WATCHING:
Syriana
Stephen Gaghan, director

A very complicated, very interesting, very involved and – ultimately – very disappointing movie.

The movie was about the stability of the Middle East and the behavior of the companies/governments that use the oil from its fields. The message was simple: Nothing is as it seems. The people who run this don’t, this that seems like white is black, doublespeak is the language of all, and it all comes down to the almighty buck.

Could be compelling, but – as presented here – it was just overkill and (possibly intentionally) confusing. I thought Three Kings (also with Clooney) did a much better job of showing how the craziness in the Middle East was oil/money/power based – with that religious wildcard, of course.

All movies

One of the big tech stories – probably the biggest – of the week is Google’s acquisition of YouTube.

This aquisition (see the New.com story), needless to say, lit up the blogosphere like a Christmas tree. Everyone had something to say about it. (I guess today it’s my turn.)

Late last week, a few days after the purchase was announced, Robert Cringely weighed in.

Now, I like Cringely – he has a long history in Silicon Valley, many contacts and comes up with some strange, yet plausible conclusions – but I think he missed the boat on this one.

In his PBS column, Cringely says that YouTube is not (yet) the future of television.

I don’t think anyone ever really thought it was, did they?

To me, YouTube is the video version of Flickr (Flickr tagline: The best way to store, search, sort and share your photos) combined with Tivo for the Tivo-less.

The first point you can probably understand, the second may be a little harder to understand.

Let me give an example.

A co-worker was telling me about Stephen Colbert’s Green Screen challenge. I’d heard nothing about it (I haven’t seen The Colbert Report for about a month).

Colbert put a green screen version of him doing a Star Wars light sabre routine up on YouTube and invited people to download and modify it. Ove the next week or so, he ran clips of some of the contenders and so on.

I went home, hit YouTube, and saw the set up, some examples, and the winners (including an entry by one “George L”[ucas], who appeared on the show).

It was like I Tivoed it, but I don’t have a Tivo.

Now does it make sense?

I don’t think YouTube is really trying to be television, it is doing – ironically – much of what Google is doing – INDEXING video, including television.

I can’t go to my TV and type in “Law and Order” and get a list of all (14 million) Law and Order shows currently running.

But, by going to YouTube and typing in a couple of keywords, I was watching all the Colbert green screen silliness (pretty damn good, by the way).

This is powerful.

Think of the next possible step – where you view a trailer on YouTube (through the not-yet-invented Home Media device) and you can click throught to the whole show, which is an on-demand download for pennies, and includes the commercials, possibly targetted ads based upon your viewing choice and/or past views.

Powerful.

YouTube becomes Tivo (with teasers) and the video version of the TV Guide. The possiblities are endless. The more I think about it, the more I see the purchase really making sense.

Which is why I think Cringely missed the point.

After circling the Baghdad airport for 40 minutes because of mortar and rocket fire, traveling by helicopter to the Green Zone to avoid the deadly bomb-strewn highway into the city and holding a meeting with President Jalal Talabani in darkness because the power was suddenly cut off, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held a news conference Thursday to talk about all the progress being made in Iraq.

This kind of clueless happy talk in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary might produce great material for political satirists, but it’s not very encouraging for those looking for signs of hope in the Middle East.

— Rice’s Baffling Mideast Trip, L.A. Times Op-Ed, 10/08/2006

If this is progress, I’d hate to see what slippage looks like.

And this is an LA Times Op-Ed, not some random leftwing/rightwing wingnut out on the web. From one of the better papers in the U.S., and one that actually tries to do national/international coverage.

A few weeks ago, our cuckoo clock stopped working. I knew my dad knew an older guy who worked out of his house fixing clocks – my dad had used him – so I got the number and gave the guy a call.

This clock guy lives only minutes from where I work, so I called and asked when I could drop off the clock; he was free then.

So I ran over.

He looked at the clock, diagnosed, fixed and oiled the clock in about 10 minutes.

Cost? $5.

Honest.

And then I made a blunder – as he was marking the clock to indicate when it was oiled, I asked him where he learned the craft (he does watches and clocks). He said back where he was born, in Europe.

I asked what country (he sounded German, but not really).

He replied “Hungry,” and then the floodgates opened.

