I Wanna Be Your Beast of Burden

I must admit that I was much more impressed with Doctor Who this past weekend than with the series premiere. "The Beast Below" addressed my main criticism of Matt Smith's debut, namely, too much in the histrionics department. Here he is still incredibly passionate but less hyper. And very funny.

The Doctor and Amy land on Starship UK which looks like a conglomeration of skyscrapers and contains the population of England (not Scotland, though) who are fleeing Earth which is under assault by solar flares. In seeking to console a girl who is crying, our heroes discover that not all is as it seems on the interstellar nation of shopkeepers. For one thing, there is no vibration from an engine. So what is propelling the ark? The Doctor and Amy must go below decks to the Tower of London to find the answer.

This should sound somewhat familiar as The Doctor and Martha visited New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York in "Gridlock" and the answer to the conundrum in that story lay below the surface just as here. Without wanting to spoil the story, I'll say that the two stories have some similarities but are quite different. Writer Steven Moffat cleverly plays against our expectations in "The Beast Below" and does so very well.

This story was a hoot. Much of what was done physically in "The Eleventh Hour" is now done verbally. The Doctor spends less time running around, spitting food, and hitting his own forehead and more time off-handedly dropping quips like the one to Amy about how he never interferes in the affairs of the places he visits. He has seemingly gotten over any post-regeneration hiccups and can now concentrate on enjoying himself and getting Amy acclimated to her new role as companion. Mania has been replaced by an avuncular congeniality. Considering his age, there were times when Smith's Doctor showed signs of Jon Pertwee as the third incarnation of the character. Tellingly, he avoids answering her queries as to whether he is a father but The Doctor does explain that he is the last of his kind.

Amy showed a lot of promise in her first episode but it focused on The Doctor. "The Beast Below" showed her to be adventurous and intelligent. We see her picking a padlock to go poking around that tent where she shouldn't be and she also overrides The Doctor's plan of pseudo-euthanasia after having pieced together what she could of the puzzle and then taking a leap of faith. Plus, since she is Scottish, there's always room for jokes about the Scots such as the aforementioned one about them building their own ark to flee the Earth instead of joining the Brits.



Sophie Okonedo was great as the badass Queen Elizabeth X. (Above w/The Doctor.) She proves herself to be a real gunslinger in the face of two menacing Smilers and recounts some previous encounters with The Doctor had by past British monarchs such as Victoria in "Tooth and Claw".

In addition to the slimy Star Wars-like garbage chute scene, I also appreciated the above "Smilers", which are surveillance devices that use clown-like faces to register official approval or opprobrium. They scared The Dulcinea and Miles pretty good. Plus I liked the vaguely Blade Runneresque sets. They retrofitted the English city really well.

Lastly I'll mention that the crack motif continues here. Introduced in "The Eleventh Hour" with the crack in young Amy's bedroom wall and Prisoner Zero intoning "the Pandorica will open, silence will fall", we see a large crack in the Starship UK.

This series may have gotten off to a bit of a slow start but "The Beast Below" gets things moving once again. To top things off, it ends with an introduction to next week's installment which is to feature the Daleks.

Mistress of the Art of Death

When I think of medieval mystery stories, my mind immediately jumps to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. I heard about Ariana Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death when it was published in 2007 and resolved to check it out. I finally got around to doing and found that, while it is a very different book in contrast to The Name of the Rose but was nonetheless an extremely fun read.

It is 1171 and a group of pilgrims who had celebrated Easter at Canterbury are returning to Cambridge. Among them are the prioress and prior of the local nunnery and monastery, respectively, three knights who are former crusaders, a tax collector, and a trio of foreigners. This latter group has been sent to Cambridge by the King of Sicily at the behest of Henry II to investigate the murder of a young boy in the town. In addition, other children have gone missing. The townspeople have leveled accusations of blood libel against Cambridge's Jews who have been given refuge in the castle. For his part, Henry is perturbed at the loss of income as his Jewish servants who engage in usury are no longer paying taxes.

Simon of Naples, a Jew who is renowned in his homeland for his sleuthing skills, leads the investigation. With him is Adelia Aguilar, a doctor who is able to examine corpses to determine cause of death, and her manservant Mansur, a Saracen. While Franklin's story isn't concerned with metaphysics, extended metaphors, and philosophical conflicts as was Eco's, she does weave a great tale which touches on a variety of issues by using Adelia as a focal point.

The book's opening introduces us to the main figures in the town but also showcases Adelia's unique talents and her temperament. Prior Geoffrey has a prostate problem and cannot urinate. In a land where practicing medicine generally means preparing herbal remedies, Adelia is able to draw upon texts she's read and jury-rig a catheter to relieve the prior of his fullness. We learn that in her native Salerno, women are allowed to be doctors, unlike in England, and that a rational, scientific approach to medicine holds sway. Adelia is an intelligent, dedicated doctor who does not suffer fools easily.

At the heart of the story is a murder mystery and our investigators suspect everyone at first. The plot meanders as more information is gathered and the list of suspects narrows. But aside from simply being an engaging story, Mistress of the Art of Death touches on many issues, though it shies away from the metaphysical. Being a stranger in a strange land, Adelia's observations of 12th century life in Cambridge are in direct opposition to life in Salerno. The meals are heavy on the animal flesh and light on salad and people don't bathe much. But the book also gives anti-Semitism a prominent role as well as the subordinate role of women in England. These themes are not delved into deeply but rather are present throughout where they sit next to many others issues such as that of class and the dichotomies of superstition vs. reason and the individual vs. society.

With so many themes and issues abutting the basic detective story, Franklin creates a very vivid portrait of Cambridge in 1171. Sure, there are anachronisms but, overall, the world of the story is absorbing. And while there is a whole host of characters, she manages to flesh out a fair number of them. Simon is a Jew in a town seething with hatred of Jews, Adelia is a beacon of gender equality and rationalism in a town of misogyny and superstition, and Mansur is a Saracen. Franklin deftly tells us about the townspeople by how they react to the foreigners.

I don't mean to imply here that Mistress of the Art of Death is The Name of the Rose-lite because Franklin and Eco had very different motivations for their stories. Franklin has managed to create an intriguing protagonist in Adelia and placed her in a lovingly detailed world. Her mystery draws the reader in and is richly adorned with thematic elements that will resonate with contemporary readers.

I am looking forward to reading the three sequels.

Go ahead and call us insane, but we Midwesterners just love a train (and so does the rest of America)

Check out this Amtrak press release (PDF). Midwestern highlights:

In the Chicago hub, ridership on Lincoln Service (Chicago – St. Louis) showed significant growth with an 18 percent jump in March and 11.6 percent for the six month period. Hiawatha Service (Chicago – Milwaukee) continues to grow with a 14.3 percent increase in March and up 4.8 percent fiscal year to date. Elsewhere in the Midwest, the Missouri River Runner (Kansas City - St. Louis) is up 24.2 percent for March and 15.8 percent for the first half of the Amtrak fiscal year, while the Blue Water (Chicago - Port Huron) increased by 21.7 percent in March and 5.2 percent for fiscal year to date.

Similar ridership increases can be seen throughout the country. Hence Amtrak is on track to break its annual ridership record.

More Priestly Revelations

Pope Fritzy can whine about conspiracies all he wants and Spanish bishops can continue to blame the children for priests who can't keep their dicks in their pants ("There are 13 year old adolescents who are under age and who are perfectly in agreement with, and what’s more wanting it, and if you are careless they will even provoke you," he said.) but, sadly, the ruined lives and the paperwork showing that the Church aided and abetted paedophiles keeps piling up.

Close to home, Rev. Thomas Brundage has been caught lying, er, misremembering, details relating to the child rapist Father Lawrence Murphy in Milwaukee.

Brundage wrote a March 29 article disputing media reports that he had been ordered to freeze the judicial process.

But new documents that were first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel show he penned a rough draft of the very letter saying he had been instructed to abate the process.

Brundage apologized Friday, saying he misremembered something that happened so long ago.

Then we have news from Norway. Despite almost being able to count the number of Catholics on one hand, they still have a priestly child rapist.

Lastly comes the disgusting revelations in "The 'Pedophile's Paradise'". Native Alaskan villages became "dumping grounds" for pedophilic priests. Suicides followed. The Catholic Church even had a "fixer" up there named Patrick Wall. Luckily his conscience got the better of him and he left the Church. Here are some of his choice statements:

These abusers in Alaska, Wall said, were specifically sent to Alaska "to get them off the grid, where they could do the least amount of damage" to the church's public image.

