Later On

Fascinating post, with maps, by James Fallows. Take a look.

I was just watching the opening scene of How to Steal a Million (1966), starring Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole. Audrey Hepburn is driving a little convertible, and from nowhere the words "Hillman Minx" leaped into my mind. I didn’t even know I knew that—and I wasn’t even sure it was a make of car. Wikipedia shows that the Hillman Minx was a very popular line in the 60′s, and that probably was a Hillman Minx she was driving. I have no knowledge of that knowledge in my own head. Weird.

The Younger Daughter sent me this impromptu recipe at my request:

Ingredients not exact. It is a quick and dirty recipe:

1 container of chicken stock (heartier than broth — Swanson’s makes the one I used)
some vermouth
dehydrated ginger and garlic
ground chili pepper
a little Wasabi Fumi Furikake Rice Seasoning
about 1/2 Tbsp of sesame oil (or a little less)
shredded cabbage and carrot (a coleslaw blend)
5 Trader Joe’s frozen gyoza pork dumplings.

Heat all the ingredients except for the dumplings until very hot, add the dumplings and cook for 3 mins.

New to me: the stock/broth distinction and the rice seasoning (and if you search Amazon on “rice seasoning”, you’ll find a variety of seasonings, based on (for example) shiso or salmon or nori).

UPDATE: amount of sesame oil corrected—see comment6.

I was just reading some blog with a post on retirement, and the discussion was tilted toward not retiring, because drinking mojitos and playing golf get old. Well, yeah, and whoever thought of that for retirement? But then I realized the reason that so many fear retirement is that they are extroverts, and their social life—daily encounters with many people they know—centers on work. I don’t think introverts have much problem at all in retirement, since most of their interests are solo: reading, crewel work, whatever.

That realization helps me understand why a friend is fighting so strongly against retirement—still working as he nears 70.

Sounds like a good book:

10,000 Ways to Die: A Director’s Take on the Spaghetti Western

by Alex Cox

From Liverpool to Cinecitta

A review by Gerry Donaghy

One of this summer’s most curious films was Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, which the trailers depicted as a straightforward Dirty Dozen (maybe Kelly’s Heroes would be a better comparison) type picture, but can in fact be best described as a Spaghetti Western populated with Nazis — substituting a suave Nazi for Lee Van Cleef’s ruthless killer, hidden Jews for missing Confederate gold, and setting it all to a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. (One could also call it a meditation on the power of cinema, a thank-you letter to the French for their appreciation of the auteur, or a kosher snuff film, but I digress.)

Whether you buy into QT’s cinematic bouillabaisse (steeped specifically in the films of Sergio Leone) or not, there is no denying that long past the genre’s heyday, an apotheosis arguably reached in 1968 with Leone’s Once upon a Time in the West, Spaghetti Westerns continue to fascinate and influence viewers and filmmakers alike.

One such filmmaker is Alex Cox, director of Repo Man and Sid and Nancy. In 1987 he made his own Spaghetti Western pastiche Straight to Hell, and, more recently, has written an assessment of the genre in 10,000 Ways to Die. To this task, Cox brings a lifelong appreciation of all Westerns, as well as experience behind the camera, both of which give him a unique perspective to the genre.

Instead of going for the academic approach (such as that typically exercised by film scholar Christopher Frayling), or exhaustively thorough (see Howard Hughes’s Once upon a Time in the Italian West), Cox takes a more cut-and-dried approach, presenting a chronological listing of films, cast and crew, and synopses, along with his critical appraisals. This more laid back style frees Cox to give his opinion and to point out shortcomings while finding enjoyment in these films that were dismissed as vulgar trash when first released (one critic, on Fistful of Dollars, wrote that "Brutality is piled unskillfully on brutality in what appears to be a blatant plea for the X-certificate the censor has awarded it.").

Cox’s critical writings here are relaxed and conversational (even in his footnotes), and free from unnecessary jargon or posturing. What’s appealing is …

Continue reading.

