A few weeks ago I tried to write a movie review of Casino Royale, the new James Bond movie. (In case you’re interested, I enjoyed the movie a lot, especially considering I went into it expecting to not like it.. I’ll finish the full review if anyone cares to read it at this late date after the release of the movie). This past weekend I went to see the movie Babel, and this movie prompted thoughts that went beyond those of a simple review.

Random images from movies reflect the undercurrents of the times. The images of an alien craft destroying the White House in the trailers for Independence Day prompted cheers at the time, now the sequence presents an uncomfortable visualization of the fear peddled in the wake of September 11, 2001. Many of the visual and storyline themes since that day have had the undercurrent of fear, uncertainty, and doubt that combine to poison reason. As shallow and banal as it might sound, the evolution of the James Bond movies over the last four decades provides a good cross-section of the underlying concerns of our culture, which sadly enough now in an unintentional irony reflect more of the Cold War-inspired real fear origins of the original novels than of the later frivolity of implausible madmen attempting to rule or destroy the world.

I have written before of the over-reaction to the attacks of September 11, 2001, but I was not noticed.

Now, some big-bloggers are starting to recognize that over-reaction may be the right description…

In the movie Babel the casual brutality of the Moroccan police is depicted without accompanying music to sway our emotions, it is simply silence spiked with the sharp crack of hand against face and questions asked and answered.

The themes of the movie are myriad, and more than I would have attempted because of the short attention span theatre that US culture has become:

insular westerners exposed to a land without the infrastructure routinely taken for granted, and with completely different

unknowing poverty contrasted with unconscious wealth; teenage disconnectedness with society made worse through physical disability and recent tragedy

how governments act in ways that show utter indifference to the individual human consequences

the difficulties of communication, especially with those closest to us

the individual tragedies imposed by grand immigration policies

the shallow analysis that jumps to the easy conclusion of “terrorism” rather than acknowledging the possibility of acts arising from innocent ignorance could create woe

Complexity doesn’t have to be subtle or “nuanced,” to use the disparaging term adopted by those who prefer a black-and-white world to avoid the heavy lifting of thought; complexity exists without the need for affirmation, and it will bite those in the ass who make choices based upon what they want to be true rather than upon the reality that will not be denied in the end…

About two weeks ago I saw something I hadn’t seen in a decade…

My face clean-shaven.

I’d been wondering how I would look without a beard ever since I started showing grey in my hair while I lived in France, and when grey began to appear in the beard, I decided it was time for a change in the first weeks of this new year.

I’m still undecided whether to keep the new-old look. I’ve lost a decade of age in appearance, so I look 32 or younger again despite gaining more and more grey at my temples, but I’m not entirely comfortable with the look.

Plus, I could get away with not shaving every day when I had the beard… boy, THAT is a pain in the patootie!

A “tag cloud” has been generated for the recent State of the Union Address by President George W. Bush. Tag clouds were originally created to indicate which tags used to label/categorize blog posts were used the most; it lists the words (or tags) used in different sizes, with the larger sizes for the most used tags. In this case, the larger words are the ones used more often in the speech.

I am always interested in new and creative ways of displaying complex information, and tag clouds can be more effective than a mere listing of words with their frequency.

Technorati Tags: President Bush, State of the Union, politics, technology

A few years ago, I bought two bottles of the best single-malt Scotch that I have ever had, the best Scotch that my friends and I felt had ever been formulated, a mixture of older vintage with some aged 12 years. It was and remains unique, something that cannot be replicated. This Scotch is no longer being made; it hasn’t been for years.

I decided to keep those two bottles, and I cracked open one when I got engaged a year ago. I raised more than one glass in toasting my Dad after his death last year. The bottle was finished shortly before I left for my wedding trip, where we got married on the beach.

I have one bottle left.

When it is opened, I will have suffered a great loss and will be lost.

Why not a celebration, you might ask.

Because celebrations are shared, I would reply. I bear my losses alone.

For celebrations, I’ll open good wine, I’ll share other fine Scotch, but the best single-malt in the world I will be selfish and reserve for when I have no other comfort.

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
   -Thomas Jefferson

The fact that “the people cannot be all, and always, well informed” is frequently taken advantage of by those who want to gain support for an endeavor that may require more than sound-bites to explain. Take the recent “surge” proposal from the Bush administration regarding troop increases in Iraq to gain victory. There are many deliberate choices being made in characterizing this supposedly new direction, including the uses of the words “strategy” and “surge” as descriptors of actions that are really “tactics” and “reinforcement” (avoiding committing the same sin by not using the word “escalation”).

People like to say, “now you’re arguing semantics,” but the meanings of the words used to explain ourselves and our thoughts are key to conveying the ideas, and choices are always made in our explanations. Occasionally, those choices are deliberate in the spin they impart.

strategy - Also, strategics. The science or art of combining and employing the means of war in planning and directing large military movements and operations.

In military usage, a distinction is made between strategy and tactics. Strategy is the utilization, during both peace and war, of all of a nation’s forces, through large-scale, long-range planning and development, to ensure security or victory. Tactics deals with the use and deployment of troops in actual combat.

—

tactics - the art or science of disposing military or naval forces for battle and maneuvering them in battle.

The situation in Iraq has been markedly lacking in long-range planning and development, and what President George W. Bush described in his speech was a change in the small-scale, short-range disposition of forces and their methods.

surge - a strong, wavelike, forward movement, rush, or sweep.

The use of the word “surge” implies a rapid ramp-up with an equally rapid ramp-down.

