Mistakes Were Made

According to the BBC, Josef Stalin is a contender in a Russian poll for greatest Russian of all time. Out of almost 4 million total votes, about 400,000 have gone to Stalin. BBC reports further that:

The fact that Stalin has been doing so well comes as no surprise to members of the Communist Party, which remains one of the biggest political parties in the country.

"Stalin made Russia a superpower and was one of the founders of the coalition against Hitler in World War II," says Sergei Malinkovich, leader of the St Petersburg Communist Party.

"In all opinion polls he comes out on top as the most popular figure. Nobody else comes close. So for his service to this country we can forgive his mistakes."

His what? His - mistakes? You mean, his genocidal extermination of millions was just a mistake? The anguish of those who withered and died in Siberian gulags was just a result of a forgivable error in judgment on Comrade Stalin's part?

Surely this supasses every record in the invention of euphemisms.

I wonder what Sergei Malinkovich would think about those mistakes if he had to spend even just one day in the life of Ivan Denisovich.

Come on, Russia. Your country has produced leaders like Catherine the Great and Peter the Great, deathless literary titans such as Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekov, Bugalkov, and Solzhenitzen, and legendary composers like Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky. And none of them had to resort to exterminating their own countrymen to achieve what they did!

Царство Американское

CNN: Biden to be working families czar

Why this recent penchant for czars? Last year there was talk of a war czar, and now Biden's a working families czar? Couldn't the media find a term that doesn't make it sound like we're living in Muscovite Russia?

Боже, Царя храни!

Their President Too

I detest Rick Warren. I think him a bigoted ass who furthers the damage he has done to this country every time his flock grows by another imbecile.

That said, I am delighted with the President-Elect's decision to have him deliver the invocation at January's inauguration.

This may appear to be a contradiction - a blasphemous one in the eyes of some liberals, apparently. But look back to Obama's acceptance speech from November 4: "And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn - I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too."

Obama wasn't just saying that. He wants to show conservative Christian Americans - the people who most gravely doubt his morals, his religion, and his patriotism - that they, too, have a role to play under this administration. And elements of the left are scorning him for it!

Isn't this why we elected the man? To unite the country? To listen to all Americans - not just one or the other side of the political fence? Change under the Obama administration doesn't mean simply exchanging which half of America will be listened to and which half will be ignored. Like it or not, Rick Warren and his congregation are also Americans. And what will make Barack Obama different is that, despite his disagreements with them, he will be their President too.

The Reason for the Season

Although "Happy Holidays" has become the vogue, P.C. way to greet people this time of year, I harbor no compunction about wishing others a "Merry Christmas". But it's not what you think. I am not a Bill O'Reilly fighting the war against the forces of secularization; it's just that I think the war is over. And we won. Christmas is a secular holiday.

Granted, not for all. Some people still desperately cling to the Christian roots of the holiday. Despite that those roots are planted in pagan dirt - the winter solstice festival that predates Christianity by thousands of years - such people insist that "Jesus is the reason for the season."

They are wrong. Santa Claus is the reason for the season.

Santa has dethroned Jesus. The shopping mall is his church, the elves are his saints, and fruitcake and egg nog are his holy communion.

Only a powerful capacity for denial can allow one to believe that the man who put the Christ in Christmas still matters at this time of year. Whatever the religious history of the holiday may be, look at it now. It is not about God or Jesus or your eternal soul. It is presents. It is Christmas trees. It is food. It is traveling hundreds of miles to see family. It is egg nog and mistletoe, a fire in the fireplace, and Christmas-movie marathons on TV. It is hyperactive children on Christmas morning dragging their bleary-eyed parents out of bed.

It is wonderful.

Not all of it, of course; Christmas as we know it also glorifies consumerism to a perverse extreme and encourages the exchange of material goods as the only valid expression of love. But I contend that even this is an improvement on the old model. Whatever vandalism consumerism commits on the human spirit, it's nothing compared to the epic guilt produced by the idea of sin.

There are many who still go to church on Christmas, but I wager that the percentage of the population who choose to waste an otherwise beautiful morning in this fashion drops every year. And manger scenes are still ubiquitous, but they look more and more quaint next to all the pretty light displays and iPod advertisements.

So atheist though I may be, I see no contradiction in wishing people a Merry Christmas. To my mind it is no more indicative of reverence for the Messiah than yelling his name when I've dropped a hammer on my foot. Christmas is a holiday that celebrates being with friends and family, eating good food, and exchanging presents. It is a lovely tradition in its purely secular form, and the inclusion of the superstitions whence it came contributes nothing of value.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good, godless night!

The Blind Guide

"In dunkeln Zeiten wurden die Völker am besten durch die Religion geleitet, wie in stockfinstrer Nacht ein Blinder unser bester Wegweiser ist; er kennt dann Wege und Stege besser als ein Sehender - Es ist aber töricht, sobald es Tag ist, noch immer die alten Blinden als Wegweiser zu gebrauchen."

"In dark times the people were best led by religion, just as in the dark of night a blind man is our best guide; at such a time he knows the ways and byways better than someone with sight - But it is foolish, once day has dawned, to keep using the old blind men as guides."

- Heinrich Heine, Aphorisms and Fragments

Happy Thanksgiving!

Some intriguing facts about this holiday that are often ignored, obscured, or misrepresented by tradition and school pageants:

The Pilgrims did not wear black-and-white clothing and buckled hats and shoes. They wore colorful clothing, and buckles wouldn’t emerge as a Puritan fashion for at least another fifty years. They are contemporaneous with the Salem Witch Trials, not the first Thanksgiving.

Of the 102 people aboard the Mayflower, only 35 were actual Pilgrims; the rest were simply common people who wanted to start new lives in the New World and make money from the fur trade.

We do not know if the group wanted to settle in Massachusetts or if they arrived there by accident, but when they arrived in late 1620, they did not find a pristine or unforgiving wilderness. Instead, they found empty villages and crop fields. Over past years, 95% of the native American population had been decimated by smallpox and other diseases introduced by Europeans. The Pilgrims appropriated the empty towns and cultivated land for themselves, and this was a key factor in their survival.

The reason Squanto spoke English was not, as some innocuous legends would have you believe, that he learned English from British fishermen. Rather, he had been kidnapped by a British sea captain and had spent about 15 years as a slave in England and Spain. After a truly Odyssean ordeal, he convinced a ship captain to take him back to New England in 1619, but when he got there, he was stunned to find that his entire village was gone. Everyone had died of smallpox two years earlier.

Squanto helped the Pilgrims plant crops and start the fur trade. A group of Indians called the Wampanoags, led by Massasoit, also helped the Pilgrims. Massasoit sought an alliance with the Pilgrims because disease had so weakened his villages that he feared the Narragansetts to the west.

The Thanksgiving feast that we commemorate today probably took place in early fall instead of late November. Duck, not Turkey, was probably the principal meat served, along with venison brought by the Wampanoag, who considered it a delicacy. There was also squash, corn, and pumpkin, none of which the Pilgrims had ever seen before, as they are foods indigenous to the Americas. Cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes, two modern-day Thanksgiving favorites, were not even invented yet.

Indians outnumbered Pilgrims at the first Thanksgiving by almost two to one; there were about 50 Pilgrims and about 90 Wampanoags.

Instead of a single day, the original Thanksgiving lasted a week.

Although religious days of thanksgiving to God were sometimes declared in the colonial and early American periods, and particularly in the revolutionary period by Samuel Adams, our modern, secular tradition of Thanksgiving did not begin until 1863, during the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln pronounced a “National Day of Thanksgiving.” Thanksgiving was not fixed as the fourth Thursday of every November until 1941.

Proposition 8

Keith Olbermann provides an eloquent and moving response to the revolting bigots who passed California's Prop 8 last week:




If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want—a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage. If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal in 1967. 1967. The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead.

The world is barren enough. It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.

And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?

The Left-Wing Media's Right-Wing Blindspots

Even before this week, conservatives have been bemoaning the notorious "liberal media" and their imbalanced treatment of the presidential campaigns. No doubt they will continue to blame the media as a major factor in John McCain's loss of the election.

The media refused to ask Barack Obama tough questions! Sarah Palin suffered constant, vicious criticism, while gaffe-master Joe Biden was almost ignored! So much bad press over Cindy McCain's and Sarah Palin's wardrobes! And so on.

But if the media lived up to their infamous liberal partiality in these respects, they fell curiously short of the mark in others.

Why so much controversy about Reverend Wright, and hardly any about the psycho, con-artist pastor who gave Sarah Palin a blessing protecting her from "every form of witchcraft"?

