According to Wired News, a mandated public comment period on the odious Digital Millenium Copyright Act has just concluded. To no one's surprise, the collected commentary is full of criticism of the law, especially provisions that seem to chip away at the public domain in favor of corproate interests.
To my surprise, I encountered one of those roadside 5-DVDs-for-$20 stands this afternoon, and of course I stopped to look. I wound up blowing a sawbuck on a quintet of flicks:
Sonny Chiba's The Bodyguard
Jackie Chan's Drunken Master
Chow Yun-Fat in God of Killers
Dario Argento's Opera--the Anchor Bay, edition, no less; this isn't a cheapo DVD at all; it goes for $22.48 at Amazon.com. An unbelievably lucky find!
Today's obscure-old-school-martial-arts-flick was Legend of the Dragonslayer Sword, starring Ma Jin-Tao and Yip Tong.
w00t!
Update: By the way, I've decided they should be a Xmas present, so they're going under the tree.
Please join me in welcoming my new nephew, The Baby To Be Named Later Samuel Owen Miller, born at about 6:30 p.m. today in Louisville to my sister and brother-in-law. TBTBNL Samuel Owen was 9 pounds, 3 ounces and 20.5 inches long. Mother and son are doing fine.
I was too disgusted about this yesterday to post anything, and even today it's difficult to discern if this action is more shocking and disturbing from its remeiscence to the reprehensible internment of Japanese-Americans in WWII or from its sheer ineptitude. It's hard to imagine a more counterproductive policy. Make no mistake about it: many of those arrested for lacking paperwork were in that condition because of delays at the INS. And while some may crow at their preception of a triumph for law and order, these were people who voluntarily stepped forward to comply with an official request--hardly the actions of a security risk. I feel confident in predicting, though, that we won't see much in the way of cooperation in the future.
In his tasty rant on this nauseating event, Demosthenes puts it in perspective:
People, this sort of thing plays into Osama's hands. In fact, it doesn't just play into Osama's hands, it does his job for him. Kindly remember that the entire point of Osama's quest is to convince Muslims that they need to reject the west and its embodiment, the United States, as a corrupt and evil influence. He wants to start a war between the west and Islam, and (I'm sure) is hoping that the United States will start it for him, so Muslims around the world will believe that they are next; that they are targets no matter how moderate, peaceful, and westernized they are. By doing this, the United States is reinforcing that belief. By arresting Iranians, the United States is showing that this is not limited to the Arab world and never was, and is ensuring that the clerics have a powerful weapon to keep the population in line and supporting their government- fear of the United States. Indeed, people that might not have been bothered or offended by attempts to keep terrorism in line will be forced to be suspicious, because the United States government has proven through this action that it doesn't matter who you are or where you live... as long as you come from the wrong country, you're a suspect.
The problem isn't just that these people are being arrested. The problem is that everybody outside the United States is going to know that they've been arrested, why they've been arrested, why it's a scam, and what it says about the respect the United States government has for the human rights of those it thinks may at some point threaten its security. And no amount of spin doctoring from bloggers, the punditry, the administration, or God Himself is going to make a whit of difference. They're going to know, and they're going to understand, and it's quite possible they're going to do something about it. And if they think that they're targets, not all the American pop culture in Hollywood is going to make a lick of difference.
Several times before, I've questioned this Administration's handling of the war on terrorism, and I've also noted that Bush has by now amply belied his oft-claimed honesty. This latest development makes it crystal clear that Bush was also lying when he uttered the following words (emphasis mine):
"I...do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and I will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Blogger-powered weblogs seem to be having difficulties with their archives. Although my archived posts appear to be in order as far as I know, I'm unable to reach several I've linked.
"You know how kids are—a year is an eternity to them," the wraithlike specter said Monday during a visit to the Southfield home of 13-year-old Josh Kuehn. "So just imagine showing them something they'll have to wait 14 years for. Teasing them with a glimpse of the PS5 is the ultimate torture. They absolutely lose their minds. It's like saying, 'Hey, kid, you'll be an old man before you ever get to touch this.'"
I for one applaud the Republicans for making clear that no one who expressed the nostalgia for segregation that Lott did should represent them as their leader, and Lott for doing the right thing and resigning.
In the same issue that featured the study of Playboy centerfolds I just mentioned, the British Medical Journal also contains a study that debunks the legend of the "Mummy's Curse"--the theory that those involved with the 1922 discovery of Egyptian pharoah Tutankhamen's tomb died suddenly soon after. Although expedition patron Lord Carnarvon died just weeks after the opening of the chamber--launching the myth--the study found that most others suffered no undue effects, and indeed archaeologist Howard Carter, who led the team that discovered King Tut's tomb, and who scoffed at the notion of a curse, lived into his 60s before dying of natural causes.
In other goodies, the same issue contained a study suggesting that gobbling ice cream (as opposed to eating it slowly) makes one more prone to ice cream headache (known to Pete & Pete fans as the dreaded "brain freeze") even in cold weather, a study suggesting that Asian-Americans do not die in disproportiante numbers on the 4th of the month due to a beleif that the number 4 is unlucky, and a study suggesting that the lay public is better at guessing a baby's gender from looking at its face than pediatricians are, although the mean number of wrong guesses as nearly 45%.
The scientists tabulated the models' anthropometric data: height, weight, and measurements for bust, waist, and hip. They calculated composite measures from these data: body mass index, waist:hip ratio, waist:bust ratio, bust:hip ratio, and an androgyny index that tracked the ration of the model's hip and bust (the slimmer the model, the higher the androgyny index).
