Lobster in a Bucket

Gametime

Good championship games on tap for today. I'm gonna go with the Saints and Colts. The Saints are about the hardest team too cheer against in professional sports in a long time. They pretty much embody all of the good sports stories in one team. They have the young rookie exceeding everyones expectations (Colston), an offensive powerhouse duo (Bush and Mcallister), a much maligned QB finding redemtion (Brees), a young optimistic coach (Payton), and a lot of bad water under their bridge (Katrina, being a permanent away team last season). All those feel-good stories equals big momentum. And every team playing against them from here on out pretty much has to feel like the bad guy.

The Patriots have done a real good job of getting this far, but Manning is ready for an excellent game. And the Pats defense is going to be shaky today. However; there is always the Brady/Belicheck factor. If the Colts don't pounce early this game could easily be a toss-up, coming down to crazy shenanigans in the closing minutes.

Pork

While I'm certianly nowhere close to becoming a vegan or an avid reader of Rolling Stone, this article filled my head with plenty of reason to never eat commercial meat again. The basic problem that the article raises with the pork industry is that it raises hogs in a density that literally destroys the land and lives of it's neighbors. This density is a direct consequence of unregulated vertical integration, and the only way to stop it is for legislatures on some level to bust it up.

While I do think environmental regulations from the federal level tend to be wildly innefficient, it seems likely that the pork concerns in question will remain too powerful on a state level to be checked anytime soon. So in this case it seems like something should be done nationally.

Digital Photography

Because my girlfriend Brae just got herself a digital slr, and I'm pretty dang curious, I've recently become interested to understand how digital slrs work. Can anyone out there reading this little blog tell me about a good place to go to understand the basics of slr photography and how it contrasts to digital? Particularly, I'm trying to figure out the workings of currently opaque terminology like f-stop, aperture, depth of view, what all those numbers on lenses signify, etc. I've hit up wikipedia, and gotten something from that, but I'd love to read something with richer explanatory power. Please Help

Kinists, like Chemists but for Kin

Today I've taken a little excursion into the world of kinists. Kinists are a special flavor of white supremacists that borrow a healthy portion of reformed theology and get caught up in voyages of self-discovery through biographies of Stonewall Jackson and Ty Cobb, definitely not Atticus Finch. But condescension aside, there is a thing or two about these kinists that I do take seriously.

First, they are racists. They don't seem to spend a lot of time tearing down african american virtue like many racists, but they do worship white virtue and purity in a way that pretty clearly puts whites at the top of the proverbial pile. In a society as diverse as America, we can't live together peacefully with such unabashed racism. So kinists deserve the fullness of our social opprobrium.

Secondly, the emotional response I have to this kind of stuff is really fascinating. I find kinists loathesome and pitiable at the same time. Loathesome because if nothing else kinism is a series of abstract ideas taken way too far. I definitely see a weakness in myself to live in abstraction, so consequently I really want to lash out at these guys. But there is something almost pitiable to me about the people espousing this kinist doctrine. In all our beliefs we tend to espouse the stuff that makes us feel righteous and good about ourself. There is a way in which kinism is a radical attempt by a few white people to show themselves some love.

In another life, I think I could just have easily given into similar, if not the same efforts of self-justification. So I certainly understand the emotional genesis of these guys, if totally, completely, hating their beliefs.

Urbana group 2006

This is the color scheme we used for Urbana, and something of the inspiration for my blog, although by green is a touch more pastelly.

New Blog Look/Name

I decided to go back to the original, and some would say superior title of my blog. Lobster in a Bucket. It used to be Lobster's in a Bucket, but that was when Seth Park posted stuff with me too. We live in Maine that summer, and the expression seemed particularly appropriate. When went back to Covenant College for my 4th year I changed the name to Responsibility Without Power in light of being an RA. Now I don't really think I have much responsibility in life at all, so comparing that to my relative powerlessness isn't cute, or meaningful. So for lack of a better title I decided to just be a single Lobster in a Bucket.

This seems appropriate to me in this current stage of life. I'm looking towards a pretty uncertain future, (I hope to start grad school in history somewhere in the fall, but must first be accepted). I don't quite feel a looming boiling, but things seem a touch ominous.

I also redid the colors for the site, pared down to fewer colors in the palette, and made the mesh better, in my opinion. I still want to get a border between the banner on top and the Calendar, Sidebar, Blog Body area. Anybody care to give me code to do this?

The Rapture...Uhh...Yeah

One of the albums I gave heavy play to this year was The Rapture's second album Pieces of the People We Love. It has this beautiful crunch to it, on every song. Although 2003's Echoes got more respect critically, I found it a bit harsh, at times spastic, and not terribly dancable.