How did Barack Obama catch hell over a weak association with William Ayers, when John McCain has publicly expressed pride in his own relationship with convicted Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy?

Why did the media let Sarah Palin get so much press for saying Barack Obama doesn't "see America as you and I do", while hardly mentioning the Palins' cozy association with an Alaskan secessionist movement?

Isn't it curious, too, that the media reported Rashid Khalidi's ties to Barack Obama, but didn't say much about the International Republican Institute, when chaired by John McCain, giving $500,000 to the Center for Palestine Research and Studies - an organization founded by Rashid Khalidi?

Oh, and the whole ACORN thing was certainly a liability for Obama. So why didn't the media do more with the fact that John McCain was a headline speaker at an ACORN rally two years ago?

Sorry, conservatives. You can't blame Obama's victory on the media. If they really are as liberal as you say they are, then they need to get their act together.

Anti-American

For the past eight years, conservatives have denounced critics of the Executive Branch as "un-american", "unpatriotic", and even as the allies of terrorists. To such conservatives, such as Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, any criticism of the president is tantamount to anti-Americanism or even "evil" (see e.g. Hannity's work of profound demagogy, Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism. 2004.).

Their position has been "My President, right or wrong."

Soon, however, that president will be Barack Obama, and conservatives will find themselves in the opposition camp. Beginning January 20, we will see whether they still believe criticism of a wartime president to be anti-American.

President Barack Obama

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
-Barack Obama


A man who once would have been considered by his country to be only three-fifths of a human being has just been given the mandate of that same country's people to be its president. That is America's greatness; not that we never make mistakes, but that we overcome them; not that we are perfect, but that each generation moves us closer to our ideals.

The question now will become whether President Barack Obama can repair the economy, lift America's reputation in the eyes of the world, and bring the country together to move it forward. He will be the president, that now is certain; can he be one of the great presidents in our country's history?

Yes, he can.

VOTE

Mark Twain once remarked that the man who does not read books has no advantage over the man who can't. The same could be said about voting.

GO VOTE.

Palin as President

http://www.palinaspresident.us/

Make sure you have the sound on, and click on things in the room.

(Thanks to KW for bringing this to my attention.)

Six Degrees of Barack Obama

First Reverend Wright. Then Bill Ayers. Now another of Barack Obama's trivial acquaintances is serving as the conduit for the McCain camp's aspersions: Rashid Khalidi, a "radical" Columbia professor with reported ties to the PLO.

It speaks to the strength of Obama's candidacy that the dirtiest mud they can find to sling at him amounts to nothing more than six degrees of separation. The PLO has a tenuous link to a Columbia professor, who is a minor onetime associate of Barack Obama; therefore Obama is... an anti-Israeli terrorist sympathizer? These attacks don't sully Obama's name as much as they advertise the desperation of the McCain campaign.

Throughout their lives, politicians shake a lot of hands. Those hands belong to many people with different viewpoints, some of which are bound to be unconventional or objectionable.

A few years back, John McCain had glowing words for Jerry Falwell, an intolerant beast who blamed 9/11 on homosexuals and the pro-choice movement. Palin and her husband have a cozy relationship with an Alaskan secessionist movement. I'm sure if the Obama campaign wanted to, they could dredge the seafloor of McCain's long career and bring to light even more unsettling associations than these. But Obama and his campaign have demonstrated a cool, mature confidence that rises above that kind of dreck.

In the last debate, John McCain sternly reminded Obama, "I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago." McCain could use some similar advice himself. Senator McCain, Barack Obama is not everyone he has ever met. You can use the last few days of your campaign articulating your vision for America, or you can keep thumbing through Obama's Rolodex. Your call.

Scott McClellan's Secret

Colin Powell's support of the Obama campaign was deservedly big news this week. And Rush Limbaugh's analysis thereof was predictably asinine.

Limbaugh clearly felt threatened because Powell, a duly respected military man and former member of the Bush administration, is changing teams. So Limbaugh shrugged off the news by asserting that Powell is supporting Obama because of race. His comments drew immediate and harsh criticism, but he didn't back down. Thinking himself slyly perspicacious, Limbaugh quipped, "[I'm] researching Powell's past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal white candidates that he has endorsed. I'll let you know what I come up with."

The problem with his breezy, fatuous analysis is its ahistoricity. To look at Powell's past endorsements is to conveniently disregard the present circumstances, to wit, a litany of Republican failures and the poor choices of the McCain campaign. Powell himself cited these factors as reasons for his endorsement, but Limbaugh, as usual, prefers a fantasy world in which apostate conservatives can be motivated only by ulterior, irrational motives.

This poses a problem regarding Scott McClellan, who formally announced his support for Obama today. He's also a former member of the Bush administration who's almost certainly never endorsed a candidate like Obama before. So what's that all about?

I predict that tomorrow, Rush Limbaugh, cigar clamped between his fat jowls, will announce on his radio program that Scott McClellan is secretly black.

Christopher Columbus

Columbus Day. The day we celebrate Columbus - according to the popular imagination, a visionary explorer who proved the Earth was round and discovered the New World.

It's just that he didn't prove the Earth was round. And of course he wasn't the first to discover the Americas. Oh, and he oversaw genocide, pimped little girls out as prostitutes, and got the transatlantic slave trade underway. But sure, great guy.

Columbus did not prove the Earth was round. In fact, the ancients understood the shape and size of the Earth better than Columbus. Eratosthenes, a 3rd-Century BC Greek librarian at the Library of Alexandria, not only knew the Earth was round, but calculated its circumference to within 10% of its actual value. No one with half a brain in 1492 thought the Earth was flat.

Another misperception - or perhaps poor choice of words - is that Columbus "discovered" America. He was the first European to make extensive explorations and to bring his findings back to Europe, but let's not give him more credit than he's due. After all, we don't say that Neil Armstrong "discovered" the moon.

Fine, you say. He didn't prove the sphericality of the Earth, and he wasn't the absolute first to discover the Americas. But he was still an intrepid explorer, right? He still did great things for civilization, right?

There's no doubt that he changed the course of world history. But even with so much celebration surrounding Columbus's voyage to the New World, people rarely learn about the wretched things he did once he got there.

On Hispanola, Columbus implemented a program of genocidal slavery: he demanded that each native bring him a certain quantity of gold every week. Those who missed the quota had their hands cut off. Anyone who refused to participate in the program was killed. In two years, Columbus managed the systematic extermination of 250,000 Arawak Indians. Over the next few decades, countless millions would die under the genocidal policies instituted by Columbus and passed on to the other thugs in his family.

Columbus was the first to see the potential for slaves in the native peoples of the Americas; he sent back about 5000 slaves to Spain, setting in motion the transatlantic slave trade that would cause incalculable suffering over the next 350 years. He also encouraged sexual slavery; as James Loewen notes:

"As soon as the 1493 expedition got to the Caribbean, before it even reached Haiti, Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape. On Haiti, sex slaves were one more perquisite that the Spaniards enjoyed. Columbus wrote a friend in 1500, 'A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.'"

Columbus was a rapist, a slavedriver, and a genocidal fiend. And the USA has a holiday named after him, placing him alongside such genuine luminaries as Washington, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King! Can't we give the day to someone who deserves it - like, for instance, the hundreds of thousands of people who were raped, mutilated, killed, or sold off under the supervision of this great historical figure?

Judicious Ignorance

Sarah Palin proves yet again that she would be over her head in even a high school civics class:

Couric: What other Supreme Court decisions [other than Roe v. Wade] do you disagree with?

Palin: Mmmmm. Well... let's see. There's... Of course, in the - the great history of America there have been rulings that there's never going to be absolute consensus by every American, and... there are those issues, like, again, Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there, so you know, going through the history of America, there - there would be others, but um...

Couric: Can you think of any?

Palin: Well, I would think of any, again, that would best be dealt with on a more local level, maybe I would take issue with, but you know, as a mayor, as a governor, and even as a vice president, if I'm so privilaged to serve, wouldn't be in a position of changing those things...

Wrong, governor. You would be in a position to change those things. See, as a member of the Executive Branch, you would participate directly in the appointment of new Supreme Court justices. That's kind of a big deal. See the Constitution, Article II, Section 2.

So not only is this woman clueless about the Supreme Court and American legal history, she also still hasn't quite figured out the responsibilites of the office for which she's running.

One thing's for sure, though. She sure is an average American - average, in that she knows nothing about her own government. The problem is she might actually get elected to lead it.

Oh, Me of Little Faith

The following is a transcription of a conversation I had with two American missionaries on a busy street in Duisburg, Germany.

Missionary 1: Guten Tag!

