Academy Awards Thread
— Dave in Texas

Because none of us gives a rats ass about them, and in fact it will irritate you all that I even put up a post about it.

All that hate's gonna burn you up kid.

What's your favorite movie and why? Like I care. It's your favorite movie, not my favorite movie. Besides you have to classify them in genres and stuff, like "dramas" or "cartoons". If you just have one favorite movie you're a window-licker and nobody needs to hear you talk about it.

I'd tell you mine but I don't even like movies. Cept for Patton, or Dr. Strangelove. I liked those. I kinda liked Star Wars when Han shot first.

That's about it I guess. Oh, the chicks will want to talk about what the women are wearing. Go for it. Be catty.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 03:55 PM | Comments (521)
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Afghanistan Violence Sparked By Poor Rubbish Disposal Procedures Continues Apace
— andy

The natives remain restless.

U.S. military officials say eight American soldiers were wounded Sunday during a violent protest outside a U.S. forward operating base in Afghanistan's Kunduz province. The Americans were wounded when one of the protesters apparently hurled a grenade into the compound. The extent of the injuries was unclear.

The attack occurred as 400 demonstrators stormed the American outpost to protest the inadvertent burning of Qurans at the U.S. Bagram airbase north of Kabul. More than two dozen people, including four U.S. troops, have been killed since Tuesday, after the Qurans and religious materials had been thrown into a fire pit used to burn garbage.

I guess they didn't get word that Obama apologized. Maybe he should visit in person and give a speech or play some golf or something. I hear their sand traps are amazing.

Andy McCarthy has a must-read piece on the apologizer-in-chief over at NRO.

We have officially lost our minds.

The New York Times reports that President Obama has sent a formal letter of apology to Afghanistan’s ingrate president, Hamid Karzai, for the burning of Korans at a U.S. military base. The only upside of the apology is that it appears (based on the Times account) to be couched as coming personally from our blindly Islamophilic president — “I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident. . . . I extend to you and the Afghani people my sincere apologies.” It is not couched as an apology from the American people, whose frame of mind will be outrage, not contrition, as the facts become more widely known.

Now is this any way to treat the hero who personally offed bin Ladin? Read the whole thing.

As far as the current situation goes, there sure doesn't seem to be much upside to our continued presence in that little slice of the third world, does there?

Posted by: andy at 03:33 PM | Comments (81)
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Open Thread
— rdbrewer

Anybody got any good crackpot theories?

I was working on a good one about intelligent alien life and evolution, but I need charts and graphs. Trying to explain it without visual aids is taking too long. So, how about half-baked crackpottery?

First, precognition. Where would you look for that? Well, why muddy the waters by talking to people when you can look at animals? Think of natural selection. Mosquitoes and flies, for example, have been swatted at for millions of years. Wouldn't it follow that the best and easiest to find examples of precognition in the animal kingdom would lie with an insect whose life depends upon getting away at just the right moment? All those years of selective pressure have created the fly and the mosquito... who fly away just before you swat at them. Ever notice that? Right at the instant you decide to take one down, bam. They leave. Typically. That's because they can see into the future.

It might also be that they can read your mind. So you'd have to test whether it's ESP or precognition. But I doubt it's the latter, because that would require a level of intelligence they can't have. more...

Posted by: rdbrewer at 10:44 AM | Comments (709)
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Moron Movie Review: Act of Valor
— andy

I'm no movie critic or expert in the art of filmmaking, and I've avoided reading every review of this movie for the express purpose of writing this man-on-the-street review without letting anyone else's bias creep in.

I haven't really liked an action/war movie since We Were Soldiers. And since becoming a parent a little over a decade ago, I could count the non-G rated movies I've seen at the theater without taking my shoes off.

But I do have about every possible method of movie delivery into a home imaginable and a great home theater setup, so I've seen most everything interesting in that time without really directly ponying up much money to Hollywood for it.

Probably the most celebrated film in the genre during this time was The Hurt Locker. It won 6 Oscars, and here's my mini-review of it: It's a plodding, predictable, utterly uninspired piece of shit.

Which brings me to the point of this review, which I rewrote parts of after thinking on it a little in light of the fact that the Academy Awards are tonight.

more...

