French Slave Ship, 19th Cent., Color Lithograph

Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to the amazing Sunday Morning Book Thread.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now I see.

This is, of course, John Newton's most famous hymn. Most of us probably know the traditional tune the words go with, but what's interesting is that is that they also fit the tune we know as The House of the Rising Sun. I've heard that this odd coincidence was used as an evangelistic device during the "Jesus movement" years. I'm not going anywhere with this, I just thought it was a curious musical artifact.

OK, so Mrs. Muse, as part of her church book club, is reading this autobiography of the famous English preacher and ex-slave trader John Newton.

He was born the son of a shipmaster in London in 1725, and when he was old enough (age 11), he went to sea with him. After his father retired, he signed on with a merchant ship sailing to the Mediterranean Sea. A few years later, he was kidnapped and press-ganged into the Royal Navy. He tried to desert, was caught and ritualistically flogged in front of the entire crew.

So this is where it gets ugly.

En route to India, he transferred to another ship, which turned out to be a slave ship en route to West Africa. Apparently, Newton was such a problem for the crew, that they just left him there with a slave trader, who gave him to his wife, the African duchess Princess Peye. Newton was basically a slave, and was abused and mistreated along with the other slaves. His father eventually sent someone, another sea captain, to look for him, and so he was rescued.

On the way back to England, the ship ran into heavy seas and nearly sank. Newton cried out to God as the ship filled up with water. But then some of the floating cargo in the hold jammed up the hole the water was coming through, and so the ship did not sink.

Now, after experiencing all of this suffering and abuse, followed by a religious conversion, you'd think that Newton would, if not actively oppose slavery, at least have nothing to do with it.

But you'd be wrong.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 06:45 AM | Comments (194)
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The Tumblr account is -- I just checked, NSFW -- here.

It's called the Large Labia Project.

I'm going to start my own Tumblr account for empowerment, permitting Busty Lesbians to send in pictures of the exxxploits to "stop the hate" or something. I'll figure out the right words later.

I could explain why sending in pictures of your vagina to an internet site is a bad idea but I think those who would do so are probably beyond rational persuasion.

Via Instapundit.

Posted by: Ace at 04:50 PM | Comments (344)
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The Sequester In One Chart.

Ah. Second day of March. You know what that means? Spring is near. And that means spring cleaning is right around the corner. So what Household Chores Are The Worst? I'm gonna have to go with the bathroom. At least any bathroom my son uses. Let's just say his aim needs some work. more...

Posted by: CDR M at 05:49 PM | Comments (696)
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Lying liars who lie. Usually people mean that sarcastically; I don't.

One thought about this: I think the media convinces itself to forgive Obama's lying about the details because they've convinced himself that he's right about the bigger picture-- that is, whether Obama created the sequester or not (he did, by the way), it's the Republicans who want to cut spending. So Obama may be lying about the mechanism of cutting spending, but it's all Republicans' fault, because they're the ones pushing the issue.

One problem with that thousandth lie the media is telling itself to excuse Obama: Obama is also on record as supposedly favoring spending cuts, too.

Remember? A "balanced approach" of $3 in cuts to $1 in tax hikes? Well, Obama got his $1 in tax hikes; so we're to have the $3 in cuts now, right?

But Obama won't specify his preferred cuts because he actually prefers no cuts.

So he got elected by running on a campaign lie.

Anyone in the media care about this, a president simply lying about every single one of his beliefs for political purposes, such that hardly a single one of his statements corresponds with any sort of recognizable reality?

The question is rhetorical. The answer is "No."

Posted by: Ace at 02:56 PM | Comments (330)
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The Master is about tremendously interesting subject matter, I think. But the film itself is very banal.

It is gorgeous, though. It's so gorgeous that 40 minutes in I looked it up to see if it had won the Oscar for cinematography. It hadn't. In fact, it hadn't even been nominated.

I wonder why. My initial guesses were that I, as a novice, was over-impressed by post-productions tricks being used like oversaturation of color. That's when (this is a total non-expert telling you this from memory, so don't quote me) you use computer software in post to increase the density of color bits in each frame of the film, so it winds up looking richly colorful, as if each shot was a staged shot for a fashion magazine. Miller's Crossing had that kind of rich, supersaturated look, for example.

