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Outrage, Then Victory Over Lawmaker Greed

Posted November 6, 2005 By Pattie Gillett

For once, voter apathy didn’t doom us to be subject to the whims of our lawmakers. Pennsylvania’s legislators, who set the world land speed record for greed several months ago by voting themselves a disgusting pay raise in the middle of the night after cutting funds to education, child care and other programs, finally faced the music and repealed the damn thing. You know why? Because it turns out the voters really did care.

This is a victory that comes about in large part because of the state’s newspapers. From the Philadelphia Inquirer to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and everywhere in between, editorial pages would not let the issue die and the public responded. I applaud the efforts of the media and hope they get the credit they deserve for keeping the issue in the public consciousness.

And now the obvious question: How do we harness this kind of power for more issues?

Filed in So Now What?
        

Crisis on Infinite Editions

Posted November 6, 2005 By Dave Thomer

I’ve had some fun joking about the confusion caused by comic continuity and universes before. And yet here I am, totally getting sucked in to a couple of DC’s ploys to play on both.

  • I bought the oversized edition of Kurt Busiek and George Perez’s JLA/Avengers crossover, which is basically an excuse to have Perez draw the heroes and settings of both DC and Marvel’s history and cram as much detail in as possible. And a lot of fights.
  • I have ordered the new oversized edition of Marv Wolfman and Perez’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, despite already owning the original issues. This is essentially so I can have a really big version of Perez drawing the heroes and settings of the DC multiverse circa 1985. And a lot of fights.
  • And this week I will be heading to the comic store to pick up the second issue of Infinite Crisis, a sequel to CoIE that has Phil Jimenez drawing the heroes and settings of the heroes and settings of the DC universe circa 2005. And a lot of fights. Oh, and there are a few pages by Perez in there, too. Just for the heck of it.

Infinite Crisis is part of some kind of years-long revamping/streamlining process DC’s been going through. I admit I have not been a huge fan of the lead-up to this story. But I am a sucker for Jimenez drawing the crap out of the DC universe, so I’m on board for this part of the ride.

Filed in Comics
        

Revenge of the Sith Review-o-Rama

Posted November 6, 2005 By Dave Thomer

With Revenge of the Sith out on DVD, I have been a very happy Star Wars geek the last week or so. Here’s a roundup of Episode III-related reviews I’ve written over at theLogBook:

Back in the summer I also did a week-long viewing of all six movies in numerical order, using my old VHS copies of the original trilogy. I wrote down some notes that at one point I was going to put up on the forums, but I figure this is as good a place as any.

My sense is that if I try to view the whole thing as one six-part story of Anakin’s rise, fall, and redemption, it doesn’t quite work for me. If I look at it as a two-part generational story that focuses first on Obi-Wan and Anakin and then on Luke, Han and Leia, I think it actually works rather well. For the most part, the prequels lend interesting subtext to existing reactions and interactions that didn’t really stand out before.

  • Rewatching Phantom Menace, I can see why Lucas went the route he did with kid Anakin. The contrast between the Jedi’s detachment from society and Shmi’s love for her son helps set up almost all of the mistakes the Jedi make with Anakin. And the three things that lead to Anakin’s downfall – confidence in his own ability, desire to help/save other people, and fear of losing loved ones – are all established.
  • None of that makes the podrace or Padme’s “No I’m the Queen!” scene any more fun to watch. And the Trade Federation voices are painful to hear.
  • The DVD cut of Attack of the Clones has Anakin’s breakdown after killing the Tuskens go on a little bit longer, so that after he sits down at the end, he expresses remorse and Padme comforts him. I think that’s a helpful revision. I have to think that Lucas is at least suggesting that the Tuskens are not quite human, so it’s not such a big deal that Anakin killed a bunch of ’em. But I’m not sure how well that works.
  • I think most of Star Wars is actually improved by the backstory. Owen knowing about protocol droids makes sense, but the different coverings and 3PO’s memory of his first job explain why he doesn’t immediately recognize him. When Obi-Wan says “Hello, there” to Artoo, it’s easy to read recognition into that if you want to. And R2 being so hell-bent on finding Obi-Wan makes sense now that we know that he’s one of the few who know what’s really going on. Any inconsistencies in what Ben says can be chalked up to him lying to protect Luke.
  • The one thing that doesn’t work so well is the Ben-Vader duel. Part of that is just from Lucas wanting a two-handed, broadsword approach in the original films, and a more acrobatic martial arts style in the prequels. But if this were really still Anakin and Obi-Wan’s story, I’d want to see a lot more emotional intensity, and maybe this would be more of a climactic moment instead of the transition to the third act. I just don’t feel like this is a rematch between the two guys that fought on Mustafar. That may actually do a lot to reveal how Vader has changed over the 20 years, with a lot of his emotion dying out. But it’s still kinda jarring. (Some folks at theLogBook have disagreed with me since I first wrote this, arguing that the sense of detachment actually works to show how much Ben has convinced himself that the guy in the suit is “more machine now than man.” So I’m trying to get over my objection here.)
  • R2 and Yoda bickering in Empire is also more fun to watch now.
  • Chewie interacting with the Jedi kinda helps explain why he’s got so much faith in Luke’s rescue plan in Return of the Jedi. (It might also explain why he was receptive to Ben in Star Wars.) I wonder if Luke mentioned who he’d been training with. I also wonder how Luke got so much stronger with the Force without more training. Maybe Yoda taught him all the skills, and Luke was able to improve just through practice.
  • The prequels do a really nice job at setting up the Emperor. Actually seeing how he seduced Anakin, and then seeing the parallels and divergences in his efforts to get Luke to turn, makes those scenes work a lot better than I remember them working before. It does kinda make me wonder where he disappeared to in 4 and 5 – another strike against viewing the movies as one six-parter.
  • I do like the symmetry in Anakin’s life. He goes to the dark side in large part to save his wife, he turns back to save his son. I also like the way he uses Luke’s fear of losing his friends and his sister in Jedi – it’s almost like he’s thinking, “This is what got me to turn, it ought to work on my son.” And it almost does.
  • The ground battle in Jedi still kinda falls flat. I guess subsequent generations of clones and conscripts weren’t quite as well trained.
Filed in Culture and Media
        

