I don't want to sound like I'm obsessed with the musical tastes of conservatives. Yes, I know, I've only written a couple of articles about it, but that seems like a lot. But we just keep getting stories about right-wingers and their love of the same bands I love. The latest is Richard Spencer coming out as a fan of Depeche Mode, and declaring them "the official band of the Alt-Right."
Once again, I don't really understand how that happens. A lot of their early music seems to be directly out of the Communist Manifesto. And one of their most popular songs, "People Are People," is as clear an anti-bigotry song as there is.
I think it's pretty weird for a person to listen to music with a message so different from their own beliefs. And most people seem to see it that way. A few years ago there was a young pundit in Britain who became a laughingstock for suggesting that Morrissey was responsible for the country's turn to the right under David Cameron.
Okay, you may have been so distracted by the thought of someone thinking that left-of-Marx Morrissey could be a conservative icon, that you may have missed the irony that we were talking about David Cameron being shockingly right-wing. Ah, simpler times.
Anyway, you can kind of see where she was coming from: Cameron - and many others in his government - would have come of age in the eighties, at the height of Morrissey's career. (Cameron has claimed to actually be a fan.) And consider that Morrissey is the sort of cult-level celebrity that means a lot to some but will be largely absent from the mainstream pop-cultural record. Young people are forgiven for not knowing who he is, or why my generation cares about him. Just imagine hipster Millennials trying to explain to their kids who Jack White was. So when Morrissey's autobiography came out a few years ago, and people in Cameron's generation couldn't stop talking about this guy the young journalist had never heard of, she put two and two together and got the idea that he was the genesis for modern conservatism.
I still don't understand this concept. I mean, it's not like being a Sir-Mix-a-Lot fan who's attracted to svelte women. In that case you could say you disagree, but can respect his opinion, as well as his self-professed honesty about it. But with these alt-right alt-rock fans, they've dedicated their lives to fighting against the ideas in their favourite music, and their musical idols would despise their values.
Of course, it cuts both ways. If you're a left-leaning person, you probably don't have a problem with musicians unless you're into country. But there may be other areas of your life. Take sports, for instance. Massachusetts may be one of the most liberal parts of the US, yet in the Superbowl, they had to cheer for a coach and quarterback that supported Donald Trump, at least in as much as they are aware of a world beyond football.
And I'm feeling it too. Normally this weekend I'd be looking forward to the Daytona 500. But I've been put off by NASCAR and its overt support for Trump. Yes, despite this being the first time in a generation that a Canadian will be in the race. And even though that Canadian, DJ Kennington is a local boy from St. Thomas, who cut his teeth at my beloved Delaware Speedway in London. But I can't bring myself to watch the race, not even out of morbid curiosity of how many Confederate Flags will be in the audience, and how the TV coverage will avoid showing them. Unlike Spencer, I can't ignore the fact that someone is working against what I believe in.
Friday, February 24, 2017
Friday, February 17, 2017
Someone Needs Changing
I wonder if Hollywood has run out of ideas yet...
Getting close, but no.
I'm sure the marketing for this one will be pretty annoying, and there's still six weeks to go. So at least consider this possibility: Sometime in the last few months, some studio exec had to stop and consider whether it was worth re-rendering the entire movie with a Trump-style toupée on the baby.
Getting close, but no.
I'm sure the marketing for this one will be pretty annoying, and there's still six weeks to go. So at least consider this possibility: Sometime in the last few months, some studio exec had to stop and consider whether it was worth re-rendering the entire movie with a Trump-style toupée on the baby.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Don't You Miss Barack Iguana?
Recently, I saw a discussion of people's favourite science fiction quote. There were some surprises (very little Yoda, but quite a lot of Babylon 5.) Interestingly, several people mentioned the same quote from one of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy books. In it, Ford explains to Arthur why a recently arrived alien has said not "take me to you leader," but rather, "take me to your lizard."
That passage is a pretty good example of how the series works: both humour and science fiction work as satire by allowing us to look at our world with a fresh perspective, and The Hitchhiker's Guide uses both at the same time to ridicule the absurdities of the modern world.
As a sci-fi fan who appreciates surreal humour, I love The Hitchhiker's Guide more than life itself. Having said that, the above passage has always bugged me a little.