Why does the church keep sending these priests, who have come to be such a major liability, back into ministry? "It's all about keeping the stores open, keeping the revenue rolling," Wall says. The Alaskan provinces in particular, Wall says, were a source of revenue—not from the Native population living there, but from parishioners in the lower 48 who were encouraged to donate for the Native ministry up north. "You could raise thousands to fund a mission that cost very little to run," Wall says. "The profit margin is huge."

Oh wait. We can't forget Pope Fritzy's stalling when it came to a California priest named Stephen Kiesle. And why would he hold back on defrocking a paedophile? Why it's the "good of the universal Church" at stake, of course.

I am hoping for a schism within the Catholic Church but I won't be holding my breath for this nor for justice ever being served for the victims of these priests and the higher ups like Fritzy who put the image of the Church before the lives of the children.

Errol Morris Coming To Madison

The A.V. Club Madison has the scoop:

The biggest non-musical event on the docket seems to be filmmaker Errol Morris' (Standard Operating Procedure, Vernon, Florida, The Fog Of War, and many other important documentaries) lecture at the Union Theater on October 21.

Obama to CIA: Terminate With Extreme Prejudice

Barack Obama learned a thing or two during his time in Chicago. Just as the CPD saw fit to dispatch Fred Hampton, Obama is happy to have the CIA assassinate American citizens without due process. No trial – nothing. To wit:

A Muslim cleric tied to the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner has become the first U.S. citizen added to a list of suspected terrorists the CIA is authorized to kill, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

Because he is a U.S. citizen, adding Aulaqi to the CIA list required special approval from the White House, officials said. The move means that Aulaqi would be considered a legitimate target not only for a military strike carried out by U.S. and Yemeni forces, but also for lethal CIA operations.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said: "This agency conducts its counterterrorism operations in strict accord with the law."

Doesn't the law say that U.S. citizens cannot be deprived of life without due process? Or does the 14th Amendment not apply when Big Daddy in the White House says it doesn't? This coming from a man who taught Constitutional law. Here's a take on the issue from Keith Olbermann.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

So where are all the Madison progressives on this? Where is John Nichols' rant? He wrote a book about impeachment when he was none too happy with George Bush so where is his outrage about Obama's presidential assassination program? I searched The Cap Times and The Nation and came up with nothing.

LOST's Black Iron Prison

It was back in season 4 when John Locke gave a copy of Philip K. Dick’s VALIS to Ben Linus but it was this week's episode, "Happily Ever After", that really showed the influence of PKD. It was Desmond-centric and cements his place as one of the best characters on the show. He is special with regards to electromagnetic radiation and is used rather sparingly. His love for Penny seems the most genuine of all the relationships and he doesn't seem to have an active daddy issue, though he does, admittedly, have a father-in-law problem. Desmond is a Lostie, but different.

In his flash sideways, all is well between him and his boss Charles Widmore. Hell, he even gets to sample the pukka scotch denied to him in "Flashes Before Your Eyes". But he is tasked with chaperoning Charley, fresh from his near overdose and a stint in a jail cell. As they're driving, the rock star grabs the car's steering wheel causing it to plunge into the ocean. Desmond escapes the sinking car and attempts to rescue Charley but the pop star merely sits there behind the glass until he puts his palm up to it. Desmond flashes back to Charley's death at the Looking Glass station and sees his hand with "Not Penny's Boat" scrawled upon it.

Eloise Hawking is Eloise Widmore in this world and Desmond and Penny do not know one another. After an MRI results in flashes back to his time with Penny, Desmond must confront Ms. Widmore about Charley's absence at a social function he was to perform at. Eloise proves to be special in her own way. While Charley and Desmond both have a gut feeling that something is amiss, Eloise seems to be above the fray and fully knowledgeable about what is going on. Desmond asks her to see a list of musicians which includes a Penny but Eloise denies him saying that it would be a violation and that he isn't ready. A violation of what?

The flash sideways world is something akin to PKD's Black Iron Prison but it's not about social or political control. I'm not sure what it's about, to be honest. Desmond has Widmore's approval while Jack seems to be living up to his father's hope that he would be a better father to his children than Christian was to Jack. For Locke, this world means coming to grips with his disability and being with Helen. On the flip side, Kate is still on the run. While unable to escape his past, Sayid still has Nadia for some consolation. Sawyer is still seeking revenge but at least he's on the straight and narrow. But Jin & Sun are obviously having problems with Mr. Paik and Keamy. There doesn't seem to be a commonality to their flash sideways plights other than not having landed on the Island.

But our Losties are beginning to see through the world of the flash sideways. As Dick would have said, they are undergoing anamnesis – they are losing their forgetfulness. For the author, it meant seeing that time had stopped in 70C.E. and a simulacrum of reality had taken its place. In LOST, we have the flash sideways with the Island underwater. If, as Jacob said, our little paradise is like a cork keeping a swell of evil and malevolence at bay, then it follows that this new "reality" is subject to those sinister forces. Could the violation Eloise mentioned be that of the universe's self-correction mechanism?

At the end of "Happily Ever After" Desmond asked Minkowski to get a hold of flight 815's manifest, the idea being that he would demonstrate to his fellow passengers that all is not what it seems and that they have a common past (present?) on the Island. I postulate that getting the rest of the Losties to understand this will be key to defeating the forces of darkness that have been loosed upon the world.

The New Doctor Is In the House

Matt Smith's tenure as The Doctor began this past weekend with the episode "The Eleventh Hour". At an hour, it was longer than the normal DW episode but it had to squeeze a lot into that hour. Firstly, there's the story. Secondly introducing the new Doctor and his new companion.

As for the first, it was alright.

It begins with The Doctor hanging from the doorway of the TARDIS as it tumbles over London before crashing into the backyard of a house in a rural village. He emerges (above) and meets little Amelia Pond. Left home alone, she welcomes the stranger in and attempts to satisfy his weird culinary cravings. (Fish fingers and custard finally does the trick.) The Doctor learns about the large crack in the wall in Amelia's bedroom which is no mere masonry problem. It is actually a crack in time and space which leads to an Atraxi prison. A voice echoes, "Prisoner Zero has escaped."

Before he can mend the time-space continuum, The Doctor is alerted by the TARDIS' Cloister Bell signifying immanent destruction. And so he races to its aid and promises Adelia that he'll return in five minutes. In an unsurprising bit of time dilation, five minutes turns into 12 years but The Doctor does return. He discovers that little Amelia has grown up into Amy and that Prisoner Zero has, in fact, been living in her house the whole time but has avoided detection by placing a perception filter on one of the rooms. Furthermore, the escapee has been mimicking coma patients in the local hospital. The Atraxi find out Prisoner Zero's location and threaten to destroy the Earth if it doesn't surrender. Lo and behold, it's up to The Doctor to save humanity once more.

If anything, the story mirrors "Smith and Jones", the episode which kicked off Series 3 and gave us Martha Jones. Alien hiding out on Earth trying to avoid captors who are of another alien race. Arguably, most of Doctor Who is recycled from previous episodes and a myriad of other stories but this one just seemed average. It wasn't particularly fresh to my mind. Not bad, just seemed to be more of the same without any twists of the plot.

“The Eleventh Hour” also serves as a good example of how the show suffers from the new shorter format. As I noted above, Prisoner Zero utilizes the thoughts of coma patients in order to co-opt their physical form. There was one brief scene when they all began speaking at once. It seems to me that reducing the show’s running time meant that it wasn’t able to utilize these spooky verbal vegetables to their full extent. They were a wasted opportunity to add some chills to the thrills and spills.

One thing that I really enjoyed was a scene that takes place on the village green. People are there taking photos of the Atraxi ship in the sky and The Doctor scans the scene for Prisoner Zero who has taken human form. Not seeing it, he traces back in his memory scanning all the details he's observed thus far. This was shown with a jerky stop-motion sequence that was accomplished with a still camera and it is really great. Stylistically speaking, Doctor Who is not notably adventurous. There are occasional flashbacks but, for the most part, it utilizes conventional narrative techniques in a very linear way. This scene, however, really sticks out.



