The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Opinion

  • Batman Begins to be Dark

    We saw The Dark Knight last Saturday. Verdict: “Very Good, but Traumatic.”

    Of course, it was traumatic because it was so good. And it was so good because of Heath Ledger. He carried the movie from start to finish and without his performance as crazy-fucking-psycho Joker, the film would have been just another Superhero Action Flick. Ledger managed to portray the Joker in a fashion that was both insanely random yet still an evil genius. He was perfect in the role which drew from the beginnings of the comic as the anti-rational villain. The Joker in this piece was no mere villain, he was the epitome of chaos and anarchy. It seemed like he didn’t know what he was going to do from moment to moment and his very randomness had me clutching the arms of the seat a few times because I was afraid the film makers were going to take some of his actions to their logical conclusion.

    I had a few issues with the wheels-within-wheels complexity of some of the Joker’s plots, though. There were several on screen moments when Joker said (essentially) “I’ve go no plans, I’m crazy!” yet his various diabolical deeds speak of highly sophisticated management and control of resources and people. But, Ledger did such a good job with the Joker that I can let it slide.

    Batman, played by strong-jawed-boy, was only ok. He did everything he was supposed to but he really wasn’t the main character. Joker was, as well as Harvey Dent, played by Aaron Eckhart, whom I love. Harvey, the idealistic new District Attorney for Gotham, does a great job filling the role of the White Knight in this movie, with a twist.

    Maggie Gyllenhaal was fine as Rachel, but her character was overshadowed by everyone else. She was mostly there as a plot device, which I found a bit disappointing. We also learn some back history on Alfred and I wonder if it jives with the comics.

    Overall: Go see it. It’s long (2.2 hours) and it feels like it ends about three times, but it’s good. There are some plot irregularities and some weirdness with Batman’s super technology, but again, I can let it slide.

    I mentioned before that it’s traumatic? Heath Ledger as the Joker will have you biting your fingernails…

    Edit: One of the reasons I liked this movie was because I’m far enough away from the comic books that I didn’t know what was going to happen. Do yourself a favor: if you don’t already know what’s going on, don’t look it up beforehand.

  • Sean Tevis for Kansas State Rep

    I was alerted to Sean Tevis’ state representative race in Kansas through BoingBoing.

    At the risk of sounding shallow, his website is so cool I sent him $10.

    Of course, he’s also running under a platform I would support, so that helps.

  • Iran != Sophisticated

    Of course, while I’m saying that Iran does not equal Sophisticated, I’m tacitly assuming that no western government would be caught doctoring their images…

    …like Iran did with their recent missile test. Tsk tsk.

    I’m sure plenty of tech-savvy people here in the states are thinking, “those silly buggers! Don’t they know how to use photshop to mask that sort of obvious image tampering?” However, I have confidence that this sort of put-up job would be about the same if conducted by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security or Defense.

    Update! Here’s a LOLMISSILE

  • Poll Crashing

    While we’re talking about Pharyngula, I should mention that PZ Meyers has been sending his minions to crash various polls with questions such as “Should prayer and the Ten Commandments be allowed in schools?”

    To illustrate the power of that directive, when PZ posted about this poll, it was 92% “yes”. Now it’s closed and the results are 58.7% no, 41% yes, with 2009 people voting.

    This goes to show why internet polling and petitions are garbage and should be discounted. They don’t work, they’re subject to weighting and they’re too easy to falsify. I chuckle every time someone sends me one of those “append your name to the end of this email and forward it along, if you support the ban on homosexual whaling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.” I’m sure that with a reasonable amount of effort, I could come up with a script that would generate a list of names and emails that look good.

    Internet polling. Just say no.

  • Ways to Save Money: DHS Style

    The Department of Homeland Security is purportedly open to the idea that aircraft passengers should wear monitoring bracelets (that can also shock the piss out of you). Gadling reports that DHS requested the manufacturer of the stun bracelet submit a letter of proposal.

    Nice! You see, I’ve been looking for a way to save some money. If something like this happened, I would refuse to ever travel by commercial airline again. Long distance trips would be a thing of the past. No more having to worry about costly airline tickets, or frequent flyer miles, or lines at security.

    What do you think a general airline boycott would do to the national economy?