The scientists discovered that, while the weight of the models was a near constant ("and hence may indicate a stable attractiveness cue"), the other measurements changed over time. Models increased in height and age; bust size and hip size decreased, while waist size increased. Composite measures of body shape captured the same trends: body mass index and bust:hip ratio decreased, while waist:hip ratio, waist:bust ratio, and androgyny index all increased.
Solely in the interests of scientific inquiry, of course, we present a (safe for work) sampling of recent Playboy centerfolds (courtesy AllPosters.com). Comparing these lovelies with this archive of centerfolds from 1960-2000 is left as an exercise for the reader.
Aziz Poonawalla reminds us that The Lord of the Rings is not allegorical; Tolkien himself rejected the notion that it was.
Tolkien's original vision was to create a mythology for England, which by quirk of history had none remaining. ...Tolkien was aghast at the idea that LOTR could be allegorical, and argued strenously against interpreting his work as such...The disdain that Tolkien had for this kind of decimation of themes to mere analogy is clear in the Foreword, because it takes something timeless and forces it into a very limited temporal window. This destroys the lessons and utility of the themes themselves.
The true themes of LOTR, which are applicable to any time, are these, to name just a few: We are our own worst enemy. Evil within must be defeated before the evil without. Death. The simple heroism of ordinary people. The Pandora's box of technology. The necessity of wisdom. The vulnerability of the wise. LOTR is suffused with powerful lessons that speak to the very core of the forces driving history in the Age of Man. This is why LOTR is timeless and will continue to be applicable, in its own unique way, to every unique reader.
The upshot of it is that profit per release is up. The number of new releases has been cut drastically, by a quarter or so--after the closure of Napster, as Reimann points out. But the remaining releases are each earning a lot more. The overall decline is in the realm of 6% over the last couple of years, which is by no means unusual in the midst of a recession. Ziemann claims, and I think these figures bear him out, that if the number of releases had not been slashed so far, the music industry would be enjoying net growth in revenue.
In short: they are lying lying lying about the impact of piracy. What's hurting the music industry is apparently bad managerial response to the basic fact of recession, cutting production more than was warranted and without doing things like reforming accounting practices, refraining from sales hikes, and not alienating customers with poorly conceived and presented anti-piracy schemes.
That may be, but waaaay back in my Political Philosophy clas, I found it mighty boring, too--exceeded only by The Communist Manifesto.
The link comes in Yglesias' citation of this Pandagon post that scoffs at an NRO column claiming the Lott flap was manufactured by Democrats (must have missed the memo declaring the party line to be that it was Republicans showing how virtuous they all are*...).
TBOGG has a blistering two-pronged takedown on WaPo columnist Michael Kelly's attempt to demonstrate that yes, Virginia, there is a "liberal media." It seems that not only are the cited factoids somewhat, er, selective, but that Kelly's sole source is not as "nonpartisan" as he would like to have us believe.
He also cites Joe Conason's rebuttal to Kelly's column. And for good measure, he joins the rest of the sane world in thinking Bush's missile defense pipedream plan is a stupid idea.
The Bush administration's decision to deploy a rudimentary missile defense system in Alaska and California by the end of 2004 begs the question of what threat justifies such an accelerated timetable. The missile system, after all, is far from proven; some of its key elements have not yet been built, much less tested. So if it is to be rushed into the field, at considerable cost and risk of failure, it ought to be because a potential adversary has appeared capable of attacking the United States with an intercontinental missile. Yet there appears to be no such enemy. America is at peace with Russia and China, nations that could easily overwhelm a missile defense system anyway. North Korea, the most likely suspect, does not yet have a missile capable of hitting the continental United States. The CIA believes its Taepodong-1 model, which has been tested only once, at best could reach the outskirts of Alaska -- and only then if it were not carrying a nuclear warhead.
North Korea, Iran or other hostile states might someday deploy missiles that threaten the United States, and for that reason a missile defense program is worth pursuing. Because several countries already possess intermediate-range missiles, and the defensive systems against them are closer to proving their worth, plans to deploy those systems on Navy ships or near U.S. bases abroad make some sense. But the Bush administration's hasty drive to build a ground-based defense against long-range missiles seems to have more to do with the U.S. political calendar than with any plausible defense scenario. For the administration's missile defense hawks, the program has become an ideology; they appear determined to pour enough concrete and create enough on-the-ground hardware by the next presidential election to make it irreversible. Some still remember, with great bitterness, the Clinton administration's decision to pull the plug on many of the pre-1992 missile defense projects; they are intent on preventing a repeat of that setback.
Yet this preemptive construction, which will require a substantial increase in the $16 billion budgeted for missile defense in the next two years, will likely create a system that is more Potemkin than preventative. The Pentagon still hasn't built key parts of the system, including a workable booster rocket, or the satellite sensors needed to detect incoming missiles and differentiate them from decoys. The radar system designed to be used with the interceptors exists only in prototype. The current interceptor has failed three of eight of its flight tests, and it hasn't even been tested yet against missiles with realistic decoys. Outside experts say such tests may not even be possible before the end of the decade.
The Post has already answered its hypothetical question "So why spend the money to deploy, given the absence of a tangible threat?" Because one we start spending, we're committed. Once we dig those holes in Alaska, we're bound to put something there, whether it really works or not. The Post is right to point out not only how faulty the decision is, but also--once again--that it's based on political, not policy, concerns.
