Ryan McReynolds

Seriously, yo

2006-11-17T21:34:00.000-06:00

What do we have to do to get an unmarried, civilly-united, socialist mother-of-two to be a front-runner in our country's presidential race? Not that Ségolène Royal is my dream candidate, but the idea is nice.

Another quick thought about Buddhism

2006-11-13T13:23:00.000-06:00

After some more consideration, I think I can better articulate how I use "Buddhism" in my life (it must be in quotes since I have never actually practiced it per se). I definitely consider myself a preference utilitarian in that I think that good is defined as "that which satisfies the preferences of the most people the most often" and bad is that which doesn't. Where the "Buddhism" comes in is in determining for myself what preferences I really have, and which are trivial. Which is to say, accepting that pain is a part of life and letting go of needless desires. Or something like that.

My head exploded and this post is being typed by a decapitated corpse

2006-11-12T12:33:00.000-06:00

George W. Bush at the dedication of the National Museum of the Marine Corps:

"Years from now, when America looks out on a democratic Middle East growing in freedom and prosperity, Americans will speak of the battles like Fallujah with the same awe and reverence that we now give to Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima."

Ryanism, or: I'm an accidental Buddhist

2006-11-11T21:55:00.000-06:00

I've been reading a lot about Buddhism in the last week or so. This in itself is not particularly noteworthy; I read a lot about a lot of things. I usually get something stuck in my head for a couple weeks and study it as intensely as my schedule will allow. A few weeks ago, I learned about as much as a lay person can know about designing nuclear fusion rockets for interstellar spacecraft propulsion. Now it's Buddhism.

Of course, I came into this already knowing the barest of basics of Buddhism. I knew the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. But I had never really thought about it in any serious, analytical way since a humanities class in high school. Not only was that a decade ago, but it was high school, so how serious could it have really been?

What I discovered is that, independent of Buddhism to the best of my knowledge, I already live my life pretty much according to the practices of Buddhism. I certainly and absolutely reject the entire spiritual component of Buddhism. But I still find myself using what is apparently the "Buddhist method" when it comes to ethics and how I deal with problems.

Now, different schools of Buddhism will phrase things slightly differently, or disagree on specifics, but I'd like to go through this generally as I understand it. The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism are: life is suffering; the cause of suffering is selfish desire; there is a way to ease suffering; the way to ease suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path.

I. Life is suffering. I think this should be self-evident to anyone who lives. But for me, I think the most significant element of this truth is exemplified in the folk wisdom that sometimes bad things happen to good people. We are not in control, and we never will be. The universe is utterly indifferent to the affairs of people. You can never have everything you want; as you climb Maslow's hierarchy of needs you simply want the next -- and when you reach the top, you will still want things like world peace or an end to hunger or not to be vaporized when an asteroid hits the planet.

II. The cause of suffering is selfish desire. This one is a bit less immediately obvious. At least, it isn't intuitive to me. But when I think of it, this is essentially true. Every act of suffering can be framed as a frustration of a desire. Simple unhappiness may result from the frustration of one's desire for a given material possession, or for the acceptance of peers, or something of that nature. The suffering of hunger is the frustration of the innate desire (and indeed, necessity) to eat. The suffering of torture is the frustration of the desire to avoid pain. So long as a person desires something, anything, there will be suffering.

III. There is a way to ease suffering. I depart from the Buddha himself, and from Buddhists in general, in that I pretty firmly believe that it is impossible to reach Nirvana, if my understanding that one who has attained this enlightenment is completely free from desire and therefore suffering. If I ever lived a life in which the death of a loved one did not cause me suffering, I am not sure that would be desirable. But I steadfastly agree that it is possible to ease and to minimize suffering, and that an extremely large amount of the pain and grief people endure is avoidable.

IV. The way to ease suffering is the Noble Eightfold Path. Obviously, my acceptance of this truth is dependent upon just what that path is. So let's look at it:

1. Right understanding. This simply means understanding the Four Noble Truths.

2. Right thought. This refers to having good aspirations and intentions, good will, and non-violence. Have you met me? The part of this that pertains to one's commitment to Buddhism itself I cannot say I follow, but my will towards others is pretty unfailingly good. The Three Poisons are greed, hatred, and ignorance. I feel that I do a good job of avoiding them.

