Susan Stepney, who is apparently a computer science professor in England, also has a nice website with a lot of capsule reviews of SF-stuff, if such interests thee (and other stuff, besides, but I went there for the SF).
Rush to Judgement (politics here)
Newsweek on Rush Limbaugh and Addiction.
Since the Rush Limbaugh-addiction story broke, I’ve been somewhat torn on how to feel about it. In all honesty, I must admit to a certain amount of schadenfreude in the whole thing. I’d be lying if I said otherwise. I’ve never been particularly tolerant of those whose professed morality is as limited as Limbaugh’s, and it’s rarely surprising when their own frailties are exposed. I saw this kind of nonsense during the 1990s, when conservatives of all stripes would rail against Bill Clinton’s infidelities when their own personal lives were hardly the picture of faith-and-chastity; I saw with Bill Bennett, who is perhaps the one person in America who has made more of a cottage industry from moralizing than Rush Limbaugh. The pattern is pretty familiar now, right down to the headache-inducing parsings following the outing: “My affairs were youthful indiscretions (committed when I was 40).” “You’ll notice that I never talked about gambling, and at least I didn’t bet the house we live in.” “He got hooked accidentally, not like those people who look to get high.”
Do I feel much sympathy for Mr. Limbaugh? I do not, I’m sorry to say. I’ve tried, because I view addiction as much more of a medical problem than a moral one, and I think that if our society takes the reverse tack, society’s wrong. But this is a guy who has been very vocal in his years on the radio in favor of “Just say no” and “Addiction’s a choice, not an illness” and “Send them up the river”. So if he broke laws I disagree with in order to get his fix, well…I still believe the laws are unjust, but it somehow seems fitting that a guy who has spent so much time advocating those laws now faces them. It’s awfully hard to take the moralists seriously when their lofty pronunciations of “This is how everyone should live” so often turn out to be “Everyone else should live this way, except me”.
Some liberals are hoping for some kind of conversion here, a kind of “atheist on the deathbed” moment in which Mr. Limbaugh will realize that he’s been wrong about drugs and addiction and that maybe treatment should be the way to go instead of punishing them all, but I rather doubt it. Sure, when he gets back to the radio maybe he’ll pay some lip service to it all, but I expect him to simply bring the topic up a lot less. But Gary Bauer, one of the most visible conservatives out there, said this in the Newsweek story:
From a moral standpoint, there’s a difference between people who go out and seek a high and get addicted and the millions of Americans dealing with pain who inadvertently get addicted.
No change here that I can see: “It’s not Rush’s fault that he got addicted. His addiction’s not a matter of choice. His addiction is just bad fortune.” The subtext, of course, is that Rush is a rich white guy who happened to get addicted, as opposed to all the poor folks who choose to do so. Well, I’m sorry, I really am. But Rush is still a rich white guy, and he’ll easily be able to get himself cleaned up and move on. If it turns out that he really did break laws to keep his habit going, I’ll bet any time he ends up doing is in a minimum-security facility. Again, I’m torn: Do I hope that Rush Limbaugh is treated in the way that I think the vast majority of addicts should be treated, or do I hope that Rush Limbaugh is treated in the way that Rush Limbaugh has long maintained that the vast majority of addicts should be treated? Tough question, that. And to return to Mr. Bauer’s statement, I don’t know if there’s really a moral difference between a rich person’s painkiller habit and a poor person’s crack habit, and in a way, I don’t really care. As Stephen King once wrote, in reference to his own addictions, “We all look pretty much the same when we’re puking in the gutter.”
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Hello–?
Hommina hommina hommina….
From The Late Show with David Letterman, we have Grinder Girl:
And that’s not all! Dave also provides weekly doses of Anna Jack, who does amazing things with hula hoops:
Who says there’s nothing good of TV anymore?
(Links provided in comments by Mickey.)
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Further Stuff About Wal-Mart
A few weeks ago I posted a number of reasons why I don’t like Wal-Mart, which had little to do with the chain’s questionable labor and business practices and a lot to do with my generally less-than-pleasant experiences as a consumer at Wal-Mart.
Well, I’m not going to absolve Wal-Mart of running stores that, in my experience, aren’t very enjoyable to shop in, but I will credit them for the fine store I was in yesterday. While gallavanting around the Southern Tier, we stopped in the Wal-Mart in our former town of residence (Allegany, NY, for those inordinately curious). This Wal-Mart was generally one of the nicer ones I’ve been in (although it was little better than a train wreck on Saturdays, when people flocked from the hills to do their weekly shopping), and since the last time I was in that store, several years ago, it has been extensively remodeled and redesigned so it’s quite nice now indeed. The electronics section, for example, has been enlarged with several entrances added (every other Wal-Mart I’ve ever been in has one entrance to the electronics area, which makes for bottlenecks). The checkout area is devoid of cluttered merchandise, as are the main aisles, and the floors are as shiny as I’ve ever seen. It was all quite surprising, really. They do still have the “Carton cut open and put on the shelf” thing going on, as well as the “wooden pallet stacked with merchandise, just as it came in off the loading dock” thing going on in some of the aisles, but not nearly so bad as the Wal-Marts here in Buffalo. Oh, and big carts.
