Super Vagina

Amongst comic fans, there is always the discussion of Superman's sperm being so powerful, it would shoot out like a bullet, thus killing an ordinary woman like Lois Lane. However, I have to wonder, in the case of "super" women like Super Girl, Power Girl, and Wonder Woman, shouldn't they have vagina muscles so powerful that any normal man's penis would be ripped right off?

Discuss...

Is American Fatalism the New Disguise of Christian Determinism?

In Editorial Board (a meeting where new books are proposed) the Fourth Amendment was brought up and with it fatalism.

Fatalism in the sense that we surrender to the inescapability of fate (or other foreign bodies).

Americans are fatalists.

Not just in relation to the Fourth Amendment but with healthcare, college aid, maternity leave, work vacation time, etc. My sister, who lives in Ireland, just took a four week paid vacation! I get ten days (unpaid)! Hell, you’d have to work for my company for over twenty five years to get that… twenty five days is all you get for a quarter of a century of work and dedication. Bleak and daunting, miserable but true.

This won’t change because Americans just don’t care enough to make one. Oh, we’ll bitch and moan about it, but don’t expect us to rally together and fight the good fight.

I can’t tell you how many times when I was going to school in Ireland people told me I was nuts for paying thirty thousand dollars a year for an education. The reply was always the same “if university cost that much here, no one would go”.

Where’s the rebellion?

Where are the millions of American college students protesting, not against paying for college but for the twenty years or so of debt that will follow? And believe me, it will.

Why aren’t we saying “NO!” to a society that’s raising the degree limit for jobs? A college degree has lost its value and now replaces a high school diploma. For many jobs you need graduate school, a two year long program that costs just as much as a four year college one, without two thirds of the aid.

Why aren’t we livid and indignant about financial aid?

Tell me, where’s the uproar, the protests about privacy, sending troops over seas?

Will we be this passive if they reinstate the draft?

Elrond help us, what happened to our balls?

How come we’re okay with people getting in trouble for music and movie piracy when the programs are on download sites?

If the internet is being monitored so closely, why aren’t they suing these sites for having the programs available? This isn’t the Bible, this isn’t God saying we have free will and should make the right choice. If downloading music for free is illegal then so should the programs that provide the service.

We’re fatalists because instead of saying “what the fuck?”, we swim passively along without caring. Is loss of choice inevitable? Is the communal good of a democratic country no longer the citizens concern?

We’re fatalists because we allow choices we should be making to be made for us and we don’t even care that it’s being done.

To me, it sounds an awful lot like theological determinism is creeping about in a sheep costume: an evil, horrific philosophy that all of our choices are predetermined by an external force or causation of an event (God/Big Bang maybe?).

Is a passive-aggressive nation one of the many rippling effects of a country founded on fundamental Christian principles? I have no idea. Is it the age old saying “leave it in God’s hands” simply morphed into leave it in Bush’s/the Government’s hands? Shit.

If the long term effects of Puritanical ideals are of this caliber then I say we’re all fucked.

I’m moving to Europe.

Interweb...EXPLODES!

The trailer for the Watchmen movie is up.

I've watched it once so far.

I'm not sure what to make of it yet. I mean, it looks cool...but that's also my concern. The fact that it looks cool. Based on interviews, it seems like Zach Snyder wants to be as faithful as possible to the source material, but I don't know if it looks like Watchmen to me. That feeling could be because this is Watchmen as filtered through Zach Snyder, it looks very similar to 300 and Dawn of the Dead(2004). It could also be that the slickness, the coolness of it, is part of a commentary on the modern superhero film. 

I don't know yet.

It's just a trailer. I'm not bounce off the walls excited like when I saw the trailer for X2, or Iron Man, or The Dark Knight. But there's a little part of me that's excited. A little part that's just itching to go back to the Apple site and watch it again. And a slightly larger part of me that wants to go see if I can watch it through the internet connection on my PS3 in HD. 

But I am excited.

A little bit.

In Defense of the All-Star Game

The "Midsummer Classic" is less than a week away. So, inevitably, the rumblings have begun as to whether the All-Star game is irrelevant. In theory, most of the charges against it are correct but upon further reflection I think it has its place.

In recent years, MLB has made some tweaks to the game so that it has an impact on games that count, such as home field advantage in the World Series. Considering that the National League has not won an All-Star game in decades, I'm not a huge fan of that rule. Of course, the Designated Hitter is by far the dumber decision made by MLB,* so I'm not going to hold that one against the American League.

For me, its the inequity of the whole thing. The game doesn't feature the actual "All-Stars" per se, but rather, the most popular players. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are the best team in baseball right now yet they only have two players on the team, neither of which are in the starting lineup. On the AL team, if you play decent ball for New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox, big market teams with long histories, you're virtually guaranteed a starting spot regardless of your comparative value against other players in the league. (They have a combined ten representaives, which is actually a weaker showing than recent years.) This year its the same deal with the Chicago Cubs, another big market team with a long history, on the NL team, with seven representatives. The Cubbies, at least, are leading their division; the same cannot be said for the Yanks and Sox.