When it comes to politics, most people are at least a little unhappy with how things are, and have an idea of how things should be. So how do you make the world a better place? You can take a revolutionary approach, where you push for a big change that will make things exactly as you want them. Or you could take the evolutionary approach, and just change the system in little ways to make it more like your ideal, even if it isn't exactly right. The first way certainly has a better outcome, but the disadvantage is that it has longer odds. Essentially, revolution is a long shot to get a perfect world, while evolution is a good chance at a better but still imperfect world.
Of course, the two approaches are not mutually exclusive; even while planning your utopia, you can spare fifteen minutes to go vote for one of the candidates you find unsatisfactory, thus giving you a hedge against your revolution failing, or at least being delayed.
And that leads to one of my supreme frustrations with politics: people who work on one approach but not the other. As you can see, I'm a dreamer with a practical streak, so I tend to focus on the evolutionary approach. I don't begrudge the revolutionaries their existence, but I'm alarmed when they ignore the evolutionary efforts going on around them. As I said, you don't lose anything by throwing a little effort behind practical efforts. Instead, it's emotional motivations that turn the two approaches to political change against one another. Not willing to entertain the possibility that their way isn't the best, they have to convince themselves that the other is useless, if not counter-productive.
So every election we find ourselves pulling teeth, making and remaking the point that even if you believe the candidates are corporate puppets, you don't lose anything by taking a moment to vote for the corporate puppet that will maintain a woman's right to choose, or gut government programs. And that brings us back to the lizard parable. Surely if there is any lesson to come out of last year's Presidential Election, it's that there is a "wrong lizard."
I can understand that things may happen to push people towards either approach to political change. Say, after Barack Obama was elected in a blaze of optimism, but did not deliver as much change as many desired, I could understand that you might go away with the idea that we need more radical change. And I'm sure that in the alternate universe where Bernie Sanders is currently putting together his cabinet, many of his supporters are feeling disillusioned that he isn't going to build a socialist wonderland, and now they're thinking that they just can't win while working within the system.
And yet I find a lot of people are trying to make the case that Trump's presidency shows that all politicians are awful and the system is corrupt. I can't understand how you would get that lesson our of our current circumstances. If you're watching night-and-day changes in politics after an election, that doesn't show that everyone in the system is bad. If anything, it shows that there is great variety among politicians.
"It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in."
That passage is a pretty good example of how the series works: both humour and science fiction work as satire by allowing us to look at our world with a fresh perspective, and The Hitchhiker's Guide uses both at the same time to ridicule the absurdities of the modern world.
As a sci-fi fan who appreciates surreal humour, I love The Hitchhiker's Guide more than life itself. Having said that, the above passage has always bugged me a little.
When it comes to politics, most people are at least a little unhappy with how things are, and have an idea of how things should be. So how do you make the world a better place? You can take a revolutionary approach, where you push for a big change that will make things exactly as you want them. Or you could take the evolutionary approach, and just change the system in little ways to make it more like your ideal, even if it isn't exactly right. The first way certainly has a better outcome, but the disadvantage is that it has longer odds. Essentially, revolution is a long shot to get a perfect world, while evolution is a good chance at a better but still imperfect world.
Of course, the two approaches are not mutually exclusive; even while planning your utopia, you can spare fifteen minutes to go vote for one of the candidates you find unsatisfactory, thus giving you a hedge against your revolution failing, or at least being delayed.
And that leads to one of my supreme frustrations with politics: people who work on one approach but not the other. As you can see, I'm a dreamer with a practical streak, so I tend to focus on the evolutionary approach. I don't begrudge the revolutionaries their existence, but I'm alarmed when they ignore the evolutionary efforts going on around them. As I said, you don't lose anything by throwing a little effort behind practical efforts. Instead, it's emotional motivations that turn the two approaches to political change against one another. Not willing to entertain the possibility that their way isn't the best, they have to convince themselves that the other is useless, if not counter-productive.
So every election we find ourselves pulling teeth, making and remaking the point that even if you believe the candidates are corporate puppets, you don't lose anything by taking a moment to vote for the corporate puppet that will maintain a woman's right to choose, or gut government programs. And that brings us back to the lizard parable. Surely if there is any lesson to come out of last year's Presidential Election, it's that there is a "wrong lizard."
I can understand that things may happen to push people towards either approach to political change. Say, after Barack Obama was elected in a blaze of optimism, but did not deliver as much change as many desired, I could understand that you might go away with the idea that we need more radical change. And I'm sure that in the alternate universe where Bernie Sanders is currently putting together his cabinet, many of his supporters are feeling disillusioned that he isn't going to build a socialist wonderland, and now they're thinking that they just can't win while working within the system.
