BOOK REVIEW: WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT AMERICA? (2002) * * * * (4 stars out of 4).
While I don’t agree with everything in this book, I did enjoy it thoroughly. Written by Dinesh D’Souza, the author of Illiberal Education argues against multi-culturalism in ways that are difficult to dismiss. He gives lots of examples of inconsistent and absurd results that would be achieved by true fidelity to the principles of multi-culturalism, but, it seems to me, the simplest way to put the arguments is to say, “multi-culturalism may be all right for you, but not for me”. Multi-culturalism, of course, is committed to the idea that you can say that sort of sentence about any belief system, yet it is equally committed to the idea that multi-culturalism is, itself, universally true. In other words, multi-culturalism is hypocritically inconsistent, in that it claims that belief systems are never absolutely true, and people who don’t agree with your belief system should be tolerated; but multi-culturalism also claims to be the only belief system that is absolutely true for all people everywhere, and that people who don’t agree with it are not to be tolerated.
Having thus disproved multi-culturalism to his satisfaction, D’Souza concludes that this means that we can indeed say that one culture is better than another. D’Souza then spends the balance of the book arguing for the premise that the United States is the best culture. Here, he makes his most interesting and entertaining points.
MOVIE REVIEW: CHICAGO (2002) * 1/2 (1 and a half star out of 4).
I finally saw Chicago with Andy M. and Sophie W..
The movie makes me want to see the play, but it does not translate well to the screen. All the little things that seem like they’d have been clever on stage (like using handkerchiefs to simulate blood), seem completely to avoid exploring the medium of film. It seems just preposterous that this whimsical, limited movie was nominated for best film of the year.
CLUBBING.
When I first got to New York, I used to go to night clubs a lot. It always seemed like a fun, exciting thing to do, and the variety of them here is overwhelming. But, after about a year, I realized that they are overpriced, obnoxiously loud, and run by psychotically rude people. So I decided to stop going to them, which I did, for years. But Andy M. insisted on going to the China Club Saturday night, so I went along, if only to remind myself why I hate night clubs. It all came back to me, in vivid detail. It’s just amazing to me how many people think it’s “cool” to just do what everynody else is doing.
SOLO.
Jill Z. and I broke up. The reason was because she is religious and I am not, and we both want to have children and to raise them to be like ourselves in this regard.
MOVIE REVIEW: ONE HOUR PHOTO (2002) * * (2 stars out of 4).
I didn’t hate this movie, but I definitely didn’t love it. It seemed both predictable and absurd, which is always a terrible combination. But there were some moments of genuine tension and compelling creepiness.
MOVIE REVIEW: DAREDEVIL (2003) * * (2 stars out of 4).
Daredevil the Movie tries to do too much. Your typical comic-book superhero movie retells the origin story and follows one adventure. I’m not saying I demand that every movie in the genre follow some formula. But this successful formula does give a good sense of what can easily be accomplished without the story feeling to slow or lacking in action. Daredevil retells and rewrites the origin story in numbing detail, then tells the Electra origin story, then tells the multi-year Bullseye story arc, and then tells the multi-decade Kingpin story arc. The result is a cluttered, confusing story that is difficult to follow. In short, it doesn’t do justice to the great work on Daredevil the comic book by Frank Miller, Kevin Smith (the famous screenwriter), and especially the current writer, Brian Michael Bendis. It’s just a classic case of the book being better than the movie.
BOOK REVIEW: BART SIMPSON’S GUIDE TO LIFE (1993) * * * (3 stars out of 4).
I really enjoyed this book. It reminded me a lot of Matt Groening’s “Life is Hell” books that I loved so much, years before the Simpsons was on TV. It had a lot less of the zaniness into which Simpsons has evolved (or devolved, as the case may be), and more of the honest realism that was so striking on TV ten years ago, and which is so common today, because of early Fox shows like the Simpsons and Married with Children. The book was charming and fun and really reminded me how it feels to be a child. But it wasn’t really that funny.