Of course, the All-Star game is for the fans who want to see their favorite players compete against one another; the starting lineups are elected democratically, through ballots at the game and online. Its a popularity contest more than a reward for demonstrating skill on the diamond. So that's a legitmate criticism of the game but an excusable one. If you really want to stand on this point, it could be said that the popularity contest should be kept to the Home Run Derby--let the rubes see 'em hit some dingers!--but its ultimately a losing argument.

One-inning maximums on pitchers fall into the same category of excusable conduct. You don't watch your ace injuring himself in a glorfied pick-up game, right?

On the plus side, whatever you have against the All-Star game, at the very least it gives teams a well-deserved break in the middle of the season. Tired players get a few days off to rest and relax, compose themeselves for the rest of the long grind into October. Managers and pitching coaches get the opportunity to shuffle their starting rotation, since the pitchers' arms get a few more days rest.

On the balance, I suppose the best that can be said is this: the All-Star game is dumb and oftentimes boring but it has its benefits. High praise indeed.

* Don't bother to argue this. Sure, it increases run production, but it also removes a huge element of strategy from the game. NL managers have a much more difficult job because they need to consider whether to keep a pitcher going another inning when his slot in the lineup comes up and they're in a rally versus AL managers being able to do so whenever they please. Sure, pitchers rarely hit for shit but a well-placed bunt is one of the great pleasures of the game. If you like the DH, you're a moron who shouldn't bother to watch actual baseball games and should just stick to watching the highlights reel on SportsCenter.

A Beautiful Film, An Ugly World

[May Contain Spoilers]

On July 4th, after returning rather burned out from a long conference in California, I enjoyed a calm day of sleeping until noon, and seeing “Wall-E.” Little did I know how un-American that decision truly was...

“Wall-E” is a movie about a lonely and in love robot that’s also really curious and adorable. He follows the girlbot he loves into outer space, meets some devolving humans, and helps bring humankind back to Earth, which had been barren of any organic life for 700 or so years. This story, combined with the wonderful score, amazing animation, and lack of dialogue (ok, and the fact that “Wall-E” is so freakin adorable) made it a unique movie going experience. After the movie, I shared with Pauly (of 822 fame) my feelings of the movie, to which he replied, “It’s a really beautiful film.” For the first time, I could really tell the difference between a great movie and a beautiful film.

Not that it’s a surprise, but this plot was grabbed on by both sides of the political aisle and analyzed and then over-analyzed. As The Village Voice’s “Runnin’ Scared” reports, there is a large backlash against the movie coming from the right-wing, claiming, “‘The plot was something only Al Gore could love,’ wrote Say Anything. ‘And your average soy latte-sipping, Obama-voting, Che-flat-waving liberal.’” Of course, also according to “Runnin’ Scared*,” there wasn’t only hatred from that side, but a love: “Crunchy Conservative Rod Dreher said Wall-E ‘argues that rampant consumerism, technopoly and the exaltation of comfort is causing us to weaken our souls and bodies, and sell out our birthright of political freedom.’” Inject your politics as you will I suppose.

I’m not naïve enough to think that there would be no political backlash, but I’m certainly not happy about it. After the movie, Erin (also of 822 fame) said, “well, if that was the one movie that Earth beamed out and the aliens saw, it would make humans look terrible.” True. But it wouldn’t make conservatives or liberals look terrible—just humans—a group that conservatives and liberals alike cannot deny being a part of.

At this point in 2008, there’s a thick black line separating the right from the left, so there’s no surprise to see politics injected where it doesn’t belong. Kyle Smith, a columnist for the New York Post and self-proclaimed film critic had a negative review of the movie. Responses to his review ranged from agreement about the movie’s pacing (“what a yawnarama”) to the political (“Is this movie as blatantly liberal as ‘Happy Feat?’) to of course the backlash (“I’m quite ashamed with your review of ‘Wall-E’”). The biggest political issue seems to be with the environmentalist “message” of the movie, but thankfully Kyle tries to push that to the curb: “Well, I loved ‘Happy Feet,’ but if anything ‘Wall-E’ is even more of an environmental parable. (Not that I concede that to want a clean environment is a liberal idea. I hope we all want that)."

I may disagree with Smith’s review of the movie, but I think his sentiment about the environment is accurate. Hate the movie for it’s lack of dialogue, but leave the politics (or the politics you inject) out of it.

*This is a link to a different “Runnin’ Scared” post, so please click both.

The Idiot's Guide to Drinking Your Milkshake*

Sometimes its appropriate to give the devil his due. The recently announced oil contracts in Iraq are indeed such an occasion.

Now, without saying whether I personally believe this to be true or not, one need not don a tinfoil hat to speculate that the Iraq war was entered into partially or wholly on the basis of securing U.S. access to oil in that country. I would regard this as legitimate suspicion rather than pure conspiracy theory; certainly, the litany of news since 2003 detailing the way in which the Bush administration deliberately mis-characterized the case for going to war would provide ample support.