David Sirota at Salon.com has an excellent column that you should read in its entirety. The conclusion:

At a moment when Obama’s agenda is acutely threatened by congressional Democratic recalcitrance, the president’s anti-primary posture tells all Democratic incumbents he will defend them, regardless of their position on issues. And that message blunts Obama’s most powerful instrument of legislative leverage: fear of contested elections.

Without vigorous primaries forcing Democratic legislators to face Democratic voters, those legislators feel free to defy the president’s Democratic agenda. Alternately, with primaries, Democratic lawmakers typically compete to show who is more committed to the Democratic agenda. As two examples, Sens. Specter and Bennet went from mealy-mouthed equivocation to strong support of the public healthcare option immediately after opponents announced primary challenges to them.

Hence, in trying to prevent or weaken primaries against incumbents, Obama is not merely signaling a royalist’s disdain for local democracy. He is exposing a corrupted pol’s willingness to prioritize country club etiquette over policy results. If his agenda ends up being killed, that cynical choice will be a key cause of death.

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent column today in which he explores the strange way that the US leaps into confrontations and wars with other countries. Some pieces of the column, which I highly recommend that you read in its entirety:

… Still, the accusations issuing about Iran are unaccompanied by evidence and raise at least as many question as they answer.  Yet here we have, yet again, inflammatory (and, in many eyes, war-justifying) accusations made against an American Enemy, and the American establishment media seems capable of nothing other than mindlessly repeating it, asking no real questions, and doing little other than fueling the fire.

By contrast, The Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman spent all day yesterday diligently and critically grappling with the question of whether Iran even breached any of its obligations under the NPT (he quotes an analyst with the Federation of American Scientists’ Strategic Security Program who points out out that the NPT requires notification to the IAEA no less than 6 months before a facility is operational — which Iran plainly did — but also notes there may be non-public Iran/IAEA agreements requiring earlier notification).  Either way, everyone agrees that — despite all the rhetoric about Iran getting caught red-handed — it was Iran itself which notified the IAEA of this facility; the facility is far from operational; and there’s no evidence that it contains or even can produce weapons-grade material.  Until there’s an IAEA inspection — which Iran said it would permit — it’s impossible to know the true purpose and capabilities of this facility, which is the cause for the Chinese’s skepticism and should cause skepticism among every thinking person, beginning with the American media.  Can anyone point to any such skepticism anywhere?  Listening to the media coverage, one would think that Iran just got caught sitting on a secret atomic bomb.

The reason such accusations deserve so much scrutiny is obvious:  there is a substantial faction in our political culture which craves a military attack on Iran — the same faction, more or less, that caused us to attack Iraq — and will seize on anything to justify that.  Anyone who doubts that should look at this creepily excited and chest-beating statement yesterday from Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, GOP Sen. John Kyl, and Sen. Joe Lieberman:  Iraq War supporters all.  Contradicting the 2007 NIE, they declare as an "inescapable conclusion" that "Iran is determined to acquire nuclear weapons."  Their joint statement threatens "catastrophic consequences" against Iran and vows that "we are prepared to do whatever it takes to stop Iran’s nuclear breakout."  Just in case anyone is still confused by what they are threatening, they favorably cite a "bipartisan" report from former Senators Chuck Robb (D) and Dan Coats (R) which urges the President to begin preparing for military action against Iran, and lays out a detailed plan for what it would entail, beginning with a naval blockade and extending to "devastating strikes" against "assets" inside Iran that "would probably last up to several weeks and would require vigilance for years to come."  That’s what three key U.S. Senators are explicitly threatening.

In the absence of what they call "immediate" compliance, the Senators call for "crippling new sanctions against Iran."  In The Washington Post today, AIPAC’s most trusted House member — Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D) — similarly recommends sanctions that would "cause the Iranian banking system to collapse" and impose other severe economic hardships.  So much for all of that oh-so-moving, profound, green-wearing concern for the welfare of The Iranian People.  Time to bomb them or, at best, starve them until their government complies with our dictates.  The Post Editorial Page repeats the same claim made for two decades about Iran ("officials say that when it is operational, it could deliver the material for a bomb in a year") and warns:  "If it had not been discovered, the Qom plant could have given Iran the means for a bomb by 2011 without the world knowing about it.  And if there is one clandestine facility, most likely there are others." …

Read it all. There’s a contingent in Congress that likes nothing better than sending young men and women to war.

