The Hunger Games underwhelmed me. I was a thrity-two year old man when I saw it, so I'm not the target audience, but enough people who weren't the target audience liked it so I gave it a try. Its a basic dystopian future story with a dash of Greco-Roman civilization and mythology thrown in. How on earth is this revolutionary?
Hasn't theatre always been big on spectacle? When going to theatre was more common, people weren't going to artistically innovative plays. They were going to true and tried crowd pleasers like Sheakespeare, vaudville, melodramas that had as much spectacle as possible in theatre, and musicals. When something artistic became a big hit, it was because people thought it was a crowd pleaser like the Three Penny Opera. The same goes with movies, the big movies were always the crowd pleasers even if they were empty of spectacle. Still, spectacle in the movies is as old as the movies themselves.
Does everything need to be sugar-coated with a science fiction gloss these days? In the past we could have overtly political movies that were more realistic in terms of antagonists, protagnoists, plots, and situations. They did not need fancy, special effects.
I just find that there is something about reading on a screen that makes any sort of focused reading really hard. When you have a page of text, its easier to force yourself to pay close attention to the words and slow down in order to absorb everything.
I find that I read differently when I read on my kindle. E-readers encourage faster reading than printed books. With books, its a lot easier to focus and study.
Chris, people who deface beautiful books by writing on the margins or underlying passengers are committing a grevious sin, akin to desecrating a work of art. Even the most boring looking print book in the world is to be protected, respected, and revered. When I was in college and law school, I always shelled out money for new rather than used additions because I knew there would be no markings on them.
My political instincts are telling me we are experiencing why highly ideologically and partisan parties are not good under a system based on separation of powers.
James, the anti-luddites often point out that technology makes better paying jobs available in the future. They argue that the jobs that were displaced by the power loom were replaced by better paying working class jobs on railroads or in automobile factories. They keep forgetting that the Luddite weavers lost their jobs in the 1780s and the railroads didn't really take off until the 1830s and 1840s. What were the people displaced by the power loom supposed to do for a generation or two or three or four? Work grueling jobs as day laborers for a quarter or tenth of the pay?
People live in the present, not the future. They need jobs and wages to support themselves and their dependents now, not latter.
I'd hardly call one riot in a nation of more than 300 million a sign that our culture failed youth. I actually do believe that our culture failed its youth but this isn't a sign of it and not for the reasons you think.
France is a semi-Presidential system rather than a parliamentary republic like Germany. The French constitution gives the President many more powers than those normally vested in parliamentary republics like Germany, Israel, and Ireland. The French President isn't supposed to be a ceremonial head of state, he or she is supposed to be a chief executive like ours except that there is also room made for a prime minister and cabinet responsible to parliament as it is in parliamentary systems.
ND, I think the idea of not wanting to sell out was an Anglosphere and European one and only limited to rock musicians and actors. People never thought that athletes were selling out when they endorsed products. Pop, R&B, and maybe hip-hop fans never mind their artists selling out either. Its only in a few genres and in acting, where authenticity is deemed important for some reason, do we get the idea of selling out and that taking corporate money is bad for your soul as an artist.
Asian countries seem to be a bit more pragmatic about it. Its why Woody Allen, Brad Pit, and others would go to Japan and do a commerical while they would never think of doing one in the Untied States unless it was a public service annoucement or a political endorsement of some type.
Rufus, I never met any rockabilly fanatic but based on my observations from Renaissance Faire members or steam punk people, no. The SCA fans really don't seem to care about the "Jew hacked by Crusaders" or "people dying of plague" part of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Its just lords and ladies, chivarly, and fun customs for them. The steam punk fans don't care about the exploitation of the working class, genderism, and colonialism; they just want to have fun and wear elaborate customs. Rockabilly fans are most likely the same.
Glyph, its getting impossible for me to tell the difference between how people treat their babies and toddlers and how they treat their pets. I think the internet and facebook are making this worse. The generation thats growing up in the age of You Tube, facebook, and blogs are either going to have serious issues (meaning that you might want to encourage your kid to go into psychology or pshchiatry if you want them to make a good living) or that the concept of privacy is going to disappear completely.
What if they can't find a baby-sitter? I'm with you against using kids as political props or sociological experiments. I'm not really sure if taking a kid to a political rally is any worse than taking them to a religious meeting. Parents are naturally going to want to teach their kids their values and are going to use institutions to reinforce this. Sometimes the instittuion is religious, other times its a political rally.
I think part of the problem is that a lot of what amounts to the Far Left in the United States doesn't feel that it really has a voice in politics, society, or media. This is partly because of the American political system and how it treats third parties. This is also because the GOP seems to feel a greater need for various reasons to speak to and sooth its more radical members. The Democratic Party either doesn't feel this need or more likely fears that it can't engage in this sort of behavior from various reasons ranging from not wanting to get labelled dirty hippies to a belief that they do not have this luxury because the GOP is off the rails and somebody has to at least try to fend off disaster.