3. Right speech. Abstaining from lying, divisive and abusive speech, and idle chatter. I don't really have a huge problem with idle chatter, but I would say I ascribe to this idea.

4. Right action. This is essentially the ethical code of Buddhism, most typically listed as the Five Precepts: don't kill (I'm a vegan), don't steal (I don't), don't rape or commit adultery (usually understood as "sexual misconduct" rather than the prudish moralism of the Abrahamic religions), don't lie (I don't often), and don't abuse intoxicants (I do drink, but I can honestly say I have never been, nor do I have any desire to be, so drunk or high that I seriously lost function or control).

5. Right livelihood. Don't engage in occupations that involve any of the bad things above. So no weapons dealing, warfare, slaughtering animals, slave-trafficking, cheating, and the like. I'm a teacher and wannabe writer, so I think I've got this one covered.

6. Right effort. This would be the daily effort to follow all of the elements of the Eightfold Path. I do consciously try to do most of the things I've said I do. Anyone who has seen me calmly ignore being cut off in traffic or something similar knows that I'm a level-headed person, but this is actually a conscious decision on my part. When something starts to upset me, I just make it stop and it goes away.

7. Right mindfulness. Being "in the moment," detached and aware of what is happening. I think for me this is related to the above. I try to be conscious of my consciousness, if that makes any sense, and I started doing this at a young age completely apart from Buddhism. When I have a bad feeling, I am aware that it is just a feeling and with a bit of effort I can make it go away.

8. Right concentration. Meditation. I don't do it, but I am interested in it. I completely reject the supernatural element some would have, but I do believe that it is probably a good way to focus one's thoughts and maintain calm. So learning to meditate is not out of the realm of possibility for me.

So, in a way, I think I am an accidental Buddhist. But I don't think I could ever describe myself as a Buddhist, because I reject the entire metaphysical underpinnings of the religion. It is currently considered hip for Americans to look at Buddhism as "a philosophy" rather "a religion," but I think this is simply because they can't conceive of a religion that doesn't feature a God to pray to. I'm not entirely sure that Buddhism (and Taoism, and Confucianism, for that matter) aren't a distinguishable class of beliefs from Western religions, but if they are, they are certainly not as secular as "philosophies." If Buddhism were a philosophy rather than a religion there would simply not be any talk of spirituality and certainly not of reincarnation. That there are fairly large numbers of Buddhists who ignore these aspects of the religion is rather irrelevant, and only a reflection of Buddhism's avoidance of doctrine.

But Buddhism without the Buddha, and without a supernatural conception of karma and enlightenment, is just a way of living life to minimize suffering. To continue to call it "Buddhism" is like calling science "Christianity" or algebra "Islam." At most, it could be called a Buddhism-based philosophy. But my experience, to me at least, proves that arriving at this philosophy does not require being "Buddhism-based."

Pragmatically, however, I am interested in the spread and continued popularity in the West. Because there are plenty of people who do believe in supernatural hocus-pocus, and who could not conceive of a worldview in which reality was all that existed, it would be preferable to people who believe in moral concepts described above that that those who need a spiritual component to their lives fill that need with a religion that follows those concepts rather than one that does not.

I have said that politically I would rather live in a world in which the borders of the debate fell between the socialists and the anarchists and the liberals than between the liberals and the conservatives. Likewise, I would love a world in which the great religious divide was between the Buddhists and the humanists and the atheists -- a world in which we all agree on what is good, and merely disagree on why.

What's wrong with Kinky Friedman

2006-10-02T23:04:00.000-05:00

It was cute, for a while, liberals and independents. Yeah, Kinky Friedman, the big middle finger to politics as usual. Jewish cowboy, silly name, catchy slogans. "Why not Kinky?"

Well...

Kinky likes invading and occupying and warmongering

When asked about his opinion of George W. Bush, Friedman said, "I agree with most of his political positions overseas, his foreign policy.... What he’s been doing in the Near East and in the Middle East, he’s handling that well, I think." To think that our current imperial adventurism is anything but a clusterfuck of epic proportions requires ignorance, stupidity, or insanity. Any of the three would tend to make Friedman an unattractive gubernatorial candidate, I should think.