This guy works out of his house in a little room which I assume was once a bedroom, and he probably doesn’t see many people during the day (he had pictures of grandkids, but I don’t know if his wife was still alive) – so when I asked him what country, I proceeded to get his life history. Honest. Here is just some of what I can remember:

1. The house he grew up in had only three rooms, the main room dominated by the pot-bellied stove, which was used for cooking and heat.
2. One small room was used as a pantry of sorts, to store produce. Carrots they’d stick into the sand that was the floor, and pull them out and use as necessary.
3. 10 people lived in this house – seven children, mom, dad and grandpa. Everyone slept in the main room around the stove.
4. House was made of abode, with walls about 15 inches thick. The front of the house, while adobe, was covered with stone.
5. Very hot in the summer, and they’d have to take the Hungarian equivalent of a a siesta during midday. Too dangerous to work outside at this time.
6. He violated this siesta rule once and was sun-struck. He almost died.
7. Dangerously cold in the winter too; people outside could freeze to death.
8. His grandfather froze to death. He was going to another town although his parents begged him to not go at that time. He didn’t listen; he froze.
9. Water was pulled from the well and poured into shallow wooden troughs for use.
10. He moved to the Dominican Republic at some point.
11. Very hot in the Dominican Republic, too – everyone wore broad-brimmed straw hats to shield from the sun, plus – when you moved – the brims would flap up and down, stirring up a little breeze for your face.
12. He saw then Vice President Richard Nixon while in the Dominican Republic.
13. After coming to America, he was drafted right before the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
14. He couldn’t fill out his draft form because he only spoke/wrote Hungarian and Spanish, not English. Some Sargent tore him a new one for not filling it out, but he can only guess he was sworn at because he didn’t speak the language.
15. They gave him a Spanish form to complete, and they told him he’d be going to Cuba, but that never happened.

A remarkable torrent of tales.

LISTENING TO:
Horses
Patti Smith

I first heard this album – on a record – in the apartment of a friend in college (~1980). She liked Patti Smith; I’d heard of her, but – shrug – whatever.

I heard the full album and quickly bought same.

I recently purchased the CD and am totally enjoying same. Patti Smith is not to everyone’s taste, but damn she is good:

“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine…”

All music

The Dictator President of the United States has made, to me, another end run around the whole constitutional process with his recent bill signing:

President Bush, again defying Congress, says he has the power to edit the Homeland Security Department’s reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists.

In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.

But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency’s 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section “in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch.”

— Associated Press, via MSN

Yet, with all the FoleyGate press coverage, this privacy issue is buried.

As are we.

I’ve always liked Paul Simon (and Garfunkel); I’m (barely) too young to have appreciated them when they first came out, but I heard – but didn’t fully understand – the music when it first came out. Took a few years to understand it; but Simon & Garfunkel songs were part of my youth.

But I have a bunch of S&G; CDs, as well as Simon’s solo efforts.

Understand that Simon was the writer; Garfunkel was the singer. No ding on either, but just the facts ma’am…

There are a lot of votes for best Paul Simon song – I’d guess including “Bridge Over Trouble Waters,” “Sounds of Silence” and “Mrs. Robinson” (maybe the solo “Graceland”), but my vote goes elsewhere.

The Paul Simon tune I like best is from his second solo album: “American Tune.”

Just resonates for me, both the lyrics and the music. Haunting.

I play this often.

His BEST song? I dunno. My personal favorite, however.

And I dreamed I was dying, I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me, smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying, and high up above my eyes could clearly see
The statue of liberty, sailing away to sea, and I dreamed I was flying

As I have pointed out previously, the update from Itunes 6.x to 7.0 didn’t go so well for me, and it appears that is isn’t going too well for others, as well.

The graphic on the left is taken from a MonkeyBites blog entry. As the article and graphic indicate, the new iTunes 7.0 is so problematic – on Windows, at least – that the older version is getting more downloads that spankin’ new, hot release.

Telling.

So it’s not just me…

How can one support torture?

Let’s even leave out the ethical/legal issues – and just focus on one fact many military/CIA officers agree on: torture doesn’t work. Start prying off my fingernails and I’ll confess to kidnapping the Lindberg baby or leaking nuclear secrets to the USSR/Stalin…

However – again, leaving out the ethical/legal issues – most Amercians support torture to some degree. Disturbingly, this includes a great deal of Catholics – who, according to one study, are more inclined to support torture.

We’ve come a long way from turn the other cheek, no? Abort a zygote; bad. Make a prisoner think you’re drowning him…hey, he might divulge secrets.

So I guess I don’t represent the majortity opinon, even though the ethical and – currently – legal frameworks are on my side. (The practical viewpoint, as the poll reveals, is the framework I’m backing the wrong pony on.)

Which makes me ashamed, as an Amercian and a person, that the U.S. Congress is actually engaging in debate over whether or not to give the Executive Branch carte blanche to torture, operate secret prison, exempt from any judicial oversight or prosection anyone engaging in torture and so on.