Does Canada and Canadians derive any benefit from being a constitutional monarch. The main benefit is that they get a head of state on the cheap. One of the problems with parliamentary republics is that they get a Ceremonial President instead of a Ceremonial Monarch as head of state. Ceremonial presidents don't seem to inspire the warm and fuzzy feelings that constitutional monarchies do, which is the chief advantage of constitutinal monarchy. You get a head of state that people could look up to and feel warm and fuzzy about while allowing them to express all sorts of feelings at the head of government. In presidential and semi-presidential republics, the emotions get fuzzier. People naturally seem inclined to want to express warm and fuzzy feelings towards their leader but they also want to be able to get angry at him or her to. Ceremonial presidents don't really seem to inspire the feelings of unity that monarchs do.
Rufus F., I think that most people who champion the "norms of the past" do so through the model of the Society of Creative Anachronism; they embrace the past how it should have been rather than how it was. Rockabilly fanatics are bit less able to get away with this than Renaissance Faire people or Steampunkers because we have plenty of people who remember and were victims of the racism and sexism of the 1950s and 1960s. In a century or so, being a Rockabilly fanatic would be like being a Steam punk fan.
Does being an eccentric and ecclectic in your tastes really make you gender queer? My tastes in toys growing up was pretty stereotypical for a boy but I never liked sports. I don't think this was enough to make me qualify as gender-queer even by a half of a percent. We need better definitions of what constitutes gender-queerism.
Lift the Green Latern high. The Obama presidency seems aimless because there is nothing that Obama could do that would make the GOP controlled House enact his legislation or compromise if they don't want to. Its the Constitution and the separation of powers that is causing this mess, not a lack of narrative.
I think it's a bit of both columns. The current GOP treats their platform/ideology as a religious creed and all deviation as heresy. As true believers, they are also not the type that would compromise.
To the supporters of the sequester, this is a feature not a bug. They think that needing the government makes you weak and dependent. This will make people self-reliant, at least in theory.
I'd argue that employers owe their employees, a living wage because they aren't going to like the wealth redistribution required for government or society to take up the slack. Either they pay the high taxes required for guaranteed minimum income or they pay a living wage.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “What Kind of Film is Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium”
The Hunger Games underwhelmed me. I was a thrity-two year old man when I saw it, so I'm not the target audience, but enough people who weren't the target audience liked it so I gave it a try. Its a basic dystopian future story with a dash of Greco-Roman civilization and mythology thrown in. How on earth is this revolutionary?
"
Hasn't theatre always been big on spectacle? When going to theatre was more common, people weren't going to artistically innovative plays. They were going to true and tried crowd pleasers like Sheakespeare, vaudville, melodramas that had as much spectacle as possible in theatre, and musicals. When something artistic became a big hit, it was because people thought it was a crowd pleaser like the Three Penny Opera. The same goes with movies, the big movies were always the crowd pleasers even if they were empty of spectacle. Still, spectacle in the movies is as old as the movies themselves.
"
Does everything need to be sugar-coated with a science fiction gloss these days? In the past we could have overtly political movies that were more realistic in terms of antagonists, protagnoists, plots, and situations. They did not need fancy, special effects.
On “A Couple Items On eBooks”
I just find that there is something about reading on a screen that makes any sort of focused reading really hard. When you have a page of text, its easier to force yourself to pay close attention to the words and slow down in order to absorb everything.
"
I find that I read differently when I read on my kindle. E-readers encourage faster reading than printed books. With books, its a lot easier to focus and study.
"
Chris, people who deface beautiful books by writing on the margins or underlying passengers are committing a grevious sin, akin to desecrating a work of art. Even the most boring looking print book in the world is to be protected, respected, and revered. When I was in college and law school, I always shelled out money for new rather than used additions because I knew there would be no markings on them.
On “Chase the Economy but Don’t Lose Sight of Immigration”
My political instincts are telling me we are experiencing why highly ideologically and partisan parties are not good under a system based on separation of powers.
On “Silicon Stupid”
James, the anti-luddites often point out that technology makes better paying jobs available in the future. They argue that the jobs that were displaced by the power loom were replaced by better paying working class jobs on railroads or in automobile factories. They keep forgetting that the Luddite weavers lost their jobs in the 1780s and the railroads didn't really take off until the 1830s and 1840s. What were the people displaced by the power loom supposed to do for a generation or two or three or four? Work grueling jobs as day laborers for a quarter or tenth of the pay?
People live in the present, not the future. They need jobs and wages to support themselves and their dependents now, not latter.
On “A leisurely Sunday afternoon riot”
I'd hardly call one riot in a nation of more than 300 million a sign that our culture failed youth. I actually do believe that our culture failed its youth but this isn't a sign of it and not for the reasons you think.
On “De-gendering the Rainbow”
This defintition is too sloppy to be useful.
On “Two attacks on the Monarchy”
France is a semi-Presidential system rather than a parliamentary republic like Germany. The French constitution gives the President many more powers than those normally vested in parliamentary republics like Germany, Israel, and Ireland. The French President isn't supposed to be a ceremonial head of state, he or she is supposed to be a chief executive like ours except that there is also room made for a prime minister and cabinet responsible to parliament as it is in parliamentary systems.