Posted by: andy at 07:27 AM | Comments (292)
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Sunday Book Thread
— Monty

I bought a couple of new books over the past week in violation of my self-imposed "no new books until I finish my backlog" rule. I'm always concerned that if I don't pick the book up when I'm thinking about it, I'll just forget about it and it will disappear into the flowing river of Time. (Also, the Kindle makes impulse-buying dreadfully easy.)

The first book went right to the top of my list: Charlie Louvin's The Devil is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers (co-written with Benjamin Whitmer). If you're any kind of fan of country or roots music, you know who the Louvin Brothers are: they were the premier country music "brother act" in the middle part of the 20th century.

Normally I'm not a fan of biography, but in this case the subject matter is an interest of mine: I love old country and bluegrass music, and as musicians Ira and Charlie Louvin (Loudermilk) blazed a lot of trails in both the mainstream country and bluegrass genres. (They're still the best close-harmony duet in the history of country music, I think.) But there is an added dimension to their story: Charlie was a relatively straight arrow while his brother Ira was a violent alcoholic. Modern rock stars' antics have nothing on Ira Louvin: married four times, his third wife shot him four times in the chest for beating her, and he was known to smash his mandolin on stage while drunk. (One has to wonder if a young Jimi Hendrix was watching and taking mental notes.) Ira was also notorious for telling a young Elvis Presley that he shouldn't be playing "that n***er trash" on stage -- advice that the young Elvis fortunately ignored.

One thing I find interesting about the Louvins' history is that their lives encompass a time of great change in America, both culturally and musically. The brothers recapitulated a story already familiar in the annals of country music: born the sons of a dirt-poor cotton farmer in the south, they eventually escaped into the world of music and made fortunes in the great postwar boom of country and bluegrass music. Born in a time when automobiles were scarce and only the wealthy had electricity and indoor plumbing, they saw America turn into a military and technological giant in the 1940's and 1950's. And finally they saw the rise of youth culture in the 1960's, as their own trailblazing ways began to be seen as old-fashioned by the new generation of young people. One brother -- Charlie -- would survive his journey; the other would not.

The second book I picked up on a recommendation from a friend: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. This book is an exploration of how human beings think: the "fast" way, which is intuitive, instinctive, and emotional; and the "slow" way, which is more deliberate and logical. Each system of thought tends to bring along with it biases and common errors in judgement, and this book is an attempt to explain how these modes of thought developed in the human species and how a synthesis of the two modes of thought compromise our mental models today. I haven't begun the book yet, but it sounds very interesting indeed. (The topic is similar to Stephen Pinker's How the Mind Works, which was a pretty interesting book.)

EDIT: I almost forgot to add links to two interesting essays.

The first is a piece by Victor Davis Hanson, entitled "So Why Read Any More?".

The second is a longish essay by Roger Kimball entitled "The Great American Novel".

Both essays touch on issues we've talked about ourselves in previous book posts: the present and future of literature -- particularly popular fiction -- in America.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:55 AM | Comments (81)
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Sunday Morning Non-Book Open Thread
— andy

Content? What content?

Posted by: andy at 02:57 AM | Comments (216)
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Overnight Open Thread
— CDR M

Robert Farley over at Information Dissemination has started something new that I think is pretty cool. He's going to start discussing Seapower in Culture. Last Sunday, he posted his first article that discussed The Final Countdown. I'm not gonna lie. I loved The Final Countdown when it came out. The idea of a modern Carrier Strike Group going back in time and be in position to stop the attack on Pearl Harbor was an awesome idea. Plus, I loved the Tomcat sequence with the Japanese Zeros. However, I agree with Mr. Farley's critique of the movie. It never really developed the characters and they really didn't delve too deeply into sea power discussions.

Final Countdown is a fun movie for people who love naval aviation. The scene of the F-14s splashing the Zeros is itself worth the price of admission. As a film, it's lacking; the characters aren't strong enough to support the plot. From a seapower point of view, the film's assumptions are incomplete and poorly specified. The Navy devoted considerable resources to making this film look good; most of the extras were Nimitz crewmen. Exchanging three minutes of shipboard operations for three minutes of conversation about the actual role that Nimitz might play in a war would have been more than worthwhile from both dramatic and public relations points of view. And really, you generally hire Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen for a reason; it wouldn't have killed the director (Hollywood vet Don Taylor) to give them a few more minutes of conversation. A work about time travel is neither inherently absurd nor without potential lessons, and it would have been better if Taylor had allowed the premise some space to breathe.