Kinky wants kids talking to themselves instead of learning

"I'll tell you right now. I'm for prayer in school." Well, that was simple, wasn't it? Friedman is opposed to the separation of church and state, and in favor of state organizations engaging in religious activities. "I say what's wrong with a kid believing in something?" How about the kids believe in things that are actually real, like getting an education. That is the point of school, is it not? What does school have to do with whether or not a child believes in God or the Tooth Fairy on her own time? Is there something about learning stuff that makes it impossible for a kid to believe in "something?" If only.

Of course, Friedman isn't content with simple prayer. "The Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments being taken out of the public schools. I want them back.... They were taken out, not by separation of church and state, but by political correctness gone awry. One atheist stands up and says, 'I don't like the Ten Commandments,' and suddenly out they go. And, of course, we all know what happens to an atheist when he dies. His tombstone usually reads, 'All dressed up and no place to go.'"

Kinky doesn't like brown people

"Good fences make good neighbors." Yes, Friedman is yet another xenophobe, trying to keep out the hard-working immigrants forced to enter the country illegally due to our own pathetic immigration policies and "free trade" agreements that make it desirable to move to avoid things like, you know, dying. After all, in Friedman's expert opinion, "Mexico is not a poor country."

But Friedman doesn't even hide his contempt for these people. "All of these politicians are afraid of offending Hispanics... I want the border off the evening news until we get something resolved." And he's willing to resolve it the old-fashioned way, too. "My immigration policy is 'Remember the Alamo'," he said. He'd use the "National Guard, the Texas Rangers, the entire Polish army, whatever it takes." Because it's better these people die than feed their families, or at the very least they'd better keep away from us so we can pretend we're blameless.

His actual plan is only slightly less ridiculous than his bluster: "I will divide the border into five jurisdictions, assigning one Mexican general to each and providing a trust fund for that general. Every time a person crosses illegally, we subtract $5,000 from the trust fund." No, really.

Kinky wants to keep killing people

Friedman supports the death penalty and opposes gun control. Enough said.

Friedman has a handful of issues that liberals really like and he makes some jokes. That is the extent of his qualifications for governor, and in light of the above, I am frankly disgusted that so many people have it in their heads that Texas would be better with him in charge. He's a clown -- let's laugh at him and find someone who has something worthwhile to say when we're looking for, oh, I don't know, the executive branch of our state government.

Well, it's official

2006-08-08T00:22:00.000-05:00

I am now being paid by the State of Texas to corrupt the supple young minds of youth professionally rather than simply doing it for fun. In other words, I am an English teacher. Fear for the future of the nation, and indeed, the world.

"I pledge allegiance..."

2006-07-19T00:51:00.000-05:00

Why I support affirmative action

2006-07-15T13:28:00.000-05:00

On Essembly (my favorite time-waster), the perennial hot-button topic of affirmative action arose yet again. And as always, I threw myself into the thick of it. One person asked:

Ryan do you recommend forcing the NBA to have its players reflect the percentage of qualified applicants from each race so that 70% or so of them are white? You're going to answer that the best applicants happen to be black. To that I'll respond this way: who's to say the best applicants for any given medical school won't be overwhelmingly white or Asian? Would you rather have the best possible basketball player or the best possible surgeon? Which is more important? By forcing quotas you are going to end up with less quality (though perfectly qualified) doctors, lawyers, cops etc. and that's exactly what's happening.

My response follows, and I essentially laid out my full case... which means it's pretty long.

Why do college admissions departments care if you've done community service? Why do they ask about extracurricular activities? Does it make any difference in your ability to be an engineer, a doctor, an architect, if you played varsity tennis for two years in high school? It doesn't. None of these things matter, but all of them are considered for admissions to universities, in addition to more mundane factors such as GPA and test scores. The reason is that there is not some magical measurement of "qualification" for college, and schools want what you always hear they want: a well-rounded student.

In the NBA, it's fairly straightforward what qualifications will get an athlete hired. They're either good at scoring a lot of points, or at helping someone else score a lot of points, or at stopping other people from scoring a lot of points. While there is some room for subjectivity in which emphasis is most important, it would be fairly easy to rank all potential players on the basis of their records and simply pick the best. You ask if there should be affirmative action for white NBA players. The answer, of course, is no, because there is neither evidence nor even accusation that the selection process for NBA players is biased by race. If there were, the NBA should be held to the same equal employment opportunity rules as any other organization.