As for Matt Smith…I was a bit disappointed that the new Doctor seemed just like the previous one. Instead of something new we got that wacky professor thing – always talking to himself very quickly and some very physical goofiness. The whole food spitting thing grew very old very quickly for me, although the line about Adelia being Scottish so she should fry something was funny. It's not that he was unlikable but rather that I was expecting his regeneration to yield a completely different personality. But I realize that his new look is only one episode old and I’m hopeful the histrionics will be toned down.

Amy Pond, the new companion, is a beautiful lass with a sexy brogue. As with all the companions in the new series, she is dependent on The Doctor yet very much her own woman. Here, she relies on The Doctor for figuring out the alien angles of the situation but she knocked him out when he had returned 12 years late and thought he was a simple intruder. In addition, once she overcomes the perception field and is finally able to see the door that she has been blind to all these years, she overcomes her fear and enters it to investigate despite The Doctor's pleas against doing so. She will no doubt make an able companion.

Despite "The Eleventh Hour" being a bit of a letdown, it is just one episode. Smith has only just begun to grow into the role and I fully expect him to make it his own. And I, for one, dig the new outfit – professorial jacket and bow tie. Good, nerdy stuff. Also new are the TARDIS interior, show logo, and theme song. Here are the latter two:

I Made My Stepson Cry This Morning (And Further Ruminations On Windows 7)

Yes, I made the kid cry this morning. While I suppose I can be an evil stepfather, these were, in fact, tears of joy.

Yesterday evening he and The Dulcinea were bickering over his use of the laptop. It's been an ongoing issue. Well, last night I'd had enough and so I went and bought a laptop for the kid. He was asleep when I got home and I spent a couple hours removing bloatware, updating, installing, and configuring. I installed his one of his favorite programs Stykz, a stick figure animation program. Miles is the creative type and he likes to animate stick figures being killed in various ways. His other killer app, Blockland, a 3D Lego-like building game, would have to wait until we found his reg code for the Mac version he has.

The poor kid had a bad night last night which meant that I was awoken from my slumbers 2-3 times by his exceedingly forlorn voice asking for his mother who was fast asleep. I am now aware that we have a centipede of extraordinary magnitude roaming our place (why hasn't the cat caught it?) and that Miles must be the only 10-year old boy who doesn't like squashing them. Since he'd fallen asleep on the couch early he was up fairly early this morning and I decided to lay the laptop on him. At first he just looked at it with his tired, crusty eyes not knowing what to make of it

"What's this?"

"It's a laptop I bought for you."

"Really?!"

"Really."

He was in shock. I figured he'd get over it quickly and went to get myself a cup of coffee because I felt like the walking dead suffering from a yawning attack. When I emerged from the kitchen he was staring at the Windows splash screen, his mouth agog at his good luck. And tears had welled in his eyes. He was crying. Now, I've made him cry before just not out of happiness. It was a very touching moment. I tried to recall how I reacted when I got my first computer – a Commodore 64 – back in the 1980s but couldn't. Very similarly, I'd imagine. It felt good to see him so happy. I'm not the best stepfather ever to walk the Earth and I realize that buying a laptop doesn't make up for my failings otherwise but I'm working on them.

Miles is 10 years old so I don't have to change diapers or bathe him. He's in good shape so I'm not driving him to the hospital once a week for kidney dialysis or any such thing. All in all, I've got it easy or at least not more difficult than average. But it's those easy things which often prove the most difficult. As I remarked above, I'm working on them. I'm working on giving him more of my time, paying attention to his endeavors, and being complimentary. To be sure, I've got a long way to go but I think I've gotten better over the past couple months. Nowhere near perfect, but better. My own father showed little interest in my activities when I was a kid – he was more keen on getting us to do work around the house and acting as disciplinarian – so I'm starting from a bit of a disadvantage here.

Part of the problem was that, when I moved in with The D and Miles, I focused on living with my girlfriend and gave too little consideration to being a stepfather. So there's work to do. But the way I figure it, if Miles turns out badly, I can blame his parents. And if he turns out well, I can take some credit. (Ahem.)

Of course now that Miles has his own computer, he'll not want to spend any time with me at all. What's a poor stepparent to do?

Setting the laptop up was my first go at Windows 7. Being used to Vista, it wasn't too difficult but I discovered that nothing makes an IT person feel old like configuring parental controls. I didn't have parental controls on my C64 and have never needed them. Until now. I created an account for Miles and set it so that he gets booted off at 8PM on school nights. This will hopefully put an end to his not getting ready for bed due to having to just one more thing to do in Blockland. I also installed the Windows Live Family Safety pack. It allows me to monitor his web usage, restrict sites, view a log of all the programs he runs, etc. I'm not particularly worried about this stuff right now but I suppose installing it makes me feel like a responsible adult or something like that.

The built-in parental controls give you the ability to restrict what programs a user can run. It presents a list of all the executables in the Program Files folder and their paths. Being in IT, I appreciate the rather granular nature of the list but I can imagine less than computer literate parents being confronted by the list and throwing their hands up in the air in total confusion. We got Blockland installed this morning but it didn't end up in the list for whatever reason. I'd like to limit the apps the kid can run just to make sure he doesn't accidentally do something which forces me to fix the thing. Aside from this, the only other snafu I ran into was that the laptop couldn't connect to our wireless network unless I turned off the firewall. I'll have to reenable it and create an exception.

My only other worry at this point is that now is viruses. I have phishing filters enabled, pop-up blockers are on, and MS Security Essentials is running. Still, he got a couple of those fake anti-virus pop-ups already this morning. Hopefully the firewall and the fact that he does not have admin rights will curtail viruses/malware.

Here are some of my first impressions on Winders 7.

1) It took me a long time to find the laptop's MAC address. While it is probably in the same spot as it is in Vista, I don't have wireless on my desktop so it took some hunting and pecking. Technical info should be easy to get at.

2) Presumably because of anti-trust lawsuits, Windows Movie Maker isn't included in Windows 7 and for some reason the latest version you download from Windows Live doesn't include the ability to record from a webcam. I bought a laptop with one built-in because Miles likes to make videos so I had to search the Net to discover that the utility included with the image called Lifeframe will capture the footage. Couldn't they have chosen a name that indicated just what the hell the program did instead of one that was creepy in an Oprah kind of way? This must be easier on a Mac.

3) The new Mac-like taskbar. I hate it less than I thought I would. But I haven't filled it up. On my Vista box, my Quick Launch bar is full and I've got tons of shortcuts pinned to my Start Menu. Not sure how the shiny new taskbar would handle all that. Also, there are some new icons so I have to concentrate on a few to figure out what they are. Not sure if you can use text labels or not here.

So let us hope that my investment will help keep the peace at home and ensure the undying love of my stepson.

Next projects: get him to use the bathroom's exhaust fan and to turn off lights and the TV when he's not watching it. The advantage of the former is obvious. As for the latter, my dad got all anal about such things during the energy crisis of the late 1970s so all I can say is that the sins of the father are visited upon the stepson.

Look At Latest Metropolis Restoration

Almost two years ago 25 or so minutes of footage from Fritz Lang's classic film Metropolis had been discovered in Argentina. It was restored and integrated back into the film.

UW film prof David Bordwell has seen this latest iteration of the film and has posted a review.

Military Covers Up More Fiascoes

Glenn Greenwald has a great post today called "How Americans are propagandized about Afghanistan". In it he describes how the mainstream media covered an incident which took place on 12 February of this year in which Iraqi civilians were killed outside a home where the celebration of a new birth was ongoing. Two men, two women (both of whom were pregnant), and a teenage girl were all slaughtered.

The Pentagon then issued a statement claiming that (a) the dead males were "insurgents" or terrorists, (b) the bodies of the three women had been found by U.S. forces bound and gagged inside the home, and (c) suggested that the women had already been killed by the time the U.S. had arrived, likely the victim of "honor killings" by the Taliban militants killed in the attack. Fiascoes

Although numerous witnesses on the scene as well as local investigators vehemently disputed the Pentagon's version, and insisted that all of the dead (including the women) were civilians and were killed by U.S. forces, the American media largely adopted the Pentagon's version, often without any questions. But enough evidence has now emerged disproving those claims such that the Pentagon was forced yesterday to admit that their original version was totally false and that it was U.S. troops who killed the women…

This is the New York Times article which documents the Pentagon's 180. But, when the incident happened in February, the NYT simply echoed the official line of the Pentagon that the men who were killed were bad guys and the women their victims. Instead it was a NATO coverup and afterwards the United States offered the victims' families $2,000 per death. Is this how to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people?