Me: Tag.

M1: Wir kommen aus Amerika und wollten mit Ihnen reden über...

Me: I'm American.

M1: Oh, no way! Where are you from?

(Small talk ensues.)

M1: So, you can probably tell what organization we're with...

Me: Well, judging by your nametags, I'd guess the Church of Jesus Christ.

M1: Exactly! We're also better known by the name of Mormons.

Me: Yes, I know who you are.

M1: Great! So basically, we're on a mission here and today we're just asking people what their beliefs are. So, what do you believe? Do you follow a certain religion, or...

Me: I'm an atheist.

M1: Ok. How long have you been an atheist, your whole life?

Me: No, actually, back in middle and high school I still believed in god, but then I started questioning things. For instance, there's a plurality of religions in the world, and many claim to be the only true faith, and I reject that one is true and another is false, because there's no external standard by which to judge the veracity of any religion. I also learned about the history of religions, and how religions came about, and I concluded that frankly, they're all false.

M1: Yeah, well it's interesting what you said about there being many religions. Personally, I think that people have their own relationships with God, and that different religions might have different views of it but it's really the same experience. But I used to be an atheist too, actually. When I was younger I thought 'No way, I don't believe in God, I don't see any reason to'. But then my father and I started talking - I was raised in the Church, you know, but we all reach that point in our lives when we doubt things like this - my father and I talked and he and I prayed together. And my father told me to pray for an answer. And when I did, I had this great feeling, like God was talking to me and saying, I'm here and I love you. And then I prayed about the books - the Bible and the Book of Mormon. And again, I just got this great feeling. Like God was really there for me, like He knew what I was going through and He had the answers.

Me: I see. But for me, that's not enough of a reason to believe in god. Frankly, I don't put much stock in prayer. There's no way to prove anybody's listening. You spoke of a 'feeling', but - you know what the placebo effect is? I think it's a lot like that. You pray because it comforts you and makes you feel good, but you really end up believing whatever you want to believe. And also, I think prayer is, in logical terms, an ad hoc fallacy - something that's tailored to be true no matter what. For instance, if my mother has a terminal illness, and I pray to god to heal her - if she lives, I say, praise the Lord, he answered my prayers! But if she dies, I say, well, god has a plan, and he knows best. You see? It's perpetually self-verifying - no matter what happens, it's assumed that prayer works.

M1. Yeah, I understand what you're saying. In fact, I had a cousin who died, and he was about my age, and he and I were very close, so I know exactly what you're talking about in terms of praying to god. But at that time, when I was mourning for my cousin, what I really needed was comfort. I needed to be comforted. And I found that comfort in God.

Me: I find it interesting that you used the word comfort, because I think that that's really the foundation of all religion - the fear of things beyond our control, the fear of what we don't understand, and I think the comfort of religion caters to those fears. If you don't understand something about the world, you can explain it away by saying that god made it happen. And if something terrible happens, you can tell yourself that god has a plan, and you'll feel better. But that doesn't make it true. I think people have many sources for comfort, and many people find comfort in their religions, but I don't think it's necessary. I think there are other ways to find strength and comfort.

M1: But look, I wasn't saying I found comfort in my religion, I was saying I found comfort in God, and in my prayers to God and my relationship with Him.

Me: Well, exactly. I don't see how finding comfort that way is any different from having an imaginary friend. Suppose right now I created an imaginary friend named George, and I unburdened my heart to him, and told him all of my fears and hopes. I would probably experience the same relief and comfort that you did praying to god, and I don't see what the difference is.
Look, I've got to run, but it's been nice talking with you guys.

M1: Nice talking to you too! Would you like a Book of Mormon? It's in German, you might find it interesting!

Me: I think it would be wasted on me, but thanks.

No Ordinary Republic

The USA is in fact not a democracy. In a strict democracy, such as that of ancient Athens, citizens vote directly to create laws and enact policy.

We don't do that in the United States. First of all, it is a logistical impossibility to have all American citizens vote on every law and issue. But there's another reason, too, why we don't practice strict democracy. The founders of the United States realized that the average American citizen simply would not know enough about many issues to make informed, rational decisions.

Two perfect examples of this are the current mortgage lender crisis and nation-building in Iraq: these are tortuous problems that require specialized knowledge for even a solid understanding of the subject, let alone productive analysis.

So the founders created not a democracy, but a democratic republic. In a republic, citizens elect leaders to represent them in government and those tough decisions for them. These leaders can have qualities and qualifications that the average citizen lacks, allowing the ship of state to be steered by the best and brightest.

This throws a different light on the current disparaging use of the term 'elitist'. The founding fathers were, undoubtedly, elitists - men of property, wealth, and vast knowledge. They wanted elites like themselves to lead the country, backed by a mandate of a free people. Frankly, they didn't trust the ordinary citizens themselves all that much; they thought them too influenced by frivolous issues (for instance, lapel pins and who can field-dress a moose) and the sophistry of demogogues (like, for example, Rush Limbaugh).

Fastforward to 2008, when Barack Obama comes under fire for acting smarter than other people, and an unimpressive person like Sarah Palin can become the Vice Presidential candidate precisely because of her ordinariness, which is, bizarrely, viewed as a virtue.

The strength of our republic has become its weakness. The leaders we choose to represent us, instead of embodying the best qualities our country has to offer, embody the average, the unexceptional, the mundane.

I understand why people want average people like themselves to lead them. They are intimidated by those with superior qualities, and think that people who share their mediocrities will better represent them in government.

But the past seven years have taught us the price of electing an average schmuck to the highest political office in the land. Average people get you average results. Stupid people get you even worse results. We elected George W. Bush, a trust-fund baby without an achievement or original idea to his name, and seven years later we find ourselves burdened with a gigantic deficit, an economic crisis, and an ongoing misadventure in Iraq. Does no one see this connection between electing an unexceptional leader and getting poor results?

We live in no ordinary republic. We shouldn't elect ordinary people to lead it.

Where Abstinence-Only Education Gets You

It's quaint that Republicans believe you can actually stop teenagers from having sex by telling them not to have sex. It's fitting when the hopelessness of this strategy is demonstrated by one of their own daughters.

I've said this before, but it bears repeating: withholding contraceptives and sexual education from teenagers won't stop them from having sex; it will just ensure that they impregnate each other more often. Conservative "family values" apparently include teens making big, round-wombed mistakes.

Sarah Palin has stated that she and her family are "proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby." As was astutely pointed out on the Daily Show this week, it is obscene that Palin is at once glad that her daughter made a good choice, while eager to take that same choice away from other women:




In response to the media attention Palin's daughter has received, Republicans have declared resentfully that this is a 'private' matter, and that the family should be left alone.

First of all, if this was a Democrat's daughter, they sure as hell wouldn't consider it 'private'. They would be bludgeoning Bristol with the same 'family values' that they're now, bizarrely, using to defend her.

Secondly, it's not a private matter. Bristol Palin is the prospective VP's daughter, and she is a walking rebuttal of her mother's naive, puritanical approach to sex education. It is both relevant and appropriate to ask how Sarah Palin proposes to convince the teens of America to abstain when she couldn't even convince her own daughter. Or why she thinks that her daughter's free choice to keep the baby should be forced upon the rest of America's women.

The Problems with Palin

We should have seen this coming. To stay in this race, McCain has to counter Obama's charisma and youth. By picking a VP who is young, female, and farther to the right, he dusts off his campaign and makes his ticket attractive to a much broader range of voters - including apostate democrats who are bitter about not being able to elect Hillary.

Sarah Palin is the Governor of Alaska. At the moment, there are three particular things about her which make me shudder at the thought of her in the executive branch.

1. Abortion

Governor Palin is against abortion. It's disappointing enough when women fight against their own rights over their own bodies. It's even more disappointing when those women back up their arguments using an antiquated Christian faith which, even if it wasn't a bunch of idle superstition, has nothing to say on the subject of fetuses.

But Governor Palin has taken her Christian pro-life position beyond mere theory. When her pre-natal testing revealed that her son-to-be had Downs Syndrome, she chose to give birth to a retarded baby.

This is a woman who knowingly rolled the dice with her baby's mental health. She got pregnant in her early forties, which, as she must have known, carries with it a massively increased risk of handicapped offspring. And then, when it was clear that the baby would indeed lead a mentally stunted life, she chose to have it, rather than commit the sensible, humane "sin" of aborting it. This earned her major street cred with the pro-life crowd. Personally, I find it vile.

2. Creationism

Regarding creationism and evolution in schools, Palin said in a 2006 interview:

"Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both."