BOOK REVIEW: THE MATRIX AND PHILOSOPHY (2002) * (1 star out of 4).
This book was a huge disappointment. I’ll sum it up for you, so you don’t need to buy it. 1) How do we know that we’re not really just a brain in a vat, like the people in the matrix are? Descartes posed this question hundreds of years ago, and no one has ever come to a satisfactory answer. It’s an interesting issue, but you don’t need to read half a dozen essays about it that all say the exact same thing. 2) Should we prefer a life of blissful ignorance (the blue pill, I think) or self-knowledge that makes us miserable (the red pill, as I recall)? Philosophers tend to pick the second one, but, of course, it’s really just a question of taste. 3) Finally, the spoon bender saying “there is no spoon” has something inexplicable to do with Buddhism. If you want to read 320 pages that say exactly what I’ve just said, over and over and over again, then be my guest. But better still would be to see the movie again, as it addresses all of these questions and more much more lucidly than the book.
The one marginally redeeming thing about this book is that it illustrates nicely that, often, the worse an argument is and the less skillful the arguer, the more likely she is to resort to name-calling and other illegitimate techniques. That is, of course, not always certain to be true. But it is common, and it is certainly the case throughout this book.
LIVING LIKE A ROCKEFELLER.
I was looking at the directory for my building, and saw that there is an “S. A. Rockefeller” living here, directly above me– that is, their floor is my ceiling. I asked at the front desk if our Rockefeller was related to John D. Rockefeller, and the desk person said that S. A. Rockefeller is John D. Rockefeller’s nephew, and he lives there with his wife. It’s nifty to think that I have exactly the same apartment as John D. Rockefeller’s nephew and his wife, but I’m sure they have nicer furniture than I do, as almost all of mine is from Ikea.
SICK AS A DOG.
I am quite very ill. I’ll spare you the details, except to say that as a result I did not go to New Orleans for Mardi Gras this year, even though I’d pre-paid for a hotel. I changed my flight, though, to a two-week trip to San Francisco in May.
LET ME ASK YOU SOMETHING.
Do you seriously think that this is a rhetorical question?
REFRESHING CANDOR FROM TYCO.
Normally, corporate annual reports are very upbeat, even when times are bad. The 162+ page annual report for the beleaguered Tyco International (NYSE:TYC), of which I am a stockholder, begins this way.
To Our Shareholders:
The past year was terrible for Tyco, its investors and its employees. The Company experienced a net loss of over $9.4 billion, and saw its market capitalization decline significantly. In addition to the tough economic conditions affecting most companies, Tyco faced the embarrassment and damage to its reputation resulting from disclosures about the conduct of former management.
“PENN & TELLER: BULLSHIT” JUST JUMPED THE SHARK.
I’d been really enjoying the new Showtime show “Penn & Teller: Bullshit“, and, in fact, I only subscribed to Showtime in order to see this show. But they argued so poorly for their thesis that laws outlawing public smoking are “bullshit” that it casts doubt on everything else they’ve said. Their first three episodes impressively debunked psychics, space aliens, and end-of-the-world prophesies. But on this episode, they smugly claim that second-hand smoke kills, at most, 2.5 non-smokers per 100,000 in the population (which they say is statistically insignificant), and they allude, without explanation or justification, to a Constitutional right to smoke in bars and restaurants, though I can’t begin to imagine which part of the Constitution they might have in mind.
First of all, here in New York City, we have 8 million people. That’s 80 times a hundred thousand, or 200 dead non-smokers. And there are an additional 8 million people in the New York metro area, many of whom come to New York every day. Penn and Teller dispute whether the rate of death is even this high, but even if there’s only a one in a million chance that second hand smoke can ever kill someone, that’s still 8 dead New York non-smokers, and perhaps more in the metro area. So, government is powerless to help these people, because there are too few of them? Between 8 and 200 needless deaths is the “statically insignificant” price we should–no, must–pay to allow people to annoy others with their cigarette smoke? Pshaw.