For too many of us such incidents are simply what fellow Madisonian Gregory Humphrey calls "realities on the ground", a phrase steeped in that kind of political language which Orwell noted "makes murder respectable". They rally behind a daddy figures like Gen. Stanley McChrystal when he says we need to really hit the insurgents but ignore him when he notes that in regard to U.S. soldiers killing locals at checkpoints in Afghanistan "We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force."

Concomitant to this is a video from 2007 showing an Apache helicopter opening up on a group of ostensibly peaceful civilians in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists. You can watch the realities on the ground as they are murdered in cold blood. And, of course, our government did its best to sell the story that it is blameless.



Again, way to win the hearts and minds over there. If you were a friend or relative of any of the above people who were killed would you be welcoming of our troops in your country?

Lastly, did anyone notice the flags around town at half-staff last Monday? They were that way in honor of this man:



Army Spc. Robert Rieckhoff of Kenosha was killed in Iraq last month. R.I.P.

ADDENDUM: From Boing Boing, a look at CNN's webpage v. Al Jazeera's when this story broke here. iPad vs. military cover-up. Guess who ran with the iPad.

African American Store Now Open

On a recent trek down E. Wash I noticed that a new store had opened in the Eken Park neighborhood - African American Store. It's at 2750 E. Johnson - the intersection with North Lawn Ave. Could it replace Chicago's Kukulu Market to satiate my chechebsa cravings?

Unfortunately, no. The African American Store is mostly devoted to clothing, jewelry, musical instruments, et al but also carries health care products, DVDs of African movies, and some grocery items.

As far as the foodstuffs go, there are tea, some snacks such as fried plantains as well as herbs/spices and lots of grains, many of which I'd never heard of and so have no idea how they're prepared. The store can also meet all of your palm oil needs. Fresh vegetables are limited to sweet potatoes, plantains, and another which I cannot remember. I'll add that staff were very friendly. Although they seemed to have emigrated here from Africa, they all spoke perfectly fine English.

I walked out with a bag of fried plantains, some jerk paste, and a sack of teff flour so I can try to make some injera bread at home.

Winging It With Nichole and JM

Last Thursday The Dulcinea and I joined Nichole and JM of Eating Madison A to Z at Quaker Steak and Lube. My meal is below. Keep an eye on their webpage for my erudite take on the wings.

I Am Inspired By the Devil!

Father Gabriele Amorth, an exorcist, blames Satan for all of Pope Fritzy's bad press.

“There is no doubt about it. Because he is a marvelous Pope and worthy successor to John Paul II, it is clear that the devil wants to ‘grab hold’ of him.”

Of course Satan is. It has nothing to do with Fritzy standing idly by as child rapists are sent from one group of victims to another. Nope. That can't be it. People can't legitimately be angry at someone who let paedophiles roam free in favor of trying to maintain the Church's image. It just has to be the Devil.

The Coming Olive Oil Crisis

We will soon reach peak olive oil and some salads will go undressed.

Ashes to Ashes Series 3 Preview

The Gene Genie returns tomorrow!

I Think the Starkweather-Moore Expedition Missed This

That's a 50' waterfall of crimson primordial ooze.

Roughly 2 million years ago, the Taylor Glacier sealed beneath it a small body of water which contained an ancient community of microbes. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, they have remained there ever since, isolated inside a natural time capsule. Evolving independently of the rest of the living world, these microbes exist without heat, light, or oxygen, and are essentially the definition of "primordial ooze." The trapped lake has very high salinity and is rich in iron, which gives the waterfall its red color. A fissure in the glacier allows the subglacial lake to flow out, forming the falls without contaminating the ecosystem within.

If you're planning an expedition to investigate the ooze, don't forget to pack lots of Cthulhu snacks. Dealing with all those Shoggoths and the Mi-go is tough work.

Tough Times in Brew City

It's been very depressing and worrying lately to read about Milwaukee. Last year the state assumed control of Milwaukee County's public assistance programs and now I read about some terribly disheartening studies. The one that seemed to get the most press showed that black fourth graders in Brew City have the worst reading scores in whole country.

Reading scores for Wisconsin's African-American fourth-graders trail those of their racial peers in every other state and the District of Columbia, according to a national government report that delivered dire news Wednesday about how Wisconsin prepares its students.

Further, fourth-graders as a whole in Wisconsin are losing ground in reading while other states make gains, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation's report card. Only 33% of the state's fourth-graders scored at a level considered proficient or advanced by the test; the rest scored at a basic level or lower.

This is an embarrassment. We are the richest country in human history yet here we are in the 21st century struggling with literacy and the state I call home is racing to the very bottom with black children essentially there already. While the majority of black children are in Milwaukee-Kenosha-Racine, I don't doubt that we face a similar problem here in Madison but with a smaller population.

Another study which I didn't discover until recently and doesn't seem have gotten any mention in Madison's newspapers was done on eviction in Milwaukee and it was carried out by a UW-Madison student named Matt Desmond. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ran a story about it but the timing was unfortunate as it hit the paper on New Year's Day. The results showed that eviction is to black women and prison is for black men. (Wisconsin has the highest percentage of black prisoners in the nation.)

The study found that one renter-occupied household in 20 is evicted each year in Milwaukee. In neighborhoods where blacks are the majority, the study found that number jumps to one in 10 renter-occupied households evicted every year.

The study was undertaken by Matt Desmond, a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He analyzed court records and a did a year's worth of field work that included living in a south side trailer park and in a rooming house on the city's north side.

During his research, Desmond spent time with tenants fighting evictions and packing their belongings. He also spent time with landlords to get their side of the eviction story.

"This is a unique study because there's a lot of information about foreclosures, but not much on evictions," said Timothy Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty and a professor in UW-Madison's La Follette School of Public Affairs.

And to add Pelion upon Ossa, I have discovered a report which notes that single women of color are incredibly poor.

The study, "Lifting As We Climb: Women of Color, Wealth, and America's Future," found that while the median net worth of single white women ages 36-49 is $42,600 -- 61 percent of the median wealth for same-aged, single white men -- single women of color in the same age group have a median wealth of just $5.

Black and Hispanic women are also drastically worse off in a broader age bracket, with almost half of single black and single Hispanic women ages 18-64 reporting zero or negative wealth (46 percent and 45 percent, respectively), compared with 23 percent of single white women, according to the report.

Mind you, these are not Milwaukee-specific numbers but Milwaukee's black population is 35-40%.

Because Madison is largely white and comparatively well-off because we have a Big 10 university and the state government apparatus we don't see these conditions very much. A lot of people here tend to think of these problems as Milwaukee's problems but I have to wonder exactly how our state can prosper when its largest city is in such dire straits. And let us not forget that poverty is growing here in Madison as well.

How Is This Possible?

I.M. Pei on American Masters

Concomitant to my review of Iris Chang's The Chinese in America earlier this week, it is worth noting that the PBS show American Masters takes a look at Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei which airs tonight at 8 here in Madison.

I.M. Pei has been called the most important living modern architect, defining the landscapes of some of the world’s greatest cities. A monumental figure in his field and a laureate of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize, Pei is the senior statesman of modernism and last surviving link to such great early architects as Corbusier, Gropius, and Mies van der Rohe. Entering into the twilight of his career and well into his eighties, Pei returns to his ancestral home of Suzhou, China to work on his most personal project to date. He is commissioned to build a modern museum in the city’s oldest neighborhood which is populated by classical structures from the Ming and Qing dynasties. For the architect who placed the pyramid at the Louvre, the test to integrate the new with the old is familiar but still difficult. The enormous task is to help advance China architecturally without compromising its heritage. In the end, what began as his greatest challenge and a labor of sentiment, says Pei, ultimately becomes “my biography.” 

Here's a preview:

Pope Fritzy's List of Victims Grows

We can now add another paedophile to the Vatican's roster - Father Ernesto Garcia-Rubio.

An investigation into a defrocked priest who ministered here in South Florida and allegedly preyed on young children from the Mariel boat lift, Nicaragua and El Salvador has reportedly uncovered documents that indicate his actions were acknowledged and covered up by the Vatican.

According to child sexual abuse attorneys Stuart Mermelstein and Jessica Arbour, the documents reveal an international cover up of Garcia-Rubios's pattern of sexual misconduct. The Vatican, Archdiocese of Miami, and Garcia-Rubio's Cuban diocese all reportedly knew he posed a threat to children early in his ministry, yet each entity did nothing to warn the parishioners.