What would be in error would be to suggest that heavy U.S. involvement in advising the Iraqi government on the new oil contracts or that the oil contracts were awarded to the oil companies who previously held exclusive rights to the Iraqi oil fields conclusively demonstrates that indeed such a conspiracy existed. There are legitimate reasons why such circumstances would occur absent Dick Cheney's malignant and abandoned heart.

The business of oil is a far greater undertaking than merely digging some holes and pumping out black gold. For the most easily accessible oil fields, that's basically the case, and so the Jed Clampett scenario is somewhat plausible. It was certainly the case during the early years of U.S. oil drilling. However, examining the history of domestic U.S. oil production, its also fairly obvious that it proceeded in a manner that involved a great deal of waste. In oil production, efficiency is key. Failure to abide by this dictum can spoil an otherwise profitable well and make it prohibitably expensive to pump out the remaining crude. Specialized knowledge on procedures can make a huge difference. The massive inefficiencies of the nationalized Iraqi oil industry under Saddam Hussein's regime make this obvious.

Proper technique is not the only key. Oil production also requires a great deal of specialized knowledge on the specific geological conditions of a well; not all oil wells are the same. Failure to recognzie this fact, and conduct the proper surveys, will also spoil an otherwise profitable well. If Chevron et al are to be re-awarded the Iraqi contracts, the best basis to do so would be their prior knowledge of the specific conditions in question.

Finally, the huge variance in the clauses in an oil contract can have a huge impact on profit. While at the present point in history, there is only one basic type of oil contract, there are also a nearly infinite number of possibilities that arise from how that contract is structured. The specialized knowledge in this area can have as great an effect as either of the other two areas. Arbitration clauses, royalties, profit structuring and technology-sharing agreements will all produce a wide variance in how much money the Iraqi government will receive from these contracts. While I have not seen the contracts in question, nor do I believe they are at the moment publicly available in any form, I think it would be in error to assume that simply because the U.S. military conducted the war and also advised the government on the contracts that there is some sort of causal connection. Even in the absence of such a connection, for decades, the Iraqi oil industry has operated a nationalized industry and they have scant experience in structuring such contracts in a private market. I refuse to jump to the conclusion that the terms of the contracts were simply dictated to the Iraqi government; they absolutely needed some outside guidance. Whether the U.S. military was the best source of this advice is another matter, but is not determinative of the ultimate issue here.

In short, while its reasonable to be suspicion of what is occurring in the Iraqi oil industry, it does not prove a grand conspiracy. If such a conspiracy exists, in the coming years the public will not need to rely on this circumstantial evidence. I'm sure Rep. Henry Waxman is planning to launch an investigation into the matter the day after President Obama is inaugurated.

* I do not mean to be condescending with either the title or the contents of this post. If, in my analysis, I have omitted certain information or simply stated something as true without explaining it it's mostly because it involves a highly technical explanation or a long history. If you have doubts regarding any of my conclusions or statements of fact, feel free to leave a comment or email me & I'll point you towards my source information. Most of the knowledge I represent here comes from having studied international oil and gas law and I am open to being corrected if I am in error.

Further Thoughts on the Marvel Film Universe

To add to my post below, I'd like to share a geeky memory. When I was younger, somewhere between the end of elementary school and the beginning of middle school I was at the height of my comic book love. Specifically, my love for Marvel comics. I was a Marvel Zombie. At one point I was buying almost every single Marvel comic because it tied into the Onslaught* crossover. Which in some cases, was really stupid, because the tie-ins could be really dumb, as in Ghost Rider casually mentions he could be helping everyone in New York fight Onslaught and yet somehow the cover reads "ONSLAUGHT TIE-IN! DON'T MISS IT!" Needless to say, I was really excited about anything Marvel. So when one fateful Saturday, the Sci-Fi Channel advertised a "Might Marvel Movie Marathon," I was ready for a new change of pants.

This was before Spider-Man, before Blade. At this point there hadn't been any Marvel heroes on the big screen aside from Dolph Lundgren in The Punisher(which I hadn't seen), so it was exciting for me to see all these TV movies, like The Incredible Hulk Returns**, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Captain America II: Death Too Soon, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange. I don't recall much of these movies except that they had very little to do with the source material and they mostly sucked(except for the Hulk ones). But at the time, it was exciting to simply see any kind of live-action media featuring these characters. 

Now, while I don't wish a return to crappy low-budget versions of Marvel characters on television, I feel that certain characters would benefit from small-screen exposure before a movie was attempted. Specifically, a Daredevil series would benefit greatly from a serialized format. If it was given the production value of a top-tier series like Lost, and with creators of a high caliber, it could easily be one of the best shows on television. People complain all the time about the glut of comic book movies, well, I think its time to bring comic books back to television.

*Onslaught was a villain that was the result of Magneto and Professor Xavier's minds making a baby. It was an ugly stupid baby.

** The Incredible Hulk Returns features Thor. And the guy who plays Thor looks like the wrestler Triple H, which leads me to believe that Triple H playing Thor wouldn't be as bad as I first thought.