And yet I find a lot of people are trying to make the case that Trump's presidency shows that all politicians are awful and the system is corrupt. I can't understand how you would get that lesson our of our current circumstances. If you're watching night-and-day changes in politics after an election, that doesn't show that everyone in the system is bad. If anything, it shows that there is great variety among politicians.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Movie Star Killed The Video Star
It’s too bad the Age Of Blogging didn’t overlap the Age Of Music Video. The world could have wasted so much time writing about them. I'm reminded of this after watching the glorified podcast that is the remains of Muchmusic. They have a show called Retro Lunch, which defines "retro" as 70's, 80's and 90's, and "lunch" as 1-3 pm.
I had plenty of opinions on videos: black & white is over used, concert videos are a cop-out, ironically cheap videos never work, opening credits just look pretentious. But there is one truth above all: movie soundtrack videos always suck.
Okay, there are a few examples that work, but that's usually because they break out of the usual format of scenes of the band playing interspersed with random clips from the movie.
At the time, I recognized that this didn’t work, since it's just forgettable images of the band without even the energy of the concert videos, combined with movie scenes so brief that they don't really tell any story. The weakness of music videos was that they often devolved into random images, and movie videos were the worst example of this.
And it got worse if the song ended up being much more popular than the movie. A band does a song for a Julia Roberts vehicle, they use scenes from the movie in the video, then the movie tanks. Everyone forgets the movie, so they won't recognize where the clips come from. So now future generations will wonder how the band got Julia Roberts to be in one of their videos, and why they just had her appear in a few disjointed scenes.
This problem was bad enough when it was just a few years after the movie. But now it’s just surreal to see a song you remember, by a musician who’s a legend, with scenes of a movie you don’t remember. You can’t even figure out what the movie is about from the short clips, and you’re trying to remember the name of that guy in the movie who was in that other thing with whatsisname.
I had plenty of opinions on videos: black & white is over used, concert videos are a cop-out, ironically cheap videos never work, opening credits just look pretentious. But there is one truth above all: movie soundtrack videos always suck.
Okay, there are a few examples that work, but that's usually because they break out of the usual format of scenes of the band playing interspersed with random clips from the movie.
At the time, I recognized that this didn’t work, since it's just forgettable images of the band without even the energy of the concert videos, combined with movie scenes so brief that they don't really tell any story. The weakness of music videos was that they often devolved into random images, and movie videos were the worst example of this.
And it got worse if the song ended up being much more popular than the movie. A band does a song for a Julia Roberts vehicle, they use scenes from the movie in the video, then the movie tanks. Everyone forgets the movie, so they won't recognize where the clips come from. So now future generations will wonder how the band got Julia Roberts to be in one of their videos, and why they just had her appear in a few disjointed scenes.
This problem was bad enough when it was just a few years after the movie. But now it’s just surreal to see a song you remember, by a musician who’s a legend, with scenes of a movie you don’t remember. You can’t even figure out what the movie is about from the short clips, and you’re trying to remember the name of that guy in the movie who was in that other thing with whatsisname.
Monday, February 6, 2017
Of G.O.A.T.'s And Men
So Tom Brady won his fifth Superbowl. In case you're wondering, he's the first to do it as starting quarterback, but the second person to have five rings as a player, after Charles Haley.
In a sane world, we'd now be talking about Brady's place in football history, and debating whether he is the greatest ever. But of course he was already crowned greatest ever in the hype leading up to the game, and now have moved on to debating whether he is the best player in the history of team sports. Personally, I haven't bought the best-ever-in-football concept yet.
Discussing best-evers in sports is frustrating: it's a debate that can be looked at many different ways, and yet it usually gets derailed by people conflating team and individual achievement. They would say that Brady is the best ever just based on having five Superbowls. But by that logic, Trent Dilfer is a better quarterback than Dan Marino.
But beyond that, the simplistic who-has-the-most-rings argument reveals how arbitrary most of our sports talk is. Take Lebron James; when he and his Cavaliers won the NBA title this year, it seemed to cement his reputation as one of the all-time-greats. It was his third title, and more importantly, his first carrying the team himself, thus silencing people like me who didn't really count his success with the loaded Miami Heat teams.
But the win over Golden State was close, with the score tied in game seven with only a few minutes to go. Had those last few minutes gone a little differently, the Cavaliers would have lost, and instead of talking about Lebron the legend, we'd be pointing out that he's been to the finals seven times and only won two, and we'd be labeling him a choker.
