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When You’re Ready

Overheard a woman tonight explaining her approach to evangelism. I won’t be able to quote her verbatim, but this is pretty close:

“When you’re ready. I don’t try to make someone believe; I can’t do that. But when the time comes, when they need God and they’re ready for the Message, it will be there for them.”

Clearly she was proud of herself: her gentle approach and the spirit of Christian charity with which she offered patience. I suppose it’s better than Torquemada’s approach to conversion, or even Pat Robertson’s. But does it really demonstrate a generosity of spirit?

Imagine the same sentiment came from an atheist: “When you’re ready. I don’t try to make someone give up superstition; I can’t do that. But when the time comes, when they no longer need the comfort of an imaginary magical friend and they’re ready for a broader perspective, it will be there for them.”

Sounds pretty patronizing, doesn’t it? Especially the smug assurance that the day will surely come. I wonder how she might react to the same condescension reflected back upon her from one of the converts she seeks.

2011 05 05 mdlake Atheism & Religion Comments (0) Permalink

Sharing Credit

A panel on the radio was discussing bin Laden’s execution tonight, and specifically who deserves how big a share of the credit for it. To their credit and my surprise, conservatives are applauding Obama for the raid.

Claims that the Bush administration and its hard-line policies should share the credit are somewhat more dubious. One of the panelists to claim that torture was justified, because it produced the information necessary to find bin Laden. When challenged on the claim, on citations of reports that the relevant intelligence was recovered only after interrogators abandoned tortures, he smoothly shifted gears just enough to claim that subsequent interrogation successes had been possible only because prisoners had been “made compliant” beforehand. An evil euphemism.

I suspect we’re going to hear a lot more of this meme; it has just the kind of untestable truthiness of which the right-wing propaganda machine is so fond. And it deserves to be slapped down.

Claims that torture softened up prisoners for interrogation under more ethical and professional standards should just make the speaker look weak, which, in a very real sense, he is. Just like the he-man who grunts and grips but fails to open a jar, only to see someone with a lot less testosterone and a little more sense twist it easily open with the right tool, or a loosening tap on the counter edge. When the he-man puffs himself up and claims “I loosened that up for you,” what are we to say? Sure you did, big guy. Now get the hell out of the kitchen before you make another mess.

2011 05 04 mdlake Politics Comments (0) Permalink

Azur & Asmar

Watched Azur and Asmar, a full-length animated film from Belgium, I believe, a fairy tale of two boys thick with love and rivalry. The boys are as light and dark, but otherwise alike as twins. Twins who fight a lot. One might say incessantly. Symmetry between the two, and between their native cultures, is the central theme of the movie. Azur begins as a young lordling and Asmar’s mother his foreign nursemaid; later the boys’ status is reversed as Azur goes questing and becomes a beggar in a foreign land where Asmar has become revered and his mother a queenly merchant. Eventually, they compete directly for the hand of the djinni princess, but not without rescuing one another from the hazards they face along the way.

Like Summer Wars, which I reviewed a few days ago, I picked it out on nothing more than the implied endorsement of NYICFF, where it appeared a year or two ago. But what a difference!

In contrast to Summer Wars, Azur and Asmar is highly experimental. Visually, it employs an eclectic pastiche of sytles, combining flat drawings with rotoscope with computer animation with live action hands with scenes from historical art treasures. Its narrative draws heavily from medieval and renaissance fairy tales but aggressively challenges their social assumptions. The experiments don’t often work: the character designs squat in the uncanny valley, the backgrounds are sometimes so striking as to hurt the eyes, and the modern fairy tale often comes across as an exercise in political correctness. About the only part we genuinely enjoyed was a young princess—Eileene especially liked her—with a precociousness verging on creepy, and her bodyguard who had nothing to say but, hilariously, “Royal princess must not do this!” (You had to be there.) The rest of the movie ranged from unesthetic to interesting but unsatisfying.