Does she also advocate teaching alchemy alongside chemistry? What about the Copernican model of the universe - should students decide for themselves whether it makes more sense than the data our satellites and telescopes have gathered?

Debate is indeed an essential aspect of education, but presenting creationism alongside evolution may lead the credulous to believe that both are acceptable in the scientific community. Educators should indeed teach students about creationism, but only to hold it up as an example of what science isn't.

So far, Palin has kept silent on whether she thinks her personal religious views lean towards creationism, and whether they conflict with the theory of evolution. Surely her beliefs will be sounded exhaustively in the next two months, so we'll find out whether she's actually crazy or just supports tolerating craziness in the classroom.

3. Oil

Palin's husband Todd is an employee of BP, and Palin herself supports opening the Alaskan wilderness to oil development. But it should be clear by now that America's addiction to oil is something to be overcome, not nurtured.


All this being said, we must remember an important fact about the McCain/Palin ticket: McCain is not exactly in his prime. He's 72 years old and has a history of health problems. Were they to get elected, there is a significant chance that Palin would have to step up herself as president.

This throws into relief the good news about Palin: experience. In choosing Palin, the Republicans have disarmed themselves in the experience debate: surely they can no longer attack Obama on experience when their own VP is even younger and has no experience outside of a sparsely populated, noncontiguous state!

Tubes

For the past two years, Jon Stewart and others have continued to mock Senator Ted Stevens's comment that the internet is a "series of tubes". I had always assumed that this comment was, to at least some extent, taken out of context. But here's the transcript from 2006:

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why?
Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially.
They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck.
It's a series of tubes.
And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
(See Wired, 30 June 2006, Your Own Personal Internet for full transcript.)

So this must be why Senator Stevens is being indicted! He filed his tax return electronically, and his report of those hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of gifts just got clogged in the tubes! By the time he got ahold of a good ePlumber, it was too late.

Medals: Not Just For Kids

In these 2008 Olympics, we've seen:

Dara Torres, 41 years old, win silver for the US in the women's 50m freestyle;

Oksana Chusovitina, a 33-year-old gymnast (!), win silver for Germany at the vault;

Jason Lezak, 32, serve as the anchor to two gold-medal swimming relays for Phelps & Co.; and

Misty May and Kerri Walsh, 31 and 30, respectively, continue their indomitable reign over the sport of beach volleyball.

Congratulations to all athletes, but especially these ones for winning against competitors ten, fifteen, or even twenty years younger than themselves. Their successes are a refreshing contrast to the Chinese "women's" gymnastics team, whose members probably have yet to lose all of their baby teeth.

McAthletes Do Not Exist

It is a sick joke that McDonald's is an 'official sponsor' of the Olympic Games. Sponsoring the Olympics and promoting nationwide obesity should be mutually exclusive.

And as if bringing those disgusting arches into proximity with the Olympic rings isn't blasphemous enough, they made a commercial implying that Olympic hopefuls enjoy the "food" sold at McDonald's. Among the athletes featured in the spot are a female sprinter with washboard abs and a petite blond gymnast who bears a resemblance to silver medalist (and real athlete) Shawn Johnson.

What audacity. I realize that this is worth many millions of dollars to NBC, but it's so nauseating. World-class sprinters and gymnasts consuming processed, artery-clogging McCrap? This is a fantasy world that can only be made possible by the vile, subhuman wretches constituting the McDonald's marketing division.

The Olympics are a celebration of athleticism, competition, diversity, and all-around human excellence. McDonald's is a corporation that sells shockingly unhealthy conglomerations of meat, corn syrup, and white flour mislabeled as food. The Olympics provide role models for kids; McDonald's shamelessly baits children with toys and playgrounds in order to gain access to their parent's wallets, unconcerned that the next generation is growing up fat and unhealthy.

Show some real Olympic spirit: boycott McDonald's.

USA! USA!

New York Times: How Lezak Won Gold in 4x100-Meter Relay

Incredible.

"Cheesus"

People are so desperate to find meaning in their lives that they even seek it in their snack foods. Every few months, a news story appears about some yokel seeing the face of Christ in a slice of French toast, or image of the Virgin Mary in a tortilla. Most recently, the son of God's divine image has graced a Missouri woman's Cheeto.

Fox News: "Cheesus?": Woman Finds Jesus In Bag of Cheetos

"I looked at that and I thought, oh my, that looks like Jesus on the cross, it was just like wow," she says.

The pastor of Kirkwood United Methodist Church does not see anything theologically special about the Cheeto but thinks some good could come from it. Pastor David Bennett says "If people can find Jesus, somehow, in each of us like she's found in this object,that would be a wonderful thing."

Kelly doesn't plan to sell the Cheeto and will keep it in a safe deposit box.

"It was just like wow." We're clearly dealing with a woman of exceptional intelligence. At least the pastor does "not see anything theologically special" about the malformed cheese curl, but he does think that genuine meaning can be extracted from it. I, too, would like to discover my Lord and Savior; where should I begin my spiritual search? The Bible? The Frito-Lay line of snack foods? The #4 meal at my local Taco Bell?

If God, Jesus, or the Virgin Mary wanted to appear to you, why would they choose junk food as their vehicle of manifestation? Wouldn't a cloud, a mighty wave, or a burning bush be a tad more awe-inspiring? Or is the Holy Trinity operating on a low budget these days?

More importantly, the people who "find" divine images in their food don't seem to be concerned about what message their deity is sending. It seems enough for them that the image is there. But in the Bible, God doesn't appear to people without having something he needs to communicate. So what's the message here? It's ambiguous at best - it could be anything from "I am the Lord thy God" to "Cheetos: Endorsed Commercially by Chester Cheetah, and Spiritually by Jesus Christ."

Interesting, isn't it, that harebrained delusions are so similar to religious revelations that people mistake the former for the latter?

The Morality of the Atheist

"If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in Protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in Catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than love of God."

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814.

Ben Stein and Rush Limbaugh: Partners in Idiocy

Evolution and intelligent design are both theories that attempt to explain the existence and diversity of past and present life on Earth. The theories may be summarized as follows.

Evolution: Life began on Earth several billion years ago with the appearance of simple single-celled organisms, which likely formed in a deep-sea vent or a 'primordial soup' of a propitious combination of biomolecules. Over time, genetic mutations during reproduction combined with the pressures of natural selection to guide the evolution of life in a myriad of directions. The complex, multi-celled organisms of today - be they people, redwood trees, or electric eels - are simply the latest iterations in extremely long chains of small, gradual genetic changes that have increased organisms' reproductive chances. This theory has been directly observed and proven in microorganisms, and although the generations of macroorganisms are too long to observe their evolution directly, their evolution may be observed through the fossil record. The theory is the underpinning of the entire field of modern biology.

Intelligent Design: God did it.

Incredibly, in our otherwise scientifically advanced day and age, many consider the latter theory to be every bit as scientific and compelling as the former.

One such intellectually decrepit individual is Ben Stein, whose Michael Moore-esque documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, attempts to show the injustice of 'suppressing' intelligent design and its advocates in the academy and the classroom. In Stein's own description, the film follows his "heroic and, at times, shocking journey confronting the world’s top scientists, educators and philosophers, regarding the persecution of the many by an elite few... educators and scientists are being ridiculed, denied tenure and even fired – for the 'crime' of merely believing that there might be evidence of 'design' in nature, and that perhaps life is not just the result of accidental, random chance."

Stein recently sat down with another half-wit, Rush Limbaugh, for a interview in which they paraded their astonishing ignorance on scientific and logical matters. The following are excerpts from the transcript of that interview, interspersed with my own rebuttals.


Stein: "Expelled" is about the Darwinists, who say that random mutation and random selection explains everything, and who believe that it is their right to fire anybody from any university job if that person even slightly questions the Darwinist worldview.

Wrong already, Ben. Random mutation, yes; but the selection aspect of evolutionary decent is anything but random. The whole point of natural selection is that the pressures organisms face when trying to survive and reproduce encourage evolution in a definite direction. For instance, two examples of random mutation might be slightly better camouflage and slightly worse camouflage. Selection is not at all random: the creature that gets slightly better camouflage will be more likely to survive and pass on that slightly better camouflage to its offspring, whereas the organism whose mutation worsens its camouflage is less likely to do so.