And even if no study can show any conclusive link between second hand smoke and death, why should non-smokers have to take any risk at all? We know that “first-hand” smoking kills hundreds of millions of people world-wide. Nobody disputes that. It’s just common sense that there may also be some slight risk associated with second-hand smoke, even if that risk is too small to measure. Should developing children and pregnant women and people who are already at high risk for cancer, not to mention the rest of us, have to take the risk that the right study just hasn’t been published yet?
And what’s the argument against banning smoking? Well, according to the people on the show, we non-smokers (and also the many smokers who support the ban) are inflicting our behaviors on others. I mean, can you even imagine? The law doesn’t tell people not to step outside for a smoke, nor that they shouldn’t smoke in their homes and cars. But when I have to breathe your second-hand cigarette smoke, then you’re the one inflicting your behavior on me. Even if it doesn’t cause one death, why can’t we, as a society, say that we don’t like to cough, and we don’t like our eyes to sting, and we don’t like to get smoke in our hair and clothes? I remember a few months ago, an exchange between a “smoking rights” advocate and a smoking ban advocate on Comedy Central‘s The Daily Show, in which the smoking rights advocate asked, “Why shouldn’t I be allowed to smoke wherever I want to?”, and the smoking ban advocate asked in reply, “Why shouldn’t I be allowed to masturbate wherever I want to?” Surely, no one thinks they have any more of a right to smoke in public than they do to masturbate in public. Do you really think you have some “right” to blow smoke in my face when I’m trying to eat? As the saying goes, “Your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose.” Why do you think the Constitution gives you a right to strike me with your cigarette smoke, any more than it gives you the right to strike me with your fist or a knife or a bullet?
The bottom line is that whether or not to allow this obnoxious behavior in public is a matter of public policy, not Constitutional jurisprudence, and it is exactly the sort of thing that should be decided by popularly elected legislatures, democratically representing their constituents. Here in New York City, the smoking ban is overwhelmingly popular. Out in “Marlboro Country” somewhere, say in Texas or New Orleans, such a ban might be unpopular, and if so, then they should have a different rule. The Constitution doesn’t give you a right to smoke, nor me a right to be free from smoke. But the Constitution does give me the right to vote for those public officials who support the laws that I believe in, such as this public smoking ban.
DAILY SHOW SCHIZOPHRENIA, PART III or HOW BIG IS THEIR GIANT DICK?
At the beginning of the month, I pointed out that Comedy Central‘s The Daily Show arbitrarily bleeped out the word “bush” when used by Rosie Perez to refer to her own genitalia, but not the word “pussy” when used by Lawrence Fishburne to refer to female genitalia, even though “Bush” is the name of the President of the United States. A couple weeks later, I pointed out that they bleeped out the word “Dick”, in the phrase “you don’t have to be a dick about it”, not referring specifically to genitalia, used by host Jon Stewart, dispute the fact that that is a common first name, and the name of the Vice-President.
On February 19, they did not bleep out the word “dick” spoken by Jon Stewart in the phrase “Is it my imagination, or does it seem like every ruler of every country in the world right now is a giant dick?” So, I guess, you can’t say “dick”, but you can say “giant dick”? I wonder if you could say, “Suck my Dick Chaney” on TV. Would they bleep out the word “Dick” and leave the word “Cheney” so everyone knew what you had just said? I leave that question as an exercise for the reader.
DO ALL TIVO SUBSCRIBERS HAVE ME TO THANK?
I was one of the first Tivo customers, and early on, I answered their request for suggestions for improving their service. They never replied, but they implemented almost all of my suggestions.
Actually, even back in 1999, these ideas seemed pretty obvious, I thought. Then again, maybe, if it weren’t for me, they’d never have happened. Who knows?
If you don’t have a Tivo, you probably won’t find this very interesting, and you might want to skip this very long blog entry.
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 01:35:31 -0400 (EDT)
From: David D.