To add insult to injury, The Vatican is doing its best to avoid legal ramifications here in the States. Regarding a lawsuit filed against the Church in Kentucky:

Plaintiffs in the Kentucky suit contend that bishops are employees of the Vatican. That point is crucial to determining whether the Holy See can be held responsible for their behavior.

There's a general consensus among legal scholars that an employee is someone who works for the employer, who controls the details of the work. Attorneys for the Vatican are expected to argue that diocesan bishops do not work for the pope, and that the Holy See does not exercise the day-to-day control over their work necessary to create an employment relationship.

So the Pope doesn't exercise day-to-day control, eh? Am I to take it that priests raping children is such a quotidian event that the situation was beneath him? Exactly how heinous a crime would need to be committed for it to extend beyond the mundane daily routine of a church to get the Holy See's attention?

The Chinese in America by Iris Chang

Having had a friend who is an ABC (American-born Chinese) for nearly 33 years, I have always had glimpses into what's it like to be a Chinese American. There's the stereotyping and racism, the tension between growing up American and having parents who retain traditional Chinese values and expectations, et al. And so when I found Iris Chang's The Chinese in America, I thought it would be interesting to learn about the broader scenario from which my friend's tales emerge.

Chang begins her narrative by giving some background on 19th century imperial China before discussing the earliest Chinese immigrants who came to America. She makes a habit of giving the reader brief bits of Chinese history which I really appreciate as they explain from where in China the various waves of migrants came from but also provides some sense of their motivations. The first immigrants were mostly men from the economically depressed Guangdong region and they came here because they'd heard about "Gold Mountain", i.e. – California. These men were hard workers but they often found themselves the target of racism. This state of affairs changed little when the Gold Rush ended and thousands of Chinese immigrants found work helping build the Transcontinental Railroad. They often did the most dangerous work and received less pay than their white counterparts. During the 1870s, the United States suffered an economic depression that brought on even more and more vicious discrimination. The early history of Chinese Americans climaxed with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which severely limited the immigration of Chinese citizens and made it impossible for many to return to the United States after visiting family in their homeland. It was not repealed until 1965.

Chang provides an endless stream of examples of discrimination and violence against Chinese Americans but, ever since the first Chinese stepped off the boat in the 19th century, Chinese Americans have contributed to America. In addition to laying track and prospecting, there are the countless stores and shops plus she points out notable people such as M.C. Chang, the co-inventor of the birth control pill, renowned architect I.M. Pei, and Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang. But there's more to the book than simply being a catalogue of injustices and achievements. One of Chang's main arguments is that Chinese Americans are still outsiders in American society that have yet to be fully accepted. This notion can be traced all the way back to the first Chinese Americans in 19th century California where laws enshrined discrimination against blacks – but what about yellow people? I found sections discussing the lives of Chinese in the American South to be particularly interesting. There they straddled color lines. Chinese were acceptable to whites yet they saw their commonalities with the blacks as well and found themselves in the middle during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Chang argues that this middle position – where pale skin is accompanied by epicanthic folds – is where Chinese Americans are stuck. She further opines that the attitudes of the white majority in America towards Chinese Americans tend to mirror Sino-American relations. And so their skin color and small numbers make them acceptable under good circumstances but their eyes and the fact that China is not always on the best of terms with the United States can turn them into scapegoats very easily.

The book is written in an accessible style where Chang gives an overview and illustrates generalizations with quotes from individuals. On the one hand, this personalizes the history and keeps it from being a jumble of statistics and an overly broad picture. And having people talk about their experiences also allows her to cover territory that one couldn't if she didn't zero in on certain topics. One area served particularly well by this technique is when ABCs talk about their estrangement from older members of their community who still had ties to China. On the other hand, there are instances when Chang quotes a person or two and expects the reader to take it on faith that these views are representative of the larger group of Chinese Americans.

Other than this quibble, Chang has certainly constructed an engaging overview of the history of Chinese Americans and shed some new light on a decades old friendship.

Scarface: The School Play

Man, we'd never have been able to stage Scarface at school when I was a kid. Times have sure changed.


Scarface School Play - Watch more Funny Videos

Hitchens On Milwaukee Priest-Paedophile Scandal

It'd be nice to see Milwaukee in the national press for something other than 200 deaf boys being raped by a priest and having the whole thing washed over by Pope Fritzy.

The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal.

Also disgusting is how civil authorities failed in their duties.

Father Murphy not only was never tried or disciplined by the church’s own justice system, but also got a pass from the police and prosecutors who ignored reports from his victims, according to the documents and interviews with victims. Three successive archbishops in Wisconsin were told that Father Murphy was sexually abusing children, the documents show, but never reported it to criminal or civil authorities.

What the hell was wrong with the criminal justice system? After trotting out the, "Yeah, but other people did it too" defense, Archbishop Dolan of New York claims:

Because, as we now sadly realize, nobody, nowhere, no time, no way, no how knew the extent, depth, or horror of this scourge, nor how to adequately address it.

So, is he sincere in saying that dealing with child rapists is one of the great advances of only the last 50 years? What an asshole. Pope Pius V had it figured out back in the 16th century when he declared that priests who rape children would be defrocked and handed over to the courts for punishment. Local constabularies have been dealing with this stuff for centuries. Are any of the bishops who reported Murphy's paedophilial predilections to Fritzy still alive? If so, instead of suing to block health care form, perhaps our Attorney General can bring those douchebags up on charges of aiding and abetting a child rapist along with any living civil authorities that stood by and did nothing.

While ACORN goes out of business because of some video editing, the Catholic Church remains, as Matt Taibbi points out, a taxpayer-subsidized guardian of child molesters.

In fact the Church is not only not sanctioned in any serious way, it gets to retain its outrageous tax-exempt status, which makes its systematic child abuse, in this country at least, a government-subsidized activity.

Madison Meet Milwaukee

Steve Jagler at OnMilwaukee has an article up there about how the business community is largely silent on the subject of the high-speed rail line between Milwaukee and Madison.

High-speed rail in Wisconsin may be an $823 million priority for the Obama administration, but from a public relations standpoint, it is an abandoned orphan.

At best, most business advocacy groups in Wisconsin are keeping the high-speed rail project at arm's length. In most cases, that's because their members are as divided about the issue as the public seems to be.

At the same time, I read that the Republican gubernatorial candidates are saying they'd 86 the railway if they get elected. In response, the DOT is working like mad to get contracts in place lest a Republican, i.e. – Milwaukee Co. Executive Scott Walker, take office.

I guess I've just been reading too much stuff about regional planning for the Midwest because it puzzles me that neither a Milwaukee official nor state business groups seem to be showing any interest in HSR. Milwaukee watches as its job base dwindles yet those who should be talking about a rail connection as having the potential to help draw Madison-Milwaukee-Chicago together as a regional economy aren't.

Again, perhaps I've just been reading too much Richard Longworth, but I think he and his ilk make good points. The Midwest is in decay. As the economy becomes ever more global, we have declining rural areas and a Rust Belt. The main point they make is that the Midwest has to strengthen itself and then unify to compete in the global economy. That means that Wisconsin will have to partner with the Flatlanders in Illinois, Iowans, etc. Closer to home Madison and Milwaukee are going to have to become conjoined and perhaps a rail line can be play a role in bringing our two cities closer together as well as creating ties between Madison and the Midwest's capital, Chicago.

We Madisonians spend a lot of time arguing over the Edgewater but our city's future lies with another building – the Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery - and our ability to leverage what happens there in a global market. And we can't do it alone.

Where Bars Trump Grocery Stores

"The Midwest takes their drinking seriously."

Please Don't Play the Victim

Emily Mills has an op-ed in the latest issue of Isthmus in which she implores readers to "Keep up the fight on health care". In it she says:

I happen to be among the more than 40 million Americans who lack health insurance. If I get sick or injured, I would almost certainly go into serious debt and probably have to declare bankruptcy. I can't afford the medication I need for a chronic stomach condition, so I go without. It's ridiculous."

Personally I find this statement to be disingenuous, to say the least. It's a ploy for sympathy that I will give no quarter because, as she has stated at her blog, she "cast off (her) full-time desk job on purpose" – emphasis hers. It's one thing to argue that health care should be a right for people in this country but it's something else to ignore reality and the reality is we don't have universal coverage. However things should be doesn't change the fact that Ms. Mills voluntarily rid herself of health insurance.

