Sharon and I saw The Two Towers yesterday, for her birthday. I thought it was good, but a step down from the first film.
Peter Jackson said he conceived The Fellowship of the Ring as a mythic prehistory of Europe. That's how it felt. The characters seemed to be ordinary people confronted with dangerous times.
The Two Towers is an action movie. None of the characters learns or grows, except bit player Faramir, and arguably Aragorn, whose growth as a leader supports Really Cool Action Sequences, rather than the other way around. The whole thing seems to have been written by breathless 14-year-olds. Hey, what if Legolas goes skateboarding down those stairs? That would be REALLY COOL! What if there's, like, an attack, and one of the Oliphaunts THROWS this one guy, and he lands RIGHT IN FRONT of Frodo and Sam? That would TOTALLY ROCK! Each of these decisions erodes the believability of the whole, until it's hard to care about any of it.
Without anything meaningful to do, the characters feel flat and uninteresting. Gimli is a fool, Gandalf is a cross between Jesus and Obi-Wan Kenobi. I don't recognize any of them, and I can't identify with them. The Merry I knew from the first movie would have wigged out on seeing a talking tree. In this movie, he and Pippin take to it pretty easily. That changes the idiom to something like The Wizard of Oz, where fantastic things happen to thick and fast that it's hard to find a human scale anywhere. Only Theoden and Sam manage to create real sympathetic emotion based on personal relationships.
As the "bridge" in a movie trilogy, Towers has to tell a story without a beginning or an end. But that's not an insurmountable challenge. The Empire Strikes Back succeeded because of the revelation at the end, which had colossal repercussions emotionally, psychologically, plot- and character-wise. This had nothing, just a lot of cool fights. It was disappointing and overlong, but it was still entertaining. We're going to rent the Fellowship DVD this week, to compare and to hear the director's commentary.
Anyway, after the movie we went to Clyde Cooper's in downtown Raleigh. Clyde's is reputed to have the best barbecue in Raleigh. I think that might be right. It's just a little hole in the wall with a lunch counter and a few booths, but they're really friendly and the pork is lean. I think this must be a piece of the old Raleigh, before all the high-tech business showed up in RTP. I like it.
|W|P|86625223|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."—Theodore Roosevelt
|W|P|86603524|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comI had remembered how expensive homeownership is, and I'm getting reacquainted with the ghastly, ceaseless expense. But I'd forgotten how humiliating it is to be un-handy. I stare in helpless bafflement at frayed weatherstripping, at expired smoke detectors, at sticking drawers. Our mailbox is rusted, and I can't figure out how to remove it from its post.
I understand that getting educated about this stuff would save a lot of money. And it would be a Mastery Experience, as my psychologist wife would say. And I think it would be fulfilling to finish the attic or paint the bedroom, and take pride in a job well done.
But there's just such a mountain of things to learn, and it seems the only way to really understand is to fail.
One thing at a time, I guess. Sharon and I both tend to want to fix everything immediately. We're uncomfortable letting things stay broken; it feels "wrong." But that's the sort of thinking that led us to pour $20,000 into a house we then had to sell in Bloomington. The to-do list never really gets shorter. Maybe this will force me to learn that lesson, or go broke.
|W|P|86569187|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comI'm listening to "Great Sacred Music of Christmas" on WCPE as I prepare for a grueling tax filing. This year we moved twice, sold a house, bought a house, searched for jobs, collected unemployment, and earned contracting income in two (three? four?) sole proprietorships, paying estimated taxes. Because the stock market has reduced the value of our IRAs, I'd also like to consider converting them to Roths. One of the moves was interstate, so we have to do part-year taxes in two states. And we have to write next year's budget.
Anyway, Christmas music sucks. Or, not Christmas music, but the classically trained vocal instrument is one of the ugliest timbres I think I've ever heard. If bagpipes sounded like this no one would play them. Stiff, dynamically inflexible, overarticulated, inexpressive, and over-concerned with technique. Sopranos and tenors seem mostly concerned with belting out the music as loudly as possible. Baritones and basses swallow their vowels till I feel like I'm drowning. No one seems to be having any fun. The announcer explained how long it would "take" to present Handel's Messiah. I wish I were black. White people squeeze all the life and joy out of everything.
|W|P|86497084|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Distinction is the consequence, never the object of a great mind."—George Washington Allston
|W|P|86407674|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThis week's game was a quick G/20 against a Rutgers student on Yahoo. I want to play slower, higher-quality games, but it's hard to find an opponent at more than G/5 except for Sunday afternoons on FICS. Maybe that's what I should do.