Is this realistic, especially given that the new “strategy” is really what should have been done, and what I assumed was being done, all along?

We have been presented new tactics that will take a long time to accomplish the desired effects. They are being presented as a “new strategy” that is a “surge” possibly ending by the beginning of autumn.

The real plan that underlies the change in tactics has a chance to succeed. Unfortunately, the focus on spin has presented a nonsensical scenario to an American public that is rightly skeptical after so many unrealistic descriptions of the situation in Iraq.

Words and their meanings will come back to haunt those who misuse them.

Wow, it’s been almost a week since I posted anything at all, and well over a week since I wrote anything substantive. It’s amazing how time gets away from you when you’re no longer a single guy with only a cat to demand your attention.

It’s been about two and one-half months since we moved into our new house, and I still haven’t finished unpacking my boxes (my wife only has about 3 boxes left to unpack, but that’s a different story…), and I have four home improvement projects underway that are in various stages of completion. Unfortunately, two of them were delayed by the huge ice storm we have experienced (it’s tough to saw wood when your garage is full of boxes and it is freezing rain outside when you planned to saw apart MDF to make shelving in the driveway…).

Somehow, the responsibilities associated with having a family to take care of along with trying to keep current on my job (the “d” part of “research and development” has become CAPITALIZED lately at the expense of the “r” part… to my dismay, given I prefer the research over the development) have been sapping my mental energy more than I ever thought it would. Other turmoil, both related to blogworld and not, neither of which I can discuss, have been using up the rest of my available bandwidth.

Time slips away when you’re not paying attention.

Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open.
   -Sir James Dewar

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
   -Aristotle

We use ideas merely to justify our evil, and speech merely to conceal our ideas.
   -Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

Reports indicate that President George W. Bush will issue his “The Decider” statement that the correct strategy in Iraq is for a so-called “surge” of troops to retake control of the situation in that troubled land. The new, Democratic leadership in Congress have sent a letter to the President indicating that they will not support any troop increases in Iraq. Some commentators, while admitting their intitial analysis indicates the “surge” is unwise, also claim that “it’s silly to argue that it has ‘already [been] tried and that has already failed.’”

However, according to The Washington Post:

Senior military and administration officials privately admit their deep concerns that the troop increase will backfire — and leave the United States with no options left in six to eight months.

They note that since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the U.S. military has repeatedly carried out temporary troop increases of more than 20,000, but violence has continued to rise.

Given the repeated number of offensive actions in different cities, including sections of Baghdad, that once the US troops left the area seemed to result in the same level of chaos as existed before, it is difficult to not question what lasting effect a “surge” that might be as small as 9,000 troops could truly achieve.

Insanity is endlessly repeating the same process and hoping for a different result.
   -Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Insanity isn’t the only problem, though.

I remember one afternoon in Baghdad in the late 1980s when I was in a store buying a notebook and a lizard scurried along the wall behind the counter. The shopkeeper gave chase, taking off a shoe and trying to smash the little reptile with the heel—until the lizard managed to slip behind the mandatory photograph of the dictator. The shopkeeper froze, arm raised, terrified. The lizard survived. If the shopkeeper had smashed the picture, he might not have.

When Saddam was toppled by the U.S.-led invasion, all this fear suddenly seemed almost as ridiculous as the tyrant’s face on a cheap watch, which is why I rejoiced at the time, and why it’s so damn sad that last weekend Saddam Hussein was turned from a monster into a martyr by the manner of his execution.

Actually, “lynching” would be a better word, despite the $128 million Washington reportedly spent trying to present the captured dictator’s trial as free, dignified and fair. In the days since Saddam’s necktie party, we’ve had to listen to spin from Washington and Baghdad that is not only implausible but condescending—and absolutely irrelevant to the problem at hand. “There seems to be a lot of concern about the last two minutes of Saddam Hussein’s life and less about the first 69 [years], in which he murdered hundreds of thousands of people,” said Tony Snow, the former Fox News face who now mouths the White House talking points.

Meanwhile, instead of facing reality and trying to find solutions to our problems the right-wing bloggers are searching for ways to call anyone who questions the policy traitors, when they are not decrying the fact that Barak Obama has the middle name of “Hussein”.

It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over.
   -Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)

My God, how did we get here?

How do we leave here?

How can we find answers when simply asking questions is a basis for crying “traitor” and flinging accusations of aiding the ever convenient boogey-man, “the terrorists”?

Yes, the far left is shrill, but their shrieks do nothing like the damage that the faux-outraged screams of the far right.

There are some posts that show why sorting through all the dross in the vast majority of weblogs is worth the time:

   Velociworld - Requiem for the Senator

Although knowing the context underlying the tale told helps, it is not necessary. The fact that “the Senator” is the author’s father becomes apparent when reading, and the full, rich texture of the relationship that has been described in previous posts by the author is hinted at sufficiently to encourage further exploration of that history.

President Gerald Ford gave David Hume Kennerley access to the White House to take unstaged photographs of the President at work. From the MSNBC Photoblog, here is a candid shot of Ford talking with his Vice President, Nelson Rockerfeller.

By contrast, the attitude of President George W. Bush has been hostile to open government, creating the most secretive administration since that of President Richard Nixon. Only the carefully stage-managed images are allowed, unless by happenstance a photo is taken that has a resonance beyond the event itself.

Democracy dies when government is conducted in secret.

The scene in Iraq is thousands of miles away, but do not be complacent. It can happen here.