But colleges are different. Your statement about qualifications presupposes two things, or seems to. One: that colleges are a reward for good prior performance, and therefore admission should be based on this prior performance. And two: that there is some objective measure of what makes a good, qualified student. While you may want the system to work that way, in reality, it doesn't.

On the first point, colleges are not a reward, they are an opportunity. Colleges exist to educate the population, not to educate some of the population. But clearly there are logistical limits, and so there must be some criteria for admission. But this criteria is arbitrary, and is only a means of choosing for limited space. I'll get back to that in response to point two momentarily. But the question here is "what is the purpose of college?" I have argued that it is an opportunity for higher education, but for whom? If there are groups that are underrepresented in a field, this isn't in and of itself bad. As you point out, cultural factors influence career paths and choices all the time, and certainly anecdotal experience suggests that, for example, Asian families are inclined to push towards medicine.

But college, and education in general, is an instrument of society. It exists for a purpose, and that is the purpose of improving the intellectual resources available to society. Greater minority representation in "higher" professions that college makes accessible is desirable to society, because for those groups which have economic disadvantages, bringing members up and out to the middle and upper classes can end these cycles of poverty. Doctors and lawyers from these groups have a better understanding of the problems the groups face, and can bring their services to people who wouldn't have otherwise had them. It is not a matter of simply saying, "Johnny went to a decent school and got decent grades, so he should be fast-tracked for medical school." It is a matter of asking, "What would be best for everyone in the long run?" And a well-educated populace, of all races, is preferable to a de facto caste system, regardless of how and why is arose.

Regarding point two, there is no particular admissions criteria that is "superior." The courts have held that race cannot be the sole basis for admission, as in quota systems, and this is as it should be. But there is no reason, in light of the above, that race can't be one factor among many. Recall my opening paragraph. Why should extracurricular activity, or athletic ability, or community service matter in admissions? Some people are good at memorizing things for tests, some people are good at writing long, winding essays (guess which of the two I preferred?), some people get the gist of things and are murky on the details. Some people, as silly adolescents, just screwed around more than they should have. Does any of this matter, when it comes to their potential for being a social worker, or a dentist, or a biologist? A little, probably, but how do you know in advance?

There is already "discrimination" against people that has nothing to do with race. If I have a 4.0 GPA, and you have a 3.99, but I didn't do anything outside of school, while you were in the Honor Society and volunteered at the nursing home, you may well get accepted to a college while I am turned down. Is this fair? Of course it is. GPA is a measure of how well you performed on certain metrics, but it doesn't say anything meaningful about your potential as a well-rounded, useful member of the educated class.

Here is the crux of the matter: people don't have a "right" to be admitted to any particular university. Universities set their admissions criteria on those factors which they believe will further their goals of educating society. If one of those goals is, say, diversity, or helping those who have been disadvantaged, there is no reason why race should not be one of the many factors that influence decisions. Since people with high academic performance do not have a "right" to be accepted, there is not violation of their rights if they are rejected in favor of someone else who brings a non-academic factor to the campus such as athletic ability, leadership potential, or even simple diversity. These are all valid things for society to desire in its instruments of learning.

Bits and pieces

2006-06-30T14:02:00.000-05:00

I saw Superman Returns on Wednesday, and it was quite good. Just the right mix of homage to the Richard Donner vision while pushing the mythos forward in a direction that the comics haven't, but that seems natural. And as he did with Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, Bryan Singer nailed the casting of an unknown in Brandon Routh. It almost pains me to say it, but I think he played a better Clark Kent/Superman than Christopher Reeve...

As John Scalzi put it, SCOTUS to POTUS: RTFM!

The new moons of Pluto have names, Nix and Hydra. Well, it would be Nyx and Hydra, but Nyx is already taken by asteroid 3908 Nyx, so the name was reverted from the Greek to the Egyptian form, Nix. I'm rather surprised there isn't a Hydra already.

That's it, for now.