Anyway, this was an exciting game, with a lot of tactics. I'll be interested to see how accurate my play was.
|W|P|86373564|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comTwo good quotes this morning on alt.quotations:
"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know, that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion."—Carl Sagan
"For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin—real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way,
something to be got through first, some unfinished business,
time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would
begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my
life."—Fr. Alfred D'Souza, Handbook for the Soul (ed. Benjamin
Shield)|W|P|86359110|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com An Idahoan fed up with the commercialization of Christmas is protesting by crucifying Santa in effigy in his front yard. (Via Plastic.) Last night I saw Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and remembered all over again why I hated school. Here's what I learned in school: reading, writing, math, typing, driving. That's all I've retained. Literally every other particle of information—all the facts I was taught, everything from kindergarten through college—has been forgotten, with no apparent ill effects.
"In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the ... Anyone? Anyone? ... the Great Depression, passed the ... Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act, which ... anyone? Raised or lowered? ... raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression. Today we have a similar debate over this. Anyone know what this is? Class? Anyone? Anyone? Anyone seen this before? The Laffer Curve. Anyone know what this says? It says that at this point on the revenue curve, you will get exactly the same amount of revenue as at this point. This is very controversial. Does anyone know what Vice President Bush called this in 1980? Anyone? Something-D-O-O economics. 'Voodoo' economics."
For years I thought education had to be this tedious. But at UNext I met some actual trained instructional designers, and learned Bloom's taxonomy. It categorizes a test question's level of abstraction, and the skills it engages:
- Knowledge: observation and recall of information; knowledge of dates, events, places; knowledge of major ideas; mastery of subject matter
- Comprehension: understanding information; grasp meaning; translate knowledge into new context; interpret facts, compare, contrast; order, group, infer causes; predict consequences
- Application: use information; use methods, concepts, theories in new situations; solve problems using required skills or knowledge
- Analysis: seeing patterns; organization of parts; recognition of hidden meanings; identification of components
- Synthesis: use old ideas to create new ones; generalize from given facts; relate knowledge from several areas; predict, draw conclusions
- Evaluation: compare and discriminate between ideas; assess value of theories, presentations; make choices based on reasoned argument; verify value of evidence; recognize subjectivity
Deeper is better. The trouble is that most public schools (and state universities) are so strapped for resources that they never get past level one, which amounts to delivering huge volumes of facts and then testing to see whether students have memorized them.
So it's not their fault, but it's still not acceptable.
What still bothers me is the curriculum. Why teach me superficial physics and chemistry, but not nutrition or personal finance? What a colossal waste of time.
|W|P|86181527|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Sometimes, Washington is one of these towns where the person—people who think they've got the sharp elbow is the most effective person."—George W. Bush, New Orleans, Dec. 3, 2002
|W|P|86116485|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com
Man, that sucked out loud. It turned out to be the worst ice storm in Raleigh's history. We finished packing by flashlight, and then the one-day move took three days. In between, we had to choose between living in a cold, dark apartment and a cold, dark house without phones or running water. We chose the house, which proved to be smart, because the power came back on Friday. The apartment was still dark on Sunday, and may be yet, for all I know.
The good news is that no one was hurt, we got moved safely, and we like the house. I met most of the neighbors, and they seem nice enough, and much friendlier than those in Bloomington. We're out of Durham, and the Raleigh area seems much nicer. My commute this morning was about 15 minutes, and I'm told there are back roads that make it even quicker.
During all the chaos I delivered my car to the body shop, and got a Galant to drive in the interim. It smells of cigarettes, but somebody left a copy of the latest Eminem CD under the visor, so that's a bonus.
|W|P|85802880|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comWe're running out of boxes to pack, so I stopped by the house at lunch to get some unused ones the sellers had left for us. While I was there I got a look at the new paint job. I think it looks terrific—the living room looks just as I'd hoped it would, and the master bedroom looks even better, clean and elegant but not pretentious. They did a really good job. It took two or three coats to cover the old blue, but they did a really professional job. I hope Sharon likes it.
It's a good thing I went at lunch, because an ice storm came into town a few hours later and closed the office. We were to meet Rob at the house tonight to review the paint job, but we put it off. As I write this, all the Triangle school systems have announced they'll be closed tomorrow. If we're closed tomorrow, Sharon and I can get some more last-minute preparations done, but we seem on track for the Friday move, thanks entirely to her.
|W|P|85514358|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe cover story in this week's issue of TIME says that The Two Towers is even better than the first film. Well, that's nice to hear, but hardly objective. And not really the top news story this week, is it? The movie doesn't even come out till December 18.