And here’s his update, which points out the sad truth that the US cannot always get its way:

Daniel Larison has some typically insightful observations about all of this, which should be read in their entirety, including this:

Significant Russian cooperation with a sanctions regime would make it more "successful" in that it would isolate Iran more fully, which would at least address part of the practical problem of imposing sanctions on Iran, but this would not lead to the result that sanctions advocates want. Most likely, China would pick up the slack and become even more heavily invested in trade with Iran than it has been. On the contrary, as opponents of sanctions keep saying, a tighter sanctions regime will harm internal political opposition to the regime, increase the political-military establishment’s hold on the economy and cause Iranians to rally behind their government in the face of outside hostility.

One of the things the American political establishment has the greatest difficulty accepting is that sometimes we can’t force other countries to do what we order by bombing them or otherwise harming them, and that the far more likely way to obtain the outcome we want is through consensual agreement.  That doesn’t produce the same pulsating sensations of power and strength as Shock and Awe — it won’t cause Joe Lieberman to pump his fists and yell "Yeah!" and "All right!" — but it is still the most rational and effective course of action.

Interesting post at The Simple Dollar:

Recently, I had the pleasure of reading Matthew Crawford’s excellent book Shop Class as Soulcraft, which is an extension of Crawford’s essay of the same name which appeared in 2006.

Crawford’s basic argument is simple: the manual trades (repair work, carpentry, and so on) offer intellectual, personal, and physical challenges and pleasures that the information economy is simply incapable of matching. The pleasure of working with one’s hands, the challenge of solving problems of machine building and spatial geometry, and the process of apprenticeship and skill growth are nearly absent in today’s economy, but each provide enormous opportunities for personal growth and happiness that we’re missing out on. Crawford attributes the recent growth in personal gardening and other similar “work with your hands” hobbies as a manifestation of that unfulfilled need in our lives.

This is similar to the things I’ve discovered over the last few years, as I’ve been attempting to do more and more manual tasks for myself, from fixing sinks and toilets to having a large garden and making my own laundry detergent. Such tasks require me to both perform physical actions and solve problems along the way, which has a lot of subtle benefits.

Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned over the past few years from doing it myself beyond merely saving some money: …

Continue reading.

Megs, wondering just what the hell I think I’m doing with that camera.

She is devoted to this tunnel now. Whenever I can’t locate her, I go look in the tunnel and generally see her furry gray butt.

She’s also back on canned food in addition to kibble. The vet suggested a bit of canned food would be good for her, especially if I mixed in a little (about 1 tsp) canned pumpkin. She seems to like it, and gets this little treat every morning. By the following morning, she’s usually cleaned up the previous day’s canned food and is eager for more.

The Fat Boy (or the Executive, as this gold-plated model is called) is probably the apogee of Gillette’s razor technology. This morning I got a superb shave from a previously used Astra Superior Platinum blade with the razor.

Of course, the terrific lather created by the Rooney Style 2 Finest from La Toja shave stick helped. I swear I could happily use the Rooney daily—at least until I craved variety. And La Toja aftershave was a great finish.

I bought a pound of Dover sole fillets yesterday with the intention of making a fish soup along these lines:

1 large onion
2 leeks
1 clove garlic

Chop the above and sauté in a little olive oil and habanero oil. When onion is transparent, add:

3 stalks celery, chopped [celery was bad: used two baby bok choy instead]
1 yellow crookneck squash, chopped
1 bunch parsley, chopped
[found some nice young carrots in the fridge, used several of those]
salt
pepper

Sauté more, then add:

1 can diced tomatoes with juice
1 qt chicken stock [plus 2.5 qts water, as it turned out]
1 cup frozen corn kernels
[1 cup fresh green beans, cut to 1" sections]
some chopped dulse (a sea vegetable) used wakame flakes
1 lb Dover sole fillets
[juice of 3 limes]
[dash soy sauce, mirin]

Bring to boil, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes. Add:

Soba noodles, broken into short pieces

Cook until noodles are done, then eat.

