Pun Salad

URLs du Jour — 2008-12-03

• At Cafe Hayek, Russell Roberts looks at a news story ("supposed to be serious", as he puts it) that describes various government functionaries reviewing the "plan" put forth by the Big Three automotive companies pleading for money. His comment is right on:

  Why don't the Big Three save the money it takes to put together Congressional testimony and the time it takes for the people in charge to make the trip. Why don't they just take out ads in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times outlining what they're going to do with the money. Then they can try this really novel idea. They can sell bonds and borrow the money. If the plans look good, people might lend them the money. If the plans are lousy, they won't get the money.

  If you need help answering those questions, click over to see Russ's take. Or even if you don't.

• Confederate Yankee notes a Thomas Friedman column which examines President Obama's likely course in Iraq. The column contains the following paragraph:

  If he can pull this [successful outcome] off, and help that decent Iraq take root, Obama and the Democrats could not only end the Iraq war but salvage something positive from it. Nothing would do more to enhance the Democratic Party's national security credentials than that.

  CY does a quick reality check:

  House and Senate Democrats, including President Elect Barack Obama, did everything in their power to lose the Iraq War, and deserve no credit for any success.

  Indeed. If the Democrats are looking for enhanced "national security credentials"—awarded by someone less credulous than a New York Times columnist, anyway—they'll have to try some other path.

• Earth Times weeps bitter tears over the apparent demise of yet another Obama campaign pledge:

  While on the campaign trail, Obama made provocative statements regarding the cost of energy and its respective negative impact on American families. On May 6, 2008, Obama stated, "It isn't right that oil companies are making record profits at a time when ordinary Americans are going into debt trying to pay rising energy costs. That's why we'll put a windfall profits tax on oil companies and use it to help Indiana families pay their heating and cooling bills and reduce energy costs."

  But now… um, never mind about that. I'm in agreement with Ron Bailey at Reason, from whence the link: "Hooray for economic sanity." And it's always fun to see irate leftists. They're cute.

• Just possibly the best Slashdot headline ever: Alien Comet May Have Infiltrated the Solar System.

The Great Debaters

[IMDB Link] [Tomato Link]

A "based on a true story" movie, produced by Oprah Winfrey, directed by Denzel Washington, starring Washington and Forest Whitaker.

Set in the 1930s, It's about the debate team at tiny historically black Wiley College in Marshall Texas. Denzel plays the coach, faculty member Melvin B. Tolson. His team is exceptionally sharp, but has many obstacles in its way: primarily, a legal system that denies black people equal protection of the laws. But the team members are also experiencing the usual college-student turmoil with sex, drugs (hooch, in this case), and rock and roll (1930s blues, in this case).

It's good, important, uplifting, etc. Washington and Whitaker give their usual great performances. But it's on the long side, and, even though the sport is debate, the normal sports-movie clichés are not avoided, just transplanted.

URLs du Jour — 2008-12-02

• Since I like both movies and computers, this NYT article was pretty interesting. It's about Netflix's contest to improve their "recommendation engine", the software that analyzes the ratings Netflix customers give to movies, and tries to predict accurately what unseen movies they'd like. The prize for a 10% improvement is a cool $1 million; as you can tell by that fact alone, it's a very tough problem.

  "Quirky" movies are especially hard. For example, even given a lot of data about a customer's past preferences, it's very tough to predict whether they will like Napoleon Dynamite. (Via GeekPress.)

• The University Diarist marks up a recent student newspaper article about classroom laptop use at a University Near Here. It's not pretty.

• Here's a sentence I wish I'd written:

  If I could change one thing about myself it's the way I'm the embodiment of all that is wrong with America and the human species more broadly.

Kung Fu Panda

[IMDB Link] [Tomato Link]

This is a pretty good Dreamworks animation release, aimed at kids who can stand PG levels of (as the MPAA puts it) "sequences of martial arts action" and (as Pun Salad puts it) a "pretty scary bad guy." Dreamworks animation is clocking in at about 0.85 Pixars, and that's pretty good. It's sweet, funny, and adult-watchable.