Cancer doesn't count

2006-06-22T00:06:00.000-05:00

The commercial features a model poorly photoshopped to look wrinkled and leathery; her skin peels off like paper, revealing the fresh and ostensibly sexy person underneath. You see, with this magical cream, "sun-worshippers" can rejoice without bad consequences. You know, lines and wrinkles and discoloration, the major important reasons why it is bad to spend large amounts of time in the sun...

Space, and why we must

2006-06-16T18:59:00.000-05:00

We are going to kill ourselves.

No, seriously, it will happen. It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but eventually, we will destroy ourselves. I wish it could be another way, I really do. If we turn around our carbon emissions we just might be able to halt global warming before more than a few billion people are affected by it. But then there's still nuclear war. And biological war. Maybe one day, antimatter war. And asteroid strikes, and supervolcanoes, and eventually, in a couple billion years, the Sun will expand into a red giant and fry whatever's left behind.

But I said we were going to kill ourselves, didn't I? Yes, because we are going to stay here, and let all of the above happen.

For perpetuity, we will huddle in our fragile ecosystem and spend all of our time and resources trying to save something that, in the long run, simply cannot be saved. In the long run, there is only one way to survive, and that is to get some of our eggs out of this basket -- a basket perched on the edge of a table that is missing a leg, with an inquisitive toddler and his drunken stepfather stumbling about nearby.

Critics deride such talk as escape-hatch fantasies at best, and elitist wingnuttery at worst. Yet another example of the rich white people finding a way to absolve themselves of the problems they've created, or at least to give themselves the illusion of having salvation. It is entirely possible that this is the scenario that will unfold, and if it does, it will be unfortunate. But I envision something radically different.

I don't want a moonbase. I don't want twenty Harvard graduates in a dugout with a stockpile of frozen sperm and eggs waiting for the Big One to take us out so they can repopulate the species. I don't want an insurance policy: I want civilization.

I want a thousand moonbases -- nay, a thousand moon cities. Cultures thriving, towns bustling, the great melting pot dream writ large across the solar system. I want countless experiments in liberal and social democracy playing out over the surface of Mars, in great O'Neill cylinders hovering high in orbit of Earth, in the cold and icy depths of the Kuiper Belt. I want passionate music and literature to be written about the rings of Saturn from people looking at them with their own eyes on vacation from their homes on cloud-shrouded Titan. I want enclaves of cultures thought extinct on Earth surviving and thriving where no touch of homogenization can harm them. Brown people, black people, red and yellow and white people, young and old, rich and poor. I want the human species to continue to evolve and strive for creating itself in whatever images it desires.

I then want this to be repeated, at the next star over, and the next... green bubbles of life spreading from Earth like spores on the wind. And when we find other life, we let it be.

And I don't want to give up on Earth. I dream of a day when the Earth is lush and green, humanity living in the technological wonder of their solar-powered cities and leaving the countryside to nature. Respect for all forms of life above human desire. No need to rape the land for what few resources weren't touched in the gloaming of the dread Industrial Age; with the resources of the Solar System, trillions of people could be supported, including those who wish to remain on our home world.

All of this is possible. We can save the world, for now, and do the other things. It doesn't take much. President Bush has a token flags-and-footprints plan for lunar and Martian exploration -- we need a plan for lunar and Martian living. Dr. Robert Zubrin, of the Mars Society, has shown extensively how it could be done for scarcely more money than NASA currently receives, a level of funding that is less than half of one percent of the federal budget. We can survive in the long run and we can clean up our mess. It is not a choice between them.

Also

2006-06-09T23:44:00.000-05:00

In a double-punch to nutjobs, not only is global warming real, it's already causing animals to evolve for better survival.

Diptych: An Inconvenient Truth

2006-06-09T22:39:00.000-05:00

(1)

So An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's environmentalism movie, was #9 in box office returns last weekend, grossing $1.4 million. This seems like a mediocre performance, though a good one for a documentary, until you realize that it was showing on only 77 screens. The #1 movie, the apparently insipid Aniston/Vaughn vehicle The Break Up, grossed $39.1 million... on 3,070 screens. Per screen, The Break Up got $12,759, while An Inconvenient Truth got $17,615. In other words, anywhere it was showing, An Inconvenient Truth was the most watched movie. Good.