I’ll probably add more stuff that catches my eye. The sole breaks up into bite-sized pieces of fish.

UPDATE: changes indicated above.

From this post, which also has the story behind the sculpture:

I don’t think people really grasp how significantly their lives are going to change. Here’s the latest report from the UN Environment program (PDF file, and includes things like a world map showing weather anomalies from 2008-09). I got the link from this excellent post by Kevin Drum, which includes the following:

both the UN report and Corell’s analysis agree that climate change is much worse than we thought even a few years ago.  Virtually every measure of warming is increasing faster than our models predicted — something that regular readers of this blog already know.  From the first chapter of the UN study:

The climate forcing arriving sooner-than-expected includes faster sea-level rise, ocean acidification, melting of Arctic sea-ice cover, warming of polar land masses, freshening in ocean currents, and shifts in circulation patterns in the atmosphere and the oceans.

….In early 2008, a team of scientists published the first detailed investigation of vulnerable Earth System components that could contain tipping points. The team introduced the term ‘tipping element’ for these vulnerable systems and accepted a definition for tipping point as “…a critical threshold at which a tiny perturbation can qualitatively alter the state or development of a system…”

The nine tipping points are below.  Three of them could happen within ten years, and two more are possible within 50.  Time to quit mucking around, folks.

The tipping points from the report (click to enlarge):

Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar has an interesting post this morning:

A little over a year ago, I posted an article entitled The Essential Bookshelf: The Only Eight Books I’ve Kept (After Hundreds of Reviews). In it, I discussed the fact that I’d read and reviewed hundreds of personal finance, personal growth, productivity, and career books for The Simple Dollar, but had only found eight of them essential enough for me to keep for future reading and reference.

Since then, more than a year has passed. I’ve read somewhere around eighty more books on those topics and integrated tons of advice into my life. I’ve also found that I’ve “drifted away” from some of the books in my library, finding other ones that provided food for thought.

So what does my library look like now? Here are the eleven books I’ve reviewed on The Simple Dollar that I own a copy of and turn to regularly for inspiration and reference…

Continue reading. One of the books, BTW, is Mindset, by Carolyn Dweck, which I highly recommend as well.

Of course. On the other hand, there are those who still believe that you can trust business to do the right thing. Kevin Hall for McClatchy:

If you doubt that U.S. banks long to return to the days of impotent regulation, you need only look at one of the financial sector’s top legislative priorities: killing a proposed new agency that would be dedicated solely to protecting consumers’ financial interests.

The Obama administration is asking Congress to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency to regulate consumer financial products ranging from credit cards to mortgages, and to simplify disclosure about them all.

Though virtually every cause of the nation’s recent financial crisis was rooted in weak consumer protection, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is leading the fight against the proposed agency on grounds that it would make credit less available and more costly. The American Bankers Association, the Independent Community Bankers of America, and the Financial Services Roundtable also oppose the measure…

Continue reading.

Roku doesn’t offer subtitles because so far that technology is limited to DVD viewing—they haven’t yet accounted for customer-selected subtitles in streaming video. The technical challenges do not seem to me to be insurmountable, especially if the matter being streamed is pre-recorded and pre-formatted. I feel sure that there is a way to embed subtitles in the streamed information and allow customers to select subtitle language and turn subtitles on or off. But not yet. So: no subtitles. And it’s not a Roku problem per se: You also don’t get subtitles if you watch instantly on your computer. So no equipment can show subtitles that are simply absent from the streaming format.

The answer is for content providers to figure out a streaming format that can accommodate subtitles. That will take a while. [UPDATE: Netflix's comment on this capability.]