On “Whither Babbitt?”
ND, I think the idea of not wanting to sell out was an Anglosphere and European one and only limited to rock musicians and actors. People never thought that athletes were selling out when they endorsed products. Pop, R&B, and maybe hip-hop fans never mind their artists selling out either. Its only in a few genres and in acting, where authenticity is deemed important for some reason, do we get the idea of selling out and that taking corporate money is bad for your soul as an artist.
Asian countries seem to be a bit more pragmatic about it. Its why Woody Allen, Brad Pit, and others would go to Japan and do a commerical while they would never think of doing one in the Untied States unless it was a public service annoucement or a political endorsement of some type.
"
Rufus, I never met any rockabilly fanatic but based on my observations from Renaissance Faire members or steam punk people, no. The SCA fans really don't seem to care about the "Jew hacked by Crusaders" or "people dying of plague" part of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Its just lords and ladies, chivarly, and fun customs for them. The steam punk fans don't care about the exploitation of the working class, genderism, and colonialism; they just want to have fun and wear elaborate customs. Rockabilly fans are most likely the same.
"
Glyph, its getting impossible for me to tell the difference between how people treat their babies and toddlers and how they treat their pets. I think the internet and facebook are making this worse. The generation thats growing up in the age of You Tube, facebook, and blogs are either going to have serious issues (meaning that you might want to encourage your kid to go into psychology or pshchiatry if you want them to make a good living) or that the concept of privacy is going to disappear completely.
On “De-gendering the Rainbow”
What if they can't find a baby-sitter? I'm with you against using kids as political props or sociological experiments. I'm not really sure if taking a kid to a political rally is any worse than taking them to a religious meeting. Parents are naturally going to want to teach their kids their values and are going to use institutions to reinforce this. Sometimes the instittuion is religious, other times its a political rally.
On “Of Radicals and Liberals”
I think part of the problem is that a lot of what amounts to the Far Left in the United States doesn't feel that it really has a voice in politics, society, or media. This is partly because of the American political system and how it treats third parties. This is also because the GOP seems to feel a greater need for various reasons to speak to and sooth its more radical members. The Democratic Party either doesn't feel this need or more likely fears that it can't engage in this sort of behavior from various reasons ranging from not wanting to get labelled dirty hippies to a belief that they do not have this luxury because the GOP is off the rails and somebody has to at least try to fend off disaster.
On “Two attacks on the Monarchy”
Does Canada and Canadians derive any benefit from being a constitutional monarch. The main benefit is that they get a head of state on the cheap. One of the problems with parliamentary republics is that they get a Ceremonial President instead of a Ceremonial Monarch as head of state. Ceremonial presidents don't seem to inspire the warm and fuzzy feelings that constitutional monarchies do, which is the chief advantage of constitutinal monarchy. You get a head of state that people could look up to and feel warm and fuzzy about while allowing them to express all sorts of feelings at the head of government. In presidential and semi-presidential republics, the emotions get fuzzier. People naturally seem inclined to want to express warm and fuzzy feelings towards their leader but they also want to be able to get angry at him or her to. Ceremonial presidents don't really seem to inspire the feelings of unity that monarchs do.
On “Whither Babbitt?”
Rufus F., I think that most people who champion the "norms of the past" do so through the model of the Society of Creative Anachronism; they embrace the past how it should have been rather than how it was. Rockabilly fanatics are bit less able to get away with this than Renaissance Faire people or Steampunkers because we have plenty of people who remember and were victims of the racism and sexism of the 1950s and 1960s. In a century or so, being a Rockabilly fanatic would be like being a Steam punk fan.
On “De-gendering the Rainbow”
Does being an eccentric and ecclectic in your tastes really make you gender queer? My tastes in toys growing up was pretty stereotypical for a boy but I never liked sports. I don't think this was enough to make me qualify as gender-queer even by a half of a percent. We need better definitions of what constitutes gender-queerism.
On “Stupid Tuesday questions, Carrietta White edition”
Opposing council and judges who fail to see the righteousness of my clients case.
On “A President Adrift, a Politics Without Focus”
Lift the Green Latern high. The Obama presidency seems aimless because there is nothing that Obama could do that would make the GOP controlled House enact his legislation or compromise if they don't want to. Its the Constitution and the separation of powers that is causing this mess, not a lack of narrative.
On “The Sequester: Still a Thing”
I think it's a bit of both columns. The current GOP treats their platform/ideology as a religious creed and all deviation as heresy. As true believers, they are also not the type that would compromise.
"
To the supporters of the sequester, this is a feature not a bug. They think that needing the government makes you weak and dependent. This will make people self-reliant, at least in theory.
On “Who owes you a living wage?”
Are you trying to make life as hard as possible for the maximum number of people?
"
I'd argue that employers owe their employees, a living wage because they aren't going to like the wealth redistribution required for government or society to take up the slack. Either they pay the high taxes required for guaranteed minimum income or they pay a living wage.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.