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Population: One

Transgressive retro

January 27, 2003
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The following has some spoilers.

The weekend’s movies were Far From Heaven and Catch Me If You Can. Definitely a retro weekend, not even counting the incredibly hip Soma FM Secret Agent streaming radio station I’ve had tuned in since Thursday. I feel like a martini, and you’re just the sort of woman to drink me…

Ah, sorry. The mood took me for a moment. More a Catch Me If You Can mood, I think; that’s the lighter of the two films. It has that jazzy sixties bliss to it, up to and including invoking James Bond with a short Goldfinger clip. That makes the contrast between the two all the more interesting, though, since they’re both about transgressions against the natural order.

Frank Abagnale Jr. breaks free of social restrictions and demonstrates exactly how much we rely on social convention to fend off the intruder. In Far From Heaven, the Whitakers both transgress, with varying degrees of success. But in Catch Me If You Can, the final dynamic is very different. We’re encouraged to cheer for the young con man — and in the end we’re reassured that it was OK to cheer, because he got caught and his pursuer was his very best friend. His real father (played by Christopher Walken, in a really brilliant turn) taught him that it was OK to lie, and wound up a sad sorry corpse. His surrogate father, the FBI agent, brought him back to the straight and narrow and in the end everyone’s happy.

Far From Heaven doesn’t offer the easy out. Cathy Whitaker’s life is ruined by the combination of her transgression and that of her husband, Frank. Oddly, Frank’s life doesn’t seem to be so bad, which got me thinking about the exact relationship between her love for a black gardener and his love for another man.

Homosexuality is so far outside the comprehension of the time that the couple can barely even talk about what’s going on. Their first scene together after she catches him kissing a man is particularly well filmed; it’s an atonal song of confusion and barely spoken thoughts and stammers. Lovely stuff. As a result, Frank’s infidelities are ignored by the world around him. Cathy’s potential infidelities are not.

Did Cathy step outside her life only because she had no other reaction to Frank’s actions? I think so, to a degree. Raymond (her gardener) is a symbol, and she’s willing to reject him when it’s the necessary thing to do. She doesn’t go back to him until Frank rejects her, at which point she needs another anchor in her life. Then again, when faced with the fact that going with Raymond will only hurt his daughter, she steps back. The safest analysis is that she really does love him, and that Far From Heaven follows the line of Douglas Sirk’s melodramas all the way through, but I wonder.

Anyhow, meanderings through theory aside, I recommend both of ‘em. Far From Heaven is by far the better movie, but Catch Me If You Can is a fun little romp if you don’t get hung up on obsessing about the end. It’s hardly Spielberg’s fault that the real Frank Abagnale turned to the side of the law, after all. They’re both excellent evocations of times past, lovingly and skillfully filmed. Good weekend for movies.

Scratch one rule of law

January 25, 2003
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Says Mr. Reynolds: “This is also why I prefer a Mussolini-style ending in which Saddam is lynched by his own people to exile, or even a trial. I think that would provide a valuable lesson.”

Yes, that’s what I always think about lynchings. They’ll provide a valuable lesson. Precisely. People get uppity, you know?

But you know, I think Den Beste is right when he says the world political order is about to change. He’s wrong about a bunch of other things; he clearly doesn’t understand the concept that international legitimacy may be important for any other reason than the immediately practical. I’ve written before about the sheer folly of assuming that the United States will always be in the privileged power position we currently enjoy, and I’ve discussed why enlightened self-interest leads us to the conclusion that we must not encourage a world in preemptively securing one’s own position by invading other countries is wise. Ah well.

He’s still right. Germany’s a bigger US trade partner than England. Germany and France together are a bigger trade partner than China. To say, as Den Beste does, that the US needs nobody by its side other than the UK and Australia (poor Canadians; they’ve been altogether left out) is blind arrogance.

It saddens me that so many have lost track of the meaning of the word “ally.” On a mailing list I’m on, someone recently said “why are they allies if they aren’t supporting us?” Apparently he confused the word “ally” with the word “subordinate.” It’s easier to assume that Europe has gone mad than it is to consider why they’re objecting. And you know, thinking about why they’re objecting doesn’t even mean you have to agree with them. It just means it might be useful to think about it, in case there’s something you can do about it. But no; easier to write them off as insane.

It’s not the defeat of Saddam that bugs people. It’s the US occupation of Iraq, and the use of Iraq as a base to force regime change throughout the region.

