Daily Kos recommends that Democrats “back off Lott, and for heaven’s sake, don’t call for his resignation. He’s more valuable to us alive than dead.” I think this is allowing the thrill of the competition to distract one from the destination. Politics are, in ever-glorious and rather deeply flawed theory, a tool for governing the country well. Putting aside the goal of doing good by the country for the sake of political victories is, well, the sort of thinking that reminds me why I’m an anarchist. It’s too damned easy to slip into tactical thought when considering politics: “What would be best for the Republibertariocratic Green Party?:
Population: One
My grandmother, Zoe Warner Durrell, passed away this morning. I’m going to talk about it a little, because I want to say some things about her and this is a place where I talk about that which is meaningful to me.
It was very peaceful. She had just moved into the home of my Aunt Zoe and Uncle Jeff, leaving her assisted living home; everyone was very happy about that. My father had spent Thanksgiving with them all. Everyone in the family had spent some time with her in the last year or so. She’d been ill since last winter. When my father called me this morning, it was not shocking.
Grandmama was a matriarch in the classic sense. She had always had a firm vision of what the family should be, and let us know when we slipped. Not in a bad way. There’s something to be said for firm guidance, and I am happy to have inherited my concepts of politesse and nobility from her. We’re preppies, albeit rather lapsed ones in my generation. I don’t say this very often, but I am proud of my heritage.
She lived through amazing changes. I am embarassed to admit that I’m not sure of her exact age, but then, it would be wrong to talk of it in public in any case. She’d seen most of the last century. The world never baffled her. In this past year, she’d gotten an email device, which she was happy to use with assistance. It’s easy to forget how much the aged have seen, but Grandmama was not one to be underestimated.
She and Grandpapa lived well and graciously. He was a publisher, originally in New York and then on a smaller scale in Kennebunkport. I know of fewer more noble occupations. I hope to follow in those footsteps, someday. When she moved to North Carolina, after he passed away, she donated her Kennebunkport house to the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust.
I am told that her memory was slipping, towards the end. It must have been difficult for her. She was exceedingly lucid when I visited her last spring, which is precisely what I would have expected. She was an author, not terribly prolific, but it’s another aspect of her that impressed and influenced me. In any case, she died content and happy that her family was doing well.
I hope that I’ve lived up to her standards. I hope that I continue to do so. I will miss her terribly.
Why aren’t any US publishers publishing lines like this? Or this, from the fantasy perspective. Wow. (No insult meant to Tor, whose reprint line is delightful; mild snide perhaps for Baen, since I’m still mournful about the Telzey edits.)
Bartleby.com is the best Web resource I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a solid, fast, all-in-one-place site with quality reference books ranging from the Columbia Encyclopedia through Strunk and White’s Elements of Style past Bulfinch’s Age of Fable to Gray’s Anatomy. Sweet. If that’s not enough, there’s also an extensive collection of verse, an equally extensive collection of fiction, and a big fat bunch of essays. Yeah, it’s all free.
That was another busy movie weekend. Two SF flicks, which had more in common than you might think (above and beyond both being surefire money losers): Equilibrium and Solaris.
I was determined to catch Equilibrium, since I missed Below and am still annoyed about it. Equilibrium is only on about 300 screens, too. I’m really glad I did. It’s a sometimes awkward graft of a unique action aesthetic onto a fairly standard totalitarian dystopia, which somehow works very well. The backbone of the movie is the near future dictatorship we’ve seen before: it’s Farenheit 451 via Albert Speer’s Berlin. The director, Kurt Wimmer, gets it right. It’s almost as pretty as anything by Wim Wenders.
Here and there, though, John Preston (our redeemed hero, played by Christian Bale) breaks into utterly lovely gun-based action sequences which are both innovative in their integration of handguns and martial arts and well-filmed. The first, five minutes in, is illuminated solely by muzzle flashes. The last, which I won’t spoil, is a veritable hammerblow of intensity. Nice stuff.
I think that it all flows together so well because the sparseness of the film’s visuals meshes with the sparse economy of the action sequences. Little is wasted.
Emily Watson gets yet another role as the quietly inspiring female lead, and Sean Bean growls his way through a brief part. Taye Diggs is not so great, but what are you gonna do?
Meanwhile, Solaris. Wow, it’s hard to know where to start. Soderbergh has utterly returned to form. I think the most masterful thing about his directing is his understanding of pacing. Solaris could easily have seemed long and overdone; it alternates between being talky and more or less dialogue-free. Soderbergh skips through the story, touching down lightly here and there, and brings off a philosophy-heavy movie with graceful ease.
The acting is also fine. George Clooney is a bit too much George Clooney, which is probably inevitable at this point. Still, he conveys the pain of his character competently. Natascha McElhone is perfect. She’s got a really tough job, effectively having to portray two characters, and brings it off without a hitch.
At first, given the distinctly 70s look of the Persephone (the space station upon which the movie takes place), I thought Soderbergh was going for a 2001 homage. I think not, though; I think that he just wanted that 70s SF look in order to properly get across the sense of isolation that’s so central to the movie. I realized on later reflection how much of Soderbergh’s work has been about loss. Solaris is no exception, despite the redemptive quality of the ending.
It doesn’t get much better than this for intelligent, contemplative science fiction film.
I have just a little more on the Ninth Circuit gun control decision, to start off the morning. How Appealing pretty much sums it up here, here, and here. This is why he’s a practicing lawyer and I’m just an interested party.
I was particularly interested in this SF Chronicle article, which talks about Judge Reinhardt and his approach to the law. It discusses what I think is admirable about the recent decision; namely, Judge Reinhardt’s tendency to confront cutting edge issues head on.
Daily Kos has an excellent summary of Trent Lott’s recent comments on Strom Thurmond. I, of course, have Cliffs Notes:
Trent Lott is our Senate Majority Leader. Strom Thurmond is the guy who ran for President in 1948 on a segregationist platform. Senator Lott’s comments include “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”
Possibly that New York Times article on the economies of China and India wasn’t so great after all. The New Republic has more. I’m going to take credit for wondering how much foreign investment has to do with the differences anyhow; NRO suggests that a lot of the apparent Chinese economic growth is simply due to the amount of foreign investment flowing into China. (Link via Electrolite.)
While I’m thinking about Volokh, here’s another National Review article he wrote recently. Executive summary: we shouldn’t worry about military discrimination based on sexual preference, because the military does so much good for us.
Well. There you go.
Eugene Volokh has some thoughts on that Ninth Circuit decision. Not bad; this is more of a start. However, he fails to recognize that the states prrrrobably have the right to change their definition of militia with the times. He also doesn’t touch the question of what “bear arms” means. I’d really like to see someone quoting a contemporary usage of “bear arms” outside the military context.
While I’m on the subject, here’s a Volokh article in the National Review. It doesn’t really address the Ninth Circuit decision, but it does have intelligent things to say about evolving standards. How Appealing comments on the article, somewhat snidely. Well, OK, it’s just a comment on the timeline.