ha!

http://xkcd.com

the hills, american gangster

for reasons i won't get into, i ended up watching a bit of the hills this weekend. (fine, i will get into it. it was on TV at the gym in the hotel i was staying at.) so, are reality tv shows kind of like sports?

• you basically choose randomly to root for certain characters.
  
• you follow their behavior, which is seemingly of no consequence whatsoever.
  
• despite their mundane behavior, you not only watch them, but you read articles that speculate about more of their mundane behavior.
  

im as big a sports nut as you'll find, but this i don't get. even weirder, it was somewhat addictive despite being the mental equivalent of an anesthetic. also, congrats on making me hate every single character on a tv show. impressive.

what i do know is how awesome american gangster is (jay-z's album, not the movie, which i sadly have not yet seen). man, i hope nobody is reading this, because this album is like a year old. especially the jay-z/nas duet "success". you gotta give hov credit for being a good storyteller, he's one of the few whose lyrics i'll actually pay attention to. also, its redemption for him after the shameful kingdom come, which followed the awesome black album, which was kind of a silly mimicking of the metallica album, whose nickname was the black album, but whose real name was metallica.

finally, an angry diatribe about MORE ROVE-IAN NONSENSE COURTESY OF YOUR LOCAL GOP. for those of you who don't know, apparently Ahmed Yousef, a political advisor to the Hamas group, basically said that he likes Obama and would be happy if he turned out to be president. Apparently in John McCain's mind, having someone think favorably of you obviously means that you think favorably of them. I didn't know that republican nominees could co-opt the reflexive property so...liberally. in my book, this is on par with trying to denigrate Obama for having Hussein as his middle name. NY Times notes:

“I think it is very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States,” Mr. McCain said to the bloggers. “If Senator Obama is favored by Hamas, I think people can make judgments accordingly.”

But important nuances appear to have been lost in the partisan salvos, particularly on Mr. McCain’s side. An examination of Mr. Obama’s numerous public statements on the subjects indicates that he has consistently condemned Hamas as a “terrorist organization,” has not sought the group’s support and does not advocate immediate, direct or unconditional negotiations with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.

But Obama has his own shameful secret, apparently:

Mr. Obama believes “that engagement at the presidential level, at the appropriate time and with the appropriate preparation, can be used to leverage the change we need”

He doesnt want us to go guns blazing into Iran? BLASPHEMY!!! ugh.

listen to sharpton!

that's you, mrs. clinton. swan song time.

many things to talk about, just no time to do it now. but quickly:
1. if you go to great adventure, ride kingda ka and el toro. theyre awesome.
2. gop's "can we ask?" trying to co-opt obama's "yes we can" refrain is awesome. check it out at the times or something. i wish i were in on the marketing meeting that ended up with "can we ask?"
3. myanmar situation is just one more indictment of the UN's best-intentioned shortcomings.
4. turns out the patriots have been cheating for years. somewhere, donovan mcnabb is almost choking on his campbell's chunky soup.
5. slate's political gabfest: good podcast.
6. one of the reasons i love baseball is how fun (i guess this is subjective) it is to quantify player abilities.

iron man, primaries, the slip

First, Iron Man. Sweet! I get to be a unabashed fanboy.

The movie focused much more on the construction of a superhero than how awesome Iron Man is once he fully takes shape. I think this is what was also heavily behind the success of the Batman franchise as well as The Incredibles. I think we are highly interested in the mental makeup that either a) creates a superhero (like Batman or Iron Man) or b) results from having to be a superhero (like Spiderman 2 or The Watchmen). I say this despite the fact that the big-time robot fight at the end of Iron Man is bad-ass. It's also fun to see superhero movies with liberal slants (like this or X-Men) rather than semi-conservative slants (like Transformers or Spiderman).

Speaking of movies, here's an amazing article about the dearth of female leads in summer movies. I'm not always a huge fan, but this time you killed it, Dargis.

Big-time primaries today! More NYTimes for you on economic policy. It was reassuring because I was starting to wonder how secure I was in my (not too well-informed) opinions. But now I'm back to being unreasonable! Clinton and McCain, you earn 4/5 condescending shakes of the head from me.

Finally, NIN released an album for FREE (http://theslip.nin.com). I like about half of the stuff and am ok with the other half. I wish they had stuck with the dance-punk stylings of the Discipline single, instead of spending 30% of the album doing vaguely halfhearted instrumental retreads. Still, the good tracks are a lot of fun, and I'm willing to bet they'll play well live.

internet singles, food crisis

First: internet singles!

I love NIN. I thought I would outgrow it, but I never did. I think deep down I'm kind of a goth kid who wants to party (but still feel deep). One of the great things about NIN is as Trent Reznor has gotten older, he's shifted away from the doom and gloom industrial stomp and really embraced his Depeche Mode/New Order love. Which is great, because I've kind of gone in that direction, too. So, the new single, Discipline, is (in my opinion) alot of fun. Just a simple synth line with an unpretentious melody, and even a little cheekiness (intentional or not). Their other song, Echoplex, was released via a Facebook application (weird.) Initially I was pretty down on it, but since im a giant NIN fanboy, eventually its hypnotic beat + deliberately strange harmonies won me over. Kind of.