(2)

I happened to see An Inconvenient Truth on Sunday, and came away more impressed than I expected. It goes without saying that the film presented a slam-dunk case for global warming caused by human activity. One would have to be, truly, a moron not to see the evidence. It also humanized Al Gore enough that I -- usually too leftist to vote for a Democrat in my non-swing state -- would probably vote for him if he ran for president again. But what I found most interesting was this bit of information: Science magazine examined a representative sampling of the peer-reviewed scientific literature on global warming, and found that a whopping 0 doubted the consensus view that is is caused by human activity. When examining mainstream media accounts, however, we see that more than half question this consensus view. In other words, as anyone who just looks at the available data can see, the entire controversy over global warming is manufactured. There is no debate among scientists, because the evidence is really that solid.

The Lake House

2006-06-03T17:44:00.000-05:00

Is it just me, or does this movie look really stupid?

Attack of the Clones

2006-05-26T13:48:00.000-05:00

Last night I had a dream.

I was working on a movie. I was some kind of script consultant or something, and as far as the production of the movie went, I didn't have anything to do. We were filming in a high school gymnasium on the third floor of a building. The star of the movie was an Asian teenage girl, and she was a clone. Not in the movie, in real life. The door to the gym opened and a hundred of her fluttered in, dressed in pink leotards. They proceeded to engage in aerobics in synch while the cameras rolled. I was neither fazed nor interested in the clone army, and instead I looked out the window. The sky was overcast. I looked down to see the broken body of a young boy, face down in a puddle on the sidewalk. I was horrified and turned away, but when I looked back he was gone. Filming finished and we left, but the clones stayed in the gym, cuddled in little groups, and slept.

I'm sorry

2006-05-24T19:12:00.000-05:00

My legions of adoring fans (all, what, five of you?), I have failed you through nothing but sheer laziness. I have plans for this blog, I just need to get around to them. Don't run away quite yet.

How can anyone not be a feminist?

2006-05-16T17:21:00.000-05:00

Seriously, I don't understand how it is possible to not think that women are full-fledged people who deserve equal treatment under the law and in society at large.

Mission: Impossible III

2006-05-05T22:54:00.000-05:00

It's true.

First time feature director J.J. Abrams absolutely mopped the floor with Brian de Palma and John Woo. Best action-spy movie ever.

Also, nice to see the second Superman Returns trailer on the big screen.

I'll try to have something of more substance to say soon.

I Think I Just Soiled Myself

2006-04-22T17:04:00.000-05:00

According to Variety, J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost, Mission: Impossible III) is co-writing, producing, and directing a new Star Trek movie featuring a young Kirk and Spock. Thank god I'm not one of those Trekkies who will have a fit if every chronological and biographical detail isn't adhered to... I'll take a total reboot of the franchise over another Nemesis anyday.