Rush: What is Intelligent Design, as opposed to Creationism?
Stein: Creationism believes that there is a God who created the earth [sic] in some finite, possibly measurable, amount of time. Intelligent Design-ers believe there is some intelligence revealed in the incredible complexity of life and the incredible complexity - and I would say beauty - in the governing principles of the universe... and that it's unlikely that these laws came about by random chance and random mutation and natural selection... Above all, I would say, it questions how the universe went from completely inorganic matter like mud to a living thing like a cell, and then eventually to a human being. [...] I say that we have as much science on our side as the Darwinists. The Darwinists cannot explain how life began... [or] how gravity began... [or] how thermodynamics began. They just take it on faith that it was done by some kind of process, a Darwinist process, and natural selection and random mutation. They don't have any evidence of that. So as long as we are talking about theories of which there is no evidence, why not bring in other theories?

Stein is scientifically illiterate if he thinks that Darwinian Evolution is supposed to explain the origin of the laws of gravity or thermodynamics. That's physics, not biology. No scientist believes that physical laws came about by a "Darwinist process" or natural selection.

How life originated on Earth is indeed still a matter of debate and postulation. But to simply posit "Well, since we don't yet have a good explanation, it must have been God" is to commit the ad hoc fallacy: to answer the question by just making shit up. At least when scientists debate the issue, they refer to evidence like the origins of organic molecules and what conditions under which life can flourish; they don't just throw out an idea for which there is not, nor has never been, any evidence.

To argue that proponents of intelligent design "have as much science on [their] side as the Darwinists" is to talk pure fiction. There is nothing scientific about the ad hoc, unempirical postulations of intelligent design-ers. They are simply bringing ancient superstition to bear against a solid scientific theory that is supported by countless observations in the fossil record and the laboratory.

Throughout, Stein also implicitly advances the first-cause argument: that since everything has a cause, and we don't know what the cause of the universe was, that cause must have been God. This argument has been made in various forms since ancient Greece, and it remains as poor an argument today as it was then. The refutation is simple: what caused God? If everything must have a cause, then God must too (and thus we're faced with infinite regress); if God doesn't have to have a cause, then why must the universe? The first-cause argument doesn't solve anything; it merely trades one problem - the origins of the universe and of life - for another - the origin of God.

Rush: It seems they [Darwinists] have a paranoia about the whole concept of God; they cannot allow for one moment the concept that there is a God. What do they so fear about God?
Stein: I think they fear... that if there is a God, they are going to be judged at some point either in this life or the afterlife, if there is one, and that they will be found to have been violating moral codes. They don't want to be judged. They want to do whatever they want. After all, if they are just specks of mud, animated by a lightening strike, they don't have any moral responsibility to anyone.

Here Stein reveals that he is as illiterate in the field of ethics as he is in science. He unthinkingly assumes that religion is the foundation of all morality, despite the overwhelming evidence in daily life that there is no correlation between religiosity and ethical behavior. There are many religious people who do terrible things, and many non-religious people who lead virtuous and ethical lives; therefore it is not religion itself, but some other factor(s) which determine morality.

In fact, it could be argued that religion is an obstacle to the same "moral responsibility" that Stein so blithely touts. Religious people simply assume that as long as they act in accordance with the laws set down by the religion, they're in the clear. It is precisely this kind of thinking that engenders suicide bombing and all forms of religious persecution. By contrast, the secular person has to find rational justification for his or her actions. I don't steal from my neighbor, not because God told me not to, but because I believe it to be wrong for a number of reasons. Stein's assumption that the irreligious are morally adrift is as insulting as it is, in my experience and observations at least, wildly incorrect.

Scientists do not have a 'paranoia' of God, as Limbaugh would so like to believe; they just ignore God. They don't have time for any superstitious nonsense - God included - for which there is no evidence. God isn't testable; he isn't measurable; he isn't empirically knowable at all, and until it can be shown that he's anything other than a figment of ancient imaginations, science need not bother dealing with him. As Christopher Hitchens pointed out, "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence." And science is all about evidence.

Rush: You spent two years interviewing more than 150 educators and scientists who claim that they were persecuted for challenging Darwinism. You say that in addition to whatever is involved here in terms of science that it is also a free-speech issue.
Stein: Absolutely.

The dismissal of pro-intelligent-design scientists, which Stein offers as the central and most powerful theme of his film, isn't an issue of free-speech; it's an issue of basic competence. If a chemistry professor started teaching alchemy, he would be fired for being an incompetent chemist. If an astrophysicist began preaching the Ptolmeic geocentric model of the universe, she too would be fired, and rightly so. So why should a biologist who rejects the theory of evolution - which is as central to biology as gravity is to physics - not be fired for gross incompetence? It's one thing if the scientist has actual evidence to question evolution, but they never do, and replacing a major scientific theory with illogical spiritualism is grounds for dismissal if ever there were such.

Stein: Darwinism basically said, at the end of the day, under all this rigmarole, that Northern European white people are destined to rule the world. That, it seemed to me, was a way of justifying the British Empire. Darwinism really was a theory legitimizing a certain political worldview more than anything else. By the way, Hitler's friends picked it up and ran with it - only they said that the Northern European country that was destined to rule the world was called Germany.
Rush: In the movie there is a trip you take with a curator.
Stein: Oh, my God. That was amazing - a Nazi killing center.
Rush: But the jaw-dropping episode shows the guide walking you around, and your facial expressions as she attempts to justify what went on there. You are right when you say that these people don't want to be judgmental. They don't even want to be judgmental about Hitler.

It's unclear how Stein and Limbaugh make the outrageous leap from the topic of Darwinian Evolution to that of the Holocaust, but Nazi similes are always the last refuge of demagogues. Here Stein and Limbaugh put the impressive range of their ignorance on display, conflating genuine Darwinian Evolution with Spencerian social Darwinism, the conservative social theory of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that had nothing to do with science or Darwin. From what I've read in other reviews, Stein also takes the opportunity in his film to blame evolution for abortion (apparently under the assumption that abortion is a bad thing). Blaming evolution for Nazism and abortion is as daft as giving Jesus credit for the Inquisition, or laying blame on the theory of gravity for the dropping of bombs that kill innocent civilians.

Rush: It [the film] so illustrates the closed-mindedness, the arrogance, and the fear of people who don't think they have to debate what they believe.

Close-mindedness, arrogance, and unjustified, indefensible beliefs - isn't Rush just describing himself here?

It is indeed discouraging that some eighty years after the Scopes Trial, some Americans are still dumb enough to choose religion over science. Stein, Limbaugh, and their willfully ignorant comrades prefer to side with the creation myths of ancient peoples instead of the empirically tested theories of modern biologists. They would fit in more among Neanderthals paying obeisance to the sun rather than among we modern - and evolved - homo sapiens.

Elitist

Elitist: noun.
1. Someone who has the audacity not to be ashamed of using and understanding big words.
2. Someone who refuses to act uneducated and excuse stupidity in order to pander to the uneducated and the stupid.
3. A derogatory label, used spitefully by those who do not read books against those who do; often a last-resort insult used by conservatives when resentful or jealous of an opponent's superior knowledge and abilities.
4. See Obama, Barack.

Yes We DID

To quote Rene Belloq, "We are simply passing through history. This - this is history."

Further thoughts on "Jonesie"

I saw the movie a second time. A second time was more than enough.

I saw it a second time because I was pleased that, amid all of the gaudy CGI, the stupid sight gags, the underdeveloped dialogue, the two-dimensional characters, and the outrageously dumb plot, at least my childhood hero, Indiana Jones, remained relatively intact.

But he wasn't intact. As I watched the film a second time, I noticed that they had given Dr. Jones two new and unwelcome traits: pedantry and patriotism.

We knew from the original movies that Indy isn't always adventuring - that, indeed, he spends most of his time teaching at the fictional Marshall College in Connecticut. We saw in Raiders and Last Crusade how he is a dedicated professor, giving detailed lectures on archaeological methods to classes of enraptured (mostly female) students.

But in Crystal Skull, Lucas and Spielberg take this too far, and turn Indy into a doddering old professor. The gag in the library, when he answers a student's question while escaping on a motorcycle, and the later scene when he begins explaining the difference between quicksand and dry sand while sinking in a bed of the latter, are not only tawdry attempts at humor; they are uncharacteristic of Dr. Jones. Indy didn't pause from fending off snakes in the Well of the Souls to lecture Marion on Egyptian hieroglyphs; nor did he make some dry scholarly remark to Elsa about petroleum's inflammability when they were about to be burned alive in the catacombs. Indy knows to put aside scholarly rhetoric when time or danger do not permit it. By making him a head-in-the-clouds pedant in his later years, Lucas and Spielberg emasculate his adventurous edge.