Now, Coldplay. I so want to hate them, but honestly, I don't. I liked Parachutes and A Sudden Rush... but didn't like their latest album. My biggest beef was probably how forgettable alot of their music sounds, (see: previous gripes about my hatred of 'background' music) and I wanted a little more urgency. They started getting into it a little with X&Y (which I inherently didnt like because that is the dumbest title for an album, ever. If I were you, Chris, I wouldn't showcase my inability to understand basic algebra.) They really only accomplished it with the fantastic "White Shadows" especially with that booming bridge-into-chorus and the whole "everything you've ever wanted, in a permanent state" awesomeness. But the rest of the album was their usual soppy foot dragging pityfest. Barf.

Violet Hill, their new single, is great. It's great. I love that he starts with a little piano and then throws down an extra fuzzy guitar stomp that takes you awesomely by surprise. I think the lyrics are genius (When the future's architectured/By a carnival of idiots on show/You'd better lie low) and I like that they seem to have a little snarl to them. It's about time.

Food Crisis Time! This is definitely an article worth reading. It's always depressing to see severe crises like these that resonate very little with us (or our presidential candidates!) because of the gap in how seriously we are affected versus how seriously Ukranians and Argentinians are affected. But if nothing else, it should motivate everyone to dismiss this stupid biofuel stuff as inefficient voter-pandering garbage until we can feed everyone. (Maybe that's laying it on thick, but whatever). It's really well written. Thoughts on this?

Zimbabwe, Gnarls Barkley

I don't really know what to say about Zimbabwe. Clearly, Mugabe is destroying the country and its residents. Slow, economic death with no efforts to reverse it isn't any less contemptible than any other form of oppression. Of course, we can't just march into a sovereign state and tell it how to run its elections. (hint.) We ALSO can't keep tiptoeing around Zimbabwe and Sudan and everywhere else, exposing our hypocrisy over our post-WWII "Never again!" posturing. A Problem from Hell, indeed. I guess the UN is supposed to save us from these urges to reconstruct regimes, Geneva-Convention-Violating-Style, right? right? Wrong.

"when the United Nations Security Council considered Zimbabwe, South Africa, the region’s most powerful nation and president of the council at the time, opposed sending an envoy to Zimbabwe, saying the situation there was not a threat to international peace." Bureaucracy at work! Answers, anybody?

Also, an outbreak of enterovirus is sweeping across China.

But, the new Gnarls Barkley album is a lot of fun. I guess its not that new, like a month old, but because they didnt have some infectious single like "Crazy" i barely heard about it. But that's stupid, because "Run" and Going On" are perfectly single-worthy. Meanwhile the album is cohesive and progressive, which is a credit to Cee-Lo's fantastic (and soulful) voice, Dangermouse's production (much more subtle than the last album and less reliant on the "cut-up" sounds that were previously a stamp of his work) as well as their combined weirdo sci-fi-esque sensibilities. My one complaint about most r&b/soul stuff is its monotony, and frankly, lack of fun, and this album proudly suffers from neither of those problems. Buy it for your next house party.

transatlantic boserk health care discussion, sort of transcribed

robin argues from india:
"Large employers are far more likely to provide some health care coverage; small ones do not, because health care premiums are very high and because they don't have the bargaining power of the larger firms who can provide volume to health insurance companies in return for lower premiums. So your plan doesn't address the crux of the problem, and it will also drive premiums up even further, since cost of coverage is linked to how much coverage is purchased."

USA Today article on above: http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/2006-10-08-employ-usat_x.htm

santosh: mandate large business, government subsidize small businesses. exemptions provide loopholes.

robin: "I feel very strongly, on the other hand, that the 40 million Americans who are unemployed, or are employed but without health insurance, should recieve coverage, mandated by the federal government. I assume there is no daylight between us on that aspect. Our difference comes in WHAT is covered. If ALL procedures are covered for ALL illnesses for ALL people who have no incentive to take care of themselves, people will keep coming into point-of-care with late-stage problems, and either the taxpayer or corporations have to foot the bill. There isn't enough money for that."

santosh: obviously rather than the above i support a single payer system, but im thinking realistically. expanding coverage doesn't mean providing coverage for anything. in fact, covering more people may mean not covering more elective procedures for anyone, but that's a good tradeoff.

robin: if you favor expanded coverage, then why are you hating on things like MinuteClinics in CVS and Walmart type stores for screening, and on online doctors?

santosh: the issue here is quality of health care. internet doctor guy doesnt take insurance so he's just exploiting rich people in a hurry. those people would be better off if they saw a doctor in person, and we shouldnt enable people to get riskier healthcare if they can get less risky healthcare. i have no problem with things like minuteclinics for large-scale screenings, ESPECIALLY for people with no insurance. the issue is for people who do have insurance, is this a time-saving strategy? Again, that makes these people take on a risk by not seeing an actual doctor, and currently i dont think its difficult enough to see a doctor (if you DO have insurance) to validate that. i would much MUCH rather just pay for the uninsured to have insurance so everyone can have healthcare without some people that have less time or money shouldering increased risk.

robin, you rock dude.