Nevertheless, it was worlds better than Summer Wars and entirely deserving of a spot at NYICFF. If it wasn’t exactly good, it was still different, challenging, stimulating. Good for kids with too much access to formulaic TV. For adults, too. In many ways it reminded me of the surreal morality play Fantastic Planet (“La Planete Sauvage”), which I saw in my college days and detested, despite critical acclaim. It wasn’t put together right. It didn’t achieve its ambitions. But it was, at least, eager to shoot for the moon, and that makes a world of difference.

2011 05 03 mdlake Review Comments (0) Permalink

Pocketses, Pocketses

I’m running out of pockets. How can this be? How many pockets does a guy really need to carry his essential stuff—which is to say, how much stuff really is essential?

Front left pocket: key ring, car key (which must be kept on a separate key ring, since we share the car), spare change. When I’ve got a lot of change and I’m driving, the pocket becomes uncomfortably full, but I can’t move them to the front right pocket, because that contains…

Front right pocket: pocket knife. I’d prefer not to scratch it, but more significantly, the frame cracks off with too much impact…like whacking into quarters and keys.

Right rear pocket: wallet. I’d prefer to live without a lump under my butt, but where else is it going to go?

Left rear pocket: cell phone, a new arrival that definitely can’t go with the keys or knife without getting scratched all to hell. For a while I was able to keep it in a shirt pocket, but summer is approaching, and golf shirts don’t always have them. Now I’ve got a lump under each butt cheek when I sit.

Add a pen which also used to sit in a shirt pocket but now gets clipped to my collar. (Any pen won’t do; at my collar, a pen needs to have a cap that won’t poke into my throat.)

I use all of this stuff, if not daily then at least frequently and regularly. Money, keys, knife, pen, phone… all things that you might have use for at any time. Papers, laptop, mini-umbrella, scratch paper go in my satchel, but only because they don’t fit in a pocket. I’ve wanted all of these and gone without when not carrying my satchel. My lifestyle is not a complex one. And yet one more pocket item will be one too many. How did I reach the point where I’m taking inventory twice a day?

2011 05 03 mdlake Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Azur & Asmar

Watched Azur and Asmar, a full-length animated film from Belgium, I believe, a fairy tale of two boys thick with love and rivalry. The boys are as light and dark, but otherwise alike as twins. Twins who fight a lot. One might say incessantly. Symmetry between the two, and between their native cultures, is the central theme of the movie. Azur begins as a young lordling and Asmar’s mother his foreign nursemaid; later the boys’ status is reversed as Azur goes questing and becomes a beggar in a foreign land where Asmar has become revered and his mother a queenly merchant. Eventually, they compete directly for the hand of the djinni princess, but not without rescuing one another from the hazards they face along the way.

Like Summer Wars, which I reviewed a few days ago, I picked it out on nothing more than the implied endorsement of NYICFF, where it appeared a year or two ago. But what a difference!

In contrast to Summer Wars, Azur and Asmar is highly experimental. Visually, it employs an eclectic pastiche of sytles, combining flat drawings with rotoscope with computer animation with live action hands with scenes from historical art treasures. Its narrative draws heavily from medieval and renaissance fairy tales but aggressively challenges their social assumptions. The experiments don’t often work: the character designs squat in the uncanny valley, the backgrounds are sometimes so striking as to hurt the eyes, and the modern fairy tale often comes across as an exercise in political correctness. About the only part we genuinely enjoyed was a young princess—Eileene especially liked her—with a precociousness verging on creepy, and her bodyguard who had nothing to say but, hilariously, “Royal princess must not do this!” (You had to be there.) The rest of the movie ranged from unesthetic to interesting but unsatisfying.

Nevertheless, it was worlds better than Summer Wars and entirely deserving of a spot at NYICFF. If it wasn’t exactly good, it was still different, challenging, stimulating. Good for kids with too much access to formulaic TV. For adults, too. In many ways it reminded me of the surreal morality play Fantastic Planet (“La Planete Sauvage”), which I saw in my college days and detested, despite critical acclaim. It wasn’t put together right. It didn’t achieve its ambitions. But it was, at least, eager to shoot for the moon, and that makes a world of difference.