In speaking about the health care reform debate, she finds herself flummoxed and writes:

It baffles me that some of my fellow citizens have been so thoroughly duped by fear-mongering and false information that they now rage against their own self-interest."

Do you think that it might have been in Ms. Mills' self-interest to keep her insurance instead of putting herself in the position of not having medication and being one illness or accident away from bankruptcy? She made her choice and she chose to go without insurance to instead pursue her writing, musical, etc. endeavors full-time. But now that the die is cast, she has the nerve to turn around and use herself as an example of the problems facing our uninsured.

While I am in favor of health care reform (but have some gripes about the pending legislation), I would implore Ms. Mills to refrain from using herself as a poster child as she continues the fight because this is the message doing so gives off to many whose support we could use: Somebody wants to be an artist and thinks the world owes her.

I can barely muster any sympathy for her and instead am worried for people like my friend who hasn't been able to find construction work in ages and a co-worker who is certainly among the working poor as he lives in a trailer with no hot water and does a lot of his shopping out in the woods and at local streams & rivers.

I wish Ms. Mills all the luck in the world in her career and hope she is and remains as close to healthy as a horse as possible. But I also hope that she'll stop holding her own position up as an argument for health care reform. Life is about making choice amongst things that are, not as how we would have them be. And, if she must try to gain sympathy with her situation in future editorials, then I hope she'll at least tell people that she is going without insurance by her own choice as opposed to intimating that she's the victim of forces beyond her control.

Corned Beef Hitting the Big Time in Madison?

The Reubens at Cooper's Tavern are getting rave reviews.

I hear that one upshot of this is that the supplier of the beef they use for corning, Knoche's Butcher Shop, is seeing their brisket and corned beef sales go through the roof. Regarding the latter, this is despite the fact that folks behind the meat counter warn customers that their corned beef is not the same as that found at Cooper's.

Is this the start of a new food trend? We shall see.

Starring Werner Herzog As...The Plastic Bag

My skin against her skin...

A Festival of Foreign Films

I don't know about you, but I managed to get tickets for all the films I wanted to see at the Wisconsin Film Festival. It was a bit of a mad dash because, as noon Saturday loomed, I discovered that a few of the films I was keen on seeing were going to be coming to Sundance this spring so I decided to avoid those and go with some unknown propositions.

Firstly there's Joon-ho Bong's Madeo (Mother) which opens the week of the festival on 16 April.

The following week we get the Swedish thriller Män som hatar kvinnor (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo). Perhaps it will make a trend out of Scandanavian crime fiction.

7 May brings us the stop motion animated Panique au village (A Town Called Panic) from Belgium which is family-friendly and perhaps a good way to get your children into foreign cinema.

Although I wasn't planning on seeing it at the festival, The Art of the Steal hits Sundance on 14 May. It's a documentary about how a multi-billion dollar art collection was moved from a small, private suburban Philadelphia site to a grand public art museum in downtown Philly. I heard about it on NPR and it just sounded too biased and conspiratorial for my taste.

Although not playing at the festival, Nordwand (North Face) is coming to Sundance as well. It, along with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and another film at the festival, OSS 117: Rio ne répond plus (OSS 117: Lost in Rio) are distributed by a relatively new company in Chicago, Music Box Films. Newcity Film recently posted a profile of MBF which notes the outfit is mostly going after foreign films instead of American indie pics.

Andreotti says that going after micro-budgeted American independent films can be “tricky,” and it best suited the new company to focus on quality foreign films that have slipped through the cracks and haven’t received the attention they deserved. “In some ways, it’s, ironically, a safer bet to go after the foreign-language films,” he says.

Now, whether or not having MBF a relative hop, skip, and jump away will mean more for foreign films here in Madison or not, I don't know. But it is encouraging to see the films they're distributing showing up in our cinemas.

White Ribbon

I am not exactly sure what director Michael Haneke was actually trying to say with The White Ribbon but I walked out of the theatre feeling as if I'd just watched a very engaging and very dark take on the already gloomy Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. The film tells the story of the fictional village of Eichwald in the years of 1913-14. A narrator tells us that the events portrayed are from his younger years when he was a schoolteacher there and that telling this tale might "clarify things" that later happened in Germany.

The opening scene is that of the town doctor returning home on his horse when suddenly it topples over and throws its rider to the ground. Someone had strung some wire between two trees with the intended results seriously injuring the doctor and his horse. This strange act of malice is followed by other similar ones including the son of the local baron being beaten with a cane as he hung upside down in the sawmill. Despite the local constabulary being called in, no perpetrator is ever found and no explanations are given. But there is another incident that seemingly had no malicious intent behind it – the wife of one of the town's farmers dies when some floorboards in the upper level of the sawmill gave way and the woman fell to her death.

As the tragic events unfold, we also get to know some of the village's inhabitants and their less than savory private lives. For instance, the local pastor is a strict disciplinarian who exacts harsh punishments for rather minor transgressions and he ties white ribbons to a couple of the children's arms to remind them of their innocence which is, in his eyes, maintained by harsh punishment. The whole family suffers when one of the children doesn't come home on time as the father denies everyone dinner. Later in the film, when one of his sons, Martin, admits to masturbating, he has the boy's arms restrained while in bed.



By this time, the doctor has returned from the hospital and there is a great transition as we cut from Martin being lectured about the evils of onanism to the doctor's office where he and the local midwife have just finished what appears to be a very clinical session of sex. The doctor is a widower and he enlisted the midwife to help around the office and look after his children. But at one point he launches a vicious verbal attack and excoriates her for being ugly, among other things. The pity I had for the midwife only increased when her mentally retarded son was kidnapped and later found after someone had attempted to blind the boy.

For his part, the school teacher looks on at what is happening in the village horrified. But amidst the chaos, we see him woo Eva, a young woman from a nearby town who was fired as the Baron's governess. She is shy and innocent and their courtship provides the only relief from the tragedy unfolding in Eichwald.

The White Ribbon was shot in color but Haneke had it all drained away leaving behind some gorgeous black & white. There are many long shots which double as long takes where he refuses to cut in. We viewers are held at arm's length for much of the film. Some scenes feature only natural light which can mean simply a lantern or two. Furthermore the camera is static. No graceful Steadicam work to be found here. While the cinematography contributes an austere beauty, the absence of any music on the soundtrack is resoundingly stark. There are no cues trying to direct the viewer's sympathies or emphasize an action or character. We are left with light & shade, facial expressions, and dialogue.

The film comes to a close with World War I looming and the schoolteacher approaching the pastor with his conviction that the children of the village are to blame for the misery that has befallen it over the past year. However willing he is to inflict pain and humiliation on his own children, the pastor will be damned if he'll let an outsider, of sorts, make such an accusation. He threatens to denounce the schoolteacher publicly which silences him. Our narrator tells us that he eventually left Eichwald and life went on there as it had before.

What was Haneke trying to say? That authoritarianism in dealing with one's neighbors and children was necessary for the Nazis, World War II, and the Holocaust? Sufficient? I am not familiar with Haneke or his previous films so I'm not sure whether such a simplistic argument is one he'd likely make. However such a proposition seems too simple. I suppose the film is making a more general case that desperate people take desperate actions. In the film, the pastor's daughter Klara sticks a pair of scissors into her father's bird in an act of revenge. There is also a scene where the son of the woman who fell through the floor of the sawmill takes a scythe to the Baron's cabbage patch as he blamed the Baron's negligence for his mother's death. Perhaps these scenes are the most important of the film as they demonstrate how those who are oppressed or downtrodden will lash out unpredictably and irrationally and this kind of anger can be manipulated by a person like Adolf Hitler. It isn't that treating one's neighbors and children so horribly leads to fascism but that more general feelings of anger and contempt can be directed outward by an entire country.

We Are All Lucifer: Legion @ the Viaduct Theatre, 22 March 2010

And he asked him, "What is thy name?" And he answered, saying, "My name is Legion: for we are many." (Mark 5:9)



This bit of scripture provides the name of William Peter Blatty's sequel to The Exorcist which has been made into a play by the folks at WildClaw Theatre in Chicago. The Dulcinea and I attended a performance yesterday along with my brother and friend Andrew at the Viaduct Theatre. I've never read the book and have selective memories of The Exorcist III, the film based on Legion, and so it was fun going in not knowing the entire plot and the ending. My brother recently started re-reading the book in anticipation of the play but hadn't finished it by show time.