Further damage is done to Indy's character by making him a flag-waving patriot. It starts with his response to Spalko's question if he has any last words. "I like Ike", he proclaims defiantly. Like all the other gags in this movie, it's cheap writing for a cheap laugh. But I was horrified later to see what they had Indy doing since Last Crusade. OSS? Espionage missions in Berlin? "Spying on the Reds"? The rank of Colonel in the US Military? Dr. Jones, yes; Colonel Jones? What the hell? Part of the allure of Indy has always been his free agency. Sure, in Raiders the US Government asks him to get the Ark before the Nazis do, but in all three of the original movies, Indy does things his own way. He's the independent adventurer, fighting on the side of the good guys, not because he's ordered to, but because he wants to. Putting him in an official military capacity strips him of this independence, and weakens his character.

Some further thoughts:

Jones... -ey?

Jonesey? Jonesie? However you spell it, such a word has no place in an Indiana Jones film. Call him Dr. Jones, call him Indy or Indiana, call him junior if you're his father, even call him just "Jones", but what the hell is Jonesie? And Ox called him Henry. Why? Even Marcus called him Indy, and he's known to the scholarly world by his adopted moniker: viz., when Chattar Lal, upon meeting him in Temple of Doom, addresses him as "Dr. Indiana Jones, the famous archaeologist".

Music

Indiana Jones is inconceivable without the famous Raiders March, written by John Williams, to back him up. But this movie didn't live up to the music for which the original trilogy is known. In those movies, there were separate and identifiable musical themes - leitmotifs - for the artifact, the bad guys, the love interest, and, of course, Indy himself. The theme of the ark made the ark scenes so awe-inspiring; the Nazi theme in Last Crusade is badass enough to rival the Imperial March of Star Wars. But you won't find great music in this film. The artifact and characters themselves were so forgettable that it's no surprise John Williams couldn't come up with epic music to accompany them.

Temple of Doom's shortcomings amplified

Someone I know made the excellent point that the qualities which made Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom the runt of the litter - Willie Scott and Short Round as sidekicks, an artifact not as awe-inspiring as the ark or grail, bad guys not as fun to hate as the Nazis, cheap gags like monkey brains for dessert, the fake mine car chase - are brought back and amplified in Crystal Skull. Mack, Ox, and Mutt are even worse sidekicks than Willy and Short Round. The artifact is just plain stupid. The bad guys are fungible, generic commies with no personality. The gags are cheaper. The stuntwork has sunk to horrifying new lows - oh, how I long to see a bad mine car chase, when presented with crap like surviving an atomic blast in a refrigerator! Lucas and Spielberg, when planning Crystal Skull, should have begun by recognizing what made Raiders and Last Crusade eternally great films, and then imposing those standards on the new movie; instead, it's as if they said, "What made Temple of Doom bad? Let's do those things again - but this time, bigger, and much worse!" Indeed, had they tried to make Crystal Skull a poor substitute for an Indy film, it's difficult to see how they could have had better success.

The idea for the film

It's now obvious to me how they came up with the idea for this movie. Instead of using an intriguing artifact, or even an interesting villain, as their starting point, they clearly began by thinking of what was going on in the 1950s (since, because of Harrison's age, they knew they wanted to set it in that decade). They thus realized they wanted commies to be the bad guys. Then, when trying to think of an artifact, the Roswell incident of the previous decade must have sprung to mind. That this was a bad way to plan the movie is quite simply borne out by the results.

A spaceship

Let me reiterate that there was a spaceship - a fucking spaceship - in this movie. Res ipsa loquitor.

Useless

Besides the teenage joy ride that opens the film, the FBI agents also struck me as a complete waste of time. Their suspicions of Indy are not followed up later in the film, and the scene involving them seems to achieve nothing except set up the part where the dean has resigned and Indy is close to losing his job - also a pointless excursion from the already suffering plot.

Plot-driving device

I already pointed out in my earlier review that Professor Oxley's dementia was a shameful excuse for a plot-driving device. It is worth remembering what served in this capacity in Raiders and Last Crusade. When searching for the Lost Ark, Indy had to find the headpiece to the Staff of Ra, which connected him with Marion and then led him to Cairo and the Ark's resting place in the Well of the Souls. In the Last Crusade, his father's grail diary is the plot-driving device, acting first as a sign that his father's in danger, and for the rest of the film as a guide for his quest. Given these epic precedents, could Lucas and Spielberg really come up with nothing better than a gibbering, deranged lunatic, who somehow possesses only enough consciousness to spout enigmatic riddles? It's more like watching an Alzheimer's patient than one of Dr. Jones's adventuresome colleagues.

Too Little, Too Late

By the time John Hurt's character regains the proper use of his brain, there is not much time left in the film to develop his character. When he delivers his last two lines, "[They have gone to] the space between spaces," and "How much of human life is lost in waiting," we are so used to hearing him babble nonsense that these lines sound no different.

"Three times it drops"

The waterfall scene actually bored me with its sad predictability and continuation of the film's hokey reliance on CGI. The first drop was disappointing but to be expected. The second drop had me yawning. The third drop was an unforgivable robbery of 20 seconds of my life.

KW's review

Crystal Skull Actually Made of Cheap Plastic

The Canon

Allow me to hereby EXCISE Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull from the official Indiana Jones canon. Like the "Young Indiana Jones" series, this pathetic waste of film, money, and talent deserves no place next to the immortal original trilogy of Indiana Jones, and all events portrayed in the film shall henceforth be regarded as apocryphal nonsense.

Indiana Jones and the Lamentable Return

"It is something that mankind was not meant to disturb."

That's Sallah's warning to his friend Indiana Jones about the Ark of the Covenant. But he may as well have said it to Steven Spielberg and George Lucas regarding the Indiana Jones legacy itself.

Indeed, it is as I feared. With Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, they have done to Indiana Jones what they did to Star Wars: extended the series with work that is not at all up to the brilliant standards of the original trilogy.

In my mind, there are three elements that make an Indiana Jones movie great (besides Harrison Ford as Indy, which is a proven constant even in a movie such as this). Those three elements: great characters, a great artifact, and great stunts. It grieves me to report that in all three of these respects, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a thorough failure.

Oh Steven, oh George, why have you forsaken Indy?

1. Great characters

A. Villains

The villains of the original trilogy - Belloq, Toht, Lao Che, Mola Ram, Walter Donovan, Colonel Vogel - were successful because they combined personality with magnificent - but not cartoonish - evil. Belloq is a self-proclaimed "shadowy reflection" of Dr. Jones, a disturbing image of what would happen to Indy himself if his values succumbed to his greed. Toht is a terrifying, eccentric, and mysterious embodiment of Nazi evil. Lao is the consummate devious gangster, and Mola Ram's Thuggee sadism is terrific fun to watch. Walter Donovan is a smart and resourceful turncoat whose own greed undoes him. Vogel is an SS Colonel who relishes the infliction of pain as a perk that comes with the job. All have qualities that give them depth and lines that are memorable as Indy's.

The central enemy in Crystal Skull is the Soviet Irina Spalko, a cookie-cutter "Natasha"-type villain, who in a horrendous waste of talent is played by the brilliant Cate Blanchett. Her personality is developed clumsily by her two-dimensional lust for 'knowledge' and her ridiculous attempts at exercising psychic powers. None of her lines are memorable, and all are delivered in a Russian accent worthy of Rocky and Bullwinkle. She captures neither the venality of Belloq or Donovan, nor the genuine, bone-chilling evil of Toht or Colonel Vogel; she is simply, transparently, cartoonishly evil. Given a role with deeper, more complex motivations, Cate Blanchett could have made Spalko a disturbing and memorable villain; instead she is merely laughed at and forgotten.

Even the minor villains of the original movies were memorable: the shirtless German mechanic who fights Indy around, on, and under the plane; the Arab swordsman Indy insouciantly blows away; the tenacious Nazi captain who struggles with Indy over control of the truck.

Tragically, ALL of the secondary villains in Crystal Skull are faceless, interchangeable Soviet thugs. None of them has any personality, none of them provide Indy with unique or interesting challenges. They're mere ducks in a shooting gallery.

B. Allies

Indy's friends - most notably Sallah, Marcus, and his father - are characters who not only are engaging in their own right, but also whose chemistry with Indy convinces the audience that they genuinely go way back. And the Indy girls are every bit a match for Dr. Jones, be it Marion's no-nonsense personality and independence or Elsa's intelligence and manipulative wiles. (One could argue also that the great weakness of the Temple of Doom was the allies, in particular the strident, prissy, and insufferable Willy Scott.)

Indy's allies in Crystal Skull are a mixed bag. Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood was good, but would have been superb, had they given her the snappiness she had in Raiders. Shia LaBeouf as Mutt Williams actually exceeded my expectations, though his relationship with Indy falls far short of that of Indy and his father, one of the greatest movie duos of all time.