2011 05 03 mdlake Review Comments (0) Permalink

Good Riddance

We got the news this morning that Osama bin Laden was killed sometime last night in an assault on his compound in Pakistan. President Obama would like you to think of this as a watershed in the war on terror: a great achievement that Bush bungled, a severe blow to al Qaeda, maybe even the beginning of the end of the whole debacle of American oil imperialism. I would like to think of it that way, too.

But I can’t. Not while knowing the jihadist terror network is too decentralized to simply fold up without its nominal ringleader, and not while confrontational sentiment on both sides remains fervent. A bunch of jingo dolts spent the night partying at the WTC site, chanting “USA! USA!” and trying to remember the national anthem. Do you figure some poor Afghani is going to see that and think, “Well, I guess that’s it for the Taliban; America just proved itself a morally superior system.” Neither do I. Killing bin Laden will have about the same effect on terrorism as Mussolini’s capture did on the Nazis.

But as much as I pooh-pooh Obama’s characterization of the event as historical watershed, perhaps I can rally behind it as political message: “Job’s done; let’s get the hell out of here.” Maybe draw down the military budget in the process, so some of the spending cuts get aimed at the largest military in the world—as large as the rest of the world combined!—instead of “wasteful” programs like education and medicare. Maybe, as long as I’m dreaming, leaving Haliburton and their ilk in the lurch, exposed in their expectation of revenues that won’t materialize. It’s a good dream. And, however briefly, all things seem possible in the wake of a purely symbolic achievement.

2011 05 02 mdlake Politics Comments (0) Permalink

Requiescat in Inferna

We got the news this morning that Osama bin Laden was killed sometime last night in an assault on his compound in Pakistan. President Obama would like you to think of this as a watershed in the war on terror: a great achievement that Bush bungled, a severe blow to al Qaeda, maybe even the beginning of the end of the whole debacle of American oil imperialism. I would like to think of it that way, too.

But I can’t. Not while knowing the jihadist terror network is too decentralized to simply fold up without its nominal ringleader, and not while confrontational sentiment on both sides remains fervent. A bunch of jingo dolts spent the night partying at the WTC site, chanting “USA! USA!” and trying to remember the national anthem. Do you figure some poor Afghani is going to see that and think, “Well, I guess that’s it for the Taliban; America just proved itself a morally superior system.” Neither do I. Killing bin Laden will have about the same effect on terrorism as Mussolini’s capture did on the Nazis.

But as much as I pooh-pooh Obama’s characterization of the event as historical watershed, perhaps I can rally behind it as political message: “Job’s done; let’s get the hell out of here.” Maybe draw down the military budget in the process, so some of the spending cuts get aimed at the largest military in the world—as large as the rest of the world combined!—instead of “wasteful” programs like education and medicare. Maybe, as long as I’m dreaming, leaving Haliburton and their ilk in the lurch, exposed in their expectation of revenues that won’t materialize. It’s a good dream. And, however briefly, all things seem possible in the wake of a purely symbolic achievement.

2011 05 02 mdlake Atheism & Religion
Politics Comments (0) Permalink

Summer Wars

I checked out “Summer Wars” from the local library this week. Anime has lost a lot of its sparkle for me, as it does for a lot of fans: what is at first a radical new animative form with amazing explosions and camera swoops, wacky humor, and plenty of cute eventually becomes familiar, and from there it’s a short hop to realizing that 99% or more of it is just as formulaic as the latest Disney princess. Paint-by-numbers animation, if you will. Still, the remaining 1% worth seeing tends to rise to the top, and “Summer Wars” in particular had a solid endorsement in the form of a screening at NYICFF a year or two ago.

Turns out the movie is full of stupid. Lots and lots of stupid. Hackneyed, threadbare stupid.