The story revolves around Lieutenant Kinderman, pictured above, who is investigating a series of murders the victims of which are a boy who had been crucified, a priest decapitated in the confessional booth, and a second priest, Father Dyer, who was a friend of Kinderman's that was desanguinated. These people all bore the distinct markings that another murderer had carved into his victims some 12 years previously. Known as the Gemini Killer, he had been killed in a shootout with police. Kinderman's investigation leads him to the psychiatric ward of a local hospital and a mysterious patient whose identity remains unknown.

WildClaw recruited a large ensemble cast for the production to populate the psych ward, act as fellow police officers, and so on. But Legion is all about Lieutenant Kinderman. Not only is he the lead investigator, but his philosophical and religious ruminations dominate the first half of the play and provide a thematic foundation for the entire story. He reflects on the nature of evil with his friends and co-workers but also with witnesses who must feel like they're being given a philosophical interrogation instead of questioned for what they saw and when. My brother told me that Kinderman's metaphysical banter is pervasive in the book and that the play captured them quite well.

During the intermission, I was out having a smoke with my brother and we were joined by someone involved with the production who told us that the first half was all setup – the second half is when all the crazy shit happens. And indeed it was.

Kinderman discovers the identity of the enigmatic mental patient which ties this story into the original Exorcist via Father Damien Karras, he who killed himself by jumping out the window after finding himself possessed by the demon. Plus there are a couple great scenes which worked their horror magic on me. In one, a nurse working the night shift in the psych ward is brutally murdered. Her scream, and the use of light and shadow really scared the bejezzus out of me. In addition, Kinderman's family is threatened in another scene and, although not scary per se, it was incredibly creepy and tense. Kudos to the light and sound folks who plied their respective trades to great effect here. The use of light and shade as well as music that set a mood but didn't overpower what was happening onstage all helped create an incredibly eerie mood throughout.

Fidelity to the source material and technical wizardry aside, the play rises or falls on the performance of Len Bajenski as Kinderman and yesterday it was a mixed bag. On the bright side, Bajenski looks the part. He is older than most of his fellow actors here, including his fellow police officers. This, along with costumes, makes for a nice contrast and enhances his world-weary countenance. Watching him contemplate existence and the place of evil within it doesn't feel contrived, it only sounds like it. And that's my gripe with his performance – his voice. Kinderman is Jewish and his way of talking here sounded hackneyed in a way that's difficult to describe. It sounded more Seinfeld cliché than natural too often for my taste. In Bajenski's defense, my brother pointed out that it's hard not to compare him to the late great George C. Scott who played Kinderman in The Exorcist III no matter how unfair that may be. Still, there was just something in his voice's cadence which didn't work for me. It didn't make his performance unwatchable by any means, but it wasn't as strong as it could have been.

Regardless, Legion was a lot of fun and I suggest horror fans get thee to the Viaduct before the show ends next month on the 18th.

Stuff White People Like: Google Fiber

So Google wants to deploy fiber to the desktop in one lucky community and Madison is making a pitch. There's even a website by some group where they post photos of people holding up the group's signs saying "I would use Google Fiber".

So who exactly would get the fiber? Are people who can only afford dial-up currently going to be able to get it at an affordable price or will they be left further behind as all those folks who can already afford a 20Mb connection watch their Facebook pages load a nanosecond faster and that bootleg HD copy of Avatar load in just a few minutes?

Detective Cindy Murphy claims to have to deal with "terabytes of data every day at work". I sure hope she was kidding because I'm thinking that she doesn't really deal with the same amount of data that's in the SANs of medium-sized enterprises. Almost all the people at the site above who express their desire for fiber are white people in a white collar office environment. The major exception is this video which makes the case that various non-profits would greatly benefit from it.

A recent survey found that "People with higher rates of broadband access tend to be younger, white or Asian, highly-educated, married, and with higher incomes, while those with no broadband are often seniors or minorities, less educated, and living in non-family households with lower incomes or unemployed." So who do you think is going to be getting fiber to their desktops?

I hope we here in Madison get Google's fiber but I also hope that it brings forward a discussion about those who do not have Internet access (which includes people who can afford it but don't want it) and those who cannot afford a broadband connection. One out of every two students in Madison public schools qualifies for a reduced-price or free lunch. Are these kids going home to broadband Internet connections? Does it matter if there are people without Internet access here in Madison who still wouldn't have it even if Google laid fiber?

Like I said, I'm rooting for the home squad here. But I also hope that fiber to the desktop would actually serve a purpose other than simply allowing people who can already afford the fastest broadband currently available to download their mp3s faster.

Little Pigs, Let Me In

Designer Chris Dimino has designed a clock for people like me who are cuckoo for Kubrick.

"Every hour, Jack breaks through the door, uttering the famous line, 'Heeeere’s Johnny,' followed by Shining co-star Shelly Duvall's unmistakable scream."

Tom Baker Returns to Doctor Who Audio Once More

After doing the audio drama Hornets' Nest last year for the BBC, Tom Baker has decided to yet again reprise his role as The Doctor on audio, but this time it's for Big Finish. The revelation came from Baker himself at his webpage.

Red Cliff

According to Shang Zuo over at Asian Wisconzine, the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history is immensely popular with Chinese as demonstrated by the classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms written in the 14th century by Luo Guanzhong and the numerous films, TV series, etc. which have succeeded it. John Woo's Red Cliff is the latest in this long line of dramatizations of the period. In China the film runs about five hours but we Americans get a version that is half that length.

As Zuo explains, the Three Kingdoms period took place in the 3rd century C.E. as the Han Dynasty was in decline. The kingdoms were the Wei, Shu, and Wu. Cao Cao, a Wei warlord expanded his power and territory through various battles. Red Cliff begins with some voiceover narration explaining this general state of affairs before we see the pretender to the throne pressure the emperor to allow him to turn southwards to take on Liu Bei of the Shu kingdom.

Liu Bei's forces are unable defeat Cao Cao's so they eschew head-on confrontation in favor of protecting the villagers who are fleeing the marauders from the north. Bei sends his military strategist Zhuge Liang to forge an alliance with Viceroy Zhou Yu of the Wu kingdom. The two sit down and battle one another on Chinese zithers. Liang is successful and the new allies make their stand at Red Cliff against Cao Cao's massive navy and his hundreds of thousands of troops.



The film had a large budget by Asian standards and this along with Woo's presence means that the battle sequences are thrilling. They're expertly staged and seamlessly blend hordes of extras with CGI effects. Before the main battle itself, a group of Cao Cao's infantry are ambushed by Bei and Quan's combined forces in a tortoise maneuver which involves luring the troops into maze created by soldiers who form moving walls with their shields to separate the enemy into smaller and smaller groups. Woo and his DPs begin with a fantastic long shot before moving in and showing Cao Cao's forces slowly being picked off in the face of their incredibly coordinated enemy.

Considering that we're getting only half a film here, this version of Red Cliff hangs together quite well. While we Americans no doubt got the vast majority of battle scenes, I would guess that there's more Cao Cao rampaging across the north that we missed. Plus there's surely lots of character back story left out as well since people's pasts are hinted at throughout the film. For instance, Cao Cao is entranced by Zhou Yu's wife. In the short version, we get a smidgeon of why this is so but it seems that there's more to be had since it is intimated that his feelings for her are at least a part of his motivation for war and their meeting towards the end of the film has immense ramifications.

Despite all this, the film's narrative remains cohesive and there's no scenes which leave you completely flummoxed for want of that which was left out.

Lastly, I want to publicly admit that I'm developing a man-crush on Tony Leung, who portrayed Zhou Yu. His scenes with Takeshi Kaneshiro's Zhuge Liang were some of the best of the film. Whether it be testing each other via a zither duel or plotting their moves against Cao Cao, their scenes are alternately graceful and intense. After seeing Leung in Lust, Caution, 2046 and now Red Cliff, I am really taking to him. He has gravitas and charisma to burn. If I were a Jungian, I'd say that Zhou Yu was the full package – lover, warrior, magician, and king. He is a first rate strategist and leader of soldiers. Plus he kicks ass in hand-to-hand combat. Yet he halts military training to put a young boy's flute in tune and we see his tender side in scenes with his wife. Leung can be approachable and gentle when he wants to be and stoic or vicious when necessary.

Consider me his newest fan-boy.