Similarly, in this Superbowl, it kind of got lost in the comeback, but Atlanta got into field goal range late, but got pushed out by a holding call and a sack, forcing them to punt. If either of those things hadn't happened, they could have gotten three more points, the Patriots' comeback would have come up short, and we'd now be talking about a changing of the guard among NFL quarterbacks. Of course, by the same argument, the Brady-Belichick Patriots's two Superbowl losses were following improbable comebacks, so you can also point out that Brady is a couple of minor changes of history from being a seven-time champion, at which point we'd be ready to start a new religion around him.
So that's why I'm not ready to put Brady ahead of Montana yet: I don't really give any credence to one more championship, and Montana was a more integral part of his team's success. Or to look at it another way, In the parallel universe where Peyton Manning was drafted by Belichick and the Patriots, I think they could have won as many or more Superbowls.
Having said that, one of the ambiguities of best-ever arguments is that you can only ever judge athletes in team sports against their contemporaries. Really, better training, scouting, tactics, etc. mean that the quality of athletes increases over time, though it's hard to say how much. I've always suspected that we'd be pretty shocked at how much better todays teams would prove to be if they could go back in time and play a team from, say fifty years ago.
The other problem with judging athletes against their contemporaries is that you don't know if a great athlete is simply ahead of his time. If you're the first to discover a new tactic or training regimen, you could appear to be better than you are, because you have that window when no one else has copied you or adapted to your style. Again, I've always suspected that a lot of the generational talents in sports are such cases, getting the attention while they wait for the world to catch up.
So is such an athlete really "the best?" You could say yes, because tactics and innovation are a part of sports. Though it's also hard to say they are the best when their success is partly due to timing. And that's a good argument for Brady as best-ever, since you could chalk-up Montana's success as being ahead-of-the-curve on passing-based football.
In a sane world, we'd now be talking about Brady's place in football history, and debating whether he is the greatest ever. But of course he was already crowned greatest ever in the hype leading up to the game, and now have moved on to debating whether he is the best player in the history of team sports. Personally, I haven't bought the best-ever-in-football concept yet.
Discussing best-evers in sports is frustrating: it's a debate that can be looked at many different ways, and yet it usually gets derailed by people conflating team and individual achievement. They would say that Brady is the best ever just based on having five Superbowls. But by that logic, Trent Dilfer is a better quarterback than Dan Marino.
But beyond that, the simplistic who-has-the-most-rings argument reveals how arbitrary most of our sports talk is. Take Lebron James; when he and his Cavaliers won the NBA title this year, it seemed to cement his reputation as one of the all-time-greats. It was his third title, and more importantly, his first carrying the team himself, thus silencing people like me who didn't really count his success with the loaded Miami Heat teams.
But the win over Golden State was close, with the score tied in game seven with only a few minutes to go. Had those last few minutes gone a little differently, the Cavaliers would have lost, and instead of talking about Lebron the legend, we'd be pointing out that he's been to the finals seven times and only won two, and we'd be labeling him a choker.
Similarly, in this Superbowl, it kind of got lost in the comeback, but Atlanta got into field goal range late, but got pushed out by a holding call and a sack, forcing them to punt. If either of those things hadn't happened, they could have gotten three more points, the Patriots' comeback would have come up short, and we'd now be talking about a changing of the guard among NFL quarterbacks. Of course, by the same argument, the Brady-Belichick Patriots's two Superbowl losses were following improbable comebacks, so you can also point out that Brady is a couple of minor changes of history from being a seven-time champion, at which point we'd be ready to start a new religion around him.
So that's why I'm not ready to put Brady ahead of Montana yet: I don't really give any credence to one more championship, and Montana was a more integral part of his team's success. Or to look at it another way, In the parallel universe where Peyton Manning was drafted by Belichick and the Patriots, I think they could have won as many or more Superbowls.
Having said that, one of the ambiguities of best-ever arguments is that you can only ever judge athletes in team sports against their contemporaries. Really, better training, scouting, tactics, etc. mean that the quality of athletes increases over time, though it's hard to say how much. I've always suspected that we'd be pretty shocked at how much better todays teams would prove to be if they could go back in time and play a team from, say fifty years ago.