  • "Hancock"

    Hancock Movie PosterJenn and I saw Hancock on opening night, yesterday. Short and sweet version: It met expectations (Jenn says it didn’t quite meet her expectations, but close).

    If you saw the previews, and how could you not if you own a TV or a computer, then you’ll be happy that they didn’t bait and switch like so many other movies do. A lot of the preview scenes occur during the first third to half of the movie, so there’s plenty that you don’t already “know” to see.

    Spoilers Ahoy, but if you’ve seen the previews, then you’re safe. If you haven’t seen the previews and you want to go to the movie fresh, stop reading.

    Hancock was fundamentally about the human condition rather than a straight up super hero action film. (I’m going to go out on a limb here because my observations may seem redundant to people who read a lot of comic books. I don’t therefore my insightful thoughts may be old hat.) Hancock is a super-being who is invulnerable, can fly, and is super strong. He is also alone, and the scenes of him as a drunken wino in the previews were, I think, the most telling part of the movie. Here is a guy who is fundamentally separate from the human race; he has no real brotherhood with anybody. He can take whatever he wants, and no one could stop him (there’s a scene which reflects on that). Think about how that could mess with your psyche! You’ve got skillz, but you don’t actually belong. There’s some deep-seated moral issues there that the movie touched on, but didn’t fully explore. I found myself wishing that I had had this idea five years ago, and had written about it. It’s a fascinating topic to explore, although I don’t think my ending would have been as happy as the movie.

    Anyway. It was a good movie. I enjoyed it and would see it again in the theater. There were some weird things about it, though. For one, it’s rated PG-13 but I could swear I heard one of the characters say “fuck”. I thought that was an instant “R” rating? Beyond that, there was a lot of “shit” and “asshole” in the dialogue, plus the violence level was quite high, but other than the “fuck” I suppose they hit the PG-13.

    I wondered during the movie where Hancock got his money. At no time does he ever do anything that might earn him cash, so how does he purchase his liquor? Hmmmm…

    Another nitpick was… never mind. It’s a spoiler. Let’s just say that there was an abrupt character transformation that they milked a bit heavily to provide some slapstick. I thought it was over done in that scene.

    It was good. Go see it.

    14:21 Edit: I totally forgot to mention something! If you have an advanced degree, especially if you’re a college professor, there is a scene in this movie that you have to see/listen to. It’s a must. You will be tickled pink, I promise.

  • Starbucks

    I heard on the news this morning that Starbucks was planning a closure of existing stores. Approximately 600 outlets will be shuttered and their employees will be relocated to other, surviving, stores, if possible.

    From a personal standpoint, I’ve never understood why Starbucks has been as successful (to date) as it is. Its stores don’t have the same welcoming ambiance as most other coffee shops that I have been in; they’re more like a fast food joint for coffee. Of course, again from a personal standpoint, it’s always bugged me that they refuse to use “small medium large” and instead use “vente vedi vici” or whatever. If I were more fundamentalist, I might call that un-American! But what can you expect from a joint out of Seattle?

    However, I also never understood how their business model could sustain the number of stores that are opened within shouting distance of each other. Apparently, it can’t. I feel bad for the number of younger folk who are going to be laid off because of this, but maybe other, local stores, will emerge to take up the slack and compete agains the Evil Empire.

  • We're All Hypocrites

    I read a science article in the NY Times yesterday about how we have the innate ability to justify our choices, internally, despite an objective evaluation that what we did was immoral in a general sense.

    It seems that when presented with the choice between an easy task or a hard task, knowing that another person would be along later to complete the task you didn’t select, most people choose the easy task and convince themselves that this is the fair choice, even though uninterested observers all agree that it is not. It continues by then arbitrarily placing people into two groups and then having one member of each group go through the experiment, picking the easy task. The people in each group agreed that when a member of the other group picked the easy task, it wasn’t fair, yet when one of the members of their own group picked easy, it was.

    Humans are fun, those waskly cweatures.