I want very much to rock it with the Rapture live in my immediate future. They are going on tour this winter. But strangely, not visiting Philly. Their tour locales on the whole are not the typical hipster watering holes. Note them below

01-25 Orlando, FL - The Club at Firestone *
01-26 Tallahassee, FL - Beta Bar *
01-27 Atlanta, GA - Masquerade *
01-29 Carrboro, NC - Cat's Cradle *
01-30 Charlottesville, VA - Starr Hill Music Hall *
01-31 Louisville, KY - Headliners Music Hall *
02-02 Cincinnati, OH - 20th Century Theatre *
02-03 Pittsburgh, PA - Rex Theatre *
02-05 Milwaukee, WI - The Rave *
02-06 Indianapolis, IN - Birdy's *
02-07 Columbus, OH - The Basement *
02-09 Baltimore, MD - Sonar *
02-10 Northampton, MA - Pearl Street *

* with Under the Influence of Giants

Note the particularly impressive jump in 7 calendar days from Pittsburgh to Milwaukee and back to Baltimore. I hope they got a comfortabel bus. And finally, the most fun music video of my 2006.

Children of Men-Review

Children of Men has a simple point told with a simple story, and boy does it work. In a time where more people feel like the world is broken, and life is uncertain, even without hope, Children brings those beliefs home, to our streets, homes, and workplaces in the West. Cuaron tells us simply that life is short and cruel, but not without beauty or heroics. Children of Men's story is a pretty basic sci-fi premise. What if all the people stopped being able to make babies? There's no cloning, no immortality, just a steadily dwindling supply of people, and hope, on earth. What would that world look like?

Most sci-fi, good or bad, starts with an interesting premise, but most of it fails to captivate the in a meaningful way. The ideas and their implications take over, without real concern for the story or the characters. Stuff get's geeked out. Children doesn't fall into the typical traps of sci fi through getting the viewer as close to the action of the story as possible. The camera follows Clive Owen and his pregnant charge like a little angel over the shoulder throw the most harrowing scenes. The effect of these moments is that you are submerged into the brutality of their lives, and by extension the brutality of Baghdad and Afghanistan.

Since Cuaron has gone on record tying the hopelessness of this dystopia to the fading hope of the early century the question still remain if this movie is an adequate and accurate representation of the present ennui many live in today. Cuaron digs into the viewers expectation of a fair and decent Western soceity through tearing away the veneer of his character's world to excellent effect. Still, there is a way that the use of this story to evoke the failing hope in our future today is a bit pretentious. Our society is not this fragile, or hopeless. If we truly identify with these characters as representations of our own present reality, we are over dramatizing our lives.

That said this movie works as entertainment and a successful concept, explored well.

They Call it the Jesus Phone

That's Right. Already this thing is being called the Jesus Phone. Why? Well it is the killer hardware application. That gadget multiplication going on in our lives, where we tote around a laptop, cell phone, ipod, and pda has been substantially simplified. For many people, the iPhone promises to consolidate those gadget needs down to one device.

Watch some of the amazing stuff this bad boy can do. Watching these for the first time made me hop off my ergonomic chair and run in place. I was that giddy. Beyond the ultra coolness, impressive specs, and swiss-army knife functionality there are a lot of big issues to be dealt with here.

1) The initial cost of the phone $499 is with a two-year service deal with Cingular. What if you don't use Cingular? How much does an unlocked phone cost, and what can the iPhone only do on a Cingular network?

2) How can basic documents be accessed. For the business user it is real important that this thing can read and edit MS Office files as well as open pdfs. If you can't pull up a spreadsheet, play a powerpoint presentation, or edit a proposal, this things power is recreational.

3) How will third-party software development work? Could it run VLC so that I can watch the latest episode of Lost that I recorded with my DVR?

4) The big question underlying points 2 and 3 is what exactly does it mean that the iPhone runs OS X? It seems unlikely that a 4 GB product will have the full version of 10.4 which clocks in at well over a GB itself.

Much of this can be dealt with once the product starts being reviewed. Of course if the whole reason for this unveiling was just to pre-empt the FCC approval, then the thing won't be working for reviewer calls for some time.

Proud to Be SEC

Beyond conclusively showing that 1) we didn't need a rematch between Michigan and OSU and 2) Florida deserved a shot at the national championship, last night's game should also have silenced those college fans who poo-poo the SEC-parity argument and assert that the SEC is weak/inconsistent/not as good as . The SEC did well this year in bowl land. Their record, while not as good as the Big East, was 6-3, and more importantly, 2-0 in the BCS, and better than any other major conference.

That said, my hat's off to Wisconsin and Penn State for putting the hurt on Arkansas and Tennessee. The Big Ten beat the SEC in head-to-head 2-1.

I am proud of my conference.

Movie Club 06

David Edelstein's baby has a new mommy. The Slate Movie Club has been a perrennial favorite of mine, especially when living in Uganda and short of a couple NYT reviews didn't know most of the big buzz movies of 04 and 05 from Adam. Edelstein always did a good job of getting a group of critics together that were serious in their own right, were civil, but didn't agree on a lot of stuff.

This year's list of critics seemed competent. There wasn't a lot of crackle in their dialogue. Nor were they as illustrious (no one from the NYT?), but they got the job done. War movies were a good topic. I liked the Borat discussion. And in general discussion was limited to movies that at least saw a reasonable limited release (I still remember getting annoyed about the ruckus everyone was raising about Wong Kar-Wai and 2046, a movie that like 5 cities in America had any opportunity to view.