Common Cultural Currency

2006-04-22T15:31:00.000-05:00

On Roger Ebert's Web site, Jim Emerson lists the 101 movies that "you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies." Not the best, not the most influential, just the movies that come up in conversations about movies often enough that they're required viewing. And so I will shamelessly duplicate the list here, with those I've seen in bold, so that everyone will know how utterly competent or incompetent I am as a film snob. No real point, but it's always fun to see what's out there.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Stanley Kubrick
The 400 Blows (1959) Francois Truffaut
8 1/2 (1963) Federico Fellini
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) Werner Herzog
Alien (1979) Ridley Scott
All About Eve (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Annie Hall (1977) Woody Allen
Bambi (1942) Disney
Battleship Potemkin (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) William Wyler
The Big Red One (1980) Samuel Fuller
The Bicycle Thief (1949) Vittorio De Sica
The Big Sleep (1946) Howard Hawks
Blade Runner (1982) Ridley Scott
Blowup (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
Blue Velvet (1986) David Lynch
Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Arthur Penn
Breathless (1959 Jean-Luc Godard
Bringing Up Baby (1938) Howard Hawks
Carrie (1975) Brian DePalma
Casablanca (1942) Michael Curtiz
Un Chien Andalou (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) Marcel Carne
Chinatown (1974) Roman Polanski
Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles
A Clockwork Orange (1971) Stanley Kubrick
The Crying Game (1992) Neil Jordan
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Robert Wise
Days of Heaven (1978) Terence Malick
Dirty Harry (1971) Don Siegel
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) Luis Bunuel
Do the Right Thing (1989) Spike Lee
La Dolce Vita (1960) Federico Fellini
Double Indemnity (1944) Billy Wilder
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) Stanley Kubrick
Duck Soup (1933) Leo McCarey
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Steven Spielberg
Easy Rider (1969) Dennis Hopper
The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Irvin Kershner
The Exorcist (1973) William Friedkin
Fargo (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
Fight Club (1999) David Fincher
Frankenstein (1931) James Whale
The General (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
Gone With the Wind (1939) Victor Fleming
GoodFellas (1990) Martin Scorsese
The Graduate (1967) Mike Nichols
Halloween (1978) John Carpenter
A Hard Day's Night (1964) Richard Lester
Intolerance (1916) D.W. Griffith
It's A Gift (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Frank Capra
Jaws (1975) Steven Spielberg
The Lady Eve (1941) Preston Sturges
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) David Lean
M (1931) Fritz Lang
Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior (1981) George Miller
The Maltese Falcon (1941) John Huston
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) John Frankenheimer
Metropolis (1926) Fritz Lang
Modern Times (1936) Charles Chaplin
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
Nashville (1975) Robert Altman
The Night of the Hunter (1955) Charles Laughton
Night of the Living Dead (1968) George Romero
North by Northwest (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
Nosferatu (1922) F.W. Murnau
On the Waterfront (1954) Elia Kazan
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) Sergio Leone
Out of the Past (1947) Jacques Tournier
Persona (1966) Ingmar Bergman
Pink Flamingos (1972) John Waters
Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
Pulp Fiction (1994) Quentin Tarantino
Rashomon (1950) Akira Kurosawa
Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Nicholas Ray
Red River (1948) Howard Hawks
Repulsion (1965) Roman Polanski
Rules of the Game (1939) Jean Renoir
Scarface (1932) Howard Hawks
The Scarlet Empress (1934) Josef von Sternberg
Schindler's List (1993) Steven Spielberg
The Searchers (1956) John Ford
The Seven Samurai (1954) Akira Kurosawa
Singin' in the Rain (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
Some Like It Hot (1959) Billy Wilder
A Star Is Born (1954) George Cukor
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Elia Kazan
Sunset Boulevard (1950) Billy Wilder
Taxi Driver (1976) Martin Scorsese
The Third Man (1949) Carol Reed
Tokyo Story (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
Touch of Evil (1958) Orson Welles
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) John Huston
Trouble in Paradise (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
Vertigo (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
West Side Story (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
The Wild Bunch (1969) Sam Peckinpah
The Wizard of Oz (1939) Victor Fleming

Just 35 out of 101. Hrmph.

Black History Month

2006-04-21T08:53:00.000-05:00

I apologize for my laziness. Unfortunately, it is continuing; I am going to again steal from my rather non-lazy obsession with debating on Essembly. One person resolved that "If every other month is white history months [sic], then we need to call them such." He supported this by saying:

I resolved that we needed to have a white history month. The most common argument against this was that we have eleven of them. Every other month is white history month was the parroted response.

Therefore, if those eleven months are indeed 'white history months' then we should call them such.

To which I replied:

As is typical with racist arguments, you are taking the correction of an inequity and pretending it is an elevation into superiority. Black History Month makes up for the fact that there would be twelve white history months without it. We live in a white-dominated culture; by default we focus on white history. You can't pretend that white and black history are on equal footing and come to the conclusion that it is therefore unfair that black history gets its own month.

All arguments against Black History Month and affirmative action boil down to conflating the black and white experience as if they get fairly distributed throughout the educational and occupational system, when the reality is that they just aren't. If they were, schools would have already been teaching the things that are added during Black History Month; they aren't. If they were, college enrollment would already reflect the ethnic makeup of the applicant pool; it doesn't. If they were, employers would hire roughly proportional to the ethnic makeup of the qualified applicants; they don't. There are only two reasons these could be the case: 1.) black people are inferior, which they aren't; and 2.) black people are discriminated against, intentionally or otherwise. Black History Month and affirmative action correct these inequities, they take away the unfair privilege of white history, white education, and white employment. They are fair, just, and morally mandatory for any society which values those qualities.

And now I share it here so as to not have to actually come up with a blog post.