To: help@tivo.com
Subject: Suggestions for improving the Tivo Software even more
I was very pleased to get your recent email announcing your welcome
improvements and inviting further suggestions. I have used Tivo for just
the last three weeks, and I already don’t know how I ever got along
without it.
Having used and relied upon it, I do have the following suggestions for
improving Tivo’s software:
1) Currently, when you change the channel with Tivo while watching live
T.V., the half-hour buffer is erased. This seems both annoying and
unnecessary. It is particularly frustrating when I’m watching a show
behind real time, and then Tivo needs to change the channel in order to
record another program. I must then chose between not seeing the end of
the show I was watching or not recording the program I had scheduled. I
don’t understand why my Tivo must require me to make this choice.
2) When I look up a show by name, I really wish there were some way to see
not just the very next time that show will be on, but the times after
that. This would be great for helping to resolve conflicts. For example,
if I want to tape “Sex and the City” on HBO, but I have a conflict, I
could press a single button and find out when the identical episode will
be repeated, and record that broadcast instead.
3) Along the same line, currently, when a new season pass conflicts with
an old one, one of those season passes must be canceled. I would far
prefer it if both passes could be saved, but Tivo would ask me which
season pass should have a higher priority. That way I could have a season
pass to a cable show that’s repeated several times a week, but have it
occasionally pre-empted by a show that’s only on once a week.
4) Finally, I think Tivo should alert me when a season pass conflict
arises that was not apparent when the season pass was set. For example,
the WB show “Felicity”, to which I have a season pass, has just moved from
Tuesday night to Sunday night, and is now opposite “the Simpsons” and
“Futurama”, to which I also have season passes. Looking at “Tivo’s To Do
List”, I see that my Tivo has resolved the conflict by deciding to record
Felicity and not the other two shows. I think it should have recognized
the conflict, and alerted me to it, so that I could decide for myself how
to resolve the conflict.
I hope these suggestions don’t sound too negative. I really do love
having my Tivo, and I think it’s a great product!
Best regards,
David Danzig
—Tivo implemented the first three suggestions—
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 17:30:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: David D.
To: help@tivo.com
Subject: Suggestions for improving the Tivo software
I am a Tivo customer, and I recently wrote you with some suggestions on
how to improve the Tivo software. I didn’t get a response, but I hope
you’ve found my suggestions useful, and that you’ll consider implementing
them. I’ve included them below, along with a few new ones. Please let me
know whether you find them helpful, and if you plan on implementing any of
them.
5) One matter of great concern to me is the status bar at the bottom of
the screen which says how long the program is, and how much has been
recorded, and how much has been played. I am concerned about getting
“screen burn”, because this item is so often on the screen. Screen burn
occurs when an image is displayed too long on a screen, and the reverse
image becomes permanently visible even when the image is gone. Large
screen rear projection TVs are particularly susceptible to this
phenomenon. The main reason I am concerned about this for the status bar,
is that it stays on the screen when a program is paused, which can be for
an unlimited period of time. Advancing the program a frame gets rid of
the status bar, but sometimes I forget to do that, and I’m sure it never
even occurs to many Tivo customers. An obvious solution to this problem
is for the status bar to be automatically removed from the screen after a
few moments when the program is paused. An even better, though more
complex, solution would be for the entire image, including the status bar,
to alternate between the regular image and its photonegative image. That
way, screen burn will be impossible, since all the pixels will be
displayed in equal amounts, over time.
6) This is a very minor problem, but it seems so easy to fix, that it
would be a real shame not to do so: When I set a manual recording of a
program which I had already scheduled, Tivo reports a conflict. For
example, suppose I had told Tivo to record Sunday’s new episode of the
Simpsons, by choosing it from Fox’s daily schedule. Then, I later decide
to set a manual recording of the Simpsons every Sunday. Tivo will tell me
that I have a conflict with my previous recording. In actuality, of
course, there is no conflict, since these are both commands to record the
same show.