Let's look a little deeper here. ... Why, look! No, not on the cover. No, not in the four-color opening spread. Over here, in paragraph 6. In a little passing clause. In parentheses. TIME and New Line Cinema are both owned by AOL Time Warner.
Huh.
That's not surprising, I know, but somehow it bugs me even more than they even bothered with the disclaimer. It's more insulting. A passing note in paragraph 6 does not get you out of Ethics Hell. An ethical editor would have refused to run the piece in the first place. Advertising—and this is advertising—is stooping more and more to outright deceit lately. The goal is no longer to depict reality, but to hoodwink deliberately and avoid litigation.
I know I sound like someone's bitter grandpa, but ethical guidelines exist for a very good reason. The people who pull this crap are the same ones who complain when others do it to them.
|W|P|85444166|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThe next time I'm in a car accident, I'm going to aim for a State Farm customer. As big a hassle as this has been, what with Thanksgiving and moving and all, they've made it as painless as they possibly could. They let me pick a body shop, and transmitted my paperwork there electronically. The shop was clean and professional, and Enterprise will even drop off a rental car for me while mine is getting fixed. Once it's done, I just arrive in the rental, drive off in my car, and State Farm direct-deposits about $1,800 to pay for it.
Now if that SERVICE ENGINE SOON light would just go off ...
|W|P|85443488|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comI used to be a pretty good typist. I think I used to get over 70 wpm without errors. But I seem constitutionally incapable of typing my own name at the end of an e-mail. Samples from the past week:
Gerg
reg
G
Grewg
Grfeg
g
Gre
What does this mean? I think Freud would say it must mean something. It happens way too often to be a coincidence. It's not a hard word to type—only four letters. I must be deeply conflicted about my very identity. Maybe I should try using other names ... or a nickname. Sparky? Scooter? Captain Midnight?
|W|P|85393300|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com"Such is the state of life that none are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing; when we have made it the next wish is to change again."—Samuel Johnson, The Book of Positive Quotations
Hmm ....
|W|P|85373835|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comDid women's liberation die a quiet death sometime in the early '90s? In Mike Nichols' Working Girl (released 1988), Melanie Griffith rises from lower-class circumstances through her own intelligence and resourcefulness. She gets the attractive guy because he admires her ability and respects her character.
But then came Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?, The Bachelor, and, soon, Joe Millionaire, an NBC show in which women compete for an anonymous man who's "wealthy beyond their wildest dreams." I expect Joe Millionaire himself might be disfigured or personally repellent in some way—that would be the natural next step. Would you marry Quasimodo to get a chateau?
Why do women persist in these fantasies? The heroes/targets in romance novels are almost invariably men of wealth and station—if women want equality, why is an earl more romantic than an average modern guy? Why do women pine for a time when they were second-class citizens? Women have struggled for years to achieve equality in the workplace and the right to choose their own futures. Undeniably they have a long way to go, but they've made tremendous strides. The cage is open, but now they won't fly out.
Maybe I'm just a benighted male, but it seems to me that it's women themselves who keep alive the 19th-century tradition that a woman must find a husband, the richer the better. I don't know any men who consider a woman's wealth when choosing a mate, and I don't know any who judge themselves (or women) failures for choosing the single life. If men don't care, why do women?
|W|P|85382735|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comThis week's game was a G/30 against an 1859 on FICS. My essential error was in not understanding the QGD well enough. I took his c-pawn on move 4 and that gave him enough threats to get a big lead in development. Then his tactics were strong enough to convert the win. I did defend relatively well, though, and there was really only one significant tactical threat that I failed to see.
|W|P|85350128|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.comI'm tired. We had a good, if short, Thanksgiving break in Washington. It was good to see everyone, but we were somewhat preoccupied by the upcoming move. On Friday we zoomed back and and I spent the weekend moving things to the house, caulking bathrooms, rearranging towel bars, assembling bird feeders, measuring rooms, finding a way to run speaker cable through the subflooring, etc. We move on Friday. In the meantime I have to work a four-day week and get the car fixed.
Speaking of the car, when we picked up our mail I had eight letters from ambulance-chasing lawyers, one from a body shop, and one from a lawyer/chiropractor. Seriously. They had all gotten word of my accident from the public record—a few of them even sent me copies of the police report. Disgusting.
|W|P|85349969|W|P||W|P|greg.ross@gmail.com