The story begins when a high school geek who spends his out-of-school time as a drone for Japan’s national internet system deciding to take a different summer job. He does not learn until he gets there that the “job” is to pretend to be the fiancee of a girl hoping to satisfy her aged grandmother (and stern matriarch). Oh, so you’ve heard this one before? And not just any girl—the most popular girl in school, at least according to the protagonist’s fellow geek. Yeah. And then an AI inspired by too many viewings of “War Games” decides to destroy the world, and eventually it’s all up to the protagonist to save the world by cracking its thousand-digit access code in the space of forty-five seconds using his amazing puzzle-solving ability.

I’m not kidding about the “War Games” analogy. The villain of the piece is the nebulous “US military,” which releases the earth-destroying AI on Japan, of all places, because…um…for some reason. Possibly because the US military doesn’t realize it inhabits the same planet. The faux girlfriend, soon to become a real girlfriend, takes it on herself to delay the AI by challenging it to a game of hanafuda. (“Shall we play a game?”) Hanafuda is a card game vaguely akin to rummy or mah jong with an exponential gambling system like that of backgammon, and, like American baseball, a symbol of national pride because nobody else plays it. Fortunately, granny has forced the whole family to learn to play hanafuda well enough to defeat a global computer system, and even more fortunately, the AI clever enough to locate its enemy’s house and take over the space program in order to drop a satellite on him is also stupid enough to gamble all its computing power against a tiny bit of additional computing power that it could take in an eye-blink anyway. Also fortunately, the guy who designed the killer AI just happens to be the black sheep of the family, who just happened to drop by for the first time in ten years, so he can offer advice on destroying it. Even more fortunately still, the world’s greatest online duelist just happens to be a saturnine younger cousin in the same house. What a coincidence! Granny dies in the middle of all this, so the family has to pause from saving the world in order to have a quiet meal together, but the delay proves worth it, because the protagonist geek does somehow guess not only the twelve-thousand-digit access code to control the AI, but also the alternate access code the AI gives itself—what?—five minutes before impact, with seconds to spare. Don’t ask me how, in those final seconds, he also diverts the plummeting satellite; I wasn’t aware that one could out-type gravity, but apparently all things are possible with enough people cheering “Gambatte!” in the background. And then there’s kissing, and the summer “job” proves to be a little more permanent than a summer, and less laborious than flipping burgers.

So why, with this much stupid in it, did “Summer Wars” appear at NYICFF, which makes a point of exposing kids to beautiful, profound, or at least experimental material? The technical quality of the animation was decent but nothing special compared to what you can readily find in the anime section of Best Buy. The story was trite, the characters triter. What was here worth showing to kids?

I eventually decided that it must be the theme of social approval so important to teens and pre-teens. Does the kid get accepted by his faux girlfriend? Her family? Will the black sheep accept his family? Will they accept him? The climax of the film is the spontaneous offering worldwide of private accounts to the hanafuda gamble, when the whole world pours its love onto this plucky Japanese girl, her online avatar surrounded by coruscating fields of internet love energy. (Anime veterans will be shocked to learn that she was not transformed at this point into a singing pop idol, bur merely remained a cute bunny girl.) I think “Summer Wars” made the festival by virtue of a message the hosts wanted to deliver to its young audience, and not by any inherent merit.

2011 04 29 mdlake Uncategorized
Writing Comments (0) Permalink

Summer Wars

I checked out “Summer Wars” from the local library this week. Anime has lost a lot of its sparkle for me, as it does for a lot of fans: what is at first a radical new animative form with amazing explosions and camera swoops, wacky humor, and plenty of cute eventually becomes familiar, and from there it’s a short hop to realizing that 99% or more of it is just as formulaic as the latest Disney princess. Paint-by-numbers animation, if you will. Still, the remaining 1% worth seeing tends to rise to the top, and “Summer Wars” in particular had a solid endorsement in the form of a screening at NYICFF a year or two ago.

Turns out the movie is full of stupid. Lots and lots of stupid. Hackneyed, threadbare stupid.

