Category: Politics

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A quick question for people who discount the idea that global warming could be caused, in part, by human activities on the basis that we can’t possibly impact the climate as much as natural events and cycles affect it.

Do you also discount the well-documented depletion of the ozone layer by interaction with CFCs and similar chemicals? That seems to be a major environmental impact, and one that clearly has an anthropogenic component.

Nearly two decades after we cut back on CFC use, it looks like the ozone layer is finally starting to recover—or at least it’s stopped shrinking. Of course, it’ll take time. The whole reason we started using CFCs is that they didn’t seem to react with anything, so they’ll stay in the atmosphere for decades. UCI’s Sherwood Roland (who won a Nobel Prize for research on this topic) is quoted as saying, “This problem was a long time in the making, and because of the persistence of these chlorine compounds, there is no short-term fix.”

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Neil Gaiman weighs in on the flap over adult-oriented comics in a Denver Library:

It’s been twenty years, and newspaper headlines still oscillate between “Wham! Bam ! Pow! Comics Have Grown Up!” and “OH MY GAAAD THIS COMIC NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN HAS CONTENT NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN IN IT!” articles. Bizarre.

(Ironically, the people complaining don’t seem to care much about the content—they just wanted to get the Spanish-language books off the shelves.)

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Well, now that people have successfully gotten Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas reclassified as Adult (18+) instead of Mature (17+)—since we all know that sex scenes that you can only get at by hacking the game are far more damaging to 17-year-olds than interactive sequences in which they shoot people, commit carjacking, and run over prostitutes—they’re going after The Sims 2.

Yep. The Sims.

Apparently you can modify the game so that the sims appear nude. OMGSEX!

Jeff Brown, vice president of corporate communications at EA, in response to the accusations, told GameSpot, “This is nonsense. We’ve reviewed 100 percent of the content. There is no content inappropriate for a teen audience. Players never see a nude sim. If someone with an extreme amount of expertise and time were to remove the pixels, they would see that the sims have no genitals. They appear like Ken and Barbie.”

Thompson doesn’t buy it. “The sex and the nudity are in the game. That’s the point. The blur is an admission that even the ‘Ken and Barbie’ features should not be displayed. The blur can be disarmed. This is no different than what is in San Andreas, although worse.”

Yes, he actually said that The Sims is worse than Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

What is wrong with these people?

First they came for the violent games…

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On seeing an ad for the upcoming Dukes of Hazzard movie, I started thinking of other 70s and early 80s TV shows that Hollywood might remake. Then I started thinking of late 80s and 90s shows. I’m certain that, 10-20 years from now, there will be a Beverly Hills 90210 movie.

But what about the big hits of this decade—the reality shows? Will Hollywood want to release Survivor or Fear Factor movies for 2025? Or would it be like producing a Jeopardy movie?

One of the big draws for shows like Survivor or American Idol is watching the contestants’ stories unfold over time. You can’t do that in a two-hour movie as effectively as you can over a 10–20–week season. On the other hand, not every reality show is about the long haul. Assuming the public’s taste doesn’t change, I’m sure Fear Factor could be made into a movie. (Though one could argue that it already has been.)

Later in my drive I heard a story on the radio about Iraqi reality TV. Apparently the genre has become quite popular there, particularly the helpful sub-genre (like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition). There’s a show that helps people navigate government bureaucracy, a show that rebuilds homes destroyed in the war, one that gives couples dream weddings, one that takes people to foreign hospitals for medical procedures, etc.

Who knew what else we’d be exporting?

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OK, so according to the Los Angeles Times, “legal analysts” are saying Karl Rove is off the hook in the Valerie Plame case because he didn’t actually name her, but referred to her as “[Joseph] Wilson’s wife.”

Let’s think about this for a second. If I say, “The First Lady is going to be speaking at such-and-such an event,” I’ve identified her. I didn’t actually name Laura Bush, but it’s obvious who I’m talking about. Since marriage is a one-to-one correspondence (at a given time, anyway) and a matter of public record, identifying “Joseph Wilson’s wife” or “Hillary Clinton’s husband” is as good as identifying the person by name to anyone interested enough to look it up.

It seems to me that the legal issues for Rove should be whether the outing was intentional and whether he knew she was covert—not what your definition of “identify” is.