Another point: The Roku has an HDMI port, so I can hook it to the TV for high-definition movies. But the DVD player is already hooked to the TV’s HDMI port. The answer is this little three-way HDMI switch: it accepts up to three HDMI inputs and has one HDMI output. It comes with a remote so you can select which of the inputs to feed (i.e., either the input from the Roku or the input from the DVD player). That does require a total of 3 HDMI cables of course (one from DVD player to switch, one from Roku to switch, and one from switch to TV), but HDMI cables are fairly cheap these days. (I got a 3′ HDMI cable for 2¢ plus $2.98 shipping.)

Although the switch came with remote, it did not have a 5V DC power supply shipped with it—probably an error, but OTOH I don’t see one mentioned in the linked listing. But I did find this one and it’s on the way. See update.

UPDATE: The comment below is correct: the switch does not require a power supply. I should have read the Amazon reviews more carefully. It works either with the little remote, or as a priority (DVD player plugged into Input 1, Roku plugged into Input 2: if DVD player is off, I get the signal from the Roku; if the DVD player is on, I get its signal). I do like the convenience of the little remote though—and that allows me to watch two movies at more or less the same time: when one gets tense, I can switch to the other until I calm down.

Something about the Roku is irresistible—the fact that you can just call up and start another movie without moving from the chair. Plus I somehow feel like I’m getting away with something—that I’m getting the movies "free", by paying for a  DVD subscription.

I watched The Ramen Girl, a Brittany Murphy vehicle that attempts to tell the story of an American girl, four years out of college, left on her own in Japan, deciding to learn to be a ramen chef. There are the expected shots of the discipline of the beginner (having to clean pots, pans, the floor, the toilet, and so on). She speaks no Japanese (!) and seems determined to make no effort to learn it—e.g., by doing something like taking night classes. But the mutual incomprehension between her sensei and herself does a good job of representing how parents and teen-agers talk past one another. (Although she’s mid-20′s in the story, the movie seems designed for teen-agers.)

One peculiarity is the degree to which she smokes—she’s constantly puffing a cigarette to the point where it seemed obviously product placement.

The other peculiarity is how the story in the last third makes several major plot leaps without explanation: one day she’s cleaning toilets, the next day she’s with the sensei at the market, and the third day she makes a ramen broth that makes people emotional. (The movie has three or four bits of magic realism cropping up unexpectedly.) There’s nothing about the actual training and preparation of ramen, which means it’s not a food movie, though it could have been (along the lines of Tampopo).

Overall impression: meh

The other movie I watched was I’ll Be There, a Craig Ferguson movie that was, on the whole, enjoyable. Has-been rock star and alcoholic learns he has a daughter and meets her, gives up the booze, etc. It wouldn’t have been much without Ferguson, I have to say. (Ferguson wrote, directed, and starred in the movie, so that statement is on solid ground.) The female lead was Jemma Redgrave, who looks a lot like Natasha Richardson (same overall family).

Then I started Day Watch, but found my eyes growing heavy. It was after midnight, extraordinarily late for me.

I love the Roku.

A first-rate shave today. The Speick shave stick is very pleasant and the Rooney Style 2 Finest produced a superb lather—I do love that brush. The Futur with its Bolzano blade of several shaves did a superb job. I don’t think this razor is underrated by those who use it, but others might not realize what a fine razor it is.

A splash of Speick finishes the shave and sets me up for the day—at least for my two cups of white tea sitting before me.

Rats. After hours of movies, the Roku suddenly won’t connect to the router. It worked fine before. It can find the network, but it’s as if the WEP passcode is wrong. (It isn’t: I checked and even deleted and re-entered it.)

In the meantime, I found this list of routers that are known to work well with Roku—and for all those hours of watching, I thought my router would be okay, too.

I have a help request in on their forum.

UPDATE: Solved it myself. Belatedly I turned on my laptop, and when it also could not connect, it seemed evident that the problem was router rather than Roku. I unplugged the power from the router, let it sit 30 seconds, plugged it back in, and all works well again.

Somehow this seems very low-tech: 1/2 step up from sharply slapping the side.