The Boy Is Becoming A Man

When I first started dating The Dulcinea and got to know her son Miles, I am sure one of the first things he and I did together was watch The Simpsons. And so for years we'd watch the show and we'd generally laugh at completely different things. Miles enjoyed Bart's pranks and all the goofy things while I tended to laugh more at all the references and parodies, although I also love any scene which involves Homer saying "Steady…steady…"

But last night the first sign that things are changing was seen. Miles decided he wanted to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and he got through the scenes where we learn about Poole and Bowman's routine about Discovery before he went to bed. However, before he retired for the night, he had made connections between some Simpsons bits and the film. For instance:



Oh, and this one too:



Since we didn't get to the Stargate sequence, he hasn't made the connection between it and the Spinemelter 2000 yet but it will come in good time.

Just before heading to his bedroom he told me, "The Simpsons sure references a lot of other stuff." This could be the turning point in his life when he begins to view The Simpsons with a whole different set of eyes and starts the long journey of getting all the cultural references in the show. The boy is becoming a man.

Next up: Rashomon!

Burlesque For Nerds

Star Wars burlesque.

V.S. Ramachandran @ Union Theatre, 10 March 2010

(Photo from The Daily Cardinal.)

V.S. Ramachandran swung through town last week and gave a speech at the Union Theatre on Wednesday. Being a neurologist, he spoke about some ideas on how the brain works and completed a trifecta of speakers this season who offered insights on cognition and how and why people think what they do. (The others were Dan Ariely and Michael Shermer.) Ramachandran's concerns were less behavioral and more about the nitty gritty of grey matter – all those synapses, neuron, and the like.

He began by saying that his field likes to examine people who had changes in their brains. When he said this, I automatically thought of Phineas Gage, that railroad worker who got an iron rod shot through his brain in an accident involving blasting powder and, although he survived, was never the same person again. But Ramachandran avoided such incidents in his talk and instead focused on three topics: 1) phantom limbs, 2) synesthesia, and 3) mirror neurons.

Phantom limbs refers to the sensations people have of limbs that have been lost. Amputees report that, although their limbs are no longer there, if still feels like they are and somewhere between 2/3 to ¾ of people with phantom limbs feel great pain so studying them is no mere academic exercise. V.S. explained how he was able to get a patient, as he jokingly put it, to move his phantom limb. First he noted that copies of brain commands to move muscles were sent to the cerebellum so that the brain can monitor movement. Then he told of how the man tried every day to "unstick" his phantom limb to no avail. VS was able to rig a mirror to create the illusion that the severed limb was back and, lo and behold, the visual stimulation enabled the patient to "move" the phantom limb. VS said that no one gets awards or funding for getting someone to move a phantom limb so he talked about this kind of treatment for stroke victims.

This subject led into a brief discussion of mirror neurons. Work by Giacomo Rizzolatti and others has shown that the mirror neurons of monkeys fire when watching other monkeys perform actions. And so, when monkey A is watching monkey B grab a banana, the neurons in monkey A's brain which would fire to induce those same muscle movements do indeed fire but don't produce the movement. VS said there is evidence that we humans have these same mirror neurons as well. Relating this back to his first topic, he said that people with phantom limbs can only feel touch in them by watching the actions of others. This led to my hypothesis that my friend Marv, who was also in attendance, could only feel touch in his phantom penis when watching other men…well, you get the idea. The benefits of science are many although Marv might not be so enthusiastic about this.

Puerile jokes aside, I never knew that so many people with phantom limbs felt such great pain. I can imagine such research is of tremendous importance - the many soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan who have lost limbs sprang to mind as I sat there.

The final topic of his lecture was about synesthesia, which is a sensory phenomenon where one type of input triggers an unrelated response. VS focused on the variety involving colors and numbers whereby some people would see a numbers as a color but he also noted those who got certain tastes in their mouths after touching certain textures. Interestingly, Roman numerals didn't do it, only Arabic ones. This and other evidence pointed to the parts of the brain responsible for dealing color and shape are in close proximity to one another and that they are connected in synesthetes to a greater degree than in those who do not have synesthesia. Ramachandran finished by talking about metaphor. He told us that schizophrenics are unable to comprehend metaphor and instead take everything literally. By way of example, he quoted Shakespeare: "Juliet is the sun!" A schizophrenic would be aghast to learn Bill thought a person was a blazing hot ball of gas but we "sane" folks get it. Perhaps metaphor, like synesthesia, reflects how the various parts of our brains are connected to one another.

And that was a major theme of the lecture. While the various parts of the brain may specialize in particular functions, there is a lot of overlap.

VS called the brain the "most complexly organized matter in the universe". Our grey matter is, if you'll pardon the expression, truly mind-boggling.

Precogs Hired by Oregon

Radley Balko points to a disturbing case where Oregon officials have apparently hired precogs so police can arrest people before they commit a crime.

Concerns about an Oregon Department of Transportation employee who purchased several guns after being placed on leave prompted law enforcement across Southern Oregon to step in.

Negotiators and a SWAT team from Medford police safely took a man — whose name wasn't released — into protective custody Monday morning in the 500 block of Effie Street, Medford police said in a news release.

He was taken to Rogue Valley Medical Center for a mental-health evaluation.

As Balko notes:

But there’s a phrase we use to describe the sort of society where the police can come into your home, arrest you, commit you to a mental facility, and confiscate your legally-obtained property on no more than a hunch that you might commit some crime in the near future.

That would be a police state.

How Much Post-Modern Irony Is Needed to Find This Funny?

Patrick Kennedy Rips Into National Press Corps

Rep. Patrick Kennedy lays into the press for not covering our venture in Afghanistan and instead saturating the news with sex scandals.

While the press certainly have a large share of blame here, even more must go to us. I don't think that most people care. Unless someone has a friend or relative over there, Americans have better things to worry about. Right? It's not like there isn't a whole TV channel devoted to broadcasting what happens in Congress. There isn't a hunger for watching Congressional debates about the war in Afghanistan. If there was, C-SPAN's ratings would be through the roof.

While there certainly are a lot of people in this country who have pressing matters such as keeping a roof over their head to keep them occupied, the great middle class in this country whose biggest decision is iPhone or Droid doesn't want to think about what's happening in Afghanistan.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher

After reading about suffering and the Vietnam War, I was up for something a bit lighter in the reading department and so chose Jim Butcher's Storm Front, the first novel in his Dresden Files series. The protagonist of the novels is one Harry Dresden, a wizard who makes his living as a private investigator in Chicago. I believe that I first heard of the books back in 2006 or so when the SciFi Channel was gearing up to broadcast a TV series based on the books. At the time I made a mental note to check out the books and finally got around to doing so last week.



I watched one episode of the TV series and just thought it too cliché-ridden and, well, cheesy. The book, however, is a lot better. Sure, it revels in Dashiel Hammett and noir, but it manages to exploit the novelty of the premise well. Having said all that, I still must say that I don't plan on continuing the series. I had a handful of gripes.

First comes the more menial of my complaints. Simply put, Jim Butcher doesn't know Chicago. Or, at least, didn't when he wrote the book. He doesn't describe the geography of the real Chicago and the people don't talk like real Chicagoans. I don't doubt for a second that none of this would bother me if I weren't from Chicago but, seeing as how I am, they did. They couldn't even bother putting the Chicago skyline on the cover of the book and instead get some generic rendering. Butcher didn't even try. I mean, all he had to do was make reference to well-known landmarks like the Sears Tower to just give the book the slightest hint of verisimilitude but he couldn't even do that.

A minor point, to be sure, but I found it distracting.

More damning is that the protagonist, Harry Dresden, is a very uneven character. There are times when he's an ass-kicking wizard with a dark past that requires more illumination and then there are times when he's puerile and annoying. The book is in first-person and passages such as those when Dresden describes his paucity of experience on the dating scene comes across as simple whining. Part of the problem lies in the narrative style. Butcher likes to put Dresden into an Irving the Explainer mode. So he'll do something and then explain that such things are what wizards do in a burst of really weak braggadocio. Is this guy an adult wizard or a child pining for attention?

Butcher does, however, have a good story. How can you not like people's chests exploding? The investigation moves through various locales and there's a nice cast of characters surrounding Dresden including a vampire named Madam Bianca and the stereotypical mysterious dame in distress. There's some good noir action to be had here and some interesting genre tweaking but characterization is, overall, lacking.