Dean Charles Stanforth (Jim Broadbent) is a decent role, but one that could have benefited from further development. We don't feel a shared history like we do between Indy and Marcus or Sallah.

Sadly, Marcus Brody and Henry Jones, Sr. have passed on by the time of Crystal Skull, and Sallah is nowhere to be found (enjoying retirement in Cairo, presumably?). Their absence is made all the more painful by the inexcusably wretched roles intended to replace them: 'Mac' George McHale and Professor Oxley. Both are played by great actors; both are tragic wastes of talent.

'Mac', played by Ray Winstone, tried, and failed, to be interesting. His double-cross of Indy links him to Elsa of Last Crusade, but he lacks her intelligence, charm, and passion. The chemistry between him and Indy is terrible; all of their dialogue sounds forced. The audience is left wondering why we should care whether he's Indy's friend or enemy.

Professor Oxley is the most tragic shortcoming of the whole movie. Played by the incomparable John Hurt, Oxley could have been the next Marcus Brody, an eloquent and supportive ally to Indy; instead, Spielberg and Lucas made the inexplicable decision to turn him into a babbling, raving lunatic for nine-tenths of the film. The clues buried in his incoherent ranting and babyish behavior are a poor excuse for a plot-driving device. Professor Oxley is to this film what Jar-Jar Binks was to Star Wars Episode I: an irritating, purposeless distraction. George Lucas, must you put one of these in all your revisited films?

C. Dialogue

The dialogue in this film vacillated between forced, corny, falsely sentimental, and only occasionally witty and engaging. Some of the lines (like Indy's about his father at the end) were so excessively cheesy as to be appalling. It was difficult to understand how the dialogue in this film could have been conceived by the same minds who thought up the epic one-liners of Raiders or the delightful father-son banter of Last Crusade.


2. A great artifact

The Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail are potent symbols in the Western imagination. In the Indy movies, they carry awe-inspiring yet understated power, and their looming presence is so well developed that the audience can actually come to believe their supernatural properties.

The crystal skull belongs to a crystal skeleton of an alien being. It is also a magnet. As if this were not stupid enough to begin with, when you return the skull to the skeleton (in a tomb of thirteen of these skeletons), you receive great 'power'. Which turns out to be great 'knowledge'. Which turns out to incinerate you, or something (it's not really clear why). It's a silly artifact with an unclear purpose and an anticlimactic execution. And whereas in the original films, Indy is a prime actor in the culminating scene when the artifact is used for its designed purpose, in this movie he simply jumps out the window before Cate Blanchett is burned up with, uh, knowing too much and the aliens - or single alien? again, it's not really clear - go up into the spaceship (christ I wish I were making this up) and flies away after causing a big tornado that destroys the ruins in which it all took place.

What the fuck, George and Steven? Did you ask a five year old for these ideas? Aren't there about a million artifacts you could have used that would have had at least some basis in reality and some relevance to the audience?


3. Great stunts

The stunts and special effects of the original Indiana Jones films are legendary, and set the bar for all action-adventure movies to follow. The truck chase in Raiders and the tank chase in Last Crusade are the most famous examples. Yes, those are real stuntmen being dragged behind the truck or jumping off a horse onto a moving tank! Yes, that boulder is rolling after Indy! Yes, that plane is actually exploding! The gritty and genuine realism of these stunts and effects lend an authenticity to the Indy films that makes them stand out in movie history.

But Spielberg and Lucas have gotten lazy, and have turned to computers to do a lot of the stuntwork and effects for them. The results are tawdry (the car chase through the jungle is transparently CGI), unrealistic (the duck boat's entry into the water via tree bending down from cliff), or just plain fake (everything having to do with the aliens at the end, particularly their 'sweeping up' as they leave, looks so fake it's might as well be a cartoon).

The scene when Shia LaBeouf swings through the jungle like Tarzan, accompanied by a cohort of monkeys, is one of the dumbest things I have ever seen on film. And Indy surviving a nuclear-blast-induced airborne ride in a refrigerator makes me weep, for the standards for stunts have sunk so very, very low.

When stunts and special effects go too far, the audience doesn't watch with bated breath; the audience points and laughs.


Other observations

-The opening scene of the teenagers on a joy ride is a complete waste of time. It contributes nothing to the plot and bears no relevance to anything. The movie could start five minutes later, with the trucks entering the military installation, and nothing would have been lost.

-The ending troubles me. First of all, the idea of Indiana Jones getting married seems fundamentally wrong - unless it's a sign that he's through adventuring. Secondly, it's a bizzarely muted note to end on. Raiders ended with the magnificently ironic warehouse scene, and Last Crusade concludes with the iconic ride into the sunset. And this movie ends with Indy walking out of a wedding chapel? How pedestrian!


All of this being said, I will see this movie again. Why? Because even though the characters were weak, and the special effects were cheesy, Harrison Ford can still wear a fedora and crack a bullwhip like nobody else. Despite the film's many flaws, Indy, at least, is still Indy.

Answering Creationist Nonsense

Scientific American: 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense

When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination.

Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms.

Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.

To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.

My personal favorite (because one hears this idiotic objection so often):

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.

All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.

The Methods of Dr. Jones

CNN: Experts: 'Indiana Jones' pure fiction

Indiana Jones managed to retrieve the trinket he was after in the opening moments of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." He pretty much wrecked everything else in the ancient South American temple where the little gold idol had rested for millennia.

Though he preaches research and good science in the classroom, the world's most famous archaeologist often is an acquisitive tomb raider in the field with a scorched-earth policy about what he leaves behind. While actual archaeologists like the guy and his movies, they wouldn't necessarily want to work alongside him on a dig.

Indy's bull-in-a-china-shop approach to archaeology will be on display again May 22 with "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," in which he's sure to rain destruction down on more historic sites and priceless artifacts.

To argue that Indy is an 'acquisitive tomb raider' who has a 'bull-in-a-china-shop approach to archaeology' is to entirely miss the point of the Indiana Jones movies.

And I don't mean in the sense that it's Hollywood, so of course it's going to misportray the methods of archaeology. I mean that in the plots of the Indiana Jones movies, the traditional methods of archaeology become a moot point.

Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade are, fundamentally, race movies - Indy and the Nazis are both trying to acquire a priceless and powerful artifact, and the fate of the civilized world hangs in the balance. As Indy's father, Henry Jones Sr., says: "The quest for the grail is not archeology. It's a race against evil. If it is captured by the Nazis, the armies of darkness will march all over the face of the earth!"

When you're trying to get to something before the Nazis do, you don't exactly have time for a traditional archaeological dig. Indy realizes this and smashes through whatever he has to in order to prevent Hitler from having eternal life or the Ark (the Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction). The same goes for the Temple of Doom - I'm sure Dr. Jones would love to spend more time looking around at ancient artifacts, but there are several hundred child slaves in a subterranean forced labor camp, so forgive him if he doesn't take time to stake out a standard dig site.

Moreover, this article couldn't be more wrong when it says that Indiana Jones "rain[s] destruction down on historic sites and priceless artifacts"; it's the historic sites and priceless artifacts that are trying to rain down destruction on him! The Well of the Souls in Raiders, the Temple of the Crescent Moon in Last Crusade, the Temple of Doom, the South American temple mentioned above - all of these places are fraught with lethal traps and pitfalls, and it's all Indy can do to get out alive! If anything is over the top, it's the deadliness of the places themselves, not Indy's trying to escape them.

We know that most of the time, Dr. Jones is either teaching at a bucolic New England college or, indeed, doing traditional archaeological digs. But that doesn't make for good filmmaking. So lay off his methods in the movies: they're not supposed to be about archaeology. They're about "a race against evil"!

Taking a holiday from good economic sense

Both Hillary Clinton and John McCain are supporting the idea of a summer 'holiday' from the federal gas tax. Most economists - and, I'm happy to say, Barack Obama - think that this is a bad idea. It may be a popular idea - doesn't cheaper gas sound great? - but it is indeed a worthless and stupid solution.

It's economics 101: what happens to consumer incentives when the price of a good goes down? There is an incentive to buy more of that product. And what happens when consumers buy more of a product with a limited supply, like oil? Supply shrinks. And when supply shrinks but demand doesn't, prices go up. So essentially, by the end of the summer 'holiday', the price of gas will have risen to its previous level anyway. The difference is that instead of some of that revenue going to the government, it will be going into the pockets of the oil industry. The net effect of this brilliant scheme is that the government is taking our tax money and giving it to oil companies. (At least that's so with McCain's version of the plan. Clinton's version involves taxing the oil companies more after the fact, which basically taxes the consumer via the company - since the company will raise prices to make up for the tax - rather than taxing the act of consumption directly.)