The other problem with judging athletes against their contemporaries is that you don't know if a great athlete is simply ahead of his time. If you're the first to discover a new tactic or training regimen, you could appear to be better than you are, because you have that window when no one else has copied you or adapted to your style. Again, I've always suspected that a lot of the generational talents in sports are such cases, getting the attention while they wait for the world to catch up.
So is such an athlete really "the best?" You could say yes, because tactics and innovation are a part of sports. Though it's also hard to say they are the best when their success is partly due to timing. And that's a good argument for Brady as best-ever, since you could chalk-up Montana's success as being ahead-of-the-curve on passing-based football.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
The Country Of The Mind
I just saw a car with a "Kingdom of Ealdomere" sticker on it. I had no idea what that is, but after years of geography-related quizzes on Sporcle.com, I knew that wasn't a real country, and I was pretty sure it was entirely made up.
So I looked it up, and found that the kingdom is a production of the Society for Creative Anachronism (renaissance fair people.) It seems that merely dressing up in period clothing isn't enough anymore, and they've actually crafted their own medieval kingdom. Members hey appointed to various roles within this land, even rotating the Monarchy through the membership.
I guess that's a good way to allow folks to participate even when they're not getting together. You could interact online using Ye Olde Snapchate . So, ironically, this is a modern take on re-enacting.
That begs the question, why isn't there an opposite of renaissance fairs? You know, a place where people dress up and act like they're in the future. Okay, I guess you'd have to get everyone to agree on what sort of things are in their collective pretend future, and that will probably take longer that the event itself. It's faster to just go to a Star Trek convention where everyone already knows the rules. I never thought of it that way before: the past is like a big pop-culture franchise, and historians and war re-enacters are their Trekkies.
So I looked it up, and found that the kingdom is a production of the Society for Creative Anachronism (renaissance fair people.) It seems that merely dressing up in period clothing isn't enough anymore, and they've actually crafted their own medieval kingdom. Members hey appointed to various roles within this land, even rotating the Monarchy through the membership.
I guess that's a good way to allow folks to participate even when they're not getting together. You could interact online using Ye Olde Snapchate . So, ironically, this is a modern take on re-enacting.
That begs the question, why isn't there an opposite of renaissance fairs? You know, a place where people dress up and act like they're in the future. Okay, I guess you'd have to get everyone to agree on what sort of things are in their collective pretend future, and that will probably take longer that the event itself. It's faster to just go to a Star Trek convention where everyone already knows the rules. I never thought of it that way before: the past is like a big pop-culture franchise, and historians and war re-enacters are their Trekkies.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Some Women Just Want To Watch The Fuel Burn
This Esso commercial has been running a lot, where the guy wonders what the cleaning ingredients are, and the scientists pop out of nowhere to tell him. Apparently it's a Mobil ad in the U.S. (all part of the ExxonMobil empire.)
I'm worried about the detergent #2 scientist. She seems to have an enthusiasm for her work that no one - not even her oddball colleagues - can match. It seems that she's destined to be disappointed that others don't share her love of internal combustion cleanliness. I see her shaking her fist in the air late one night at the Esso lab, saying "I'll show them the importance of removing deposits from fuel injectors!"
And I'm dreading what she'll do next. We know that she's a master of disguise, since she was she was also detergent #1 developer. And that leads to the next problem: she's obviously a chemistry genius, since she developed two fuel additives in the time everyone else needed to develop just one. What I'm getting at is, she just has to steal the flying chair from the Marker Molecules guy and she'll have everything she needs to be a supervillan.
I'm not sure what sort of name she'd choose. The Solvent? Dr. Fluid? Ms. Clean? I think she'll have to depend on some sort of lab accident to create a persona for her.
I'm worried about the detergent #2 scientist. She seems to have an enthusiasm for her work that no one - not even her oddball colleagues - can match. It seems that she's destined to be disappointed that others don't share her love of internal combustion cleanliness. I see her shaking her fist in the air late one night at the Esso lab, saying "I'll show them the importance of removing deposits from fuel injectors!"
And I'm dreading what she'll do next. We know that she's a master of disguise, since she was she was also detergent #1 developer. And that leads to the next problem: she's obviously a chemistry genius, since she developed two fuel additives in the time everyone else needed to develop just one. What I'm getting at is, she just has to steal the flying chair from the Marker Molecules guy and she'll have everything she needs to be a supervillan.
I'm not sure what sort of name she'd choose. The Solvent? Dr. Fluid? Ms. Clean? I think she'll have to depend on some sort of lab accident to create a persona for her.
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