Disappointing Times

Conditions: Freezing

What The Hell Is Wrong With America?

For around 50 years the American government has been called to periodically raise their debt ceiling so that their government can continue to operate. A simple and stable solution to a complicated problem that requires complicated solutions in order to actually eliminate. Those solutions seemed to be working in the Clinton years, where suddenly the goal of paying off the deficit seemd to be on the horizon, only to be dashed by a financial crisis and the onset of President Bush the younger. And yet now, in this year, suddenly the motion of raising the debt ceiling has been stopped by the hard-core republicans, despite the economic catastrophe that is approaching if it is not raised.

Both sides say gridlock in Washington is nothing new. Passions were just as high, positions just as fixed in past struggles such as civil rights and desegregation in the 1950s. Indeed, some argue that limited government is a healthy by-product of legislative gridlock. Unlike a parliamentary structure, the US constitution created an elaborate system of checks and balances deliberately designed to cool tempers and force compromise.

Yet to many, reaching the edge of economic collapse reflects a much higher level of paralysis in the US capital that is fuelling talk of a decline in US might around the world. It is a point not lost on China, the biggest foreign holder of US Treasury paper. “The ugliest part of the saga is that the well-being of many other countries is also in the impact zone when the donkey and the elephant fight,” Xinhua, Beijing’s official news service, observed this week.
[...]

“It’s just really poisonous – it’s polarised and chaotic – and it’s happening at the same time as America’s status as an economic leader is starting to be questioned,” says Jim Kessler, a former Democratic aide in Congress who is now vice-president for policy at Third Way, a think-tank. “I’ve never seen it like this before.”

Even if the US escapes default, significant damage may already have resulted from the stand-off. Credit rating agencies have indicated that they could downgrade the US. Stripping the world’s largest economy of its triple A badge would be seen as emblematic of a power humbled.

Could it be down to the new Tea-party republicans who are fresh on the scene after the most recent house and senate elections?

The emergence of the populist Tea Party movement as an intransigent force is often singled out as driving the malfunction, with last year’s midterm congressional elections shifting the Republicans so far to the right that any agreement with the Democrats becomes virtually impossible. Recent opinion polls show the vast majority of Americans believe Congress and the White House should be adopting a “balanced” approach. According to a Pew Research Center poll released this week, 68 per cent say politicians who share their views should be willing to make concessions on the debt ceiling; just 23 per cent say they should hold the line, even if it leads to default.

“I think the American people wanted compromise and a middle-of-the-road approach but over-corrected and hired people who heard the message of 2010 to be not just slow down, not just stop, but reverse direction,” says Chris Coons, a Democratic senator from Delaware.

- ft.com/cms/

So here we are, staring down the barrel yet again, and all because of an willingness to compromise sensibly. It really makes you despair in whether the politicians can actually do anything right. And as usual, the ones who are pushing us towards disaster are also the ones least likely to be badly affected by the disaster. Funny how that always seems to be the case.





Film Review: Cars 2

A lot of people say that Cars was Pixars worst, or perhaps least best, film. A fairly simplistic tale of down home Americana with a fish out of water, it played like an animated version of Doc Hollywood, but with cars instead of people. Cars 2, I feel, may well now inherit the title of "least worse" Pixar movie. It is another fish out of water film, but this time trading in Doc Hollywood for ...Austin Powers?

The focus this time is on Mater the tow truck, invited along by Lightning McQueen to the World Grand Prix, a championship set up to promote the goodness of Organic fuel. Mater is treated to a series of culture shocks as he goes to Japan, France, and England. But under all this is a Legion of Evil who are plotting to sabotage the whole thing by blowing up the competitors. New character Finn McMissile, voiced by Michael Caine, is a British secret agent trying to uncover the evil plot. He believes Mater is an American secret agent and drags him in to figure out what's going on.

So the plot is basically a little bit of Grand Prix, and a bit more of James Bond. Which is an interesting idea I guess, but frankly I found the racing sequences much much more interesting than watching Finn and Mater try to uncover the secret plan and figure out who the bad guy is. But most worrying is that, unlike practically every other Pixar movie, at the end of this one the protagonist hasn't really changed. Mater's still an idiot, and hasn't changed or learned an important lesson, or really learned anything. This is quite the departure for Pixar, and I'm not sure if it's lazy writing, or just complacency in knowing that whatever they did with this film, the masses would flock to see it. I certainly hope it's just an anomaly, a random bump in the road, and that Pixar will remain committed to remarkably nuanced and detailed movies, and not simplistic good-looking crap like this. Two backfires out of Five.



- Peace out

Weird Science

Conditions: Snow-ish

Eyes Wide Shut

Finally the shady world of human-animal experimentation is calling for some regulation on it's practices

FRANKENSTEIN animal experiments must be controlled more tightly to stop scientists racing ahead with research that creates monsters, experts warned.

They called yesterday for a watchdog to monitor implants in animals and urged it to kill off mixed animal/human embryos at 14 days. The Academy of Medical Sciences said the public broadly supported animal research but was opposed to anything that might make them more like us. It follows news that scientists are close to replacing whole brains in monkeys with human cells.

The Academy said: “There is a Frankenstein fear that research which creates ‘humanised’ animals is going to generate ‘monsters’.”

- mirror.co.uk/news/

I for one welcome this opportunity for the Animal-Human hybrid creators of the future to open up their work to the greater scientific community, not only for the betterment of their practices, but also for the chance for their work to receive the true recognition that it deserves!