The story: Po, a panda who kind of sounds like Jack Black, is obsessed with Kung Fu, though he is but a lowly assistant in his father's noodle shop. But one day, through a series of bumbling pratfalls, he finds himself anointed as the prospective "Dragon Warrior", destined to save his homeland from the evil Tai Lung. Everyone greets this with extreme skepticism, including his reluctant master (a red panda who sounds just like Dustin Hoffman), and the "Furious Five", a group of warriors (Tigress, Monkey, Mantis, Viper, and Crane) idolized by Po.

And Jackie Chan is in it, voicing Monkey. His performance is, as always, Oscar-worthy, even if there isn't exactly a category for it. ("And the winner for 'Best Jackie Chan-like supporting performance in an animated feature' is… Jackie Chan!")

One drawback: if you're like me, you will be unable to get the song "Kung Fu Fighting" out of your head for a couple of days.

UNH Goes Even Leftier for MLK Day 2009

My employer, the University of New Hampshire, has announced the agenda for its 2009 celebration of Martin Luther King Day, to which they are devoting two full weeks, from January 22 until February 5.

(I blogged about 2006's events here and 2007's here. Having nothing new to say, I skipped 2008.)

You might guess that, starting a couple days after the inauguration of President Obama, UNH might present a largely celebratory, unifying event, and some mention might be made of the progress made since King's day, exemplified by the election of a president who (as he once put it) "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

Boy, would you be wrong.

Now, some things remain unchanged: the University will once again sponsor a "Spiritual Celebration" at the local community church, something it would never do for an actual religious holiday. As usual, everything is dripping with sanctimony and tendentious rhetoric about "social, political, and economic justice." And while the events are billed as being in support of "University's goal to cultivate an inclusive learning community of mutual respect and a shared spirit of inquiry," just as in previous years, the sole voices invited to participate are those from the left wing. (More on that in a bit.)

This year's theme is "One in 100: Dismantling a Prison Nation". It springs from the claim that the US has "more than one in every 100 adults confined behind bars." As you can guess from the wording, there's no indication that there just might be some room for sane discussion on the issue. It's the newest cause, there's only one side, and dissent will not be on the agenda. For example, the "Educational Panel" is billed this way:

A_____ D____, while advocating for a shift from punitive to restorative justice in the way our criminal system addresses crime, asks the question, Are Prisons Obsolete? Through productive conversations with a prison warden, a social worker, legal professionals, and academic scholars, audience members will have a chance to examine the social, economic and political implications of answering YES.

But I've left out the best part. By which I mean: the worst part.

A_____ D____ above is Angela Davis, described on the page as an "UC Berkeley professor and internationally known civil rights activist".

One obvious botch: Davis was at UC Santa Cruz (from which she recently retired) not Berkeley. And the remainder of the description is notable for what it doesn't say. Among the high points, culled from Wikipedia and David Horowitz's Discover the Networks page:

Angela Davis was a doctrinaire big-C Communist for many years, winning the Lenin Prize from East Germany in 1979. She ran with perennial CPUSA candidate Gus Hall for Vice President on the party's ticket in 1980 and 1984. She remained with the Party until 1991 (Horowitz says she was expelled, Wikipedia says she "broke" from the Party); the issue was the USSR coup of "hard liners" against Gorbachev, which the CPUSA supported, and Davis opposed.

But another claim to fame was her appearance on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List in 1970, only the third woman to achieve this honor. She earned her spot having bought the guns used in a hostage-taking at the Marin County courthouse, including the shotgun used to blow a judge's head off. She remained at large for a couple months, but was apprehended in New York. A year and a half later she was acquitted of murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy charges.