7) Finally, I want to re-emphasize my suggestion number 2) below. I think
the single best thing you could do to improve Tivo is to show every
scheduled broadcast of a show when it is chosen by name, instead of just
the very next showing. As I wrote below, this would be great when the
first broadcast is in conflict with another show, and the same episode
will be on again, as with many cable series and movies. But it would also
be really great for talk shows and syndicated shows. For example, I have
most, but not all, episodes of the Simpsons, Newsradio, and Friends, three
of my favorite shows, each of which is on multiple times throughout the
day on a different channel from the other two. It is very tedious to go
through the schedules of the three different channels, looking at the
program descriptions of each episode, to see if it’s one that I haven’t
seen, and should tape again. I can’t tape them all, since some of these
shows conflict with each other. It would also be very useful for taping
talk shows, which I might only want to watch if there’s going to be a
particularly interesting guest on. Adding this feature would literally
save me hours every week. Please, consider adding this feature.
Very best regards,
David Danzig
[quote of original message snipped]
—Tivo implemented suggestions 5 and 7—
SPAM KILLS.
Have you ever seen one of those spams that says that the deposed leader of Nigeria wants to pay you millions of dollars to help move some money out of the country? Well, some Czech person who got taken in by the scam just assassinated the Nigerian consul to the Czech Republic after being taken in by the scam, and not being able to get his money back via the Nigerian consulate.
While I, of course, abhor murder, I do hope this helps to show people both that you should never do business with a spammer, and also that spam is not a harmless nuisance. For my part, I get over one thousand different spam emails every single day, and that number is rising rapidly. I once tried unsubscribing myself, but that only made the problem much, much worse. I spend hours dealing with it each week, and I have to pay my employees hundreds of dollars to sit and delete their spam, too. It’s outrageous! And I’m just one guy who never even answers these spams. People are losing their life savings to scams like these every day.
How many more people have to die before we address this global problem?
I’M BACK!
I got back last night from San Francisco. Here’s what I did while I was away.
Wednesday, I arrived and had dinner at my cousin Diana‘s apartment with her husband, Adam, and her brother, mother, and father, who are, respectively, my cousin, aunt, and uncle. Then I went to Sean S.‘s and Dav C.‘s place, where I was staying. We went out to a bar that was having lesbian night.
Thursday morning, I went to my cousin Neil B.‘s twin sons’ circumcision. I was very glad I could share that moment with my family, and I’m all for circumcision, in general. But watching it and celebrating it was very off-putting, and it really reminded me of why I don’t really like being Jewish, and why I really don’t want to raise my children Jewish. Then, I went to Neil’s and his wife Beth‘s place and hung around with my extended family, and then went to Diana’s again for dinner. Then, I went back to Sean’s and Dav’s and went out for drinks.
Friday, we had lunch at this great Sandwich place near Sean and Dav, and then Sean and I went to the Cable Car Museum and hung around Fisherman’s Wharf. We had Sushi at a cool place on Mission Street, and then went to Manisha‘s place for drinks and fun times.
Saturday, Sean and I had lunch in Berkeley, and spent the afternoon there. Then we went to some kind of Robot Art Show with Dav and David D., who I’ve known since elementary school, and lives out near San Francisco now.
Sunday, Sean and Dav and I had lunch on Haight Street, and Sean and I hung around Haight, and then wandered around The Castro. We had Pizza in North Beach for dinner, and called it an early night.
Monday, I flew out first thing in the morning. I was changing planes in Philadelphia, and it was an hour and twenty minute layover, followed by a one hour flight, but the train from Philly to New York is only an hour and twelve minutes, and central Philly is a lot easier to get to from the Airport than New York is from its airport. So I threw away my connecting ticket, I went into Philly, and I had dinner with Joe F. and took the Acella to Manhattan.
AND I’M OFF.
I’m going tomorrow to San Francisco, because my cousin Neil B. and his wife Beth just had twins, Jonathan and David. David is named after my and Neil’s grandfather, David R., for whom I was also named. I’ll be back Wednesday night.