Film Review: X-Men First Class

Prequels are always a tricky business, as characters that we already know about are "put in peril", but of course are not actually in peril as they have to show up in the next film. Furthermore, we already know who the characters are and what arcs they are going to end up on, so a lot of the potential surprise of discovery is lost. X-Men First Class is not really an exception to this, putting forward the story of what happened to Magneto to make him the genocidal maniac he turns out to be, and how Professor X became Professor X, and why the two of them are friends. It's the 60's, and the U.S government is standing toe to toe against the Russians over American nuclear missiles in Turkey, and Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba. Turns out the whole standoff was engineered by Kevin Bacon, who I didn't even know was in the film, and is the bad guy. Kevin wants to provoke a nuclear World War 3 because then he and his fellow mutants will rule the world, and he's got a nifty Dr-Evil style submarine to charge around in to try and make it happen.

Professor X and Magneto (not yet their actual nicknames) team up for the CIA in order to recruit a bunch of mutants to go against him, but of course Magneto has his own plans and ideas, since Kevin was also the guy who tormented him back in the Nazi camp so many prequels ago. And it turns out Mystique and X knew each other well from a very young age, she spending her youth pretending to look normal before Magneto eventually persuades her that she should not hide who she is. Unless she's actively, you know, being someone else.

Anyway, while the film is quite clever, managing to ramp up the tension as the Cuban Missile crisis comes into full swing with the X-Men right in the middle of it all, the problem with the film is that it doesn't have a lot of depth to it. It's so busy setting up characters and establishing the plot that the actual character development that makes a film work is greatly compressed. Mystique's character especially suffers from this, as she seems to make some big decisions seemingly out of nowhere. Anyway, James McAvoy(X) and Michael Fassbender (Magneto) are really spot-on in their portrayals of the younger versions of these characters, there's something about putting English actors into American action movies that just works. Director Matthew Vaughn has managed to put this film together quite well, delivering a good spectacle that actually has a beating heart at it's center. It's actually a shame that this is a prequel, and that they didn't start with this one. Would have worked even better. Three and a half coins out of Five.


- Peace out

Pieces Of Eight

Conditions: Shiny

The Mob.

For years now it has been known that a certain newspaper had hacked into peoples voicemail accounts in order to get the scoop. And yet it's only now that all hell has broken loose. A famous newspaper has been shut down, various executives are resigning in disgrace, and Ruper Murdoch, the great news tycoon himself, is canceling huge take over deals one minute, and grovelling for forgiveness the next. What is going on?

Hinton's resignation came just hours after Rebekah Brooks, a former News of the World editor who currently oversees News Corporation's British newspapers, also stepped down.

Murdoch shut down News of the World last week. The firestorm over the scandal also has forced Murdoch to abandon efforts to push through a multi-billion-dollar bid for British Sky Broadcasting, a satellite television company.

As News Corporation announced the public apology, the 80-year-old Murdoch visited at a London hotel with the parents of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old British murder victim whose phone was hacked by News of the World. A lawyer for the family described Murdoch as "very humbled" and "very shaken" as he offered his apology.

Brooks has agreed to testify before the British parliament next week about the phone-hacking and police bribery scandal. Murdoch and his son, James, who heads News Corporation's international operations, will also testify before parliament next week, after initially refusing to do so.

In the U.S., the Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun a probe into whether News Corporation employees tried to hack into the phones of victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and their families, or tried to bribe police for information.

- voanews.com

I have to say, I don't really get all the hysteria that's been sweeping this along. I mean, yeah it looks like they did something illegal, and I'm not cool with that, but is it actually worth this much drama? This kind of witch hunt? Did someone get killed out of their phones being hacked? I suspect what we're really seeing is the mob turning against the rich and powerful. When it was just actors and politicians getting hacked, no one cares. Screw them, they're rich. But hack the phone of a little girl, or a victim of some monstrous crime, and suddenly it's Heads Will Roll. It's depressing. It's essentially mob rule, where the law is only really important if the victim is photogenic enough. That ain't justice.


Film Review: Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides

Who'd have thought a amusement park ride could have been stretched to a multi-billion dollar 4-film franchise? Well clearly Disney did, as did Jerry Bruckheimer, running this thing for all it's worth. The previous director proving too busy, they picked Gerry Marshal who has delivered up a simpler and Jack-oriented movie for the fourth outing. And thank goodness, too, because the tangle the last two movies got into were quite annoying. This time Captain Sparrow is tasked with finding the Fountain of Youth, on behalf of Blackbeard (Ian McShane) and his daughter played by Penelope Cruz. And since she has a thing with Captain Sparrow the scene is set for hi-jinks galore. Add in Geoffrey Rush again who is also after the Fountain on behalf of the British admiralty, and the Spanish armada, and you've got a fast paced film filled with fights and chases, with Jack weaving about in the middle somewhere.

Playing Jack again seems to suit Johnny Depp well, it's a fun character who has a well-hidden depth and a basic method to his madness. I'm not really sure if Sparrow himself knows exactly what is going to happen next, or is winging it along with everyone else, but I think the key to these films is to not concentrate too much on the specifics. Always a good idea when there are mermaids about. Ian McShane as Blackbeard is essentially on one single note. He wants the fountain because someone is going to kill him, and he'll kill anyone who gets in his way. That's fairly simple to understand, at least.

The music is pretty solid, the direction is pretty solid, the fight sequences are well done, but perhaps without the flair of earlier films, and the film pushes on to it's conclusion. It's not exactly fantastic, the newness rubbed off a long time ago, but it is at least an improvement over the labyrinth of the last two outings. Three and a half bottles of rum out of five.


- Peace out