So, this one store was not dirty. Still evil, of course. But not dirty!
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A Brief Observation on the matter of….Coffee.
[Being a transparent attempt to merely take up space on the blog with a post of dubious content]
I really do prefer the way coffee tastes when I grind the beans myself, immediately before brewing. It comes out stronger, fresher, with more “zip”. (If wine people can talk about “bouquet” and “finish”, I can talk about “zip”.) But last week the grocery store had my brand of coffee on sale, plus I had coupons for additional savings on the ground coffee only, and not the whole bean. So I got the ground stuff…and while not as good in the cup, it is kind of nice to not have to drag down the grinder every morning.
Being a big believer in brewing freshly ground coffee, I would never get one of those coffee makers they have nowadays — the ones with VCR-style timers so you can load the grounds the night before and set the machine to start brewing at eight hours later. That’s eight hours the grounds are sitting in the basket, exposed to air which dries out the oils and thus dulls the flavor, and that’s eight hours your water is sitting in the reservoir with no air in it. (Aerated water makes good coffee, which is why you should let the faucet run for ten seconds or so before filling the carafe to transfer the water to the reservoir, and start your brewing immediately.)
My mother used to have the extremely questionable practice of brewing a large pot of coffee in the morning, drinking her two cups, and then turning the thing off and then microwaving cold coffee back to hot later in the day. The mere thought of doing that makes my skin crawl. And when I was in Target the other day, I was surprised to see that they still make percolating machines! I thought those had gone the way of the dodo when everyone realized that percolated coffee tastes lousy.
Now that winter is coming, it will soon be time to dig out the espresso machine. I don’t make very good espresso, I’m sorry to say — never practiced much — but I love a cup of hot chocolate dosed with a serving of espresso. As for coffee accessories I don’t own, I’ve always wanted to try using a French press and a stove-top vacuum pot.
Oooooh, pot’s done brewing! Gotta go.
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They’re probably Cubs fans, too.
Ooooooooh, lookie! More irate Star Wars fans over on AICN!
Here’s the story: A few days ago, AICN put up a publicity notice for some screening of A New Hope that was to take place in Los Angeles. What was interesting is that the people screening the movie advertised it as the original version as released in 1977 (which George Lucas has removed from circulation) as opposed to the 1997 Special Edition.
So, the other night, this film festival (apparently some kind of retrospective on film history) announced that they were unable to get the original version, because – – consistent with his stated policy – – George Lucas would only allow them to screen the Special Edition, and that was that. Chaos, of course, ensued on the AICN TalkBack, in which we have more of George Lucas showing total contempt for the fans and for film history and raping everybody’s childhood and selling out and blah blah blah blah blah.
But as I parse this timeline, I’m wondering: how the hell is this George Lucas’s fault? This film festival went ahead and announced their screening of the original film before they knew if they had permission to screen it? And George Lucas is to blame?
Well, OK. Tomorrow night I will personally screen Return of the King in my home, and you’re all welcome. But if I can’t get a print and have to send you all home, remember the logic of the Idiot Star Wars Fan: It’s Peter Jackson’s fault.
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Holy Orange Gourds, Batman!
Yesterday the family and I trekked into the hills and farmlands of New York’s Southern Tier to visit a place called Pumpkinville, an annual event for us. Pumpkinville is pretty much just what it sounds like: a small roadside tourist attraction devoted to, well, pumpkins. Lots and lots and lots of pumpkins. Not only do they have thousands of them nicely lined up by size in one spot, but if the pre-chosen ones aren’t to your liking, you can actually wander out into the pumpkin patch itself to grab one. And there are farm animals to pet and feed, pony rides, crafts, apples by the bushel, a shed in which maple products are sold (New York being the country’s largest producer of maple syrup), pumpkin-flavored ice cream, and the obligatory hay rides (although the hay ride now involves no hay, the bales in the wagon behind the tractor having been replaced by wooden benches). A good time was had by all, especially since the autumnal turning of the leaves seems to be at peak in the Southern Tier.
Then we proceeded to the town of Ellicottville, which hosted its Fall Festival this weekend. This is your basic street festival, with food and crafts and all manner of other stuff going on. Ellicottville is Western New York’s largest skiing town; it’s home to several of the area’s largest ski resorts and has a real upscale, Aspen-like air about it. Thousands of people converge on this little town each year — on the way out, we sped past traffic literally backed up seven miles on US 219 — for this Festival. Ellicottville itself caters to a very wide area; wealthy people from Canada even travel there during the winter weekends.
Here is what the hills and ski slopes in that part of New York look like:
This photo is a couple of years old; there was no snow yesterday. Here’s an even better view, from up on one the ski slopes themselves:
Is it any wonder that October is my favorite month?
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Howl! Howl!
I wrote a guest review of the film RAN for the Destroy All Monsters website. I’m not sure how insightful my review is, given my general lack of knowledge about Japanese cinema outside of Hayao Miyazaki’s anime films, but check it out, anyway.
One of these days I’ll get around to adding DAM to my links, because it’s an excellent site about Asian popular culture. I learned about the site from Darth Swank.