As noted, since then Davis has gravitated to the usual employer of last resort for violence-associated leftists lacking more traditional job skills: in the Bill Ayers/Bernardine Dohrn tradition, higher education welcomed her with open arms. At UCSC since 1991, she brought down a six-figure salary as a professor in the—I swear I am not making this up—"History of Consciousness" Department. (Horowitz claims that historian Page Smith established this program "to demonstrate that the Ph.D. is fraud.") And of course, she continues to rack up $10K-$20K per speaking engagement. (I don't know how much she's getting from UNH.)

Since her Communist days, Davis claims now to favor "democratic socialism". However, she "points to Cuba as an example of a country which successfully addresses social and economic problems." So she probably has a slightly different conception of democracy than what we're used to.

Even more than usual, UNH has chosen hard-left polarization and divisiveness for MLK Day 2009. Davis's personal association with violence and with an ideology that provided death, repression, and privation for those unfortunate enough to come under its control make her an especially lousy choice.

I am disgusted.

The people who made this decision should be ashamed.

URLs du Jour — 2008-11-29

• I have mixed feelings about this story describing efforts to make a movie based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation. I blogged about re-reading the book here: while I loved Asimov, the talk/action ratio in his books is very, very high. (At Granite Geek, David Brooks has a similar reaction.)

  Apparently a movie based on The End of Eternity is also a possiblity; that might work better.

  But the same old questions come to mind whenever they talk about making movies out of classic science fiction works: where is the movie version of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? Stranger in a Strange Land? The Door Into Summer? And why couldn't they have played Starship Troopers straight?

• This isn't much of a URL; you can only read the first 100 words of a front page WSJ story about Robert Rubin, but the lead paragraph is probably enough:

  Under fire for his role in the near-collapse of Citigroup Inc., Robert Rubin said its problems were due to the buckling financial system, not its own mistakes, and that his role was peripheral to the bank's main operations even though he was one of its highest-paid officials.

  Hey, Citibank? One of your card-carrying customers here. Although I lack even a diploma-mill MBA, I have an suggestion: stop paying huge salaries to people who are peripheral to your main operations.

  Just a thought.

• Many, many programmer jokes. I'd heard this one, but I still get a chuckle:

  Q: How do you tell an introverted computer scientist from an extroverted computer scientist?

  A: An extroverted computer scientist looks at your shoes when he talks to you.

  (Via BBSpot)

• And a belated link to the latest Rochester (NH) Police Log. I appreciated this note of resignation:

  Monday, Nov. 10

  8:38 p.m. — Someone drives "like a maniac" on Rochester Hill Road. There are hundreds of suspects.

Fedora 10 Impressions

Posting has been light the previous few days because of… Thanksgiving? No! Well, at least not that much. Instead, a lot of my time has been devoted to explorations of Fedora 10, a new version of the Linux distribution I use at home and work, released earlier this week. Some random notes:

• I opted for fresh installs on unused disk partitions. Although an "upgrade" path is available, the docs say "In general, fresh installations are recommended over upgrades." And for once, I decided to go that way.

• That's fine, although my old Fedora 9 systems had accumulated months worth of tweaks, addons, and customizations. And also some forgotten now-worthless experimental cruft. So: distinguish the "good stuff" from the cruft, and carefully fold it back into the familiar-yet-new system. Maybe come up with better ways to do things, like integration of my mail program (Mutt) with LDAP and a local address book. This is an ongoing process. Fortunately, to the certain sort of geek I am, it's also fun.

• Booting the installation DVD still did not recognize the USB keyboard on my work system, a Dell Dimension E510. I was presented with a nice, attractive menu from which I could select… nothing. Fortunately, it had the default behavior I wanted, after waiting for a minute.

  (There's apparently a workaround if you're fast enough with your fingers before the GUI menu appears. I didn't really need it.)

• It finally did the right thing with my Dimension's display chipset (ATI Technologies Inc RV516). This has been a major toothache with previous versions of Fedora.

• But post-install, the system locked up twice, necessitating a finger on the power button. Both times after I had left for the day. Grrr, major inconvenience.