Anyway. Yes, the world is going to change, and here’s one important way it’s changing:

For the first time, the United States will invade another country not because that country attacked it, or because it attacked one of our allies, but because we think it might pose a threat in the future.

If you don’t think that’s a big deal, even if you think the attack is a good idea, you’re nuts. And your children will have no right to complain if, in a hundred years, Brazil invades the United States “because we just don’t know what they might do with those old nukes.” That’s the precedent we’re about to set.

SQL is a virus

January 25, 2003
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The Internet was hit by this attack last night. Parties unknown exploited the MS SQL vulnerability to launch a distributed denial of service attack which took down much of the Internet, as per this post. Meanwhile, I’d been mulling over a recent security alert that discusses a vulnerability close to the heart of the HTTP protocol. Once again, Vernor Vinge got it pretty much right. His future computer nets weren’t something you jacked into, they were a vast network full of legacy code and unexpected consequences. Sounds about right.

Bachelor chow

January 25, 2003
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Warning: this may be disturbing to real cooks. Or not. I really have no idea.

My aunt, blessed be her name, gave me a rice cooker for Christmas. It has a no-stick pot so it’s super easy to wash. You don’t have to pay attention to it while you’re cooking something. It rocks. I made rice and put some beans in and it was great.

So then I decided to try something else. There’s a rumor floating around out there that you can cook meat in it. Mmm, steamed chicken! So I cut up some chicken and some sausage, and put some olive oil into the bottom of the pot, and turned it on. When the oil heated up, I threw in the chicken and sausage and stir fried it a little till I got bored. Then I dumped in a bunch of rice and some water and a can of black beans and a few random spices that were probably past their expiration date, and closed the lid, and made myself go into the living room to read comics.

When I came back, it was done cooking and had switched over to “keep the stuff warm until Bryant wants to eat it” mode. I opened it up, kind of assuming that the meat would be undercooked. Not so! Perfect! Nice moist tender chicken, tasty bits of sausage, all around goodness.

And cleanup was just rinsing out a non-stick bowl. Aw yeah.

More of that sauce stuff

January 24, 2003
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This article is about the funniest parody I’ve read in some time, and makes it mercilessly clear why you can’t just invert protest numbers to determine the number of people who support the status quo.

It’s pretty obvious, by the by, that the numbers of people protesting are important. You can tell, because people who support whatever’s being protested generally aim for the low end of the possible range. Nathan Newman makes an interesting argument against mass protests (link via Electrolite), but I don’t think the math is as simple as he does. A really sizable protest makes it psychologically easier for those who might support the cause but be uncertain of themselves to come out the next time; humans have a lot of herd animal in them. It’d be nice if it were otherwise, and perhaps someday, but right now? Perceptions of numbers matter.

Thus, protestors will always estimate high, and anti-protestors will always estimate low.

Aha moments

January 23, 2003
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OK, I think I figured this one out. And you thought I’d forgotten all about it…

Without further ado, the Population: One two axis predictive political graph.

Axis one is still freedom vs. safety. Which matters more in your personal calculus? Will you give up safety for freedom, or vice versa?

Axis two is privileged position vs. one among many. Do you think that your club/state/nation/special interest group has a privileged position vis a vis the rest of the world, for whatever reason? If so, perhaps you think God granted said status; perhaps you think it’s been earned by means of a sterling diplomatic record. The question is whether or not you think it exists, not why it exists.

The inspiration for the fine-tuning of axis two was Glenn Reynolds, who with a straight face recently commented on the resentments California arrogance engenders elsewhere. I think the parallel he’s making works in both directions, though.

The really important question

January 23, 2003
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Eric McErlain thinks Tampa Bay’s gonna win the Super Bowl. Might as well get my pick up to be mocked: it’s gonna be the Raiders. I even think they’ll beat the line.

Why? Because they have the team of destiny patina. They’re pissed off about the playoffs last year, the veterans know they need to get it done now or perhaps never, and the team is tight. Contrast this to the distraction Keyshawn is capable of causing. Check out his ESPN diary and tell me that isn’t someone who thinks he’s bigger than the team. Note that he didn’t mention his quarterback once. I hear Brad Johnson isn’t that bad a player.

That means that it’s up to Tampa Bay’s defense to make up for any problems on the offensive side, and that isn’t gonna be easy. Raiders win it going away.