The story begins when a high school geek who spends his out-of-school time as a drone for Japan’s national internet system deciding to take a different summer job. He does not learn until he gets there that the “job” is to pretend to be the fiancee of a girl hoping to satisfy her aged grandmother (and stern matriarch). Oh, so you’ve heard this one before? And not just any girl—the most popular girl in school, at least according to the protagonist’s fellow geek. Yeah. And then an AI inspired by too many viewings of “War Games” decides to destroy the world, and eventually it’s all up to the protagonist to save the world by cracking its thousand-digit access code in the space of forty-five seconds using his amazing puzzle-solving ability.

I’m not kidding about the “War Games” analogy. The villain of the piece is the nebulous “US military,” which releases the earth-destroying AI on Japan, of all places, because…um…for some reason. Possibly because the US military doesn’t realize it inhabits the same planet. The faux girlfriend, soon to become a real girlfriend, takes it on herself to delay the AI by challenging it to a game of hanafuda. (“Shall we play a game?”) Hanafuda is a card game vaguely akin to rummy or mah jong with an exponential gambling system like that of backgammon, and, like American baseball, a symbol of national pride because nobody else plays it. Fortunately, granny has forced the whole family to learn to play hanafuda well enough to defeat a global computer system, and even more fortunately, the AI clever enough to locate its enemy’s house and take over the space program in order to drop a satellite on him is also stupid enough to gamble all its computing power against a tiny bit of additional computing power that it could take in an eye-blink anyway. Also fortunately, the guy who designed the killer AI just happens to be the black sheep of the family, who just happened to drop by for the first time in ten years, so he can offer advice on destroying it. Even more fortunately still, the world’s greatest online duelist just happens to be a saturnine younger cousin in the same house. What a coincidence! Granny dies in the middle of all this, so the family has to pause from saving the world in order to have a quiet meal together, but the delay proves worth it, because the protagonist geek does somehow guess not only the access code to control the AI, but also the alternate access code it gives itself—what?—five minutes before impact, with seconds to spare. Don’t ask me how, in those final seconds, he also diverts the plummeting satellite; I wasn’t aware that one could out-type gravity, but apparently all things are possible with enough people cheering “Gambatte!” in the background. And then there’s kissing, and the summer “job” proves to be a little more permanent than a summer, and less laborious than flipping burgers.

So why, with this much stupid in it, did “Summer Wars” appear at NYICFF, which makes a point of exposing kids to beautiful, profound, or at least experimental material? The animation was decent but nothing special compared to what you can readily find in the anime section of Best Buy. The story was trite, the characters triter. What was here worth showing to kids?

I eventually decided that it must be the theme of social approval so important to teens and pre-teens. Does the kid get accepted by his faux girlfriend? Her family? Does the black sheep return to the fold? The climax of the film is the spontaneous offering worldwide of private accounts to the hanafuda gamble, when the whole world pours its love onto this plucky Japanese girl, her online avatar surrounded by coruscating fields of internet love energy. (Anime fans will be shocked to learn that she was not transformed into a singing pop idol at this point, bur merely remained a cute bunny girl.) I think “Summer Wars” made the festival by virtue of a message the hosts wanted to deliver to its young audience, and not by any inherent merit.

2011 04 29 mdlake Review
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Honeymoon’s Over

The calm following spring break didn’t last long.

After a week off, both teachers and students had a chance to get all their stuff together. The kids were, by-and-large, sufficiently refreshed to put up with sitting through lessons. We had pleasant weather, but not so pleasant as to keep the students focused on getting outside.

Now it’s Wednesday, and it’s all back to business as usual, or worse. Lots of missing assignments, and shoulder chips visible to the naked eye. And my kids just aren’t getting the lessons. It’s our third day on probability in one class, our second on some very simple formula work in the others, so I chalk the failure up to a lack of attention and not the difficulty of the material, or to my own arcane delivery. And the bad apples are being complete shits: three detention slips in one day.

We’re only three days past a week’s vacation, and already I want a break. Or at least a nap.

2011 04 28 mdlake Teaching Comments (0) Permalink