  Possible source of the problem: I had deleted the installed GNOME screensaver, and installed the superior 'xscreensaver' and associated packages. My speculation is that there was some weird incompatibility with the X video driver and one or more of the packaged screensavers, which triggered the lockup. After (regretfully) removing xscreensaver, and reinstalling GNOME screensaver, the system has remained up. Albeit with a lame screensaver.

• In contrast, my home system (an older Dell Dimension 4500) installed with only one hitch: installing from multiple CDs, the system demanded Disk 2 be inserted, but refused to eject Disk 1. Arrgh. After some fumbling, the only solution was to shut down, resulting in an unbootable system. Fortunately, starting the install up again worked fine.

Bottom line: I can't recommend Fedora to non-geeks, but I like it.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

[IMDB Link] [Tomato Link]

Everyone's favorite argument for nurture over nature returns! Again, it's pretty good, with generous helpings of humor, imaginative design, and great special effects.

Long ago, the supernatural world warred with mankind. They were aided by the titular "golden army": a juggernaut of invincible robots. But eventually peace was declared, and the robots were stored away at an undisclosed location, never to be used again.

Which brings us to the present: the bad guy, elf prince Nuada, has re-declared war on humanity—I hate it when that happens—and determines to reactivate the golden army. All he has to do is to figure out where they are, and grab onto the three pieces of the magic crown that allows them to be commanded. And guess who is tasked to stop him?

But the golden army is like Chekov's gun: you can't put it out there without it eventually going off. This climactic scene doesn't happen until the very end, though. The journey to get there is a lot of fun.

The Big U

Why yes, I did read two Neal Stephenson books in a row. Good catch.

Specifically, after reading his latest book (Anathem), I read his very first book, The Big U, which came out in 1984. Even after nearly 25 years, its sharp satire of college life still resonates on a large number of notes. The computer technology is dated, of course, but otherwise…

The Big U follows a loose collection of students, faculty, and staff through a (tragically truncated!) academic year at American Megaversity, an institution of higher learning completely contained in a single huge building, the Plex. There's Sarah, president of the student body; Casimir, physics geek; Bud, a new professor; Septimius Severus Krupp, Megaversity president; and a host of others.

It starts out as kind of a Tom Wolfe-style satire of faceless bureaucracy, commodified education, political correctness, and various student types. But around December, things get a little weird. Then things get very, very, out of hand, and stride boldly into territory into which Tom Wolfe has never ventured.

Eventually, even I started to recognize some obvious real-world parallels between Stephenson's portrayal and a certain actual institution about 75 miles south of here. A quick Wikipedia check said: yup, Stephenson wrote this while a student at Boston University.

It's also said that Stephenson is "not proud" of this novel. While—OK, sure—it's not Cryptnomicon, taken on its own terms, it's perfectly fine and worthwhile.

Mongol

[IMDB Link] [Tomato Link]

I hear you asking: are there hordes? Yes, indeed, there are hordes. You can't title a movie Mongol without including hordes. It would be like not having kangaroos in Australia.

There's also throat-singing, of course.

It's the story of Genghis Khan! It begins in his youth: as a nine-year-old named Temudjin, his dad takes him on a trip to a neighboring tribe to pick a bride. And it winds up (minor spoiler for historical illiterates) when he defeats his rivals to give birth to the Mongol Empire.

The movie portrays GK as kind of a big sentimental softie when it comes to his family and friends. Frankly, I doubt it. But this won over Mrs. Salad, who (I was surprised) really liked it. And there's plenty of horde-vs-horde blood-splattery for the guys. Fun for the whole family.

It was filmed mostly in Mongolia. It's in Mongolian, with English subtitles. (Although at least one commenter at IMDB scorns the language as being "pidgin" Mongolian, it's probably authentic enough for most.) The actors are also mostly Mongolian, except for the one playing the adult Temudjin (he's Japanese), and the one playing his blood-brother-turned-enemy, Jamukha (Chinese). In other words, authenticity-wise, this movie compares well with The Conqueror, which starred John Wayne as Genghis.

The actor playing Jamukha, by the way, is very, very good.