THE 100TH INTERNATIONAL TOY FAIR.
Jill Z. and I went to the 100th annual International Toy Fair yesterday. It was so fun. There were thousands of exhibitors showing toys ranging from old classics of years past to innovative new things. Some of my favorites were moldable scented soap with the consistency of play-dough, screened in butterfly houses, a Jesus action figure, a ball with a launcher that makes it bounce much, much higher than the height from which it was dropped. There were cute dolls and puppets and board games and ball games and puzzles and so many different things that when I closed my eyes to go to sleep, I kept seeing booths of toys, like when you play a video game all day, and then close your eyes and keep seeing the game you were playing when you try to sleep.
THE STORM OF THE CENTURY (SO FAR).
It’s really bugging me how the media keeps calling this “the blizzard of 2003”. Like, if they just said, “the blizzard”, I’d be all like “What blizzard? Do you mean the blizzard of ’69?” I appreciate that they’re trying to make it seem historic, and I’m sure that history will come to call it that next year. But to start calling it that now is the exact opposite of journalism. And, you know, there really could be another, even bigger blizzard before the year is out, in late February, early March, or November or December. This reminds me very much of the storm of late 1995, which the media dubbed “the storm of the century,” only to see it dwarfed by a larger storm, just a few weeks later in early 1996.
Jill Z. and I hiked through for miles and miles all day yesterday. Sometime it was up to our knees or deeper, and the piles made by snow plows were as high as 20 feet, I reckon, near Rockefeller Center. The city and its inhabitants did a really good job of clearing the roads, but no matter how much they cleared, more snow just kept getting dumped on top of their efforts. But as soon as the snow stopped, it only took everybody a couple of hours to clear everything. Good job, NYC!
Jill’s flight got snowed in, so I got to stay with her an extra day. Yay!
TV IS TOTALLY PHONEY.
I recently saw tapings of both Chapelle’s Show and The Ricki Lake show. There’s a lot of pretending to cheer for no reason and even pretending to laugh at jokes you already heard in an earlier take.
THEATER REVIEW: SCATTERGOOD * * * 1/2 (3 and a half stars out of 4).
This great play is smart, funny, and ultimately very dark.
THEATER REVIEW: IMAGINARY FRIENDS * * * (3 stars out of 4).
This soon-to-close musical about the real-life literary feud between Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman was quite entertaining. It was funny and smart and witty and sometimes powerful. I don’t think it should have been a musical, though. The play is somewhat surreal, and the music lends to that surrealism, yet it also distracts from the flow of the story, I think. Plus, the music didn’t blow me away at all, except for one haunting song about the McCarthy hearings.
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY.
My girlfriend, Jill Z. came to visit for Valentine’s Day weekend! We had a really wonderful weekend exploring the city. She hadn’t been to New York in many, many years, and I was showing her around. She also had seen snow only twice before, and got to be snowed in here for the biggest blizzard in decades. In her too-brief visit here, we saw a taping of the Ricky Lake show, the plays “Imaginary Friends” and Scattergood, the show Tinkle, hosted by David Cross, and a comedy show at the Comedy Cellar. We ate a culinary swath through all neighborhoods of the city, and we took in the 100th annual International Toy Fair.
More to follow.
DAILY SHOW SCHIZOPHRENIA, PART II or MORE FUN WITH BUSH AND DICK.
A couple weeks ago, I pointed out that Comedy Central‘s the Daily Show with Jon Stewart bleeped out the word “bush” used to refer to female genitalia, but not the word “pussy” used to refer to female genitalia, which seemed pretty arbitrary to me, particularly considering that “Bush” is the name of the unelected President of the United States. On Tuesday night’s episode, they bleeped out the word “dick”, in the phrase “you don’t have to be a dick about it” (i.e., not specifically or necessarily referring to male genitalia). This, despite the fact that “Dick” is a common first name, as well as the name of the unelected Vice-President of the United States.
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