overall, a good thing for humanity.  While he makes it clear that he is no neo-conservative, Brin calls for the reflexive America loathers to give it some credit:

"Even if America is exhausted from having spent its way from world dominance into a chasm of debt, the United States does have something to show for it the last six decades. A world saved. Billions of human beings lifted out of poverty. That task, far more prodigious than defeating fascism and communism or going to the moon, ought to be viewed with a little respect."

Should the 21st century become the "Chinese Century", as many have postulated, when historians look back upon it, will they find any similar commitment to uplift the human race?  One can hope.