Tangentially, this movie club had a puzzling quote by Wesley Morris.

Obviously, the valences of the war movie are many. And it seems you've singled out a particular subset of the genre that relies, more or less, on a formula that when exploited well, as it is in Saving Private Ryan and in Children of Men (a relatable war picture in New Age, sci-fi fatigues), is powerfully cinematic.

The term valences is what I can't move past. The only meaning I have for valences is a type of electron that appears on the outer ring of an atom. What other meaning is there for this word? Someone help me.

Poverty

Every two months or so in Uganda I would go to the capital city Kampala in order to buy cheese, chicken breasts, milk and other western style foods to consume during the next couple months. Invariably, as we would arrive back to our rural homes a crowd of children would arrive and watch us unload boxes of food. Sometimes they would see the frozen meat. These moments would engender one of a couple feelings in me. Sometimes I would feel pity, or shame, or guilt about these hungry little eyes looking at me.

The problem that I had with all these emotions is that they mainly had to do with my conscience and had little to do with real empathy towards these poor children. I didn't understand what it was to want food, or clothing, or things in general.

So when I hunt my memories for some understanding of the poor, this is what I come up with, for better or for worse.

I'm 13 years old. It's the last week of school. All of our books are in, and the grades our finalized. The only reason we are in school is that the schoolboard said we needed to have x amount of days in this school year. I have almost made it through.

I'm 13 years old. It's the last week of school. All of our books are in, and the grades our finalized. The only reason we are in school is that the schoolboard said we needed to have x amount of days in this school year. I have almost made it through.

In that last hysterical week of parties and field days we go outside toI glance over my shoulder and see a couple, leaning against a tree, doing their best to resemble an uptruned arachnid. Except that the boy's hands were working the girls breasts like I'd seen a fat woman on television work dough. I stared and stared at them. Soon my friends noticed them too. We all stared.

Here was a moment where we saw with our own eyes something going on that we had not even imagined doing. Ever. Yes we often imagine the pubescent breast's of our classmates. We also imagined touching them. But we never once though in a million years to knead those very same breasts leaning against a tree at school one sunny afternoon while the other boys run after each other with super-soakers and water balloons.

And this radical widening of our frame of reference was immediately crushing. For even as the unknown is revealed it seems no less possible for us in our hopeless geekiness. Never in my wildest dreams could I imagine being that guy-against-the-tree. It was beyong my means but I wanted it desparately. So much so that I imagined kicking that guy in the face, supplanting him, and kneeding that dough.

This is as close as I can get, I think to empathy. I don't think poor people live in a constant state of envy, and my story is far less serious than theirs. But I do think that when the poor are confronted with their need through seeing the wealth of others, my emotions from above and their emotions are the same.

Music in 06

Contrasting Pitchfork's top ten of 05, 04, and 03 with the consensus picks for 06 is real exciting to me. I love a lot of the music from many of these top tens. I own probably more than half the albums. But these albums are cool. The two best albums out of this year, St. Elsewhere and Return to Cookie Mountain are two of the wierdest, and at times goofiest funk-fests to come around. Throw in Hot Chip, Joanna Newsome, and the Knife and there's something refreshing about this year to me. Gnarls Barkly, Newsome, and TVOTR are all doing quite well commercially too. Right now on Amazon they are all in the top 75 for albums sales, months after their albums came out. Amazon isn't exactly mass society, but it is a much bigger pond than Pitchfork, Sterogum, Gorrila vs Bear, etc.

Sunday Reading

TI've read a couple articles with an economic tilt today. The first was about gift cards. Apparently 19% of all giftcards in America go unused. That amounts to a large loss to consumers, and a lot of free money for corporations. I can't imagine why people don't use the things. I think it's better than cash. Cash leaves you the option to be responsible and save it. On the other hand, you can only get yourself something with a gift card. The second was about this online swap-meet message group called freecycle. The slant of the article was to point out how giving our stuff away provides us with a pleasure similar to getting new stuff.

Finally, and this is the meaty one, I read about the investment practices of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the charity that is worth more than the the GNP of 70% of the nations in this world. The harm that the foundation allows to go on from companies that they hold a major share in outweighs the good that the charitable end of the foundation makes happen. Everyone in the world needs to know about this, and hold foundations more accountable.

To be fair to the foundation. This story was made possible by the fact that the foundation is transparent in their finances. Which is something in their favor and a departure from the general secretiveness of Microsoft, the foundation's sugar daddy.

Back in Action (Again)

Because I really want to in my heart of hearts, I've decided to get back into blogging again (for now). In the interests of full disclosure, I have a deep emotional need to not just write words on this website for sake of writing, but because, someone is reading them, and thinking about them. So please, encourage me. As extra incentive, I noticed before I started this post that I have 399 comments on this blog. So the first person to give me a good word or two will have the self-satisfaction of being the 400th commentator. That's auspicious.