I'm going to give the Axis Of Time book trilogy a read when I get time. It sounds pretty similar only this time, the Carrier Strike Group STAYS back in WWII. more...

Posted by: CDR M at 05:40 PM | Comments (411)
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Human Ingenuity 2, Peak Oil 1 [ArthurK]
— Open Blogger

The debunking of the Peak Oil idea has popped up in this blog from time to time. It's popping up again because I like the quotes from this article.

Here's the money quote.

Doomsayers had reasonable grounds for suspecting (that global oil production has peaked) - but failed to address the bigger picture, one which includes technological innovation. They simply wanted Doomsday a little too badly.

Isn't that the truth! These guys anticipate, nay long for, humanity's* self destruction. The consequences of running out of oil are as much fun as a Zombie Apocalypse to them.

*or is it just Western Civilization?

Enough ranting. Summing up, technological progress when governments allow it to proceed is finding fossil fuel faster than we use it. Now for more tasty quotes.

The idea that seized the imaginations of the bien pensant chattering classes in the Noughties - "Peak Oil" - is no longer relevant.

"Peak Oil" is the point at which the production of conventional crude oil begins an irreversible decline. The effect of this, some say, is that scarcity-induced prices rises would require huge changes in modern industrial societies. For some, Peak Oil was the call of Mother Earth herself, requiring a return to pre-industrial lifestyles.

...

Oil production is far more contingent on upstream investment than many people realise. When it does respond, it responds rapidly; the US well count has increased 500 per cent in three years.

In other words, when you TRY to get more oil... You Get More Oil.

The death of Peak Oil kicks away the underpinnings from a great deal of policy-making by our bureaucracies and their advisers. Over the past two decades, we've seen the mushrooming of the "sustainability" sector, which is almost completely dependent on state funding* ...

*aka Obamaesque Crony Capitalism (Algae!)

The Victorians once depended on whale blubber for lighting and heating - and fretted, much like today's sustainability crowd, about what might replace it. Human inventiveness rapidly provided an alternative. And policy-makers were once gripped by the constrained and volatile supply of saltpetre, the nitrate* being essential to both feeding their populations and making things that went bang. Then chemistry came to the rescue. Of course a resource is a combination of things - the limits of human invention being just one.

*Naval battles were fought in WW1 to secure islands covered with guano. The Germans lost those battles and industrialized their invention to use Nitrogen from the air to make high explosives.

(peak oil debunking) signals the beginning of the end of what we might call Apocalypse Politics - where unpopular and daft* policies gain traction simply because their advocates claim that they're justified by some catastrophic and irreversible historical trend. Nobody but the superstitious can really believe that any more.

*aka Obamaesque Crony Capitalism (Solyndra!)

_{^{Also, I tweet at @ComradeArthur}}

Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:56 PM | Comments (260)
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"Act of Valor": a brief review, w/spoilers [Fritzworth]
— Open Blogger

Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf. -- George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism

This film has gotten a fair amount of 'net publicity -- though probably not nearly enough regular marketing -- because of its fundamental concept: film a movie about what Navy Seals do, using actual Navy Seals and, by the way, a lot of live ammunition. It sounds like a recipe for a heartfelt but amateur film.

While it is heartfelt, it is anything but amateur.

Yes, the Seals themselves tend to sound just a bit stilted when talking with each other, as I suspect most of us would if we were filmed. But after a while, that just adds to the ambiance of the film. What came through is that these are real men who train for and carry out exactly these missions. At no point in the film did I roll my eyes or make a quiet snide comment to my wife. Nor was there any hint of political correctness, stupid plot twists, or Hollywood tropes (save one, but see below). The film had great direction, great cinematography, great sound, and great editing.

What I was not prepared for at the end of the film was the list of Naval Special Warfare personnel who have died in the line of duty since 9/11. It was a much longer list than I would have expected. My wife and I were quiet when we left the film and for most of the drive home. As we walked out of the theater, past the posters for various coming films, I was struck in a new way how fatuous most of what Hollywood produces is, compared to a film such as this.

While it is doubtful that George Orwell ever said, "People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence in their behalf," it is a true fact nevertheless. God bless such rough men in the service of the United States.

Highly recommended. Some spoilers after the jump. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 01:55 PM | Comments (87)
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Woman In Black Review
— Ace

The bad: You've seen it all before.

The good: Some things are just plain scary, no matter how many times you've seen 'em. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:52 PM | Comments (170)
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