Men: Abortion Isn't About You

2006-04-11T13:24:00.000-05:00

I have been fooling around on Essembly.com lately. The short description might be "MySpace for politics;" it is a social networking site where users can vote on a variety of user-created resolves and find other like-minded people, as well as generally have a good time. If you're into that sort of thing. At the moment it is skewed pretty heavily towards the young and white, so it would be nice to get some variety in there.

One of the resolves I had a bit of a discussion over was "Abortion violates a man's rights." The argument was that since men and women are equally complicit in conception, men should have their say in abortion considerations. The two faces of the issue are the cases where a woman might abort a fetus that would develop into a child the man wanted, and cases where a woman might bring to term a fetus that the man didn't want, which he would them be financially responsible for.

In the first case, I should think it is fairly obvious that forcing pregnancy and childbirth on women is unethical and amounts to slavery.

In the second, the situation is a bit more complicated. It is true that forcing fathers to provide financial support to unwanted children is imposing a burden on them against their will. At the same time, it is clear that in a world without abortion as an option, these men would be financially responsible, even for accidental pregnancies. So in World A, with no abortion, a man must pay for children he conceives, regardless of if he intended to conceive them or wants them. In World B, with abortion, the question is whether this availability means that a man can absolve himself of this responsibility because the birth of the child is contingent on the mother choosing to have it, even against his will.

I would argue that the availability of abortion changes nothing. There are many, many ways in which a man can avoid unwanted children; they are all contraceptive. Women also have many ways; contraception, but also abortion. It is not "unfair" that women get to make a choice concerning their own bodies while men don't. Men get full control of their own bodies, as do women. If fetuses gestated in external pods, the decision would be equal, but they don't: they gestate inside women. If you are a man and take all reasonable precautions to avoid pregnancy but a woman gets pregnant despite them, you are responsible for the resulting child, but for the nine months it is a part of the woman's body, she has sovereign control over it.

So sorry.

Rush Limbaugh is a class act

2006-04-04T22:25:00.000-05:00

Have you heard about how some of the Duke lacrosse team allegedly beat, strangled, and gang-raped a black exotic dancer while calling her racial epithets? Now I know Rush is an easy target, but talk about heartless:

[Al Sharpton is] trying to figure out how he can get involved in the deal down there at Duke where the lacrosse team, uh, supposedly, you know, raped, some, uh, hos.*

Later, a caller asked him specifically if he called the gang-rape victims "hos," and he said he did. Then he apologized, but it was one of those half-assed apologies where you don't apologize for what you do, but for the effect it had.

I regret that you heard me say it.

The man is classy all the way.

* There is in fact only one victim, but both Limbaugh and his caller use the plural. Must not have been paying attention.

[via Oliver Willis]

Transplants grown from patients' own cells

2006-04-04T21:54:00.000-05:00

Science fiction writer Larry Niven had a series of stories focused on "organlegging," the practice of selling organs for transplants on the black market. The idea was that with demand growing faster than supply, a hefty profit could be made selling parts. It even resulted in some draconian societies building up banks of organs taken from petty criminals. I always thought this was nonsense, because we'd have better ways of getting organs before any of that came to pass.

It seems I was right. For the first time, doctors grew replacement bladders for seven patients by culturing their own cells on a bladder-shapped scaffold. The result? A new, fully-functional bladder with no chance of rejection. Dr. Anthony Atala and his team, the group behind the procedure, are working on growing twenty other organs, including hearts, in the laboratory.

Weekend link roundup

2006-04-02T11:03:00.000-05:00

Some of silly and amusing little things that have caught my eye in the last week.

A man with no arms is fined for speeding in New Zealand. Says the police officer who stopped him, "Obviously driving at a speed like that, arms or not, you're just waiting for an accident." [via Boing Boing]

The Atheists of Silicon Valley have compiled over three hundred proofs of God's existence. I'm convinced.

Professional dominatrix Princess Natasha changes her Web site to protect young children searching for a cartoon. I just find it amusing to imagine the ten year-old girls trying to find their favorite heroine and instead discovering a world of whips and latex. [via Warrenellis.com]

Do you watch Lost? Wondering what the hell that map was on the blast doors? See for yourself.

Am I the only person who kinda wants to revel in the B-movie grossness of Slither?