Not that I have any illusions that Rove will suffer any significant consequences. When a highly successful political strategist says, “go ahead, name me as your source,” you know he’s confident about his defense.

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Regarding the furor over Revenge of the Sith/Post-9/11 parallels: Get over yourselves.

You know, I could see parallels in Star Wars: Episode II and post-9/11 America. Palpatine’s emergency powers = PATRIOT Act. Militarization in response to the separatist movement = attacking Afghanistan and rattling sabers at Iraq. And there are conspiracy theorists who think that Bush arranged for 9/11 to generate an excuse for a power grab—just as Palpatine/Sidious manufactured his crisis by having Dooku/Tyranus arrange for the clone army under the name of a dead Jedi, then wait for the appropriate time to start fomenting a rebellion. But you know what, Episode II was filmed before 9/11, so Lucas couldn’t possibly have intended all that as commentary on the War on Terror any more than JMS could have been commenting on the same subject with the Nightwatch arc on Babylon 5.

So now, with Episode III, sure, he could mean it as commentary. And he admits seeing parallels. Note: seeing, not writing. But he states that the story grew out of looking at historical democracies’ descent into dictatorship (Los Angeles Times this morning):

Lucas began researching how democracies can turn into dictatorships with full consent of the electorate.

In ancient Rome, “why did the senate, after killing Caesar, turn around and give the government to his nephew?” Lucas said. “Why did France, after they got rid of the king and that whole system, turn around and give it to Napoleon? It’s the same thing with Germany and Hitler.

“You sort of see these recurring themes where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way, with the same kinds of issues, and threats from the outside, needing more control. A democratic body, a senate, not being able to function properly because everybody’s squabbling, there’s corruption.”

That’s the model he’s been basing the transformation on. The prologue in the original 1976 novelization of Star Wars refers to the Republic “rotting from within” and describes Palpatine’s rise to power:

Aided and abetted by restless, power-hungry individuals within the government, and the massive organs of commerce, the ambitious Senator Palpatine caused himself to be elected President of the Republic. He promised to reunite the disaffected among the people and to restore the remembered glory of the Republic.

Lucas originally described Palpatine as becoming a figurehead Emperor, with the Imperial governors behind the Empire’s “reign of terror” (note the French Revolution reference there), but had clearly changed his mind by the time he wrote Return of the Jedi. But the description of how Palpatine gets into power tracks exactly with what we’ve seen him do in the actual films. In fact, throughout the prequel trilogy he uses the same strategy in each film. He creates a crisis as Darth Sidious (the invasion of Naboo, or the Separatist movement), then offers to solve it as Palpatine—as long as people will give him the power to do so.

In other words, Palpatine’s tactics were set in stone back when Bill Clinton was President.

As far as dialogue… Please, if you think a variation on “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” is a deliberate attack on a statement Bush made, you really need to get out more. How many centuries has that phrase been around?

I’m reminded of Yoda’s words to Luke on Dagobah, when he asked what was in the cave. “Only what you take with you.”

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No one liked Susan B. Anthony dollars. “Gold” dollars all but vanished from circulation, as far as I can see (I can’t remember the last time I saw one that wasn’t change from a vending machine.) And while CNN/Money seems skeptical, Congress wants to try for another dollar coin. The catch? Collectability. Modeled after the state quarter series, they’ll release four Presidents a year, in historical order.

OK, it could work. But I have yet to see any of this year’s crop of commemmorative nickels, and I’m not even sure I’ve seen all of 2004’s quarters, never mind any from 2005.

Then there’s the matter of living people:

When the time comes to honor contemporary presidents, such as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and their successors, their likenesses are to be minted whether they are living or dead.

That means by 2018 or so — when Bush and Clinton would be in their early 70s — the United States could break a long-standing tradition that money only honors the deceased.

I had thought this was codified somewhere, but I may be confusing the issue with postage stamps. The important part is keeping current government figures off of the money (too monarchist), but I’m not exactly thrilled about the precedent.

Of course, the real question is this: Why hasn’t the dollar coin caught on? I remember an Australian grumbling about American currency and how “you can have a pocket full of coins and have nothing.” Admittedly Australian currency no longer uses $1 bills (coins go from 5¢ to $2 and bills from $5 to $100), but they had a point: A pocket full of £1, 1€ or even AU $2 coins can buy a lot more than the same pocket full of quarters and dimes.