Read Not News with a Nice Hot Beverage

Posted November 5, 2005 By Dave Thomer

If you have access to a source of quality Dutch-processed cocoa powder, I recommend Alton Brown’s recipe for homemade cocoa mix. I tried it last year with a so-so brand of cocoa powder, and was less than thrilled. But this year we found a new variety at Whole Foods, and it’s some good stuff.

Filed in Life in Practice
        

A New Branch of Government?

Posted November 5, 2005 By Dave Thomer

I’ve been doing a lot of reading in the area of democratic theory lately, which will provide fodder for a slew of more academic posts shortly. The area I’m focusing on is called deliberative democratic theory, which is basically concerned with getting citizens involved in the political process by getting them to justify their favored policies to one another. So Amazon has been spitting a bunch of titles at me lately, and this one caught my eye: Deliberative Democracy in America: A Proposal for a Popular Branch of Government by Ethan J. Lieb. Here’s the description:

Leib concentrates on designing an institutional scheme for embedding deliberation in the practice of American democratic government. At the heart of his scheme is a process for the adjudication of issues of public policy by assemblies of randomly selected citizens convened to debate and vote on the issues, resulting in the enactment of laws subject both to judicial review and to possible veto by the executive and legislative branches. The “popular” branch would fulfill a purpose similar to the ballot initiative and referendum but avoid the shortcomings associated with those forms of direct democracy. Leib takes special pains to show how this new branch would be integrated with the already existing governmental and political institutions of our society, including administrative agencies and political parties, and would thus complement rather than supplant them.

I haven’t read the book yet, so I’m not sure how it would work. I’ve expressed my doubts about government by proposition before, so I’m open to new ideas that execute the core idea more effectively. I’m definitely going to have to try to get a hold of this book.

Filed in Public Policy
        

Life, the Universe and Everything – on Film

Posted November 5, 2005 By Dave Thomer

Every once in a while I read a book I desperately wish I had written. The Philosopher at the End of the Universe by Mark Rowlands is one of those books. I’ll write a fuller review in the near future, but I wanted to give it a mention now. Rowlands is a philosophy prof in the UK and a big fan of science fiction stories. He argues that the high concepts of a lot of blockbuster movies are actually explorations of thorny philosophyical issues like personal identity and the reliability of knowledge. Since Star Wars is probably one of the things that got me thinking about ways of understanding the universe as a kid, I’m not one to argue. In fact, I just showed an episode of Babylon 5 to one of my classes to kick start a conversation about identity and the mind. And of course everyone has heard about the connection between philosophy and The Matrix.

What I like about Rowlands’ approach is that while he’s not dismissive of the movies, he also knows that a good exploration of the issues they raise requires more depth than you can get in a two-hour movie. So he expands the conversation to include key texts and arguments from a number of philosophers. He has a sense of humor, but he uses it in the service of a serious discussion. It’s a really nice piece of work.

Filed in Philosophy
        

And So It Begins

Posted November 4, 2005 By Dave Thomer

Welcome to This Is Not News. If this is your first time here, this is a site that tries to help create the kind of democratic community envisioned by American philosopher John Dewey. More on that here.

If you’ve been here in any of the site’s earlier incarnations and are wondering why I’ve gotten on the blog bandwagon, that’s a good question. It’s been five years since I first launched Not News, and it’s had two significant periods of dormancy when I couldn’t muster the time or energy to produce lengthier articles on a regular schedule. But I still have a lot to say about the topics that led me to launch the site, and I think the informality of the blog structure might be more conducive to that. I have also seen sites like Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo use the blog model to help foster a certain kind of electronic community, and I think I’d like to get a little bit more involved in that conversation.