Is this the type of democracy we hope to bring to the Middle East? And we wonder why they really aren’t embracing same…

One question I’d like the pollsters to ask people who give the thumbs-up to torture: “What if your wife/husband/mother/father etc. was whisked away in the middle of the night because she/he is suspected to be terror mastermind. Is torture, with no judicial oversight, no charges placed (i.e. no habeus corpus) and no information about that relative – including no confirmation/denial about this relative’s apprehension to anyone outside the CIA (for example), still OK? Are you good with the torture of your relative?”

Because that’s what’s already happened to a lot of relatives, and – should the new torture conventions the Executive Branch is pushing for become law – could well happen to a lot of other relatives. This is not an abstract arguement – Americans have been plucked out of our sight and squirreled away, not just some guy in a beard spouting the Quran. (That doesn’t make it any better/worse for me, but many folks – understandably – care more about their families than unknown families in some Third World country.)

Think about that. Your relative/co-worker/best friend just suddenly gone.

Imagine that moment.

Imagine that confusion.

Imagine your reaction to discover this person has been detained – with no charges – in some secret prison in some unknown country and is being treated in a manner that, if you treated your dog similarly, you’d be fined/arrested. With no recourse.

Imagine.

I like Mighty Girl; I don’t read her often but Maggie’s often a good read.

However, she has written a book, and I just don’t get it: No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas For Your Blog.

The book – as the title implies – is things you can write about on your blog (Dooce has picked up one of these suggestions and blogged about, basically, when you realize this relationship is going nowhere…).

But isn’t this book sort of backwards? Don’t – shouldn’t – one have a blog because one has something to say, as opposed to having a blog because it’s the hip thing to do but you’ve no clue about what to say?

If you have nothing to say, don’t write anything that day/week/month. Wait until there is something you want to write about.

I just don’t get it, but … whatever.

WATCHING:
The Dish
Rob Sitch, director

This is not a great movie, this is not a classic – it’s just a really well made, beautifully filmed story about that time in our history when we raced for the moon.

The story is set in Australia, which was (and still is) home to the radio dish that handles spacecraft communications when North American dishes can’t see the object.

Quirky characters, a strong cast – mainly of unknowns – help elevate this tale of how Parkes Radio Telescope participated in the Apollo 11 program from a pretty boring premise to one that is a compelling watch. This is not The Right Stuff or Apollo 13 – it’s closer to October Sky.

All movies

Sometime in June I did something I never thought I’d do: I cancelled my newspaper subscription. I was going to write about it then, but I thought I’d wait a few months to get some perspective – who knows, at this point, I could well have decided to re-up my subscription.

Now, I’ve been reading at least one newspaper a day since I began reading. And I would subscribe to the paper during my lengthy period of poordom, when a newspaper (and magazines) was a very expensive luxury.

My tastes have changed – now I’ll hit the op-ed pages and business sections before reading the cartoons – but I still liked the variety a newspaper gave you, and all the news packed in there.

So why did I bail on newspapers?:

• It’s not a money issue: I make enough now to justify a subscription without much of an issue.
• Newspapers suck: In an effort to offset rising paper and gas prices (delivery), newspapers have been cutting back on the extras that made them special, and trying to target the audience that’ll get them the best bang for their buck. It’s understandable, but it’s a shame that newpapers have put business ahead of journalism to such a craven degree. (Don’t take just my word for it, read this Dan Gillmor entry; Gillmor was a newspaper journalist for over two decades.)
• Not even the comics are funny: I always read the comics; from 6-46 years old. But each year, the pool of cartoons that are worth reading gets a little smaller. I miss The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbs, Bloom County. Doonesbury is still doing some interesting things, but – for the most part – the cartoon page(s) are no longer “must read.”
• I get my news on the Internet: Any questions?
• I get my job listings at Monster, my classifieds at Craiglist or eBay: Any other questions?

This is a sad state of affairs to me, as I’m a big reader and long-time lover of newspapers. I still get the Sunday paper, but I find myself reading less and less of it, for the same reasons outlined above.

While sad, it is reality – sure, you missed having that horse you had for years pulling your cart, but isn’t a car really more practical??

As mentioned in my previous post, I updated my iTunes to 7.0.

Wow, does 7.0 on Windoze XP suck.

There is some sort of buffering issue, which renders songs unplayable. Put the pause on, the buffering (I’m guessing) catches up, and it plays fine.

I tried to roll back to 6.x, but it didn’t take. So I put 7.0 in but am not happy about it. Sucky release; looking forwad to the patch.