As Paul Krugman points out in his blog, the McCain gas tax holiday would be "a giveaway to oil companies, disguised as a gift to consumers," whereas Clinton's holiday would be "in one pocket, out the other... pointless, not evil."

By opposing an idea that is both popular and bad, Barack Obama is demonstrating that he is willing to do what is in the people's best interests rather than what appeals to their visceral sentiments. If that's elitism, it's just the kind of elitism we need!

Praying at the Pump

AFP: Tired of paying through the nose, Americans try praying at the pump

The half-dozen activists -- Twyman, a former Miss Washington DC, the owner of a small construction company and two volunteers at a local soup kitchen -- joined hands, bowed their heads and intoned a heartfelt prayer.

"Lord, come down in a mighty way and strengthen us so that we can bring down these high gas prices," Twyman said to a chorus of "amens".

"Prayer is the answer to every problem in life... We call on God to intervene in the lives of the selfish, greedy people who are keeping these prices high," Twyman said on the gas station forecourt in a neighborhood of Washington that, like many of its residents, has seen better days.

"Lord, the prices at this pump have gone up since last week. We know that you are able, that you have all the power in the world," he prayed, before former beauty queen Rashida Jolley led the group in a modified version of the spiritual, "We Shall Overcome".

"We'll have lower gas prices, we'll have lower gas prices..." they sang.


I'm not making this up. This is real. There are people out there who do this. These are citizens - people who are entrusted with drivers' licenses and voting and jury duty and the rearing of children. And they believe that the best way to bring down gas prices is not to educate oneself about macroeconomics and elect leaders who will effect appropriate change, but to stand at a gas station and ask God for cheaper super unleaded. Given the choice, they would sooner act like a neolithic vilager begging the gods for rain than an informed citizen of the 21st century who could watch a meteorological report.

I find this terrifying.

Crazy

"Faith is what credulity becomes when it finally achieves escape velocity from the constraints of terrestrial discourse - constraints like reasonableness, internal coherence, civility, and candor. However far you feel you have fled the parish, you are likely to be the product of a culture that has elevated belief, in the absence of evidence, to the highest place in the heirarchy of human virtues. Ignorance is the true coinage of this realm - 'Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed' (John 20:29) - and every child is instructed that it is, at the very least, an option, if not a sacred duty, to disregard the facts of this world out of deference to the God who lurks in his mother's and father's imaginations.

"To be ruled by ideas for which you have no evidence (and which therefore cannot be justified in conversation with other human beings) is generally a sign that something is seriously wrong with your mind. Clearly, there is sanity in numbers. And yet, it is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the Creator of the universe can hear your thoughts, while it is demonstrative of mental illness to believe that he is communicating with you by having the rain tap in Morse code on your bedroom window. And so, while religous people are not generally mad, their core beliefs absolutely are. This is not surprising, since most religions have merely canonized a few products of ancient ignorance and derangement and passed them down to us as though they were primordial truths. This leaves billions of us believing what no sane person could believe on his own. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions. Consider one of the cornerstones of the Catholic faith: [the Eucharist]. Jesus Christ - who, as it turns out, was born of a virgin, cheated death, and rose bodily into the heavens - can now be eaten in the form of a cracker. A few Latin words spoken over your favorite Burgandy, and you can drink his blood as well. Is there any doubt that a lone subscriber to these beliefs would be considered mad? Rather, is there any doubt that he would be mad? The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. Because each new generation of children is taught that religious propositions need not be justified in the way that others must, civilization is still besieged by the armies of the preposterous."

- Sam Harris, The End of Faith, pp. 65, 72-73.


"Isnt' it interesting that religious behavior is so close to being crazy that we can't tell them apart?"

- Gregory House, M.D.

Electing the Elite

One of the things that has mystified me over the past several years is how voters are drawn to 'average joes'. Normal guys. The candidate you can 'have a beer with'. Some people, it seems, are most comfortable electing a president who isn't much superior to themselves. (If it weren't for this fact, I don't believe our current administration would have been possible.)

I was once arguing with person much older than myself over the weak mental faculties of President Bush. I pointed out how Bush's numerous gaffes - mistaking 'persecute' for 'prosecute', adding an 's' onto the word 'children', etc. - are of too serious a nature to be normal verbal slip-ups, and come unsettlingly close to signs of actual functional illiteracy.

The person's response? "Well, maybe he's not the smartest person in the world, but then, neither am I."

Ok. But then, YOU AREN'T THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Jon Stewart gave a refreshing editorial aside last week during the Daily Show. In response to charges of 'elitism' levied against Barack Obama, Stewart said:

"Doesn't 'elite' mean good? Is that not something we're looking for in a president anymore? You know what, candidates: I know 'elite' is a bad word in politics, and you want to go bowling, and throw back a few beers. But the job you're applying for - if you get it, and it goes well - THEY MIGHT CARVE YOUR HEAD INTO A MOUNTAIN. If you don't actually think you're better than us, then what the fuck are you doing? In fact, not only do I want an 'elite' president, I want someone who's embarrassingly superior to me. Somebody who speaks sixteen languages, and sleeps two hours a night, hanging upside-down in a chamber they themselves designed!"

The Conceit of the Faithful

CNN: Crash Survivor: God 'still has work for us to do'

A missionary family from Minnesota is glad to be alive and together after surviving a plane crash in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the father said Wednesday.

"We couldn't believe that our family of four could all escape a plane that was crashed and on fire, but by God's mercy, we did," he said.

Mosier said he believes the family made it for a reason.

"I think the Lord has a plan for us, otherwise we wouldn't have survived," he said. "He still has work for us to do."

I don't know who's more insufferable: these conceited jerks, or the arbitrary jerk of a god in which they believe.

When a survivor of a crash that killed more than thirty others says he's alive because god 'has a plan' for him, he's implying that God's "plan" for the others was simply to let them die. So why didn't they get a better plan? Were they too unfaithful? Too... black? Or did god just not feel like letting them live? In the end, God's either a stickler, a racist, or an indifferent slob.

My, how easily faith in a god above can become faith in one's own personal superiority on the earth below!

In Touch and Out of Touch

Barack Obama has been catching hell for this comment he made last week about small-town America. Clinton and McCain have argued that this shows how Obama is 'elitist' and 'out of touch' with average Americans.

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

I fail to see how this statement is inaccurate. It seems to me a reasoned insight on why some Americans think and vote the way they do. If anything, it demonstrates how well Obama understands the psychology of Americans.

But people in this country don't want to be told the truth about why they're religious, militant, or xenophobic. They merely want to cling to the comfort that their willful ignorance provides. And so honesty and candor are perceived as 'elitist' and 'out of touch', and are replaced in the political discourse by ingratiating equivocation - which gets people elected but doesn't accomplish much else.

Lil' Bush

The Comedy Central cartoon series Lil' Bush fascinates me. How can a comedy show do such a terrible job of imitating the most easily imitated and mocked president in our history? It's pathetic. It's like they're shooting at fish in a barrel and missing.

From what I've seen in commercials and at the tail end of episodes, the show makes our president out to be a mischievous little prankster, taking charge and orchestrating juvenile adventures with his cabinet. It portrays Bush as a successfully scheming and impulsive leader, and neglects the qualities that make him (in)famous: his backwoods humor, his lack of presidential dignity, his astounding ignorance, his difficulties with grammar and syntax, his unparalleled capacity for the disastrous execution of poorly planned schemes.

But the worst thing is the impersonation itself. For an impersonation to work, it has to resemble the person it's imitating; by caricaturing certain aspects of the actual person, the basis for humor is formed. In this regard the show is a thorough failure. The writing doesn't resemble in the slightest anything you can actually imagine Bush saying - it's too snappy, and doesn't have enough stumbling, hesitation, or failed attempts to sound dignified and intelligent. The cartoon version of Bush, frankly, looks and sounds a lot brighter than the real president. It especially doesn't capture the simian expressions that make President Bush so bewildered all the time. And the voice! I don't know who does the voiceover for the cartoon, but it's terrible. It sounds more suitable for a hot dog commercial.

And lastly, why would a cable network want to spend money developing a show that is guaranteed be dated almost as soon as it airs? (Last season, I remember seeing Rumsfeld in commercial adverts for the show, despite his resignation months earlier). This season they're apparently having an episode about Katrina. Way to be two-and-a-half years behind the issues! Good luck selling this crap on DVD in a year.