The message board and site archive are still here, and I have no plans to take them down any time soon. In fact there’s a good chance that lengthier blog pieces might work their way into a more permanent form in one of those two areas. I’m still working out how this is all going to work, and trying to tinker a little bit under the hood here, so please bear with me for a while.

Filed in Site Comments
        

Loose Canons

Posted August 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

I have been a member of numerous fandoms in my life. And if you participate in any fandom long enough, you will eventually find yourself in the middle of a canon discussion. Philosophers have spent thousands of years contemplating the nature of reality, but they are rank amateurs compared to two fans of a fictional creation debating what “really� happened to the creation in question.

If you’ve never encountered such a discussion before, “canon� with regards to a fictional universe refers to the set of stories that are considered “official,� such that future stories in that universe will be expected to reflect and not contradict the earlier tales. (Comic fans, who have been grappling with this issue for decades, tend to use the term “continuity.�) The goal is to have an internally consistent master narrative built from a series of smaller stories. It’s a noble goal, but one seldom achieved. Contradictions pop up, some trivial, some major. At that point, something has to give – one of the contradictory elements must be jettisoned. And then there’s the matter of stories that, for one reason or another, a fan would like to ignore and forget about, to the point of never wanting so much as to risk seeing it referred to again. At this point the campaign to have said story expunged from the canon begins.

To be dismissed from the canon is, in the eyes of many fans, tantamount to being branded a leper. For these fans, the possibility that a story would contradict stories they have already read, or that future stories would not reflect its consequences, takes so much of their enjoyment away that the merits of the individual story don’t matter. They only care if it “counts,â€? and to be non-canon is a seal of disapproval. Last year the BBC announced a series of animated Doctor Who stories would be presented on the Web and on DVD. Many fans were excited by the prospect of new stories in a visual medium. (The Doctor has had a steady career in books and audio dramas since he went off the air.) But a significant minority turned up their noses. If it wasn’t broadcast on television, it wasn’t “proper Doctor Who,â€? and they weren’t interested. These fans went into paroxysms of joy when the BBC announced a new television series to air next year – at least until they started worrying about whether this new series would fit into the established canon of the previous series. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Culture and Media
        

We Need the Power

Posted July 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

Energy policy has become a nexus through which so many seemingly disparate issues connect. Energy affects the economy because of fuel prices and production costs. It affects national security because of our dependence on oil from foreign countries, including some that use their oil profits to fund terrorists and other destabilizing forces. It affects the environment and public health because energy consumption creates pollutants that contribute to global warming, smog, and the presence of irritants and toxins in the atmosphere. (And when you get down to it, every one of those other issues carries an added economic cost with it.) It’s not surprising, then, that energy policy has become a significant issue in the current presidential election. It seems like a good idea, then, to look at the two major candidate’s plans as a starting point for a discussion of where we should go in the future.

Both George W. Bush and John Kerry provide outlines of their plans on their websites. Both outlines are extremely vague on a number of points, such as Bush’s claim that he “remains actively engaged with our friends in OPEC, as well as non-OPEC producers from around the worldâ€? in order to reduce gas prices or Kerry’s non-specific promise to “improve fuel efficiency of cars to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.â€? How are you going to engage them? What’s the payoff of the engagement? How much are you going to increase efficiency? How will you motivate manufacturers to make those improvements? Even in those vague statements, however, there are clearly differences in priorities, and there are some concrete proposals to consider as well. Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Public Policy
        

Reform Begins at Home

Posted July 1, 2004 By Dave Thomer

The challenge of a Deweyan reformer is to somehow form a functioning community out of a vast society – to create close enough links between geographically disparate people such that one will consider the effect of his actions on the other even if they never become acquainted in person, or indeed ever become specifically aware of the other’s existence. It is a difficult task, even if the reformer successfully exploits the technological and media tools available to her. It may be tempting, therefore, for the reformer to focus her efforts on the national scale – writing essays for national magazines, staging events designed to be covered by the large news networks, etc. Dewey, however, was quite cognizant of the role of local communities in the eventual establishment of the Great Community, and the democratic reformer ignores this role at her own peril.

Vibrant local communities are vital to Dewey’s vision of a flourishing democracy. Many social challenges will need to be addressed at a local level, and the experience of working together to address said problems will give citizens the skills and mindset to tackle larger issues in a similar fashion. The impetus for change often begins at the local level as well, as a grass-roots response to a particular local problem calls attention to a larger issue and galvanizes feeling about it. If a national reform movement is to be a true model for the desired democratic society, it too must function as a network of thriving, coordinated local reform movements.
Read the remainder of this entry »

Filed in Philosophy
        
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