Maybe experts think this is no big deal, something easily accomplished, and therefore something not worthy of an award?

Another idea I had was this: I think union rules require a separate position for Director of Photography, and specifically state that the Director must not operate his own camera. Maybe there's some Secret Information not widely shared that Philip Thomas Anderson either breaks this rule or hires young and inexperienced DPs so he can just boss 'em around and essentially be DP? So the Academy avoids giving his films an Oscar for cinematography, because they know the person they'd be giving the award to is just a stand-in for the director?*

Well, I don't know. But to this non-expert's eyes the photography here was just terrific. Particularly when he's got a camera on a boat or looking at a boat, the pictures are beautiful. If anyone expert in photographic matters can solve the Mystery of Why the Academy Doesn't Seem To Think This Was a Gorgeous Picture, please let me know.

Apart from the photography and lighting and set design and costuming (it's set in 1950) -- all that stuff involving technicians and craft, which is all well done and looks like it cost a bunch of money -- this movie just isn't very interesting at all.

Here is my exact thought process while watching it:

First ten minutes: Wow, this movie looks great and really seems like a serious and important movie. I'm glad I rented this. I kind of feel like an Intellectual just sitting here watching this.

Minutes 10-30: Is the director trying to make fundamentally interesting subject matter less interesting than it seems it should be? Am I too stupid to grasp some subtle (probably European) aesthetic he's chasing? Is there a Banality of Evil message here?

This is also when a bit of boredom set in and I began wondering if it had won Best Cinematography, and then began wondering why it hadn't.

It's a bad sign for a movie when the viewer -- even an admiring viewer, as I was initially -- is thinking about things about the movie's technical aspects and isn't actually engaged with the material.

Minutes 30-120: Well, this movie is a failure, but it's an Interesting Failure,, a Worthy Failure, and while I don't actually like it, I'm going to half-recommend it to cineastes on the basis that it tried something that ought to be tried. Even a failed experiment, after all, produces important results. Even a failed experiment tells us something.

Last Seven Minutes: You're kidding me-- that's it? Okay now I'm not recommending this movie at all. I'm actually now sort of pissed off that my time was wasted for two hours and seven minutes.

More thoughts below.

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Posted by: Ace at 11:35 AM | Comments (429)
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Lots and lots of 'em.

This is done to get her show "trending" on Twitter. The Twitter software deems a hashtag, like #maddow, "trending" if it gets a certain number of mentions in a period of time. I don't know the actual algorithm and I bet it's a proprietary secret, but if enough Twitter accounts include #maddow in their tweets, #maddow goes to the "trending" list and gets, basically, free publicity on every Twitter homepage in the world.

Some of these fake accounts feature a butterface showing off her cleavage so Twitchy notes this with the headline "Busty Squad of Fake Rachel Maddow Fans Promote Her Show With Identical Spam Tweets.

You had me at Busty Squad.

Posted by: Ace at 09:59 AM | Comments (247)
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Effing Nostradamus

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

These guys ran a head to head on an old 86' vintage Mac Plus vs an AMD dual core with Vista. The results were rather shocking. The 20yo 8mhz Mac held its ground against the new dual-core 2.4Ghz AMD.

[open]thread[/open]

Posted by: Open Blogger at 09:08 AM | Comments (159)
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There's "not even trying to hide it anymore" and then there's this:

All Propaganda.

Posted by: andy at 03:17 AM | Comments (335)
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Snarf.

Don't tell me if I spelled his name wrong. I don't care. I bother to learn the spelling of names that matter, not this fat little hump. Looks like a lima bean that eats too many carbs.

Of course, Obama had told him to push exactly this line just hours before.

Obama spoke at 11:30am, Dr. Testicle spoke at around 2 pm. They've gotten it down to a bloody science.

Posted by: Ace at 03:19 PM | Comments (495)
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The History Channel is actually airing a dramatic series, and I don't mean Ultimate Fighter.

It's called Vikings. It's about Vikings.

It premiers Sunday at 10/9 Central.

Review: "A bloody good time," the headline says.

via @realrosenrosen

Posted by: Ace at 02:44 PM | Comments (206)
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