    This got me thinking about choices I’ve made. Without getting into too much detail, I’ll state that I’m generally a considerate person, but consideration can have a sharp delineation under the type of situation described by the experiment. I’m not sure I agree with the general assessment of the experimental subjects that the first person picking the easy task isn’t “fair”. I could argue (in fact I will argue) that when presented with a binary set of options, with no way to “fairly” distribute them, an inequitable distribution in favor of the first person is “fair” by the standards of our society. We Americans hold closely to a first-come-first-served ethic and with that in mind, it would be perfectly all right for the first person to claim the fruits of being early. Let’s frame it another way. Two people are going to the beach for a picnic. They are both seashell collectors. The first person finds a beautiful conch shell. Should that person leave it for the second person? I don’t believe that is a rational choice in the context of American society.

    Let’s go back to the experiment for a moment. With the seashell analogy, I was describing a situation where the first person has a positive incentive for being first and picking the greater reward. In the experiment, the first person has a less-negative incentive to choose the easy task: either they will work for a short time or a long time. When I was a Boy Scout, in the Order of the Arrow, one of the ethics they teach is to not put down your burden until someone comes to take it from you (yes, I know, very Christian). From that standpoint, by arriving first, you are obligated to choose the more difficult task, to spare your fellow human the difficulty of completing it. This has a reward system built in, but only internally, especially if no one observes you during your moment of self-sacrifice. How many of us are so internally content that we can move through life knowing that we are just king shit, but no one around us is aware of that, or why? Again, to bring up our good ‘ol American cultural upbringing (and maybe I should state that this is White Suburban America) where we aren’t at all very Zen, there’s little incentive to opt for the hard task, under the situation where no one will be aware of your choice. Which brings me back to my wondering why the selection of the easy task was so overwhelmingly considered “unfair”.

    Of course, I’m analyzing a psychological study that I’ve only heard about through a newspaper article. I can’t count the number of times I’ve read a science article in a newspaper and wailed with disbelief over how the writer could screw up the facts on something so easy, and this article may be no exception. I’m not a psychologist and don’t have any basis to judge the merits of the experiment. But I am a person who is presented with choices like this on a daily basis. Do we go with the easy route, knowing that the other person will never know? Or do we throw out a little sacrifice to help out our fellows, also knowing that the other person will never know?

    I’ll leave the answer to that question as an exercise for the reader.

  • Extensive Homeless Dwelling

    Last Tuesday, my father and I attended a Braves game here in Atlanta. My normal parking spot is at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers which is a bit of a walk, and on the other side of I-75/85 from the stadium. As we were walking under the bridge to get to the park, I snapped this picture of a man’s shelter up underneath the bridge deck.
    Home for Homeless
    This is quite a set up! A papasan chair and all. Frankly, I was a bit surprised that this complicated structure was allowed to remain in place by the police who, as always, are out in force for game nights. Atlanta has made a big deal about chivvying the homeless out of the tourist areas. This bridge, and the ball park, aren’t in the “Tourist Triangle” centered around the Five Points and Centennial Park, but it still surprised me. There’s an awful lot of people who walk under this bridge to get to ball games and I imagine a lot of them aren’t local. “Protecting” the vision of Atlanta as a tourist-friendly city without panhandling homeless was the whole point behind the Tourist Triangle regulations.

  • Offline Identity Theft

    I read this story today about how security consultants hired by financial institutions are demonstrating holes in the security of their physical files. The hired guns were able to walk into banks and credit unions with threadbare disguises and walk out with documents containing people’s vital info. The same information that identity thieves are stealing from the online world.

    My response? Meh.

    We’re already living in a world where if your unlucky number comes up and someone steals your identity, you’re going to be out a significant amount of time cleaning up the mess. The only thing you, personally, can do about it is keep an eye on your credit report (perhaps put a credit freeze on, if you’re really concerned), watch your bank and credit card accounts and be generally mindful of your finances. The fact that these institutions are being physically violated is less exciting to me than the millions of personal files that an incident like ChoicePoint releases into the wild.

    Does this mean I’m blasé about identity theft? No. But I don’t think we’ll ever win the race of keeping our vital information under lock and key and away from would-be thieves. The solution needs to come from somewhere else. Credit card companies already absorb the costs of fraudulent transactions. Making other lending institutions who open accounts without properly verifying a person’s identity responsible for the headaches and financial burdens might be a good start. We live in a money-driven economy, so solutions won’t present themselves until it becomes cheaper for institutions to fix the problem than to pay the damages.